The Structure and Extension of (Proto)Type Concepts: Husserl’s Correlationist Approach

Abstract

This paper aims to reassess a notion in the works of the later Husserl that is both historically important and philosophically insightful, but remains understudied, namely, that of type. In opposition to a standard reading which treats Husserl’s type presentations as pre-conceptual habits, this paper argues that these representations are a specific kind of concept. More precisely, it shows that Husserl’s account of type presentations is akin to the contemporary prototype theory of concepts. This is historically important, since the predecessor of the prototype theory is usually said to be Wittgenstein. From a philosophical standpoint, the paper shows that Husserl has an innovative account of the connection between type concepts and their extension. Contrary to the standard view of extensions as sets and thus sharp entities, Husserl develops a correlationalist theory of concepts, according to which, for the specific characteristics in the structure of a concept, there are corresponding characteristics in the arrangement of its members, and vice versa. According to this theory, while sharp concepts lead to sharp extensions, vague concepts such as (proto)type concepts lead to vague extensions. The paper presents this understanding of Husserl in detail and explains its philosophical significance.

Acknowledgments

A first draft of this paper was presented at an informal work-in-progress seminar organized by Nils Kürbis at King’s College London in 2019. I am grateful to the participants for their remarks, especially Julien Dutant and Nils Kürbis. I also thank Gregor Bös for his written comments on an earlier draft of the paper. My special thanks go to Mark Textor, with whom I had lengthy discussions about various issues developed in the paper and who made very useful suggestions. Finally, I thank the anonymous referees and James Hampton for their helpful remarks on earlier drafts of the paper.

Notes

1 On the relation of Husserl and Wittgenstein on this point, see Bégout 2002, who nonetheless does not connect the discussion to the prototype theory.

2 For Husserl’s evolution on this difficult question, see Künne 2013. I will not discuss this point here, as it would require a lengthy treatment; on this issue, see Taieb 2018.

3 Husserl 1974, Hua XVII, 163.3-7; trans. Cairns, slightly modified; see also Husserl 1976, Hua VI, 132.32–133.9.

4 For a similar position in contemporary philosophy, see Placek 1996 and Moltmann 2013. On Husserl’s theory of mental products, see again Taieb 2018.

5 On Husserl’s adoption of type concepts, see Bégout 2002 and Lohmar 1998; for a general presentation of Husserl’s account of concepts, see Beyer 2011.

6 I am grateful to Mark Textor for the idea that this is to be described in terms of a primitive experience.

7 Although the initial comparison which leads to the abstraction of the type ‘dog’ is made between particulars, the type itself is a general content. If it were not, then Husserl’s view would resemble more the ‘exemplar theory of concepts’ (Brooks 1987), according to which our concepts are deprived of any general content, but are organized around the representation of an individual, which members in the extension resemble to a greater or lesser degree. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point. For more on the contents of type concepts, see below.

8 I am grateful to Mark Textor for this idea.

9 In this paper I frequently cite Husserl 1939. Note, however, that the original manuscripts of the passages on which I mostly rely have been published either in Husserl 2012, Hua XLI or in Husserl 2008, Hua XXXIX, making it possible for me to check whether I am quoting Husserl himself. On the composition of the 1939 volume and its relation to Husserl’s Nachlass, see Lohmar 1996; a new edition of this volume is currently in preparation at the Husserl Archives in Cologne.

10 Note that this account might have some theoretical advantages over the view that the prototype is an existing species; for one, it would explain how prototype concepts can combine, thus answering the objection that these concepts do not allow for compositionality. For a presentation of the problem of compositionality, see Margolis and Laurence 2019.

11 Hampton 2016, 129.

12 It must be emphasized that vagueness does not pertain exclusively to prototype concepts as contrasted with definitional concepts. Although definitional structure entails that there is a determinate number of necessary and sufficient properties that must be instantiated for something to fall under the concept, this does not mean that the concept is sharp: a definition can include some vague marks, and so a concept with definitional structure can also be vague (on this, see Margolis and Laurence 1999, 24).

13 Husserl 2008, Hua XXXIX, 159.17-25; see also 2008, Hua XXXIX, 429.31–430.11.

14 For Husserl, the notions of typicality and familiarity apparently overlap, though one might claim that they are distinct. Prima facie at least, something can be both atypical and familiar, e.g. when someone has an atypical dog as a pet. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this idea.

15 Husserl 2012, Hua XLI, 388.8-10 and 23-27.

16 As noted above, Husserl also talks of type essences, and describes them as ‘fluctuating’ (2012, Hua XLI, 67.14-18), which might mean that they are vague too (if it is admitted that they truly exist).

17 Note, however, that there are exceptions to this. First, even if Hampton (2007) says that what is vague is the prototype concept and not the extension, he still thinks that there is a correlation between the intension and extension of such concepts – or more precisely, between the weight for membership fixation of the properties represented by the prototype and the degree of typicality possessed by individuals which instantiate these properties. (I thank James Hampton for drawing my attention to this point.) Moreover, in a dialetheic framework, in which borderline cases are treated as ‘glutty’ items to which a vague predicate applies both truly and falsely, it might be correct to talk of an ‘extension’ with vague frontiers, in the sense that the extension includes both the items to which the predicate applies merely truly and those to which it applies also truly (on dialetheism and vagueness, see Priest, Berto, and Weber 2018). In addition, there have been explicit objections to the thesis that a set is necessarily sharp, namely, in fuzzy set theories, first elaborated by Zadeh (1965) and further developed into a theory of vague sets by Gau and Buehrer (1993). However, the notion of ‘vague set’ has been received with some scepticism in philosophy (see Horgan 1990, 554 n. 16). Although Husserl himself did not fully elaborate a fuzzy logic, his notion of vague extension clearly anticipates this tradition.

18 See again, however, the exceptions mentioned in the previous footnote.

19 One might be sceptical about the use of the word ‘concept’ to refer to such a complex entity, which includes a computation process, that is, something usually not counted among concepts. An answer to this objection would simply be to admit that the word ‘concept’ is not a natural kind name, but is used for entities that have various natures (this position is defended by Machery 2009).

20 See 2012, Hua XLI, 111.33-36, and 273.11-35 (but which Husserl describes as unsatisfying in a note), as well as 1939, 398–403 (2012, Hua XLI, 248.35–250.31). The fact that Husserl treats type concepts as ‘pre-predicative’ has also led interpreters to hold that they are non-linguistic (see e.g. Lohmar 2008, 153). But I must confess that I have some difficulties in seeing why: something pre-predicative is pre-judicative, but not necessarily pre-linguistic. At any rate, as noted above, Husserl (2012, Hua XLI, 276.15 and 315.21-23) is happy to say that type concepts are expressed in ordinary language.

21 Husserl 2012, Hua XLI, 107.1-4.

22 For the application of semantic indeterminacy to the vagueness of concepts, see Hampton 2007, 379; on the distinction between the semantic and epistemic accounts of vagueness more broadly, see Egré 2018.

23 However, see footnote 17 above for exceptions.