Dasein - Monoskop

HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY AND LANGUAGE AS CALCULUS 23
quoted above does not by itself necessitate the suggestions I have
made. At least one distinguished interpreter 52 claims that, for
Husserl, numbers in themselves just "are psychical acts of higher
order that are actually carried out in contrast with acts that are
only symbolically presented". 53 According to this proposal one might
perhaps explain the expression "realm of numbers" as shorthand
for those number concepts that we could—starting from small numbers—successively
construct if only our psychical apparatus lacked
the limitations it in fact has. In other words, this realm consists of
those number concepts that a hypothetically assumed limitless reason
would have. Strong support for this view is to be found a still
unpublished work from the year 1890 where Husserl still writes that
it has to be admitted that "cardinal numbers are creations of the
human mind ... They originate from certain psychic activities." 54
On whatever side one comes down on in this issue, from the
perspective of our study it is far more important that on the psychologistic
as well as on the constructivistic or the platonistic reading
Husserl regards the meaning of numbers as accessible to us: numbers
are not just signs, numbers have meaning. This meaning might not
be accessible in the same way in each case, but for Husserl there is
never any doubt of the fact that the meanings of numbers are indeed
accessible to us, nor of the fact that an understanding of the
meanings of numbers is essential to an understanding of elementary
arithmetic.
2.2. The Interpretation and Re-interpretation of Algorithms
—From Psychology to Logic
As we have seen in our Introduction, a calculus conception of logic
and language is likely to have a somewhat ambivalent position visà-vis
formalism: formalism will be opposed where it is seen to result
from a disregard for semantics, while it is likely to be accepted where
it is connected to the idea of the re-interpretability of the formal calculus
over different domains. Up to this point we have seen Husserl
oppose formalism precisely for the predictable reasons. As we turn
to the recently published manuscripts of the early 1890s, we shall
encounter Husserl's acceptance of a qualified formalism.
In February 1890, three years after the publication of the Ha-