Dasein - Monoskop

64 PART II
to investigations five and six, we will be able to encounter even more
evidence to the same effect.
3.5. Truth, Realism, and Knowledge about Abstract Objects
Investigations five and six are by far the most difficult of the Logical
Investigations. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they
carry the burden of proof for several of the most central premisses
of the whole work: they demonstrate that we do indeed have access
to reality, that is to say, they refute idealism; they defend a nonrelativistic
notion of truth; and they present an answer to the question
how we are able to acquire knowledge about abstract meaning
entities in the way presupposed in investigation four. Thus investigation
five and especially six give Husserl's conception of language as
calculus its ultimate justification (as far as the Logical Investigations
are concerned).
Before turning to these major topics, I want to draw attention
to something of a minor theme of the fifth and the sixth investigations.
This theme is not crucial for an understanding of what
Husserl is doing here, but it will show its true significance once we
have encountered Heidegger's and Gadamer's account of the same
issue. What I have in mind is the distinction between picture and
sign. As we shall see below, especially Gadamer stresses that language
is misconstrued when looked at as a system of signs, and he
conceives of language as a picture of reality. From this perspective
it is interesting to note that Husserl in the last two investigations
takes up the same problem but answers it in favour of the very sign
conception that Gadamer opposes.
Husserl draws the distinction between sign and picture by saying
that in the case of the picture there exists a relation of similarity
between the picture itself and what is pictured. In the case of the
6ign this similarity is purely coincidental and generally absent. Now
in the case of language there is no similarity between word and thing:
Husserl holds that signitive act and perceived object have "nothing
to do with one another*} 17 Were Husserl to stop here, the difference
between him and Gadamer would have to be noted but would
not as such be especially exciting. What makes the difference more
dramatic is the way in which Husserl goes on to qualify his stand