Simønä Crësti

The aim of this paper is to analyze some rising issues that indexicality places to Husserl’s phenomenological semantics. We will conduct the discussion availing ourselves of the husserlian formulation of the problem and his attempt to solution, and of approaches to the problem from analytic philosophy and linguistics. In particular, in order to understand what essentially characterize indexicality and make it a puzzling problem, we will examine two of its fundamental features, that is the relationships it maintains with context and perspective. We will try to sound out their compatibility with Husserl’s analysis and to highlight some internal difficulties in the phenomenological approach to the topic.

This paper deals with the semantic theory of indexicality expressed in Logical Investigations, integrating it with some aspects of John Perry’s work on the same topic. My intention is to show some unexpected affinities between these two studies and draw attention to the value of their different conclusions. In particular, I will refer to the problem of the role of intuition to understand whether and in which sense the context of utterance is semantically determining within the expressive act. Moreover I will try to clarify the way the indexical meaning is described by Husserl and Perry: their solutions are similar as far as they split the meaning sphere in a twofold partition – roughly consisting of a descriptive and indicating part on one hand, and a content on the other one – but nevertheless different because of the ontological status granted to the content. This will appear to be related to the different way they interpret their common choice to make the act, and not the object, the key of the argument.