NOEMA. Husserl introduced the technical term noema in Ideas I (1913) to denote the intentional object of conscious experience. In that work he describes the intentionality of experience as a noesis-noema correlation. Whereas noesis refers to a real (reell) content of experience, viz., the meaning-intention which is directed toward an object in a determinate manner and with a certain positional or thetic characteristic, noema refers to the intentional content of the experience, its “objective” correlate, i.e., the intentional object or the object as intended.

Husserl’s account of the noema, however, appears ambiguous. In speaking of the noema, Husserl uses the language of objects suggesting the noema is the intended object itself but simply as intended (for example, the perceived as such, as perceived); the language of contents (ir-real, ideal, or intentional contents); and the language of sense (that is, language which connects the notion of noema to that of sense as a determinate mode of presentation). This apparent ambiguity has generated much controversy regarding how to interpret the notion of the noema.

Some, for example, Johannes Daubert, criticized the very idea of the noema. Among those who did not, however, there a rose two main interpretations. The first emphasizes the similarities between Gottlob Frege’s notion of sense and Husserl’s notion of the noema. On this view, the noema is an abstract entity that mediates the relation of the noesis to the intended object. The view combines two claims: the intentional object or noema is the intentional content but not the intended object of the act, and the noema is an abstract, intensional entity, which is to be understood as a linguistically expressible meaning and to be characterized basically as Gottlob Frege characterized meaning. On one version of this interpretation, the noema is an abstract ideal object, that is, a meaning-species that is instantiated in acts or, alternatively, a type that is tokened in individual acts. On another version, the noema is an abstract particular entertained by the act and referring to the intended object.

The second interpretation emphasizes the noema as the intended object precisely as intended, and it is thereby committed to deny the ontological distinction between noema (intentional object) and intended object posited by the first interpretation. On this view, in other words, Husserl’s adoption of the technical term noema is meant to indicate that one is speaking of the intended object from a philosophical, rather than a natural, perspective after having performed the phenomenological reduction and entered the phenomenological attitude. In employing this technical language, Husserl introduces no new existents; he merely transforms the way in which we attend to intended objects. The noema is the intended objectivity philosophically considered, just as it is intended with its significance for us, in relation to our animating interests and concerns, and with certain thetic characteristics. Once again, there are two versions of this interpretation. One characterizes the relation between the intended object and the multiplicity of noemata presenting the single intended object as a whole of noematic parts. On this view, the object, more precisely, is the ideally realizable, but not actually realized or realizable, totality of noemata presenting it. The other version characterizes this relation as an identity-in- a-manifold, wherein each phase of the manifold discloses the identical object in its horizonal connections to other phases of the manifold.

Some, but by no means all, interpreters argue that the differences between the two interpretations are not as marked as they first appear and can be reconciled. Others—again by no means all—argue that both interpretations are correct within a limited range of application—the second interpretation for perceptions, the first for non-perceptual experiences.

These interpretational differences have to do with what Husserl on occasion calls the “full” noema. He distinguishes in the full noema three moments: the thetic characteristic (the noematic correlate of the act-quality), the noematic sense (the assimilation of act-matter into the newly conceived intentional content), and the determinable X (the “innermost moment” of the noema). See also HORIZON; IDEAL CONTENT; IDENTIFICATION; IR-REAL CONTENTS.