NOEMATIC SENSE. Husserl distinguishes within the noema two moments: the thetic characteristic and the noematic sense. Husserl’s characterization of the noema as “the perceived [object] as perceived,” “the remembered [object] as remembered,” “the judged [state of affairs] as judged,” or, more generally “the intended [object] just as intended” foreshadows this distinction. The object’s manners of givenness with its appropriate thetic characteristic—for example, in perception the object as perceived is believed to exist—is distinguished from the noematic sense. Husserl uses the image of a core to distinguish the noematic sense from the full noema; the noematic sense is at the core of the full noema. The noematic sense, then, corresponds to what Husserl had formerly called act-matter, and it accounts for the presentation of the object in a determinate manner. In particular, the identical object is given with its “attributes” or, as Husserl sometimes puts it, its “predicates.” This reveals that the noematic sense is itself further distinguished into two moments: the determinable X which is the formal placeholder for the identical object and the attributes or predicates belonging to or predicable of that object.

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.

Beyond the noema of an experience, Husserl says, lies “another fundamental trait of intentionality”: what he calls the horizon of the experience. Acts directed toward certain sorts of objects – paradigmatically physical objects – represent their objects as “transcendent”, as being “more” than what the Sinn of the act explicitly prescribes. Such an intentional experience thus points toward a “horizon” of further possibilities regarding the object, and hence toward a corresponding “horizon” of further possible experiences of that object. And it is thanks to a certain “indeterminacy” in the noematic Sinn of an act that it has such a horizon.

Trees, for instance, are transcendent objects. When I see a tree, there are many features of its back side that are hidden from my view and not specified in my perception. Moreover, I know little of the internal chemistry of the tree, and even less of this particular tree’s history. Nonetheless, the tree itself has a back side, an internal chemistry, and a history; and so the tree I see outruns or “transcends” my perception of it. In this sense, as Husserl says, the tree as presented in my perception is incompletely “determined”, or partly “indeterminate”. Or better, there is an “indeterminacy” in the predicative content of the Sinn of my perception: the Sinn prescribes certain of the tree’s properties but leaves open, or indeterminate, the full nature of the object it prescribes. (Ideas, §44; CM, §§19-20; EJ, §§8, 21c.)

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By virtue of the sense of indeterminacy in its noematic Sinn, an experience like perception “predelineates” an array of further possible properties of its object, which may be given in further possible perceptions of that same object. These further properties of the object – left open, yet delimited, by the Sinn – Husserl calls the horizon of the object as represented in the experience. Correspondingly, he calls the further possible perceptions – compatible with and “motivated” by what is prescribed in the experience – the horizon of the experience. Although this notion of horizon, or pair of notions, may be generalized, Husserl expounds it for the case of perception. (Cf. CM, §§19, 20; EJ, §8).

Consider again my seeing this blooming apple tree. As Husserl stresses, a thing can be seen only from one side at a time, or “in one aspect”. Yet what is “genuinely given”, or given with sensory evidence, is experienced as surrounded by a “horizon” of what is “co-given” without sensory evidence – such as the leaves and their colors that I expect might be found on the tree’s back side. This horizon of further aspects or properties of the tree is itself indeterminate: the exact shapes, colors, and density of leaves on the back side of the tree, for instance, are not precisely predelineated by the Sinn of my present experience. And the horizon is open-ended: as I walk around the tree and discover more precisely what its further properties are, the Sinn of each new experience will predelineate still further possibilities not motivated by preceding perceptions. (Cf.Ideas, §44; CM, §19.)

The horizon of the tree, as given in my perception, includes what Husserl calls an “internal” and an “external” horizon (EJ, §§8, 22). The internal horizon consists of possible further nonrelational properties of the object. It includes properties that could be given in further perceptions, such as colors of leaves and blossoms on the back side of the tree, and also – if we go beyond the strictly perceptual part of the horizon – non-observable properties such as those concerning the tree’s chemical composition. The external horizon consists of the object’s possible relations to other things, including things not explicitly represented in the perception. The external horizon is important, for it reflects the fact that objects are not perceived as solitary things but as things existing in the natural world and as therefore being related to every other natural thing. Thus, the external horizon could include many kinds of relational properties: being next to the peach tree, being over the hill from another blooming apple tree, harboring a pair of mourning doves, having been planted by Johnny Appleseed, and so on – the ‘and so on’ denoting the tree’s ultimate external horizon, its relations to “the world” as very vaguely and indeterminately predelineated in the perception.

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The notion of horizon extends Husserl’s phenomenology and his theory of intentionality via noema. In effect, Husserl constructs a ramified theory of intentionality: the first level of theory concerns acts, intentional character, and intentional relations; the second level concerns the noema and the Sinn’s prescription of an object; and the third level concerns the horizon of possibilities for the object that are left open by the Sinn. To explicate the intentionality of an experience, then, we must address not only the experience, its intentional character, and its noematic Sinn, but also its horizon of further possible experiences of the object as constituted in the experience.

Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith - Theory of Intentionality

Husserl introduces his “as such” terminology in an attempt to overcome a certain problem in talking about the noema and its role in intentionality. By virtue of the Sinn in an act’s noema, we have said, the subject of the act has a “sense” of an object. And, as we have been stressing, one can have a sense of an object even when there actually is no such object. Nonetheless, it is almost impossible to describe this sense or Sinn, and to distinguish it from other Sinne, without speaking of “the object” that it gives the subject a sense “of”. Consider, for example, the difference between hallucinating a dagger and hallucinating a tree. It would be natural to say that this difference lies in “what” the subject perceives: a dagger in the one case, a tree in the other. But since the acts are hallucinatory, there is no dagger or tree – or, Husserl insists, any other object – that the subject perceives in either case. This difference in “what” is perceived, on Husserl’s analysis, is therefore not a difference in the objects of perception, for here there are no such objects. Rather, it is a difference in noematic Sinne: the one act has a Sinn that gives the subject a sense of a dagger; the other, a sense of a tree. And so the expression ‘what is perceived’ is ambiguous: if one is speaking “naturalistically” about the relation between a perceiver and the thing she perceives, it refers to the object of the perception; but if one is speaking “phenomenologically” about the intentional or representational character of a perception, it refers to the intentional content of the perception, i.e., to the noema or the noematic Sinn. Husserl’s “as such” terminology is introduced to resolve this ambiguity: thus, Husserl calls the object of a perception “the perceived”, “the perceived object”, or sometimes “the object simpliciter”; and he calls the noema or Sinn “the perceived as such”.

Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith - Theory of Intentionality

The noema and the object of an act are completely distinct entities. For one thing, they are usually not even the same kind of entities: an act’s noema is the act’s intentional content, its ideal or abstract structure; whereas the objects of acts, in typical cases, are ordinary physical objects in the world of “nature”. Moreover, while every act has a noema, not every act actually has an object: an hallucination, for example, has a noema and so is intentional in character, although no object actually stands before the perceiver at all. And of course the noema and the object of an act play entirely different roles: the object, if there is one, is what the act is “of” or “about”, while the noema is what gives the act its phenomenological character of being of or about that object.

Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith - Theory of Intentionality