David Bell argued in his book Husserl that Frege's notion of reference was realist, whereas Husserl's notion of reference in Logical Investigations was non-realist. The suitable notion of reference should reconcile between extensional and intensional modes of speaking of the object. According to Husserl, intentional objects do not form an ontological category: to speak of them is to adopt the material mode of saying what, in the formal mode, relates to a singular term standing in an intensional context. Thus, Husserl's solution closely resembles Frege's, and both are essentially realist ones.
Keywords: David Bell, Frege, Husserl, Intensional context, realism, reference, sense