It is clear from this exposition that fulfillment as well as
Knowing--which indeed is only another word for the same thing--can be characterised as an act of re-identification.
(Husserl, VIth Investigation, Subsection 8)
We have equated fulfillment with Knowledge (in the narrower sense) and
have indicated that by "fulfillment" only certain types of re-identification are designated, those, namely, which bring us closer to the goal of Knowledge. What that is to mean we perhaps can make clear by saying:
In each fulfillment a more or less complete INTUITIONALIZATION occurs.
(Ibid., Subsection 16)
I
From its earliest phases up to the present, philosophical inquiry has taken
the nature of knowledge to be a central concern. Even the extreme sceptic must
come dangerously close, for him, to knowing what knowledge is, if his claims are
to be at all intelligible and interesting, since a person who does not know what
he is denying the possibility or actuality of would have little claim to be
taken seriously. Accordingly, each sceptical philosopher has articulated, more
or less, a conception of knowledge which he regards as reasonable to accept.
Most of the philosophers commonly counted "great" have not been
sceptics, of course. They are usually quite straightforward with their claims,
not only to know, but to know what knowledge is, and often have given reasons
supporting their view. Still, no philosophical positions have been more
contested than those on the nature of knowledge, and this remains so up to
today.
Some of us who continue to believe that reflection upon texts by Edmund
Husserl is a better than average way of working toward substantive philosophical
conclusions are especially attracted by what he had to say about knowledge or Erkenntnis.
This is certainly true for me. I would never have chosen to work at philosophy
as a profession but for the single--though multi-faceted--issue of realism. I
have always felt that realism had to be true, because there is just no way that
the objects of our world--whether particulars or universals (a tree or galaxy, a
color or shape)--could, being what they are, be produced or sustained in
existence by acts of thought or perception, being what they are. (Yes,
yes, I know: What are they?)
Yet I have to admit that many others feel just a strongly that realism must
be mistaken. And of course they have their arguments, against which people such
as Thomas Reid in the Eighteenth Century, and the American New Realists or the
later `Critical' Realists of the Twentieth Century, have not been able to
prevail. At least that is the general view of the matter, in which I regretfully
concur. And they all seemed to me to have failed for a simple but profound
reason. They were unable to give a proper substance and nature to consciousness
itself.
One is haunted by the image of G. E. Moore trying to "fix his attention
upon consciousness and to see what, distinctly, it is," in response
to which "it seems to vanish: it seems as if we had before us a mere
emptiness." When we introspect the sensation-of-blue, he thought, we can
see the blue alright; but "the other element," consciousness-of-blue,
"is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it can be distinguished if we look
attentively enough, and if we know that there is something to look for." He
tried to make the reader see consciousness, but confessed his fear that
he "succeeded very ill."1
And rightly did he fear. We all know of the retreat that was beat soon
afterwards, especially to the North and West of the English Channel, from
"consciousness" into language, as the proper subject of philosophical
analysis: bringing with it the rejection of "private space" (and
private `language', but really consciousness itself as previously understood),
and proposals of "logical" behaviorism, the "topic
neutrality" of mental reports, functionalism, and most recently various
forms of "externalism" or contextualism, which tend to analyse
knowledge as a social reality that no human individual taken by herself can
realize, for it simply is not a state of an individual--much less a state of mind.
There have been a few who attempted to stand against the anti-realist flood,
such as Gustav Bergmann. But they have now disappeared, leaving hardly a gurgle
behind. Curiously, so far as the prospects of realism are concerned, we have
returned at the end of the Twentieth Century almost precisely to the point where
the remarkable efforts toward realism around 1900 found us. As we then were not
supposed to be able to "transcend" our own mental states, or perhaps
"experience" in some more impersonal sense (Bradley, Dewey), we now
allegedly cannot transcend our language and its social history. The ego-centric
predicament is replaced by a lingo-centric predicament. In either case,
"there is no ready-made world," as Hilary Putnam says, and we are left
with the clear implication that the world is `made' in the interactions of
consciousness (now language) and .... and what? The result is that we (I, you)
never see or know what `we' (collectively) have not, in some sense,
"made."
What is most intriguing in Husserl's thought to me, the always hopeful
realist, is the way he works out a theory of the substance and nature of
consciousness and knowledge which allows it to grasp a world that it does not
make, and even to be known--even observed!--to grasp it. He gives an
observable substance to knowledge that does not force it or its `products' to stand
between the knower and what is known, and leaves the viewing of the
relationship between them a distinct possibility. Even to hint at such
possibilities is no doubt scandalous in the contemporary context. The force of
the philosophical Zeitgeist drives flatly against them. I know of no way
to avoid the immeditate offense. But I hope that an exploration of what Erkenntnis
is, according to Husserl, might help us at least to begin to think such
unthinkables.
II
Husserl's concern with Erkenntnis in general developed in two main stages. When he first began his work he was not concerned with the general
issue of the nature of knowledge at all, but with the quite specific issue of how to turn the powerful technique of general arithmetic into a body of
knowledge. I have elsewhere related how his hopes for a quick victory in terms of "inauthentic" representations, or representations by means of
signs, were dashed upon what he found to be the facts of consciousness in the working arithmetician.2 As he struggled with the issue of knowledge of the "absent" (an infinity of numbers and their specific and general relations) in terms of a "present" (algorithmic symbol systems) that
has little or no natural relation to it, his horizons gradually broadened over the years to a realization that "common sense" as well as scientific
knowing pervasively manifests this same gap between its descriptive make-up and its subject matter. At the end of his important 1894 paper, "Psychological
Studies in the Elements of Logic," he expresses his amazement that "a psychical act can reach out beyond its own immanent content to another content
>object< which is not really met with [bewusst] at all."3
This is the first stage of his concern with Erkenntnis in general.
The signified contents (objects), he continues in this paper, "enter into consciousness either not at all or only in a quite rudimentary fashion....
But all of this does not trouble us. It seems as if the meant objects themselves underlay the sequence of words" or symbols used. Thus the question arises
as to how we are to understand "the possibility of knowledge in general," especially "scientific knowledge, which is totally based
upon the possibility of our being able purposively to prefer such thinking...over thought more fully adequated to intuition. But
how, then, is rational insight possible in science?" And "rational insight," to which intuition is indispensible, is for him an absolute
requirement for Erkenntnis.
Now these comments actually come toward the end of a paper, crucial for any understanding of the development of Husserl's views, in which he has been
working toward a solution of his puzzle about arithmetic by exploring necessary connections within the elements of consciousness, including some of the
fundamental relationships between a mere representation and a corresponding
intuition of the same object. He speaks here in some detail of fulfilment,
ultimately the key concept for his clarification of knowledge, as is announced
in the epigraphs above. For example he remarks:
"If a representation goes over into its correlative phenomenon, e.g.,
into an intuition immediately intended by it, then the immediate psychical
experience of the fact that the intuited is also the intended shall be
designated as consciousness of the fulfilled intention. Of the intuition
involved in such a case we say that it is borne upon a consciousness of fulfilled
intention. Of the representation we say, more simply, that it has found its fulfilment.
This latter term will be used by us in general to designate the non-mediated or
mediated correlate of a representation....The ultimate fulfilment of any
representation is the intuition proper to it. It is pure intuition--a term which expresses the fact that a content bears no representative function whatsoever."4 He will later
standardly say, of course, that "the final fulfilment of all intentions lies in perception" (LI 763), meaning "intuition."
What is lacking in this early account of fulfilment, and so of Erkenntnis,
is fulfilment as, ultimately, a relationship to the object or subject matter itself.
If you were just to read the 1894 paper without knowing anything else about
Husserl's works, you could easily come away with the impression that
intentionality (and as a result, fulfilment) is only a relationship between experiences
or aspects thereof. And if you study his early development (from Brentano) you
can see why this would have had to be so--which certainly must be agreeable to
those, from Heidegger to Derrida, who have poisoned the stream of Husserl's
thought by turning it into a socio-historical form of idealism, as well as to
their contemporary `Analytic' counterparts such as Quine, Putnam and Rorty.
But in the light of what we will see below, we must say only that Husserl in
this 1894 paper had not yet worked out a theory of intentionality that
will permit it to reach beyond components of consciousness. This is because he
was still befuddled by talk of "immanent" or "intentional"
objects. To develop such a theory is the work of his mid- and late-1890's. This
work came to expression in the 1896 review of Twardowski's Zur Lehre vom
Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, in the research notes drawn
together by the Husserliana editors under the title "Intentionale
Gegenstande," in an essay length letter of 1901 to Marty--all of which are
contained in Husserliana XXII--and above all in the Vth "Logical
Investigation" of 1901. As a result of working out a view of intentionality
that at last permits one to speak seriously of the "objectivity" of
"contents," his question about the nature and possibility of knowledge
is no longer stated in terms of what is present and how it enables us to grasp
what is not present--though that always remains an issue. Rather, as of 1900 at
least, it is in terms of "the relationship between the subjectivity of
knowing and the objectivity of the content known."5 And this
marks the second stage of his concern with Erkenntnis in general.
III
Beginning, as he did, with attempts to understand science--Arithmetic, but
very soon science in general--Husserl's first concern had been with theory.
In his Logical Investigations, accordingly, the primary goal was to work
out an account of how theory can be present in and to the minds of many
individual knowers, while having a unity, identity and being that was
independent of those minds and their acts. For theory, he holds, is objective:
the same for many, and dependent on none--nor on all together or
successively--for its nature and existence. Pure logic, or logic as a
strictly formal discipline or body of knowledge, is for him simply an account of
the logical unity of actual and possible theories.6 Its
theoretical content has, accordingly, no reference to mental or linguistic acts,
nor to anything anthropological or "worldly."
By contrast, "logic" in the broader sense of a Kunstlehre or
technology of knowledge, concern for which Husserl never abandoned, treats
precisely of the instruments (including theory and its corresponding symbolisms)
by which the human mind achieves knowledge, showing how they accomplish what
they do.7 Any account of human knowing has to deal with how theory
integrates itself into mental and linguistic acts of theorizing, and the role
that symbolisms play in the human grasp of objective realities, including
theories themselves. Inquiry into the theoretical foundations of logic in the inclusive
sense forces us, accordingly, to deal with the question of its relationship to
psychology and other disciplines. And: "This question coincides in
essence...with the cardinal question of epistemology, that of the objectivity of
knowledge." (LI 56) We have to give a phenomenological treatment of acts of
knowing in relationship to what can be `in' them, and in that sense
"subjective," without losing its objective status: its independence in
nature and existence.
An examination of acts of consciousness (or of language) that is adequate to
provide theoretical foundations for logic in the inclusive sense--or even for a
clarification of pure logic as a body of knowledge--also makes it clear
(LI 253-254) that those acts aim at or are about objects or states of affairs
which stand as identical, and hence as objective, over against multitudes of
actual or possible meanings or acts bearing upon them. And it establishes that
every `mere' thought of or reference to an object is subject to "Ideal
laws" that govern the possibility (or impossibility) of arriving at Erkenntnis
of that object. Every representation provides guidelines to a better or
fuller cognitive grasp of its "object." These are found by Husserl to
be bedrock phenomenological "facts" about cognitive experiences
generally. But they, in turn, provoke the questions to which his mature analysis
of Erkenntnis must provide answers. These are:
"How are we to understand the fact that the `in itself' of the
objectivity comes to `represention'--indeed, that in Erkenntnis it falls
within our `grasp' [zur `Erfassung' komme]--and so ends up by becoming
subjective after all? What does it mean to say that the object is both `in
itself' and is `given' in Erkenntnis? How can the Ideality of the
universal, in the form of concepts or laws, enter the flux of real psychical
Experiences and turn into an Erkenntnis possession of the one thinking?
What does the adaequatio rei et intellectus involved in knowing signify
in the various types of cases, depending on whether the knowing grasp takes in
an individual or universal, a fact or a law, etc.?" (LI 254)
It is these questions which Husserl intends to answer in his Logical
Investigations. That is why its "Second Part," made up of the six
"Investigations" themselves, is given the general title:
"Investigations in the Phenomenology and Theory of Erkenntnis."
The VIth Investigation, which states his results, is titled: "Elements of a
Phenomenological Clarification of Erkenntnis."
IV
Now we turn to consider his mature theory of what Erkenntnis or
knowledge is, and to see how he lays the foundation for his realist answer to
the above questions.
The opening sentence of the VIth Investigation reaffirms that his aim all
along has been die Aufklarung der Erkenntnis, and emphasizes how
important the Vth Investigation was for our advance toward that goal. In the
simplest of terms, knowledge is a matter of finding something to be as it is
thought to be, or at least of having insight into the possibility of such a
finding. This means that Erkenntnis is an act with other complete acts as
parts. It is a "molecular," not an "atomic" act. How its
sub-acts can come together in it is dependent upon their structure. The internal
structure of the "act" of thought as such is what is displayed by the
Vth Investigation, and that explains why it is of such importance. As a result
of his research in the mid and late 1890s, coming to expression there,
representation and corresponding intuition are no longer treated as wholes which
magically come together as the latter `fulfils' the former. Rather, they are
seen as complexes in which what they have in common and how they differ stand
out and provide the basis for an analysis of what fulfilment amounts to.
Most importantly for our concerns here, meaningful acts as such manifest four
dimensions of variability. Any two acts may differ as to their object, of
course. But they also may differ as to how one and the same object is presented,
e.g. in different relationships. These two dimensions together constitute what
in the Vth Investigation he calls the "matter" of the act. (LI 588,
652, 737) Or, again, two acts may differ in the `attitude' assumed toward one
object presented in the same way. This difference, which we would today call the
"propositional attitude," is called the "quality" of the act
by him. (LI 588f) Matter and quality together form the act's "intentional
essence." (590) Taken in relation to a respective linguistic expression,
the intentional essence becomes a "semantic essence"--or, when `taken
Ideally', just a meaning in Husserl's Ideal sense. (590-593) The
intentional or semantic essence of an act is to be distinguished from a
corresponding epistemic (erkenntnismassige) essence, possible in
principle for all acts with objects that actually exist or are. This
"epistemic essence" is precisely what is to be analyzed in the VIth
Investigation. (744-745)
Finally, for our present purposes, acts may differ with respect to whether
their objects exist or not. Some may want to balk at this, for is it not a
central thesis of Husserl's thought that the existence or non-existence of the
object makes no difference to the act or meaning directed upon it? We hope to
make clear below the senses in which this is and is not true. But what we need
to have before us at this point is that some acts have existent objects, while
other do not, and that in the latter case there does not stand in for the
`real' object an `intentional' object, safely tucked inside the act itself to
make it possible for it to `have' its object, to be about what it is
about. The identity of the real and the intentional object, and the abandonment
of the `immanent' object as essential to the make-up of the act, is decisively
demonstrated in the Vth Investigation. (LI 557ff & 595f) It is the
indispensable foundation for Husserl's understanding of what the problem of the
possibility of knowledge is, and for his account of Erkenntnis.
V
With these dimensions of possible variation in mental acts before us, we can
now turn to an exposition of Husserl's phenomenological elucidation of
knowledge: of the "matching up" of mere meaning with corresponding
intuition to establish a relation to the object "itself." And a
phenomenological elucidation always works from a description of cases,
preferably the simplest cases incorporating the essences in question. Thus
Husserl begins with the simple case of intuitive naming, first considered
statically (VI, subsection 6), and then dynamically (subsection 8). Here is his
description of the "static" union:
"I speak, e.g. of my inkpot with the inkpot itself standing
before me: I see it. The name names the object of the perception, and names it
by means of the signifying act, which imprints itself as to kind and form upon
the form of the name. The relation between name and thing named exhibits, within
this state of unity, a certain descriptive character, to which we have
already called attention: the name `my inkpot' as it were imposes itself upon
the perceived object, and so-to-speak tangibly adheres to it. But this
`adherence' is of a peculiar sort." (LI. 688;cf. 584)
The adherence of the meaning laden words to the named object, while
observable, is not a matter of some physical relation which the thing
named has to the physical side of the words. The act-experiences--of the words
and of the inkpot, objects which do not themselves in any way enter into the
experiences as their constituents--are unified in the act of Erkennen, of
knowing or `re-cognizing'. In seeing that this object is my inkpot: (1) I know what
my inkpot is, conceptualize it as I think of it, and (2) I see this
which fits the conceptualization, and (3) I am aware that the seen is the
conceptualized. "That's it!" we may say in such a context; and the that
is determined by the perception, while the it is determined by the
conceptualization. The identity of the intention or "matter" in
the conceptualization, on the one hand, and in the perception (intuition), on
the other, brings the "fulness" of the object though the
perceptual act to the act of conceptualization or mere meaning. This
latter is then `filled full' of the reality of the object itself. That is, it is
actually joined to the object--and, in the ideal case, in every respect
that it `reaches for' in it. "In fulfilment, the object is `given'
intuitively in the same way in which the mere meaning means it....The ideally
conceived element which thus coincides with the meaning is the
fulfilling sense, and...through this coincidence, the merely significant
intention (or expression) achieves relation to the intuitive object...."
(LI. 743) The actual union of the conceptualizing act with the object on
the basis of a corresponding intuition of that object, together with a
recognition of the identity of object of the concept and of the perception, is
what Erkenntnis is as an act. And it is an act, though one of a
special type. (LI 696f, 707, 819) In a dispositional sense we `have' Erkenntnis,
are knowledge-able, when we are in a position, or are qualified, to actualize
the path toward the re-cognitive union of concept and perception, or at least
know that such an actualization is `in principle' possible.
Now in subsection 8 Husserl turns, as we noted, to consider a "dynamic
coincidence of meaning and intuition, where an expression first functions
in merely symbolic fashion, and then is accompanied by a more or less
corresponding intuition." (LI. 694) For example, I am looking for my
Inkpot, and experience it coming into view as I open a drawer in my desk. The
phenomenological difference from the `static' union previously discussed is
obvious. The two sub-acts (conception/intuition) and the act of Erkennen
that synthesizes them to yield knowledge of the respective object are here
spread out across time. "We have a first stage of mere thought (of pure
conception or mere signification), a meaning-intention wholly unsatisfied, to
which a second stage of more or less adequate fulfilment is then added, where
thoughts repose as if satisfied in the sight of their object...."
Here the focal phenomenon is that of the "empty" signification becoming
fulfilled. The descriptive union of thought and object, based on the intuition,
becomes more vividly present because of the contrast between
"before" and "after" that stands before us in such cases.
"The act of pure meaning, like a goal-seeking intention, finds its
fulfilment in the act which renders its matter intuitive.... The intentional
essence of the act of intuition gets more or less perfectly fitted into
the semantic essence of the act of expression." (LI. 694)
The crucial point to get here concerns what happens to the semantic or
intentional essence of the act of `mere thought' that enters into the
fulfilment synthesis. In fulfilment it undergoes, according to Husserl, a
peculiar modification which is its fulness (LI. 698f, 728-731) This
fulness consists in the peculiar relation--by no means mere
intentionality--which the act, and hence its essence, achieves to the object
itself. (LI. 744) The act (or meaningful word), through its meaning in union
with the corresponding intuition, actually attaches itself to the meant.
(LI. 691f) That is why Husserl repeatedly speaks of the fulness of the object
itself, or some part thereof, being imparted to the intention. (LI. 726,
728, 729, 762, 765) As fully given, "the object is fulness itself."
(766) In its less than perfect degrees, fulfilment of a more or less signitive
intention is simply a matter of its matching up to a corresponding act that is more
of an `intuition' of the same object. But there is possible in many cases
"the perfection of final fulfilment which presumes this fulfilment, and which is an adequation with the `thing itself'."
(LI. 763; cf. 718, 724, 729)
Of course by treating one special form of consciousness or language-meaning
as being or involving a relation--in the strict sense that conforms to the two
axioms, "Rab ---> (Ex)Rax" and "Rab ---> Rba" (where R
is the converse relation for R)--Husserl is not exactly unique. Descartes'
"clear and distinct ideas," Hume's vivid impressions, Russell's
`acquaintance', denotation and proper names, David Kaplan's `vivid' names, and
"rigid designators" as treated by many contemporary philosophers, are
all fumbling around over the same factor of thought: the "reality
hook" as some have called it.
The object of the knowledge-act for Husserl accordingly is not
the fulfilling intution, nor is it any other experience or psychical
content--except in the special cases where such are taken for our subject
matter. This is a point that must be belabored. We know and classify the
perceived object as my inkpot. "The expression seems to be applied
to the thing and to clothe it like a garment." We are not "classifying
the perception rather than its object....That would involve acts of a quite
different... constitution..., expressible through expressions...such as `the
perception of the inkpot'." (LI 688f) Again, "If I call this intuited
object a `watch', I complete, in thus naming it, an act of thought and
knowledge; but I know the watch, and not my knowledge. This is of course the
case in all acts that confer meaning.... If I assert something, I think of things,
that stand in this or that manner.... I do not think and know my act of judging,
as if I were also making it into my object...."(LI 837f) And: "In the
unity of knowledge, it is not the fulfilling act...that we know, but the fact
which is its objective correlate.... We achieve knowledge of the intuited fact
in question." (LI 839) It must be emphasized that all of this remains true
of all categorially formed acts and their objective counterparts. (LI 783)
Now to all of this the quality or propositional attitude involved in
an act makes no difference. "Quality" has no bearing upon the nature
of fulfilment as such. (LI 728, 760) So what we have looked at in the case of a
name representation and its union with the intuited object is to be seen in acts
of fulfilment independently of whatever propositional attitudes they may or may
not involve. In particular, fulfilment is not restricted to assertive acts or
acts of belief, though such acts have a special interest because of their
relation to judgment and theory. (LI. 721) Also, the complexity of the
act--including the number of sub-acts, or the levels of sub-acts, upon which it
is founded--makes no difference to the generic nature of fulfilment as seen in
these simple cases of intuitive naming. Of course there must be specific
differences in the fulfilments possible for different types of objects and the
corresponding thoughts and intuitions that can grasp them. But these do not
effect the basic nature of Erkenntnis, which is our focus here.
VI
Now a few clarifications with respect to degrees of
fulfilment:
Although all knowing, in the strict sense of a full grasp of "the object
itself" by the mind, is an act of fulfilment, not every act of fulfilment
amounts to a knowing of the respective object--just as every act of fulfilment
is an identification, but not conversely. (LI 720) The intuition involved in a
fulfilment must be adequate if that fulfilment is to be a case of Erkenntnis.
It is adequate just in case every aspect of the object as conceived is also
directly given. (LI 745f) This is the case of the "pure" or complete
intuition, already mentioned, where the act contains no intentional bearing upon
its object that is not also given. (LI 734, 762f) Pure intuition is an option
only in a restricted range of cases--those of mental acts and of certain
essences or universals and their connections--and is not possible for physical
world or its objects. (LI 831)
The ideal limit of intuitive presence realized in a pure intuition is also
called "Evidenz" by Husserl. (LI 765) He allows us to speak
loosely of Evidenz--and, indeed, of Erkenntnis, where there are
lower but still significant degrees of intuitive presence. "But the epistemologically
pregnant sense of Evidenz is exclusively concerned with this last and
unsurpassable goal, the act of this most perfect synthesis of fulfilment,
which gives to an intention, e.g. the intention of judgement, the absolute
fulness of content, the fulness of the object itself. The object is not merely
meant, but in the strictest sense given, the given as it is meant, and
made one with our meaning-reference [in eins gesetzt mit dem Meinen]."
(Ibid.) Evidenz in this strong sense remains exactly the same in
character whether the objects concerned are individuals, universals or states of
affairs, of whatever specific kind.
Now it is crucial for our discussion to acknowledge that in most cases where
we `confirm' a thought, we do not literally carry through to this Ideal
limit of Evidenz, but simply assure ourselves that we could do so
if we wished. And sometimes we mistakenly do so. The `really being so'
experienced in the grades of fulfilment short of Evidenz is merely an
assumed one, which may or may not hold up. (LI 708) "There are,"
Husserl observes, "only too many false and even absurd recognitions
[Erkenntnisse]. But these are not `authentic' recognitions--namely, not
logically sound and complete recognitions, recognitions in the strong
sense." (716f) But "All inauthentic fulfilment implies authentic
fulfilments, and indeed borrows its character of fulfilment from these
authentic cases." (727) The many events which are experienced or taken as
fulfilments, but in fact do not have a corresponding object in reality, are
therefore not fulfillments at all.
On the scale of degrees of fulfilment, representations short of full
intuitiveness, which Husserl usually calls "mediate" presentations,
always in some measure present their ultimate objects "as objects of
other presentations, or as related to objects so presented." Objects can of
course be presented through their relations to other objects, and these
"other objects" may also be presentations. In this latter case
"the presentations are presented presentations in the relational
presentation: they belong among its intentional objects, not among its
constituents." (LI 724)
When I see this apple here, for example, an essential part of what my
perception is of is its back side and its inner and unseen parts. These parts
are present to me essentially in terms of how my present perception of the apple
would develop if I were to proceed to open the apple up with a knife, or bite
into it, or etc. etc. There is possible here, "phenomenologically, a
continuous flux of fulfilment or identification, in the steady serialization of
the percepts `pertaining to the same object'. Each individual percept is a
mixture of fulfilled and unfilled intentions. To the former corresponds that
part of the object which is given in more or less perfect projection in this
individual percept, to the latter that part of the object that is not yet given,
but that new percepts would bring to actual, fulfilling presence." (LI 714;
cf. 701) The result is a sequence of syntheses of "identifications binding
self-manifestations of an object to self-manifestations of the same
object." This sequence is governed by an iron law of essence which "dictates
a determinate order of fulfilment a priori" (LI 724) for every
presentation, according to its type.
VII
Now we must pause to emphasize the importance of this phenomenologically accessible structure of 'emptiness' passing over into filled-full-ness, with
reference to one and the same object, in Husserl's account of "the
possibility of knowledge" and the nature of Erkenntnis. It is simply
the heart of his "theory of knowledge"--which of course he declines to
call a "theory." He tells us, with specific regard to knowledge of
physical objects, that "all perceiving and imagining is a web of partial
intentions, fused together in the unity of a single total intention. The
correlate of this last intention is the thing, while the
correlate of its partial intentions are the things's parts and aspects."
(LI 701) Then he adds a comment that addresses his basic question about the
subjectivity of knowledge act and the objectivity of the knowledge content
(object). It is in fact one that applies to "finding things to be as
thought" without restriction to the type of objectivity. For, in
generality, "Every feature of an object is somehow included in the scope of
every presentation" of it (LI 729, 731), and every presentation not a pure
intuition, no matter how empty, indicates a course of development, starting from it, through which its objective correlate can be grasped with greater intuitive fulness. (See subsection 149 of Ideas I) His comment is: "Only in this way can we understand how consciousness can reach out beyond what genuinely makes it up (das wahrhaft Erlebte). It can, so to speak, `mean' beyond,
and the meaning can be fulfilled." (LI 701)
In assessing this statement we first of all need to be clear on what its author is not doing. He is not attempting a definition of "fulfilment"
(or "knowledge"). By examining cases we discover, he holds, that
fulfilment characterizes the phenomenological essence of the knowledge
relation (Erkenntnisbeziehung). (LI 695) But "That acts of
signification and intuition are capable of entering into this peculiar sort of
relationship is a primitive phenomenological fact." (Ibid.) If one
asks how the same "matter," as explained above, "can at one time
be apprehended (aufgefasst) in the manner of the intuitive
representative, and at another time in the manner of the signitive, or wherein
the difference of character in the form of apprehension consists, then I am
unable to give a further answer. It is a matter of a phenomenologically
irreducible distinction." (LI 742)
Also, we need to be clear that he is not attempting to explain intentionality
or meaning itself. This too he regards as a phenomenological primitive. (LI 400)
But given generic intentionality, basic "ofness" or "aboutness,"
and given also that a specific case of it can be empty and then be filled full
of what it is of or about, his aim then is to call attention to the structure of
the compound acts where objects are found to be as thought, where Erkenntnis is present.
In these cases, we find consciousness indeed "reaching out beyond what
genuinely makes it up." The object is not a part or aspect of the act. This language presupposes a clarification--in his mature, Vth Investigation doctrine of intentionality--of the puzzling fact referred to in the 1894 paper, already referred to. There he had said that "It is certainly a most remarkable fact in its own right, that a psychical act can refer out beyond its immanent content [uber seinen immanenten Inhalt hinausdeuten] to another content which is totally outside of consciousness [das in keiner Weise
bewusst ist]."8 In the Vth Investigation we have
definitively set aside (LI 558-560, 578-580) those "immanent objects"
which were what previously made a special mystery of how we "get
beyond" them in thought or meaning to engage with, to `mind', what is not
immanent. The interpretation of intentionality and of "acts" in that
Investigation removed the "immanent object" and recognized in their
place "act characters" (LI 562f, 566f) or meanings, along with what he
later calls the "hyletic data" in the act, as the substance of
concrete objective reference. A given meaning has the possibility, under Ideal
law,of passing through a sequence of representations or symbolizations more full
of "the object itself," up to the point where it is directly related
to that object. This possibility is what constitutes its "reach
beyond" its own make-up. Indeed it is the possibility of knowledge.
Since these immanent "act characters" or meanings, with their
possibilities, simply are the reach of an act toward its determinate
object--whatever else may be required for their foundation within the act--we no
longer have the problem of `getting beyond' the `circle of ideas', for we do not
start out from within such a circle. As Moore saw, and said in his
confusing language, but was unable to develop and defend: "There is,
therefore, no question of how to `get outside the circle of our own ideas and
sensations'. Merely to have a sensation is already to be outside that
circle. It is to know something which is as truly and really not a part
of my experience, as anything which I can ever know."9 It
is the invaluable contribution of the Vth Investigation to provide an analysis
of intentionality and mental acts that can make sense of Moore's insight.
So this is what we are to make of the "mean beyond" portion of
Husserl's important comment above. The "and the meaning be fulfilled"
part refers to the capacity of the "empty" meaning to be joined
directly to its object in a unique relation founded on the
"fulfilling synthesis of identification" that we have been discussing.
So Erkenntnis is a relational state or whole involving a complex
act--indeed, a categorially `forming' act, since it is consciousness of, among
other things, an identity (LI 819)--in union with its object. This is a union
which, unlike mere intentionality, requires, by the Ideal law governing it, that
the object exist if the act (of that specific type) exists.
VIII
Because misunderstanding is so likely on this point, we must strongly
emphasize that the relationship established between the "mere thought"
with its meaning and the corresponding object by the fulfilment synthesis is not
just intentionality, though in it intentionality is obviously presupposed
in a number of ways. This Erkenntnis relation, the Erfassung of
the object, requires that the object exist, just as hitting a ball with a bat
requires that the ball exists. With respect to fulfilment in its ultimate stage,
or Erkenntnis in the strict sense, there is no corresponding
"inexistence." Erkenntnis is a peculiar type of whole which
exists only as its parts do, and one of the parts is the object in question.
Some of the parts, on the other hand, may exist without the whole. This is true
of the "mere thought" involved, of the intuition involved, and of the
object involved, though not of the peculiar synthesizing act of identification,
nor of the relation of the thought to the object which is realized on the basis
of that synthesis.
Moreover, in the relationship to the mere thought that is realized
when the thought achieves its object in union with an appropriately identical
intuition, the object receives a property which it does not have outside of that
relationship. It is, if you wish, the property of being known by a
certain person. (LI 696) But that property in no way distorts or conceals the
identity of the object before, during or after the time when it has it, any more
than being hit by the bat does so to the baseball. Husserl comments with
reference to categorial acts, of which Erkennen is one, that "The
object is intellectually grasped by the intellect, and specifically by Erkenntnis
(which indeed is itself a categorial function), but is not distorted....
Otherwise...relational and connective thought and knowledge would not be of what
it is, but would be a falsifying transformation into something else." (LI
819f) The property of being hit by bat x at time z does not
produce or destroy the identity of the ball, but in fact presupposes that
identity as determing what is and was hit. It is the same for the
property of being known by person x at time z. Both the relation
of hitting and of knowing are "external," and the properties which
they impose upon their relata are contingent, with a coming and going that can
in suitable cases be observed.10
Intentionality, on the other hand, does not impart a property to its object
That is why `inexistence' of the object is possible for it, and why the two
axioms for genuine relations stated above do not hold for it. If it imparted a
property to its object, then of course the object would have to exist. For
nothing can both have properties and not exist. And since very often, as we
know, intentionality's object does not exist in "the real world" (as
with Pegasus, etc.), it would have to exist you-know-where:
"immanently," "in the mind." All of which explains, once
again, why Husserl's final dismissal of immanent objects as a factor in mental
acts is of such great importance for the analysis of Erkenntnis.
IX
The externality of the Erkenntnis relation or context to its
object--its inability to cast an inescapable veil or distortion over that
object--is what opens up the possibility of comparing object with meaning and of
observing the agreement between a conceptualization and its object. Among
philosophers this is generally thought to be out of the question because, in
taking something as our object, and all the more so in knowing it, we
must necessarily modify it. Thus we can never grasp it as it is apart from
consciousness or `in itself'. The Midas Touch of the mind transforms the
substance of all it contacts. But once we realize, following Husserl, that the
object, when appropriately "given," is in itself as we then find it to
be, and that knowledge is not a distorting but an apprehending function, nothing
stands in the way of comparing the object with our thought of it, and finding
them to "agree" (or not). Of course we can and do also compare the
object as given with its conceptualizations. But this does not exclude
that the object as given is, under suitable circumstances, the object as it is,
the object an sich.
On Husserl's view, therefore, we on appropriate occasions live through
the agreement between conceptualization and the object as given--including the
cases where the object as given is the object itself, every phase of the object
being directly united with the meaning directed upon it from the conceptualizing
act. And while not every such agreement lived through is viewed, all can
be viewed by an objectifying act appropriately directed upon it. (LI 765f)
Mental acts are not ontologically privileged by Husserl, so that all other
things--and even whatever mental acts may be cognized--take their character from
their status as objcts. A mental act, a representation or judgment for example,
is just one specific type of entity, which may from time to time have whatever
relations to other entities are made possible by the kind of thing it is. And as
entities can in general be observed in their interrelationships, so can a sign
or mental act and its object. It is this fact alone that opens the door to a
phenomenology of Erkenntnis and of "Reason," the minds capacity
validly to grasp reality. (IP 33, 46)11
X
This all stands out even more clearly in the 1908 lectures on The Idea of
Phenomenology. The main issue dealt with in these lectures is precisely how
in Erkenntnis the mind enters into relation, `grasps', what is
independent of it in existence and nature: the "transcendent," as
Husserl usually calls it here and later. "How can Erkenntnis reach
the transcendent?" he asks. "What I want to understand is the possibility
of this `reaching'." (IP 4, cf. 1) And how is it possible to understand
this possibility? Only by seeing cognition actually reach its object. (IP
4, 29f) In seeing the `reach' I can abstract its essence and know what it is,
thus understanding how it can come about or what makes it possible. Indeed, in
appropriate cases--the "dynamic" ones--I can see it come about, see
how it arises.
The key to Husserl's discussion in this text is his distinction between two
senses of "immanent," with corresponding senses of
"transcendent."12 Something is of course immanent to the
act or to the mind if it is genuinely (reell) contained in it as a
constituent, and correspondingly transcendent if it is not. (IP 27f) This we
might call "ontological" immanence/transcendence. But now, in
conformity with our discussion of Erkenntnis in the strong sense above,
Husserl articulates a second meaning of "immanent" (and "transcent").
In this case anything is immanent if it is object for the absolute self-givenness
of perfect Evidenz. (IP 28, 47-49) Here the act-intentions are, as we
have seen, directly united--in the full sense related--to all the
features and phases of the object as well as to the object as a whole. This we
might appropriately call an "epistemological" immanence/transcendence.
Something immanent in this latter sense might be transcendent in the first
sense, which is exactly the case with crucial cases of essences or universals
and their laws. And something transcendent in the second sense sense might be
immanent in the first sense, as with a thought or valuation not fully focussed
on in intuition. (LI 725)
Now after these clarifications Husserl makes a crucial move. He includes the
object that is fully given within the domain left over after the
phenomenological reduction. How is this to be warranted? I believe it is to be
taken in the following way: He rejects the "naturalist's" error that
"Erkenntnis is something apart from the Erkenntnis-object,"
and that "Erkenntnis is given, but the Erkenntnis-object is
not." (IP 3) The Erkenntnis relation itself is fully present in and
to consciousness, and it is also, according to him, directly involved in
or attached to its object, whether that object is a part of consciousness or
not. There is nothing "between" it and its object, and where it is its
object also is. Thus: "Phenomenological reduction does not entail a
limitation of the investigation to the sphere of genuine (reell)
immanence, to the sphere of that which is genuinely contained within the
absolute `this' of the cogitatio.... Rather it entails a limitation to
the sphere of things that are purely self-given,... In a word, we are
restricted to the sphere of pure evidence." (IP 48f)
The upshot is, as we have indicated, that something can now be both
transcendent (independent of the mind in character and existence, not immanent
in the ontological sense) and immanent (fully given to the act conceptualizing
and intuiting it). And this is, specifically, true of the Erkenntnis
relation itself. Evidenz can be given in Evidenz. It can be fully
found in a reflective "seeing" directed upon a case of finding
something to be exactly as it was thought to be. (IP 36) Thus it is
epistemologically immanent. But it also is ontological transcendent, for it is
an abstract structure, an essence, which--like all universals--exists and is
what it is independently of its cases. Though `in' the concrete act of knowing
in the manner of universals viz a viz their instances, it is not a part
of the act. It does not cease to exist when the act with all its parts does.
Now this, for Husserl, solves the problem of the possibility of knowledge in
general. That possibility is just the possibility of the mind fully coming into
direct relation with what is not a part of, not genuinely (reell)
contained in, the relevant acts directed upon it. Thus, he says, it would be
"senseless, with respect to the essence of cognition [Erkenntnis]
and the fundamental structure of cognition, to wonder what its Sinn is,
provided one is immediately given the paradigmatic phenomena of the type in
question in a purely `seeing' and eidetic reflection within the sphere of
phenomenological reduction." (IP 45)
Having determined what this possiblity is in general, it can now be
calibrated to provide norms of epistemic `acceptability' in cases where full
givenness is not yet achieved--or even where it is impossible, as with physical
objects and the sciences of the natural world. (IP 46) Thus a "Critique of
Reason," an analysis of the limits to which we can speak of Erkenntnis
with reference to objectivities of every type, can (and must) be developed. In Ideas
I this enterprise is called a "phenomenology of reason."
(subsection 138) It is also there called "noetics in a pregnant sense of
the term" (subsection 145), since Erkenntnis is strictly a function
of acts of consciousness in the concrete--not of the phenomena of pure logic,
nor of noemata (`appearances'). But we must break off at this point and leave it
to the reader to test our interpretation of Husserl's Erkenntnis and Vernunft
against a reading of the Fourth Section of Ideas I, titled precisely
"Vernunft und Wirklichkeit," or "Reason and Actuality." It
opens with a discussion of how the appearances of objects, the ways they are
"given," mediate the relation to an actual object (not just
intentionality) that is always the claim of reason. (See end of subsection 128)
XI
So how does Husserl answer the four questions listed in Section III above,
which, we have said, his mature analysis of Erkenntnis must answer? Let
us go over them one by one:
1. "How are we to understand the fact that the `in itself' of the
objectivity...in Erkenntnis falls within our `grasp' and thus becomes
subjective?"
Answer: The objectivity as it is when unknown, and thus `in itself', is not
changed by entering into the Erkenntnis relation. Rather, through the
fulfilling synthesis it becomes directly related to the meanings directed upon
it, and in that sense only does it "become subjective." It is
`possessed' by the act and mind. But it does not take on the nature of the
mental, any more than a ball takes on the nature of the bat or the person that
hits it.
2. "What does it mean to say that the object is both `in itself' and
is `given' in Erkenntnis?"
Answer: It is to say that the direct union of the act with the object in the
peculiar context of Erkenntnis does not turn the object into something
other than what it is outside of that context.
3. "How can the Ideality of the universal, in the form of concepts or
laws, enter the flux of real psychical experiences and turn into an Erkenntnis
possession of the one thinking?"
Answer: Of course they can `enter' in the manner of every type of objectivity
that is fully given, as signitive or `inauthentic' representations of them
progressively give way, in the appropriate manner, up to the point where, if
possible, they are given in pure intuition. All said under 1 and 2
applies to them. However, concepts and laws (as propositions) also are present
in appropriate thought acts as their properties. They are the intentions
or meanings of those acts "Ideally conceived." In those acts they are
`possessed' as the instance possesses its nature or "species" through
exemplification or predication. The singular cases from which the concepts and
propositions that make up theory are `abstracted' to become objects of eidetic
insight are events of conceptualization and judgment that wholly fall within the
ontologically immanent sphere. This no doubt confers upon them a significant
advantage in becoming epistemically immanent, or the objects of knowledge in the
full sense. But it has no bearing upon the basic nature of Erkenntnis
bearing upon concepts and laws.
4. "What does the adaequatio rei et intellectus involved in
knowing signify?"
Answer: It signifies that the components of the object and the
intentionalities or meanings involved in the Erkenntnis synthesis are set
into direct relation with each other, each meaning being paired intuitively to
an objective component and conversely.
XII
So to say that knowledge of x is possible is, for Husserl, simply to
say that the representation `x' can be incorporated in a synthesis of
fulfilment where x is intuitively found to be precisely as `x'
represents it. Accordingly, a `critique' of knowledge and reason--of Erkenntnis
and Vernunft (see IP 50 for a brief statement on their
interrelationship)--is a matter of determining, as a matter of essence, the
precise manner and extent to which objects of specific types that may be in
question can be given in intuition. To the extent that they are "in
principle" subject to intuition they are knowable.
We can see here that Husserl is substituting "empty intention" for
"understanding," and "intuition" for
"sensibility," in the familiar Kantian "critique" project.
Kant's critique of reason was carried out by limiting knowledge to the sensibly
given, shaped by the apriori forms of sensibility and understanding. One can
easily see how Husserl might have been tempted to compare his critique to
Kant's, and on what points Kant's critique would be vulnerable in such a
comparison--as well as how Kant might reply.
In fact, Husserl is quite stern in his criticism of Kant. His general point
is that Kant simply does not succeed in "clarifying the relationship
between thinking and intuiting," as well as the various
confusions of principle associated with that relationship. (LI 832) Certainly,
from its earliest appearance, Kant's first Critique was hounded by
complaints that the relation he hypothesized between sensation and concept--or
between the various faculties and factors involved in cognition--is hopelessly
obscure. That is a historical fact. Moreover, it would seem that his very
analysis of knowledge would necessitate that we can have no knowledge of that
relation--other, perhaps, than that it must be there. For the interaction
of sensibility and understanding does not itself fall under the forms of
sensibility.
Husserl points out that Kant tried to `save' knowledge, show that it
is possible, before determining what it is, "before subjecting it to
a clarifying critique and analysis of essence." (LI 833) This is further
traced to Kant's failure to get clear on the specific nature of "pure
Ideation, the adequate survey of conceptual essence, and the laws of universal
validity rooted in those essences." (Ibid.) Thus it was naturally
impossible for him to "investigate the pure, essential laws which govern
acts as intentional experiences, in all their modes of sense-giving
objectivation, and their fulfilling constitution of `true being'. Only a
perspicuous knowledge of these laws of essence could provide us with an
absolutely adequate answer to all the questions regarding...the `possibility of
knowledge'." (LI 834)
Of course Kant's own understanding of intuition and universals (essences) was
so very opposed to the one adopted by Husserl that there is little likelihood
that he would have been convinced by Husserl's criticisms of his Critique of
Pure Reason. On the other hand, Kant's position on the relation of the mind
to object in Erkenntnis may be one we are driven to, but it is hardly one
we could have hoped for; and his answers to the four questions about
knowledge posed and answered by Husserl would seem to simply give away points
essential to the vast significance of knowledge as an ideal of human existence.
Moore, who now shows up here for a final bow, was also much concerned in his
early work to undo the damage he thought Kant and similar thinkers (such as F.
H. Bradley and A. E. Taylor) had done to the prospects of knowledge. He
accordingly thought that if his line of thought about the distinctness of
consciousness from its object could be driven through, a vast and astonishing
ffect on philosophy for good would be secured: "It will indeed follow that
all the most striking results of philosophy--Sensationalism ,
Agnosticism and Idealism alike--have, for all that has hitherto been urged in
their favor, no more foundation than the supposition that a chimera lives in the
moon. It will follow that,...all the most important philosophic doctrines have
as little claim to assent as the most superstitious beliefs of the lowest savages."14
These now somewhat quaint-sounding or even humorous remarks expressed, I
believe, a valid insight into the fundamental significance of interpretations of
Erkenntnis (or just intentionality) for philosophical views generally,
especially in the Modern and Contemporary periods. They touch upon the
possibility of avoiding an all-smothering relativism, which now seems generally
conceded to hold the upper hand in the life of intellect and taste. If Moore
could have established his claim that "I am as directly aware of the
existence of material things in space as of my own sensations" (p. 30), he would
have established something with every bit of the significance for philosophy
that he surmised. However, he did not establish it, later adopted an apologetic
tone with reference to his "Refutation of Idealism," and in his final
paper on perception had to confess that he was unable to arrive at any
satisfactory view of the relationship between "sense data" and objects.15
Does Husserl come out any better? Well, at a minimum we can say for Husserl
that he has a coherent story to tell about what consciousness is like, and how
it, as "mere thought" or empty meaning, can move and `reach' toward
and seize the corresponding objects as they are in themselves. That it is not a
story which can be told within an Empiricist or Naturalist framework is no
automatically devastating objection to his story, though it is likely to be
taken as such today. But to regard it as such is only to beg the question as to
the nature of knowledge, no matter how ready we are to do so today., and to push
us back to the higher-level question of how we are to know the nature of
knowledge. Here again Husserl has a coherent story. It is a story, about
"phenomenological research," which well may do a better job of
accomodating what we seem to know about knowledge before we adopt our
philosophical positions than any other. And it may also do a better job of
interpreting the implicit claims of science to reveal how things are, as
distinct from how they appear. At least it supports the view that there really
is such a distinction, and that it is accessible to the human mind.
NOTES
- G. E. Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism," Philosophical
Studies, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., LTD., 1922), p.
25. This paper first appeared in Mind, N. S. Vol. XII, 1903. Return
to text.
- I have discussed this turning point in Husserl's work in
Chapter III of my Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge: A Study in
Husserl's Early Philosophy, (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1984),
as well as in my "Husserl on a Logic that Failed," Philosophical
Review, LXXXIX (January 1980). He was left with the question that opens
his research manuscript, "On the Logic of Signs (Semiotic)," from
late 1890 or early 1891: "How is it that one can speak of `concepts'
which one , nevertheless, does not genuinely possess, and how is it not
absurd that the most certain of all sciences, arithmetic, is to be based
upon such concepts?"--from page 340 of Edmund Husserl, Philosophie
der Arithmetik, `Husserliana XII'. (My English translation of this and
other papers from the 1890's is soon to appear from Kluwer, in Early
Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, by Husserl.) Return
to text.
- In Edmund Husserl, Aufsatze und Rezensionen (1890-1910),
`Husserliana XXII', (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979), p. 120,
also appearing in the English translations cited above. See also `Husserliana
XII', p. 340. Return to text.
- P. 109 of `Husserliana XXII'; cf. LI. 732f. "LI"
refers to the English edition of Husserl's Logical Investigations, J.
N. Findlay, translator, (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). Although it is
necessary to refer to the Findlay translation, I do not always simply quote
his version, for it frequently seems to me unperspicuous. Findlay usually
translates "Erkenntnis" with "recognition."
William P. Alston and George Nakhnikian rely mainly on "cognition"
in their translation, The Idea of Phenomenology, (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1964). Various disadvantageous nuances in these terms have led me
to utilize "knowledge," for the most part, and to re-introduce the
German term itself repeatedly, as a way of keeping alive the issue of
exactly what we are to mean by it. Return
to text.
- LI p. 42-43. See my Logic and the Objectivity of
Knowledge, Chapter I, for a full-scale development of Husserl's view of
his problem of subjectivity/objectivity in knowledge. Return
to text.
- See on "possible theories" chapter 11, "The
Idea of Pure Logic," in the "Prolegomena to Pure Logic,"
which is volume I of the Logical Investigations, and compare to the
various "languages" and their interpretations in Rudolph Carnap's Logical
Syntax of Language, (Patterson, NJ.: Littlefield and Adams, 1958),
disregarding Carnap's dogmatic linguisticism in logic. Return
to text.
- See "Prolegomena to Pure Logic," subsections 8
and 9. Return to text.
- Husserliana XXII, p. 120, quoted earlier. Return
to text.
- "The Refutation of Idealism," p. 27. Return
to text.
- The American New Realists understood the externality of
the cognitive relation. See section VI, written by E. G. Spaulding, of
"The Program and First Platform of Six Realists," first published
in The Journal of Philosophy, VII, #15 (July 1910), 393-401, and
republished in Herbert W. Schneider, editor, Sources of Contemporary
Philosophical Realism in America, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Library
of Liberal Arts, 1964), pp. 35-46. Indeed, this entire "platform"
statement admirably expresses much of what Husserl arrived at in his
phenomenological analyses of the Erkenntnis context. This is no
accident, for they were well aware of Husserl's work. Walter B. Pitkin, who
was one of the six, studied with Husserl in Gottingen in 1904 and
afterwards, and seems to have made a complete English translation of the Logical
Investigations, which was left unpublished because of a negative
recommendation to the American publisher by William James. (See p. 112 of
Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical
Introduction, 2nd edition, Volume One, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1969).
Unfortunately the New Realists, mainly under the influence of E. B. Holt,
wanted to interpret consciousness naturalistically--even scientistically--and
that prevented them from having an account of what consciousness and
knowledge was made up of. Among other things they could not deal with all of
the "objects" which presented themselves in `illusions' and in the
variabilities of perceptual consciousness (elliptical pennies, train-tracks
that run together in the distance, and the like). So they were branded by
the term "Naive," while their main opponents took the high ground
as "Critical Realists." And they were naive, for they tried
to characterize the "relation" of cognition without an adequate
account of the terms which founded it. In this they have had much company
throughout the history of philosophy. The attempt to characterize the mental
in terms of the "inexistence" of objects, for example, in Brentano
and others, does not get to the heart of the matter. What is it about the
nature of the mental act, what goes into its make-up, that allows it to be
`about' something which may or may not exist? As James Heanue pointed out to
me years ago, one cannot make anything out of "inexistence" taken
by itself. Return to text.
- "IP" refers to the English edition of Husserl's
The Idea of Phenomenology, translated by Alston and Nakhnikian, (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964). Return
to text.
- See the subtle and thorough discussion of this matter in
Jacques Taminiaux, "Immanence, Transcendence, and Being in Husserl's Idea
of Phenomenology," in The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First
Ten Years, edited by Sallis, Moneta and Taminiaux, (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1988), pp.47-75. To me, the effects of the distinctions
dealt with for the clarification of Husserl's views on Erkenntnis are
somewhat confused by giving Heidegger the last word in the concluding part
of Taminiaux's excellent paper. Return
to text.
- On the nature and role of noemata, see my paper,
"Finding the Noema," in The Phenomenology of the Noema,
edited by John Drummond and Lester Embree, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1992). Needless to say, at this point, I cannot read Husserl as
placing noemata between the act and its object, nor as taking the
object to consist of noemata. Return to text.
- "Refutation of Idealism,' p. 5. Return
to text.
- In C. A. Mace, editor, British Philosophy at the
Mid-Century. Return to text.
