Husserl: Epistemology

In this paper, I argue that Husserl offers an important, although almost completely neglected so far, contribution to the reductionist/antireductionist debate about testimony. Through a phenomenological analysis, Husserl shows that testimony works through the constitution of an intentional intersubjective bond between the speaker and the hearer. In this paper I focus on the Logical Investigations, a 1914 manuscript now published as text 2 in Husserliana 20.2, and a 1931 manuscript now published as Appendix 12 in Husserliana 15. I argue that, (...) in those texts, Husserl highlights three essential phenomenological features of testimony: a) testimony is personal, meaning that it only takes place among persons, b) testimony is social, meaning that it requires the joint effort of multiple cognitive agents, c) testimony is community-building, meaning that it generates a long-lasting social bond among the parts involved. (shrink)

Tomasello offers an evolutionary, palaeoanthropological account of the human origin of objects and objectivity. Husserl gives a phenomenological account of the constitution of objects by intersubjectivity. Comparing the two, I claim that Tomasello’s “naturalized” approach closely parallels Husserl’s transcendental approach.

In this chapter I aim to show that Husserl’s descriptions of the nature and role of activity in the epistemic economy of our conscious lives imply a nondeflationary account of epistemic agency. After providing the main outlines of this account, I discuss how it compares to contemporary accounts of epistemic agency and respond to some potential objections. In concluding I indicate that according to this Husserlian account of epistemic agency we can be said to be intrinsically responsible for holding the (...) beliefs we do as well as for the absence of belief. (shrink)

In this paper we will analyze Lawson’s criticism of Hayek for not having transcended positivism. We will distinguish two levels in the criticism: methodological and ontological. So far as methodological criticism is concerned, we consider that Lawson’s positivist interpretation of Hayek regarding the method in economics is not the only possible, and we will try to develop another one. With respect to ontological criticism, we will state that though it is possible to understand Hayek as an ontological positivist, since he (...) assumes an ontological individualism, this fact would not necessarily lead to positivism -question to which Lawson seems to bring Hayek closer after 1955- but a moderate ontological individualism could be assigned to Hayek founded on a realistic interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

This article is polemical. It argues with those philosophers who see, in the semantic theory of knowledge of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, the significant and exclusive influence of Alfred Tarski’s semantic output. Listening to these philosophers, one gets the impression that they have overlooked the fact that the term “semantics” meant one thing in the case of Ajdukiewicz, presenting the semantic theory of knowledge, and something different in the case of Tarski, presenting the semantic theory of truth. There is another difference, related (...) to the abovementioned, and fundamental in the case of both these logicians, namely their different approach to language, which seems to escape the attention of those who write about the semantic theory of knowledge. Ajdukiewicz’s approach was intensional, while Tarski’s approach was extensional: for the first of them, the intensional interpretation of language was basic, as for the second, was the extensional interpretation. The philosophers with whom I argue overlook one more fact, namely the impact, difficult to overestimate, that the intentional theory of language of Edmund Husserl had on the emergence of the semantic theory of knowledge. This article tries to restore Tarski’s real role in the matter referred to in the title, and do justice to Husserl: after all, without his philosophy of the semantic theory of knowledge, as a metaepistemological project, it would not have come to be. It was only in the implementation of this project that some of the achievements of Tarski’s semantics were used. (shrink)

More than 80 years after his death, Husserl’s voluminous work remains an unexhausted resource for contemporary philosophy. This is true of his later work, but it is also true of his early text, Logical Investigations. Relying and building on work done by numerous scholars and philosophers, especially Dan Zahavi, Walter Hopp, Philipp Berghofer, and Declan Smithies, this dissertation is an attempt to utilize some resources in Logical Investigations in order, first, to help articulate an Husserlian descriptive account of phenomenal consciousness (...) and apply it to the cognitive phenomenology debate in philosophy of mind, and, second, to help show the relevancy of Husserl’s phenomenological epistemology — which is effectively a functional account of phenomenal consciousness — to the debate over the role of phenomenal consciousness in epistemic justification. While these descriptive and functional accounts are not without their problems, they nevertheless provide an important perspective on these contemporary debates. (shrink)

This article tries to establish the relevance of phenomenological analysis within the current epistemological edifice, in particular, with regard to certain key issues of the epistemology of our time, this last one meant as a philosophy of science. In doing so, it is primarily based, on the one hand, on certain Husserlian texts mainly those published in Logical Investigations, Formal and Transcendental Logic and the Phenomenology of Time Consciousness and, on the other, on certain developments, essentially running from the beginning (...) of 20th century, in such diverse fields of positive science as logic and the foundations of mathematics as well as quantum mechanics. The overall argumentation serves to establish a holistic approach of the objects of knowledge, taken as material or mental ones, to the extent that they may be taken as objects in evident presentation in front of an embodied consciousness provided with certain a priori constitutional modes. (shrink)

According to Husserl there is not only a negative meaning of scepticism, in which reason dissolves itself in an exasperated relativism, but also a completely opposite one, in which the idea of scepticism is a necessary transition for rational argumentation that reflects the actual ability of radically questioning those certainties that are fideistically interwoven in the relationship between life and scientific knowledge. It is therefore equally unquestionable that the objective of such scepticism is to seek, with untiring fatigue, solid, persuasive (...) terrain for one’s own argumentation that has the constant backdrop of revealing a new idea of subjectivity in its intrinsic tie with science and the common world of practical life. These two forms of scepticism, the anti-philosophical and the critical-rational therefore share an important trait: their unavoidable reference to subjectivity. However, whilst the discovery of the absolute intimacy of subjectivity with the world as a theatre of cognitive operations and of the creation of meaning fills the alleged fracture of a reality in itself that transcends the subject, it does not however eliminate the actual reasons of the concrete existence of the world and of the actual influence of such a reality on operations in the process of their creation. It is this that is the crucial question, the essential correlation between self and world, which progressively gains more and more importance in the evolution of Husserl’s notion of epoché and phenomenological reduction. A notion that corresponds to the critical exercise of reason, the necessary exercise of a scepticism that is never exhausted in itself as it never exhausts the view of the constantly changing meaning of the world in the wealth of its infinite essential traits. (shrink)

Can phenomenologists allow for the existence of unobservable entities such as atoms, electrons, and quarks? Can we justifiably believe in the existence of entities that are in principle unobservable? This paper addresses the relationship between Husserlian transcendental phenomenology and scientific realism. More precisely, the focus is on the question of whether there are basic epistemological principles phenomenologists are committed to that have anti-realist consequences with respect to unobservable entities. This question is relevant since Husserl’s basic epistemological principles, such as the (...) “principle of all principles,” seem to suggest that epistemic justification is limited to what can be originally given in the sense that if an object cannot be given in an originary presentive intuition, then one cannot be justified in believing that this object exists. It is the main aim of this paper to show that interpretative reasons exist for not reading Husserl in such a way and that systematic reasons exist as to why phenomenologists should not subscribe to this criterion. I shall put forward a different criterion of justification that satisfies the spirit of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology and allows for justifiably believing in the existence of unobservable scientific entities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor Husserl, noetics is the most fundamental science and the centrepiece of a phenomenological epistemology. Since in his major works Husserl does not develop noetics systematically but uses its main ideas and achievements often in apparent isolation without clarifying their systematic unity, the significance of noetics is often overlooked. Although Husserl has repeatedly stressed the importance of a phenomenological epistemology, what the concrete theses of such an undertaking are supposed to be often remains obscure. We shall see that the best (...) way to clarify this is by providing a detailed account of Husserl’s noetics as it is developed in Husserl’s lecture courses “Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge” and “Logic and General Theory of Science”. This is the main aim of the present paper. We will shed light on the significance, systematic unity, and concrete theses of noetics. Furthermore, I shall show in what way the main theses of noetics are present in Husserl’s ot... (shrink)

Alfred Schutz elaborated Edmund Husserl’s term of appresentation to a particular theory of appresentational relations comprising “marks”, “signs”, “symbols” and “indications”. Even though Schutz implied the existence of other such relations, it was Husserl who drew a line between appresentation and proof. Following this differentiation, this paper aims to constitutionally analyse the everyday life phenomenon of proof and to describe its structure by consulting William James’ term of “knowledge about” as well as by discussing Schutz’ theory of relevance. With reference (...) to Husserl’s Logical Investigation and by contrasting proof with indication it is shown that proof is appresentationally constituted through reflectively bringing the polythetical elements of clear, distinctive and consistent knowledge about, functioning as interpretational relevance, into the centre of topical awareness. (shrink)

In the final book of Logical Investigations from 1901, Husserl develops a theory of knowledge based on the intentional structure of consciousness. While there is some textual evidence that Husserl considered this to entail a critique of Kantian philosophy, he did not elaborate substantially on this. This paper reconstructs the covert critique of Kant’s theory of knowledge which LI contains. With respect to Kant, I discuss three core aspects of his theory of knowledge which, as Husserl’s reflections on Kant indicate, (...) Husserl was familiar with. These are the cooperation of two faculties for the justification of beliefs; the concept of a priori structures of knowledge Kant operated with; and the delivered transcendental proof of these structures. Regarding Logical Investigations, I first briefly outline the intentional structure of consciousness as presented in the fifth book and then turn to the theory of knowledge in the sixth book. I then clarify, partially on the basis of manuscripts and lecture notes, the covert critique of the three core aspects of Kant’s theory which the sixth book contains. (shrink)

In the Logical Investigations, Husserl argues that “sign” is an ambiguous word because it refers to two essentially different signitive functions: indication and expression. Indications work in an evidential way, providing information through a direct association of the sign and the presence of an object or state of affairs. Expressions work in a non-evidential way, pointing to possible experiences and displaying that the speaker or someone else has had such experience. In this paper I show that Husserl went back to (...) the distinction between indications and expressions in a much later text, a manuscript from 1931, in order to distinguish between two kinds of communication with different essential features. I call these indicative and expressive communication. My claim is that Husserl’s distinction between these two types of communication is a crucial contribution to the phenomenology of knowledge sharing. In knowledge sharing, we appropriate someone else’s knowledge as someone else’s knowledge. Husserl shows that only expressive communication, and not indicative communication, makes this appropriation possible. Since Husserl argues that only humans use expressive communication, his analysis of indicative and expressive communication is also a contribution to understanding the uniquely human capacity for accumulating knowledge. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. The first is an interpretative one as I wish to provide a detailed account of Husserl’s conception of experiential justification. Here Ideas I and Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07 will be my main resources. My second aim is to demonstrate the currency and relevance of Husserl’s conception. This means two things: Firstly, I will show that in current debates in analytic epistemology there is a movement sharing with Husserl the (...) basic idea that certain experiences gain their justificatory force simply from their distinctive phenomenal character. Secondly, I shall reveal the benefits of Husserl’s specific version of this view. Thus, one of my aims is to show that debates in current analytic epistemology could profit from adopting certain Husserlian elements. More precisely, I will defend Husserl’s claim that perceptual experiences are justifiers due to their self-giving phenomenal character as opposed to the currently popular view that it is the phenomenology of pushiness that makes them justifiers. To put it differently, what matters is what is originally given within experience and not how you feel about what is given. (shrink)

This book fills an important gap in previous Husserl scholarship by focusing on intersubjectivity and empathy (i.e., the experience of others as other subjects) and by addressing the related issues of validity, the degrees of evidence with which something can be experienced, and the different senses of 'objective' in Husserl's texts. Despite accusations by commentators that Husserl's is a solipsistic philosophy and that the epistemologies in Husserl's late and early works are contradictory, Hermberg shows that empathy, and thus other subjects, (...) are related to one's knowledge on the view offered in each of Husserl's Introductions to Phenomenology. Empathy is significantly related to knowledge in at least two ways, and Husserl's epistemology might, consequently, be called a social epistemology: (a) empathy helps to give evidence for validity and thus to solidify one's knowledge, and (b) it helps to broaden one's knowledge by giving access to what others have known. These roles of empathy are not at odds with one another; rather, both are at play in each of the Introductions (if even only implicitly) and, given his position in the earlier work, Husserl needed to expand the role of empathy as he did. Such a reliance on empathy, however, calls into question whether Husserl's is a transcendental philosophy in the sense Husserl claimed. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to question the Cartesian interpretation of Husserl’s philosophy. In that interpretation Husserl is regarded as a representative of epistemological fundamentalism characterized by searching for the foundations of cognition in the transcendental consciousness given in the absolute and adequate evidence. The thesis of this article states that the essential anonymity which Husserl ascribes to consciousness is the crucial argument for his questioning of the Cartesian myth of the self-transparency of consciousness and thus allows for regarding (...) him as the master of suspicion in a meaning which Paul Ricoeur has endowed this concept with. According to Husserl, consciousness, at the beginning of philosophical thinking, appears to be unknown, hidden, since a human being living in a natural disposition, is immersed in anonymity and forgets about his own subjectivity. Though this anonymity may be overcome by means of phenomenological reduction, the transcendental consciousness, uncovered due to that reduction, in its deepest layers will remain anonymous and will not present itself adequately in self-reflection. (shrink)

I argue that, on Husserl's account, affectivity, along with the closely related phenomenon of association, follows a form of sui generis lawfulness belonging to the domain of what Husserl calls motivation, which must be distinguished both (1) from the causal structures through which we understand the body third-personally, as a material thing; and also (2) from the rational or inferential structures at the level of deliberative judgment traditionally understood to be the domain of epistemic import. In effect, in addition to (...) recognizing a “space of causes” and a “space of reasons,” Husserl’s account of affectivity and the epistemology of passive synthesis in which it is situated suggest that we should recognize a separate “space of motivations.” Within this space, on Husserl’s phenomenological picture, we can isolate two different sorts of epistemic import, one belonging directly to the passive-synthetic content of experience, as explained in Husserl’s account of association and his closely aligned notion of nonlinguistic sense, and a second—my primary focus—affectivity, which is still relevant for that content, albeit indirectly, and holds epistemic import in its determination not of what that content is but of how it comes to matter for us. (shrink)

The theme of phenomenology and quantum physics is here tackled by examining some basic interpretational issues in quantum physics. One key issue in quantum theory from the very beginning has been whether it is possible to provide a quantum ontology of particles in motion in the same way as in classical physics, or whether we are restricted to stay within a more limited view of quantum systems, in terms of complementary but mutually exclusive phenomena. In phenomenological terms we could describe (...) the situation by saying that according to the usual interpretation of quantum theory, quantum phenomena require a kind of epoche. However, there are other interpretations that seem to re-establish the possibility of a mind-independent ontology at the quantum level. We will show that even such ontological interpretations contain novel, non-classical features, which require them to give a special role to “phenomena” or “appearances”, a role not encountered in classical physics. We will conclude that while ontological interpretations of quantum theory are possible, quantum theory implies the need of a certain kind of epoche even for this type of interpretations. While different from the epoche connected to phenomenological description, the “quantum epoche” nevertheless points to a potentially interesting parallel between phenomenology and quantum philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper has been a brief examination of Husserl's notion of the riddle of knowing with a comparison to Lonergan's notion of wonder and the intention of being. The examination was undertaken by relating Husserl's concept of a riddle essentially to these central themes: wonder, epoche, and intentionality, with concomitant references to Lonergan's analogous notions. The paper was thus divided into two sections to address these themes of Husserl and Lonergan: Part I: "The Riddle of Knowing"; and (...) Part II: "Wonder and Intentionality." The paper shows that for Husserl the very fact of human knowing in its correlation to transcendence is the riddle, and it shows that for Lonergan the subject wonders at this correlation, and consciously engages its structure of knowing and loving. (shrink)

This thesis introduces certain aspects in the thought of Dallas Willard and Edmund Husserl as a new way forward in the internalism externalism debate. Husserl’s detailed analysis of cognition has application to epistemology and addresses in great depth an area which in the current discussion is often tertiary and shallow at best. It is argued that in both internalist and externalist camps there is a common assumption about cognition which Husserl argues forcibly against. This assumption is that thought, or cognition, (...) is essentially linguistic. Whatever else thinking may be, when we do it we do it in or with language. This assumption about thought means that whatever justification may be it is linguistic. This thesis holds that the rejecting of this assumption is critical to advancing the discussion past the current stalemate. (shrink)

Using the 1991 police beating of Rodney King as case study, this paper draws on Husserlian phenomenology to establish a coherentist account of knowledge as situated with respect to its concrete circumstances of production. I take as my point of departure Gail Weiss's phenomenological investigation into the jury's assessment of evidence in the "Rodney King incident," and in particular, her interest in Husserl's conception of the "horizon" as a structure of consciousness that mediates what is present in perceptual awareness. Making (...) use of Anthony Steinbock's work on Husserlian phenomenological method — drawn from his extensive study of Husserl's unpublished manuscripts — I develop an epistemological framework that treats knowledge claims as inextricably bound to the horizons of meaning from which they arise, and provides standards of epistemic responsibility pertaining to an agent's "framing" of evidence. (shrink)

Damian Byers analyzes the form Husserl gives to the problem of knowledge—the way this form influences the development of the phenomenological method, and the results of its application. In a very clear fashion, Byers presents Husserl’s understanding of the roles of intentionality, idealism, temporalization, and kinesthesia in the constitution of knowledge. Drawing upon all of Husserl’s major texts, he corrects many misapprehensions about Husserl’s doctrines of intentionality and idealism. Byers argues that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is both a philosophy of closure (...) and control and a philosophy of openness and vulnerability. (shrink)

This book offers a provocative, clear and rigorously argued account of the nature of perception and its role in the production of knowledge. Walter Hopp argues that perceptual experiences do not have conceptual content, and that what makes them play a distinctive epistemic role is not the features which they share with beliefs, but something that in fact sets them radically apart. He explains that the reason-giving relation between experiences and beliefs is what Edmund Husserl called 'fulfilment' - in which (...) we find something to be as we think it to be. His book covers a wide range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and traditional phenomenology. It is essential reading for contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and phenomenologists alike. (shrink)

Arguments pro and contra convergent realism - underdetermination of theory by observational evidence and pessimistic meta-induction from past falsity- are considered. It is argued that, to meet the counter-arguments challenge, convergent realism should be considerably changed with a help of modification of the propositions from this meta-programme’s “hard core” and “protecting belt”. Maybe one of the ways out is to turn to the coherent theory of truth. Some of the works of Hegel (as interpreted by Merab Mamardashvili and Alexandre Kojev), (...) Husserl and Heidegger can help to dig still deeper into the background of this theory. Key words: Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, convergent realism, internal realism, coherent theory of truth. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I criticize Claude Romano’s recent characterization of Husserl’s phenomenology as a form of Cartesianism. Contra Romano, Husserl is not committed to the view that since individual things in the world are dubitable, then the world as a whole is dubitable. On the contrary, for Husserl doubt is a merely transitional phenomenon which can only characterize a temporary span of experience. Similarly, illusion is not a mode of experience in its own right but a retrospective way of characterizing (...) a span of experience. Therefore, Husserl cannot be plausibly characterized as either a disjunctivist or a conjunctivist. The common premise of both theories – namely, that perception and illusion are two classes of conscious acts standing on equal footing – is phenomenologically unsound. I propose to call Husserl’s theory a hermeneutical theory of perception, i.e., one that interprets perception as a temporal and self-correcting process. In the last part of the paper I argue that Husserl’s positive appraisal of Cartesian doubt is only pedagogical in nature. Husserl does not take Cartesian doubt to be practicable, but the attempt to doubt universally has the positive effect of revealing transcendental subjectivity as the subject matter of phenomenology. (shrink)

My thesis is that there is a way of understanding moral knowledge in terms of Husserl's theory of the fulfillment of consciousness which may unify the main types of views held with respect to "the practicality of reason." By "the practicality of reason" I mean the claim that moral knowledge of the appropriate kind constrains moral action. This knowledge is intuitive or experiential knowledge in contrast to mere thought, intentionality or reasoning. I claim that such knowledge is possible and that (...) it places a greater constraint on action than mere moral thought or reasoning. ;The aim of the historical part of my thesis is to delimit the three main types of views held with respect to this thesis, i.e., the traditional, the Humean empiricist and the Kantian idealist, and to show that they all concede some form of "intuitive" or experiential constraint over action, but do not provide an adequate elucidation of it. In Hume's case, the attribution of selectively intentional features to moral sentiment allows for a plausible interpretation of Hume's view as consistent with, if not a concession to, the thesis. In Kant's case, his repeated, although unclarified, appeal to moral "experience" in conjunction with his ultimate appeal to reason supports our contention that he too adheres to the thesis. ;The primary "proof" of my thesis, however, proceeds by way of an independent phenomenological analysis of conscientious action. The moral intuitionism of Richard Price is refined and defended by the application of Husserl's analysis of the intuitive fulfillment of consciousness to moral experience and the will thereto in conscientious action. This analysis reveals that all thought, but especially intuitive thought, involves motivational structures with specific active tendencies. Intuitive moral thought, therefore, constrains to a much greater degree than mere intentional moral thought alone. We conclude with the observation that although the theory of moral perception is highly complex, it is in principle no more complex than an adequate theory of knowledge generally. The intuitive justification of moral knowledge may stand or fall with the intuitive justification of anything at all. (shrink)

The dissertation critically examines Husserl's transcendental idealism as a response to epistemological skepticism. Contrary to prevailing interpretations, I argue that Husserl intended to formulate a non-reductive, idealist justification of empirical knowledge. I take the standard phenomenalistic interpretation of Husserl's idealism to be right in discerning his basic concern with the refutation of skepticism, but wrong in construing the transcendental reduction as an ontological reduction of the natural world to "ideal" sets of transcendental experiences. On the other hand, recent "neutrality views" (...) which hold that phenomenological epoche requires the permanent suspension of ontological commitments seem to confuse Husserl's quasi-verificationist critique of traditional metaphysics with the positivistic critique of all metaphysics. I suggest instead that Husserl's epistemological program be understood as an attempt to ground transcendentally, i.e. on the basis of apodictic and presuppositionless evidences, our ordinary beliefs about the world. In this light, Husserl's Weltvernichtung argument for the presuppositionlessness of consciousness can be seen as a necessary precondition of the transcendental justification of empirical knowledge. ;To clarify Husserl's genetic phenomenology, I adopt Dagfinn Follesdal's interpretation of the noema as a Fregean Sinn. I distinguish two levels of 'constitution' to show how Husserl traces back the sense and being of the objective world to the synthetic activity of the transcendental subject. The resolution of transcendental analogues of skeptical doubts by means of Husserl's analysis of 'retroactive cancellation' completes, in general outline, the grounding of the "verificationism" of the natural attitude. However, I argue that the anti-skeptical force of 'retroactive cancellation' depends on conceiving the relationship between the conscious subject and the world in a way that renders Weltvernichtung unintelligible. Husserl's transcendental idealist response to the skeptic accordingly leads to a dilemma: either one maintains the presuppositionlessness of consciousness but abandons the critique of skepticism for a descriptive study of the transcendental structures of experience; or one attempts to reformulate Husserl's phenomenological verificationism while abandoning the goal of absolute grounding. (shrink)

The final chapter can only suggest how philosophy might respond to such a conclusion. Because descriptivism cannot conclusively be argued against on the basis of mediate assumptions, descriptivists can lose ground only by "losing faith" in their own descriptions, in this case by finding no criteria by which to choose between two mutually-exclusive and exhaustive descriptive systems. Belief should not here become unbelief--which is only a species of belief--but a suspension of belief, and maybe even the atrophy of the desire (...) for certainty altogether. Other traditional motives may be enough to sustain philosophy in a recognizable form. ;Edmund Husserl and Ludwig Wittgenstein are historically and conceptually the most important figures of descriptivism, which, unfortunately, they represent in radically different ways. After a brief chapter sketching the general problems of contemporary philosophy, the two thinkers are introduced separately in two succeeding chapters so that their visions may shine critically unencumbered. There, the many dimensions of each are shown to include the quest for certainty in description. But the two are forced to take each other into account in chapter four, where it is discovered that the description each gives of the basic content and verification of description is not enough to justify it against that of the other. Moreover, verification for each is too mediated to provide the stasis needed for certainty. Chapter five portrays the prior faith each has in the nexus of Cartesian clarity which makes objective reality immediately available to the subject. Even here, however, each conceives of clarity differently: Husserl as intuition, Wittgenstein as communication. Again, there seems to be no way for either side to defend itself against the other; moreover, each discovers clarity alone to be insufficiently reflexive to yield certainty. In chapter six, Husserl and Wittgenstein are shown to attempt the reflexive movement, at first rather clumsily in what amounts to dogmatic monadology and behaviorism, then more imaginatively and negatively by contrasting the results of their respective methods with their "shadow" sides: naive realism and linguistic Platonism. But negative contrast without a positive description of the space in which the contrast is made is either useless or covertly dogmatic. The two unconscious myths inspiring phenomenology and linguistic analysis are shown to exhaust the possibilities for philosophic description. ;Post-cartesian philosophy has so driven apart the philosophic subject and objective truth that its methods are divided between an endless and uncertain analysis of objective concepts and a final though theological certitude. A method has been proposed in this century which pretends both to avoid convolutions and to provide certainty through the simple and adequate appropriation of objective reality as it is, or, rather, as it is for the appropriating subject. This method claims very different adherents who, however, quite independently of each other give it the name "description." Philosophic description is of essential possibilities, which, because they are essential, do not suffer the provisionality of contingent description. Conveniently, essences bear essential relations among themselves: subject and object are immediately and even integrally related by an entire system of essential meanings that they share. In determining the essential structures of objective reality, the philosopher simultaneously determines the meanings they must have for the subject, which, in the last analysis, can be described as the locus of meanings. The essential subject-object relations is therefore established by a prior network of relations, themselves capable of objectification by the philosophic subject. This weld of object to subject enables the philosopher to meet his object without mediation, to know its necessity as his own, and to describe it in the most intimate terms. (shrink)

The dissertation examines Hegel's and Husserl's notions of truth, knowledge and subjectivity. Both philosophers are read as advocates of absolute truth, reached through phenomenological analyses in which subject and object putatively coincide. After reviewing Husserl's thought, the dissertation criticizes the concepts of subject and object, and transcendence and immanence, in three different examples: the perceptual object, the experience of the body, and the connection of individual subjects to time and other subjects. The dissertation concludes that Husserl's philosophical project is fundamentally (...) misguided; it results in information that is true, but not absolutely true. ;The dissertation then takes up Hegel, situating his philosophical project historically, and describing how the dialectic is supposed to unify the subject and object and disclose Absolute knowledge. Hegel's attempt to unify subject and object, as described in the Phenomenology of Spirit, fails, for he assumes the transparency of the body in sensation and perception. Moreover, the hypothesis of Absolute knowledge is as flawed as its practice. The supposedly universal knowledge is restricted to men, according to Hegel, and even particular men must abandon their particularity to grasp the Absolute. Even if Hegel's Absolute were attainable, it would not result in knowledge that is useful. ;The dissertation concludes with a alternative proposal for the concept of truth and knowledge. It outlines a dynamic conception of truth and knowledge based upon the most important philosophical contributions of Husserl and Hegel. while rejecting the prejudices that truth need be absolute, necessary, or certain. An accurate phenomenological description of the experience of truth reveals that the truths in which we believe change over time; they are not necessarily or certainly true; they are as contingent as the experiences from which they are derived. They are all based upon and mediated by intersubjectivity---the existence and concurrence of other subjects is implied in all claims to truth. Thus, they are subject to challenge and revision on the basis of contingent, empirical facts, themselves established, challenged, and revised by the intersubjective community and not judged by the individual alone. (shrink)

Relativism, provisionally definable as the view that no view is knowably better than any other, is widely accepted today. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand more fully what relativism is by looking at ancient and modern discussions of this view. ;Chapter one begins by considering Michael J. Sandel's recent discussion of a difficulty that modern liberalism faces in its acceptance of relativism. Sandel argues that relativism renders ineffective the attempt to promote toleration of various practices, and thus we (...) must argue for tolerating them in terms of their goodness. Sandel's suggestion that certain goods are knowable leads us to wonder whether the best life is knowable and hence to reconsider the principle of justice that seems to exclude knowledge of that life: Locke's principle of modern natural right. We first raise the question of whether the basis of the knowability of this principle is found in Locke's political work or his epistemological work. After considering Locke's epistemology and Husserl's revision of it, we suggest that Locke's political work is the principle's ultimate basis, for Locke's mechanistic epistemology presupposes that the highest good, or the Biblical God, has been ruled out. ;Chapter two is thus a reading of the opening chapters of the First Treatise, Locke's work confronting the problem of the Biblical God. We argue that Locke does not show, and is aware that he does not show, that man is naturally free, or that man is not in the hands of the mysterious God who orders human life by means of particular providence. Instead, Locke argues only for the supposition that man is naturally free. ;This result permits reconsideration, in chapter three, of Plato's discussion of relativism in the Theaetetus. After clarifying what relativism is, Plato suggests that there is no argument, beginning from perceptual experience, for this view. He also may suggest that relativism stems from the apparent awareness that we cannot explain the grounds of that experience, which could be the gods. (shrink)

Danger of skeptic consequences of relativism was one of the main motives which led Edmund Husserl to taking up polemic with psychologism. This polemic was discussed and analyzed repeatedly, so instead of speculating on validity and importance of each of the arguments used, I rather focus on the structure of argumentation articulated in Prolegomena to pure logic and to consider the role of frequently dismissed thread of the epistemological absolutism’s apology. For Husserl this absolutism is strictly connected with a conception (...) of signifi cances as ideal species, thus in next step I try to show that basic draft of this conception is present already in polemic arguments of Prolegomena. That in turn appears to lead up to the conclusion, which – contrary to the declarations – that in respect of systematic the Husserl’s polemic over relativism is placed before strict phenomenological turning point – it seems to be its ramification. Subsequently I demonstrate how becomingaware of this fact leads Husserl straight to the idea of phenomenological reduction. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I develop an engaged understanding of objectivity, or good knowledge practices. I argue that for knowledge practices to be good, they must both be truth-conducive and engaged, that is, explicitly implicated in the critical appraisal of background values and assumptions. I pursue this argument in six stages. First, I consider work in epistemology that countenances a place for values in objectivity. I conclude from this that truth-conduciveness is not sufficient for objectivity, and that a social approach to (...) knowledge is called for. Second, I consider standpoint theory, a prominent feminist approach to objectivity. This allows me to show the possible insights available to marginalized perspectives, while indicating that this will be a component of rather than itself offering an account of objectivity. Third, I consider a more comprehensive approach in Helen Longino's critical contextual empiricism, which locates objectivity in the social features of inquiry. Her approach is promising, but requires the insights of early phenomenology in order to develop that potential. I develop the phenomenological framework in Chapter 4, where I consider Husserlian phenomenology. Fifth, I bring the insights of phenomenology to the challenges presented by critical contextual empiricism, and develop my positive view, critical phenomenological objectivity. On this view, inquiry is objective when individuals and communities foster critical perspectives, seek transformative epistemic experiences, build coalitions, foster diversity, and pursue empirical adequacy. In the final chapter, I consider a case study that enables me to defend the merit and warrant of these features of objectivity. (shrink)

Discussing ideas from Husserl's 'Vom Ursprung der Geometrie' and the author's research on human information processing, it is suggested that there may be two relatively independent modes of knowledge. They are tentatively referred to as 'experience' and 'reason'. They constitute an epistemological dualism that may enable to avoid certain circularities in the foundation of knowledge and that may provide an avenue towards the integration of scientific and preschientific (phenomenological) knowledge. This duality involves two horizons advanced yet bu Husserl, but we (...) do not know whether he went so far as to connect them with two modes of knowledge of which the one has a meta-status relative to the other making that it can found as well as relativate the other. Finally, having an infinite character, both horizons may offer distinct perspectives on ultimate reality and meaning. (shrink)

This paper explores the political import of Husserl’s critical discussion of the epistemic effects of the formalization of rational thinking. More specifically, it argues that this discussion is of direct relevance to make sense of the pervasive processes of ‘technization’, that is, of a mechanistic and superficial generation and use of knowledge, to be observed in current contexts of governance. Building upon Husserl’s understanding of formalization as a symbolic technique for abstraction in the thinking with and about numbers, I argue (...) that processes of technization, while being necessary and legitimate procedures for the reduction of complexities, also may give rise to politically unresponsive and ultimately dysfunctional ‘economies of thinking.’ This paper is structured in three parts. In the first part I outline Husserl’s account of the formalization and technization of thought and knowledge. In the second part I make my case for the political import of this account, departing in this context from positions that (a) regard Husserl’s discussions of formalization and its effects as merely epistemological, or that (b) try to mobilize Husserl for a one-sided critique of instrumental reason. In the final part I address a major shortcoming of Husserl’s account, namely its neglect of the concrete and historically evolving technological infrastructures of processes of formalization/technization. (shrink)

A study of the major philosophical theories of knowledge from Plato to Husserl intending to show the pivotal role of Descartes and the influence of his unjustified assumption of mental reality for ideas. On the basis of this study, the book suggests the need to return to the pre-Cartesian cognitive realism of the Greeks and Medievals.