Husserl: Intentionality, Misc

Before engaging with intentionality, the philosopher of mind must consider the intrinsic nature of psychological elements. Conscious states, contrary to ordinary and scientific objects, seem to penetrate each another in such a way that it becomes impossible to enumerate, class or organize through laws the various experiences at stake. In this context, how is a science of consciousness conceivable? How is it possible to apply the epistemological requirements of any science to a domain whose ontological nature contradicts such demands? The (...) paper reconstructs Husserl’s solution to this issue in the Fifth Logical Investigation. I show how his appeal to the mereological framework of the Third Investigation gives him the tools to rationalize the domain of the mind and to establish phenomenology as an authentic science of consciousness. I first demonstrate that the very task of phenomenological investigations is defined in mereological terms. I then reconstruct the issue regarding the inclusion of the intentional object within the act, by exposing the nuances of the Husserlian position in this famous controversy. In a last part, I show how mereological concepts are at the core of the Husserlian reinterpretation of the Brentanian thesis according to which all acts are presentations or based on presentations. (shrink)

As two defining properties of mental phenomena, consciousness and intentionality have some deep connections. These connections may be either grounded by a more fundamental mental property, or governed by some bridge laws, or accepted as a brute unexplainable fact. This paper argues, on the one hand, that we do not have justifications for believing in the existence of a new fundamental mental property, although we have motivations for making an inference to such a new mental property. On the other hand, (...) this paper demonstrates that Husserl took these connections to be governed by some bridge laws and to be realized by the mapping function of what he called apprehension. (shrink)

The paper offers a systematic reconstruction of the relations that, in Husserl’s work, bind together our shared social world (“the spiritual world”) with shared intentionality. It is claimed that, by sharing experiences, persons create social reasons and that these reasons impose a normative structure on the social world. Because there are two ways in which persons can share experiences (depending on whether these experiences rest on mutual communication or on group’s identity), social normativity comes in two kinds. It is either (...) directed (it has an addressee) or it is collective or absolute (it applies to all group members). Social normativity should be distinguished from axiological normativity: The first is grounded in shared intentionality, the second in values. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars tackled the difficult problems of reconciling Pittsburgh school-style analytic thought, Husserlian phenomenology, and the Myth of the Given. This collection of essays brings into dialogue the analytic philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars--founder of the Pittsburgh school of thought--and phenomenology, with a special focus on the work of Edmund Husserl. The book's wide-ranging discussions include the famous Myth of the Given but also more traditional problems in the philosophy of mind and phenomenology such as the status of perception and imagination (...) nature of intentionality concept of motivation relationship between linguistic and nonlinguistic experiences relationship between conceptual and preconceptual experiences Moreover, the volume addresses the conflicts between Sellars's manifest and scientific images of the world and Husserl's ontology of the life-world. The volume takes as a point of departure Sellars's criticism of the Myth of the Given, but only to show the many problems that label obscures. Contributors explain aspects of Sellars's philosophy vis-à-vis Husserl's phenomenology, articulating the central problems and solutions of each. The book is a must-read for scholars and students interested in learning more about Sellars and for those comparing Continental and analytic philosophical thought. Contributors Walter Hopp Wolfgang Huemer Roberta Lanfredini Danilo Manca Karl Mertens Antonio Nunziante Jacob Rump Daniele De Santis Michela Summa. (shrink)

In this article, I start with an analysis of Husserl’s description of the intentional structure of communicative intentions in the Logical Investigations, pointing to some obvious shortcomings of it. Then, I stress some important criticisms of Husserl’s approach, namely by Pfänder, and I endeavor to show that Husserl was very close to a full-fledged theory of communicative intentions in the years around 1910. I then turn to Reinach’s theory of social acts, without deciding whether Reinach’s approach was dependent or not (...) on Husserl’s new views concerning the intentionality of communicative acts. Regarding Reinach’s theory of the Vernehmung, I criticize a widespread trend to construe it as something like a perception, showing that it expresses what I call the “vocative element” of the communicative acts. Then, I point to some complements that Reinach’s description is in need, and I finish with an outline of a phenomenologically oriented concept of communication, based on Husserl’s and Reinach’s insights. (shrink)

This essay examines how Husserl stretches the bounds of his philosophy of meaning, according to which all propositions are categorical, to account for existential propositions, which seem to lack predicates. I examine Husserl’s counterintuitive conclusion that an existential proposition does possess a predicate and I explore his endeavor to pinpoint what that predicate is. This goal is accomplished in three stages. First, I examine Husserl’s standard theory of predication and categorial intuition from his 1901 Logical Investigations. Second, I show how (...) Husserl imposes those 1901 insights to uncover the predicate of the existential proposition in unpublished manuscripts and lectures. He determines that the existential proposition predicates of the subject, that it corresponds to an actual object. This analysis reveals that Husserl’s descriptions of existential propositions from the late 1890s employed both static and genetic methodologies. In those texts, he carefully untangles and clarifies the co-enmeshed passive and active moments of consciousness and shows that the passive givenness of certain circumstances is the condition of possibility for our active verifying of propositions. Finally, I execute a critical assessment of Husserl’s thought to reveal that, while his insights about existential propositions are largely correct, they are augmented by re-construing them within the context of his mature philosophy. Only by renouncing his metaphysical neutrality and by accounting for intersubjectivity, can Husserl properly clarify existential propositions. (shrink)

There is currently no consensus about a general account of hallucination and its object. The problem of hallucination has de facto generated contrasting accounts of perception, led to opposing epistemic and metaphysical positions, and, most significantly, exposed a manifold of diverging views concerning the intentionality of experience, in general, and perceptual intentionality, in particular. In this article, I aim to clarify the controversial status, experiential possibility, and intentional structure of hallucination qua distinctive phenomenon. The analysis will first detect a phenomenological, (...) Husserlian-informed concept of hallucination in its irreducibility to other kinds and modes of sensory experience. This will set the theoretical basis to develop an account of hallucination by means of a morphological description of those diversified structures of intentional consciousness that lend themselves to generate hallucinatory appearances. I will then describe both the turning of certain kinds of intentional experience into hallucinatory perceptions and the status of hallucinatory objects. This will support the possibility of hallucination in a strict and rigorous sense, elucidate the enigmatic claim that ‘in hallucination we are conscious of something while nothing truly appears,’ and offer a seminal perspective concerning the alleged problem that hallucinations pose on perceptual intentionality. With the aid of some crucial distinctions, I will then argue that hallucinations do not affect perceptual intentionality as a dyadic, relational structure. (shrink)

This essay examines the debate that arose immediately following the publication of the first volume of Edmund Husserl's Ideas regarding the model of concept formation that Husserl sketches in that work. After a brief overview of the relevant passages from the Ideas, I take up essay-length responses to Husserl by August Messer, Theodor Elsenhans, and Heinrich Gustav Steinmann. Reflecting a variety of empiricist commitments, all three authors are skeptical that concepts can be expected to embody the essence of a corresponding (...) phenomenon. Subsequently, I review the responses to these critiques offered by Husserl, his then-assistant Edith Stein, and Paul Linke. For Linke, it is at least highly probable that certain concepts derive their content from an apprehension of essence. The empiricist alternative, he argues, is fatally unstable. Husserl and Stein, meanwhile, offer a more forceful defense of this position. Unless we allow that certain kinds of concepts can originate from a grasp of essence, they argue, we will be unable to explain how certain manifest cognitive accomplishments are possible. (shrink)

I contend that the well-established phenomenological distinction between reflective and pre-reflective self-awareness needs to be further supplemented with more refined distinctions between different modes of pre-reflective self-awareness. Here I distinguish between five modes, which we come across in perception, lucid dreams, non-lucid dreams, daydreams, and episodic memory. Building on the basis of a phenomenological description, I argue that perception entails the pre-reflective self-awareness of the perceiving ego; non-lucid dreams implicate the pre-reflective self-awareness of the dreamed ego; in the case of (...) lucid dreams and daydreams, we are faced with a split pre-reflective self-awareness, which entails the self-awareness of the dreaming and the dreamed ego. Lastly, in the case of episodic recollection, we are confronted with a threefold pre-reflective self-awareness: the self-awareness of the remembered ego, the remembering ego, and of the temporal unity of experience. The phenomenological analysis here offered leads to the conclusion that pre-reflective self-awareness need not be spoken of in the singular, but in the plural, and that while some modes of pre-reflective self-awareness constitute the foundations of selfhood, others enable the subject of experience to flee its facticity and become someone other than it is. (shrink)

Normative notions are central to Husserl’s account of intentionality: intending an object is a normative achievement, essentially admitting of fulfillment or disappointment. So is teleology: intentional conscious life is inseparable from a horizontal orientation toward “ideas in the Kantian sense.” How are they related? Is teleology essential for intentionality as a normative achievement? Or, in Husserl’s way of putting it, do relative truths “demand” ideal truths? This article explores some reasons for agreeing with Husserl that this is indeed the case. (...) In Sec. 2, I will identify a “normative turn” in Husserl’s account of the basic structure of perceptual intentionality and spell out the teleological character of this normative account. This sense of teleology is a minimal one. A more robust teleology, in the sense of an orientation toward infinite ideality, is then justified in Sec. 3 by virtue of its function in the constitution of genuine objectivity. In Sec. 4, I will turn to the noetic, especially the ego-oriented side of Husserl’s analysis, in order to clarify the normative force of infinite telos. All in all, I will argue that the normative and the teleological sides of the story are inextricably intertwined in Husserl’s account of intentional conscious life. (shrink)

Husserl endorses ideal verificationism, the claim that there is a necessary correlation between truth and the ideal possibility of experience. This puts him in the company of semantic anti-realists like Dummett, Tennant, and Wright who endorse the knowability thesis that all truths are knowable. Unfortunately, there is a simple, seductive, and troubling argument due to Alonzo Church and Frederic Fitch that the knowability thesis collapses into the omniscience thesis that all truths are known. Phenomenologists should be worried. I assess the (...) damage by surveying responses that may be open to Husserl. In particular, I explore whether Husserl ought to have adopted intuitionistic logic and motivate a restriction of ideal verificationism on phenomenological grounds. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the primacy that, following Sellars, Robert Brandom ascribes to the intersubjective and discursive space of reasons over all other processes in which the human mind is involved. I will compare Brandom’s perspective with that of the situated approach to the study of mind. At first, my aim is to show that the origin of intentionality has to be found in the sphere of sentience and the living body. Second, by comparing the enactivist account of language (...) that derives from the naturalization of Husserl’s phenomenology with the neo-pragmatist approach to the linguistic turn, I argue for a heuristic primacy owing to the linguistic practice of giving and asking for reasons. This allows me to reflect with a meta-philosophical approach on to what extent two families of views such as pragmatism and phenomenology, with their different variants, interact in the attempt to blend things together, i.e., nature and culture; mind and world; and what happens inside the human body and what happens outside it. (shrink)

I reconstruct the notion of significance [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] in the later Husserl, with attention to his conceptions of judgment and transcendental logic. My analysis is motivated by the idea that an account of significance can help to connect analytic, Anglo-American conceptions of meaning as a precise, law-governed phenomenon investigated via linguistic analysis and Continental European conceptions of meaning in a broader “existential” sense. I argue that Husserl’s later work points to a transcendental-logical conception of a founding level of _significance_ [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] prior (...) to language, and that this conception meets characteristically analytic demands for precision and governance by logical constraints. At the same time, since it is based in descriptions of perceptual intentionality at the level of essential possibility, it leaves room for an account of meaning as a partially undetermined phenomenon of lived experience, and not just of our language and concepts, and thereby meets the characteristically Continental demand to take at face value meaning’s vagueness and indeterminacy in everyday human life. (shrink)

The paper analyses Peirce’s hypoiconicity through the lens of Husserlian intentionality. Peirce’s triple structure of hypoiconicity as resemblance relation, diagrammatical reasoning and metaphoric displacement is shown to require intentional acts in its production and interpretation. Regarding hypoiconicity as a semiotic schematization of Vorstellung, the paper places it in the context of Husserl’s conception of intentionality in which iconicity appears as a stepping-stone towards the skeletonization of resemblance in diagrammatical abstraction and as schematic displacement in metaphor. As such, hypoiconic intentionality is (...) argued to play a role also in Peirce’s community conception of language. The paper’s core claim is that intentionality provides an avenue for revealing hypoiconicity as a major, critical concept of semiotics, functioning as paradigm case for investigating the convergence of semiotics and phenomenology. (shrink)

When putting semiotics and phenomenology in juxtaposition, the first task necessarily is to find out what a study of meaning, conceiving of itself as an empirical science, has to do with a philosophical school, the business of which it is to secure the epistemological foundations of all the sciences (broadly understood). Our answer, in short (but we will go at some length to show it), is that since all results of phenomenology also count as contributions to phenomenological psychology, the phenomenological (...) method constitutes a part of the panoply of methods offered to semiotics. Our second task will be to review the fragmentary semiotics proposed, originally employing that term, by Edmund Husserl, to gauge its value for contemporary semiotics. Since our investigation of Husserl’s semiotics will demonstrate that it sometimes concerns the sign in a narrow sense, and sometimes broadens up to a study of meaning in general, our third and final task, in this paper, will be to consider a proposal made by a close follower of Husserl, Alfred Schütz, whose idea of a system of relevancies, wedded to Husserl’s notion of sedimentation, might be amended when considered in connection with Umberto Eco’s idea of the encyclopaedia. (shrink)

Whether Edmund Husserl is a realist or idealist or metaphysically neutral is still often debated among his commentators. Instead of making an over-generalized claim about Husserl’s thought, this study only focuses on intentionality theory to know toward which Husserl is metaphysically committed in that theory. This study, therefore, aims to metaphysically reconstruct Husserl’s theory of intentionality and then prove that the theory is realist, not idealist nor metaphysically neutral. By using the textual analysis method, this study finds four important points (...) in Husserl’s works regarding intentionality theory. Firstly, in the Husserlian framework of intentionality, consciousness always intends its objects through the mediation of a certain meaning. Secondly, objects toward which consciousness is directed are transcendent and independent from consciousness. Thirdly, a single object can be intended by consciousness through different meanings according to the perspective that determines the intention. Therefore, fourthly, Husserl’s theory of intentionality can be categorized as one version of perspectival realism. (shrink)

Esta contribución presenta como el concepto filosófico de “donación” es reinterpretado en la reflexión de Patočka. Partiendo de la lección husserliana, gracias a la cual las cosas son dadas en la pura inmanencia de la consciencia, él critica esta orientación “subjetivista” porque no desarrolla adecuadamente el tema del aparecer en el campo fenomenal. La segunda sección analiza tres desplazamientos metódicos que abarcan: el rol del sujeto, su relación con la trascendencia, el darse a sí mismo del mundo en su totalidad. (...) La tercera sección compara la reflexión de Patočka con dos referencias cruzadas a algunos intentos similares en la historia de la fenomenología. El tema de “la donación”, por tanto, nos traslada al mayor problema con el que ha trabajado siempre la filosofía: la manifestación del mundo. Patočka intentó esclarecer este problema mediante dos metáforas, pero también subrayó cómo concierne el modo en el que el hombreinterpreta la propia existencia.This paper presents how the philosophical key concept of givenness is reinter-preted in Patočka's reflection. Starting from the Husserlian idea, according to which things are given in the pure immanence of consciousness, Patočka criticized this "subjectivist" orientation because it doesn’t adequately develop the appearing in the phenomenal field. The second section analyzes three main methodical shifts concerning: the nature and the role of the subject, its relationship with the transcendence, the self-giving of the world as a whole. The third section compares Patočka's reflection and two cross-references to similar undertaking in the history of phenomenology. The theme of givenness brings us back in the end to the biggest problem within which philosophy has always worked: world manifestation. Patočka tried to clarify this issue through two metaphors, but he also highlighted as it concerns the way in which man interprets his existence. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, the essay demonstrates that Edmund Husserl’s theory of meaning consciousness from his 1901 Logical Investigations is internally inconsistent and falls apart upon closer inspection. I show that Husserl, in 1901, describes non-intuitive meaning consciousness as a direct parallel or as a ‘mirror’ of intuitive consciousness. He claims that non-intuitive meaning acts, like intuitions, have substance and represent their objects. I reveal that, by defining meaning acts in this way, Husserl cannot account for our experiences (...) of countersensical, absurd, or impossible meanings. Second, I examine how Husserl came to recognize this 1901 mistake in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. I discuss how he accordingly reformulates his understanding of non-intuitive meaning acts from the ground up in those Revisions, where this also allows for him to properly account for the experience of impossible meanings. Instead of describing them as mirrors of intuitions, Husserl takes non-intuitive meaning acts to be modifications of intuitions, where they have no substance and do not represent their objects. Finally, in the conclusion to this essay, I demonstrate how this fundamental change to his understanding of meaning consciousness forced Husserl to revise other central tenets of his philosophy, such that the trajectory of his thought can only be properly understood in light of these revisions to his theory of non-intuitive meaning consciousness. (shrink)

Husserl's departure for the rejecting of the duality (subject and object) inherent in the nature of the Western metaphysical tradition is the transcendental structure of consciousness. Hence the innate foundation of consciousness is intention. The intention is the act of consciousness and practical objectification; That is, by resorting to methodological and Noesis steps, objects from the type of perception can emerge and are included in the consciousness of the mind. Therefore, in addition to sensory intuition, consciousness has the power of (...) intuition of essences. Therefore, consciousness is always associated with its object. In this way, Husserl's methodological axis in phenomenology is the return to objects, and this return is provided by the power of human comprehension and makes the world its intention's object. This article seeks to explain how the phenomenon of the world is made in the realm of consciousness, as well as how the pure subject and advanced mind in the face of the objective world as the only method of understanding and receiving the universe can be an objectifying action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article demonstrates why Husserl struggled to understand the conditions of possibility of false memory, and how only the genetic dimension of his phenomenology enabled him to conceive of a specifically mnemic form of falsehood. For a false memory to deceive us, we must trust that it is true, but in order to have a phenomenology of its falsehood, the memory must appear as false. Husserl’s theory of false memory responds to both of these demands by showing how distorting (...) syntheses conceal themselves, without making it impossible to discover their distorting effects. Key to meeting these two demands is Husserl’s account of how the unconscious functions as the “untrue” basis of memory, and how all recollections require affective, associative syntheses between present conscious experience and past unconscious experience, syntheses that are subject to many vicissitudes. (shrink)

En el presente artículo analizo la lectura que hace Dorion Cairns, probablemente el más cercano de los seguidores de Husserl, del libro de Ideen y pondré de relieve las críticas que mi maestro le hizo a lo que Husserl había considerado una especie de manual de su filosofía fenomenológica. Lo que sigue es un resumen del seminario de 1964, dedicado a las Ideas. Siguiendo la estructura del libro, Cairns hace las siguientes observaciones: consideraciones sobre la comprensión adecuada del título del (...) libro, reflexiones de Cairns sobre la relación entre la fenomenología trascendental y la psicología empírica y la relación entre lo eidético y lo trascendental. En tercer lugar, abordaré lo que probablemente sea la mayor diferencia entre la fenomenología de Cairns y las Ideas de Husserl, esto es, la importancia de la “preconstitución”, un rico sustrato de los actos o acciones humanas, la cual desemboca en una critiqua de la noción de la intencionalidad presente en Ideas, como objetivadora. Cairns rechaza también la distinción hyle/ morphé y la sustituye por una más fundamental, la de sentir y sensa. También considera los aspectos fundamentales del tiempo. En cuanto a la tercera parte de Ideas, Cairns pone de relieve algunas dificultadaes a la hora de clasificar los actos. Otro aspecto de la lectura de Ideas es la insistencia en analizar los componentes subjetivos o irracionales en la teoría de la práxis, valores y conocimiento.In this paper I shall analyse Dorion Cairns´s, arguably Husserl´s closest follower, reading of the Ideen and I will emphasize criticisms that my teacher had of what Husserl considered a sort of manual for his phenomenological philosophy. What follows is a summary of the seminar from 1964, devoted to the Ideas. Following the structure of the book, Cairns points out the following remarks: concerns about the proper understanding of the very title of the work, Cairn´s consideration of the relation of transcendental phenomenology to empirical psychology and the relation of the eidetic and the transcendental. In the third place, probably the biggest difference between Cairn´s phenomenology and Husserl´s Ideas, that is, the importance of the “preconstitution”, a rich substratum of human act or actions. This emphasis amounts to the critique of intentionality in Ideen as objectivating. Cairns also rejects the hylē/morphē distinction and substitutes it by a more fundamental one of sensing and sensa. He also considers some fundamental aspects of time. As to the third part of the Ideas, Cairns points out some difficulties in classification of acts. Other aspect of Cairn’s reading of Ideen is the insistence on analysing the subjective or irrational components in the theory of praxis, values and knowledge. (shrink)

This article tries to examine Husserl's theory of signification and reference, while presenting a content-oriented view of theory of intentionality and proposing the theory of the ideality of meaning, and thus explores the relation between Being and consciousness under the category of "objectivity" in logical investigation; Because the relationship between Being and consciousness must be sought at the intersection of theory of intentionality and objectivity. This intersection can be proposed in the truth condition of the objectivity of meaning, which acts (...) as the decisive result of Husserl's theory of signification and reference; to this reason, after presenting Husserl's critique of Brentano's causal theory of intentionality, this paper introduces a adverbial reading of theory of intentionality which is Husserl's specific theory of intentionality in logical investigation. According to this theory, the subject always pays attention to the object from his perspective, and this is called the perspectival subjectivity, which is the intrinsic characteristic of the subject. We will then show that the theory of the ideality of meaning is the result of the threefold structure of Husserl's intentionality and the content-oriented view of intentionality. Contrary to the claim of this theory that its true and inherent characteristic is intentionally its phenomenological aspect, the theory of reference and its corresponding meaning cannot satisfy the condition of the objectivity of meaning; Thus, theory of intentionality is based on an inadequate content-oriented attitude. (shrink)

The paper inquires Husserl’s immanent teleology of conscious life, conceived as a Teleologie der «tiefen» Assoziationen. The associative genesis entails synthetical processes in the primordial-associative field, driven by the general concept of interest. The resulting syntheses ground the various forms of judgments, both judgments on experience and predicative ones in general. Since the theory’s foundation relies on pre-predicative experience, then it must encompass its teleological dimension and, in this sense, the concept of evidence – pivotal in the theory – mirrors (...) the result of the synthesis of fulfilment. This latter, in turn, is driven in an asymptotic path towards a teleological idea of adequacy. This account expresses the complementary mirroring that characterizes the relationship between judging and teleology, without the need to separate teleology from reason. In order to highlight the significance of this framing, the paper is closed by a brief comparison with R. Millikan’s teleosemantic theory, whose concept of teleology is shown as flawed by the general concerns proper to naturalism. (shrink)

In this paper I draw on Husserl's early analysis of the frustration of an intentional act to argue against orthodox transcendental idealism, the claim that our acts of cognition can be mistaken with regard to a "matter," and are therefore objective, but this matter only has conceptual structure by virtue of human activity. For example, the proposition "My coffee cup is red" can be true or false depending on the sensations I receive (the matter of the act of cognition), which (...) are independent of my will, but it is only by virtue of my own conceptualizing activity (the form or "structure" of the act of cognition) that there exists an object which is my coffee cup and is red, as opposed to this bare sensation of redness. I will argue against this view; Objects have both matter and conceptual structure independent of the actual fact of human cognition. Our acts of cognition can be mistaken with regard to matter insofar as subsequent intentional acts give the same object as having a different, contradictory matter, in which case our earlier act is "frustrated." This contradictory matter, in order to contradict the earlier matter, which was itself a property predicated to the object insofar as it has a certain conceptual structure, must itself belong to the object insofar as it has the same conceptual structure. (shrink)

The paper presents a phenomenological approach to recent debates in the philosophy of language about rule-following and the normativity of meaning, a debate that can be traced to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations but that was given new life with Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Taking a cue from Hannah Ginsborg’s recent work on “primitive normativity,” I use some of Husserl’s own comments about meaning and the status of rules to sketch a solution to Kripke’s rule-following paradox by (...) appealing to a kind of normativity at the level of perception and intersubjective embodiment. This level of normativity arises, like Ginsborg’s, via a primitive kind of judgment that does not presuppose linguistic or conceptual mastery. Unlike for Ginsborg, however, for Husserl this level should still be understood in terms of meaning—just not in the standard linguistic or conceptual senses prominent in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition in which the rule-following debates have occurred. My interpretation thus also demonstrates how Husserl’s account bypasses certain presuppositions about meaning common in the period of the linguistic turn—presuppositions also questioned, in different ways, by Wittgenstein, by Kripke, and by Ginsborg. (shrink)

Responding to the myth of a purely sensuous “given”, we turn to phenomenology, to the structure of consciousness in an everyday perception of an everyday object. We first consider Brentano’s model of an act of consciousness: featuring the presentation of an object “intentionally” contained “in” the act, joined by the presentation of that object-presentation in “inner consciousness”. We then dig into Husserl’s intricate “semantic” theory of intentionality: featuring “noematic” meaning within a “horizon” of implicated meaning regarding the object of perceptual (...) consciousness. Brentanian inner consciousness morphs into “inner time consciousness” for Husserl, where noematic sense shapes more basic sensory elements of temporal experience. Drawing on these Brentanian and Husserlian analyses, we develop an enhanced account of how an object is “given” in perceptual acquaintance or “intuition”: by virtue of a structure of meaning entertained in the experience. This account we develop further in a “modal” model of the structure of consciousness in everyday perception: distinguishing fundamental factors of phenomenal intentional experience, including inner awareness, phenomenality, and spatiotemporal awareness. Within this model, we specify how the external object of perception is “constituted” in consciousness by virtue of ideal meaning, all within the real world wherein an intentional relation of acquaintance links the perceptual experience with its object. What is “given” in a familiar type of perceptual acquaintance turns out to be quite complex, embracing: the object perceived, the visual experience, its subject, the spatiotemporal context including consciousness and object, and the manifold of meaning shaping the “constitution” of the given object. Where we refer to historical figures, including Husserl, the aim is theoretical rather than exegetical, seeking to develop a contemporary theory of “the given” with roots in classical philosophical views. The resulting theory develops in a series of explorations of increasing complexity in the phenomenology and attendant ontology of “the given”. (shrink)

This paper aims to reassess a notion in the works of the later Husserl that is both historically important and philosophically insightful, but remains understudied, namely, that of type. In opposition to a standard reading which treats Husserl’s type presentations as pre-conceptual habits, this paper argues that these representations are a specific kind of concept. More precisely, it shows that Husserl’s account of type presentations is akin to the contemporary prototype theory of concepts. This is historically important, since the predecessor (...) of the prototype theory is usually said to be Wittgenstein. From a philosophical standpoint, the paper shows that Husserl has an innovative account of the connection between type concepts and their extension. Contrary to the standard view of extensions as sets and thus sharp entities, Husserl develops a correlationalist theory of concepts, according to which, for the specific characteristics in the structure of a concept, there are corresponding characteristics in the arrangement of its members, and vice versa. According to this theory, while sharp concepts lead to sharp extensions, vague concepts such as (proto)type concepts lead to vague extensions. The paper presents this understanding of Husserl in detail and explains its philosophical significance. (shrink)

Husserl desarrolla un enfoque genético que busca dar cuenta del origen de las formas lógico-categoriales a partir de las correspondientes preestructuraciones situadas en el nivel de la receptividad sensible. Para un enfoque de ese tipo, la explicación del origen de las modalidades del juicio, en general, y la negación, en particular, plantea peculiares desafíos. El presente trabajo discute el modo en el que Husserl trata la negación, en tanto forma básica de la modalidad, tanto en el enfoque estático de Ideen (...) I como en el enfoque genético de Erfahrung und Urteil. A fin de poner de relieve el al-cance histórico y sistemático de la concepción husserliana, se proporciona previamente una presentación general de su contexto polémico inmediato. Este viene dado por la oposición entre psicologismo y formalismo, dominante en la filosofía de la lógica alemana de fines del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX.Husserl develops a genetic approach that seeks to account for the origin of the logical-categorical forms starting from the corresponding pre-structures located at the level of sensitive receptivity. For such an approach, the explanation of the origin of the modalities of judgment, in general, and negation, in particular, poses peculiar challenges. This paper discusses how Husserl treats negation as a basic form of modality, both in the static approach of Ideen I and the genetic approach of Erfahrung und Urteil. Previously, in order to highlight the historical and systematic significance of the Husserlian conception, a general presentation of its immediate polemic context is offered, especially with reference to the opposition between psychologism and formalism, dominant in the German philosophy of logic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper shows that Husserl is not guilty of Sellars’ myth of the sensory given. I firstly show that Husserl’s account of ‘sensations’ or ‘sense data’ seems to possess some of the attributes Sellars’ myth critiques. In response I show that, just as Sellars thinks that our ‘conceptual capacities’ afford us an awareness of a logical perceptual space that has a propositional structure, Husserl thinks that ‘acts of apprehension’ structure sensations to afford us perception that is similarly propositionally structured. Not (...) only this, but there is much affinity and shared motivation between Husserl and Sellars accounts of the sensory stratum. Reflection on phenomenological considerations prevents Sellars from denying phenomenal non-conceptual content, whilst Husserlian ‘sense data’ are technical designations; dependant parts of perceptual experience grasped in abstraction, necessary for providing a reflective/philosophical account of empirical knowledge. I show that both Husserl and Sellars assert that the proper description of phenomenal content affords it the function of presenting properties of spatial objects during perception, and reiterate the well-known fact that Husserl thinks that perception is of ‘conceptually’ apprehended spatiotemporal objects. (shrink)

This paper examines the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy of nonintuitive intentions. The analysis has two stages. First, I expose a mistake in Husserl’s account of non-intuitive acts from his 1901 Logical Investigations. I demonstrate that Husserl employs the term “signitive” too broadly, as he concludes that all non-intuitive acts are signitive. He states that not only meaning acts, but also the contiguity intentions of perception are signitive acts. Second, I show how Husserl, in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical (...) Investigation, amends his 1901 theory of non-intuitive acts, which he now calls “empty” intentions. He there accurately distinguishes empty meaning acts from the empty intentions of perception. In the conclusion, I reveal how Husserl’s alterations to his theory of non-intuitive intentions can inform our understanding of a larger shift in his philosophy. (shrink)

This book carries forward the discourse on the mind’s engagement with the world. It reviews the semantic and metaphysical debates around internalism and externalism, the location of content, and the indeterminacy of meaning in language. The volume analyses the writings of Jackson, Chomsky, Putnam, Quine, Bilgrami and others, to reconcile opposing theories of language and the mind. It ventures into Cartesian ontology and Fregean semantics to understand how mental content becomes world-oriented in our linguistic communication. Further, the author explores the (...) liaison between the mind and the world from the phenomenological perspective, particularly, Husserl’s linguistic turn and Heidegger’s intersubjective entreaty for Dasein. The book conceives thought as a biological and socio-linguistic product which engages with the mind-world question through the conceptual and causal apparatuses of language. A major intervention in the field of philosophy of language, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers interested in philosophy, phenomenology, epistemology, and metaphysics . (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)

Hubert Dreyfus once noted that it would be difficult to ascertain whether Edmund Husserl had a computational theory of mind. I provide evidence that he had one. Both Steven Pinker and Steven Horst think that the computational theory of mind must have two components: a representational-symbolic component and a causal component. Bearing this in mind, we proceed to a close-reading of the sections of “On the Logic of Signs” wherein Husserl presents, if I’m correct, his computational theory of mind embedded (...) in a language of thought. My argument goes like this: the computational theory of mind is the idea, following Haugeland, that the mind comes prepackaged as, or is endogenously constrained to be, an automatic formal system; this explains, according to Husserl, why automatic trains of thought without logical intent resemble arguments exhibiting deductive structure with logical intent. In general, an automatic formal system yields true results provided that the syntactic symbols with which they compute are univocal and are semantically evaluable, and the mechanized inferences they perform are valid and preserve truth. These two conditions describe a computational cognitive process: the first condition connects representations to syntax, and the second condition uses the syntax, in inauthentic judging, to arrive at true conclusions through blind causality. Now, in point of textual fact, these are the conditions which Husserl attributes to our “natural psychological mechanism of symbolic inference” which typically yields true results. Since a formal system attributed to the “internal structure” of the mind, and guided by blind causality, just is the computational theory of mind, it follows, I think, that Husserl had a computational theory of mind. This computational theory is, moreover, embedded in a language of thought, since Husserl attributes a language-like form to our thoughts so that they may be mechanically processed. I conclude with a discussion of my results. (shrink)

The paper comparatively deals with the concept of attention in Bergson’s and Husserl’s philosophy. Special attention is devoted to their confrontation with psychological interpretations, as well as to methodological aspects of their theories. Analysed are the vitality, intentionality and temporality of attention by keeping in mind the complex terminological background in both Bergson and Husserl. The author holds that what connects them is that they both define attention as an inherent dynamic modification, with the different dimensions of presence, past and (...) future. Similarities and differences are both taken into consideration concerning the most important dilemmas. (shrink)

The recent investigations into knowledge and its elements viz facts, skills and objects have become prominent in various subfields of philosophy and other areas like linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. These investigations have been mainly on understanding the relation between the intentionality and its referential entities to know how they enrich knowledge with their existence. This article starts with an exploration of the fundamental aspects of judgemental sense from the knowledge origins perspective. To explain the consequences of this, (...) I start with reconstructing the notion of categorial intuitions described in Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigations by relating it to ‘knowledge origination’ as an intuitive fulfilment of signifying acts. This offers a relation of perceptual synthesis, operating implicitly among the signifying intentions upon grasping intended objects, in view of language structures such as copulas. This leads to the synthesis of intuitive aspects mainly from the categorial elements for a judgemental sense or thinking and the attitude from the very sphere of perception. The tension between categorial intuitions is understood as foundational acts and founded acts. Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigation describes the notion of passive synthesis, the genesis of categoriality in every realm of sensibility that allows one to formulate the relational role among the ‘act of knowing’ and phenomenological approaches to the judgemental sense. Thus, the investigation focuses on perceptual judgements and categories, which fulfils the judgemental sense of categorial elements and attitude. (shrink)

The article is an attempt at establishing a theoretical basis for a dialogue between phenomenology and contemporary philosophy, with regard to the problem of internalism-externalism. It is argued, according to Roman Ingarden, that one has to first of all put forward an adequate question about the problem, to be able to understand it appropriately. Moreover, the analysis is limited to the two forms of the internalism-externalism debate, namely semantics and the philosophy of the mind. Within Husserl’s phenomenology one can easily (...) point to basic intuitions that justify thesis that this philosophy refers to the internalism-externalism problem. Ultimately, by using phenomenological terminology, the article arrives at questions about possible internalism-or-externalism within Husserl’s phenomenological project. The questions, however, suggest that phenomenology can be neither clearly nor completely classified either as internalism or as externalism. (shrink)

The body is both the subject and object of intentionality: qua Leib, it experiences worldly things and qua Körper, it is experienced as a thing in the world. This phenomenological differentiation forms the basis for Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological theory of the mediated or eccentric nature of human embodiment, that is, simultaneously we both are a body and have a body. Here, I want to focus on the extent to which this double aspect of embodiment relates to our experience of temporality. (...) Indeed, to question, does this double bodily relation correspond to a twofoldtemporality of embodied intentionality? In the first part of this paper, I differentiate between the intentional temporality of being a body and the temporal experience of having a body. To further my argument, in the second part, I present examples of specific pathologies, as well as liminal cases of bodily experiences, wherein these temporal dimensions, which otherwise go hand-in-hand, become dissociated. Phenomenologically, I want to argue that Husserl’s differentiation between Leib and Körper corresponds to two genetic forms of intentionality – operative and act intentionality – and that these are, in turn, characterized by different temporalities. Anthropologically, I want to argue that having a body – what occurs as an inherent break to human embodiment – is the presupposition for the experience of a stable and object-like time. I will conclude that the double aspect of human embodiment and in particular the thematic experience of having a body enables both the experience of a past, which is remembered, and a future that is planned. (shrink)

The philosophical line of inquiry opened by Edmund Husserl remains one of the most inspiring ones for contemporary thinking, insofar as it places the experiential dimension at its center. Yet its initial disposition rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding. While phenomenology scolded the traditional representationalist accounts, for which we never have the things themselves, but ever only internal representations of it, its major advanced consisted in stressing that in experience, we have the things in themselves and not just emissaries or representatives. (...) However, this advance, which we will qualify as the " principle of selfhood " led to imprudently make another assumption, that is that in experience, we do not only have the things themselves (principle of selfhood) but that we also have them immediately (principle of immediacy). A deconstructive analysis of experience provides such a postulation to be problematic: what appears (phainestai) is never given right off the bat, but appears through something else (dia phainestai). The paper indicates where a deconstruction of Husserl's theoretical framework is necessary, and sketches the transformations of phenomenology into a kind of thinking that makes space for the intermediaries of experiences. Diaphenomenology starts off with the assumption that whatever appears appears through something. Experience has to be conceived of as transphenomenality. A diaphenomenological perspective moves away from both a foundationalist account of subjectivity (where the ego is the ground for all appearances) and a merely accusative account of it (where the ego is nothing but a pole of affections). It describes the modes in which the subject is actor, albeit not author of her experiences. (shrink)

The goal of the present text is to analyze some aspects of Husserl’s own phenomenology against the backdrop of the quite famous or infamous critique of the “Myth of the Given” proposed by the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars in his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Indeed, whereas Sellars’ volume is usually deemed the source of what has been recently referred to as the “Hegelian Renaissance” characterizing analytic philosophy, Husserl and his transcendental phenomenology are on the contrary seen as the (...) very expression of a new “form” of “Cartesianism.” Now, after a quick discussion of Sellars’ “diagnosis” of the Myth of the Given, the present essay elaborates on the general “Hegelian” character of his argumentations ; finally, an analysis of Husserl’s alleged Cartesianism in the late text known as Cartesian Meditations will be provided bearing upon the notions of “evidence” and “synthesis.” As we firmly believe, our remarks will show not only that Husserl does not at all fall prey to the “Myth,” but also that his understanding of the concept of reason can help us avoid some of the implications directly flowing from Sellars’ position. (shrink)

A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid (...) view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that it can also be deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid a objection raised by Walter Hopp—that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress. (shrink)

Gurwitsch is the philosopher of consciousness par excellence. This paper presents a systematic exposition of Aron Gurwitsch’s main contribution to phenomenology, namely his theory of the ‘field of consciousness’ with its a priori structure of theme, thematic field, margin. I present Gurwitsch as an orthodox defender of Husserlian descriptive phenomenology, albeit one who rejected Husserl’s reduction to the transcendental ego and Husserl’s overt idealism. He maintained with Husserl the priority of consciousness as the source of all meaning and validity but (...) he rejected Husserl’s transcendental idealism in favour of a ‘levels of existence’ approach. Gurwitsch’s project was to show the continuity between Gestalt psychology and Husserlian eidetics. I explain his concepts of theme, thematic field, margin and horizon as a consistent development of Husserlian thought. I conclude by claiming that neither Gurwitsch nor Husserl fully appreciate how the horizons of an entity can support radical novelty and the application of entirely new contexts. (shrink)

In this essay, I develop Husserl’s view of the relation between sense experience and empirical knowledge by outlining the idea of Husserlian expressivism. I begin the essay by taking a look at the relevant problem on empirical knowledge in the literature. The point is that the content of experience is of the propositional form if experience should have justificatory significance. Husserl emphasizes the epistemological significance of the perceptual presence of objects; nevertheless, he sees perceptual sense as nonpropositional. How can we (...) understand Husserl’s thought? I argue that Husserl’s conception of expression in Ideas I can give us a clue. Interpreting this conception as saying that expression is not representational medium, but the logical form of the content of experience, I argue that we can ascribe the significance to experience as such, which is only made explicit by expression: propositional form is the expressive form of the implicit experiential content. This interpretation also makes a Husserlian conception of reason possible in which perceptual experience as such can have its rationality. Characterizing sense experience as a non-discursive form of reason, I attempt to describe this conception as an explication of holistically conducted inquiry of empirical knowledge. (shrink)

This paper contends that, even though Husserl demonstrated that consciousness intends objects in the world rather than mental representations, he ultimately failed to provide a convincing account of how the ego constitutes itself and other egos. By reconfiguring consciousness as an operation rather than as a container, Husserl opened consciousness to the world and thereby overcame previous solipsistic frameworks. But despite his attention to the “things themselves,” his fidelity to another maxim—that all sense-bestowing activity be traced back to the operations (...) of the ego—prohibited him from fulfilling his goal of describing otherness accurately. This paper examines the tension between Husserl’s desire to describe phenomena and his mandate to constitute phenomena, to show that both cannot be accomplished simultaneously. If phenomenology is to come to terms with the challenge of otherness and describe self and other adequately, the demand that self and other be constituted within the ego must be relinquished. (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)

Whether Husserl is a conceptualist has been heatedly debated among contemporary Husserl scholars. The present article intends to join the debate by asking the question of how, in the Husserlian context, intuitive acts fulfill signitive ones. On the one hand, those who take Husserl to be a conceptualist hold the content-identity theory, arguing that intuitive act and signitive act have the same content, so that the former can fulfill the latter. On the other hand, the non-conceptualists defend the object-identity theory (...) and claim that it is the identity of object of intuitive and signitive act that makes fulfillment possible. On the basis of a careful reading of the sixth investigation of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, the article proposes a dynamic content-identity theory, in which the identity of content does not mean that intuitive act and signitive act have the identical content accidentally, but rather, in the dynamic fulfillment process, the intuitive act obtains the content that overflows into it from the signitive act, so that the two acts have the identical content. And this article shows how the dynamic content-identity theory places Husserl in the conceptualist camp while avoiding certain difficulties of either plain content-identity theory or object-identity theory. (shrink)