Abstract

In this study, I examine the relationship between "the real" as understood by the positive sciences and as it is experienced and thought about in commonsensical life . ;Husserl argues that the lifeworld is a presupposition of the achievements of the positive sciences. I show that Husserl provides three different kinds of arguments, and that only one of them is a likely candidate for functioning as a potential antidote to a scientistic agenda. I define this agenda in terms of recent models of reduction and elimination for intertheoretic contexts. Concurrently, I provide a critique of the latent instrumentalism in Husserl's writings by developing a form of scientific realism which is nominalistic in thrust but still compatible with the philosophical assumptions of a generic phenomenology. This generic phenomenology represents the neo-Kantian and neo-pragmatic motifs in Husserl's thought. I assume such a scientific realism when assessing the vulnerability of lifeworld ontologies to reduction or elimination by science. ;The core of the study undertakes this assessment by looking at three test cases: the lifeworld of persons, perception, and commonsensical kinds. In each case, I explore whether the appropriate level of science can be thought to reduce or eliminate the lifeworld validities. Arguments are offered which draw on Husserl for general inspiration but which go beyond him in specific details. The first two cases I argue are both ineliminable and irreducible presuppositions, given our current image of science. The third I suggest admits of at least partial replacement by science. I further argue that the presupposition approach is an elaboration of the logic of a critical-internalism, The presupposition arguments are thus antidotes to scientism, but only if one is already a critical-internalist; they do not of themselves answer the scientism of a metaphysical realism. The dissertation, however, provides reasons for rejecting metaphysical realism and favoring critical-internalism.