Abstract

In the sixth Logical Investigation, Husserl defines meaning, objectivity, and knowledge by appealing to "syntheses of identification and fulfillment": each act of consciousness has a meaning-intention whereby it anticipates a range of fulfilling intuitions, whose ongoing synthesis would identify intended objects in the face of their changing appearances. This dissertation investigates the ground, the mechanisms, and the results of synthesis. I argue that synthesizing consciousness must be a self-explicating system of interpretative acts driven by ongoing forwards and backwards references, grounding its structures as it proceeds, and positing its orgins as that which must have been given "in advance". I thereby develop a dialectical reading of Husserl's largely untreated concept of "referring backwards" . ;The first five chapters of the dissertation analyze specific problems in Husserl's first five Investigations. The first chapter shows how all meanings must be synthetic. The second develops Husserl's argument that universals are independent of, yet grounded in individuals, into a general theory of synthetic "grounding". The third argues that individuals too are grounded in syntheses, namely in the part-whole relations involving Husserl's rarely thematized description of the "need for supplementation". The fourth draws consequences from Husserl's account of syncategorematic terms for a theory of the synthetic connections that underlie meanings "in advance". In the fifth, I reconcile Husserl's claims that names and judgements refer back to one another, by developing a theory of "referring backwards" in general. ;The sixth chapter pursues a systematic and speculative theory of synthesis based on the sixth Investigation. I develop five increasingly complex Husserlian analyses of synthesis, based respectively on universal names, contexts, perspectives, ideal limits, and finally, the dynamic whereby meanings retroactively refer back to, and thereby constitute the very priority of, their own grounds. ;I argue finally that the Logical Investigations lacks an account of how implicit backwards-referents can be stored in consciousness. Husserl does offer such an account in Ideas with his theory of pure consciousness--not as an ego prior to synthesis, as most commentators take it, but as the underlying unity carried out as synthetic interpretations "draw back" or "withdraw" to the ground of their own self-articulation