Abstract

_ Source: _Volume 46, Issue 2, pp 277 - 295 In this paper I argue that in Husserl’s _Ideas I_ there is a seeming contradiction between the characterization of pure consciousness as the _residue_ of the performance of the phenomenological reduction and the claim that in the natural attitude consciousness is taken to be an entity is the world. This creates a puzzle regarding the positional status of consciousness in the natural attitude. After reviewing some possible options to solve this puzzle in the existing literature, I claim that the positional status of conscious experiences in the natural attitude is best characterized as _unsettled_. The act that _settles_ the positional status of conscious experiences is reflection. In reflection, experiences are posited as beings, either in a psychological or in a phenomenological key. I conclude by arguing that the problem of positing is of paramount importance to understand correctly Husserl’s claim that phenomenology is _voraussetzungslos_.