Who is the founder of phenomenology

If the intentional content of an indexical experience is to serve as a sub- propositional content, it must uniquely determine the object if any that the respective experience refers to. That is to say: if two indexical experiences display the same intentional content, they must refer to the same object if any. It seems, though, that the moments of matter of two such experiences can instantiate the same ideal matter—the same type of particular content—whilst representing different objects.

However, it is doubtful whether this distinction really helps Husserl overcome the difficulty the phenomenon of context-sensitivity poses for his species-theory of content. And this content does not appear to be an ideal species. It may be argued, however, that even sub- propositional contents of indexical utterances can be instantiated multiply in thought and speech, thus qualifying as ideal species after all.

For the claim that noematic sense is contextually determined respective meaning rather than general meaning function—which rules out any internalist reading; see Section 4 below—cf. XXVI, p. It is argued in LI V, sec.

Husserl sees quite clearly that indexical experiences just as experiences given voice to by means of genuine proper names are characterized, among other things, by their singularity : they represent a particular object, or set of objects, x , such that x is to be regarded as the intentional object of the respective experience in all relevant possible worlds i.

Thus, for instance, in sec. Smith and McIntyre For example, if you see something as a table, you will expect it to appear to you in certain ways if you go around and observe it. What binds together the intentional horizon of a given indexical experience? According to Husserl, all of the actual or potential experiences constituting that horizon share a sense of identity through time , which sense he labels as the determinable X they belong to.

As a first approximation, two experiences of a given subject belong to the same determinable X if and only if the subject believes them to represent the same object.

For a related criterion of inter subjective identity of determinable X , see Beyer , sec. Hence, experiences belonging to a determinable X must be accompanied by at least one higher-order belief.

This view fits in well with the thesis shared, at least in part, by so-called dispositional higher-order belief theories of consciousness that intentional experiences automatically give rise to i.

It is controversial whether such a dispositional higher-order view may be ascribed to Husserl see Zahavi , sec. It should be uncontroversial that on his view the motivational basis of the relevant higher-order dispositional beliefs must already display the essential feature of consciousness independently of occurrent higher-order thought in order to be available for such thought in the first place see Beyer , p.

The determinable X a given indexical experience belongs to, with respect to certain other experiences, helps us answer the question of what determines the reference of that experience, if not its ideal meaning species alone. In order to take the role played by the determinable X into account properly, we have to employ a Husserlian research strategy that could be called the dynamic method. In a more recent terminology, one may say that in this perceptual situation the subject has opened a mental file about a particular object cf.

Perry The same goes for cases of perceptual judgements leading to, or taken by the respective subject to be confirming, entries into an already existing file. See Beyer , sec. Notice, however, that Husserl does not naively take the existence of an extra-mental referent for granted.

Instead, he asks which structures of consciousness entitle us to represent the world as containing particular objects transcending what is currently given to us in experience see Sections 7 and 8 below. Husserl can thus be read or at least be rationally reconstructed as both an early direct reference theorist headword: singularity and a non-naive externalist about intentional content and respective meaning.

This may help to explain why the species-theory of content had become less important to Husserl by the time he wrote Ideas. It may be regarded as a radicalization of the methodological constraint, already to be found in Logical Investigations , that any phenomenological description proper is to be performed from a first person point of view, so as to ensure that the respective item is described exactly as is experienced, or intended , by the subject.

Now from a first-person point of view, one cannot, of course, decide whether in a case of what one takes to be, say, an act of perception one is currently performing, there actually is an object that one is perceptually confronted with. For instance, it is well possible that one is hallucinating.

From a first-person point of view, there is no difference to be made out between the veridical and the non-veridical case—for the simple reason that one cannot at the same time fall victim to and detect a perceptual error or misrepresentation. That is to say, the phenomenological description of a given act and, in particular, the phenomenological specification of its intentional content, must not rely upon the correctness of any existence assumption concerning the object s if any the respective act is about.

This is supposed to enable the phenomenologist to make explicit his reasons for the bracketed existence assumptions, or for assumptions based upon them, such as, e. In Section 7 we shall see that Husserl draws upon empathy in this connection. By contrast, there may be some such contents, even many of them, without intentional content generally having to be dependent on a particular extra-mental object. The phenomenologist is supposed to perform his descriptions from a first-person point of view , so as to ensure that the respective item is described exactly as it is experienced.

If one is hallucinating, there is really no object of perception. However, phenomenologically the experience one undergoes is exactly the same as if one were successfully perceiving an external object. Therefore, the adequacy of a phenomenological description of a perceptual experience should be independent of whether for the experience under investigation there is an object it represents or not.

Either way, there will at least be a perceptual content if not the same content on both sides, though. It is this content that Husserl calls the perceptual noema. Phenomenological description is concerned with those aspects of the noema that remain the same irrespective of whether the experience in question is veridical or not. However, this lands him in a methodological dilemma. This is the first horn of the dilemma. For, as Husserl himself stresses cf. Ideas , sec. This is the second horn.

There are at least three possible ways out of this dilemma. First , the phenomenologist could choose the first horn of the dilemma, but analyse an earlier perceptual experience of his, one that he now remembers. He just has to make sure here not to employ his earlier and perhaps still persisting belief in the existence of a perceptual object.

Secondly , he could again decide in favour of the first horn and analyse a perceptual experience that he merely intuitively imagines himself to have. While in the latter case the subjective probability may be 0. It is not entirely clear if Husserl considers all of these strategies to be admissible. The third strategy—pragmatic ascent—fits in well with the way he uses to specify the common element of the noema of both veridical perceptions and corresponding hallucinations see, e.

The specification might run as follows: The noema of a perceptual experience i is such that either 1 there is an object x that i represents in virtue of its noema, where x is to be regarded as the referent of i in all relevant possible worlds, or 2 there would be an object meeting condition 1 if i were veridical.

Beyer , pp. If there is no such object, condition 2 will be satisfied—provided that we are dealing with a perceptual experience. Husserl regards sense impressions as non-intentional and thus non-conceptual in nature. Rather, his view on perception is best characterized as a sophisticated version of direct i.

This merely seemingly unconscious structure is essentially indexical in character and consists, at a given time, of both retentions , i. It is by such momentary structures of retentions, original impressions and protentions that moments of time are continuously constituted and reconstituted as past, present and future, respectively, so that it looks to the experiencing subject as if time were permanently flowing off.

XIII, pp. These recurrent temporal features of the horizon-structure of consciousness cannot be meaningfully doubted. Hence, there is no epistemically problematic gap between experience and object in this case, which therefore provides an adequate starting point for the phenomenological reduction, that may now proceed further by using holistic justification strategies.

After all, intentional consciousness has now been shown to be coherently structured at its phenomenologically deepest level. One of the main themes of transcendental phenomenology is intersubjectivity. Among other things, it is discussed in considerable detail in the 5 th of the Cartesian Meditations and in the manuscripts published in vol. According to Husserl, intersubjective experience plays a fundamental role in our constitution of both ourselves as objectively existing subjects, other experiencing subjects, and the objective spatio-temporal world.

Transcendental phenomenology attempts to reconstruct the rational structures underlying—and making possible—these constitutive achievements. From a first-person point of view, intersubjectivity comes in when we undergo acts of empathy. In order to study this kind of experience from the phenomenological attitude, we must bracket our belief in the existence of the respective target of our act-ascription qua experiencing subject and ask ourselves which of our further beliefs justify that existence-belief as well as our act-ascription.

It is these further beliefs that make up the rational structure underlying our intersubjective experience. Since it takes phenomenological investigation to lay bare these beliefs, they must be first and foremost unconscious when we experience the world in the natural attitude.

Among the fundamental beliefs thus uncovered by Husserl is the belief or expectation that a being that looks and behaves more or less like myself, i. So the belief in question must lie quite at the bedrock of my belief-system. Crisis , against which my practice of act-ascription and all constitutive achievements based upon that practice make sense in the first place, and in terms of which they get their ultimate justification. It can roughly be thought of in two different but arguably compatible ways: 1 in terms of belief and 2 in terms of something like socially, culturally or evolutionarily established but nevertheless abstract sense or meaning.

VI, pp. XV, pp. VI, p. These conceptions determine the general structure of all particular thing-concepts that are such that any creature sharing the essential structures of intentional consciousness will be capable of forming and grasping them, respectively, under different lifeworldly conditions. IV, p. That is, it has value for me with respect to the fact that with it I can produce the heating of a room and thereby pleasant sensations of warmth for myself and others.

IV, pp. One of the constitutive achievements based upon my lifeworldly determined practice of act-ascription is my self-image as a full-fledged person existing as a psycho-physical element of the objective, spatio-temporal order.

In this way, I can figure out that in order for the other subject to be able to ascribe intentional acts to me, he has to identify me bodily , as a flesh-and-blood human being, with its egocentric viewpoint necessarily differing from his own.

This brings home to me that my egocentric perspective is just one among many, and that from all foreign perspectives I appear as a physical object among others in a spatio-temporal world. So the following criterion of subject-identity at a given time applies both to myself and to others: one human living body, one experiencing subject. However, Husserl does not at all want to deny that we also ascribe experiences, even intentional ones, to non-human animals.

This becomes the more difficult and problematic, though, the less bodily and behavioural similarity obtains between them and ourselves. Husserl studied many of these phenomena in detail, and he even outlined the beginnings of a phenomenological ethics and value theory cf. Even the objective spatio-temporal world, which represents a significant part of our everyday lifeworld, is constituted intersubjectively, says Husserl. The same holds true for its spatio-temporal framework, consisting of objective time and space.

How so? His question is what justifies us i. VII, p. Roughly, his argument goes as follows. Hence, I must presuppose that the spatio-temporal objects forming my own world exist independently of my subjective perspective and the particular experiences I perform; they must, in other words, be conceived of as part of an objective reality. However, according to Husserl this does not mean that the objective world thus constituted in intersubjective experience is to be regarded as completely independent of the aspects under which we represent the world.

For on his view another condition for the possibility of intersubjective experience is precisely the assumption that by and large the other subject structures the world into objects in the same style I myself do. Real possibilities are, in other words, conceived of as more or less rationally motivated possibilities; and Husserl understands motivation in such a way that it is always someone who is motivated a certain way cf.

Hua IV, p. This is why Husserl subscribes to the following dependency thesis : The real possibility to acquire empirical knowledge regarding a contingent object A possible world, individual thing, state of affairs involving such thing; cf. Husserl also adheres to the following correlation thesis with regard to empirical reality and real epistemic possibility: If a contingent object A is real really exists , then the real as opposed to the merely logical possibility obtains to acquire knowledge regarding A cf.

Why are actual subjects of experience supposed to be necessary? Husserl takes this notion to be applicable as far as empirical consciousness is concerned in case of truth only. Thus, in sec. This conception of empirical truth, which is already to be found in Logical Investigations , has been compared to ideal verificationism cf. Beyer , One way to make sense of this would be to weaken the dependency thesis, and the requirement of an actual substrate, and to merely require what might be called real higher-order possibilities—possibilities for acquiring epistemic dispositions in counterfactual or actual cases where epistemic subjects would be co-existing—that may remain unactualized but could be actualized by someone properly taking into account a multitude of individual epistemic perspectives, by means of intersubjective experience.

Andrea Staiti - - Cambridge University Press. Dostal - - Husserl Studies 24 1 Elveton - - Chicago: Quadrangle Books. Mohanty - - Yale University Press.

Eugen Fink - - Indiana University Press. Logical Investigations Volume 1. Dermot Moran ed. The Theory and Practice of Husserl's Phenomenology. Harry P. Reeder - - Zeta Books. Bachyrycz - - Husserl Studies 30 2 Logical Investigations Volume 2.

Husserl's Phenomenology. Dan Zahavi - - Stanford University Press. Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl. Marvin Farber ed. Added to PP index Total views 21 , of 2,, Recent downloads 6 months 1 , of 2,, How can I increase my downloads?

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