The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (103 page)

In
Chapter 8
, §1, we considered Dummett’s characterization of analytic philosophy as philosophy based on the tenet that the philosophy of language is a foundation for the rest of the discipline. To whatever extent this admittedly controversial characterization is correct, it goes some way towards addressing these puzzles, since Husserl, despite his philosophical interest in language, would not have privileged that interest in any such way. Analytic philosophy, on Dummett’s characterization, has an elemental concern with sense, specifically with linguistic sense. Phenomenology has an elemental concern, not so much with sense – certainly not so much with linguistic sense – as with sense-
making
.
⁶
This suggests that the branch of philosophy that phenomenologists are most likely to regard as a foundation for the rest is the philosophy of mind. But sense-making in this context is not to be construed as an activity of the mind, at least not on any ordinary understanding of what an activity of the mind is. (This should be clearer by the end of the chapter.) If there is any branch of philosophy that phenomenologists are most likely to regard as a foundation for the rest, it is in fact metaphysics.
^7
,
8

More important than these differences between analytic philosophy and phenomenology, however, at least for current purposes, are their relations to naturalism. Although analytic philosophy does not carry any commitment to naturalism, neither, of course, does it preclude it. Phenomenology does. Phenomenology is an attempt to make sense of sense-making in a non-(natural-)scientific way, in direct violation of naturalism. An analytic philosopher may believe that a non-(natural-)scientific way is the only way to make sense of sense-making. A phenomenologist must believe this. Husserl’s project was twofold. In the first place he wanted to justify this belief. In the second place he wanted,
pari passu
, to put the belief into practice. In other words he wanted to make sense of
sense-making.
⁹

2. The Phenomenological Reduction

We make sense of things. How? What are the relations between us and the things of which we make sense that allow for and/or contribute to our making sense of them? How are things
given to us
? Such are the questions that concern Husserl. Here are two pertinent quotations:

We have, on the one hand, the fact that all
thought and knowledge have as their aim
objects
or
states of affairs
, which they putatively ‘hit’ in the sense that the ‘being-in-itself’ of these objects and states is supposedly shown forth … in a multitude of actual or possible meanings, or acts of thought. We have, further, the fact that all thought is ensouled by a thought-form which is subject to ideal laws, laws circumscribing the objectivity or ideality of knowledge in general. These facts … provoke questions like: How are we to understand the fact that the intrinsic being of objectivity becomes ‘presented’, ‘apprehended’ in knowledge, and so ends up by becoming subjective? What does it mean to say that the object has ‘being-in-itself’, and is ‘given’ in knowledge? How can the ideality of the universal
qua
concept or law enter the flux of real mental states and become an epistemic possession of the thinking person? What does the
adæquatio rei et intellectus
mean in various cases of knowledge …? (
Investigations
1, Vol. II, Introduction, §2, emphasis in original)

How can experience as consciousness give or contact an object? How can experiences be mutually legitimated or corrected by means of each other, and not merely replace each other or confirm each other subjectively? … Why are the playing rules, so to speak, of consciousness not irrelevant for things? How is natural science to be comprehensible …, to the extent that it pretends at every step to posit and to know a nature that is in itself – in itself in opposition to the subjective flow of consciousness? (
Philosophy
, pp. 87–88)
¹⁰

Husserl’s fundamental idea is that, in the case of our scientific sense-making, indeed in the case of all our normal sense-making concerning things in space and time – all our ‘natural’ sense-making, as I shall call it
¹¹
– there is no prospect of our answering such questions, no prospect of our understanding
what it is that we manage to do when we make such sense, by doing more of the same. Partly, he has in mind the threat of vicious circularity (
Philosophy
, pp. 88–89). But he also believes that our focus would be wrong if we tried to make sense of our natural sense-making by carrying on in the same vein.
¹²

It is thus that Husserl urges on us what he calls ‘the phenomenological reduction’.
¹³
This is a methodological tactic whereby we cease temporarily to engage in any natural sense-making. This leaves us free to reflect self-consciously on the sense-making itself. For us to cease to engage in any natural sense-making is not for us to call into question any of the beliefs that we have arrived at as a result of having engaged in it in the past, any of our ‘natural’ beliefs. Still less is it for us to replace any of these beliefs with others, something that in any case we could not wilfully do.
¹⁴
It is for us to stop being concerned with ‘natural’ matters at all. We are to refuse to allow such a concern, and the miscellaneous beliefs with which it has so far furnished us, to inform this upper-level sense-making project.

For example, many of us believe that the sun is an enormous ball of gas whose light takes approximately eight minutes to reach our eyeballs. And we have untold further beliefs that stand in various relations of entailment, justification, and the like to this belief. But to make sense of our conception of the sun we are to ‘bracket’ all of these beliefs. We are to reflect
instead on the beliefs themselves, and on what their significance for us is; on what they
come to
for us. How do our various beliefs about sunshine, say, never mind for the time being sunshine itself, relate to that familiar glare that each of us experiences when standing outdoors (as we suppose) on a bright summer’s day? And what is the exact intrinsic nature of the experience itself, never mind for the time being the facts about light and sight that occasion it?

Here is how Husserl himself characterizes such bracketing:

[It is] an
epoché
¹⁵
of all participation in the cognitions of the objective sciences, an
epoché
of any critical position-taking which is interested in their truth or falsity, even any position on their guiding idea of an objective knowledge of the world….

Within this
epoché
, however, neither the sciences nor the scientists have disappeared for us who practice the
epoché
…. [It is just that] we do not function as sharing [their] interests, as coworkers, etc. (
Crisis
, §35)

When we pursue natural science, we
carry out
reflexions ordered in accord with the logic of experience…. At the phenomenological standpoint, … we ‘place in brackets’ what has been carried out, ‘we do not associate these theses’ with our new inquiries; instead of … carrying
them
out, we carry out acts of
reflexion
directed towards them…. We now live entirely in such acts of the second level. (
Ideas
I, §50, emphasis in original)

And here is how he justifies its implementation:

How can the pregivenness of the life-world become a universal subject of investigation in its own right? Clearly, only through a
total change
of the natural attitude, such that we no longer live, as heretofore, as human beings within natural existence, constantly effecting the validity of the pregiven world; rather, we must constantly deny ourselves this. Only in this way can we arrive at the transformed and novel subject of investigation, ‘pregivenness of the world as such’: the world purely and exclusively
as
– and in respect to
how
– it has meaning and ontic validity, and continually attains these in new forms, in our conscious life…. What is required, then, is … a
completely unique, universal
epoché. (
Crisis
, §39, emphasis in original)
¹⁶

The temporary transformation of the ‘natural attitude’ to which Husserl refers here
is
the temporary suspension of all natural sense-making in favour
of reflection on that very sense-making. It brings into focus how things are given to us: the appearance of things,
¹⁷
the significance of things.
¹⁸

3. Why Husserl Is Unlike Descartes (But Not Unlike Wittgenstein)

There is much in what we have just witnessed, and elsewhere in Husserl, to put us in mind of Descartes. Husserl himself has plenty to say about the various ways in which Descartes anticipated his project (see e.g.
Meditations
, Introduction).
¹⁹
However, as in Bergson’s case (see §3 of the previous chapter), it is easy to read elements of Descartes’ philosophy into Husserl that are quite certainly not there. And although Husserl does see an anticipation of his project in Descartes, he is like Bergson in seeing an abortive anticipation of it. He is as concerned to distinguish himself from Descartes as he is to liken himself to him.

Prominent among the elements of Descartes’ philosophy that we are especially liable to read into Husserl are:

(1) a preparedness not to take anything for granted, and in particular not to acquiesce in natural sense-making

(2) an attempt, nonetheless, having critically reflected on natural sense-making, to vindicate it, and more specifically to vindicate it by founding it on the data of consciousness

and

(3) a fundamental cleavage between mind, the locus of such data, and matter, the spatio-temporal reality beyond mind, at which (most of) our natural sense-making is targeted.

In fact, none of this is in Husserl, at least not in quite the same way as it is in Descartes. Some of it is not there at all.
²⁰

To begin with (1). Descartes’ preparedness not to acquiesce in natural sense-making was born of simple circumspection. It indicated a concern with the reliability of such sense-making. He was interested in the truth of his natural beliefs. (See
Ch. 1
, §3.) Husserl’s preparedness not to acquiesce in natural sense-making, as we saw in the previous section and as Husserl himself is at pains to emphasize (
Ideas
I, §31), is born of something quite different. It indicates a (tactical)
lack
of concern with the reliability of such sense-making.
Qua
phenomenologist he is precisely
not
interested in the truth of his natural beliefs.
²¹

It immediately follows that (2) is not in Husserl. Husserl does see his work as an attempt to found a kind of sense-making, but not natural sense-making, nor any instance of it. He is trying to found ‘a new science’ (
Ideas
I, ‘Author’s Preface’, p. 5), not any of the extant sciences. (Husserl could agree with Quine that there is nothing more secure than the extant sciences on which to found them.
²²
) Furthermore, it is quite misleading to talk of ‘data’ in connection with Husserl’s project. True, Husserl is concerned with ‘things that are given’, inasmuch as he is concerned with how things are given. But this concern is quite general. It is not, as talk of ‘data’ suggests it is, a concern with some privileged things that are given or with things that are given in some privileged way. Moreover – this is a related point to which we shall return in §§4 and 6 – in the sense in which he takes anything to be capable of being given in consciousness, he takes everything to be capable of being given in consciousness (
Ideas
I, §50; cf.
Crisis
, §§48ff.). It is not as if what can be given in consciousness can serve as evidence for what can be given only in some other way, or for what cannot be given at all (
Ideas
I, §32).

This in turn relates to the most profound difference between Husserl and Descartes, which concerns (3). Descartes, reflecting on his natural beliefs,
recognized a distinction between those that enjoyed a certain indubitability, his beliefs about the contents of his own mind, and those that did not, his beliefs about material objects. This was what led him to regard his own mind and matter as two separate substances (
Ch. 1
, §6). But Husserl is simply not interested in any such distinctions among his natural beliefs. The
epoché
described above is a bracketing of all of them, be their subject matter as it may, be their indubitability as it may (
Ideas
I, §33, opening paragraph). Insofar as this leads him to a new domain of investigation (
Ideas
I, §32), this is not a question of his prescinding from one part of the natural world, that which lies beyond his own private mental life, and attending to another, the mental life itself. It is a question of his ceasing to attend to anything in that world in a ‘natural’ way, and attending instead to everything in that world in a new, self-conscious way.
²³
The bracketed beliefs are no longer
operative
, but both they and their content are still in view: that is the very point of the exercise. So there is a sense in which, after the
epoché
, nothing has changed for Husserl, even though there is also a sense in which everything has changed. ‘[The world] goes on appearing,’ he says, ‘as it appeared before; the only difference is that I, as reflecting philosophically, no longer keep in effect … the natural believing in existence involved in experiencing the world – though that believing too is still there and grasped by my noticing regard’ (
Meditations
, §8). He also says that he has ‘lost nothing’, but has ‘won the whole Absolute Being’ (
Ideas
I, §50; cf. ibid., 31).
²⁴