Husserl's Positive Argument and its Deceptively Positive Upshot

 

In "Philosophy as Rigorous Science" Husserl criticizes the notion that a 'naturalistic philosophy' based on psychology can provide a complete account of consciousness. He argues against this notion by providing both a 'negative', or destructive, criticism and a 'positive', or constructive, criticism. In his negative argument, he demonstrates that, while a natural science may discover many interesting things about consciousness, it fails, by definition, to provide a full account of the mind, particularly as it tries to explain such normative features as logic. On the other hand, Husserl's positive argument aims to identify the limits of naturalistic philosophy as it examines consciousness. From this, a philosophy, namely phenomenology, can be established in order to inquire systematically into those areas restricted to naturalistic philosophy. I will attempt to present Husserl's positive argument and its constructive consequences found in phenomenology.

Husserl begins the positive argument by reiterating the conclusion he draws from his negative criticism of psychology. Indeed, he appeals to a type of 'reductio ad absurdum' to show that psychology, by definition, cannot be "the basis for establishing the norms of pure logic, pure axiology, and practical discipline" (85). Nonetheless, in the remainder of the positive argument, Husserl focuses on a critique of "epistemological psychologism and physicism" (85). Thus, most of the positive argument should be understood as an attempt to discredit the idea that psychology and physics alone can provide, respectively, the tool to study epistemology and the ideal model of any such study.

Husserl claims that "all natural science is naive in regard to its point of departure" (85). By this, he points out that all natural sciences assume that only physical elements which manifest themselves in space and time can be considered as objectively knowable. On this view, natural sciences model themselves after physics, which studies only tangible objects and their interactions, in order to lay claim to any knowledge.

Accordingly, since psychology is a natural science, it can study only those characteristics of the mind which manifest themselves physically in space and time. An extreme contemporary aberration of this can be seen in 'scientific realism' which claims that all of the mind's events can be explained in terms of interactions in neural networks. From this, Husserl claims that "every psychological judgment involves the existential positing of physical nature, whether expressly or not" (86). In other words, psychology is bound to assume the existence of physical objects as it makes any statement about the human mind.

It is now important to briefly review Brentano's conclusions concerning purely mental phenomena, or the events which occur within the human mind. Indeed, according to Brentano, it is possible for the mind to contain, and refer to, objects which merely display immanent objectivity. In other words, the mind can refer to objects which have no physical existence, yet exist within itself. Let us suppose that I am thinking of a narflex, a thing which has bubbles for legs and lives forever; no such thing exists outside of me (it is even hard to conceive of it as even possibly existing in the physical world), yet, I cannot deny that it bears some objective existence in my mind.

In accord with Brentano, Husserl claims that a proper account of consciousness must also be able to account for the 'existence' of immanent objects, those which are, in Husserl's terminology, intended. Furthermore, a proper account of epistemology must be able to examine how consciousness, as it is at least partly immanent, can relate to both immanent and physical objects, and how it can relate immanent objects to each other. Indeed, let us suppose that I think of a unicorn, which is essentially the combination of a horse, a horn, and wings. All of these components are known to exist in the physical realm. Nonetheless, even if we grant, for the argument's sake, that it is necessary to experience these components to be able to think of a unicorn, there is an interaction between these components, the formation of a single unicorn, which need only occur in the realm of immanent objects. Furthermore, the resulting object, the unicorn, need only exist as an immanent object.

As Husserl purports to have shown, the natural sciences cannot account for objects which do not manifest themselves physically. Furthermore, he maintains that consciousness and its objects are, at least in part, immanent. It follows that natural sciences cannot account for consciousness and its objects, or, at least, an important part of them: "[to attribute a nature to phenomena] is the absurdity of naturalizing something whose essence [or immanent character] excludes the kind of being nature has" (107).

Nonetheless, Husserl intends to show that, while psychology is limited to the study of 'external' consciousness, it, along with all natural sciences, can still bring valuable knowledge. Thus, it is important to present a philosophy, namely phenomenology, which can provide the grounds for both naturalistic science and a 'science of the immanent'.

Indeed, Husserl advances that all meaning is grounded in consciousness and, while words may express meanings in a certain physical sense, meanings themselves are immanent and, as such, do not require words to exist in consciousness. From this, he claims that meanings can be considered phenomena, or immanent objects. It is quite simple here to imagine trying to express a specific feeling to which we cannot ascribe a proper definition; even if such a definition is unknown to us, it is still rational to think that we know that feeling.

Thus, if meanings can exist in immanent consciousness as objects prior to any physical manifestation, then words must stem from these immanent meanings. So too must scientific words and language. This leads Husserl to claim that, in order to justify the validity of scientific knowledge, we must be able to provide an account of immanent consciousness and its intended objects.

Nonetheless, as we have seen above, while immanent objects, or phenomena, may be about physical or other phenomena, they essentially have no 'natural', or physical, qualities. Indeed, the essence of a phenomenon can be understood as the totality of its immanent characteristics, or of its characteristics in consciousness alone. As such, phenomena cannot be understood according to naturalistic terms such as space, time or causality. Indeed, in order to properly observe and understand phenomena and their interactions, we must do so assuming only their essences; any attempt to do otherwise would lead to the same type of pragmatic contradiction which natural science displays when it purports to account for logic.

Thus, Husserl claims that only an act of pure consciousness, such as essential intuition, can allow us to examine consciousness and its objects as such. In this light, it would be a fallacy to assume any existence, including that of the subject. Husserl exemplifies the beginning of an essential intuition as the perception of a perception. He further claims that, through essential intuition, we can obtain the "clarification of the 'origin' of all formal-logical an all natural- logical principles" (116).

Nonetheless the intuition of essences, as a grasping of entirely immanent characteristics, arguably excludes any possibility of completely describing them. Indeed, description could be understood as a kind of existential positing; it is difficult to conceive of a way of describing even a concept without adding, at least implicitly, the pronoun "that". In this light, while we may be able to intuit essences, I find it hard to understand how any consciousness could make any sense of those intuitions if it cannot even describe them to itself.