Philosophy notes27

III. Method: Method consists of reduction i.e. going to the origins of particular objects/experiences Method consists of epoché or bracketing or putting aside assumptions/ prejudices and the like.

Why method?  To get back “zu den Sachen” or the essences or phenomena.

Phenomena are the intentional structures of consciousness that underlie everyday experiences.  Method brings about a shift from presuppositions to thinking without presuppositions or prejudices.  To bring about a shift from the naturalistic attitude to a transcendental phenomenological attitude.  The method is meant to isolate the essence of intentional consciousness. Thus, both the act of consciousness and its object will be unearthed from the essential point of view.  One has to do something in order to move beyond the naturalistic attitude of taking facts for granted.  The method prescribes a procedure  It urges human beings to do something: expressed in imperatives  Effects a transformation Husserl’s method has influences: Epoche derived from Greek and means abstaining from judgement.

But Husserl did not advocate a withdrawal from the world like Greek skeptics Rather epoche for him consisted in not taking a stance-suspending judgment till one is sure (like Descartes and Kant) Testing one’s judgment whereby one can be sure that it lies on a firm foundation

Husserlian reduction and positivist reduction: Difference Husserl’s reduction comes from the Latin verb reducere which means to turn to the origins: underlying all particular experiences are universal structures of intentional consciousness.

Against, this positivist reduction goes from the universal to the particular by analyzing the whole into parts. For example, reducing an object to sense data.

Various Reductions: 1. Eidetic Reduction: from particular to universals (eidos) Although one perceives individual objects, one needs to reflect on its univesal dimension or eidetic dimension. This is a shift in mental attitude where instead of the particular we pay heed to essences. Here on brackets or does an epoche on the particular dimension: “…although it remains what it is in itself, we put it ‘out of action’, we ‘exclude it’, we ‘bracket it’. It is still there, like the bracketed matter inside a pair of parentheses…but we make no use of it. We put out of action the entire ontological commitment that belongs to the essence of the natural attitude. We place in brackets whatever it includes with respect to being” ” (Ideas: §32/p 111) Husserl urges the bracketing of all social, ontological, metaphysical, religious commitments. Indeed, existence itself should be put into brackets: so that instead of turning outwards to figure out whether one is representing an object correctly, one turns in wards to examine one’s own conscious structure.

Natural sciences study the naturalistic attitude Mathematics studies eidetic attitude

2. Transcendental Reduction: Here we reflect on the act rather than the object. One pays heed to how while becoming aware of the essence there are three dimensions: The structuring experience in the act: noesis The correlated structure given in the act: noema The filling/constraining experiences: hyle Thus, in transcendental reduction there is a change in focus from an object-directed attitude to an act directed attitude.

Here we turn to subjectivity: the activities and achievements of consciousness which is the origin of meaning The transcendental ego is also a point of attention at this stage: it is an awareness that one experiences while studying one’s own mental stages, but it is absent when one studies objects in the physical world. “The realm of transcendental consciousness is in a quite definite sense a realm of “absolute” being. It is the original category of being as such…in which all other regions of being have their roots” Ego: Not a substance, not a psychological self, but a transcendental unity of acts: past, present, future; a sense of belonging Cogito: all intentional acts (conscious) Cogitata: noemata/intentional objects Metaphysics studies transcendental reduction 3. Phenomenological Reduction: This is an integration of the eidetic and transcendental reduction.

Phenomenology is a study of the phenomenological reduction

4. Free Imaginative Variation: We try to ensure that the essential knowledge we have obtained is objective. Take the essence at hand and vary aspects of it to see whether it retains its identity. Do the variations affect the identity of the thing? Do they not affect its identity? In the former case, one would have to revise one’s essential knowledge.

5. Intuition of Essences: General essences are intuited: one can arrive at such an intuition only after free imaginative variation.

Some critical remarks: As David Bell observes the whole point of reduction is to show how particularity is grounded in universality or eidos or essence.

But it is still inadequate: Even if imagination is necessary for arriving at an understanding of a concept, it is not a necessary condition. Husserl does not ensure that imagination is exercised in an impartial manner. As the later Wittgenstein puts it, “…the main cause of philosophical disease – a one-sided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example.”

Husserl also aims at the wrong result: “The essence (eidos) is a new sort of object…the datum of essential intuition is a pure essence…Essential insight is still an intuition; just as the eidetic object is still an object…Essential intuition is the consciousness of something, of an ‘object’, a something towards which its glance is directed.”

But can scientific understanding be brought about by simply looking at an object. Theory, concepts, evaluative evidence are all

necessary for scientific understanding; all of these are more complex than a gaze.

Methodologically phenomenology aims at a pure description “of transcendentally pure consciousness in the light of pure intuition” (Husserl Ideas §24); “the decisive factor lies, above all, in the absolutely faithful description of what is actually present in phenomenological purity, and in keeping at a distance all interpretations that transcend the given…”(Husserl Ideas §92) As David Bell puts it, the problem is not that (a) pure data is accepted nor (b)that one unique description of this data is possible nor (c)that such a description determines a rigorously scientific theory. Rather the problem is that phenomenology begins and ends with the given: it does not transcend it or transform it. Hence the extent to which it can successfully address the crisis in science is dubious.

Reading: Bell, David. Husserl (Secondary source) Follesdal, Dagfinn 2006. “Husserl’s Reductions and the Role they play in his Phenomenology” in A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism Ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A.Wrathall.

Blackwell, Malden Husserl, Edmund. Ideas (Primary source) Spiegelberg, Herbert The Phenomenological Movement (Chapter on Husserl)