Abstract
The account of mental representation to be developed in this study is based upon the difference and yet inner relatedness between mental activities by which reference is made to something in its absence and those by which reference is made to something in its presence.2 Wherever something absent is referred to we are dealing with representations (Vergegenwärtigungen). The notion of “representation” which will be argued for here is, if not explicitly stated otherwise, understood as referring to activities of representing something that is not itself present. This is important for it links the topic of mental representation at once to the topic of consciousness. It will be recalled that, on the present view, mental activities are indeed essentially conscious, whatever else they may be besides that. Or the other way around, to be conscious is essentially to be mentally active in one way or another, whatever else may also be required for consciousness to be functioning (e.g. from neurophysiological and biological points of view, etc.).3
The relation to something objective attributed to intuitive acts is not anything immediately obvious, .... To have an intuition is not yet to have an object, and object is here too something identified in virtue of presentations.
Husserl 1908 (Hua XXVI, p. 60)1
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Notes to Chapter 2
Auch die den intuitiven Akten zugeschriebene Beziehung auf Gegenständlichkeit ist nichts unmit- telbar Selbstverständlicheschrwww(133). Eine Anschauung haben, das ist noch nicht einen Gegenstand haben, and Gegenstand ist auch hier Identisches von Vorstellungen“ (Hua XXVI, p. 60).
Besides Husserl’s analyses of the activity of perceiving something (e.g., Hua XVI, 1973) and of the various forms of intuitively representing something (anschauliche Vergegenwärtigungen; see, in particular, Hua XXIII, 1980), the most important source for what will be developed here is to be found in Kern (1975), especially “II. Abschnitt, Vernunft and Sinnlichkeit”, pp. 56–233, and “III. Abschnitt, Philosophische Methodenlehre”, “2. Kapitel: Wesenserkenntnis”, pp. 273301. “Presence” and “absence” have also become one of the major topics in recent work by R. Sokolowski to which I am indebted as well. See for example Sokolowski (1974), chapters 2,4,6,7, (1977), (1978), (1980), (1981), (1984), (1987), (1990). I also sense an affinity to W. McKenna (1982, see chapter 4, especially) with whom I had the pleasure to discuss various matters on several occasions at the time of preparation of his manuscript. — Among older work in the phenomenological tradition related to the present study, I would like to mention, in particular, E. Fink (1930, newly published 1966) and Th. Conrad (1968).
Regarding the point of view of consciousness, see Introduction, in particular, p. 9ff.
This is generally in line with Husserl’s best developed account of inner time-consciousness as the most fundamental consciousness. For a succinct explanation, see e.g. Kern in Bernet, Kern, Marbach (1993), chapter 3, §2. See also Kern (1975), §11.
See B. Smith (1984), p. 158. In what follows, allusions will be made to Smith’s presentation of the matter that I take to be a sophisticated analysis on pre-phenomenological grounds and in contrast to which some of the points I would like to emphasize come all the better to the fore. See also B. Smith (1985/86), “§1. The Problem of Intentionality”, in particular, for the present context. As Smith puts it: “The world is the totality of objects — things, events, processes, states — standing in certain relations to each other. Among the objects in the world are mental acts (or mental episodes in general), which have the peculiar property that through them we can become related to objects of all conceivable varieties. This occurs both immediately (in our perceiving of this table, for example) and mediately (when we think about the carpenter who built this table, or about the heaviest table in Smolensk). There is, however, a crucial difference between the two kinds of relatedness at issue here. Crudely expressed, we can say that it is only in the former case that a real link or connection to an object is in fact established. In the latter case, the acts in question manifest merely certain internal similarities to relational acts. Even here, however, the mere existence of an object will be sufficient guarantee that a relational sentence can correctly be employed to describe the directedness of the acts involvedchrwww(133)” (p. 533, emphasis mine).
See B. Smith (1984), p. 158: “Suppose Bruno walks into his study and sees a cat. To describe the seeing, here, as a relation, is to affirm that it serves somehow to tie Bruno to the cat”. Also Mulligan and Smith (1986), p. 118.
See, e.g., Husserl (1913), §90: “It would even be tempting to say: In the mental process the intention is given with its intentional Object which, as intentional Object, inseparably belongs to it, therefore itself inherently dwells within (the intention). Indeed, it is and remains its (Object) meant, objectivated, and the like, no matter if the corresponding `actual Object’ precisely is or is not in actuality, if it has been annihilated in the meantime, etc. But if, in this way, we try to separate the actual Object (in the case of perception of something external, the perceived physical thing pertaining to Nature) and the intentional Object, including the latter (as) really inherently in the mental process as ‘immanent’ to the perception, we fall into the difficulty that now two realities ought to stand over against one another while only one (reality) is found to be present and even possible. I perceive the physical thing, the Object belonging to Nature, the tree there in the garden; that and nothing else is the actual Object of the perceptual ‘intention’. A second immanental tree, or even an ‘internal image’ of the actual tree standing out there before me, is in no way given, and to suppose that hypothetically leads to an absurditychrwww(133). In contradistinction to such errors we have to abide by what is given in the pure mental process and to take it within the frame of clarity precisely as it is givenchrwww(133). Now, inherent too precisely in perception is this: that it has its noematic sense, its ’perceived as perceived’, ’this blossoming tree there, in space’chrwww(133) precisely the correlate belonging to the essence of phenomenologically reduced perception”. The original German version of the quoted passages runs as follows: “Es liegt gar zu nahe zu sagen: Im Erlebnis gegeben sei die Intention mit ihrem intentionalen Objekt, das als solches ihr unabtrennbar zugehöre, also ihr selbst reell einwohne. Es sei und bleibe ja ihr vermeintes, vorstelliges u. dgl., ob das entsprechende `wirkliche Objekt’ eben in der Wirklichkeit sei oder nicht sei, inzwischen vernichtet worden sei usw. Versuchen wir aber in dieser Art wirkliches Objekt (im Falle der äusseren Wahrnehmung das wahrgenommene Ding der Natur) und intentionales Objekt zu trennen, letzteres, als `immanentes’ der Wahrnehmung, dem Erlebnis reell einzulegen, so geraten wir in die Schwierigkeit, dass nun zwei Realitäten einander gegenüberstehen sollen, während doch nur eine vorfindlich und möglich ist. Das Ding, das Naturobjekt nehme ich wahr, den Baum dort im Garten; das und nichts anderes ist das wirkliche Objekt der wahrnehmenden `Intention’. Ein zweiter (,) immanenter Baum oder auch ein `inneres Bild’ des wirklichen, dort draussen vor mir stehenden Baumes ist doch in keiner Weise gegeben, und dergleichen hypothetisch zu supponieren, führt nur auf Widersinnchrwww(133). Gegenüber solchen Verirrungen haben wir uns an das im reinen Erlebnis Gegebene zu halten und es im Rahmen der Klarheit genau so zu nehmen, wie es sich gibtchrwww(133). Nun dann liegt eben in der Wahrnehmung auch dies, dass sie ihren noematischen Sinn, ihr Wahrgenommenes als solches’ hat, `diesen blühenden Baum dort im Raume’chrwww(133) eben das zum Wesen der phänomenologisch reduzierten Wahrnehmung gehörige Korrelat” (see Hua II111, §90, p. 207, lines 26–39; p. 208, lines 1–4, 25–27; and p. 209, lines 19–24).
In Marbach (1982), I have discussed Husserl’s method of “constitutive deconstruction” (konstitutiver Abbau) in its application to modified empathy as it would have to be brought to bear in a phenomenological interpretation of animal behavior (see especially pp. 458–469).
See Kern (1975), §11, §§28–29; Kern in Bernet, Kern, Marbach (1993), chapter 3, §2. Husserl sometimes maintains, erroneously in my view, that retention and protention can also become independent intentions; see, e.g., Hua X (1966), Beilage III, p. 107.
Hua X, Beilage III, p. 106: “Das wache Bewusstsein, das wache Leben ist ein Entgegenleben,ein Leben vom Jetzt dem neuen Jetzt entgegen”, emphasis mine.
By appealing to caution, I want to say that one should not be misled by the spatialized arrangement of the signs into thinking of the activity in terms of an objective outside one another of the various phases. See also note 19 in chapter 1. I should also add that with the emphasis of the notation, as presently elaborated, on the noetic side of mental activities, justice is not done to a more refined designation of the flowing moments of being given concerning the perceptual correlate as such, here designated simply by the letter “x” without further indices.
Hua X, e.g. p. 40, 43, 63, 114, 360; Ideas I (1913), Hua II111, especially p. 183 (originally p. 164). See Kern in Bernet, Kern, Marbach (1993), chapter 3, §2.
For further discussion of the attentional functions of consciousness, see, e.g., A. Gurwitsch (1929); Marbach (1974), §§24–27; McKenna (1982), chapter 4.
For a very readable short discussion of phenomenalists’ and indirect realists’ positions in theories of perception, see, e.g., J. Dancy (1985), chapters 10 and 11. Compare also Husserl (1913), Hua IIUI, §43.
A very thoughtful phenomenological discussion of this aspect is to be found in McKenna (1982), p. 86ff., 104ff. — For an informative short survey of “appearance and reality”, see Kennick, W. E. in P. Edwards (Ed.) (1967), volume one, pp. 135–138.
The attribution of such a view of indirect awareness (representative theory of perception) to Locke himself is controversial; see especially Yolton, J. W. (1984).
See, e.g., Kant (1790), §2 especially (Wohlgefallen ohne alles Interesse),et passim; also Hua XXIII (1980), Beilage VI (around 1906) where Husserl refers to Kant’s doctrine; Nr. 15h (1912); Beilage XL and XLI (1912); Sartre (1940), pp. 239ff. especially, where Sartre also refers to Kant’s doctrine (p. 242).
See Husserl’s many texts about constitution from the point of view of “normality” as against organic etc. “anomalies” in, e.g., Hua XIV (1973), Beilagen XII and XIII (1921); Hua XV (1973), Nr. 11 (1930 or 1931); Hua XVI (1973), chapter 6, in particular, for a discussion of optimal conditions of perception.
See, e.g., Hua XI (1966) and Erfahrung und Urteil (1985); for the psychogenetic point of view see, e.g., Piaget (1936), chapter IV, especially §5.
At the level of pre-scientific perceptual experience and knowledge of what there is, at which the present discussion is situated, it would also make sense to speak of, e.g., “seeing the stars in the sky themselves”, etc.
E.g., Hua XXIII (1980), Nr. 15j (1912); Beilage XLVIII (1912). For a subtle discussion of Husserl’s thesis that perceiving a thing is a believing or doxic consciousness and, especially, of the relationship between perceptual belief and empirical or transcendental illusion, see McKenna W. (1982), chapter 4 and chapter 6, respectively.
See, e.g., Hua XI (1966) and Erfahrung und Urteil (1985) where Husserl extensively discusses various forms of modalities of one’s believing or positing something.
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Marbach, E. (1993). Reference to Something in Activities of Presentation. In: Mental Representation and Consciousness. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2239-1_3
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