When1: 1887
When2: 1937
Who: Edmund Gustav Albert Husserl [Husserl, Edmund Gustav Albert]
What: philosopher
Where: Germany
works\ On the Concept of Number [1887]; Philosophy of Arithmetic [1891]; Logical Investigations [1900 to 1901]; Lectures on the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness [1905]; Thing and Space [1907]; Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology [1913]; Cartesian Meditations [1931]; Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology [1935]
Detail: He lived 1859 to 1938, was a psychologist, read Frege, and became a philosopher. He developed phenomenology by extending Brentano's intentionality theory.
Epistemology
People know knowledge types only by psychological effects {psychologism}, which are subjective experiences. Psychology is about psychological effects and subjective experiences themselves and so about consciousness. People cannot know physical scientific facts or how subjective experience relates to them. Psychology needs postulates, but psychology cannot prove these fundamental ideas.
Logical structures exist independently of psychological activities, but people can only understand logical structures from psychological effects.
To study mental processes and what is in conscious mind, start with no assumptions about perception, objects, concepts, causes, or consequences. Suspend judgment {epoché, Husserl} about actual existence.
First, classify phenomena {phenomenology, Husserl} and then find their essences {eidos} and origins.
People have meaningful and logical object representations {intention, Husserl} in consciousness {phenomena, Husserl}, which reflect universals or essences {noema}. People can experience and remember unique and individual intentions in consciousness and consciousness itself {noesis}. Conscious acts are intentional and direct towards objects.
Phenomena are mental object representations {profile, Husserl}. Profiles are object-essence aspects. Essence is sum of all possible profiles, and people find it by intuition {eidetic intuition} using intentions about profiles {transcendental subjectivity} {transcendental ego, Husserl}. Finding object essence makes that essence, and so consciousness is constitutive. Eidetic intuition both finds object essence and develops its existence {eidetic reduction}.
Phenomena have ontology, because they are in object essence. Intentions have ontology, because they are about object essence. Knowing object essence relates phenomena to intentions {phenomenological reduction}. Provisional connections {bracketing} {einklam-merung} are between objects and intentions, which both refer to noema. After analyzing intentions, find all possible meaningful intentional relations {transcendental reduction}. Intentions cannot refer directly to objects, because objects are not contingent, but intentions and subjects are contingent.
Phenomenology is better way to establish physical world facts. In Western world, science appears to be the only fact source {objectivism, Husserl}. However, facts are intentions from conscious activity, and subjective experience is all people can know about world. Empiricism should account for subject, observer, and methodology. Including life, history, and society subjective experiences requires an epistemological phenomena theory, such as phenomenology.
Psychologically, numbers develop from counting set elements. Logically, numbers are symbols and wholes, which people do not count but manipulate.
Awareness has unrepresented features and has space and time {horizon of awareness} {awareness horizon}. The horizon is necessary to perception, meaning, and understanding.
Mind
Mind knows only phenomena appearances, not reality.
Egos or subjects are not consciousness or mental-experience physical objects but transcend both categories {transcendentalism, Husserl}.
People's egos can know each other {the Other, Husserl}.
The living world {Lebenswelt} {life-world} is people's subjective natural state, before science and history, which has essences upon which to build knowledge.
Conscious experience has viewpoint and object {intentionality, Husserl}.
Conscious experiences have many meanings and appearances, some sensory and some non-sensory {superposition, Husserl}.
Imaginary objects have arbitrary properties, but perceived objects have definite and often more properties {transcendence, Husserl}. Perceived objects have stable part relations {relational constancy}; have no affect from interruptions or other perception changes, will or other mental states; allow perception by different senses {perceptual invariance}; and allow improvement in perception {corrigibility}.
Perceived objects associate with objects in the past and future {temporality}, including themselves, and so have history {retention} and expectations {protention}. Consciousness moments {primal impression} include past and future. People know viewpoint or object changes by object comparisons at different times. Perceived objects have duration, and events have monotonic order. Time is global and unitary. Events nest recursively.
People have lived-in bodies {leib, Husserl} and bodies as intentional objects {körper, Husserl}. Sensations relate to proprioceptive and kinesthetic information from physical body, which allows action. Sense-organ and body movements create egocentric space, which makes intentions and experience. The sense of self is implicit, not known by higher-order thought or itself.
Pain and color sensations {hyle} (material) are not intentional but are sense contents and lead to intentions and consciousness.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224