The wood and its trees: Investigation II, Chap 1

I'm posting this when my memory is still fresh and I can deal with both the wood and the trees as I like it.


The introduction explains why the problem of abstraction (both as the act of abstracting and the result acquired from abstraction - Husserl sometimes prefers the other word "ideation.") pertains to the problematic of pure logic. (1) Among categorial distinctions of meanings there is the distinction between individual and universal objects. This will be attempted in chap. 1. (2) A more important reason is that ideal meanings (here he says spezifischen Einheiten) constitute the realm of pure logic. A last remark in the intro defends an epistemological idealism, which "recognizes the ideal as the condition of the possibility of objective knowledge in general." This makes the whole enterprise in LU look especially like a modification of Kant now (I find it hard to resist this line of thought), where the phenomenological analysis of acts and breaking them down into particular- and universal-intuiting act-moments replaces transcedental deduction. Tell me what you think of this.

§1 The distinction between species-object and particular-object, and the distinctive ways of representing (Vorstellen) them can only be shown by Evidenz. The latter in turn is to be given by the clarification of the relevant representations (Vorstellungen). Namely, phenomenology shows the way to let ourselves "see" the Evidenz; thus, any writing of phenomenology in and of itself is not a demonstration of the Evidenz of Evidenz, but only a means to it. Through the words in the book we should appropriate for ourselves the proper attitude of reflection to get to the things themselves. For a pertinent example of how this works see §4 below.

To show that this distinction holds as it appears to our consciousness, Husserl starts from what is common in the species-intending-act and the individual-intending-act: the same sensible content is given in the same way of grasping it (Auffassungsweise). In my own words: the way the object appears to us seems the same. I think of my mom far away, I think of a triangle - both seem to be objects not in sight. By the same token, even in thinking of the triangle I draw and in thinking "triangle" as a universal, what appears (Erscheinung) to the consciousness may in both cases be the same - the triangle I draw. But by showing what is common between them, this example also points to the difference in an obvious way: triangularity is the "content," the "idea" so to speak which the act intends, while the individual-intending-act only intends to "what actually appears." Husserl himself gives a reference to VI. §46 on founding and founded acts: intuitions (or: sense perceptions) are founding while the Meinen towards species are founded (i.e. the categorial intuition). "In allen Faellen sei das individuelle Moment ein anderes, aber 'in' jedem sei dieselbe Spezies realisiert; ..." This is so fucking Aristotelian. Come to think of it this is not surprising given that his teacher Brentano is an Aristotelian. "Wie alle fundamentalen logischen Unterschiede, ist auch dieser kategorial. Er gehoert zu der reinen Form moeglicher Bewusstseinsgegenstaendlichkeiten als solcher. (Vgl. dazu die VI. Untersuchung, Kap. 6 u.f.)" Already two references to the bitchy VI. My paraphrase of this sentence: the distinction between universals and individuals is the basis of all possible pure forms as logical objectivities for consciousness.

§2 I don't have much to say about this section, but there is a passing note about the crisscrossing of the two dichotomies individual / species and singular / universal. According to Husserl this will give us four kinds of judgments. I quote the examples below:

(1) Individually singular: Socrates is a man.

(2) Species-ly singular: 2 is an even number.

(3) Individually universal: All men are mortal.

(4) Species-ly universal: All analytic functions are differentiable; All purely-logical propositions are apriori.

The first two do not seem hard to understand: the number 2 is a singular species, namely 2 itself among numbers. I have a bit of trouble with the latter two. Conjecture: It seems that "all men are mortal" counts as type (3) and not (4) is due to the fact that what is mortal are the individual men that are each an instantiation of the species "man." While every analytic function and purely-logical proposition are already a species. I can't think of some way to put this more clearly, but it seems that two senses of "one" are distinguished: "one" in the sense of being able to be picked out as some one object for consciousness (which is here called "singular"), ultimately founded in the grasping of "unity" (another sense of "one"), and "one" in the sense of "being something" in which the species-being shows itself to consciousness ("individual"). "Being something" only pertains to the perceptive realm. This is all my attempt at interpretation, but I cannot help but wonder about Plato's Parmenides.

§3 Sameness and Identity (Gleichheit and Identitaet). Sameness: when in everyday language we say "this and that are the same" we focus on the aspects or the attributes which are identical between them. But in Husserl's view, that means sameness is ultimately founded on identity, namely the identity of species: e.g. the rose and my blush are the same in virtue of the moment of the meaning "redness" being identical. If we insist the redness (as species) that inheres in the rose and that that inheres in my blush are different then one cannot avoid an infinite regress problem. One should not define identity as the limit condition of sameness: this strongly reminds one of the famous recollection argument as offered in the Phaedo. "Identity is absolutely undefinable, but not sameness."I take its undefinability to mean that it can only be seen with the mind's eye, and if you can't see it then it cannot exist relative to your state of knowledge. Sameness is the relation between objects and a self-same species: Socrates and Plato are both human.

§4 A phenomenological "showing" of why understanding identity as the limit condition of sameness must be wrong. We compare two intentions. (1) Grasping any group of objects in an intuitive sameness as a unity; knowing their sameness with one Schlage; knowing the sameness in single acts of comparison. (2) Second intention: grasping the attribute which constitutes the aspect of sameness and of comparison as an ideal unity. Then Husserl asserts that these two intentions evidently have different objects. Evidently?! I need help here. One would need to "see" that and reflect on them to get to the difference. Husserl goes on: in the second intention no intuition of sameness or comparison is required. Even though one may reply that we need comparisons and practice to "see" the ideal unity, Husserl thinks this is irrelevant, since the evidence does not "lie in" those comparisons (but in the newly founded act). I can't understand this quite well. The difference between the two intentions seems to be this. I see a bunch of people. According to this account, there can be two senses in which we say "they are all human." Either I intend them as a collection, each of the members in it sharing one or some common attributes as my interest guides me to notice (the first intention), or I turn the attention to that attribute itself and "see" how it is always the self-same moment in each individual member. Husserl's statement implies that there are cases where we only need one individual to have the second intention, while the first one always requires a comparison of several individuals.

Why the empiricist approach is wrong: they are unable to say what imparts unity to the field. There will be a problem of how identity is arrived at through similarities (the Humean problem or Quine's argument against the similarity-set approach to natural kinds seem comparable). The Husserlian criticism is that this will cause infinite regress of comparisons of similarities. The upshot: universals are unavoidable. §5 is a continuation of his critique of empiricism and psychologism (which, according to him, splits the unity into the manifold of the subsumed objects). Two versions: Mill (who insists on the identity - H. thinks it is inconsistent) and Spencer (who consistently insists on sameness, but just falls to the problems already mentioned). Don't see anything worth mentioning...

§6 A quick overview of what is to follow in investigation II. He notes that he will criticize competing theories as a way of showing and testing the correct theory. Thus the latter part of the title of this investigation. I wonder if one can say that the whole method is phenomenology plus historical criticism (the latter part looks like a sort of dialectics, perhaps). It seems to intimate the later thought in Crisis about sedimentation and historical reduction and all that...Empiricism and new theories confused the psychological explanation of experience and the "logical" illumination of their thought content. It should already be clear by now what this means. The wordplay of Er-klaerung and Auf-klaerung is also worth pondering (the English translation gives "explanation" and "classification" respectively. The former is pretty standard and good, but I have trouble with the latter. My rendering might be "to make sense of" and "to throw light on the matter.") The latter is the foundation of an epistemological-critical enlightening of the "possibility" of knowledge. Competing theories do not pay attention to the "descriptive content [Gehalt] of the consciousness of abstraction." There is a puzzling ending here: a distinction between (besides psychologically explanatory and epistemologically clarifying) phenomenological and objective analysis - this confusion makes that which is only assigned by the mean-ing to the objects assigned also to the acts themselves as their real constituents. I do not understand what this means, and I may even got the sentence wrong. But Husserl promises to treat all the issues in detail in further chapters. So I'm moving on and see if he keeps it.