Abstract
In this paper I show that, in Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, the consciousness of any perceiving subject can take up space. What Husserl calls “noema” just is some intentional object. Thus any noema of perception just is the object of some perceptual experience. According to Husserl, since the noema of perception is immanent to the consciousness of the perceiving subject, the object of perception must also be in some sense immanent. In order to avoid confrontation with Husserl’s anti-Brentanian claim that no intentional object can be immanent to any intentional act, I show that there are two different senses of immanence in Husserl: the “genuine”-sense and what Steven Crowell calls the “phenomenological”-sense. On this disambiguation, any perceptual object can be genuinely transcendent while remaining phenomenologically immanent. What is required for the second sense of immanence is a holistic conception of consciousness. However, Husserl is also a realist about the objects of perception: the object of perception is the actual object itself rather than some mental representation of anything like the Kantian thing in-itself. The objects of perception are spatial. Therefore, if any perceptual object is immanent to some consciousness then that consciousness must also be spatial; hence, my spatialist interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology of perception.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
I add “typically” because in early onset glaucoma some patients see a black spot in their visual field. The black spot is an object of perception. It is not publicly accessible.
- 3.
For example, Cartesian skepticism, mind-body problem, etc.
- 4.
The most comprehensive defense of the standard object-interpretation of the noema remains Drummond (1990). To a large extent, the view that I develop about the noema is derived from Drummond’s. That is why I offer no positive arguments of my own that the noema is some kind of intentional object. Where I diverge from Drummond ’s view should be clear by the end of Sect. 3.3. For other object-interpretations, see: Gurwitsch (1964), Welton (1983), Sokolowski (1987), Bell (1990), Banchetti (1993), Ströker (1993), Brainard (2002), Zahavi (2003), Shim (2005).
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For a more recent discussion of this “noetic, or act-based” Husserlian view of token meanings that I do endorse, see: Hopp (2011, esp. 27–36). My agreement with Hopp—as opposed to Smith and McIntyre —rests on the fact that Hopp nowhere calls the conceptual “content” or aspect of an intentional act the “noema”; since, in general, Hopp takes no side at all in the noema debate (Hopp 2011, 176–177). For a contemporary view that conceives representational “contents” to be features or aspects of intentional or psychological states rather than being their truth-value, see: Pitt (2009).
- 7.
Consequently, Smith and McIntyre are early advocates of conceptualism about perception.
- 8.
Another exegetical reason in Smith and McIntyre is the following confusion between “reell” and “real.” As Husserl uses these terms, “reell” means “genuine” or “authentic;” by contrast, by “real” he means spatio-temporal, thus “actual” in a metaphysical sense. However, it appears Smith and McIntyre confuse these two distinct concepts and argue like this: since the noema is not a “reell”—i.e., not a genuine or authentic—component of the intentional act, it must be non-“real”—i.e., must be neither spatial nor temporal—and, therefore, the noema must be “ideal” or abstract (1982, 119–125). This is an obvious terminological error and, thus, fails to motivate their interpretation.
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- 10.
All translations of Husserl’s work are my own.
- 11.
As I will expand upon in Sect. 3.3, a sufficient condition for the transcendence of an intentional object is its numerical identity despite the diversity of intentional experiences about it (Hua III/1, 79, 84–86; Hua XI, 330–331).
- 12.
Throughout this paper, experience is a translation of “Erlebnis”—which is more accurately, though more awkwardly, translated as living through or undergoing. Among many reasons why Husserl is not a representationalist is that not all Erlebnisse are intentional or representational. Moods, emotions, proprioceptive states like pain and hunger, are for Husserl Erlebnisse—but they do not represent.
- 13.
In Ideas I, Husserl admits quite frankly “the one-sidedness of the noetic orientation” in the Logical Investigations (Hua III/1, 298; also, 217–218). That is, in the first edition of the Logical Investigations, Husserl dealt almost exclusively with features and properties of individual intentional acts—i.e., what is only genuinely immanent—as opposed to the objects at which such acts are directed. Smith and McIntyre ’s interpretation, therefore, turns out to be only germane to the noetic analysis of the first edition of Logical Investigations.
- 14.
The rule seems to be this. Genuine immanence implies phenomenological immanence; but the converse is not the case. Perceptual objects can be phenomenologically immanent without being genuinely immanent. Phenomenological transcendence implies genuine transcendence. Nothing can be phenomenologically transcendent and genuinely immanent. However, the converse is not the case: genuine transcendence does not imply phenomenological immanence, for perceptual objects are genuinely transcendent yet phenomenologically immanent.
- 15.
Of the numerically identical “pure ego” required by neo-Kantians like Paul Natorp, Husserl writes: “I must openly admit that I have not in any way been able to find such a primitive ego as the necessary center of relations” (Hua XIX, 374).
- 16.
In the second edition of Logical Investigations, Husserl remarks in a footnote: “Since then, I have learned how to find [the pure ego]” (Hua XIX, 374).
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Shim, M.K. (2017). Husserl’s Spatialization of Perceptual Consciousness. In: Walton, R., Taguchi, S., Rubio, R. (eds) Perception, Affectivity, and Volition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Phaenomenologica, vol 222. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55340-5_3
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