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Notes
I shall refer to Hopp (2011) by simple page numbers. All other references will be done in the usual way.
In what follows, this “performance-reflection distinction” shall be abbreviated as the PR-distinction.
Cf. pp. 12ff, 18ff, 22ff. The denial of this “spotlight theory” is of crucial importance when Hopp, later on, raises the issue of nonconceptual contents. Cf. pp. 130–189, especially pp. 135f, 140, 152f, 161, 163.
Correspondingly, the thrust of the transparency thesis, as it may be found in Michael Tye’s or Gilbert Harman’s writings, among others, can be summarized as follows: “External objects and features […] wholly determine the subjective character of a given experience. The feel, or ‘phenomenal character’, of a given experience is a by-product of what it represents. Stronger and weaker variants of this view are called ‘representationalism’” (Mattens 2010, p. 409).
In particular, according to a specific brand of representationalism experience is said to be an intentional relation to propositional contents. Cf. Kennedy (2009, pp. 581ff).
For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Husserl’s solution to the famous problem of “immanent objects” raised by Brentano and his pupils. Cf. Rinofner-Kreidl (2000, pp. 66–80).
It may seem that Hopp denies this when he commits himself to an impure phenomenology which he sets against Husserl’s pure phenomenology (p. 187). Yet the former considers causal roles as part of the intentionality of perception. Contrary to Hopp’s claim, it is therefore not the object itself, bare and metaphysically transcendent, that explains how and why an experience belongs to a stable system of possible experiences. Rather, it is the fact that I bear the right causal and spatiotemporal relations to the object. Otherwise impure phenomenology ceases to be phenomenology at all. Hopp rightly stresses that perception calls for causal roles without being reducible to them (pp. 4, 188). Yet this is compatible with pure phenomenology in Husserl’s sense—as is evident from Husserl’s inquiries into embodied processes of perception in Thing and Space, Ideas II, Experience and Judgment, and elsewhere. Cf. Rinofner-Kreidl (2011).
In particular, we need not be suspicious of the noema as the object-as-it-is-perceived (pp. 176f).
Keeping Figure (B) in mind helps us to understand why it is misguided to designate Husserl a “naïve realist”. The lesson we learn from phenomenology is that in abandoning representationalism we must not side with naïve realism—given that, according to the latter, direct awareness of the perceived object amounts to a total neglect of the subject-related structure of the experience itself. To be sure, there are interpretations of naïve realism that “[respect] the transparency phenomenon, while preserving the innocuous idea that we can be aware of our experiences” (Kennedy 2009, p. 588). This can be achieved by “[extending] experience, in the relevant cases, all the way out to the external objects that we perceptually apprehend” (ibid., p. 594). Apart from the fact that the relevant notion of experience stands in need of clarification, Husserl agrees with the naïve realist that the objects of perception are public objects, thereby denying the representationalist view “that we see public objects by being aware of private objects” (Mulligan 1995, p. 169).
As a matter of fact the author does rely on the PR-distinction, though it is surprisingly absent from chapter 1, where he is occupied with introducing a precise and viable notion of content. See, e.g.: “Statements about how things appear to me, or how I am appeared-to, are made on the basis of reflection. Such statements are not fulfilled by the perceptual experiences themselves, but on the basis of reflective experiences which have those very experiences as their objects. The experience itself purports to depict how things are. Failing to align one’s beliefs with its content is a way of muting it” (p. 219).
Related to this, we learn that Hopp understands his theory of perception as a brand of disjunctivism (pp. 153, 172–188). According to Crane, “[w]hereas the intentionalist sees the qualities presented in perceptual experience as represented, the disjunctivist sees these qualities as instantiated in perception, and as merely represented in hallucination” (Crane 2006, p. 140).
I take it that “communication” is richer in content than merely simultaneously grasping the same detached abstract objects. Relating to this, too, we should bear in mind Hopp’s explanation of how possessing a concept differs from perceiving in accordance with horizonal contents (pp. 57–60). Communication in the sense we are acquainted with requires that the persons communicating, at least to some extent, are embedded in common horizons they consider to be perceptually explorable. This being so, it is obvious that, in real life, we never start with sharing the same (“bare”) thoughts. Doing so, rather, represents an artificial and reduced state, a purely theoretical option which we may achieve by transcending our daily practice. Yet even as a theoretical option, we consider the “pure” sharing of thoughts as some sort of practice if we follow Hopp (and Husserl) in maintaining that conceptual contents must be linguistically expressible (cf. pp. 143f).
Counterbalancing evidence occurs in two different types. “Such a belief that P can be defeated directly by a rebutting defeater, where a rebutting defeater is any evidence that provides one with a reason to believe something contrary to P, or by an undercutting defeater, which defeats the connection between one’s evidence and one’s belief that P” (p. 216).
Abbreviated in what follows as “PPC”.
See Husserl’s principle of intuition (“principle of all principles”), introduced in §24 of Ideas I.
This seems to be a crucial point concerning a more encompassing defense of a phenomenological intuitionism, which requires distinguishing between naïve and reflected types of intuitionism. In the present context we cannot dwell on this issue.
Compare Hopp’s characterization of (first-order) indirect realism (p. 150), which I modified and, correspondingly, transformed into a second-order position.
I would like to thank Steven Crowell for his very helpful and acute comments on different versions of this paper, and for his extensive linguistic corrections.
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Rinofner-Kreidl, S. Mental Contents, Transparency, Realism: News from the Phenomenological Camp. Husserl Stud 29, 33–50 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-013-9125-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-013-9125-x