Abstract
This paper examines the evolution of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perceptual occlusion. This task is accomplished in two stages. First, I elucidate Husserl’s conclusion, from his 1901 Logical Investigations, that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by partial signitive acts. I focus on two doctrines of that account. I examine Husserl’s insight that signitive intentions are composed of Gehalt and I discuss his conclusion that signitive intentions sit on the continuum of fullness. Second, the paper discloses how Husserl transforms his 1901 philosophy in his 1913 revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation, affirming that the occluded parts of perceptual objects are intended by empty contiguity acts. I demonstrate how he overturns the two core doctrines of his theory from the Investigations in these revisions, claiming that empty intentions are not composed of Gehalt and asserting that those acts break with the continuum of fullness. Husserl implements these changes to solve problems that arise from his recognition of two new kinds of intentions; darker and completely dark acts. Finally, in the conclusion, I cash out this analysis, by indicating that, in 1913, Husserl transforms his theory of fulfillment on the basis of his new insights about empty acts.
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Notes
I provide references to the corresponding English translation where available, following a slash after the Husserliana page number. Quotes from the Logical Investigations always come from the First Edition.
Husserl broadly defines external perceptions or perceptions via the external “sense” (I treat these terms as synonymous throughout the paper), claiming that they are all of the experiences one can have via the five senses (Hua XIX, p. 667/1970, p. 277). The inner sense or inner perception, in contrast, is the intending of “‘inner objects’, the ego and its internal experiences” (Hua XIX, p. 667/1970, p. 278). Since Husserl concludes, in 1901, that perceptions via the internal sense are adequate, that is, they contain no signitive intentions, his discussion of internal perception is not immediately relevant for the purposes of this paper.
Concerning my discussion of Husserl’s theory of intuition, for reasons that will become clear just below, in this essay I primarily deal with his descriptions of perception and less so with his understanding of imaginative intentions. Yet, it should be noted that Husserl’s 1901 conclusions concerning external perceptual acts naturally can be translated to account for imaginative intentions. According to his 1901 philosophy, the latter, just as the former, are composed of intuitive and signitive Gehalt and both are directed at perspectivally given objects.
For brevity, I discuss only the signitive components of single-rayed non-categorial external perception in this essay. The question of whether categorial objects or states of affairs are given perspectivally would be the topic of another study. On this point; however, it is worth mentioning that in Ideas I, Husserl does seem to claim that essences, which are categorial objects, are intuited perspectivally, at least when that term is analogically understood. He writes, “The specific character of certain categories of essences is such that essences belonging to them can be given only ‘one-sidedly’, in a sequence ‘many-sidedly’, yet never ‘all-sidedly’” (Hua III-3, p. 13/1983, p. 8).
Just from this claim, the interpretation of this paper already stands in contrast to the readings of other scholars, such as Sean Kelly. Kelly asserts that, for Husserl, the hidden sides of objects are “hypothesized but sensibly absent” (2005, p. 79). According to Kelly’s Husserl, the perception of the hidden sides of objects is more cognitive than perceptual. For example, Kelly writes, “On Husserl’s account […] I know or believe or hypothesize or expect that the object has certain hidden features, but I do not properly speaking see it as such” (2005, p. 80).
To provide three examples from just this journal: First, in “Husserl’s Conception of Experiential Justification”, Phillip Berghofer only briefly repeats the standard definition of signitive intentions. He simply writes that signitive intentions are the acts “in which what is given to us is not the object in its actual presence but the object as something that is meant only” (2018, p. 147). Second, Timothy Mooney, in “Understanding and Simple Seeing in Husserl”, merely once mentions that signitive intentions are opposed to intuitive intentions (2010, pp. 23–24). Finally, in “Desiring to Know through Intuition”, Rudolf Bernet only directly explicates Husserl’s account of signitive intentions in a footnote (2003, p. 166 n. 4). It should be mentioned that, outside of this journal, Kevin Mulligan provides an exacting, yet brief investigation of Husserl’s theory of signitive intentions in “Perception” (1995, pp. 193–194 and 204–206). In sum, most analyses of Husserl’s theory of perception do seek to clarify his conclusion that a partial intuitive intention fulfills a partial signitive intention. Yet they normally only extensively discuss the former kind of partial acts.
Of the few scholars who have discussed Husserl’s theory of signitive intentions, Ullrich Melle has provided the most extensive and exacting analyses. On the one hand, this essay expands upon Melle’s conclusions from his articles, “Signitive and Signifikative Intentionen” (1999) and “Husserl’s Revisions of the Sixth Logical Investigation” (2002). On the other hand, at times I develop my own interpretation of Husserl by critically engaging with Melle’s reading of Husserl’s Revisions. In particular, see notes 26 and 28 below.
At another point, Husserl writes, “The sum total of the communally fused moments, considered as the fundament of the pure intuitive apprehension […] comprises the fullness of the [intuitive] presentation” (Hua XIX, p. 608/1970, p. 234).
As such, if the act attained the ideal of fullness, that is, if the intention were entirely full, the act would then only contain components that would correspond to apparent parts of the object. In such a presentation, “no part, no side, no property of its object fails to be intuitively presented, none is merely indirectly and subsidiarily meant. Not only is everything that is intuitively presented also meant […] but whatever is meant is intuitively given” (Hua XIX, p. 612/1970, p. 236).
I have chosen to leave Husserl’s terms “Inhalt” and “Gehalt” untranslated. While Findlay translates them as “content” and “substance”, I believe that these terms—and the latter in particular—obscure the meaning Husserl sought to communicate. Moreover, by leaving them in their original German, the distinctions between them remain lucid.
See note 3 above.
Certainly, Husserl is not entirely consistent in the application of these terms in 1901. He sometimes uses the term Inhalt for what is clearly Gehalt and vice versa.
Husserl develops his descriptions of the relationship between the Inhalte and apprehension in opposition to Natorp and other thinkers like him, who claim that all changes in the represented objects are due exclusively to alterations of content (Cf. Natorp 1888, p. 182). Husserl instead asserts that Inhalte can continually change, but that if the apprehension remains invariant, it will continue to interpret the distinct Inhalte as representing the same object and properties.
Husserl even goes so far as to write that, “To each part and property of the object, including its reference to a hic et nunc, there must necessarily be a corresponding part or moment of [the matter]” (Hua XIX, p. 610/1970, p. 235).
On Husserl’s later theory of perception, the co-meant halo also comprises the not-intuitively-presented co-meant objects and larger surroundings. See Hua XX-1, pp. 90–93.
The signitive act does not merely consist of the matter, but also of what Husserl calls the objectifying “quality”. Husserl emphasizes that an analysis of quality is not directly relevant for his theory of fullness. He writes, “in the following investigation [of fullness], only the ‘matter-side’ of an act’s intentional essence will have relevance for the relationships to be established. The qualities of our intentions (whether assertive or merely presentative) can be varied indifferently” (Hua XIX, p. 607/1970, p. 233). Following Husserl, I do not discuss quality in further detail in this essay.
To be clear, in 1901 Husserl asserts that it is not possible to execute an entirely signitive intention. There must be an accompanying intuition, which motivates the signitive intention. More appropriately stated, consciousness must reelly contain Inhalt for the signitive intention to be performed, as the former serves as the necessary support for the latter. Husserl writes, “A purely signitive act […] indeed if it could exist by itself at all, i.e., be a concrete experiential unity ‘on its own’. This it cannot be: we always find it clinging to some intuitive basis” (Hua XIX, p. 619/1970, p. 241). In contrast, Husserl does assert that it is possible to execute an entirely intuitive act; namely, during internal perception. See note 2 above.
Husserl does use the term “empty” in LU. However, it is largely employed as synonymous with signitive.
In the second volume of Hua XX, Husserl further revises his theory of signitive acts. He there asserts that the term “signitive” applies to the tendency, which arises from the intuition of the words, to execute the pertinent meaning-giving act, and that only the meaning-intention itself should be called the significative act (Hua XX-1, pp. 203–204). Melle explains these points well by writing, “The meaning in the sense of the intention, which points beyond, must be distinguished from the meaning in the sense of the thematic intention. The signitive intention leads over into the significative intention, and is satisfied in the latter” (1999, p. 177). In fact, Husserl laments the fact that he largely equated the terms signitive and significative in LU, writing that it “was a mistake in the first formulation of this investigation, a mistake which is still apparent in the First Investigation, that signitive and significative intentions were mistaken for each other” (Hua XX-2, p. 204).
Husserl not only outlines these contiguity intentions, which point beyond the seen front side of the object (hinausweisende Intentionen), but also discovers partial acts which point-inward towards the further determinations and determinabilities of that already apparent front side (hineinweisende Intentionen). He writes, “The appearance of a colored so and so given spatial figure points to continually new manners of appearance of the same colored figure, the same figure in its continually new orientations” (Hua XX-1, pp. 91–92). For further information on Husserl’s theory of hineinweisende Intentionen, see Melle (2002, pp. 117–118).
In total contrast to his claims from 1901 (Cf. note 17 above), Husserl concludes, in Revisions, that one can execute an entirely empty act but not an entirely intuitive act. As discussed below, an entirely empty act can be a meaning-intention or a fully dark act. A completely intuitive act is not possible, because Husserl sees that, as a result of temporal extension, even internal perceptions have empty retentional components.
To be noted is that, in section 18 of Revisions (Hua XX-1, pp. 94–96), Husserl additionally outlines two ways to divide between kinds of empty intentions. He distinguishes between associative and non-associative empty acts; he then divides associative intentions which are motivated by an “arousing object” (Erregerin) from those that are not.
While these conclusions mostly align with Husserl’s understanding of fullness and intuition from LU, he also alters his position in significant ways. He states that, in addition to his reell or noetic understanding of fullness from LU, there is a real or noematic fullness. Moreover, Husserl develops a more complex and nuanced theory of fullness by modifying some of his observations from the first edition of section 23 of the Sixth Investigation. He claims that fullness is to be measured according to different ranks or continuums (Rangestufe). On the one hand, as Husserl inchoately recognized in 1901, he now claims that fullness concerns the series of extent (Umfang) or richness (Reichtum), and liveliness (Lebendigkeit). On the other hand, Husserl discovers that fullness is also ranked according to clarity (Klarheit) or distinctness (Deutlichkeit), favorability (Gunst), and determinacy (Bestimmheit). For further information on these alterations, see Melle (2002, p. 119).
Naturally, these terms are being used in an extended sense. In a Beilage to the revised chapter, Husserl more clearly terms these partial acts the “Quasi-Fülle” and the “Quasi-Leer” (Hua XX-1, p. 240). Of note is that Husserl radically alters his theory in the pertinent Beilagen, since he rejects his revisions of the chapter and instead readopts many of his conclusions from LU.
From this solution an important question arises: If an empty intention does not have the structure of intuitive and empty Gehalt, then how can Husserl account for the fact that the object of the completely dark act is perspectivally given? Husserl’s only answer is that the “modification is so essentially structured, that it demands for its fulfillment a corresponding intuition, which in itself has reell certain empty components; where they also require for their fulfillment, new intuitions, with new reell empty components and so on […]” (Hua XX-1, p. 145). Even though there is no intuitive or empty Gehalt in the empty dark act, the intention still emptily discloses its object perspectivally, as is evidenced by the fact that it can only find its fulfillment in an intuition which has empty and intuitive Gehalt, that is, in the intending of an object that possesses an intuitive core and an empty co-meant halo. Unfortunately, Husserl does not provide the reader with more information on how to understand this point.
Ullrich Melle adopts a different interpretation of Husserl’s theory. He writes, “A difference has to be made between empty representation and an obscure [dark] intuition, i.e., an intuition emptied of intuitive content. Otherwise we are faced with an infinite regress” (2002, p. 118). A generous reading of Melle’s comment here would suggest that he is differentiating darker intentions from empty intentions, which is a division that Husserl certainly endorses. Yet Melle’s assertion that “obscure intuitions are emptied of intuitive content” lets the reader know that he is actually trying to claim that Husserl differentiates between completely dark and empty intentions, which is not the case.
In a manuscript from 1909, which foreshadows Husserl’s 1913 conclusions about fulfillment outlined here, he arrives at a slightly different insight. While he does conclude in those manuscripts that an expression can be bound with either an intuitive or an empty meaning act, he also states that if “the empty expressing goes over into a full expression, then [the empty and intuitive acts] coincide” (Hua XX-2, p. 267).
On the one hand, Melle encapsulates this idea well by writing, “Intuitive and empty expressions have the same structure. The meant, which is bound with the word by the intentions that points-beyond, is either an intuitive or an empty meaning. The linguistic consciousness is always composed of two parts, either intuitive or not” (1999, p. 179). On the other hand, Husserl’s quote from page 67 makes it further clear that Melle’s interpretation of Husserl’s theory of dark intentions is untenable. In contrast to Melle’s claims, Husserl here describes the same act as being dark and empty, that is, he equates (complete) darkness with emptiness.
References
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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Witold Plotka, Daniel Murphy, Dermot Moran, Julia Jansen, Ullrich Melle, Claudio Majolino, and the anonymous reviewer.
Funding
Postdoctoral Research Grant From KU Leuven Internal Fund; Postdoctoral Research Grant from “Talent Search Project”, University of Macau.
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Byrne, T. Husserl’s 1901 and 1913 Philosophies of Perceptual Occlusion: Signitive, Empty, and Dark Intentions. Husserl Stud 36, 123–139 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09255-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09255-5