Ideal Verificationism and Perceptual Faith

Abstract

Husserl maintains that there is an essential relationship between consciousness and being. Understanding the details of that relationship is one of the principal tasks of Husserl’s phenomenology. A. D. Smith characterizes Husserl’s position as “ideal verificationism,” according to which “There is nothing, no possible entity, that is not in principle experienceable”—and, therefore, knowable on the basis of experience. This chapter presents Husserl’s principal argument for ideal verificationism. More specifically, it discusses Husserl’s views on the relationships among truth and being, truth and evidence, and evidence and consciousness. The chapter then discusses Husserl’s view that it is at least ideally possible that any object could be intuited adequately or completely. It then turns to Merleau-Ponty’s argument against that view. Finally, the chapter examines Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception and perceptual faith, and argues that a version of Husserl’s ideal verificationism is compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s position.