Categorial Intuition Research Articles

Observing Mythical Entities

Abstract Sellars has taught us that we do not have direct epistemic access to sense data. Therefore, the latter cannot work as the bedrock of our knowledge. At the same time, through the myth of genius Jones, Sellars has tried to explain how we become able to rationally refer to sense data. What is more, it even seems that, following Jones’ teachings, the Rylean folk have become able to observe sense data. How could this be possible if sense data are merely mythical entities? By making use of some ideas and reflections from Husserl on perceptual experience, categorial intuition, and knowledge, I suggest a way to overcome the riddle. My solution, however, will partially contrast with Sellars’ idea that sense data are, in the end, something internal to the subject.

Tanabe Hajime — “Where self‐evidence resides”

In this article from 1928, translated here for the first time, Tanabe Hajime examines the concept of self-evidence, mainly in the light of Husserl and Brentano. The author starts out by establishing, through a preliminary analysis of the Cartesian cogito, two criteria for self-evidence, namely adequate fulfillment of the intention of Sosein, and the coextension of Dasein and Sosein (being-there, or existence, and being-such, or essence/properties). He then proceeds to consider four domains of knowledge through the prism of the question of their claim to self-evidence: knowledge of mathematical objects, categorial intuition, the ontological proof for the existence of God and finally, outer perception. Dedicating the last paragraph to a critical assessment of Husserl’s account of perception, the author concludes that all self-evidence is founded on inner perception. Outlining a creative appropriation of phenomenology while elucidating the conditions for certainty, this text constitutes an important milestone in a period leading up to Tanabe’s break with Nishida as well as to his critique of Heidegger, thus laying the groundwork for his independent philosophical stance.

Conceivability, Rational Intuition, and Metaphysical Possibility

The purpose of this article is to provide a case against certain claims made by modal skeptics with a specific application to the debate about whether conceivability is the right notion to employ in justifying the move from some state of affairs being conceivable to its being metaphysically possible. Does conceivability provide adequate, defeasible grounds for inferring metaphysical possibility? If not, is there a better approach that employs a replacement for conceivability? I argue that conceivability should be abandoned in favor of rational intuitions understood in a way I hope to make clear and precise.To accomplish this purpose, I begin by examing the general way conceivability has been related to metaphysical possibility and opt for a replacement for conceivability. Next, I make clear and precise what I mean by that replacement—rational intuitions. Third, I present three representative accounts of modal knowledge offered by Timothy O’Connor, George Bealer, and Edmund Husserl. O’Connor’s account is externalist, Bealer’s is a hybrid between an internalist and externalist view, and Husserl’s is a purely internalist perspective. While all three are plausible perspectives, I will criticize and reject the first two accounts and argue that Husserl’s way out of modal skepticism is successful. I conclude that Husserl’s employment of rational intuition made precise by his notions of eidetic and categorial intuition, provides a rigorous, fruitful way to ground modal knowledge in general, and de re and de dicto possibility in particular.

THE PROBLEM OF THE CATEGORIAL IN THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PERCEPTION: HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER

The article aims to show that the task of grounding categorial constituents in the specific founded acts of perception yields the problem field of phenomenological inquiry, within the framework of which remains Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology. To achieve this goal the article reconstructs, first, the problem of the possibility of a priori correspondence between meaning and intuition of the intentional act; second, the phenomenological justification of extension of the traditional concept of truth, as a result of which truth characteristic expands to intentional acts structured in a certain way, namely acts of total agreement between meaning and intuition (identification acts); third, the problem of the “categorial” in the phenomenological analysis of perception, which includes the extension of the concept of perception, limited in transcendental philosophy to the area of sensible intuitions, and justification of the specific categorial acts. On this basis, the article demonstrates that (1) phenomenology in a certain sense continues the project of transcendental philosophy, but the idea of a priori correspondence between notion and intuition within the framework of structural analysis of intentionality forms a new research problem. (2) The phenomenological understanding of truth in terms of the dynamics of empty and filled meaning intention is significant for the concept of truth presented by Heidegger in Being and Time. Heidegger explicates the concept of the truth in fundamental ontology based on the idea of identification. (3) The extension of the concept of object to its categorial constitution justified by Husserl provides fundamental ontology with the research subject. Heidegger interprets the categories, phenomenally represented in acts of categorial intuition, as a priori structures of the being of beings. The study also ascertains that new concepts of Husserl’s phenomenology saturate the conceptual framework of fundamental ontology. However, Heidegger also rethinks the key concepts of phenomenology in accordance with objectives which are different from the original objectives of the project of phenomenology designed by Husserl.

Heidegger and Professor Capobianco

Phenomenology offers the only proper entrée to Heidegger’s work, a fact overlooked by ‘Right Heideggerians’ such as Professor Richard Capobianco, with disastrous results. This essay traces Heidegger’s path through Husserl’s doctrine of categorial intuition to his own question about what makes possible the meaningful presence of things.

The Meaning of Being: Husserl on Existential Propositions as Predicative Propositions

This essay examines how Husserl stretches the bounds of his philosophy of meaning, according to which all propositions are categorical, to account for existential propositions, which seem to lack predicates. I examine Husserl’s counterintuitive conclusion that an existential proposition does possess a predicate and I explore his endeavor to pinpoint what that predicate is. This goal is accomplished in three stages. First, I examine Husserl’s standard theory of predication and categorial intuition from his 1901 Logical Investigations. Second, I show how Husserl imposes those 1901 insights to uncover the predicate of the existential proposition in unpublished manuscripts and lectures. He determines that the existential proposition predicates of the subject, that it corresponds to an actual object. This analysis reveals that Husserl’s descriptions of existential propositions from the late 1890s employed both static and genetic methodologies. In those texts, he carefully untangles and clarifies the co-enmeshed passive and active moments of consciousness and shows that the passive givenness of certain circumstances is the condition of possibility for our active verifying of propositions. Finally, I execute a critical assessment of Husserl’s thought to reveal that, while his insights about existential propositions are largely correct, they are augmented by re-construing them within the context of his mature philosophy. Only by renouncing his metaphysical neutrality and by accounting for intersubjectivity, can Husserl properly clarify existential propositions.

Re-examining Husserl’s Non-Conceptualism in the Logical Investigations

Abstract A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that is also deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid an objection raised by Walter Hopp – that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress.

El concepto de la intuición categorial en Husserl

Dieter Lohmar: Husserls concept of categorial intuition Husserl’s theory of categorial intuition is presented in the 6.th Logical Investigation. It starts with the question: what fulfills the specific categorial elements of thinking and language? Husserl’s analysis of the structure of categorial intuition opens up with a confrontation of simple acts of perception in contrast with complex, founded acts of categorial intuition. This is illustrated by the difference between simple synthesis of identification in continuous perception in contrast to the thematic identification of the same object. Then the crucial “fulfilling” function of the “synthesis of coincidence” between implicite and explicite (partial-)intentions in categorial intuition is very carefuly presented. The source, the special character and the special mode of givenness of the synthesis of coincidence is characterized: They are non-sensual contents which are nevertheless given to us in the transition of the perceptual acts within the whole structure of a categorial act. This leds to a detailled categorial act. In the end there is to be found a critical evaluation of the procedure of seeing essenses (Wesensschau) viewed as a special case of categorial intuition. The performance and the limits of this central phenomenological method are discussed.

Daseinsanalyse and the question of being in the early Heidegger. Destruction of Husserl‘s concept of consciousness as the absolute being in the sense of the absolute givenness

The text deals with a certain phase of the Heideggerian way of thinking, which had precedes the emergence of ?Being and Time? (1927). Heidegger?s reception, criticism, and transformation of some of the central concepts of Husserlian phenomenology (intentionality, a priori, categorial intuition) is the focus of the reflections. This article shows how this radical transformation of Husserlian phenomenology goes beyond the formal coincidence of the phenomenological principle ?to the things themselves? and points to the essential connection of the question of being and its phenomenological demetalization.

Heidegger y la indicación formal: hacia una articulación categorial de la vida humana

<p class='p1'>Este artículo aborda el complejo problema heideggeriano de cómo acceder adecuada y correctamente al ámbito de manifestación inmediata de la vida humana. Partiendo del concepto de hermenéutica de la facticidad, se analiza la propuesta heideggeriana de articulación categorial de la existencia humana, la cual recurre al instrumental analítico de los indicadores formales, esto es, a los conceptos básicos que sirven para explicitar reflexivamente la comprensión que la vida, el ser-ahí, tiene de sí misma. En este contexto, se intenta concretar el significado y la función de esos indicadores en la mencionada explicitación categorial de la vida: por un lado, se rastrean sus antecedentes en el caso de la comunicación indirecta de Kierkegaard y de las expresiones ocasionales de Husserl; y, por otro, se pretende mostrar hasta qué punto la posibilidad de esa explicitación se alimenta del concepto husserliano de intuición categorial.</p>

Intentional ontology. Heidegger and the transformation of Husserlian phenomenology

Abstract lntentional ontology. Heidegger and the transformation of Husserlian phenomenology. The article will look inside in what Heidegger said in his first course in Marburgo about the issue of intentionality as the basis for a “fundamental ontological investigation.” Through the first Heidegger’s lessons, especially Freiburg, aspects of the Husserl’s idea of intentionality who suffered a hermeneutic appropriation by Heidegger, will be deployed. The text will focus on the relationship between Husserl’s intentionality and categorial intuition in order to interpret them through the light of hermeneutic and understanding intuition that Heidegger speaks in his 1919’s Kriegsnotsemester.

The Expressional Limits of Formal Language in the Notion of Quantum Observation

In this article I deal with the notion of observation, from a phenomenologically motivated point of view, and its representation mainly by means of the formal language of quantum mechanics. In doing so, I have taken the notion of observation in two diverse contexts. In one context as a notion related with objects of a logical-mathematical theory taken as registered facts of phenomenological perception (Wahrnehmung) inasmuch as this phenomenological idea can also be linked with a process of measurement on the quantum-mechanical level. In another context I have taken it as connected with a notion of temporal constitution basically as it is described in E. Husserl’s texts on the phenomenology of temporal consciousness. Given that mathematical objects as formal-ontological objects can be thought of as abstractions of perceptual objects by means of categorial intuition, the question is whether and under what theoretical assumptions we can, in principle, include quantum objects in abstraction in the class of formal-ontological objects and thus inquire on the limits of their description within a formal-axiomatical theory. On the one hand, I derive an irreducibility on the level of individuals taken in formal representation as syntactical atoms-substrates without any further content and on the other hand a transcendental subjectivity of consciousness objectified as a self-constituted temporal unity upon which it is ultimately grounded the possibility of generation of an abstract predicative universe of discourse.

“Looking” for Intentionality with Heidegger

Phenomenologists find themselves in the unusual position of attempting to describe non-sensuously phenomenal phenomena. Intentionality is one such oddity. It is not sensuously phenomenal, yet Husserl and Heidegger both purport to be able to “read off” its necessary features. Both were well aware that such an enterprise has its difficulties. The primary difficulty is how to make intentionality into an “object.” To do so, a method for directing our “phenomenological vision” is necessary. Heidegger, however, is unable to utilise Husserl’s methods for this purpose. Since the phenomenological method must “follow its matter,” and Heidegger’s matter is different from Husserl’s, Heidegger cannot merely adopt Husserl’s methods. Thus, Heidegger must develop a new method to investigate intentionality. In this paper, I show the ways in which Heidegger’s conception of intentionality diverged from Husserl’s while retaining its core sense, and why intentionality poses particularly difficult methodological problems. Finally, I investigate the new methods Heidegger develops (c. 1925–28) to deal with these problems—categorial intuition, a reformulated version of the reduction, and a form of objectification—and why each of these methods fails.

Recepción y “Crítica inmanente” de Heidegger de la Fenomenología Husserliana

Abstract At the beginning of Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Gesamtausgabe, volume 20), Heidegger extensively puts forward his views against phenomenology, especially that of Husserl, which is the one we are going to consider. By means of what he calls the “fundamental discoveries of phenomenology”, that is, intentionality, categorial intuition and the meaning of the a priori in Husserl’s Logical!nvestigations, Heidegger reaches a definition of phenomenology: “the analytic description of intentionality in its a priori”. Next, Heidegger proceeds to what he characterizes as an “ immanent critique” of phenomenology, that consists in highlighting that in Ideas Husserl does make but omits the fundamental question on “the being of consciousness” and on “the sense of being”, in a way that ends up in being un-phenomenological. We go into Heidegger’ S text in order to consider the legitimacy of its critique and, particularly, its alleged immanence.

Husserl e a fenomenologia heideggeriana da fenomenologia

Abstract Heidegger’ s Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriff offers what could be called a phenomenology of Phenomenology itself, that is: an investigation of its history. The husserlian discovery of the “categorial intuition” appears as the second moment of this history, after Brentano’s “intentionality” and before Heidegger’s own discovery of the “original sense of the a priori”, which constitutes the third moment. Our paper seeks to understand this sequence as a way to answer the leading question of how it may be possible that “to be a intentional object can have any relationship with the being itself”. Or, to put it in another formulation: how is intentionality itself ontologically possible?

Gödel's Path from the Incompleteness Theorems (1931) To Phenomenology (1961)

In a lecture manuscript written around 1961 (Gödel *1961/?), Gödel describes a philosophical path from the incompleteness theorems to Husserl's phenomenology. It is known that Gödel began to study Husserl's work in 1959 and that he continued to do so for many years. During the 1960s, for example, he recommended the sixth investigation of Husserl's Logical Investigations to several logicians for its treatment of categorial intuition (Wang 1997, p. 164). While Gödel may not have been satisfied with what he was able to obtain from philosophy and Husserl's phenomenology, he nonetheless continued to recommend Husserl's work to logicians as late as the 1970s. In this paper I present and discuss the kinds of arguments that led Gödel to the work of Husserl. Among other things, this should help to shed additional light on Gödel's philosophical and scientific ideas and to show to what extent these ideas can be viewed as part of a unified philosophical outlook. Some of the arguments that led Gödel to Husserl's work are only hinted at in Gödel's 1961 paper, but they are developed in much more detail in Gödel's earlier philosophical papers (see especially 1934, *193?, 1944, 1947, *1951, *1953/59). In particular, I focus on arguments concerning Hilbert's program and an early version of Carnap's program.§1. Some ideas from phenomenology. Since Husserl's work is not generally known to mathematical logicians, it may be helpful to mention briefly a few details about his background.

Absolute Subjectivity and Categorial Intuition. An Investigation into the Structure of Hegel’s System

Absolute Subjectivity and Categorial Intuition. An Investigation into the Structure of Hegel’s System