Reiterations, Transformations, and Combinations of Purely Mental and Pictorial Representations

Abstract

In the last chapter of this study, I wish to introduce a few more complex mental activities of representation. Recall that, on the present account, mental activities are quite generally considered in their function of establishing reference to something objective. Basic forms of activities of representing, in particular, have been analyzed in terms of intentional relations between activities of presenting something and of representing something. These relations were explained in terms of intentional implication and modification. Different ways of “being intentionally implied/modified” were taken to be so many intentional properties defining the conceptual content of phenomenological forms of mental representation.

He who is practiced in consciousness-reflections (and has previously learned to see any data of intentionality of whatever sort) will see precisely without any further difficulty the levels of consciousness which present themselves with phantasies in phantasies or with memories in memories or in phantasies. One will then see too what is inherent in the essential sort of this hierarchical formation: namely that every phantasy of a higher level can be freely converted into a direct phantasy of what was indirectly phantasied in it, whereas this free possibility does not take place in going over from phantasy to the corresponding perception.

Husserl (1913), § 112, p. 227¹