Abstract
One must establish that a thing is possible before one can begin the inquiry into the conditions of its possibility. One may, of course, assume the existence of the thing as a fact; but in an area where there is disagreement, there is at least a preliminary task that must be faced: that of answering the opposing arguments. Husserl meets these necessities in the “Prolegomena” to the Logische Untersuchungen. In a rather curious method of procedure, he argues that objective knowledge is possible because the denial of objective knowledge is not possible. More concretely, he may be regarded as arguing that any theory which denies the possibility of objectively valid knowledge slips into relativism. Relativism itself, however, collapses into scepticism — a position which undermines the possible validity of the original theory.
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Notes
In Husserl’s words, “To being in itself correspond truths in themselves and to these correspond fixed and unambiguous expressions in themselves” (LU, Tüb. ed., II/1, 90; F., p. 322). Husserl also asserts in the same passage, “Everything that exists is knowable `in itself’ and its being is a being definite in content, one that documents itself in such and such `truths in themselves’ ” (Ibid., II/ 1, 90; F., 321). This sentiment, which is repeated throughout the Logische Untersuchungen, ill accords with De Boer’s somewhat Kantian description of its epistemology: “The world in itself is for it unreachable” (“Zusammenfassung,” op. cit., p. 585). The position of the Logische Untersuchungen, on this point at least, is anti-Kantian. The dominant influence, here, stems from Brentano. As Iso Kern expresses the latter’s position, “It also cannot be said that because the phenomena are codetermined by subjectivity these phenomena do not faithfully reproduce the things in themselves” (Husserl and Kant, Phaenomenologica, No. 16, The Hague, 1964, p. 7). As we shall see, Husserl’s project of “epistemological clarification” involves understanding how subjectivity can both codetermine the phenomena and yet faithfully reproduce and, thus, know things in themselves.
Certain remarks of the late Wittgenstein seem to indicate that his position falls under this definition. The connection between the two is made through the identification of a logical law (or logical proposition), a form of facts (or, linguistically, a form of factual, empirical judgements) and a rule for testing these empirical judgements. Wittgenstein writes: “One could conceive that certain propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were fixed and functioned as a channel for the non-fixed, fluid empirical propositions; and that this relation changed with time because fluid propositions became fixed and the fixed became fluid.” . at one time, the same sentence can be treated as one to be tested by experience, at another, as a rule for testing.“ ”But, then, doesn’t one have to say that there is no sharp boundary between logical propositions and empirical propositions? The unclarity is precisely that of the boundary between a rule and an empirical proposition“ (On Certainty, §§96. 98, 319; eds. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. my own, New York, 1972). For Husserl, the ”fluidity“ of a logical law or rule makes it contingent.
See Husserl’s citations from the works of Mill and Erdmann (LU, Tüb. ed., I, 81; F., p. 113;Ibid., I,137; F., p. 145).
See LU, Tüb. ed.,I, 56–57;F.,pp.94–95 andlbid., 11/1,347; F., pp. 536; also LU, Halle ed., II, 336; F., pp. 545–46.
See LU, Tüb. ed., I, 65; F., p. 101. Cf. Hume, A Treatise of Human Understanding, Bk. I, Part IV, sec. 1.
In terms of the analogy, the resemblance could at least be as slight as that between the statement of the electronic events inside the calculator and the statement of the arithmetical laws which the figures on its face supposedly follow. The same disparity would occur in a calculator built on the principle of the gear and lever — i.e., a mechanical adding machine.
Gunther Stent extends the notion of this relativity to the very basic concepts of scientific laws — i.e., space, time and causality. See his “Limits to the Scientific Understanding of Man,” Science, CLXXXVII (1974), 1054. Stent’s position is not very different from those considered by Husserl in LU, “Prol.,” §§52–56.
When we combine this with the Darwinian theory of the biological evolution of the subject, we achieve the type of scepticism described in Die Idee der Phän.; Biemel ed., p. 21. See also LU, “Prol.,” §36, nos. 4–6.
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Mensch, J.R. (1981). The Refutation of Psychologism. In: The Question of Being in Husserl’s Logical Investigations . Phaenomenologica, vol 81. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3446-2_2
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