Husserl
Phenomenology: Issues and Method
The Challenge of Psychologism
One of the things that Husserl joins Kant in affirming is the goal of developing philosophy as a
science. Unlike Kant, however, Husserl faced a number of contemporaneous intellectual
movements that cast significant doubt on the very possibility of such a development. The two
most prominent ones were psychologism (and historicism.) Very early in his career, Husserl
recognized (at least in part, due to the work of Frege) that he needed to definitively respond to
the obstacles posed by these theories.
So what is psychologism? In general, psychologism is the tendency to limit the explanation of
human activity to psychological facts. At one level, this is a perfectly natural, and innocuous
process. We often seek to understand the actions of the people around us by speculating on their
psychological states. Other more or less innocent types of psychologistic interpretations are
psychohistory and psychological interpretations of literature.
The problem emerges when we extend the limited scope and value of such explanation to the
whole of human experience. This is particularly dangerous when we attempt to reduce
consciousness to mere psychological facts. On this understanding, psychologism is a species of
naturalism (the attempt to explain consciousness and conscious experience on the basis of purely
natural (though not necessarily physical) facts).
This is much closer to the strict sense of the term psychologism that is Husserl's target: the
attempt to reduce logic to psychology. Crudely put, the question that Husserl seeks to answer is:
is logic, as a normative discipline, a species of psychology, or do its theoretical foundations lie
elsewhere. Husserl is going to assert the latter, ultimately pointing to the ideal character of logic
as the clue to its proper grounding. Let's take a closer look.
Some Key Claims in Husserl’s rejection of psychologism:
1. Logic is a normative discipline. It's focus is not 'what' we think, or even 'how' as a fact we do
think, but how we 'should' think.
2. As normative, logic is the science of the sciences. That is, it is the standard of thinking as
such, and all reasoning in the specific sciences is constrained by this standard.
3. Logic, like any normative discipline requires a foundation in a theoretical discipline. As
purely formal, it has no content itself, no way of accounting for the relationship between the
ideal that it is and what it is an ideal for/of. Such an account can only be provided by a
theoretical discipline.
The question then is: which theoretical discipline provides this foundation for logic. As Husserl
characterizes it, the argument in favor of psychologism has an intuitive strength that seems
difficult to resist.
What is logic a science of? Thinking. Where does thinking happen? In the mind. What is
the science of the mind? Psychology.
Even if we grant this to psychologism, at best what it establishes is that psychology has a role to
play in the foundation of logic. They do not preclude the possibility that there is a realm of 'pure'
logic that falls wholly outside of the sphere of psychology. It is this realm that Husserl is seeking
to delimit.
In general, Husserl opposes psychologism because of what he sees as its absurd consequences.
They fall into two general categories.
1. Empiricistic: as a descriptive science, psychology is limited to the merely probable
conclusions of induction. Yet logic is concerned, at least in part, with what is necessarily,
and not merely probably, true. Psychologism cannot account for the absolute character of
logic.
2. Skeptical: the attempt to reduce logic, to factual psychological laws threatens the absolute
character of logic in another way. Namely, by asserting that logical laws are founded in
contingent
The fact that, in the face of these consequences, people still argue for psychologism is to be
explained by a set of prejudices common not only to the advocates of psychologism, but to their
opponents—prejudices which are so common precisely because they are deeply ingrained in
everyday consciousness.
1. Rules guiding thought must be mental. However, when we consider the normative force of
logical laws, what becomes apparent is that their content is not only prescriptive. That is,
logic is not a 'rule book' for thinking. Rather, logic is a theory of truth. The psychologists
make the mistake of confusing the subjective apprehension of the truth (which admits of a
psychologistic interpretation) with the systematic unity of the truth thus apprehended. The
latter is independent of any particular mode or style of apprehension and it is the task of
'pure' logic to grasp the principles of its systematicity as truth. Husserl insists that the
mistake of the psychologist amounts to confusing the real for the ideal (the empiricistic
error).
2. If, as the pshychologistic approach would suggest, we focus on the mental content of all
logical judgments, any attempt to isolate a 'pure' logic would be fundamentally mistaken.
Here, according to Husserl, psychologism oversteps itself. If this were true, not only would
logic be grounded in psychology, but so would mathematics (thus raising the specter of
skepticism).
3. The last refuge of psychologism is the assertions that logic is really nothing other than the
'inner certainty' of certain forms of judgement. Here too skepticism seems to be the obvious
implication. Is the failure of such certainty to manifest itself to count against logical
certainty itself?
The key to all of these prejudices is a confusion between the real and the ideal. Psychologism
collapses the ideal into the real, thus missing the ideal character of logic. It is this ideal character
that for Husserl is the real object of logical reflection.
The Natural Attitude as the Touchstone of Philosophy
All philosophy starts in the "middle of things," in the context of our everyday concerns and
perspectives. Husserl's term for this 'everyday' mode of existence is the 'natural attitude.' A first
question to ask of any philosophy is, "What do you make of that starting point?" The answer to
the question is crucial. For Husserl, an inadequate response is only slightly better than the failure
to recognize the issue at all.
The first step in adequately addressing the question is to thematize this everyday mode of
existence. Husserl suggests that the best way to do this is to reflectively adopt the first person
perspective. In this perspective, significant dimensions of the natural attitude are revealed. First,
I find that I am in the world. This surrounding world (umwelt) is not formless or empty. It's filled
with things and people that I am more or less immediately or directly concerned with. Of course,
these things and people are not all immediately present to my faculties of perception. The field of
my actual perception is accompanied by a "horizon of indeterminate actuality," a realm of
possible perception that can be made actual by directing my consciousness towards it.
Second, this world is not merely spatially determinate. The same sort of analysis could be
provided for the temporal dimensions of my experience. The present is carried along in a
penumbra of past and future experiences. For both dimensions of my experience, it is possible to
imaginatively vary my standpoint, adopting a different place and different time. Significantly,
such variation itself reveals the same horizonal structures revealed by my present perspective.
Third, the umwelt is not merely a world of space and time. It is as immediately and naturally, a
world of values, of practices, and these values and practices are not external to my involvements
with the umwelt, but rather establish the very character of this involvement.
The next step in our reflective assessment of the natural attitude is to consider the unity of these
various dimensions of our everyday experience of the world. A brief consideration reveals that
all of these various horizons are oriented around me (not me personally, but the reflective
subject). The things I actually perceive now, and the things I only potentially perceive are there
for me. The present is my present, and the past and the future that accompanies it are mine as
well. The value and practical characteristics of the things and persons in the umwelt are
determined by my situation. Husserl names the unity of these strata of sense the "Cogito" in a
conscious invocation of Descartes. My experience of the world is always and constantly oriented
by (intended) my active, conscious life—even when I am unreflective about that activity. I am
always in the world in a particular way. The natural attitude is the most basic and ineliminable
way I am in the world, but I can and often do adopt more limited and specialized attitudes to
accomplish specific purposes (arithmetical attitude constitutes an arithmetical world). A
particularly pervasive and important attitude/world is the intersubjective world. Fundamental to
this world is the natural commitment to the objectivity of our shared world. In fact, Husserl
ultimately argues that the sense "objectivity" requires this intersubjective world for its full
expression.
Given this variety of attitudes/worlds, an important question that still remains is what
distinguishes the natural attitude and its world from other more specialized ones. Husserl
responds by noting that the natural attitude is a pre-thetic attitude, that is, it is prior to and
actually excludes any theoretical analysis. Before any consideration of what it means to
characterize something as actually and factually existing, the natural attitude is our commitment
to this sort of existence for the world of our experience.
Husserl is now in a position to answer the question—what to make of the natural attitude? §31
begins with this answer, "Instead of remaining in this attitude, we propose to alter it radically.”
The intent of this alteration remains obscure. What we first need to consider is the possibility of
altering it. Remember, we've already noted that the natural attitude is an ineliminable component
of our experience. We are from the first committed to the existence of the 'natural' world.
However, the history of philosophy has shown that such a commitment (positing) can be put
aside: Cartesian doubt is only one of the most thoroughgoing (and instructive) examples of this.
What does Descartes' example reveal? The most important thing to recognize is that an
interruption of the natural 'positing' of the world need not take the form of a counter 'positing.'
That is, doubt is not denial. Rather, it is a form of "parenthesizing" of "bracketing." If we
consider the relation of this bracketing to the natural attitude, we discover that it is a specific and
particular mode of consciousness which accompanies, while modifying, this attitude. What
precisely is modified? It is not the fact of our commitment to the 'truth' of the natural attitude.
Rather, it is the tendency to extend that truth, through judgement, to a metaphysical commitment.
What is bracketed or suspended is thus judgment.
The next step is to delimit the phenomenological sense of this epoché. Husserl distinguishes this
sense from both the sophistic (negation) or skeptical (doubting) modalities, which both retain an
implicit judgement, insisting that all judgement has to be suspended (cf. 65c1-2). Two
implications of the phenomenological epoché have to be noted. First, such suspension requires us
to exclude from consideration as a possible foundation for philosophy the findings of the natural
sciences taken as a valid determination of the natural world. I can of course bracket these
propositions and consider them as the offer insight into my experience. Second, the epoché is not
merely a methodological principle (like the positivist demand to purify the sciences of
metaphysical elements). It is a radical reorientation of our conscious apprehension of the world
(cf. 65c2).