Critical Excursus. Phenomenology and the Difficulties of "Self-Observation"
It is clear from what we have just said that phenomenology is not
affected by the methodological scepticism which in empirical psychology
has led so often in parallel case to the denial or improper restriction
of the value of inner experience. Recently H. J. Watt has none the less
believed that he could maintain this skepticism as against
phenomenology, though he has quite failed to grasp the distinctive
meaning of pure phenomenology to which the *Logical Studies* have sought
to provide an introduction, and has not seen how the pure
phenomenological differs from the empirico-psychological situation.
Related as the difficulties on both sides may be, it remains a real
difference whether there is raised the question concerning the range and
the intrinsic value for knowledge of the *existential* states through
which the data of our inner (human) experience are brought to
expression―the question advanced by psychological method; or, on the
other side, the question proper to a phenomenological method, concerning
the intrinsic possibility and range of *essential* states, which, on
the ground of pure reflexion, should concern experiences as such,
considered from the standpoint of their own essence as liberated from
all natural apperception. Yet between the two there subsist inner
relationships, congruences, indeed, in no small measure, which justify
our paying attention to Watt's objections, in particular to remarkable
statements such as the following:
"It is scarcely possible even to
form opinions concerning the way in which one comes to a knowledge of
immediate experience. For it is neither knowledge nor the object of
knowledge, but something different. One cannot see how a record
concerning the experience of experience, even if it has been taken,
could be put on paper." "But this is always the final question of the
fundamental problem of self-observation." "It is now customary to refer
to this absolute description as phenomenology."
Resuming T.
Lipps's expositions, Watt says further: "In contrast to the *known*
reality of the objects of self-observation we have the reality of the
present Ego and the present conscious experiences. This reality is
experienced (merely lived, that is, not "known," not reflectively
apprehended). It is therefore absolute reality." "Very different
opinions may be held," he now adds as his own comment, "as to what one
is to do with this absolute reality...Moreover, it is only a question
here of results of self-observation. If now this observation which is
always retrospective is always a knowledge about experiences we have
just *had* as objects, how should we set up mental states of which we
can know nothing, of which we are only aware? The importance of the
whole discussion turns, in fact, round this point, the origin, namely,
of the notion of an immediate experience which is not knowledge. It must
be possible to observe. Everyone in the last resort experiences, only
he doesn't *know* this. Even if he knew it, how could he know that his
experience is really as absolute as he thinks it to be? Out of whose
head should Phenomenology spring up into life ready-fashioned? Is a
phenomenology possible, and, if so, in what sense? All these questions
press for an answer. Perhaps a discussion of the question of
self-observation undertaken by experimental psychology will shed new
light on the topic. For the problem of phenomenology is one which
necessarily arises for experimental psychology also. Perhaps the
latter's solution will be more cautious since it lacks the supporting
zeal of the discoverer of phenomenology. In any case it has a natural
and spontaneous bias towards inductive method."
In view of the pious
belief in the omnipotence of inductive method which breathes from the
lines just quoted (a belief Watt should hardly be cherishing when he is
meditating upon the conditions of the possibility of this method), it is
truly surprising to hear him confess "that a functional analytic
psychology will never be able to explain the fact of knowledge."
In opposition to these assertions, so characteristic of the psychology
of the present day, and just so far as they are psychologically
intended, we should in the first place have to justify the separation
above referred to between the psychological and the phenomenological
questions, and in this connexion to stress the point that a
phenomenological doctrine of the essence is as little called on to take
an interest in the method which might enable the phenomenologist to
certify the *existence* of those experiences which serve as a basis for
his phenomenological findings, as the geometer is expected to be
interested in determining on methodical lines how the existence of the
figures on the board or the models in the cupboard is to be rendered
convincing. Geometry and phenomenology, as sciences of the pure essence,
know nothing positive concerning real existence. It hangs together with
this, that clear fictions do not only serve these sciences for a
foundation as well as do data of actual perception and experience, but
to a certain extent even better.
Now if phenomenology also has no
existential judgments to make concerning experiences (*Erlebnisse*),
thus no "experimentings" (*Erfahrungen*) and "observings" in the natural
sense in which a science of facts must find support in such acts, it
makes none the less, as a fundamental condition of its possibility,
positive affirmations concerning unreflective experiences. These it owes
to reflexion, or more accurately, to reflective intuition of the
essence. Consequently the skeptical doubts concerning self-observation,
in so far as these doubts spread in a way easy to understand, from
reflexion as immanent to every reflexion generally, come under the ken
of phenomenology also.
And, indeed, what could we make of
phenomenology if we "cannot see how a record concerning the experiencing
of experience, even if it has been taken, could be put on paper?" What
could we make of it if it had to make statements concerning the essence
of known reflective experiences but not concerning the essence of
experiences as such? What could be done if it were "scarcely possible
even to hold opinions concerning the way in which one comes to a
knowledge of immediate experiences," or to a knowledge of one's essence?
It may be that the phenomenologist has no existential judgments to pass
on the experiences which come before him as the examples on which his
ideal formations depend. Yes, one might object, but he sees in these
ideal formations only ideas of that which at the moment he has before
him as an illustration. As his glance turns towards the experience, it
first becomes that which now offers itself to his gaze; as he looks
away, it becomes something else. The essence apprehended is essence only
of the reflective experience, and the supposition that through
reflexion one can win absolutely valid knowledge which is valid for
experiences generally, reflective or unreflective, is wholly ungrounded.
"How can we set up mental states," though it be only as essential
possibilities, "of which we can know nothing?"
Clearly this concerns
every kind of reflexion, although in phenomenology each separate kind
claims to be a source of absolute knowledge. In fancy a thing, it may
even be a centaur, hovers before my eyes. I believe myself to know that
it manifests itself under certain "modes of appearance," and in certain
"sensory variations of the perspective kind," apprehensions and the
like. I believe myself to have the *essential* insight that an object of
this kind *can* be viewed only under modes of appearance of this
particular kind, only through these functions of perspective
manifestations, and whatever else may play a part here. But as I keep my
centaur in view, I have not in view its modes of appearance, its
perspective data, its apprehended meanings; and when I comprehend its
essence, I do not comprehend these and their essence. For this there is
needed a certain turn of reflective insight, and this renders fluid the
whole experience with modifying effect; thus in the new ideal formation I
have something new before my eyes, and should not maintain that I have
reached essential components of the unreflective experience. I should
not maintain that it belongs to the essence of a thing as such to
exhibit itself in the form of "appearances," manifesting itself in the
indicated way in perspective and through sensory data, which on their
side must submit to apprehension, and so forth.
The difficulty
obviously bears on the analyses of consciousness also in respect of the
"meaning" of the intentional experiences, of all that which belongs to
the supposed, to the object intentionally referred to, as such, to the
meaning of a statement, and the like. For these also are analyses
conducted with a scheme of specially directed reflexions. Watt himself
goes even so far as to say: "Psychology must reach a clear understanding
that with self-observation the objective relation of the experiences to
be described is changed. This change has perhaps a greater significance
than one is inclined to believe." If Watt is right, we should be
maintaining too much when, in self-observation, we set it down that we
had just been attending here to his book and were continuing to do so.
That held good no doubt prior to reflexion. Reflexion, however, changed
the attentive "experience to be described," and indeed (according to
Watt) in respect of the objective relation.
Every genuine
scepticism, whatever its type and orientation may be, can be recognized
by this fundamental absurdity, that in the arguments it uses it
presupposes implicitly, as the conditions of the possibility of its
validity, precisely that which it denies in its own theses. It is easy
to recognize the presence of this feature in the arguments we are
considering. He who merely says, I doubt the significance of reflexion
for knowledge, maintains an absurdity. For as he asserts he doubts, he
reflects, and to set this assertion forth as valid presupposes that
reflexion *has* really and without a doubt (for the case in hand) the
very cognitive value upon which doubt has been cast, that it does *not*
alter the objective relation, that the unreflective experience does
*not* forfeit its essence through the transition into reflexion.
Further: In the arguments considered reflexion is continually referred
to as a fact, and there is much talk as to what causes it or could not
cause it; and at the same time very naturally "unknown," unreflective
experiences are also referred to as facts, namely, as those out of which
the reflective grow. Thus a *knowledge* of unreflective experiences
including unreflective reflexions is presupposed throughout, whilst at
the same time the possibility of such knowledge is put in question. That
happens, in so far as doubt arises as to the possibility of making
*any* statement *whatsoever* concerning the content of unreflective
experience and the work of reflexion upon it: how far does reflexion
alter the original experience, and does it not falsify, so to speak, by
converting it into something totally different from what it was?
But
it is clear that if this doubt and the possibility which arises out of
it were justified, there would not remain the slightest justification
for the certainty that an unreflective experience or a reflexion exists
or can exist at all. It is further clear that this certainty which, as
we know, was the constant presupposition throughout can be known only
through reflexion, and that it can be grounded as immediate knowledge
only on reflective, dator intuition. So too as regards the assertion of
the reality or possibility of the modifications which follow on
reflexion. *Are* the like, however, given through intuition, they are
given within an intuitional content; thus it is absurd to maintain that
there is here nothing knowable, nothing respecting the content of the
unreflected experience and the type of modification which it undergoes.
This suffices clearly to expose the absurdity. Here, as everywhere,
skepticism loses its force by harking back from verbal discussions to
the essential intuition, the primordial dator intuition and the
sovereign right which it possesses in itself. Everything depends on
whether we really set this intuition in action, and are able to raise
the matter in question into the light of genuine essential clearness:
whether we can grasp expositions such as we have attempted in the
previous paragraph in the same intuitive way as that in which they are
carried out and presented.
The phenomena of reflexion are in fact a
sphere of pure and perhaps of the clearest data. It is an *essential
insight* always attainable because immediate; that, from the objectively
given, as such, a reflective glance can be transferred to the
object-giving consciousness and its subject; from the perceived, the
corporeally "there" to the perceiving act; from the remembered, as it
"hovers" before us as such, as "having been," to the remembering; from
the statement as it comes from the given content to the stating
activity, and so forth; whereby the perceiving comes to be given as a
perceiving of just this perceived object, the momentary consciousness as
the consciousness of just this momentary object. It is evident that
essentially―not therefore merely on accidental grounds, merely "perhaps
for us" and our contingent "psychological constitution"―it is only
through reflexions of this kind that such a thing as consciousness or
conscious content (in a real or intentional sense) can become known.
Therefore God Himself is subject to this absolute and transparent
necessity, just as surely as He is to the insight that 2 + 1 = 1 + 2.
Even He could win a knowledge of His consciousness and its content only
through reflexion.
This implies that reflexion cannot be entangled
in any antinomian conflict with the Ideal of perfect knowledge. Every
type of being, as we have already had to insist more than once, has ways
of being given which are essentially *its own*, and therewith its own
ways as regards methods of knowledge. It is strictly absurd in this
connexion to treat essential peculiarities as defects, to the extent
even of imputing them as contingent, empirical defects to "our human"
way of knowing. Another question which must also be considered on lines
of essential insight concerns the possible "range" of this or that type
of knowledge, the question how we are to guard against statements which
go beyond what is really given at the moment and transcend the eidetic
grasp; and still another question is that of the methods proper to
*empirical* thinking: how we humans, as psychologists may be, must
proceed under the given psychological conditions so as to confer on our
human knowledge as much dignity as the case admits of.
We must
lay stress, moreover, on the point that our repeated recourse to insight
(self-evidence or intuition) here as elsewhere is no mere form of
speaking, but in the sense of the Introductory Section, signifies the
regress to that which is ultimate in all knowledge, precisely as it does
when we speak of insight in connexion with the most primitive logical
and arithmetical axioms. But he who has learnt to grasp with insight
what is given in the sphere of consciousness will not be able to read
without astonishment statements like the one already cited: "it is not
possible to form any opinions concerning the way in which one comes to a
knowledge of immediate experience." From such words one can only gather
how strange to modern psychology essential analysis in its immanent
aspect still is, although it gives the only possible method for fixing
the concepts which must prove determinative in all immanent
psychological description.
In the problems of reflexion here
discussed, the inner connexion between phenomenology and psychology is
brought home to us with special force. Every description of Essential
Being which relates to types of experience provides an unconditionally
valid norm for the possibilities of empirical existence. Naturally this
also applies in particular to all the types of experience which even for
psychological method are part of the mental life, as it holds good
generally for all modes of inner experience. Thus phenomenology is the
court of appeal for the fundamental questions of psychological
methodology. The general conclusions which it has reached must be
recognized and, as occasion requires, adopted by the psychologist as the
condition for the possibility of all further developments of method in
his field. What conflicts with it bears the stamp of *intrinsic
psychological absurdity*, just as in the physical sphere every conflict
with geometrical truths and the truths of the ontology of nature in
general bears the stamp of *intrinsic absurdity in natural science*.
In accordance herewith we can trace an intrinsic absurdity of this kind
in the hope expressed that the sceptical doubts concerning the
possibility of self-observation may be overcome through *psychological
induction* by the way of experimental psychology. Here again it is just
as though one wished to overcome the corresponding skepticism in the
domain of the knowledge of physical nature, the doubt whether in the end
every external perception would not prove deceptive (since each, taken
singly, could really deceive us) by means of experimental physics, which
indeed presupposes at every step the authority of external perception.
Moreover, what is here stated in very general terms should become more
convincing in the light of all that follows, more particularly through
the clearing discussions concerning the scope of reflective essential
insight. The relations here touched on between phenomenology (for
between the eidetic psychology which here, for provisional reasons, is
not yet separated off from it, and in any case is inwardly bound up with
it) and psychology as an empirical science are to be discussed and
clarified with all the deep problems they give rise to in the Second
Book of this whole treatise. I am sure of this, that at a time not so
very far distant it will have become a commonly accepted conviction that
phenomenology (or eidetic psychology) is, methodologically, the basic
science for empirical psychology, just as the material (*sachhaltig*)
mathematical disciplines (e.g., geometry and kinematics) are basic for
physics.
The old ontological doctrine, *that the knowledge of
"possibilities" must precede that of actualities (*Wirklichkeiten*) is,
in my opinion, in so far as it is rightly understood and properly
utilized, a really great truth."
―Edmund Husserl, from_Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology_. Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson, pp. 204-213
