ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD | OFFICIAL RELEASE | 2011

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PRESENTATION (Vorstellung). Husserl identifies numerous senses of the term “presentation,” a fact that indicates the danger in the use of the word and that motivates Husserl’s language of “objectifying act.”

The senses important for logic and the theory of knowledge are: 1. A presentation is the act-matter by virtue of which an object is presented in a determinate manner, as such and such; 2. A presentation is a “mere presentation,” that is, a qualitative modification of belief such that the existence of the object is neither posited nor denied; 3. A presentation is a nominal act; 4. A presentation is an objectifying act; 5. A presentation is an intuition of the presented object.

Among these logical senses, the first and the fourth are primary. A presentation, in other words, is an act that presents an object to an experiencing subject, an objectifying act; presentations in this sense are on a par with and include perceptions, judgments, memories and the like. Such objectifying acts by virtue of their matter present the object in a determinate manner, as such and such. The presentation in this latter sense underlies the concrete act whether it is a “mere” presentation (in the sense of a non-positing objectifying act), a positing objectifying act, a complex act that includes either categorial or non-objectifying moments (for example, an emotion), or an intuition, whether simple or categorial.

Husserl also identifies additional, ordinary senses of “presentation”: 6. an imagining or remembering (as opposed to a perceiving); 7. a physical image of a thing, such as a painting; 8. a representation (Repräsentation) that provokes presentations and does duty for them, that is, a sign, whether a depiction or a linguistic sign; 9. an image; 10. a presented object; 11. a content of consciousness; 12. an opinion.

Husserl believes that these equivocations in the term “presentation” are dangerous. Most important is to isolate those that are important for logic and the theory of knowledge (that is, senses 1–5) from the everyday uses and to use the logical senses clearly and distinctly. See also CATEGORIAL ACT; CATEGORIAL FORM; CATEGORIAL OBJECT; CATEGORY; POSITING; POSITION-TAKING; PRESENCE.

PRESENTATION (Gegenwärtigung). Husserl uses the term Gegenwärtigung to designate the subset of presentations (Vorstellungen) that present an object originally, that is, intuitively. Such a presentation intuitively presents (gegenwärtigt) an object by virtue of the fact that it comprises filled intentional moments originally and directly presenting (gegenwärtigend) a side or aspect of an object. Other moments in the act make present or re-present (vergegenwärtigt) those sides and aspects of the object that are not originally and directly present. Hence, while the concrete act or presentation directly and originally presents its concrete object, not every moment within the act originally makes present its correlate, that is, the side or aspect of the object to which it is directed. See also APPERCEPTION (Apperzeption); FULL INTENTION; FULLNESS; INTUITION; PERCEPTION (Perzeption); RE-PRESENTATION (Vergegenwärtigung).

OBJECTIFYING ACT. Objectifying acts—the class of acts denoted by what Husserl takes to be the most precise sense of the term “presentation”— are those acts in which something becomes objective to us in a determinate manner. Objectifying acts may be either pre-predicative or predicative, that is, objectifying acts include both nominal and perceptual acts as well as judgmental and propositional acts. The class of objectifying acts also includes both positing and non-positing acts. Objectifying acts may also involve either intuitive acts that present an object directly and include intuitive fullness or they may be (founded) signifying acts with their signitive intentions that present an object through the medium of a sign—a complex of words, for example.

Hence, an objectifying act presents an object to consciousness, which object might be either an individual or a state of affairs and which object might or might not be meant as existent. The objectifying act establishes both the act’s objective sense and its referent.

In the Logical Investigations, Husserl adopts the view that acts, including objectifying acts, are composed of act-quality and act-matter, and the sense and referent of an act is determined primarily by its matter. Hence, Husserl claims that Franz Brentano’s thesis that every act is either a presentation or based on a presentation is reinterpreted as the claim that every intentional experience is either an objectifying act or based on an objectifying act. In the latter case, the founded act must contain an objectifying act such that the matter of the founded act is (at least in part) the same as the matter of the objectifying act that can be separated out from the founded act. Ultimately, according to Husserl, every act must be grounded in a simple nominal or perceptual act such that the matter of the founded act includes the matter of the objectifying act that presents the unarticulated referent with a certain significance, and such that the quality of the founded act is rooted in the objectifying quality of the underlying act. In the works from Ideas I on, however, Husserl transforms what he had called the matter of the act into the noematic sense contained within the full noema. It is this noematic sense that determines the referent. Hence, although Husserl does not drop the language of objectifying acts, the notion of noematic sense takes over in Husserl’s later philosophy some of the role of the objectifying act. In the later works, in other words, the noematic sense of the founded act must have as a component the noematic sense (objective sense) proper to an originally objectifying act, that is, a nominal or perceptual act that could occur independently of the founded stratum.

Moreover, in works subsequent to the Logical Investigations, Husserl also draws a distinction between significative intentions and signitive intentions. The former are the intentions belonging to objectifying acts, whereas the latter are the intentions belonging to expressive acts. The former present an object with a certain significance, whereas the latter are the intentions belonging to the act expressing in words the sense belonging to the objectifying act. See also FOUNDED MOMENT; INTUITION; JUDGMENT; NOMINAL ACT; PERCEPTION.

NOESIS. Husserl introduced the technical term noesis to refer to what he had formerly identified as the apprehension of an object in experience, an apprehension that bears the mark of intentionality. Noesis refers, then, to the real (reell) content of the experience, namely, the meaning-intention which is directed toward an object in a determinate manner and with certain positional or thetic characteristics. In a broad sense, the term can be used to refer to the subjective side of the intentional correlation, but in its proper sense it refers only to the apprehension or intending of the object. See also NOEMA; REAL CONTENTS.

NOEMATIC SENSE. Husserl distinguishes within the noema two moments: the thetic characteristic and the noematic sense. Husserl’s characterization of the noema as “the perceived [object] as perceived,” “the remembered [object] as remembered,” “the judged [state of affairs] as judged,” or, more generally “the intended [object] just as intended” foreshadows this distinction. The object’s manners of givenness with its appropriate thetic characteristic—for example, in perception the object as perceived is believed to exist—is distinguished from the noematic sense. Husserl uses the image of a core to distinguish the noematic sense from the full noema; the noematic sense is at the core of the full noema. The noematic sense, then, corresponds to what Husserl had formerly called act-matter, and it accounts for the presentation of the object in a determinate manner. In particular, the identical object is given with its “attributes” or, as Husserl sometimes puts it, its “predicates.” This reveals that the noematic sense is itself further distinguished into two moments: the determinable X which is the formal placeholder for the identical object and the attributes or predicates belonging to or predicable of that object.

NOEMA. Husserl introduced the technical term noema in Ideas I (1913) to denote the intentional object of conscious experience. In that work he describes the intentionality of experience as a noesis-noema correlation. Whereas noesis refers to a real (reell) content of experience, viz., the meaning-intention which is directed toward an object in a determinate manner and with a certain positional or thetic characteristic, noema refers to the intentional content of the experience, its “objective” correlate, i.e., the intentional object or the object as intended.

Husserl’s account of the noema, however, appears ambiguous. In speaking of the noema, Husserl uses the language of objects suggesting the noema is the intended object itself but simply as intended (for example, the perceived as such, as perceived); the language of contents (ir-real, ideal, or intentional contents); and the language of sense (that is, language which connects the notion of noema to that of sense as a determinate mode of presentation). This apparent ambiguity has generated much controversy regarding how to interpret the notion of the noema.

Some, for example, Johannes Daubert, criticized the very idea of the noema. Among those who did not, however, there a rose two main interpretations. The first emphasizes the similarities between Gottlob Frege’s notion of sense and Husserl’s notion of the noema. On this view, the noema is an abstract entity that mediates the relation of the noesis to the intended object. The view combines two claims: the intentional object or noema is the intentional content but not the intended object of the act, and the noema is an abstract, intensional entity, which is to be understood as a linguistically expressible meaning and to be characterized basically as Gottlob Frege characterized meaning. On one version of this interpretation, the noema is an abstract ideal object, that is, a meaning-species that is instantiated in acts or, alternatively, a type that is tokened in individual acts. On another version, the noema is an abstract particular entertained by the act and referring to the intended object.

The second interpretation emphasizes the noema as the intended object precisely as intended, and it is thereby committed to deny the ontological distinction between noema (intentional object) and intended object posited by the first interpretation. On this view, in other words, Husserl’s adoption of the technical term noema is meant to indicate that one is speaking of the intended object from a philosophical, rather than a natural, perspective after having performed the phenomenological reduction and entered the phenomenological attitude. In employing this technical language, Husserl introduces no new existents; he merely transforms the way in which we attend to intended objects. The noema is the intended objectivity philosophically considered, just as it is intended with its significance for us, in relation to our animating interests and concerns, and with certain thetic characteristics. Once again, there are two versions of this interpretation. One characterizes the relation between the intended object and the multiplicity of noemata presenting the single intended object as a whole of noematic parts. On this view, the object, more precisely, is the ideally realizable, but not actually realized or realizable, totality of noemata presenting it. The other version characterizes this relation as an identity-in- a-manifold, wherein each phase of the manifold discloses the identical object in its horizonal connections to other phases of the manifold.

Some, but by no means all, interpreters argue that the differences between the two interpretations are not as marked as they first appear and can be reconciled. Others—again by no means all—argue that both interpretations are correct within a limited range of application—the second interpretation for perceptions, the first for non-perceptual experiences.

These interpretational differences have to do with what Husserl on occasion calls the “full” noema. He distinguishes in the full noema three moments: the thetic characteristic (the noematic correlate of the act-quality), the noematic sense (the assimilation of act-matter into the newly conceived intentional content), and the determinable X (the “innermost moment” of the noema). See also HORIZON; IDEAL CONTENT; IDENTIFICATION; IR-REAL CONTENTS.

JUDGE (urteilen). The infinitive “to judge” (urteilen) means to articulate an object by identifying its moments or properties and predicating them of the object (for example, S is p) or to articulate an object by identifying its pieces as belonging to the whole (for example, S has a) or to articulate an object by identifying the relations into which an object enters with other objects (for example, xRy). See also APOPHANSIS; JUDGMENT (Satz); JUDGMENT (Urteil); LOGIC; PURE LOGICAL GRAMMAR.

INTENTIONAL OBJECT. The intentional object is the intended object just as it is intended. The intentional object is the object intended in a particular manner, that is, as having a particular significance or sense for the subject, and intended in a particular kind of act, that is, an act having a particular act-quality. The intentional object is distinguished from the intended object simpliciter, that is, the object apart from its particular manners of appearing and the object which is an identity appearing in manifold ways. Husserl later calls the intentional object the noema.

INTENTIONAL CONTENT. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl distinguishes three senses of “intentional content”: 1. the intentional object of the act; 2. the (intentional) matter of the act; and 3. the intentional essence of the act.

1. Intentional content as intentional object can be considered from two different perspectives, that of the object which is intended and that of the object as it is intended. While some commentators understand this distinction in ontological terms, others claim that Husserl does not use these two expressions to denote two different entities—an immanent intentional object and a transcendent intended object—but only to indicate two different ways of considering the object: the intended object simpliciter and the same object considered precisely as intended in the act in question. It is the latter perspective that is the phenomenologically more important, for a descriptive account of experience will necessarily turn its attention to the object as experienced. The distinction between the object which is experienced and the object as experienced also points toward Husserl’s view of the intended object as an identical object manifested in a multiplicity of appearances or presentations. In his discussions of the intentional object Husserl also distinguishes the object taken in its entirety and the partial objects to which are directed the constituent parts of the experience intending the identical object. This distinction points toward Husserl’s use of whole/part analyses in his discussions of various kinds of objects, including and especially those whole/part analyses that appeal to the notion of ‘foundation.’

2. Intentional content as act-matter is distinguished, first, from the intentional object of the act and, second, from the act-quality. While the quality of the act determines the act’s kind as perceiving, naming, judging, or the like, the matter of the act determines the act as perceiving this, naming this, judging this, and so forth. The matter, in other words, is that moment in the act that accounts for the act’s intending a particular object in a particular manner. The matter accounts for the act’s reference to the object and fixes the object’s significance or sense in a particular way; it is the interpretative or objective sense by virtue of which the object appears or is significant to us in a particular, more or less determinate manner. The distinction between the quality and the matter of an act plays an important role in the Logical Investigations, but Husserl in later works assimilates the notion of matter to that of noematic sense.

3. Intentional content as intentional essence denotes the unity of quality and matter. Together they form only the essence of the act and not its totality. The act in addition contains as non-essential parts, for example, the contents that are animated or interpreted in the act. The notion of intentional essence as an apprehension animating or interpreting contents plays an important role throughout Husserl’s Logical Investigations, but his view of the structure of intentionality and of how to conceive the relations between the intention and its presenting contents and between the act and its objective sense changes in later works. See also ACT-MATTER; DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE; HYLETIC DATA; IMMANENCE; NOEMA; REPRESENTING CONTENTS.

HYLETIC DATA. Hyletic data include, first, the sensuous contents that present the objective, sensible determinations of an object. This is the fundamental meaning for Husserl of the expressions “sensuous contents” and “hyletic data.” However, hyletic data also include, second, feelings such as sensuous pleasures and pains that are involved in the awareness of the value of objects. And they include, third, what Husserl calls “drives,” the instinctual tendencies that involve bodily feelings of certain kinds. Husserl understands all such hyletic data to be real (reell) moments of experience.

Husserl isolates the basic notion of hyletic data in reflecting on the perception (Wahrnehmung) of material things in space. He imaginatively varies the perception such that the sensible qualities of the intended object remain constant while their appearance to us varies. Husserl attributes this change in appearance to changes in the fullness and vivacity of the really (reell) inherent sensuous contents. He concludes, therefore, that the intentional experience must be composed of two real (reell) moments: an intentional apprehension or noesis and the sensuous contents. The noesis is a form (ìïknÞ) that animates or interprets the sensuous matter (àëç). The basic idea is that the hyletic data are the presenting or representing “stuff” that is really inherent in the experience. However, because hyletic data are sensuous in character, Husserl extends the scope of the term to include all really inherent sensuous moments. Hyletic data do not themselves bear the mark of intentionality; they are referred to an object only by virtue of their being intentionally “formed” by the apprehension.

Originally Husserl thought that all acts have some sort of material stuff or hyletic data to be intentionally formed, but his analyses of both inner time-consciousness and of categorial acts persuaded him otherwise. Consequently, it appears that he retained the doctrine of hyletic data only for the impressional moment, that is, primal impression, within the momentary phase of consciousness. Moreover, although he initially characterized hyletic data as a really inherent moment of the experience, there are places in Husserl’s works where he speaks of hyletic data more noematically as the immediate sensible presence of the objective determination itself. Finally, the broadest sense in which Husserl speaks of hyletic data is to refer that which is passively pregiven as the materials on which active thinking operates. See also EIDETIC VARIATION; NOEMA.

EMPTY INTENTION. An empty intention is one that re-presents or makes present an object that is absent to consciousness. Empty intentions are contrasted with full intentions. Full intentions either present an object intuitively by containing sensuous contents that directly present a side or aspect of the object, or they present an object that, while not intuitively present, is presented with the aid of contents that are re-presented by virtue of the living present’s retention of previously experienced (erlebt) sensuous contents. Empty intentions, on the other hand, make an object present without an intuitive basis for the presentation. That is, the object is presented in a way that involves no sensuous basis. Most importantly, empty intentions present an object signitively in language, wherein the sensuous basis of the presentation is not sensuous contents presenting the determinations of the object but a sensible sign (a written or spoken word) whose signification or meaning refers to the absent object. See also HYLETIC DATA; INTUITION; SIGNIFICATIVE INTENTION; SIGNITIVE INTENTION.

APPRESENTATION.

1. Appresentation is the “presentation” that accompanies a presentation. Within the momentary phase of an experience, only the moment of primal impressional directly presents its object or, more precisely, a particular aspect of the object. However, one is also aware in the same experience of other aspects of the directly presented object and of other, related objects as the horizon of what is directly presented. This horizonal, appresentational awareness is made possible by two other moments of the momentary phase, namely, retention and protention. Appresentation, then, is the experiencing, the “re-presenting,” or “making present” of the not directly presented.

2. “Appresentation” can also refer to what is appresented. Whereas the directly experienced aspect is presented, the not directly presented aspects are appresented. See also APPERCEPTION; INTUITION; PERCEPTION (Perzeption); PERCEPTION (Wahrnehmung).

APPERCEPTION (Apperzeption).

1. Apperception is the “perception” that accompanies direct perception (Perzeption). There are two aspects to apperception. The first is the act’s interpretive apprehension of the presenting or representing contents really inhering in the act. The second refers to the fact—at least within Husserl’s developed theory of inner time-consciousness after about 1907–1909—that within the momentary phase of a perception (Wahrnehmung), only primal impression animates hyletic data, that is, only primal impression directly grasps the genuinely appearing side or aspect of the object. However, the perceiver is also perceptually aware of the just seen and still to be perceived sides or aspects of the object as well as other objects spatially or thematically related to the perceived object. The awareness of the not directly perceived sides and of thematically related objects forms the horizon of what is directly perceived. This awareness is made possible by the two other moments of the momentary phase, namely, retention and protention. The second aspect of apperception, then, is the perceptual awareness, the “perceiving,” of the not directly perceived sides or aspects of the object as well as the spatial and thematic background of what is perceived.

2. “Apperception” is also used in a wider sense beyond the analysis of perceptual experiences to designate those moments of an experience that grasp other aspects of the same object as well as related objects in the horizon of the experienced object.

3. “Apperception” can also refer to what is apperceived. Whereas the directly perceived side or aspect (a “perception” in the sense of a percept) is perceived, the not directly perceived sides or aspects—the just perceived and yet to be perceived sides and aspects (the “apperception” in the sense of an “appercept”)—are apperceived. See also APPRESENTATION; INTUITION; PRESENTATION (Gegenwärtigung); RE-PRESENTATION (Vergegenwärtigung).