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.

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.

Still, in perception one is not completely free to posit just any object at all as being the thing one perceives: the noesis must give a Sinn that is compatible with the sensory evidence in the perception. The sensory content of perception thus places certain constraints, or boundary conditions, on the Sinn and what it can prescribe. And such constraints contribute much to our sense of the “reality” of those objects that we perceive.

Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith - Theory of Intentionality