Christopher Gutland

This article is dedicated to the intention of meaning as a core concept in the clarification of knowledge in Husserl's Logical Investigations. First, the two components "meaning" and "intention" are analyzed in detail. The resulting ambiguities of the expression "meaning intention" are then explored phenomenologically. This leads to aporias concerning meaning intentions directed at individual objects and so-called significative intentions. Both aporias are examined and solutions are developed. After refuting the origin of logical meanings in sensory intuitions with Husserl's own counterexamples, the focus shifts to the investigation of meaning-consciousness as such. It becomes clear how meaning-consciousness originally creates meanings in a wide variety of acts, not only in perception and imagination, and how one must consistently distinguish between the sensory fullness and the intellectual clarity of meaning. This paves the way for studies and comparisons of how meaning-consciousness functions in all types of acts.

This article demonstrates how Fichte, through intellectual intuition, seeks to investigate the a priori in a manner closely resembling Kant's analytic judgments, while Husserl's categorical intuition approximates Kant's synthetic a priori judgments. To illustrate these differing approaches of Fichte and Husserl to Kant, Kant's distinction between synthetic and analytic judgments is first recapitulated. Subsequently, it is shown how Fichte initially seeks to investigate the a priori purely within conceptual-analytical contexts, without recourse to sensibility, space, or time. The parallels between Kant's synthetic a priori judgments and Husserl's categorical intuition are then examined. Here, it becomes clear how Husserl considers the original givenness of essence impossible without a grounding in sensibility, and therefore, throughout his life, makes the experience of sensibility a condition for a priori investigation of essence. As a possible solution to the problems that arise on both paths, a more in-depth exploration of the ego's activity is recommended in the end.

Although Husserl explicitly asserted that we can experience ideas authentically, he believed throughout his life that the enriched giving of ideas is only possible when grounded in sensibility. However, Husserl's discussions on how the mere symbolic meaning of ideas differs from their enriched giving, and on the related question of the relationship of enrichment as a whole, vary drastically across different texts. The fundamental problem of Husserl's concept of enrichment will be explained through several of the most important elements of enrichment that he considered: sensibility, spatiality, psychological bonds, the synthesis of partial intentions, linguistic phenomena (words and sentences), and finally, conceptual expression. As the analysis deepens, it will become increasingly clear that Husserl unconsciously presupposes a genuine experience of ideas within the relationship of enrichment, without explicitly pointing to this phenomenologically.

This article addresses Husserl’s attempt to differentiate between transcendental phenomenology and eidetic psychology. The thesis is: The distinction remained problematic so that Husserl’s analyses are often valuable contributions to psychology that, however, aremistaken to be epistemology. It is shown how and why the confusion of epistemological and psychological investigations harbors the danger of a psychologism. The article shows how becoming conscious of consciousness leads to a kind of reduplication of the world and why this led Husserl to give psychology an epistemological priority.On the other hand, it considers where and how the concern of epistemology and psychological investigations on the genesis of consciousness can bemethodologically separated. Finally, it offers perspectives on howHusserl’s psychological contributions can be made fruitful for the project of a phenomenological psychology.

This article phenomenologically contrasts the experience of sensations and concepts as two forms of psychological awareness of non-psychological content. While the contents of sensations inform us about physical states and processes, concepts inform us about essences and essential structures. In conscious awareness, thus, the fields of physics, psychology, and logic become intertwined. This article uses phenomenology to distinguish between these different fields based on the way we experience them. While investigating the experiences of the related act types of sensing and thinking, parallels are discovered between sensing and thinking and between imagining and judging. The article concludes with a closer examination of the conscious awareness of essences.

This article conducts a phenomenological exploration of how Chinese pictographs could function as language signs before their visual resemblance to their referents entirely faded. The aim is to reassess the dominant explanation of this development, namely, William Boltz’s phonocentric view that writing must derive meaning through sound. Drawing on Husserlian phenomenology, the article advances the thesis that pictographs can motivate linguistic meaning directly through visual schematism, not only through association with spoken words. Methodologically, it analyzes Husserl’s distinctions between image-consciousness, hieroglyphs, and linguistic sign-consciousness to explicate how Chinese pictographs prevent the opening of an image space and instead prompt the constitution of general meanings that are further intersubjectively stabilized through conventionalization. The result is a phenomenological model that not only counters phonocentric accounts but also clarifies how pictographs, despite their visual resemblance, could function as linguistic signs. The conclusion shows that written graphs can function as words independently of speech, thereby complementing sinological and linguistic research with a phenomenological account of meaning constitution.

Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s 1913/1914 revisions, this article applies his modality‑neutral account of signification to the Chinese script to challenge phonocentrism. After outlining relevant features of Chinese, it introduces phonocentrism via William Boltz, who holds that written graphs convey linguistic meaning only through associated word sounds. Husserl’s revision, by contrast, holds that a sign is linguistic insofar as it functions within grammatical structures that motivate categorial acts, not insofar as it is acoustic. Accordingly, it is shown phenomenologically how the non‑alphabetic Chinese script can meet this condition even in the absence of phonetic mediation. The paper thus undercuts phonocentrism by showing, via Chinese, that written signs can be linguistic without phonetic mediation and that writing is a primary linguistic modality.

This article contrasts the views of the philosophers Husserl and Hegel on quantification in science and compares their proposals for conducting rigorous qualitative research. Both deem quantification integral to science, but furthermore proposed methodologies to investigate qualitative necessities achieved by a shift in conscious activity and awareness. However, their methodologies differ significantly. While Husserl rejects idealization and instead proposes intuitive means to ideate qualitative essential relations, Hegel suggests idealizing less one-sidedly, namely, qualitatively over and above quantitatively. The article first examines how quantification is achieved and how it contrasts with measuring. This contrast reveals that measuring implies knowledge of qualities. These qualities, however, thus far remain oddly external to the mathematical relations linking the various established equations. The article then follows Husserl’s reconstruction of the development of science to illustrate the dismissal of many experiential qualities and how philosophy further amplified skepticism about science on qualities. Husserl’s notion of the life-world and the method of eidetic variation are then introduced as means to counterbalance mathematical proceedings in science. However, this method reveals both eidetic qualitative structures and psychical structures without being able to distinguish between them. It is thus susceptible to idiosyncratic, traditional, and cultural biases. Subsequently, Hegel’s description of the shift in conscious experience that sets qualitative from quantitative thinking apart is introduced. This shift may overcome the biases, but it faces skepticism that calls for further investigation of the experience of different kinds of thinking.

Over several decades, Liangkang Ni has developed a distinctive perspective on the parallels and divergences between Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and Buddhism, particularly Yogācāra Buddhism. Despite the significance of his contributions, Ni’s writings remain largely unavailable in English and have thus had limited exposure in Western phenomenological discourse. This article addresses that gap by offering a thematic reconstruction of Ni’s key insights. The first part examines Ni’s reading of Husserl’s own philosophical reflections on Buddhism in relation to phenomenology. The second part explores Ni’s reconstruction of genetic and structural parallels between Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and Yogācāradoctrines such as vijñaptimātra (consciousness-only), ālaya-vijñāna, and manas. The article assumes some familiarity with Husserl and uses his framework as an entry point to introduce Buddhist concepts. Rather than offering new empirical data, the article provides conceptual clarification and theoretical integration aimed at informing contemporary debates in consciousness studies.

This book draws connections between recent advances in analytic philosophy of mind and insights from the rich phenomenological tradition concerning the nature of thinking. By combining both analytic and continental approaches, the volume arrives at a more comprehensive understanding of the mental process of "thinking" and the experience and manipulation of objects of thought. Contributors scrutinize aspects of thinking that have a common grounding in both the phenomenological and analytic tradition: perception, language, logic, embodiment and situatedness due to individual history or current experience. This collection serves to broaden and enrich the current debate over "cognitive phenomenology," and lays the foundations for further dialogue between analytic and continental approaches to the phenomenal character of thinking.

This article investigates the epistemological potential of knowing natural causality in light of the East Coast versus West Coast controversy that arose around Husserl’s notion of the noema. It starts out by portraying how, since Hume and Kant, the epistemology of causality has become more and more entangled in consciousness. After introducing the noema discussion, the article reveals the difficulties each position faces once their theses are applied to natural causality. Afterwards, a suggestion for how to view the relation between a real thing or process like causality and its noema is developed. The article closes with a viewof future interdisciplinary endeavors between phenomenology and natural science by rethinking the notion of ‘phenomenon’.

Gibt es eine Erfahrung des Denkens und der Gedanken? Wenn ja, wie ist sie aufzufinden und wie zu beschreiben? Eine Antwort wird ausgehend von Husserls Phanomenologie gegeben, wobei die Cognitive Phenomenology-Debatte und auch Hegels Ansatz zum Denken wichtige Erganzungen erlauben. Nach einer Analyse des gedanklichen Anteils im Empfinden und im naturlichen Welterleben wird das Verhaltnis von Denken, Sprechen und Urteilen erarbeitet. Indem dabei ein phanomenologisches Vorurteil entlarvt wird, kann schliesslich der Bereich des reinen Denkens betreten und seine Erfahrung beschrieben werden.

Do we experience our thoughts and thinking, or are they subpersonal factors that functionally determine our experience without themselves being experienced? And if we do experience them, do they have a certain qualitative feel to them like pain or color sensations? Within philosophy of mind, these questions are seminal and have led to an ongoing debate over ‘cognitive phenomenology.’ Although both proponents and opponents of the existence and relevance of cognitive phenomenology have presented intriguing arguments, to this day the debate does not yield a conclusive, encompassing, and convincing answer pertaining to the question of whether thinking does or can have an experiential character.