Juha Himanka

Fernando Floresin ja Terry Winogradin Understanding Computers and Cognition poikkeaa perinteisistä ohjelmoinnin lähtökohtien pohdinnoista. Teoksessa asetetaan syrjään lähtökohta, jota tekijät kutsuvat rationalistiseksi perinteeksi, ja syvennytään sen sijaan fenomenologiaan. Keskeinen tekijä tässä siirtymässä on representaationhypoteesin hylkääminen. Kirjoittajat nojaavat lähinnä Martin Heideggerin, Hans-Georg Gadamerin ja Humberto Maturanan tuotantoon, mutta tässä artikkelissa lähden liikkeelle Edmund Husserlin fenomenologisesta reduktiosta. Tulkitsen Floresin suorittaneen reduktion hänen päätyessään hylkäämään representaatiot.

Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations was the breakthrough of phenomenology. What made it a breakthrough was the new way of explicating truth or evidence as self-givenness or adequacy. Husserl did however also have another interpretation of truth: evidence as indubitability or certainty of apodicticity. Originally Husserl thought that apodicticity increases the evidence of something already adequately given. Yet, in the first Cartesian Meditation Husserl differentiates the two modes of evidence. In this article the way to this split up of evidence is elaborated with the help of some recent publications in Husserliana. It is also suggested that the fact that Husserl has two separate views on truth is one reason for the dispersed state of Husserl-research. This article argues that Husserl's early view on evidence adequacy is more original and interesting. The real philosophical challenge, however, is to be able to join the two modes of evidence under one strenge Wissenschaft.

Husserl claimed that reduction is the true starting point of phenomenological research, but to figure out how this deed should actually be accomplished has turned out to be a very challenging task. In this study, I explicate how Husserl accomplished reduction during his series of lectures entitled The Idea of Phenomenology. He does not state it explicitly, but what actually happened on the last day of the lectures can be seen as consistent with his descriptions of reduction as an act. Understood in this way, reduction is the model of how to do philosophy. The result of Husserl’s reduction is the correlation between appearance and “that which appears” or, to use Husserl’s later terminology, between noēsis and noēma. When this correlation is understood as an outcome of reduction and not as a result of an analysis, we, as readers of Husserl, will be in a better position to avoid natural attitude in our interpretations.

ABSTRACT Edmund Husserl strongly emphasized the importance of reduction to his phenomenology. For his followers, however, it has proved a formidable task to specify exactly how this intricate accomplishment that opens up the possibility for phenomenological research is to be performed. In this article, we study different approaches to gaining access to reduction and conclude by suggesting that we should read Husserliana itself as a set of accomplished reductions. In other words, our task is to pinpoint chapters where the movement of reduction takes place. As an example of such a reading, I will point out events that come about in Husserl???s Idea of Phenomenology. R??SUM?? Husserl a fortement insist?? sur l???importance de la r??duction dans sa ph??nom??nologie. Pour ses disciples, cependant, s???est av??r????tre redoutable la t??che de pr??ciser comment doit??tre ex??cut??e cette r??alisation complexe qui ouvre la possibilit?? pour la recherche ph??nom??nologique. Dans cet article, nous??tudions les diff??rentes approches de la r??duction et nous concluons en sugg??rant que l???ouvrage Husserliana lui-m??me doit se lire comme un ensemble de r??ductions accomplies. Notre t??che consistera donc?? identifier les chapitres o?? a lieu ce mouvement de r??duction.?? titre d???exemple d???une telle lecture, j?????voquerai quelques-uns des??v??nements de L???id??e de la ph??nom??nologie de Husserl.

Husserl claimed that reduction is the true starting point of phenomenological research, but to figure out how this deed should actually be accomplished has turned out to be a very challenging task. In this study, I explicate how Husserl accomplished reduction during his series of lectures entitled The Idea of Phenomenology. He does not state it explicitly, but what actually happened on the last day of the lectures can be seen as consistent with his descriptions of reduction as an act. Understood in this way, reduction is the model of how to do philosophy. The result of Husserl’s reduction is the correlation between appearance and “that which appears” or, to use Husserl’s later terminology, between noēsis and noēma. When this correlation is understood as an outcome of reduction and not as a result of an analysis, we, as readers of Husserl, will be in a better position to avoid natural attitude in our interpretations.

Edmund Husserl’s Nachlass includes a text enclosed in an envelope on which is written: “Overthrow of the Copernican theory in usual interpretation of a world view. The original ark, earth, does not move.” This text was chosen to be one of the first posthumous publications of Husserl. The editor, however, chose to use a less controversial title: “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature.” The title nevertheless does not change the radicality of the text itself; it boldly claims that the earth does not move. Husserl knew that with such a statement he risked becoming a laughing stock. For the Western scientific community the Copernican view of the earth’s movement is the symbol of the victory of science over common sense views and religion.

Evidence is the very core of Husserlian phenomenology, with the term “evidence” signifying for Husserl the phenomenological perspective on the question of truth. In contrast to the conventional philosophical understanding of “truth” in mainly epistemological terms, Husserl’s notion of “evidence”, as elaborated in his Logical Investigations (1900–1), is more essentially ontological, pointing to the way in which a phenomenon becomes clear to us in its constitution. Husserl’s main point in the Sixth Investigation was that we can “see” how evidence functions when we compare something in the fullness of its presence with the emptiness of its absence. This paper considers the example Husserl offers of the room where the lights go off in order to illuminate the breakthrough for phenomenology achieved by Logical Investigations in its move beyond logic and epistemology to the primary level of pretheoretical experience as the reality of the real. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 2 August 2006