Guzen and Hitsuzen

Let me begin this piece by introducing two technical terms, guzen and hitsuzen. Both are stolen from Japanese, and their translations come out to being something like coincidence or chance and fate or destiny, respectively. While I could simply repurpose the English terms “coincidence” and “fate” I think they are already too loaded with meaning, and thus that our intuitions about them are bound to get in the way. So, as an aid in avoiding confusion with our intuitive conceptual scheme, I introduce guzen and hitsuzen. By guzen I will designate things that happen by chance, not in the sense that occur probabilistically, but in the sense that they occur by happenstance and aren’t part of some larger scheme. Thus events that fall in the domain of guzen are meaningless, in the sense that that they are unconnected to other events and thus signify nothing beyond themselves, certainly not some larger scheme or goal. In contrast hitsuzen is the opposite of guzen. Events that fall under the domain of hitsuzen happen in accordance with some scheme, plan, or design. Thus hitsuzen is meaningful in exactly the way that guzen isn’t. Events that fall under hitsuzen can be understood as connected to other events within that scheme, and thus signify the scheme and its ends as a whole. To speak in philosophical terms for a moment: hitsuzen manifests teleology, i.e. goals or ends, while guzen does not.

Once the categories are defined the next question to consider is how to deploy them. Three possibilities immediately present themselves. First everything, or at least everything important might be hitsuzen, i.e. part of some larger plan. Secondly the world could be a mixture of hitsuzen and guzen. Finally, there may only be guzen; with any appearance of hitsuzen being simply a kind of delusion or illusion.

If everything, or everything significant, is hitsuzen then the natural question to ask is: what is the overarching plan? The obvious religious answer is that the overarching plan is a divine one. In fact a religious perspective would seem to necessitate that everything is hitsuzen. If god is omnipotent and interested in what happens in the world then the idea that some things go against god’s intent contradicts his supposed omnipotence (since omnipotence cannot be opposed). Or, if god falls short of being omnipotent because he is opposed by some equally powerful, but evil, divinity, then it would seem that everything is still hitsuzen, although whose plan an event is in accordance with becomes an open question. I don’t, however, think the implicature in the other direction holds; it is not necessary to have a religious perspective in order to believe that hitsuzen dominates. It is possible to look at the natural laws as a kind of hitsuzen, for example. More plausibly, some see large-scale events as being the work of historical, social, or evolutionary forces that are beyond the control of individuals. These forces can be seen as creating a kind of hitsuzen connecting major events.

Of course not everyone finds the idea of universal, or near universal, hitsuzen plausible. There is something undeniably compelling about seeing the natural world as being devoid of hitsuzen. Sure, there are natural laws that determine which events occur, but those laws are devoid of meaning. They don’t appear to stitch together the events into a plan. Meaning, it would seem, is a purely human construction. But the world is not composed simply of things bumping up against one another in the dark. People do exist, and people can impose meaning on the world. Thus under this view the world is naturally all guzen, but in this world of guzen people create hitsuzen though their choices. Naturally this view sparks further questions. What happens when the domains of hitsuzen generated by individual lives come into contact with each other? Do they come together to form a unified hitsuzen, one that structures society as a whole? Or do they conflict, reducing the areas where they rub up against each other to guzen again? Such questions are beyond the scope of this piece.

Finally, we are brought to the third possibility. Like the previous picture it accepts the idea that fundamentally the natural world is nothing more than guzen. However, it rejects the idea that people can create hitsuzen. After all, there is nothing ultimately supernatural about people, and so, if nature cannot create hitsuzen, neither can individuals. Of course people see themselves as living in a world of hitsuzen, but that hitsuzen is not real, it is all in the mind. And this view may seem vindicated when things don’t go as they should or events escape control. Such occurrences may seem to demonstrate that hitsuzen is really an illusion.

I advocate the idea that philosophical theories, such as the three that were just mentioned, are really philosophical perspectives, and that there isn’t a definitive answer about which is right and which is wrong; they can only be more or less useful. However, under that view I am obligated to say a bit about how they might be useful, to who, and why. But to do that an additional element needs to be introduced: the human element. Because it is not clear, at least under the first and third perspective, how people fit into the picture, and thus it isn’t clear what implications accepting one of them would have, either in terms of how we go about our business or live our lives. The missing human element, I think, is free will or free choice.

But is free human choice a manifestation of guzen or hitsuzen? The answer will depend on which perspective the question is asked in. The “obvious” answer is that hitsuzen excludes free will, that when events fit into a larger picture the individual is no longer free to choose. Certainly that seems like the kind of answer that would have to be given under the first perspective discussed, where most events are attributed to hitsuzen. Exactly what the significance of this is depends on the precise variation. If hitsuzen is essentially god’s plan then being deprived of free choice can be comforting, because it implies that really everything is directed towards some good end and that it is impossible for individuals to make mistakes or interfere with that end. Thus, even if you make a mistake and do something that appears wrong from a human perspective, it was really all part of hitsuzen, and in the long run will turn out to be good. Alternately, if everything is hitsuzen because of two or more competing divine plans, then there may be room for guzen, and thus free choice, where the two plans rub up against each other. Specifically, it could be the case that under one plan some event is supposed to occur but under the other it is supposed to be prevented. Then, the omnipotence of both agents canceling out, which occurs is guzen, and so might be affected by free human choice. Thus under this perspective free choice plays a small but crucial role in deciding between the two divine plans. Finally, if, under the last version of this perspective, the large-scale events are all directed by hitsuzen, then free choice, and guzen, remains only in the small things. This justifies the view that what is really important is the small things, since only over them do we have a measure of control.

Each of these variations will appeal to different people in different circumstances. The first, where there effective is no free human choice, may be appealing to those who feel powerless; the idea of a divine plan directing things may be comforting. Such a perspective may also be necessary for someone who is being destroyed by guilt, since it assures them that, in the long run, everything will turn out all right. Finally, the perspective may be useful to someone who has rejected conventional morality altogether, since it effectively justifies them doing whatever they please (since whatever they do must necessarily be part of the divine plan). The second variation, in contrast to the first, suits those who want to be empowered rather than disempowered. Some believe that for something to be meaningful it has to be meaningful in a grand way, to contribute to some humanity or universe spanning picture. And this perspective gives them just that, in the form of a role in deciding between divine plans. What could be more important than that? The third variation seems aimed at those who have come to realize how little their life means in the grand scheme of things and are depressed by it. Consider Bob the office worker. Bob realizes that he is nothing more than a cog in the machine at his work. He is easily replaceable. And, more distressingly, the company he works for isn’t even doing something really important. For a long time Bob had his own private ambitions to write the great American novel. However, after a series of disappointments, he has come to realize that he doesn’t have the necessary genius. To feel better about himself he tells himself that what becomes the great American novel is determined by social forces and luck; that it is outside of the control of individual people. Thus Bob comes to think of the world as dominated by hitsuzen; social forces, of which his company is part of, guide what happens, and Bob is simply swept along by them. Naturally this makes Bob unhappy. However, Bob comes to realize that not everything is controlled by these social forces. The details of Bob’s life, for example his choice to maintain a small garden out back, are his and his alone. Bob thus comes to believe that this is the most anyone could ask for; everyone is subject to hitsuzen when it comes to the big things, even the great American novelist. We can only control the small things, and thus to us they are what should really matter. And Bob is making the most out of the small things that he can through his garden. So Bob is leading the best life that can be lived, given the prevalence of hitsuzen.

However, under the second perspective the connection between free choice and hitsuzen is reversed. Instead of excluding free choice hitsuzen is most naturally understood as the consequence of free choice. Meaning is essentially tied to people, because only people have the kinds of goals and plans that can produce hitsuzen. And these goals are manifested through their free choices (in contrast to their unfree actions, which they are unable to direct towards their own ends). Thus, logically, through a series of free choices hitsuzen is imposed on the world. Now who would this perspective appeal to? Consider James. Unlike Bob, James is a successful author. James is still employed, in a loose sense, by other people, but he has the ability to decide what he wants to write for himself. Moreover James likes being an author; he finds fulfillment in being an author. Perhaps James seems better off than Bob (although I think that natural assumption is highly questionable), but that doesn’t mean he isn’t faced with his own set of issues. Like Bob, the question of what matters and why presents itself to James. James does not want to surrender his life to an all encompassing hitsuzen, as under the first perspective, because that would diminish what he thinks of as most important (his being an author), by subjugating it to some larger purpose. But yet he still wants to find meaning somewhere, in part to justify his being an author and spending so much effort on being an author. Thus this perspective is a perfect fit for James. It tells him that the things he has devoted much of his life to, his being an author, are a kind of hitsuzen, a personal kind of hitsuzen that is centered around the things that he is most devoted to.

Finally, under the third perspective, which says that everything is guzen, free choice can be associated either with guzen or hitsuzen. To associate free choice with hitsuzen under this perspective is to turn it into a kind of nihilism. Specifically it is to assert, as under the previous perspective discussed, that free choices would be a kind of imposition of hitsuzen on the world. However, this perspective denies that the world can manifest hitsuzen, and thus it denies the possibility of free choice, so conceived. And so, under this version of the perspective, there is nothing we can do but be moved by chance from one meaningless event to another. However, we don’t have to be so negative. Free choice could also be associated with guzen under this perspective. What that amounts to is an assertion of absolute freedom. If there is no hitsuzen, no structure, then the freedom we have is complete freedom; every choice can be made as if it was the first choice, independently of any other choices that we have made or will make. While that won’t appeal to Bob, who sees an obvious, and sometimes oppressive, hitsuzen and wants to be able to live well within it, or to James, whose life is centered around a few important things and wants to understand how they can be meaningful, it may suit John. Unlike Bob and James, John’s life is not strongly ordered. He does not keep one job for years on end. Instead John moves from job to job, and many of his jobs are unconventional. And, unlike James, he does not have a single dominating interest. Many things interest John, and even though he is most interested in playing the trombone now he might be big into painting next year. John has a different problem than Bob and James; John probably thinks that his life should have some meaning, but because of his nature to go from one thing to another it is hard for him to interpret his own life as describing some plan or being part of one. Adopting this third perspective allows John to give up those expectations; it’s not that John’s life is falling short by being meaningless, it’s that everything is meaningless. And, moreover, it also picks out John’s life as something special: under this perspective Bob and James are fooling themselves to an extent, to the extent that they see the world as containing hitsuzen. However, free choice is in the domain of guzen, and so their false belief in the existence of hitsuzen is blinding them to their own freedom. Bob doesn’t realize that he is free to leave his boring job for something else, and James won’t allow himself to see that he is free to give up being an author for something else, at any time, without suffering any loss. John, in contrast to those two, is making full use of his freedom.

Thus I have shown how at least one variation on each of the perspectives on guzen and hitsuzen presented may be attractive. But is that enough? My position on philosophy, discussed previously, is that philosophical perspectives are a kind of conceptual/intellectual tool and should be judged accordingly. And it would seem that we could draw a distinction between being attractive and being useful. If I have shown only how these perspectives may be attractive then I haven’t done enough. But I think I have done more than show that they can be attractive, I think I have shown how they can make life better, or at least more tolerable, and that their attractiveness results from that. The perspectives discussed help Bob, James, and John be satisfied with their own lives. And, since dissatisfaction with ones life is a problem, these perspectives are thus demonstrated to be useful, inasmuch as they help deal with that problem. And with that I rest my case.

Varieties Of Objectivity

It is natural to divide the world up into two categories: the objective and the subjective. Matters of fact – cases where an assertion can be either true or false – belong to the objective. And, in contrast, the subjective is a domain where everything goes, where we are free to essentially make things up as we go, and where every opinion must be given equal weight. If we look at the world through this perspective it is easy to conclude that what is really important is the objective. And thus that anything which falls short of being objective, to which the labels true and false do not apply, is unimportant, and at best a kind of entertainment. The advantage of this perspective is that it is simple, and if your interests do lie primarily with those things that are unequivocally objective (the objects of rigorous science, for example) then it is probably good enough. However, there are complexities that this simple picture hides, and sticking to it, and its associated value judgments, can lead to confusion, as anything deemed important is shoehorned into being objective.

To get started with separating the different kinds of things lumped into objectivity by the simple dualistic picture discussed above I will start with pinning down what exactly is subjective. In the strictest, most literal sense, to be subjective is to be something that a particular subject can have complete authority about. For example, whether War and Peace is an enjoyable book is subjective, in this sense, because it is up to each individual whether it is an enjoyable book for them. No one has the authority to overrule them and dictate that they did or did not enjoy it, contrary to their experience of it. Note already that, so defined, to be subjective is distinct from being arbitrary. Although there is no way to speak with authority about subjective matters from a universal standpoint, each individual can speak with authority about the subjective as they see it. In contrast, when it comes to things that are arbitrary no one can speak with authority about them.

From this understanding of subjectivity we can now take a single step towards complete objectivity. Consider shared subjectivity. What could it mean to share something that is subjective? Consider the meaning of the word “oak”. There is a way in which the meaning of the word “oak” is subjective: I experience the word as having a particular meaning, and you cannot overturn my authority about what the word means to me. However, there is also a way in which the meaning of the word is shared, and, despite variations in the way the meaning of the word is experienced, we mean “the same thing” by “oak”. In part this results from my experience of what oak means to me being partially constituted by a desire to mean the same thing as others who use the term. But, even though the meaning of the word is shared between individuals, there is still no perspective from which to make universal pronouncements about the meaning of the word “oak”. It is possible, for example, that there exists another linguistic community that associates a completely different meaning with the word. Thus there is still no universal standpoint from which to authoritatively speak about things shared in this way, although a community’s practices can be considered authoritative about the things they share. Things of this sort I am inclined to call intersubjective. Those things that can be shared from person to person, but would not themselves exist, as such, without people are almost always intersubjective. And so, along with the meaning of words, cultural ideas and values are intersubjective as well.

Another property commonly associated with objectivity is decidability. And I take decidability to be the next step towards complete objectivity. What is decidability? In this context what I mean by decidability is that given a well-formed question a single answer can be produced that everyone will agree on (or, if there is no answer, everyone will agree that there is no answer). Mathematics is decidable in this sense; you can ask “is this a valid proof from axioms A to conclusion B?” and get a definite answer. Note that this should not be confused with mathematical decidability. In some systems there may not be a finite procedure for determining whether a conclusion can be proved or disproved (or neither proved nor disproved) from the premises. I still consider such cases decidable in the sense discussed here because it isn’t the case that in such situations some people will give one answer while others will give another (assuming they haven’t made any mistakes). To go back to the question of “who can speak with authority about such things?” the answer with respect to such domains must be “everyone”, or at least potentially everyone, to the extent that they don’t make mistakes. (And note that for a domain to be properly decidable in this sense whether someone has made a mistake should itself be decidable). Another interesting consequence of decidability is that it implies that the domain can be shared. Fortunately for us this makes the “ascent” to complete objectivity linear, so far, since we don’t have to consider both domains that are decidable but not shared and domains that are decidable and shared.

Now at this point some may think that decidability is as objective as things can get. Mathematics is decidable in this sense, and many assume that it is a paradigm case of objectivity. Granted, mathematics is closer to complete objectivity than the subjective or the intersubjective. But the decidable falls short of being completely objective because of the caveat that the questions asked must be well formed. What does that mean? Well, at least in the context of mathematics, it means that the question must be asked with respect to a certain system or certain axioms. To properly answer “does 2+2 = 4?” one must assume a specific mathematical system that gives meaning to the symbols and provides rules governing their operation. This is not a fact we commonly think about because we are so used to working in particular systems by convention, but the existence of non-standard logics, geometries, and so on demonstrates that it is in fact so. In contrast, when dealing with a question about the physical world, such as “does this glass contain water?” there is no need to pin the question down with respect to a specific system or set of axioms.

Thus the physical world has an extra degree of objectivity that mathematics lacks; it is completely objective. We can pin down the difference by pointing out that, with respect to the physical world, and thus questions about it, there is a single domain of objects that we all have access to. This contrasts with mathematics, where there are as many systems containing points and lines as you like, and so which one we are talking about must be pinned down precisely. But when it comes to the physical world, since there is only one domain of objects that we all are acquainted with, there is no need to pin down which objects we are talking about; our common existence in the physical world pins that down for us. Thus complete objectivity is finally defined: something is completely objective when it deals with a common set of objects we all have access to. And, as with the previous step in our “ascent”, complete objectivity implies decidability, since any question can be definitely answered by appeal to the common world of objects. Thus a hierarchy is established with complete objectivity on top (materially objective), decidability below it (formally objective), intersubjectivity below it, and subjectivity on the bottom (unless we want to include things that are arbitrary below it).

Presented in this way the hierarchy described above surely seems like a rigid ontology, such that everything we experience can be rigidly and finally thrown into one of those divisions. However, in many cases it is possible to move a question from one category to another simply by asking it in a different way. Consider the intersubjective. In its natural form “what is meant by ‘oak’?” belongs to the domain of the intersubjective. But we can rephrase that question by putting it in the form “what does culture X mean by the term ‘oak’?”. Asked in that way it falls under the domain of complete objectivity, since the culture, and the individuals that compose it, are part of that common world of objects we all have access to. Similarly, we can turn questions that fall under complete objectivity into something intersubjective. Normally when we consider a question in the domain of complete objectivity we think only about its content. When asking “are oaks trees?” we are asking about the relations between objects in that common world. However, we don’t have to approach the question in that attitude. Instead we can consider the language the question is asked using to be as important as its worldly content. Thus the question will have the same answer in our native tongue, but will be unintelligible (or possibly have a different answer) in other languages. Under this unconventional approach the question falls under the domain of the intersubjective.

Now our ability to transform questions in this way should not mislead us into thinking that everything is subjective, or intersubjective, or completely objective. Nor should we jump to the conclusion that if we can address every question, after appropriate transformations, under one domain that we no longer need the others. When we transform a question in the way described above we change its content. A question that was completely objective is about objects in the common world. Transforming it into a form that is intersubjective also transforms it into being about shared ideas, values, and language. And the content of one domain can never be wholly captured in another, because the intersubjective, for example, is essentially intersubjective and can never be captured, as is, by complete objectivity. At best some of the features of intersubjective things may find a reflection in some completely objective description. To be more precise: part of what a particular bit of intersubjectivity is is how it is experienced, subjectively, by individuals (patterns of how it is experienced). But that “how it is experienced” is necessarily shaved away by any objective treatment, leaving only facts about patterns of behavior and the use of language. Similarly, trying to understand mathematics as an obscure way of talking about how particular things interact loses the sense in which formal mathematics has the ability to be applied to anything and the sense in which the particular formal system being used is an arbitrary choice.

To conclude allow me to briefly discuss some of the benefits of this more complicated picture. Philosophically it can assist us in resolving issues that arise from taking subjectivity and objectivity to be two mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. For example, intuitions are rejected as a guide to the objective by many. But then mathematics, and mathematical intuitions, become problematic, as it would seem to imply that mathematics is subjective. Since many take the subjective to be the domain of unsubstantiated opinions, and worthless, this may seem unacceptable. Obviously all such problems are eliminated when we have more than two categories. A second benefit of the more complicated picture is that it can help us overcome the idea that the subjective is bad and the objective is good. We can now reject the arbitrary as truly worthless, while accepting that the other levels of objectivity may have something going for them. For example, by being only decidable mathematics is a useful tool since it can theoretically be applied to anything. Similarly the subjective and intersubjective, may capture aspects of the human experience, which may be worthwhile even if we can’t build a bridge with them. Or maybe not. But at least with a more nuanced picture our options are open.

Analytic Philosophy And Phenomenology

Previously I described the framework under which phenomenology works (or, more precisely, a charitable reconstruction of that framework). With that in hand it is now possible to discuss how the analytic method is similar to the phenomenological method, and whether they are faced with common problems.

The easiest way to go about making that comparison is to see where analytic philosophy fits into the larger phenomenological framework. Under that framework each discipline studies a region, or some subset of a region. Thus we can begin by asking which region analytic philosophy aims to study. If we have the origins of analytic philosophy in mind it is natural to conclude that it studies the formal region. Originally analytic philosophy was defined, indeed named, after the a priori analytic truths it was supposed to capture: namely those tautologies sentences that follow from the meaning of words. (Note that other a priori analytic truths include mathematics. Since mathematics falls under the formal region it is extremely natural to conclude that analytic philosophy, as such, does so as well.) Thus we could say that the goal of analytic philosophy is to describe formal systems, almost extensions to logic, from which all the truths about, say, justice can be deduced.

The problem with this picture is that the conception of analytic philosophy as a formal discipline doesn’t seem to fit actual analytic philosophy. First, when it comes to formal disciplines right and wrong have a different kind of meaning than in philosophy. For example, a mathematician working on non-standard analysis (calculus) does not accuse those working on standard analysis of being in error. Error in the formal arena is not something that is said of a system as a whole, rather it is something that crops up only internally, often in the form of a faulty proof. If analytic philosophy was a formal discipline we would expect that there would be no disagreement regarding whether one analysis of personhood, for example, was better than another. As with calculus, all consistent systems would be accepted as non-competing variants. If one philosopher was to correct another it would only be to point out that their conclusions aren’t entailed by their premises. But this not how analytic philosophy proceeds; analytic philosophers are quite committed to the idea that there is some best theory about personhood, and to arguing against those they see as worse.

A second problem with taking analytic philosophy to be a formal discipline is that it appears to have a subject matter. And a proper formal discipline is ideal; it has no subject matter of its own, but may be applied wherever it fits. Now this is not to say that formal approaches are never conjoined with some subject. Indeed phenomenology itself is supposed to be a formal approach to consciousness. However, we would never bill phenomenology as a formal discipline, given that it applies its formal structures to consciousness (and develops them explicitly to fit consciousness). And, inasmuch as analytic philosophy applies its formal structures to things such as personhood, it cannot be described as a purely formal discipline.

So if analytic philosophy is not purely formal then we are left with the regions characterized by objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. Since analytic philosophy is, as was noted above, apparently committed to the idea that there is some single correct theory about its subject matter it seems natural to say that it studies some part of the objective region. (Since the existence of one universally correct answer is characteristic of objectivity.) However, we already have a discipline that studies the objective: science. And there is only one correct (or, at least, optimal) way to study each region. Thus if we claim that analytic philosophy falls under the objective region we must bite the bullet and accept that analytic philosophy is a kind of science. This would in turn mean abandoning those intuitions that analytic philosophers are so fond of appealing to, because the scientific method rejects intuition. What we would be left with might resemble Kornblith’s work: an attempt to find natural kinds that we can label with the familiar philosophical terms. But, while Kornblith (and a number of other contemporary philosophers), may be satisfied with this, it hardly is representative of the majority of contemporary analytic philosophy. It would seem that we are better off rejecting analytic philosophy’s ostensible commitment to objectivity, and looking for some other region for it to fall under.

Next up is subjectivity, i.e. consciousness. I think it is safe to gloss over this possibility without giving it much consideration. It is true that some have characterized analytic philosophy as studying our concepts (through conceptual analysis), and it is at least possible to understand that as a study of how we conceptualize our own experience. However, this seems like an extremely bad fit for analytic philosophy. If analytic philosophy is the study of concepts as we find them in consciousness it would be hard to salvage anything from its commitment to there being better or worse answers to philosophical questions. Now, admittedly, phenomenology does seem to be equally committed to the idea that it has some of the right answers, and it does study the subjective. If we must we can rescue phenomenology by construing it as a study of common forms of subjectivity, and reminding ourselves that it is not in the business of providing necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. But when we get into specific details of consciousness, such as how an individual is conscious of the personhood of a person it seems foolish not to expect that to vary greatly from individual to individual.

This leaves us with the intersubjective. And the most important members of the intersubjective region are senses. (Note that Husserl himself put senses as a third top level in his ontology, but I think he was wrong in doing so. Senses would not exist without thinkers and they are shared between thinkers, thus they appear to be prototypically intersubjective.) Taking analytic philosophy to be a study of senses does seem to be a good fit. Since senses often manifest in concepts or through language this approach is in general agreement with those who claimed that analytic philosophy was a study of concepts or of language. And it also manages to salvage some degree of the objectivity that analytic philosophers were after: senses are shared between people and so argument is possible about who is more accurately capturing the sense of a term. (This suggestion also agrees with one of the proposals I made in a previous paper concerning how the intuitions appealed to in analytic philosophy could be rescued from their apparent failure to capture anything objective.)

Certainly this clarifies the nature and project of analytic philosophy. But does it solve its problems? Or do its problems now apply to phenomenology as well, inasmuch as phenomenology deals with senses? In one way its problems are solved. Worries about whether intuitions are really reliable guides to things such as knowledge can be dismissed, since: a) intuitions are reliable guides to senses, and b) no one expects complete agreement about the intersubjective. However, new problems are created by this treatment of analytic philosophy, which I maintain are at least potential problems for phenomenology as well.

The first problem is that, with respect to many philosophical issues, we expect how things “really are” (how things in the objective region are) to have some bearing on philosophical matters. For example, whether we can have knowledge in a situation, one may expect, should depend on some objective facts about the world (such as whether the objective world actually exists, whether we are hallucinating or not, whether our senses are reliable, and so on). However, a subjective or intersubjective treatment of knowledge can never include such issues. It can only inform us about the conditions that we think must hold before we recognize some experience as providing knowledge. But this is not the same as asserting that those conditions must really hold. In other words, it can yield only an internalist account of knowledge. And similar issues can be raised with respect to ethics, the mind-body problem, and so on. These problems, however, can be solved. As I detailed in yet another paper, while phenomenology cannot address such issues, by its very definition, and neither can any other single-region discipline, the possibility for cross-regional disciplines exists. To summarize those conclusions: it is possible to develop cross regional theories, but only on the basis of completed theories about the regions to be bridged in this way.

In that way the traditional problems of philosophy, as conceived of traditionally (in ways that are inherently cross-regional) can be addressed, although not by philosophy alone (or at least not by analytic philosophy or phenomenology alone). Unfortunately there is still one large problem remaining that is not so easily resolved. So far all the approaches described here, both single regional and cross-regional, produce descriptive theories. With respect to the subjective and the intersubjective they report on how we in fact experience and conceive of things. And any cross-regional discipline is in the business of drawing correlations between the findings of different regions; it builds on “finished” theories about a single region, but it cannot go back and revise them. This puts us in a difficult situation, at least with respect to epistemology and ethics. In both of those fields there is the expectation that a good theory can correct what we think about ethics or epistemology. For example, a particular epistemic theory might revise the way we collect evidence. But a purely descriptive approach can never do that. If a particular subject experienced the magic 8 ball as providing evidence then a phenomenological analysis of the sense of evidence for this individual would, indeed must, sanction the magic 8 ball as providing evidence (because what it is reporting on is the forms of this individual’s experience, and would get those experiences wrong if it did not report the magic 8 ball as evidence providing). Could we fix things at the cross-regional stage? No. Certainly at the cross-regional stage it might be noted that certain natural kinds (such as reliability) are correlated with many of the individual’s experiences of events as evidence providing, except for a few oddballs, such as the magic 8 ball case. But this mismatch does not imply that there is something wrong with the magic 8 ball case; rather it simply indicates that what is experienced as providing evidence doesn’t correlate with a single natural kind, which is probably true of many senses.

Clearly solving this problem is trickier. One way to go might be to lean on the expectations that we associate with certain senses. Evidence, for example, we expect to be highly reliable; i.e. to experience something as providing evidence is to develop some specific expectations about which future experiences we will and won’t have (i.e. that we will have those that agree with the evidence and won’t have those that disagree with it). Then, building on the correlation between our experiences of particular facts and the way things objectively are, we could say that, with respect to the magic 8 ball, it is not the case that those expectations will reliably be fulfilled. Thus we go cross-regional and back again to demonstrate the experiencing the magic 8 ball as providing evidence is, in an indirect way, inconsistent with the sense of evidence (i.e. that evidence as experienced by this individual in internally inconsistent). Unfortunately while this is a step in the right direction it is not a complete solution. First of all it doesn’t motivate revision in a particular direction; in the case discussed here both ditching the magic 8 ball as providing evidence and relaxing the expectation of reliability are ways to resolve the problem, and this approach does not prefer one to the other. Secondly it is not clear that we will always be able to make this move. Even with respect to evidence I can imagine problematic pathological cases. For example, in the magic 8 ball case our subject may believe that there are malicious demons who change the way things are whenever he checks up on the information the magic 8 ball provides. Thus in the case of the magic 8 ball he does not form the expectations that we were leaning on. And I don’t think that there is any way around this. Now if we had a prescriptive approach we might point out to the individual that he might as well stop thinking about the magic 8 ball as providing evidence, given that he never acts on that information (since he believes that the demons will interfere if he does). The function of evidence is to prepare us to take action, and so it is effectively the same as taking it not to provide evidence if the evidence it provides can’t be acted on. Thus, for the sake of a simpler epistemological theory, he should revise his opinion of the magic 8 ball. But we do not have a prescriptive approach.

Reinterpreting Phenomenology

It is natural to assume that continental methods are radically different analytic methods, and thus that criticism leveled at philosophical methods would have to treat each separately. But I’m not sure that is really the case. A cursory glance at the phenomenological method, characteristic of a great deal of continental philosophy, reveals that it is described as a study of essences of consciousness, which are revealed through eidetic intuitions and eidetic variation (as are all essences). This is analogous to the analytic method, which is often described as a study of concepts that are revealed through specific intuitions and thought experiments / intuition pumps. At least from a distance it appears that these methods are essentially the same, that the differences are purely terminological, and thus that any criticism leveled at one will apply to the other.

Of course we should not allow ourselves to be misled by superficial similarities either. There do appear to be differences between the phenomenological method and analytic method when we get into the details. But can these differences shield the phenomenological method from criticisms leveled at the analytic method? Let’s find out by first taking a look at how the phenomenological method works, exactly.

Fundamentally the phenomenological method is grounded in ontology. At the highest level things are divided into three broad categories: facts, essences, and meanings (sense). We will set aside meaning here and consider only facts and essences. Under the category of facts fall particular objects, such as a tree or a table. Under the category of essences fall ideal objects, which are not in space and time, properly speaking, but which are classifications that divide things according to what they are. Essences themselves are further divided into two subgroups: material essences and formal essences. The material essences are ways of dividing the world of objects, and the most general divisions possible of this sort are called regions. Husserl names three regions: Nature (things in space-time), Pure Consciousness (that which is experienced), and Culture (that which we jointly constitute). For reasons of simplicity we can gloss these three categories as: objective, subjective, and intersubjective, respectively. (Husserl might not have described them in this way, but his own method implies that these are valid ways of describing the region, since objectivity, for example, is more general than appealing to falling in space and time, given that it also includes the fabric of space-time itself). And under each region are sub-essences, such as being a particular kind of tree, which are less general. The formal essences, in contrast, are those that are so general that they apply to everything: essences such as number, property and object, necessity and possibility, and so on.

Now before we go any further we must describe two ways something can fall under an essence. I will describe these two ways of falling under as formally falling under and materially falling under. For something to materially fall under an essence that means that it is an object and that the essence applies to it. A particular lamp post, for example, materially falls under the region of Nature because it exists objectively. For something to formally fall under and essence means that it is itself an essence that is a sub-type or sub-category of the larger essence. The essence of lamp posts, for example, formally falls under the region of Nature.

With this ontology set up we can now get to the payoff. First Husserl asserts that there is a unique way to study the objects that materially fall under each region. And the best way to study objects that materially fall under Nature is through the scientific method. Already this has some interesting consequences. The first is that natural laws, which are objective, and thus fall under Nature are best studied through the scientific method (as I assume is obvious). But since they aren’t properly studied by the phenomenological method, which looks at essences, this in turn means that natural laws are not essences (see Ideas 1:15). And, logically, the same could be said about natural kinds, if they exist. Natural kinds are therefore not essences, and if we were thinking about examples such as “a kind of tree” or a “lamp posts in general” in terms of natural kinds or as referring to a natural kind we would be misinterpreting them: natural kinds are to be studied by the scientific method, not the phenomenological method. A second consequence is that essences can be studied in their own distinct way as well: through eidetic intuition and variation. Eidetic intuition discloses essences to us from the intuition of particular objects; eidetic variation is “free phantasy” where we entertain different cases in order to prompt eidetic intuitions.

So far so good. But now questions arise regarding the details of the method. Since essences have a way of being studied it would seem that they must be specific kinds of objects that themselves materially fall under some region (Husserl explicitly says they are a kind of object, see Ideas 1:9), in addition to formally falling under other essences. Which region do they materially fall under? The official answer is that they materially fall under the formal category (even though they formally fall under more general essences; this is why I made that distinction previously). But does the official answer make sense? Husserl seems to indicate in places that essences are objective. But if they were objective then they must fall under Nature. And if that were the case the right way to study them would be through the scientific method, not eidetic intuition and variation. Clearly this contradicts what Husserl claims about them. And it would also amount to naturalizing philosophy, which he is an opponent of.

Another interpretation that is closer to the text would be to take Husserl’s essences to have a Kantian favor: to take them as transcendentally structuring the possibilities for experience. This is implied by Ideas 1:18, for example, where Husserl remarks that the regional Eidios of Nature exhibits a necessary material form of all the objects in the region, and on the next page gives (Euclidean) geometry as an example of this, saying that it is the “ontological discipline relating to … spatial form”. There are obvious parallels with Kant here, and, as with Kant, if this claim is not to be trivially refuted by pointing at special relativity we must take it in the sense the Euclidean geometry structures spatial form as disclosed to us in experience. Thomasson (Conceptual Analysis in Phenomenology and Ordinary Language Philosophy) also seems to favor such an interpretation of Husserl. She describes Husserl’s essences as being analogous to concepts in analytic terms, and takes Husserl’s “free phantasy” to be a tool to explore what we can and can’t imagine or conceptualize. Again, this points to a reading of Husserl where the essences structure the possibilities for experience, or at least of conceptual experience.

But, however close this reading is to the words of the text, it seems to fly in the face of the spirit of the phenomenological project. The previous interpretation would seem to imply that essences fall under the subjective: they are products of our mind – structures of our experience (properly, structures of possible experiences). But Husserl is firm in claiming that essences are objective, or at least not subjective. Secondly, it would seem to lead to a kind of psychologism. If essences, which includes mathematical essences, are simply structures of what we can possibly experience, then some theoretical psychological study could uncover those same limits. This means that the rules of logic, for example, are products of our particular psychological construction and limitations. And Husserl is, again, firmly opposed to psychologism of any sort. Now at this point we could simply take these apparent inconsistencies to be real inconsistencies. Maybe Husserl didn’t realize that essences qua structures for possible experiences would lead them to materially fall under the subjective and to imply a kind of psychologism. But I would prefer to keep looking for a more charitable interpretation.

Any such interpretation must keep essences from materially falling under any of the regions (objective, subjective, or intersubjective), both because of the problems described above, and because each of those regions already has particular kinds of intuitions that disclose it, which are distinct from eidetic intuitions. But how would that be possible? Aren’t those three categories exclusive? Not necessarily. Let’s begin our search for a fourth possibility by considering non-standard logics, and mathematics in general (which Husserl does not substantially engage with). Given the existence of such things is the “objectivity” of classical logic thrown into doubt? It must be; no longer can we claim with a straight face that there is one universally necessary logic. We must instead accept that we have a choice between logics. But neither does this make a logic itself a subjective construct; a particular logical system is pinned down completely by its rules and axioms. To suppose a different rule or axiom is simply to talk about a different logical system – in that way they still have a kind of objectivity (i.e. the nature of a particular logical system does not vary from person to person or culture to culture, even possibly). A logical system is thus neither objective, nor subjective, nor intersubjective. We need a new term then. For the moment let’s use the clumsy “objective-subjective”. To be “objective-subjective” requires two things. First that we have a choice about whether to apply a particular system to a situation (i.e. we impose it, it is not found in the objects themselves) and secondly that what a particular system is has an answer that is completely fixed, such that any variation is to simply entertain a different system. Being “objective-subjective”, I maintain, characterizes formal essences. And eidetic intuition and eidetic variation are ways in which we invent or discover (pick your poison) particular formal systems. Of course this means that, in a way, philosophy qua phenomenology, as the study of essences, is a great deal like mathematics (specifically applied mathematics); a sister discipline if you will. The similarities between mathematics and phenomenology have also been noted by Haaparanta (The Method of Analysis and the Idea of Pure Philosophy in Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology).

That, in a broad sense, is how phenomenology works. There are, of course, some major details that are missing. I have described the sense in which phenomenology is a study of essences, but not the more specific way in which it is a study of the essences of consciousness. Why just consciousness? Well there are two reasons for Husserl to narrow his project in this way. First if he was just studying essences in general he would end up doing math or ontology in general, under this picture; which has adequate coverage already. And, more importantly, Husserl believes that the region of pure consciousness has never been properly studied before, as it is in itself, at least in part because the method for studying it as it is in itself (epoche) was previously undiscovered (although Husserl believes that Descartes just missed it). Thus Husserl sets off on the project of describing an eidetic science for this new region via the method he calls phenomenology. In a sense then this business about ontology and essences is a framework to fit the intuitions about pure consciousness and the theories they prompt, Husserl’s primary focus, into. However, here I am more focused on the framework because it is what is analogous to the methods of analytic philosophy (analogous to phenomenology would be the analytic study of experience & its structures, not analytic philosophy in general).

I’ll leave a discussion of how this framework differs from analytic philosophy and whether it manages to shield phenomenology from certain problems facing analytic philosophy (and whether it gives rise to a new batch of problems) for another day.

Note: Observe that the interpretation I put forward here also helps justify the ontological framework that motivates and justifies phenomenology itself: The ontological framework is simply a formal structure, it is not necessarily the only correct ontological framework, but it is a useful one we choose to project onto the world / our experiences of the world, in order to better work with it.