Husserl and an Intro to Phenomenology

The first chapter of Ideas is about the phenomenological method. In order to help us understand phenomenological bracketing, he contrasts the standpoint we take when we perform phenomenology with what he calls the natural standpoint, or natural attitude.  Husserl says that the first outlook we have on the world is from a natural standpoint. This means that you are simply aware as the world as there--even without paying any special attention to it.  In fact, this is the 'General Thesis' of the natural standpoint: the world exists, it is continually present to me, and I am a part of it

In this natural standpoint, or natural attitude, the world is experienced as being full of value. Things are experienced as good or bad by me. Things are experienced as useful. People are experienced either as friends or foes. The world is also experienced as a "W-about-me", meaning that the world is always experienced relative to my conscious acts. Conscious acts (acts of the Cogito) include describing, comparing, distinguishing, collecting, counting, presupposing, inferring, theorizing, wanting, willing, and emotional states and feelings like sadness, happiness, anger, fear and boredom.

Not only do I experience the world as real and as continually present to me. I perceive it as available to other subjects. I experience other as subjects, as units like me, as selves, as egos, as <Ich>s. Because I immediate perceive the other as a subject, I take them to be in the same relation to the natural world as I myself am. The world about me and the world about them are one in the same, even if we have completely different subjective experiences of it.

Natural sciences stay within the natural standpoint. Phenomenology, however, attempts to radically alter the natural standpoint. For methodological purposes, the general thesis of the natural standpoint is subject to radical Cartesian doubt. This doubt is only as a device of method. This doubt does not affect the form of Being itself.  Doubting the existence of the world does not affect the world  The attempt to doubt is not a denial of Being or of the natural world. Rather, it is a suspension of the thesis.

p.108, "It is not a transformation of the thesis into an antithesis...we set it as it were "out of action", we "disconnect it", "bracket it"." Husserl also calls this methodological suspension of the natural attitude Epoche.

In the second chapter of Ideas, Husserl turns his attention away from the method of bracketing and towards the object of phenomenological inquiry. Phenomenological reduction (bracketing) means putting the whole world into brackets. When we do that, what is left over? The world of fact is disconnected. The world of form, however, is not disconnected. The world as Eidos, as form, as structure, remains in pure consciousness. Husserl calls this pure experience, or pure Ich, phenomenological residuum. Basically, the form of experience is all that is left over when we abstract away from all actual experience.

When considered in its full concrete context, each experience has an essence or a content. After performing the phenomenological reduction, we can grasp the essence of the experience. This is a task of phenomenology. Even though the experience has been bracketed, they still share in the essential nature of the original experience. Both the original experience and my phenomenological reduction of that experience are about something.  Consider this analogy.  The sentence "Kobe is tall" is about a living thing in the natural world.  The name "Kobe" is directed towards Kobe the person.  When I put the name in brackets, then I'm not just talking about the person Kobe.  I'm talking about the mode of presentation for that person.  But the content of <Kobe> is still directed towards Kobe.  <Kobe is tall> is still about Kobe, even if I suspend all belief in the existence of the natural world for methodological purposes

Be warned, however, not all experiences have this characteristic. Only experiences that are actually conscious experiences of some thing have this characteristic. Such experiences are called intentional experiences. Intentional experiences are just experiences that are about something. In other words, these experiences are intentionally related to some object. In yet other words, these experiences have intentionality because they are experiences of something.  My experience of watching Kobe on TV is an  intentional experience because it is an experience about Kobe.  But if I hallucinate that Kobe is in the room with me, then my experience is not actually about something real.  The hallucination is not an intentional experien