The view that Blouin attributes to Husserl below is
my own view. (And presumably Blouin’s.) Husserl, I will argue, did indeed hold that there is no reality “behind” or “beneath” the phenom- enal stream (= ontological phenomenalism), yet this does not entail that all things exist “in- side the mind” (be it of man, God, or transcen- dental subjectivity), as opposed to “out there” in the world. Rather, the phenomenal stream precedes the subject-object (or mind-world) di- chotomy, and thus it is misleading to categorize it without qualification as subjective (or mental or immanent). It is precisely this inside-outside dichotomy that transcendental phenomenology attempts to undercut by positing the ontologi- cal primacy of the phenomenal stream. 1 Husserl himself is, in my view, somewhat ambiguous on this point, though Blouin makes a good case for what I would call the strongest and therefore most charitable reading of of Husserl’s work. In any case, what matters most is whether what Blouin calls “on- tological phenomenalism” is the strongest ontological thesis we can manage. I think it is. Later, Blouin handles the usual objection that phe- nomenalism necessarily involves “data-sensualism,” and goes on to emphasize its gist. 1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-023-09328-6
1 Phenomenalism is thus not necessarily a sensu- alism, but it is necessarily an immaterialism in the Berkeleian sense, to the extent that it is de- fined principally by its opposition to the idea of an independent substrate lying “behind” or “beneath” the phenomenal. If Husserl explicitly rejects the first, sensualist thesis by Berkeley, nothing opposes him to the second, immateri- alist one. Far from it, the post-transcendental- turn Husserl, as we have seen, explicitly denied the existence of a trans-phenomenal being, thus agreeing with Berkeley that the concept of a Ding an sich is pure nonsense (unless it is rein- terpreted as an Idea in the Kantian sense). Immaterialism is an ideal synonym for phenomenal- ism. Rather than being primarily a positive theory presenting sensation as the fundamental stuff of the world, it is a negative theory that rejects the nonsense of whatever is self-mystifyingly supposed to hide be- yond all possible experience. Following Mill’s use, we might call it “Matter.” This Matter names a role played by various concep- tions of the represent-ed “really real” according to the many flavors of representationalism (indirect realism, dualism). For some, Matter is what Sellars calls “the scientific image.” For others, it is, all too vaguely, “in- formation” of some kind. Still others, following Kant, leave it completely and necessarily indeterminate, an empty X. Schopenhauer, at times anyway, called it “Will.” All seem captured, without noticing it, by 2 the same representational metaphor. As Wittgenstein put it: A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. All assume that perception is re-presentation rather than original presentation. It’s worth noting that representation remains a valuable concept, as in the “picture theory” of the TLP and Husserl’s concept of the signitive intention. It just doesn’t work for perception. An emphasis on the role and “real reality” of aspects is the cure for this misinterpretation of experience as fundamentally representation. An entity is the logi- cal and therefore temporal and interpersonal synthe- sis of its aspects, though we need to use “aspect” as a metaphor here. We need to generalize our aspect metaphor, so that “moment” becomes a more appro- priate term of art. The aspect metaphor does remains valuable as an intuitively comfortable introduction to the more general concept of moment (as a ladder). If phenomenology is indeed best understood as having a phenomenalistic anti -representational basis, then it’s safe to say that, despite the fame of phenomenol- ogy, it continues to be misunderstood, by many if not most, as if it were merely a description of the form of representation. Husserl’s repeated use of “conscious- ness” unfortunately encourages this reductive reading, which results in a quasi-representational unstable cor- 3 relationism which is hard to distinguish from more typical forms of indirect realism. Elsewhere I examine how the aspect metaphor re- solves representationalist objections to (misunderstand- ings of) phenomenalism or immaterialism. Sartre opens Being and Nothingness with his own very similar ex- planation. So this “aspect approach” is under-appreciated but not new. The work that did remain undone, it seemed to me, was the addition of how such an aspect approach worked in the larger interpersonal situa- tion. In other words, what were or are the “global” im- plications of understanding the “first-personal” stream as ontologically prior to the “subject-object (or mind- world) dichotomy ” ? For instance, Wittgenstein tersely presents immateri- alism (nondual phenomenalism) in the TLP, starting at 5.6. He realized and emphasized that “conscious- ness does not exist.” At the same time, Wittgen- stein understands that substance is subjectlike. The world and life are one. I am my world. (The mi- crocosm.) The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing. So Wittgenstein, like Mach and James, adequately describes a single “personal continuum” or (neutral) “phenomenal stream.” Granted that one understands and accepts this, how is one to understand the world or reality as a whole ? If reality is not hidden “be- hind” my phenomenal stream or yours, how do we make sense of (properly glue together) this teeming
4 plurality of streams ? If the world is not “behind” such streams, which have some kind of privacy, where is it ? Leibniz gives us a clue in his Monadology. And as the same town, looked at from various sides, appears quite different and becomes as it were numerous in aspects [perspectivement]; even so, as a result of the infinite number of sim- ple substances, it is as if there were so many dif- ferent universes, which, nevertheless are nothing but aspects [perspectives] of a single universe, according to the special point of view of each Monad. The physicist Schrödinger, no mean philosopher, walks the same path. Just as we can understand entities as logical-temporal-interpersonal syntheses of their ac- tual and possible aspects, we can understand the world as the synthesis of all phenomenal streams, which we might call “monads,” though without adopting all that Leibniz intended by the term. These phenomenal streams or monads are (to use Schrödinger’s phrase) “aspects of the one.” Doing this is ontological per- spectivism. For the ontological perspectivist (in the above sense, anyway), the moments or aspects of entities are scat- tered “over” this plurality of streams, which includes of course their being scattered over time. Each phe- nomenal stream “is” time. You and I can intend the same object, even though the intended object shows 5 itself differently to us. You see one side of the coin, I see the other. But we can both grasp that “face” or “side” or “aspect” of the coin as an aspect of one and the same coin.2 Many representationalists might grant us “phenom- enal streams,” but they would insist that these are “streams of consciousness,” understood by them there- fore as streams of (private) representation. They might grant us something like an epistemological per- spectivism. But this weaker approach fails. In gen- eral, representationalism has trouble accounting for the “ontological horizon,” which is its enabling con- dition. The problem with epistemological perspec- tivism, which it shares with every representational- ism, is its participation in the same old reification of the subject-like-ness of “substance” into a mystified Consciousness Stuff. And then inevitably to some ver- sion of Matter. ( James’ essay “Does Consciousness Exist?” is helpful on this issue.) Let me elaborate on this “subject-like-ness of sub- stance.” All that I mean here is that the phenomenal stream has the “shape” or “character” of a stream of “experience.” The problem with invoking experi- ence is the suggestion of an experienc-er outside of this experience. The “panenexperientism” (Severin Sjømark’s term 3) implied by James’ “world of pure experience” is a genuine phenomenalism or immate- rialism. But insufficiently careful readers may reify 2 To be more precise, we usually take the aspect of the coin for the coin itself. But we can thematize the aspect in
order to become aware of this.
3 I had the pleasure of discussing this with Severin Sjømark through email and in the reddit r/Husserl.
6 the subject-like-ness and subject-centeredness of the stream into a “Consciousness” that leads directly to the famous hard problem. This “hard problem” is, for phenomenalism, a pseudo-problem arising from an unquestioned but dominant metaphor. Whether we call it “ontological phenomenalism” or “neophenomenalism” or “phenomenalism properly un- derstood,” this anti-representationalist position is not well known. While Husserl and especially Heidegger are recognized as great philosophers, it seems to me that the phenomenalistic basis of their work is insuf- ficiently emphasized. Without the cornerstone of ontological phenomenal- ism, they are both too easily read as describing an experience understood merely as private representa- tion, trivializing them as ontologists. An indirect re- alist reading misses why Heidegger thought it was a scandal that Kant thought it was a scandal that phi- losophy lacked a proof of the External World. The ontological forum is presupposed by the project of ontology. The “world worlds” in partially but not rad- ically isolated streams of aspects or moments of its en- tities. Language always already targets or intends the world. Feuerbach, demystifying Hegel, already saw this curious relationship between the sensual and the conceptual. While sensation is in some sense private, conceptuality is essentially public or social. The rep- resentationalist misinterprets the perspectival char- acter of sensation to imply that perception must be representation. Instead, entities are logical-semantic
7 syntheses of their “appearances.” When they show themselves “through” aspects or moments, they are not sending a representative or a substitute. Entities are “made of” their “aspects” or moments. Time is necessary for their unfolding, and they are never done unfolding. Such aspects or moments are genuine “pieces” of an entity that offers different “sides” of itself to different people at different times. These pieces are unified logically. We just can intend enduring entities. An entity is temporally and interpersonally shattered, but not into representations, as if the entity had some other, secret, “aperspectival” kind of being. We intend the object, though we can of course also intend a passing “aspect” of that object. We can the- matize a “moment” of an entity. We can thematize the ontological concept of the moment of an object, and so on. I can reason about your toothache, despite what might be described as your privileged access to some of its qualities.
