Is All Scientific Knowledge Suspect?
The nature of knowledge is taken for granted. Most never question the basis of knowledge itself and since the times of Plato and Aristotle the question has rarely been addressed by philosophers. The assumption is that the answer is simple and obvious, was obtained long ago and is simply not worthy of their time. Husserl says not so fast…science has been blinded by a set of dogmas and crippled by the use of the “natural attitude.” Paraphrasing Dermot Moran from page 15 of The Phenomenology Reader; the natural attitude is that in which we live first of all and most of the time and the scientific attitude takes its origin from the natural attitude, referring back to it for justification. Husserl shows why science being based on the natural attitude is a potential problem…a problem that shakes the core foundation that all knowledge is based on.
I will begin this essay by explaining why Edmund Husserl believes that knowledge requires an ultimate justification that is to be arrived at independent of science, then continue with an exploration of Husserl’s criterion for how something qualifies as genuine knowledge. Finally an explanation of the epistemological/phenomenological reduction will show that its purpose is to yield objective universal knowledge of the ‘thing” in question, thus securing the scientific status of phenomenology.
Husserl believes there are two fundamental ways of looking at the world, the natural attitude and the philosophical attitude. Science utilizes what Husserl calls “the natural attitude of thought” or natural thinking as opposed philosophical thinking. Within natural thinking, our attention is focused on objects via the act of intuition and thought with the possibility of knowledge simply taken for granted, as a given.
Science takes knowledge as a ‘thing,’ it doesn’t ask or investigate how that knowledge is actually obtained. The question never arises as to how consciousness actually accesses this knowledge. All knowledge must be accessed from within consciousness, even if transcendent, as the human mind can only know what is contained in it. Science takes for granted the process of simply perceiving the world and this familiarity may actually cloud its ability to determine objective knowledge. Science approaches its subjects from without, studying and observing them from a third party point of view, whereas the only access to these things is from inside their minds. For example, science studies consciousness itself from the ‘outside,’ analyzing brains, waves and nervous systems to try to make inferences about consciousness.
An objective science can’t rationally analyze subjective thinking, experiencing beings…the conscious entities that are actually doing the science. Science and consciousness are not separate from the world, and neither are looking at it from the outside. They are both an integral part of the world, of existence, of being itself. There are boundaries to science, limits to the questions that science can answer and science can’t be used as a source of self-understanding.
Such skepticism not only shows the limitations of science, it also questions the possibility of knowledge itself, making it necessary to adapt the philosophical attitude and not limiting ourselves to the natural attitude. Science can’t justifiably investigate itself, its own conscious perceiving nature, it must begin with an outside premise to build on, thus is not sufficient to justify the basis of knowledge itself. Consciousness must be investigated from within via philosophical thinking instead of from without with natural thinking. Turning inside to consciousness doesn’t limit us from the outside world, conversely it is the only way to connect to it! Thus science, which utilizes the natural attitude, cannot be used as a justification of knowledge because genuine knowledge is transcendent, paradoxically obtained through immanence.
If something is ‘really’ immanent it is epistemologically immanent, thus indubitable. Paraphrasing Husserl, all positive knowledge is knowledge that takes its objects as transcendent, positing objects as existing and claiming to make contact with states of affairs that are not themselves immanent. How can something immanent be transcendent? He submits that we have a distinct kind of evidence, an epistemological immanence of what is transcendent.
We know indubitably that we are having the thoughts we are having…cogitatio. Whether something is real or not is not the question. Husserl is not doubting that, he just thinks it is irrelevant. We can doubt whether everything is objectively true but not that we are having these thoughts. Epistemological immanence is the quality of conscious experience that certifies knowledge beyond any doubt, it indubitably demonstrates that what you are experiencing is real. Epistemological immanence is indubitable evidence.
The question is how does this immanence connect to transcendence…is there evidence within consciousness of cognitive contact with the world? From within consciousness are there cases of epistemological immanence that transcend to the real world? Husserl believes the answer is affirmative and this epistemological immanence is to be determined through the epistemological or phenomenological reduction.
The phenomenological reduction consists of examining our conscious experience and applying a methodology to strip away our naturalistic filters, our veil of perception, eliminating certain aspects of our experience from consideration, in order to determine the universal essence of the phenomenon being investigated, be it concrete or abstract. The reduction is a process of analyzing the conscious experience of the perception of the ‘thing’ in question in order to arrive at universal knowledge or the universal essence of the ‘thing.’ As Dermot Moran mentions on page 15 of The Phenomenology Reader; “the phenomenologist must operate the bracketing and reduction in order to focus only on the meaning constituting character of the act, the noetic act.”
Husserl believes that through direct experience an observer can obtain the absolute givenness of an object by performing a reductive process to somehow strip away, to bracket out all prejudices, cultural biases, preconceived notions....all transcendent properties…leaving the observer with objective knowledge of the essence of the object being observed. As Husserl explains on page 30 of The Idea of Phenomenology; “the epistemological reduction must be performed, that is all transcendence that comes into play here must be excluded…” This eidetic reduction shifts perspective from fixations on particulars and facts to universals, thus providing knowledge of the universals within conscious experience. An actual experience is not required, the essence of an imaginary concept can also be determined. The eidetic reduction is not confined to perception, it can also be performed on imagination to discover the eidetic intuition of essences. The purpose of this reductive process is to discover objective universal knowledge.
Phenomenology must be considered an objective theory if it is to be classified as scientific. A theory is considered objective if it generates a universal truth about reality. This is because universal knowledge (the essence of things) is objective by definition and the base concept that other all other concepts are built on. Husserl claims that phenomenology is a science, a science that can be utilized to determine these objective universal truths.
He believes that one can experience essences (aka universal knowledge) with indubitable certainty due to epistemological immanence which yields universal truth following successful bracketing with the epoche. One has immanent knowledge of the cogitatio…our thoughts, reflections, thinking, experience. Evidence about external objects is never one hundred percent certain, however reflecting on the cogitatio is indubitable, as the match between what you experience feels like and the idea you are experiencing is perfect. Even though the cogitatio seems subjective and personal, it can contain objectivity because the cogitatio is epistemologically immanent and contains transcendence. Epistemological (intuitive) immanence can be transcendent. Objective knowledge, knowledge possible of things that transcend the mind, is possible through ‘eidetic intuition’, an intuition of forms and universals, and the epoche or eidetic/phenomenological reduction. Knowledge of universals satisfies the criteria of eidetic intuition and meets all the conditions for absolute givenness.
Science uses the natural attitude, assuming the possibility of objective knowledge, never questioning the method that this knowledge is obtained by. Without verification of this assumption, the basis for scientific knowledge itself is suspect. This basis must be found outside science and Husserl submits this objective universal knowledge can be found in Phenomenology. Phenomenology studies consciousness and describes the essence of knowledge, genuine knowledge ascertained independent of science, thus providing knowledge of universally valid statements in order to develop valid scientific theories.