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chap t e r f o u r ................................... evidence, rationality, and existence in husserl’s phenomenology In the preceding chapter on evidence and truth, I suggested that while an occurrent case of evidence does not make the corresponding proposition true, it does make us justified in believing that the corresponding proposition is true. Evidence is that experience whereby a proposition can acquire the sense of being true such that we are justified in making it the object of our assent. Thus a consideration of Husserl’s conception of the relation between evidence and truth leads us directly to a consideration of the relation between evidence and justified belief. The major statement of Husserl’s theory of justification is to be found in part 4 of Ideas I, titled “Reason and Actuality” (Vernunft und Wirklichkeit), especially in the second chapter of that part, “Phenomenology of Reason” (Phänomenologie der Vernunft). There Husserl lays out a phenomenological theory of rationality. The general task of a theory of rationality is to specify those conditions under which a belief is justified. More precisely, for any proposition p, a theory of rationality is to specify the conditions under which a person, S, is justified in believing p. It is persons who are justified in having beliefs. In our examination of part 4 of Ideas I, I will distinguish between a weak and a strong statement of the rationality condition. I will then indicate why the weak statement is so weak as to make it practically useless as a condition for person rationality. I will then argue that the strong statement— which is very strong indeed—is not intended as a statement of a rationality condition that is to hold for all cognitive subjects in general. Rather, it is a statement of the condition for philosophical rationality. It holds only for some cognitive subjects at some times, namely, philosophers when they philosophize . Although it appears as if Husserl is developing here a general theory of rationality, there are indications in his other works that what he has in mind here is something quite specific. evidence, rationality, and existence 103 Expanding on such indications, I will argue that Husserl’s concept of rationality is differentiated with respect to epistemic project. I will then show why the strong statement of the rationality condition is not binding in the domain of positive scientific research. Thus, while it may be the case that if p is evident to a practicing empirical scientist, that scientist is justified in believing p, it does not follow that a scientist is justified in believing p if and only if p is evident. Such a restriction on justified belief holds, if at all, only for the philosopher in pursuit of philosophy as a rigorous science. If justified belief in the context of positive scientific research is not restricted to what is evident in the Husserlian sense, then it is least possible that the practicing scientist is justified in believing in the existence of entities that cannot be directly given in an intuitive act of evidence. I will argue, then, that on Husserl’s own account, such a scientist—together with the scientifically educated—may be justified in believing in the existence of theoretical entities even if such entities cannot be given in the phenomenologically required sense. 1. husserl’s theory of rationality: ideas i In part 4 of Ideas I, the problem of rationality is initially posed in terms of the question of the relation between the noetic-noematic components of experience and the putative object of experience. In part 3 Husserl sketched out the major contours of the correlation between the noetic and noematic dimensions of consciousness. The ontological identity of the noema is a matter of huge disagreement in Husserl scholarship. I will have more to say about it in chapter 6. Here suffice it to say that every intentional act of consciousness (noesis) intends its object in a particular way, under a particular description (noema). Every element in the act by which an object is presented will find its correlate in the noema of that act. In part 4 Husserl takes up the issue of the relation between the noetic-noematic complex of consciousness and the object intended by consciousness. He begins by reasserting the point that consciousness and reality represent two distinct “realms of being, which are radically opposed and yet essentially related to one another” (ID I, 307 / H III 1, 295). He also claims that noemata are not to...

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