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Mental Representation and Consciousness. Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Representation and Reference.

Source: The Review of Metaphysics

Publication Date: 09/01/1995

Author: Sokolowki, Robert

One of the major points in Husserl's philosophy is his insistence that consciousness is structured. He denies that consciousnessis simply an undifferentiated awareness and that all the differences occur in the content or object of consciousness. He claims

that consciousness itself is articulated; it has parts ordered into different kinds of wholes. The most vivid examples of this

articulation are found in "representational" forms of consciousness such as remembering or imaging an experience. Let us say

that I remember getting into a taxi last evening. My remembering is dual and involves the memorial reenactment of a prior

perceptual activity. I "relive," so to speak, myself getting into the taxi yesterday evening, and I do so now, while sitting in a

chair in my office. This dual pattern of consciousness, however, this parallelism between my present remembering and my pastexperience, is entirely focused on one object, on the taxi as being perceived and entered by me.

We might put this structure into a simplified notation such as the following: "I {remember [perceiving] (x)}." The symbolism,

like that of symbolic logic, would have the advantage of condensing a long verbal analysis into a simple notation and of

reminding us of certain important structural elements, such as the fact that although there are two acts, one (the prior

perception) nested inside the other (the present remembering), the whole memorial experience has only one target, one (x), the

taxi being perceptually entered by me.

However, my simplified notation would not take into account all the elements involved in remembering. One would have to

add something to symbolize other aspects implied in my present act of remembering, such as the marginal awareness I have of

my present surroundings, the awareness I now have of my own bodily condition, the reenacted awareness of the past

surroundings and body, and the identification of my own self that occurs within remembering. What Eduard Marbach does in

the book under review is to provide a full notation for all the relevant factors in many forms of human consciousness. As in

Husserl, the paradigm for conscious structure is taken to be memory and imagination, but Marbach also examines pictorial

consciousness and perception itself. In other words, he works mainly with perception and its modifications. He develops an

extremely sophisticated notation for these conscious structures. It is too complicated to reproduce in this review, but it is

presented as an analogue to the Begriffsschrift that Frege introduced for logical structure.

Given the rivalry between Frege and Husserl, and the rivalry between the traditions that emanated from both thinkers, it is

highly appropriate to provide such a notation for Husserl. The notation is not focused on logical structure; it is focused on the

intentional acts that constitute logical and other structures. There is a great rhetorical advantage in providing such a notationbecause our somewhat mathematical age is comfortable with mathematical-looking expositions of philosophical doctrines, but

the advantage of the notation is not only rhetorical; it also helps us to condense Husserl's philosophical teaching and to be able

to see relationships and contrasts that are hard to discern on the basis of verbal descriptions alone. One of the best examples of

such clarification is Marbach's demonstration that imaging cannot involve the experience of "inner pictures." The

presentational form of imagination is structurally different from the form of viewing pictures, and a comparison of thesymbolisms for each bring this out very effectively; Marbach develops this point in debate with the work of Stephen Kosslyn

on mental imagery. I should also mention that an important theme brought out in Marbach's notation is the role played by the

modes of belief and neutrality in the generation of these various modes of intentionality.

Another benefit of providing notation for presentational or intentional forms of consciousness is that this effort will help

advance a certain systematization of phenomenological analysis. Husserl always hoped that his philosophy could become

expressed as a systematic, ordered whole of description. This goal could never be fully achieved, but some steps toward it

could be made by a "catalogue," in symbolic notation, of the descriptions that have been accomplished. The definitecontributions of phenomenology would more vividly be presented if they were symbolically collected. Such a presentation

would provide a solid platform for further work.

Marbach's background prepared him very well for this extremely original effort. He wrote his thesis, which later appeared in

Phaenomenologica, on Husserl's concept of the ego, and he edited a volume of Husserliana dedicated to pictorial, memorial,

and representational consciousness. He has worked extensively in cognitive science and in the psychology of Piaget, and has

empirically studied the development of pictorial consciousness in children. Marbach's own work is very much influenced by an

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excellent book by Iso Kern, Idee und Methode der Philosophie, a work that is not nearly enough acknowledged in

contemporary continental thought.

Marbach's present book comes at a very opportune moment in philosophical controversy. John Searle has recently argued, in

The Rediscovery of Mind, that consciousness is irreducible and must be taken into account philosophically, not neglected or

eliminated as it has been by much of recent cognitive science; he says that recent philosophy of mind has been sterile because

of its neglect of consciousness. Marbach vividly shows how consciousness can be structurally analyzed; we do not have torefer to it merely in global and vague terms. Another author to whom Marbach's work can be related is Gerald Edelman, whose

book The Remembered Present bears a title that fits beautifully with Marbach's project and the work of Husserl.

I would like to suggest still further avenues of exploration for the work that Marbach has done. First, Marbach gives notations

for perception, memory, anticipation, imagination, and pictorial consciousness. These are forms of intentionality that underlie

full categorial consciousness. It would be especially important to provide notation for categorial articulation, for the kind of

intentionality that constitutes states of affairs and propositions. This level of notation might provide a fruitful link between

Husserl and Frege, and would help us understand now categoriality emerges out of precategorial experience. Second, oncevarious forms of intentionality have been symbolized, one can ask about the philosophical differences between this symbolic

notation and that of Frege. Does the Husserlian notation allow any sort of inferences? Is there anything analogous to inference

in it? Is there anything analogous to contradiction in certain forms and their combinations? Can the notation be used in

automation in any way? What benefit would such automation bring? Or is it only an instrument in more purely theoretic

explorations? Third, I would suggest that the many ways in which we intend the absent deserves to be codified in notation, a

notation that will bring out clearly that we do not need surrogate images when we "emptily" intend something. Fourth, it would

be interesting to devise a notation to express the intentionality at work in reading and writing.

The role of the notation in "systematizing" Husserl's phenomenology would be shown if we were, for example, to examine the

difference between the intentionality at work in reading a text and that involved in looking at a picture. We could simply

compare the symbols for each and the differences would spring to light. The systematization would not mean that the various

intentional forms are to be derived from certain basic forms as though from axioms; the systematic order of phenomenology is

not deductive but interwoven, as one form is seen to blend with or give way to others.

Marbach's book is an important milestone in Husserlian studies, because it leads us away from the stale issues that seem to be

repeated over and over again in phenomenological work: the problem of the lifeworld, the problem of reduction, the problem

of the noema. Husserl's major contributions occurred in his actual descriptions of intentionality; the achievement is in the

details. Marbach brings these analyses to the fore with his notation and shows that Husserl's philosophy has made major,specifiable contributions. Husserl did not just wave his hand at intentionality and say that it is a "consciousness of" something;

he showed how it is structured, and his analyses have very much to offer to current debates about the mind. Marbach makes

these analyses vividly present to us. His edition of Husserl's Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung is now being translatedinto English by John Brough, and when the translation appears, the present volume might serve along with it as a major

stimulus to detailed and productive advances in phenomenology in the English-speaking world. - Robert Sokolowski, The

Catholic University of America

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