On the Object of Thought: Methodological and Phenomenological Reflections
Aron Gurwitsch1
Contrasting with the objectivistic trend which, to a large extent, prevails in contemporary philosophy and psychology, phenomenology has insisted upon the orientation towards subjectivity, i.e., consciousness. The present paper is devoted to the defense and, if possible, the elaboration of this orientation. We propose to discuss a concept which has central importance in this respect, namely the concept of what may be called the “subjective object.” Provisionally and roughly defined, it is the concept of the object not as it really is, but as it appears to the experiencing subject’s mind through a given act of consciousness. What is meant hereby is nothing else than Husserl’s noema.
Since, as far as I can see, William James was the first to lay down the concept of a “subjective object,” it seems appropriate first to expound James’ ideas in the context in which he came to develop his concept. His term for this concept is “object of thought,” which he distinguished from the “topic.” It is this term with the sense James gives to it, that I borrow as title of the present paper. It must be remarked that in dealing with theories of James, we are concerned only with James the psychologist, that is with the ideas which James laid down in his Principles of Psychology; we shall have to disregard his later philosophical development. In the second place, we shall briefly survey some philosophically significant developments in contemporary psychological sciences in which, with or without reference to James, concepts similar to his prove important from the methodological point of view. Finally, we shall attempt to radicalize James’ methodological reflections and thus to open up an avenue of approach toward constitutive phenomenology.
A most essential characteristic of mental states or “thoughts” consists, according to James, in their cognitive function or knowing reference to extramental facts. Such a fact is then known to the mental state through which it presents itself and it is also known to the “psychologist” who studies the mental state in question, no matter whether the latter be his own experience or that of somebody else. The psychologist’s knowledge of the extramental fact is assumed to be “true”; to be not only as true and as complete, but, as a rule, more true and more complete than that of the mental state under examination. We shall see presently that the knowledge of the psychologist in any case extends further than that of the mental state studied, since the former includes elements which are altogether absent from the thought in question, even when the latter happens to be one of the psychologist’s own experiences. In this case, the knowledge which the psychologist as a psychologist has is obviously not conveyed to him by his own mental state, the one that he is just studying, but is derived from other sources, for instance, previous experiences concerning the extramental fact in question. In the case of introspective analysis, the psychologist has then a double knowledge of the extramental fact concerned: (1) the knowledge he owes to his mental state that he is actually experiencing and goes on to analyze in introspection and (2) the knowledge which he has insofar as he is a psychologist and which James terms “the psychologist’s reality.”
“The psychologist’s reality” comprises first of all the extramental fact which stimulates a certain section of the nervous system and provokes nerve- and brain-processes to which the mental state to be studied corresponds. We must keep in mind that this mental state is not only aroused by, but also bears a knowing reference to, that extramental fact. As to this fact, the psychologist accepts the common-sense belief. This belief or knowledge is supplemented by what the psychologist learns from the physical sciences. Thus when he has to discuss the perception of a black body, the psychologist will take account of the fact that no light is reflected from the surface of that body. “The psychologist’s reality” furthermore includes the organic conditions of stimulation and finally comprises a knowledge properly to be called psychological, the knowledge, namely, of what mental state other than the actual one would be given rise to if the same extramental fact would stimulate the nervous system, but under conditions different in this or that respect from the present ones.
“The thought’s object” is obviously nothing else than the knowledge which the thought studied has of the extramental fact or, as James likewise calls it, the “topic” to which it bears cognitive reference. Accordingly, James defines the “object of thought” as the thought’s “entire content of deliverance, neither more nor less.” Surveying the various examples James cites to illustrate his concept and the manifold applications he makes of it, one may assert that: Whenever a mental state occurs, something appears to the experiencing subject’s mind. This something may be a sense-datum as well as the meaning of a comparatively complicated sentence. It may be given directly, as in sense-perception, or in a rather symbolic manner. The something in question appears in a certain light, under a certain aspect surrounded by a halo, escorted by fringes, swimming in a network of relations, and so on. What thus stands to the mind or to thought studied, such—but exactly and only such—as it actually does, that is “the thought’s object.” That object is what it is experienced and known as through the particular mental state considered.
The preceding description may well be taken as a provisional and rough characterization of Husserl’s concept of noema. As James distinguishes between “topic” and “object of thought,” so Husserl does between the “object which is intended” and the “object as it is intended.” The latter, to borrow from Prof. Farber’s paraphrase2 of Husserl’s description is to be taken just as it is intended, just as it is determined in the way in which it presents itself, in just the manner in which it is meant through the act of consciousness under consideration. To give only one example, the distinction is between the meaning or sense of a proposition, that which is formulated and stated by the proposition, on the one hand, and, on the other, that about which the statement is made, the “objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit)”—in Husserl’s terminology—about which something is asserted, and to which the proposition refers by means of its meaning. I refer to this example because some ideas which James has developed on this subject come rather close to certain aspects of Husserl’s elaborate theory of meaning. Lack of time forbidding, I must refrain from pursuing the line along which there is agreement between James and Husserl as to the mentioned problem.
According to James, there are two standpoints with regard to an extramental fact given in experience: the standpoint of the mental state through which the extramental fact presents itself and the standpoint of the psychologist who studies and analyses the mental state in question. It is of great methodological importance that these two standpoints never be confounded. It is this confusion that James stigmatizes as the “psychologist’s fallacy par excellence.” The “object of thought” studied must be taken at face value, such and exactly such as it presents itself. The psychological, physiological, physical and common-sense knowledge that the psychologist has as a psychologist must not be foisted into the thought studies. Therefore, the fact that the thought of (a + b) refers to two items, a and b, does not entitle the psychologist to assume the thought of (a + b) to be, in turn, composed of the thought of a and the thought of b, as though the thought of (a + b) were nothing but a thought of a plus a thought of b. Quite in general, the extramental fact to which a thought refers may well consist of parts. But it does not follow from this that the thought consists of as many parts, each one of the latter standing in a one-to-one correspondence to the parts of the extramental fact. On the contrary, the “thought’s object” is a unitary whole, uncompounded of, and not decomposable into, elements; it has no parts out of which it was built up, and it is always thought “in a single pulse of subjectivity, a single psychosis, feeling or state of mind.”
Let us assume a certain stimulating extramental fact to be composed of elementary stimuli which provoke a set of nerve-processes and let us furthermore assume that each one of these nerve-processes, when it occurs separately, arouses a mental state different from and—as is usually said—more elementary than that aroused by the entire set occurring together. It may even happen that a mere effort of attention is sufficient to transform what was a unitary and unarticulated phenomenon into a plurality of more or less distinct data, each one being just that very sensation which is aroused by an elementary nerve-process when the latter comes into action alone. These conditions are realized in the case, much discussed in James’ time, of the audition of a musical note, one time without and one time with discrimination between the fundamental tone and the harmonics, or in the case of a chord in which the listener sometimes does and sometimes does not discern the component notes. Against the views of Helmholtz and Stumpf, James maintains that the discriminating and the non-discriminating auditions are two different mental states, either, it is true, referring to the same extramental fact and the former yielding a better and more accurate knowledge of the fact than the latter. But, James insists, they cannot be said to be the same mental state recurring twice, as if the discriminating auditions contained in an explicit and unfolded form what the non-discriminating audition also contains, though implicitly, less distinctly, or not distinctly at all.
By this criticism James challenges the concept of non-noticed sensations. As Prof. Köhler has shown in an article published in 1913,3 the concept of non-noticed sensations is most closely connected with the constancy-hypothesis. This hypothesis purports that genuine sense-experience depends entirely and exclusively upon the local stimulation in the peripheral sense-organs. Under certain conditions it is possible to experience genuine sense-data in their purity; but such is not the case normally. We see things in the “real” or normal shape and size, and not in that which corresponds to their “retinal images.” On the basis of the constancy-hypothesis, the discrepancy between perception and sensation can only be explained as brought about by an interpretation of the sense-data. The latter are actually given in their purity, but, so to speak, they are distorted by supervening factors. In every percept the distinction must be made between what is genuine sense-experience and what is derived from interpretive factors. The question then arises as to the nature of these factors, their respective contribution, and the conditions upon which these contributions depend. These factors are considered superior to pure sensibility in the sense that they presuppose the contribution of sensibility for their operation. However differently the interpretive factors are conceived in different theories, the main effect of their operation is considered to consist in organizing, shaping and molding the data of sense-experience, which in themselves are devoid of organization and structure.
Prof. Köhler has pointed out that the distinction between genuine sense-data and the contributions of interpreting factors expresses no structural differentiation within the percept, but rests entirely upon physiological considerations. Once again, to use James’ terminology, “the psychologist’s reality” intervenes in the description of “the thought’s object.” Abandoning the constancy-hypothesis, Gestalt psychology takes the percept at face value as it offers itself in experience, without asking and allowing for that which ought to be expected to occur under the given conditions of local stimulation. The percept is regarded as a unitary whole, as homogeneous in the sense that it is not composed of several strata, each stratum having a provenience and dependence of its own. Organization, articulation, or structure are taken as authentic features of sense-experience. Whatever is exhibited by and plays a role in sense-experience is considered as a matter of this very experience. Thus the problems raised in Gestalt-psychology differ typically from those formulated in traditional theories of perception. The question is no longer that of how organization is brought about in the supposedly shapeless mass of sense-data. The problems of Gestalt theory concern the conditions under which this percept rather than that is given rise to, the conditions under which a type or form of organization or a different one is realized. If only some of the conditions are varied and others, e.g., those of the local stimulation, are kept constant, and if, under these circumstances, two different percepts result, Gestalt theory, in contradistinction to the preceding theories, considers these two percepts as really and substantially different, and not as a group of identical sense-data differently interpreted.
These views on perception come very near James’ own ideas. It sounds like an anticipation of Gestalt theory when James asserts that the sensation “does not still exist inside of the perception and form a constituent part thereof” and that the perception should not be treated “as a sum of distinct psychic entities, the present sensation, namely, plus a lot of images from the past, all ‘integrated’ together in a way impossible to describe.”
Next we refer to the studies by late Ademar Gelb and Prof. Kurt Goldstein on the mental consequences of certain brain lesions, i.e., to diseases such as the various forms of aphasia, agnosia, and apraxia. Gelb and Goldstein have established the methodological principle that when one examines a patient by confronting him with certain situations and having him solve problems that arise in these situations, one should not concentrate upon the patient’s successes and failures, i.e., one should not confine oneself to ascertaining whether or not the patient comes to the result a normal person would attain when put in the same situation. That approach rests upon the assumption that the situation in question means to the patient the same thing that it means to a normal person. When the patient proves unable to master problems which are within the grasp of a normal person, the explanation which suggests itself on the basis of the mentioned assumption is that some of the functions of the patient have been impaired or have been put out of action altogether. But just that assumption is challenged by Gelb and Goldstein.
Instead of clinging to externally ascertainable results, the authors propose to find out, in every particular case, the way in which the patient is led to what he achieves, regardless of whether, from our point of view, the achievement of the patient is or is not the solution of the given problem. When this method is followed, the difference between the patient and a normal person proves deeper and much more essential than it appears on the basis of the mentioned assumption. This difference involves much more than the impairment, to a greater or lesser degree, of certain functions. In accordance with views of Head and anticipations by Jackson, Gelb and Goldstein maintain that the whole mental life of the patient is reduced to a lower level. His general attitude has become more practical and more immediate and this thoroughgoing alteration of the patient’s personality is expressed by and appears in typical modifications which affect each and every function. Correspondingly, the world in which the patient lives differs substantially from ours. In his world there is place only for what is actual and factual. But the patient is unable to imagine things presented to him to be different from what they are in fact, he cannot transform a given situation in his thought or imagination, and he is utterly unable to conceive of possibilities. In other words, the patient is reduced to accepting passively the situation that is given to him or, better, that is imposed upon him. With regard to this situation, the patient has no freedom whatsoever and can display no spontaneity of any kind.
Highly significant in this respect is the utter incapacity of the patient to regard a thing presented to him, such as a key, a hammer, or a pipe as an example or representative of a certain class or category of objects. The patient cannot but cling to the individual and, sometimes, accidental determinations and particularities of the actually present thing, and he is entirely reduced to the practical handling, in fact or in thought, of the thing as determined by their individual peculiarities. This immediate and thoroughly practical attitude has been designated by Gelb and Goldstein as “the concrete attitude.” It contrasts with the “categorical attitude” in which the individual thing is taken as a special case of a certain class, appears under the perspective of, and with reference to, a certain category of objects that it exemplifies. Whenever a problem could be tackled by those means as are available to the “concrete attitude,” Gelb and Goldstein’s patients attain a certain result. There are cases in which, as far as the externally observable effect is concerned, the achievement of the patient does not seem so very different from what a normal person achieves under the same conditions. But let us not forget that the conditions are never the same. At a lower or higher level, the “categorical attitude” permeates all of our [normal] life. The meaning which the given situation has to us is co-determined by this attitude, at least by the ever-present possibility of assuming the “categorical attitude.” To the patient, the “categorical attitude” is utterly inaccessible. For him, the meaning of the given situation is entirely determined by the structure of his reduced world, and it is only within the framework of this reduced world that he can think, act, and live.
From the methodological point of view, but only from this point of view, there is a similarity between Gelb and Goldstein’s procedure and the late Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s criticism of the animistic hypothesis.4 This criticism can be summarized as follows: If people belonging to our society would hold beliefs and practice rites like those observed in primitive societies, their behavior could hardly be explained except by the animistic hypothesis. The emphasis here is on people belonging to our society. Hereby is meant that the experience which the people in question have of the world may be assumed to exhibit substantially the same structure as our experience does; or, to put it otherwise, that those people may be assumed to share with us the belief in certain axioms which, without being explicitly stated, underlie all mental and practical behavior. To formulate roughly the most fundamental of these axioms, we may say: nature constitutes a concatenation of events between which there are certain regularities and causal connections. The regularities and connections which are here in question are those which we know and rely upon in everyday experience previous to their scientific interpretation, previously also to their formulation by means of the mathematizing procedures and in terms of the idealizing concepts of physics that derive from mathematization. We are furthermore well accustomed to the distinction, grounded upon the experience of the mentioned regularities, between events which are and those which are not in causal connection with each other. We distinguish things that have something to do with each other from those that are irrelevant to each other. Before Lévy-Bruhl, it had never been put into question but had rather been considered as a matter of course that primitive people have by and large the same kind of experience as we have, only they interpret it differently and draw different inferences from it. To explain these differences of interpretation is the purpose of the animistic hypothesis.
It is this very assumption of the structural identity of our experience and that of primitive people that Lévy-Bruhl has challenged and stigmatized as a special case of the “psychologist’s fallacy par excellence.” When Lévy-Bruhl insists upon a difference of mentality between civilized and primitive people, it is not that primitive people have a logic of their own. In his later writings Lévy-Bruhl has repeatedly shown that the formal modes of reasoning are the same with us as with primitive people, as far at least as our common-sense reasoning is concerned. The difference concerns rather the premises which play a part in reasoning; that is to say, it concerns the very structure of experience itself; primitive people accept axioms highly different from ours. The principle axiom of primitive mentality which dominates all experience of primitive people is what Lévy-Bruhl has called “la loi de la participation.” The world of primitive people is more dense than ours in the sense that the things hang together more closely and intimately. They hang together by a kind of consubstantiality, communion, participation, or partaking in each other. There are no two things which may definitively be said to be irrelevant to each other. They may happen be indifferent to each other, but they become relevant to each other as soon as the relation of participation is established between them.
What a thing is is not defined by its objective properties open to experience and verification, but rather by the participations in which it is involved. Every being, human and other, is integrated into a highly complex system of multiple participations. Lévy-Bruhl goes so far as to define a concept of existence which is effective in primitive thinking without, of course, being formulated. To primitive mentality “être [to be]” means, according to Lévy-Bruhl, the same thing as “participer de [to participate in].”5 On the basis of this hypothesis, Lévy-Bruhl achieves a simpler and more rational explanation of the rites and practices so characteristic of primitive societies, the purpose of all these rites and practices being the establishment, re-establishment, and eventual severance of participations. Lévy-Bruhl has disclosed a world-structure and a structure of experience very different from everything that is familiar to us. To mention one point only, the concept of the “la loi de participation” makes somehow understandable the strange phenomena of identification which prevail in primitive thinking. These disclosures and explanations are due to Lévy-Bruhl’s explicit refusal to foist what “the psychologist” believes and knows the world to be into the primitive peoples’ thought that he is studying.
The preceding survey is, unavoidably, both superficial and incomplete: superficial insofar as the methodological problems here involved deserve and require more detailed discussion than I can afford in the time at my disposal and incomplete in that I cannot mention such pertinent trends as Max Weber’s investigations concerning the methodology of the social and historical sciences, e.g., his distinction between “objective” and “subjective” significance (“objectiver” and “subjectiver” Sinn) and, on the other hand, the phonological school in linguistics, the “Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague.” Insufficient as it is, the present survey will, I hope, have made appear the methodological importance and fertility of James’ concept of the “object of thought” or of an equivalent concept, that of the subjective object.
Turning to the last part of my argument, the radicalization of James’ methodological reflections and the transition to constitutive phenomenology, I must, to begin with, characterize the general position in which James established the concept under discussion.
This position is that of the psychologist, psychology being considered as a natural science, and all philosophical questions being put aside deliberately. Within the real world there are two domains: the domain of things known or to be known and the domain of mental states knowing, neither domain being reducible to the other. The cognitive function of the mental states is simply posited and every inquiry as to its possibility or general nature is explicitly excluded. Thus a dualism and even a kind of pre-established harmony between things and thoughts is assumed and accepted. It is this dualism that gives rise to the specific philosophical questions. The line along which we are going to formulate these problems is, however, entirely different from that which James followed in his philosophical development subsequent to the Principles of Psychology.
The radicalization of the methodological reflections consists in enlarging the scope of the psychological point of view so as to apply it to that which falls within the “psychologist’s reality,” e.g., to the “topic” as defined by James. Let me recall the distinction between the “thought’s object” and the “topic,” that is between the object as it appears through a concrete act of consciousness and the object as it really is and is known to the psychologist. In a universal reflection, the psychologist makes himself aware of the fact that whatever he knows about the “topic” and about other items which pertain to the “psychologist’s reality” is due to certain experiences. Just because he adopts the point of view of natural science, the psychologist does not consider the “topic” and other elements of the “psychologist’s reality” as metaphysical entities, but rather takes them as a matter of experience. From the point of view of empirical science, a thing is what it is known as, to refer to Hodgson’s fortunate formulation of the sound principles of British empiricism. There is then a relation between any element of the “psychologist’s reality” and experiences, both actual and possible, through which that element is known as that which it is, displays its qualities, properties, and determinations, appears in its real existence, and exhibits the meaning of its existence. For the sake of simplicity, let us suppose that the psychologist is studying a mental state of his own. He is then confronted with a “thought’s object,” i.e., with the topic such—exactly and only such—as it stands to his mind through the mental state he is studying. But the psychologist does not lose sight of the topic as it really is. In the radicalization in question, the topic is considered in its relation to experiences, not only to the mental state which the psychologist is about to study, at least not to this mental state alone, but also to experiences made in the past and which, under most circumstances, the psychologist, is free to repeat. Between these experiences, there is accordance, convergence, and conformance, by virtue of which all of them present themselves as experiences of the topic in question. The same holds correspondingly for the other elements of the “psychologist’s reality,” e.g., for the organic conditions of the stimulation. Here too, there is reference to experiences, though not to mere perceptions, but to the latter as embodied in scientific interpretation and elaboration. The experiences which are here in question exhibit some complexity and a more or less complex stratification.
Proceeding in this way, the psychologist becomes a psychologist throughout, a psychologist with regard to whatever exists and is valid for him, or, for that matter, he becomes a philosopher; there is no longer a sharp line of demarcation. By the same token, an incipient phenomenological reduction is performed—incipient because it is surely not the phenomenological reduction in the developed and elaborated form in which Husserl has formulated this methodological device in the Ideas and later in the Méditations cartésiennes. But the essential principle, i.e., the consideration of every reality with reference to certain groups of experiences, is already laid down.
To exemplify the reference of a real existent to the experiences through which the existent appears and is known as that which it is, let us take a glance at perception. When we perceive a thing, we do so from a certain standpoint and at a certain distance. The thing is near to or far from us, it offers itself from this side or from that, it is seen under a certain aspect, or situated in a perceptual field, the thing appears under the perspective of these or those other things belonging to that field. As we change our standpoint, come nearer to, go farther away from, or go around the thing, the latter presents itself from different sides and appears under varying aspects and perspectives. We are here confronted with the phenomena which Husserl has brought out in his theory of perceptual adumbration (Wahrneehmungsabschattung). Allowance must furthermore be made for the experiences of the causal properties of the thing, properties which find their expression in concepts of physics like inertia, conductivity of heat, index of refraction, electrical conductivity. If we go beyond the perceptual level, account must be taken also of the idealizing processes through which the causal properties receive their mathematical formulation. We are thus in the presence of a plurality of mental states, all different from each other and yet all referring to the same real existent. James has laid down the “principle of constancy in the mind’s meanings” to the effect that “the same matters can be thought of in successive portions of the mental stream, and some of these portions can know that they mean the same matters which the other portions meant.” Adopting the point of view of psychology as a natural science, James could content himself with simply asserting this principle and with ascertaining its dominance in consciousness. If we pass to the phenomenological level, through the radicalization of the psychological point of view, the mentioned principle proves a title for both deep and far reaching investigations. In fact, the identity of the object in the face of the multiple experiences referring to the former is the fundamental problem of constitutive phenomenology, the aim of which is to account for the object or existent in terms of the pertinent experiences.6
Let us finally consider the form in which the dualism between the “thought’s object” and the topic appears on the phenomenological level. Considered in its reference to the multiple pertinent experiences, the topic proves itself an “object of thought,” related, to be sure, not to this or that particular experience, but to the totality of experiences through which it becomes known as that real existent which it is. In this sense the topic turns out to be an “object of thought” of a higher order. To put it in Husserl’s terminology, through each of the experiences in question, the topic presents itself in a certain mode of appearance; to each of these experiences corresponds a noema, viz. the topic as appearing under a certain aspect and perspective. To the totality of experiences there corresponds then, in the ideal case, the topic as offering itself under the totality of possible aspects and perspectives. In other words, the topic is a noematic entity itself, more precisely it proves the systematic concatenation of noemata. Now, the particular experience which we are considering belongs to the group of experiences through which the topic discloses and unfolds itself in its properties, qualities, and determinations. Accordingly, the noema which corresponds to this experience, belongs itself to the mentioned noematic system. Hence the relation between the “object of thought” and the “topic” is that between a member of a system and the system itself, and, correspondingly, the relation between a particular experience and the coherent group of experiences to which it belongs. The problems which arise in this connection concern (1) the phenomenal features through which the reference and pertinence of this particular noema to the noematic system is given and (2) the nature of the coherence of the noematic system and of the group of corresponding experiences. The latter question refers, so to speak, to the dynamics of conscious life. Earlier we mentioned the accordance, conformance, and convergence between experiences which present themselves as experiences of one and the same object. These terms refer to the internal structure of the system and group [of experiences] in question. Problems of this type arise with regard to all domains, perceptual and other that are dealt with in constitutive phenomenology.
I am too well aware of the little sympathy or, shall I better say, lack of sympathy which James, especially the older James, would have had for this trend of ideas to present them as a continuation and development, let alone interpretation, of his intentions. If notwithstanding the intentions of the historical James, I started from his methodological reflections, it is because James has brought out the foundational problems of psychology with such clarity and rigor that motives become apparent which lead toward the phenomenological position. In the present phase of phenomenology it seems to me important and even imperative to insist upon the possibility of disengaging such motives from the foundation problems of the sciences. I am very glad to find myself in full agreement with Prof. Farber’s stand that phenomenology is not detached from the sciences, not separated from them by an unbridged gulf, but, to the contrary, is accessible beginning from the sciences of the natural attitude. Accessibility means continuity by motivation. This holds not only for psychology, but applies also to the foundational problems of the other sciences, the mathematical and physical sciences as well as the historical and social sciences. As to the latter, I refer to the work done by Dr. Schutz.7 If phenomenology keeps in close contact with the sciences and if, on the other hand, the foundational problems of the sciences are set forth in a radical way as to their philosophical implications, much clarification and advancement may be expected along these convergent lines of research.
EDITORIAL ADDENDUM
The shorter version of the preceding essay was, as mentioned, published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. It was followed there by remarks on it by Lewis White Beck and Fritz Heider, to which Gurwitsch responded as follows. [L.E.]
In the present paper, which is concerned with psychology from the philosophical point of view, psychology is understood in the classical sense as a science dealing with mental phenomena and consciousness. Psychology undoubtedly has an explanatory phase or aspect. However, it is not this aspect that presents a major interest to philosophy, especially phenomenology.
The relationship between phenomenology and psychology are of a peculiar nature. Phenomenology tries to bring about ultimate clarification of the fundamental concepts of all sciences. Differently from what is the case with regard to the other sciences, there is, however, community of subject-matter between phenomenology and psychology, since the former is also concerned with consciousness, though from a specific point of view. Hence the results of phenomenological analysis have a bearing on psychology and, conversely, the findings of psychological research, to the extent to which this research is concerned with consciousness, must be allowed for in the elaboration of phenomenological theories. On the basis of this particular relationship, the present paper embarks upon the discussion of a fundamental concept of psychology, viz., the concept of the “object of thought” and, by developing tries far enough the problems concerning the mentioned concept, to open an avenue of approach towards phenomenological questions and positions. Koffka’s concept of “behavioral” as different from “geographical environment” is indeed one of the illustrative examples that may be given of the broader concept of the “object of thought.”8 Lack of time forbidding, other examples could not be given at the meeting.9
NOTES
1. Entitled merely “On the Object of Thought,” chapter 8 of Gurwitsch’s Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966) has the following note attached to its title: “Paper read at the meeting of the Phenomenological Society, April 27, 1946, at Hunter College, New York City. It was not possible to include here all of the discussion. The original version was published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research VII (1947).” What seems the integral script read at the International Phenomenological Society meeting has, however, survived in the Nachlass. It is 596 lines long and 291 lines of it, i.e., practically half, correspond closely to the published version. The following, however, was added to the previously published version:
and I must also forsake surveying the elaboration of concepts analogous to that of the “object of thought” in several contemporary psychological sciences. I have in view the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis in Gestalt theory, the studies of the late Gelb and Prof. Goldstein on the psychical effects of brain injuries, the late Lévy-Bruhl’s account of mental functions in primitive societies, the views of the phonological school in linguistics, Max Weber’s verstehende Soziologie and especially his distinction between objektiver and subjektiver Sinn.
The discussions of the phonological school and Max Weber were unfortunately not originally included in this text, but those of Gestalt theory, Gelb and Goldstein, and Lévy-Bruhl are in the excluded 291 lines that are restored here.
2. Marvin Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943) and cf. Gurwitsch’s review of this work in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 6 (1946): 439–45. [L. E.]
3. Wolfgang Köhler, “Über unbermerkte Empfindungen und Urteilstäuschungen,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie LXVI (1913). [L. E.]
4. Gurwitsch’s library contained at his death the following works of Lévy-Bruhl: La mentalité primitive (1922), Le surnaturel et la nature dans la mentalité primitive (1931), L’Experérience mystique et les symboles chez les primitifs (1938). He first referred to Lévy-Bruhl in 1932 (cf. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, chapter 5) and probably persuaded Husserl to study him. [L. E.]
5. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, “The Problem of Existence in Constitutive Phenomenology,” Journal of Philosophy LVIII (1961) and reprinted in his Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, chapter 6. [L. E.]
6. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940) and reprinted in his Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, chapter 7. [L. E.]
7. Cf. Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. I, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962) and Aron Gurwitsch, “The Common-Sense World as Social Reality—A Discourse on Alfred Schutz,” Social Research XXIX (1962) and reprinted in Gurwitsch’s Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, chapter 5. [L. E.]
8. Cf. Kurt Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1935). [L. E.]
9. The author wishes to express his gratitude to the American Philosophical Society for a grant in aid of research (Penrose Fund) by which he was enabled to prepare the material from which the present communication is drawn.