1. Ontology Presupposed in Epistemology
Ontology has frequently been understood as the theory of the ultimate classes of existents or entities and of characteristics of and structures that belong to all entities merely as such.1 Understood in this way acts of human cognition, for example, like all other events, obviously fall within the domain of ontology. There are thus also certain special or 'regional' ontologies, which attempt to exhibit the essential characteristics and structures peculiar to the members of each of the ultimate classes of entities — of minds (and mental acts), physical bodies, and so on. But even given these special ontologies it is still not strictly true, as Gustav Bergmann has often said, that "... epistemology is but the ontology of the knowing situation."2 There is a normative or criteriological aspect to epistemology that is not reducible to a mere ontological analysis of cognition. It nonetheless seems plausible to suppose that an adequate ontology of cognitive acts would be a necessary condition for the satisfactory execution of the normative inquiries in epistemology.3 The intent of this paper is to cast some light upon the relationship between ontology and the theory of knowledge, by explaining Edmund Husserl's use of certain general ontological structures to clarify the manner in which individual cognitive acts can have an objective 'content'— or in short, to clarify how knowledge as commonly understood is possible. In the process, some important but lesser known aspects of Husserl's philosophy will be explained. Our first step must be an explanation of how Husserl understood the problem of the objectivity of knowledge.
2. Three Aspects of the Objectivity of Knowledge
Certain time-worn philosophical questions about knowledge arise from the fact that the experiences — cognitive and otherwise — of each person are a part of his and only his life, and exhibit characteristics peculiar to him alone. My present perception of that tree out of this window and from this chair is indelibly mine. It has features that in all probability will never be combined in just this way again — which is completely assured if we include its temporal locus among those features. As a particular event it is non-repeatable even within my own life stream. It also could not, of course, be a part of the life stream of any other person. No one else could have had or can have that particular experience, although they might have one very like it. Further, it is possible that the 'object' of my perception might not exist at all, or might actually be very different from what it appears to be. Given simply that I see that tree, even in a very clear and determinate manner, it does not follow by any rules of generally accepted logic that the tree seen exists in actuality.
With few exceptions, the points just made are conceded today in philosophical accounts of human cognitive experience. But, once conceded, they pose difficulties about other aspects of human knowledge that seem equally obvious, or even more so, before philosophical reflection sets in; and in so doing they threaten to undermine the very possibility of knowledge itself. One may reason as follows: My perception of that tree, as has just been said, is logically distinct and seems separable in essence from every other experience of mine, from every experience of any other person, and from the very 'object' of that perception itself. But, this being so, it is well on the way — along fines familiar to readers of Hume — to closing in upon itself entirely and becoming a minute Spinozistic substance or Humean 'perception', wholly self-sufficient and therefore ineluctably alone. It has nothing in common with anything else and hence is incapable of communication; and it carries within it no inherent reference beyond itself, for it has no necessary connections with any other thing. Perhaps only some loose-jointed causal creed relates its involvements with other things, and that faith can and has been shaken by plausible lines of argument. The cognitive event as an individual entity (or substance) thus becomes utterly 'subjective'.
But how, then, are we to understand certain other obvious features of [381] knowledge that presuppose, precisely, the involvement of the cognitive experience with things other than itself. These are the 'objective' features of experience. The tree presents itself to me as something that was there before and remains after I see it. It is hard to imagine what our experience would be like if this were not so, and unclear even what it would mean to suppose a tree to be produced or annihilated with the mere act of looking at it. My perception lays claim to a certain transcendence toward an object (that tree) which is independent of the particular experience of it, if not of all experience whatsoever. Moreover, my many experiences of the same tree are subjected to a rigorous order or lawfulness. The parts of the tree, and the perspectives which it exhibits from various approaches, dictate a determinate succession of possible experiences in relation to the tree. There are also certain obvious general conditions of my seeing the tree at all, and these must be respected as I undertake to examine the tree visually and otherwise. I cannot arrive at a perception of this tree — or of this tree from that angle — by just any arbitrary set of previous experiences. As Kant and many others have noticed, in such matters all roads certainly do not lead to Rome. Any variability in the routes that bring you exactly there is rigorously confined within abiding necessities. And finally, my perceptions of the tree can be verified or falsified by the perceptions of a second person. Thus my 'object' can also be his 'object', even though our experiences differ both individually and qualitatively. It is similar with other types of cognitive experiences. He can also verify my memory, check my inference, evaluate my hypothesis. With reference to most types, at least, of cognitive acts, a certain community or identity is presupposed between my cognitions and those of others. That presupposition is even a condition of our cognitive disagreements.4
Thus there are three apparently objective aspects of acts of knowledge: transcendence toward an independent object, conformity to general order or law, and a certain community of what is cognised. They, together with the subjective aspects previously stated, confront us with the problem of how — in Husserl's words — we are to understand ‘…the relationship between the subjectivity of knowing and the objectivity of the content of knowledge.’5 The problem of the objectivity of knowledge may be viewed as the problem of how to reconcile these three objective aspects of knowledge with the subjectivity of cognitive acts, and a solution to that problem constitutes a necessary (if not sufficient) condition of any account of the possibility of knowledge.
3. Husserl's First Problem: The Objectivity of Formal Methods in Arithmetic
The first aspect of the problem of the objectivity of knowledge that presented itself to Husserl was the one concerning the rigorous order or lawfulness of knowledge. This came about in the course of his mathematical studies at Berlin under Karl Weierstrass. Much in the mathematical methods of those times (the 1870s) could not be reduced to general rational procedures, but at critical points depended upon the blind (even when accurate) instincts and tact of individual mathematicians — who often held quite divergent theories about the techniques by which they nevertheless obtained identical results. Weierstrass and others of course regarded this as a deficiency in mathematical knowledge, and one which both required and admitted of a remedy.6 It was generally presupposed that the domain of number was itself rigorously ordered, and that knowledge of that domain must possess a corresponding rigorous order. The task was only to find this order, to realize it in practice, or at least to show how it could, in principle, be realised.
Husserl's early ambition was to carry out this task. He first undertook clarification of the concept of number by an intuitionally based analysis of the simpler objects that fall under it (i.e., of the smaller numbers, 2 through 12). Here he was satisfied with his results. Then, setting out from the clarified concept, he endeavoured to give a rational reconstruction of the path leading from it to the most remote truths of numerical analysis or general arithmetic. But he found this reconstruction to be impossible. The building-blocks at his disposal at the time — various sorts of 'representations' of numbers — simply were not always what was used in the epistemic progressions that occur in arithmetical practice. The employment of the artificial symbolisms and formal techniques so pervasively and accurately used in the advancement of arithmetical knowledge (in the solution of equations, for example, or in the ordinary adding up of a column of figures on paper) clearly was not a matter of representing or thinking about numbers and number relations at all, but consisted to a very large extent of a mere rule-governed manipulation of sense-perceptible symbols.7 At this point in his career he found himself unable to explain how such formal procedures or 'calculations' yielded their uniformly and objectively correct results. What is the order in the mental processes of the working mathematician, focused almost entirely upon things other than numbers and number relations, [383] that nevertheless allows those processes to eventuate in a grasp of truths about numbers and number relations?
But this question soon broadened into a realization that arithmetical thinking is not peculiar in this regard. He therefore found himself involved in a more general epistemological inquiry8 concerning how ordinary as well as scientific thinking — both of which largely deal in highly partial or extrinsic determinations, or even mere symbols, of the subject matters at issue, instead of with the matters themselves — nevertheless can result in an accurate grasp of truths about die Sachen selbst, and in many cases even a grasp of those very things themselves? What are the laws of cognitive experience that account for this? It is in this form that the problem of the objectivity of cognitive experience in general first addressed itself to Husserl.
Moreover, it is the objective order9 in the discursive aspect of cognitive experience that remains uppermost in Husserl's concerns at least until 1900. Thus, in the "Introduction" to the Prolegomena to Pure Logic he describes the problem of the objectivity of knowledge as "the cardinal question of epistemology", and then proceeds to state that it "... coincides in essence, mainly, if not entirely", with the question about the theoretical foundations of logic viewed as a technology (Kunstlehre) of the advancement of knowledge, and especially about the relationship of such a technology to psychology.10 The technology in question is simply an applied logic — that is, one which furnishes criteria and techniques for distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable concepts, theories, derivations, and assertions, and also develops methods for originating acceptable ones. Hence in 1900 the question of the objectivity of knowledge is for Husserl mainly the question: What must we know, and what must therefore be the case, in order that such an applied logic should be possible? In particular, can the possibility of an applied logic be explicated — as was widely assumed at the time — solely by reference to truths established in the science of psychology, and by reference to the corresponding facts and empirical laws of the mental processes of human beings?
