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A Critical Exploration of Husserl's Notion of the 'Natural Attitude'
By: daniel ohalloran

This essay will seek to explore Husserl’s conception of the ‘natural attitude’ and how this attitude reveals itself. With this important phenomenological position outlined it will then be possible, using a selection of work from another 20th century thinker Willard Van Ormand Quine, to offer a brief critical analysis of Husserl’s claim that it is possible to reveal and subsequently study an attitude which is pre-judicative such as that which is offered in his work ‘Ideas’; an attitude which he describes as an awareness of that which is ‘simply there’ or ‘present’ [1969:101]. Quine’s work it will be seen raises some interesting concerns with this Husserlian position, that is the attitude that there exists an experience prior to all judgements, and Quine’s notions of ‘conceptual schemes’ [1953:213] offer an interesting alternative to the phenomenological position. Although both thinkers offer somewhat comparable marriages of psychology and mathematical logic their conclusions are different to the point of being each others antithesis. Husserl it will be seen offers a view of a world that is present, always present; this world and its contents are ‘presences’ and only problematic when connected with judgement claims. These presences are neither correct nor incorrect unless they are judged to be so, but prior to judgement they just are, the significance of this for the phenomenologist Husserl and that which is the crux of the opposition between his and Quine’s position is his claim that this pre-judicative attitude can be made available via the suspension of judgement, the phenomenological ‘bracketing’[1969:108]. Quine will offer opposition to this in the form of conceptual schemes, as can be seen in his statement that:

‘The philosopher’s task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea.
We can improve our conceptual scheme, our philosophy, bit by bit while continuing to depend on it for support; but we cannot detach ourselves from it and compare it objectively with an unconceptualized reality’ [1953:79]

This is a key difference in the positions taken by these two philosophers, whereas Husserl offers a view in which the universe is present in its constituent parts as ‘things themselves’ which become accessible after bracketing. For Quine it is impossible to perform the act of bracketing as like the mariner of his example one cannot leave the vessel completely to experience the ocean. This crucial tension which arises within these authors’ writings can be most clearly explicated by a thorough examination of Husserl’s conception of ‘the natural attitude’ [1969:101] this elucidation will consequently lead to the revelation of his method of bracketing and thus will highlight most clearly the point at which Quine’s theories can offer an alternative world view, that subsequently can be used to critique the Husserlian phenomenological position.

Husserl in an attempt to understand the logical axioms that support mathematics moves from the traditional conception of logical laws which dictate the way in which the universe works, to the more radical position that these logical laws support a belief system about how the universe ought to work, or as he states logic which is not normative, but can be used normatively [1970:170]. This psychological differentiation between that which is real and that which ought to be, is central to Husserl’s conception of the ‘natural standpoint’ . This is the cornerstone upon which Husserl’s phenomenology attempts to break away from the traditional epistemological project which had been at the heart of much of the philosophy arising from the empirical and rational schools of thought. Both traditions in striving to ascertain the foundation of certainty created similar models, in which an experience was constituted of three elements; the world, that which experiences the world and the means by which the world is experienced. The differing schools then proceed, in a historical context, to argue about the means by which the world is experienced by the person that experiences it, this is where Husserl differentiates from his predecessors. It is not the case that an experience is threefold but, rather it is twofold. There is that which is experienced by that which experiences it. For Husserl there is not a means in the sense of a different thing, a sensation which is distinct from and separates the subject and object, the sensate whether it is thoughts or feelings is part of the world which is given [1970:195]. Whereas previously it was always implicit within the construct of the arguments proposed that the given was the intermediary sensations between subject and object, Husserl suggests that too much is occurring in these situations and that what is given is the world to the subject. This situation arises, he feels, as what is occurring when one makes these claims about thoughts or feelings is that a judgement is made rather than a description given. The suggestion being made is that when the threefold experiences is posited then a claim is being made, an interpretation of the given, not a description of the given, this judgement is a confusion between what is real and what is ideal [1970:171]. The ideal is how the world ought to be, when one reflects upon an experience of the world thus doubling the experience one automatically makes judgements of how the world ought to be not how it really is, as Husserl states:

‘Judging is meaning – and, as a rule, merely supposing – that such and such exists and has such and such determinations; the judgement [what is judged] is then merely supposed affair or complex of affairs: an affair, or state of affairs, as what is meant. But, contrasted with that, there is sometimes a pre-eminent judicative meaning [meinen], a judicative having of such and such itself’ [1973:10]

Here it can be seen that the suggestion is that meaning is intimately related to judgement and yet behind these judgements is a universe that has its own value irrespective of its being perceived. The things themselves have values of their own which are not given by value judgements. This is why experience is a fluid relationship between two or more objects, rather than an experience mediated by a sensate faculty, as to reflect upon the sensate is to judge it as ideal or not. That is to say that value as it is not just something which is given, but something which is possessed by something, although each entity may not have the same corresponding value. For example one may perceive Mount Kilimanjaro to be a large mountain; therefore one has placed an object which is present to oneself and given it the value of largeness and this is the problem. Mount Kilimanjaro has a size but this size belongs to it, whether it is large to a man or small to a Martian the thing which is present in the universe which much of the English speaking world refer to as Mount Kilimanjaro has a size which is its own [It should be noted at this point that size is being used in the vaguest possible sense in an attempt to highlight that something in the universe is present whose value is just that very presence that it is. Regardless of perception by anything the very least this presence is, is presence to itself].
The empirical idealist George Berkeley highlights this problem some two hundred years prior to Husserl with his mite example [1999:126-128] although he moves to different conclusions than that reached by Husserl who avoids an idealist position by the development of his conception of the ‘given’ . As has been shown he moves away from the previous epistemological position, which was almost universally held, in which that which is given is sensation whether external or internal and offers in its place a world that is given, but it is given as it is independently of the manner in which it is perceived its very existence is prior to subjectivity and therefore this position cannot be seen to be idealistic as it does not depend on a subjectivity. This subjectivity though is the way in which the universe is presented to human beings and as such constitutes the ‘natural standpoint’ , that is to say that the universe is present and that subjectivities in their natural situation are presented with it in the manner which they judge it to be presented, as is stated;

‘Our first outlook upon life is that of natural human beings, imagining judging, feeling, willing, “from the natural standpoint’ [1969:101]

The world is presented prior to judgement but, is given meaning through the judgements made about in the natural standpoint. This meaning though is an ideal meaning which is an expectation of how things will be or should be. These normative claims stem from a trust in the world as being simply there which it is in the natural standpoint, but these claims remain normative because they are couched in expectation and therefore are not real in the sense of how the world really is, but are claims about how the world ought to be given that it is present in the manner which it is and is expected to present itself in particular way. The next move that is made once the conditions of experience have been laid down is to outline the manner in which the real world of presences can be made available, and as the natural standpoint is a part of the real and not the ideal, it is also the same manner in which it is revealed. This radical move away from the natural standpoint is known as bracketing [1969:107] and is that move which takes the phenomenologist from the natural standpoint in which the ideal is present to the standpoint in which the real is revealed. This radicalisation of the natural standpoint, by bringing that which is real into view with its suspension of the ideal allows the universe, as it is prior to judgement, to be described. This movement is possible due to a trust in the world’s presence, which is to say that the world as it is presented is as Husserl states:

‘...the world which exists for me, that always has and always will exist for me, the only world that ever can exist for me’ [1973:26]

It is this world which always exists that lays the foundations for the movement required to bracket in the phenomenological sense; it creates trust as it is constant. The world is encountered as certain this is due to the fact that uncertainty arises from mistakes and mistakes are judgement claims, yet the world is presented and is present prior to judgement. It is phenomenology’s task to bracket judgement claims and therefore reveal the universe as it truly is, in the sense that evidence is proof and what could supply more proof than a presence which is present without disguises. An experience of the world supplies all the evidence necessary to speak about it as is stated:

‘...the quite pre-eminent mode of consciousness that consists in the self-appearance, the self-exhibiting, the self-giving, of an affair, an affair complex, [or state of affairs], a universality, a value or other objectivity, in the final mode: itself there, immediately intuited / given originaliter.’ [1973:57]

This essay itself can be used as an example of Husserl’s position. The symbols that are used are done so in an attempt to convey meaning. They are ‘present’ they are placed in a selected order in an attempt to describe a specific situation. Yet author and reader do not experience these symbols in the same manner, both experience the symbols and yet one does in a completely different manner to the other. Whereas the author uses the symbols to convey a description of a position, the reader in turn uses the same symbols to try to understand the position. Yet critically the symbols do not change, once freed of the author and readers intentions and attitudes towards them, the symbols remain. The symbols although different for each of the people who experience them are in fact still the same symbols, which is to say that in terms of their existential dynamics they do not change. The shape and order remain and yet for each person that encounters them there exists a unique experience of them. This is Husserl’s point, that as one suspends judgement upon the meaning of the available universe the universe reveals its meaning, that is to say that a phenomenological description relies not on judgement claims but on the certainty revealed by the universe when it is described as it is. It is this suspension of judgement which allows the natural standpoint to be revealed as if one can describe the natural standpoint from a position of suspended judgement as a ‘primal givenness’ [1970:195] then that which is described is self-evident by the very nature of its presence.
It is this notion of bracketing which a thinker such as Quine offers a quite powerful argument against, as can be seen by his statement in response to the self imposed question ‘how much of our science is merely contributed by language and how much is a genuine reflection of reality?’ :

‘Certainly we are in a predicament if we try to answer the question; for to answer the question we must talk about the world as well as about language, and to talk about the world we must already impose upon the world some conceptual scheme peculiar to our own special language’ [1953:78]

Here it can be seen that Quine is very much opposed to a complete suspension of judgement in the sense that it is treated by Husserl. As has been previously stated Husserl envisions the state in which a person naturally relates with the world as one of self evident presences whose revelation is made once one suspends judgement and sees them in the manner of their presentation. This complete suspension of judgement is not possible, for Quine, as language contributes so greatly to everything known. If the natural standpoint is a judgemental standpoint then it seems reasonable to conclude that the natural language is also a judicative one. If this is the case then it is impossible to use judicative language to describe a non-judicative state of affairs. That is to say that a child is brought up and remains within a language, within a conceptual scheme and although it is conceded that, that schematic can be changed it is Quine’s contention that it can never be discarded in the wholesale manner in which Husserl suggests with his phenomenological bracketing of judgement. This ‘rational pragmatism’ based within the discipline of linguistics, which is propounded by Quine, is an intuitively strong argument. This is due in part to the fact that, even though Husserl is offering a philosophy that transcends language, he still must use language to convey his position. With this as the case can it really ever be ascertained that Husserl manages to leave behind the prejudices of the conceptual schemes in which the language that he uses is couched? Although it should be noted that a thinker such as Husserl would maybe suggest to Quine that his empirical epistemology, a key building block in the foundation of his philosophy, is still ultimately flawed due to its doubling of experiences which are quite singular. If this is the case and his empirical point of view is flawed then the way in which our knowledge is gathered may be otherwise to that which Quine suggests and if that is so then the way in which such information is retained, for instance by conceptual scheme, may also be flawed.

Bibliography

Berkeley, G, 1999, ‘Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues’, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus ‘The Challenge of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment for Cognitive Science’ in Gail Weiss and Honi Fern Hobe [ed] Perspectives on Embodiment

Hume, D, 1993, ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’, Hackett, Indianapolis

Husserl, E, 1969, ‘Ideas – General Introduction to Pole Phenomenology’, Trans W.R Boyce Gibson, Allen and Unwin

Husserl, E, 1970, ‘The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology’, North Western University Press

Husserl, E, trans J.N.Findlay, 1970, ‘Logical Investigations’, Routledge, London

Husserl, E, 1973, ‘Cartesian Meditations – An Introduction to Phenomenology’, Martin Nijhoff, The Hague

Quine, W.V.O, 1953, ‘From A Logical Point of View’, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Quine, W.V.O, 1969 ‘Epistemology Naturalised’ in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press: 69-90.

Internet Resources

http://thesituationist.wordpress.com

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/

http://www.husserl.com/

http://www.natcom.org/conferences/Rome/Rome%20papers/Torn.htm

http://notebookeleven.com/

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=29

http://philosophy.sas.ac.uk/Agency.htm

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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