The Problem of Defeasible Cognition

As I have argued, the heart of the problem of defeasible cognition concerns the possibility of defeasible justificatory grounds. To see more clearly what this problem consists in, note first that, on Husserl’s view, both mediate and

immediate justificatory grounds may be defeasible: To characterize a ground as immediate is not, in and of itself, to say anything about the strength of the justification it provides, but only about the conditions of that justification—

namely, that it does not depend on justification provided by other justificatory grounds (cf. III/1 51). Add to this that, as Husserl also holds, any justificatory ground is either immediate, or suitably related to an immediate ground, and it follows that the basic question concerning defeasible justificatory grounds must be the question of the possibility of immediate grounds of this sort: How, or in what sense, can an immediate justificatory ground indicate the being of an object when it cannot do so in the sense of recognizably guaranteeing it?

To see what this question, for its part, amounts to, note further that Husserl takes bodily selfgivenness in general to be an immediate justificatory

ground (cf. III/1 51). Indeed, recognizing different kinds of immediate

justificatory grounds, he takes bodily selfgivenness to be the most basic ground of this sort. That said, he also holds that the degree of justification, or being-indicativeness, provided by instances of bodily selfgivenness varies with their degree of such givenness (cf. III/1 51). We have already seen him claim that the being-indicativeness of instances of absolute bodily selfgivenness is itself absolute, in the sense that any such instance guarantees the being of the object given. What we should now note is that he also holds that the

being-indicativeness of instances of relative bodily selfgivenness is itself relative, in the sense that they do not, in most cases at least, guarantee the being of the objects concerned, and this for parallel reasons:²⁷ If the attributed features of an object are not all bodily selfgiven, then the object could come to be bodily selfgiven in a way different from how it is presently given, or come to be recognizable as not being capable of being bodily selfgiven at all, which means that it could turn out to be different from how it is presently given as being, or turn out not to be at all (cf. XXXVI 109).

Given this, the basic question of the possibility of immediate defeasible justificatory grounds can, more precisely, be taken as the question of how the relative bodily selfgivenness of an object can constitute an immediate

justificatory ground for positing that object, when its indicating the being of the object cannot be a matter of guaranteeing it. For Husserl, one instance of this question concerns outer perceptual givenness: that is, the way in which physical objects are present to consciousness when they occur as objects of outer

perception. Outer perceptual givenness is a form of bodily selfgivenness—the one specific to physical objects, the mode of givenness in which they are most originarily present to consciousness (III/1 11). So the perceptual givenness of a physical object constitutes an immediate justificatory ground for positing it (XXXVI 118; III/1 319). Outer perceptual givenness is only a relative form of bodily selfgivenness, however: For a feature of a physical object to be bodily selfgiven in the strict sense is for it to be sensuously present. But outer

perception is necessarily perspectival, in that it must present its object from a

27 I say “in most cases” to allow for the later Husserl’s view, noted in the previous section, that being adequately given is not necessary for being apodictically given.

certain point of view, one determined by the position of the perceiver’s body.

And, since physical objects are essentially spatial, this means that any

perceptually given physical object will be present as having features that are not bodily selfgiven in the strict sense—features pertaining to its flanks, rear and insides—which will be present in a non-sensuous, more or less “empty” manner (XVI 51; XI 18 f.). And so, although the perceptual givenness of a physical object is an immediate justificatory ground for positing the object, it can never

constitute an indefeasible ground for doing so (cf. XXXVI 109; III/1 319).

According to Husserl, however, the question of how the perceptual

givenness of a physical object can constitute a justificatory ground for positing it is not merely an instance of the general question of the possibility of immediate defeasible justificatory grounds. It is also the most important instance of that question. For he takes it that perceptual givenness constitutes the ultimate ground, not just for any cognition relating to the natural world, whether scientific or non-scientific, but for any non-phenomenological cognition whatsoever (cf. XIII 121; EU 13). And lack of clarity with regard to how it can constitute a justificatory ground would, therefore, entail a lack of clarity with regard to the rationality of any such cognition.

7. Conclusion

On the specification I have arrived at, Husserl’s riddle of cognition, construed as the problem that figures in the transcendence argument, is the problem of how defeasible cognition is possible. And the core of this problem is the problem of how there can be defeasible immediate justificatory grounds, in the form of relative bodily selfgivenness, outer perceptual givenness in

particular.

Returning to the question with which I began, this means that Husserl must be seen to be committed to a very strong view of the nature of

epistemological cognition, on which a form of cognition is epistemological only if it is indefeasible. According to what I called his transcendence argument, as we recall, the problem of transcendence cannot, on pain of circularity, be solved by means of cognitions of the kind whose possibility it concerns. But if the problem, ultimately, concerns the possibility of defeasible cognition, this is to

say it cannot be solved by means of such cognition, or equivalently, that it can be solved, if at all, only by means of indefeasible cognition. And if, as Husserl holds, what applies to the form of cognition required to solve the problem of transcendence applies to epistemological cognition in general, this is, in turn, to say that no form of cognition qualifies as epistemological unless it is

indefeasible.

A consequence of this is that Husserl cannot consistently hold that phenomenological cognition may be defeasible, and still serve as a means for solving the problem of transcendence, or any other genuine epistemological problem. To be sure, the later Husserl might appear to hold just this, as many have noted.²⁸ Given the above, however, to the extent that phenomenological cognition is defeasible, it will fail to qualify as a form of epistemological cognition, let alone as the only form of such cognition.²⁹

28 See, for instance, Føllesdal (1988), Welton (2002, Ch. 6) and Crowell (2013, Ch. 4).

Crowell suggests that Husserl could derive the philosophical need for phenomenological cognition, not from the demand that philosophical cognition be apodictic, but from the demand that it promote “ultimate self-responsibility”, where this does not require that it be apodictic (2013, 94). This suggestion fails to take into account, however, that unless one rejects the circularity argument just indicated, which Husserl never did, the demand that epistemological cognition be apodictic cannot consistently be given up. The same point applies to Poellner’s suggestion that “nothing of significance is lost to [Husserlian] phenomenology if it contents itself with claiming, for most of its results, an epistemic distinction less ambitious than apodicticity” (2007, 416).

29 I am grateful to Frode Kjosavik, Nicolas de Warren and Ingunn Larsen for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay.