{"id":13936,"date":"2026-04-05T15:55:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T22:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=13936"},"modified":"2026-04-05T15:58:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T22:58:00","slug":"is-the-world-inconceivable-apart-from-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/04\/05\/is-the-world-inconceivable-apart-from-consciousness\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the World Inconceivable Apart from Consciousness? (Version 2.0)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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That depends. It depends on what ‘world’ means.<\/p>\n

Steven Nemes quotes Dermot Moran on the former’s Facebook<\/em> page:<\/p>\n

[1] In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. [2] Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. [3] For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense\u2014this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect\u2014but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. <\/span>\u00a0[4] The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. [5] Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness\u2019s foundational, disclosive role. (Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology<\/em>, p. 144.)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This strikes me as confused. I will go through it line by line. I have added numbers in brackets for ease of reference.<\/p>\n

Ad [1]. I basically agree.\u00a0 But while conscious acts cannot be properly<\/em>\u00a0understood from within\u00a0die nat\u00fcrliche\u00a0 Einstellung<\/em>, it doesn’t follow that they cannot be understood “at all” from within the natural attitude or what Moran is calling the natural outlook. So I would strike the “at all.” I will return to this issue at the end.<\/p>\n

Ad [2].\u00a0 Here the trouble begins. I grant that conscious acts cannot be properly understood in wholly materialistic or naturalistic terms. They cannot be understood merely as events in the natural world. For example, my thinking about Boston cannot be reduced to anything going in my brain or body when I am thinking about Boston. Conscious acts are object-directed. They have the property philosophers call ‘intentionality.’\u00a0 Intentionality resists naturalistic reduction.<\/p>\n

And I grant that there is a sense in which there would not be a world for us in the first place if there were no consciousness. A world for us<\/em> is a world that appears to us<\/em> as conscious beings.<\/p>\n

But note the equivocation on ‘world.’ It is first used to refer to nature itself, and then used to refer to the openness or apparentness of nature, nature as it appears to us and has meaning for us.\u00a0 Obviously, without consciousness, nature would not appear, but this is not to say that consciousness is the reason why there is a natural world in the first place.\u00a0 To say that would be to embrace a form of idealism.<\/p>\n

Ad [3] We are now told that this is not “a subjective idealism.” I agree.\u00a0 But note that the world that is disclosed and made meaningful is not the world that is inconceivable without consciousness.\u00a0 The equivocation on ‘world’ persists.\u00a0 There is world<\/em>\u00a0in the transcendental-phenomenological sense as the ‘space’ within which things are disclosed and become manifest, and there is\u00a0world<\/em>\u00a0as the things disclosed.\u00a0 These are plainly different even if there is no epistemic access to the latter except via the former.<\/p>\n

Ad [4] Therefore, to be precise, we should say that the world as the ‘space of disclosure’ is inconceivable without consciousness. But this ‘space of disclosure’ is not the same as the natural world, which is not<\/em> inconceivable without consciousness.\u00a0 If you say that it is, then you are adopting a form of metaphysical idealism, which is what Husserl in the end does.<\/p>\n

In the end, he reduces Being to Meaning (Sein<\/em> to Seinsinn<\/em>) or Being (Sein<\/em>) to ontic validity (Seinsgeltung<\/em>).\u00a0 Accordingly, beings in the world are constituted<\/em> (a piece of Husserlian jargon) as beings<\/em> by transcendental consciousness.\u00a0 This is the upshot of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction. What we naively take in the natural attitude to exist in themselves, on their ontological own, so to speak, things like rocks and planets and galaxies, are in truth intentional objectivities constituted in transcendental consciousness.<\/p>\n

Ad [5] In the final sentence, ‘world’ clearly refers to the physical realm, nature. I agree that it would be a mistake to reify consciousness, to identify it with any physical thing or process. Consciousness plays a disclosive role. It is pre-mundane, transcendental.\u00a0 As OF the world \u2014 genitivus objectivus<\/em> \u2014 consciousness is not IN the world. But the world in this sense, the world that consciousness is not IN, is<\/strong> conceivable apart from consciousness.\u00a0 If it were not, then Roman Ingarden’s realism and Thomist realism, and other types, would not be conceivable, which they plainly are.<\/p>\n

And so the confusion remains.\u00a0 The world in the specifically phenomenological sense, the world as the ‘space’ within which things are disclosed \u2014 compare Heidegger’s Lichtung<\/em> or clearing \u2014 is inconceivable without consciousness. But the world as that which is<\/strong> disclosed, opened up,\u00a0gelichtet<\/em>, made manifest and meaningful, is NOT inconceivable apart from consciousness. If you maintain otherwise, then you are embracing a form of metaphysical idealism.<\/p>\n

So I’d say that Moran and plenty of others are doing the ‘Continental Shuffle’ as I call it: they are sliding back and forth between two senses\u00a0 of ‘world.’\u00a0 Equivalently, they are conflating the ontic and the broadly epistemic.\u00a0 I appreciate their brave attempt at undercutting the subject-object dichotomy and the idealism-realism problematic.\u00a0 But the brave attempt does not succeed.\u00a0 A mental act of outer perception, say, is intrinsically intentional or object-directed: by its very sense it purports to be of or about something that exists apart from any and all mental acts to which it appears.\u00a0 To speak like a Continental, the purport is ‘inscribed in the very essence of the act.’\u00a0 But there remains the question whether the intentional object really does exist independently of the act. There remains the question whether the intentional object really exists or is merely intentional.\u00a0 Does it enjoy esse reale<\/em>, or only\u00a0esse intentionale<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I recommend to my friend Nemes that he read Roman Ingarden’s critique of Husserl’s idealism.\u00a0 I also recommend that he read Husserl himself (in German if possible) rather than the secondary sources he has been citing, sources some of which are not only secondary, but second-rate.<\/p>\n

To return to what I said at the outset: Conscious acts cannot be properly understood naturalistically.\u00a0 But surely a full understanding of them must explain how they relate to the goings-on in the physical organisms in nature that support them.\u00a0 A satisfactory philosophy cannot ignore this. And so, to end on an autobiographical note, this was one of the motives that lead me beyond phenomenology.<\/p>\n

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That depends. It depends on what ‘world’ means. Steven Nemes quotes Dermot Moran on the former’s Facebook page: [1] In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. [2] Consciousness should not … Continue reading “Is the World Inconceivable Apart from Consciousness? (Version 2.0)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,67,79,100,523,81,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness-and-qualia","category-husserl","category-idealism-and-realism","category-intentionality","category-phenomenology","category-transcendental-philosophy","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13936"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13981,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936\/revisions\/13981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}