Consciousness

Consciousness is phenomenology’s fundamental subject matter. According to Husserl, phenomenology is a descriptive, eidetic or priori science of “pure experiences.” Edmund Husserl identifies four features of the givenness of consciousness that, jointly, are unique to it. First, conscious experiences are immanent rather than transcendent. Second, they are adequately given. Third, they are indubitably given. And fourth, they are capable of being given in reflection. A further feature of consciousness is that each experience is part of, and is itself, temporally extended flow. One of the most important distinctions among intentional acts is between those which are intuitive, such as perception, imagination, image-consciousness, and “seeing” of essences, and those which are “signitive” or empty. Intentional acts are oriented toward beings, and understanding what those beings are is bound up with some sort of understanding of how they manifest themselves to consciousness. Finally, we turn to the “mystery” of consciousness. Consciousness is widely agreed to be among most puzzling phenomena in existence.