Chapter
One
What’s the problem?
Husserl’s phenomenology built on the earlier work of Franz Brentano, whose
theory of consciousness was based on the idea that every subjective experi-
ence is an act of reference. Conscious experiences are about objects or events,
while physical objects are not about anything. For example, I might have a belief
about horses, but a horse itself is not about anything. This ‘aboutness’ he called
‘intentionality’.
It is most important to realise that this awkward word gets used in many different
senses. By and large philosophers use it in Brentano’s sense, as meaning refer-
ence or aboutness. In psychology (and in ordinary language when it is used at all),
intentionality usually means ‘having intentions’ or having plans or goals or aims.
If you come across this word, ask yourself which meaning is intended, so you can
avoid getting confused and can spot some of the amusing muddles created by
people who mix them up.
The idea that all experience is about something is also questionable in itself. Some
claim that it is possible to have ‘pure consciousness’, consciousness without being
conscious of anything (Chapter 18). We might also ask whether all emotions or
sensations (joy, heat) are about or referring to things. And if so, how do they relate
to consciousness? Am I conscious of an emotion, so is my consciousness about
something which is itself already about something?
A separate approach to studying subjective experience used methods based
on introspection, or self-observation, which the German physiologist Wilhelm
Wundt helped develop. Wundt had founded the first laboratory of experimen-
tal psychology in 1879, and for this he is often called the father of experimental
psychology. While the physiology in which he was trained studied living systems
from the ‘outside’, he wanted to build a psychology based on studying from the
‘inside’ – in other words, introspection. Like Husserl, he insisted that introspective
study had to be systematic and rigorous, and so he trained people to make pre-
cise and reliable observations of their own experience. Later researchers, such
as Wundt’s student Edward Titchener, investigated other ways of making use of
introspection in science, primarily studying sensation and attention.
Wundt claimed to find that there were two kinds of ‘psychical elements’: the sen-
sory elements or simple sensations such as tones, heat, or light, and the affective
elements or simple feelings, such as the sensory pleasure or displeasure that
might accompany the simple sensations. Every conscious experience depended
on a union of these two types. Like many others around this time, he hoped to be
able to build up a science of consciousness by understanding the units or atoms
which, combined into complex compounds, made up ‘the actual contents of
psychical experience’ (1897, p. 29) – an atomistic approach to consciousness that
William James utterly rejected.
Although phenomenology and introspectionism both had the benefit of dealing
directly with experience (or at least, with what people said about their experi-
ence), they faced serious difficulties. For example, Wundt’s trained participants
had to look at a colour or listen to a ticking metronome and report their thoughts
and feelings, but reporting can itself interfere with thoughts and feelings, and
some of them might not have described their feelings accurately or truthfully –
and with no objective measure it was impossible to find out. These were among
AM I CONSCIOUS NOW?