The phenomenological senses of truth in the 6th Logical Investigation
Os sentidos fenomenológicos da verdade na 6ª Investigação Lógica
João M. Silva da Rocha
IFBA – Instituto Federal da Bahia
Recebido: 26/09/2024
Received: 26/09/2024
Aprovado:17/12/2024
Approved: 17/12/2024
Publicado: 31/12/2024
Published: 31/12/2024
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to present and analyze the different meanings of the concept of 'truth' outlined by Edmund Husserl in the 6th Logical Investigation. Initially, it addresses the traditional conception of truth as correspondence in its most fundamental aspects. Next, it examines how this idea of adequation, phenomenologically reinterpreted in light of the intentional structure of fulfillment, guides Husserl’s reflection on the concept of evidence, and thus, how this analysis leads to the thematization of the concept of truth, since Husserl defines it as the objective correlate of evidence. This brings us to the core of the investigation: a characterization and discussion of the four senses of truth enumerated by Husserl in paragraph 39 of the 6th Logical Investigation. Finally, some general aspects that articulate these four senses are highlighted, with special emphasis on the primacy of the sense of truth as “being true” in relation to the other phenomenological senses of the concept presented.
Keywords: Husserl; truth; evidence; concordance; adequation.
RESUMO
Este artigo objetiva expor e analisar os diferentes sentidos do conceito de verdade delineados por Edmund Husserl na 6ª Investigação Lógica. Inicialmente, aborda-se a concepção tradicional de verdade enquanto correspondência em seus aspectos mais fundamentais. A seguir, examina-se como essa ideia de adequação, reinterpretada fenomenologicamente a partir da estrutura intencional do preenchimento, orienta a reflexão husserliana ao conceito de evidência e, por sua vez, como essa análise conduz à tematização do conceito de verdade, uma vez que Husserl define a verdade como o correlato objetivo da evidência. Com isso, chega-se ao núcleo da investigação: procede-se com a caracterização e discussão dos quatro sentidos de verdade elencados por Husserl no parágrafo 39 da 6ª Investigação Lógica. Por fim, são apontados alguns aspectos gerais que articulam esses quatro sentidos, com ênfase especial na primazia do sentido de verdade enquanto “ser verdadeiro” em relação aos demais sentidos fenomenológicos apresentados do conceito.
Palavras-chave: Husserl; verdade; evidência; concordância; adequação.
Introduction
“What is truth?” An investigation that engages with this fundamental question can take several directions. Of all of them, however, the path that stands out most clearly is that of understanding truth as “adequacy”, “correspondence” or “agreement” – an understanding that can even be pointed out as “the most venerable of all types of theories of truth”(Kirkham, 2001, p. 119) and which, therefore, represents what is widely recognized as the traditional conception of truth[1]. This conception of truth as correspondence can be characterized lato sensu based on two criteria listed by Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time: “1. The ‘place’ of truth is the proposition (the judgment) [and] 2. The essence of truth lies in the ‘agreement’ between the judgment and its object” (2005, p. 282 [GA 2, p. 215])[2]. This generic understanding of truth as an agreement between what is thought (and said) about something and the thing itself in what it effectively is goes back, at least, to the teachings of Plato and Aristotle and will find its probably most famous formulation in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, synthesized in the maxim “truth is the adequacy of the thing and the intellect [veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus]” (Aquino, 2009, p. 360).
Generally speaking, such a traditional conception assumes that truth “is the conformity of thought with things as they are in reality” (Sister, 2002, p. 10) or, more precisely, that “truth consists in the correspondence of a truth-bearing element (knowledge, judgment, proposition or concept) to a truth-generating element (object, fact or event), which makes the bearer true” (Perin, 2010, p. 98). In this scenario, reflecting on the meaning of truth is to think, “first of all, about the idea of a referential relationship between language/thought and reality” (Szaif, 2006, p. 2), in which “the truth or falsity of a belief always depends on something outside the belief itself” (Russell, 2001, p. 70), so that the thing (in a broad sense) is assumed as the measure or condition of the truth of any thought/judgment that states something about it. We therefore start from the idea that “there is a world out there; and that what we say is 'true' when it captures it the way it is and is 'false' when it does not correspond to the way it is” (Putnam, 2010, p. I). Therefore, the true thought/judgment will be that which agrees with what is out there, that which corresponds to the thing, or that which is properly adapted to it. In more precise terms, the general panorama of the correspondence conception of truth can be outlined as follows:
The notion of truth therefore involves three logically distinct notions: propositions or judgments, facts or things with their properties, and the correspondence relation. Each of these elements plays a specific role: propositions (linguistic entities) or judgments (mental entities) describe facts or things; facts (or things) make propositions (or judgments) true; the correspondence relation links linguistic (or mental) entities with extralinguistic (or extramental) entities. (…) the relationship is asymmetrical, since it is propositions, and not facts, that have a descriptive function (…); [but] it is facts (or things with their properties) that make propositions true. Hence reality is the norm of truth, or, as the scholastic adage states, truth is a consequence of the being of things. Thus, the correspondence between propositions and facts expresses the conformity of the propositions to the facts (Landim Filho, 1992, p. 11-12 – our emphasis).
Edmund Husserl is among those thinkers who explicitly defend the correspondence conception of truth, although with relevant specificities derived above all from the way in which he understands the intentional structure of consciousness, since the Husserlian description of truth “presupposes a phenomenology of fulfillment and of completeness” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 134).
Considering this, before we dedicate ourselves directly to the delimitation and analysis of the different meanings of the concept of truth proposed by the phenomenologist in §39 of the 6th Logical Investigation, let us observe, in general terms, the investigative context from which the thematization of truth is brought about, closely associated with the idea of adequacy, the structure of intentional filling with a view to knowledge and the characterization of the concept of evidence.
1. Adequacy and Evidence
In the Logical Investigations, the phenomenologist explicitly uses the classical formulation of the correspondence conception of truth – the adaequatio rei et intellectus – in §37 of the 6th Investigation (which deals with perception, an intuitive act par excellence, in the function of filling and the ideal of definitive filling), with the aim of describing the “definitive goal of the additions of filling, in which the pure and global intention is filled, not in an intermediate and partial way, but in a final and definitive way (...) through this ideally perfect perception” (Husserl, 1996, p. 115 [HuaXIX/2, p. 647])[3]. More precisely, Husserl uses the formulation consecrated in the tradition to summarize the ideal of all fulfillment with a view to knowledge:
When a representation is definitely fulfilled by means of this ideally perfect perception, it produces a genuine adaequatio rei et intellectus: the objectal is effectively 'present' or 'given' exactly as that-as-what is intended; no partial intention that lacks fulfillment remains implicit (Husserl, 1996, p. 115 [HuaXIX/2, p. 647] – author’s emphasis).
The classical correspondence formulation of truth is therefore assimilated by Husserl as a way of summarizing the ideal of all fulfillment, so that the terms “adaequatio” and “intellectus”, when phenomenologically considered, acquire specific meanings: this does not refer to “thought” in general, but particularly to the intention of signification and that, in turn, “is realized when the signified objectality is given, in the strict sense, in intuition, and given exactly as that-as-which-it-is-thought-and-named” (Husserl, 1996, p. 115 [Hua XIX/2, p. 648]). Adequacy, therefore, does not involve purely and simply “thought” and “thing”, but rather the perfect correlation between significant and intuitive acts and their respective correlates in the process of filling, in such a way that the intuited thing can fill the empty intention and, thus, “res” and “intellectus” can adjust appropriately.
In line with this definition, two forms of adequacy are pointed out by Husserl “when an intuitive act is in the function of giving plenitude particularly to a significant intention” (1996, p. 100 [Hua XIX/2, p. 629]). On the one hand, there is the adequacy between the intentional experiences involved in synthesis of covering: there is adequacy when the meaning, in all its parts, is filled by intuition or, in Husserlian terms, when “the adjustment to intuition is perfect, because the thought does not aim at anything that the filling intuition does not completely present as belonging to it” (Husserl, 1996,p. 116 [Hua XIX/2, p. 648]). On the other hand, “adequacy” also designates the relationship between fulfilling intuition and intuited: intuition is suited precisely to that objectality as significantly targeted in the empty intention. This duplicity involved in the conceptualization of “adequacy” demonstrates that there must be significant intention in order to determine the objective reference to which intuition must be suited, just as there must be intuition so that the empty intention, by being suited to it, can relate to the targeted objectality. Summarizing this double meaning of adequacy, the phenomenologist explains that: “the first determines, therefore, the completeness of the adequacy of significant acts to corresponding intuitions; the second, the completeness of the adequacy of significant acts – through intuitions complete – to the object itself” (Husserl, 1996, p. 100 [Hua XIX/2, p. 629] – author’s emphasis).
Furthermore, corroborating this double dimension, Husserl argues that such ways of conceiving adequacy, despite being clearly complementary, must be differentiated from one another: “we must therefore distinguish: the perfection of adjustment to intuition (adequacy, the natural and broader sense of the word) of that which (...) is the perfection of definitive filling (adequacy to the 'thing itself')” (Husserl, 1996,p. 116 [Hua XIX/2, p. 629] – author’s emphasis).There is, therefore, broad sense, the attribution of a sense of “adequacy” to the synthesis of intentional experiences among themselves, but also the recognition of a sense stricto sensu directly associated with access to objectality, which highlights objectality itself as the measure of the second form of adequacy: more or less adequate is, in this sense, the act that conforms more or less to the object or state of affairs aimed at. More radically, despite not finding express recognition in the Husserlian text, it is worth highlighting that the broad sense of “adequacy” depends in its strict sense, described by the phenomenologist as the “adequacy to the thing itself”, since “only the adequacy of intuition to the object offers the final fulfillment to the intention that culminates in it, only it does not need any subsequent fulfillment” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 135).
The recognition of this ideal possibility in which the pure and global intention is fully fulfilled leads to Husserl's reflection on adequacy towards evidence, insofar as “the ideal of adequacy gives us evidence” (Husserl, 1996, p. 117 [Hua XIX/2, p. 647]). In view of this, in §38 of the 6th Investigation, Husserl presents “evidence” through two senses. On the one hand, Husserl states: “we speak of evidence, in the broad sense, whenever a positioning intention (above all, an affirmation) is confirmed by a corresponding perception” (1996, p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651]). In this broad sense, whenever there is a fulfillment of the empty intention at some level, more or less complete, there will be evidence, as a synthetic act of identification responsible for the synthesis between empty intention and intuition. Thus, the possibility of variation in the aforementioned confirmation is admitted according to the degree of fulfillment and, consequently, Husserl points out, in this broad sense, “it is legitimate to speak of degrees of evidence” (1996, p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651] – author’s emphasis). In light of this meaning, therefore, Husserl “allows us to speak vaguely of evidence – in fact, of knowledge – where there are lower degrees, but still expressive of intuitive presence” (WILLARD, 1999, p. 153). On the other hand, however, in the strict sense, gradations are not admitted and evidence concerns exclusively the act of the most perfect synthesis of fulfillment of all, the ultimate goal of knowledge, which “gives to the intention, for example, to the intention of judgment, the absolute fullness of content, the fullness of the object itself. The object is not merely aimed at, but, instead, it is given, in the strict sense, as aimed at” (Husserl, 1996, p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651] – author’s emphasis).
In both senses, evidence is conceived as the third act involved in the process of cognitive completion, responsible for the synthesis between meaning and intuition and which, specifically considered in its strict sense, promotes the “most perfect synthesis of covering of all” (Husserl, 1996, p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651]), thus qualifying the act of fully adequate identification, by virtue of which “all dimensions of the thing have been put into play, all implications have been outlined”, as Sokolowski (2010, p. 66) points out, and thus, nothing more remains to be filled in with the targeted object or state of affairs.
In the development of the Husserlian text, it is the recognition of this characterization of evidence as a synthetic act that identifies the intended and the intuited that directs the phenomenologist's attention to the concept of “truth”, insofar as the objective correlate of evidence, states Husserl, “is called to be in the sense of truth or also of true” (1996,p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651] – author’s emphasis). With this observation, the phenomenologist ends §38 of the 6th Investigation and moves on to §39, which bears precisely the title “evidence and truth”.
2. The four phenomenological senses of “truth”
In §39 of the 6th Investigation, Husserl presents four meanings for the concept of “truth”, which we will name as follows: first sense –object agreement(or V1); second sense –interactive suitability(or V2); third sense –be true(or V3); fourth sense –true intention(or V4).The justifications for these naming proposals are presented in the discussion of each of the senses.
2.1 First sense: object agreement
The first sense of truth, above
presented as the objective correlate of evidence stricto sensu, is
defined at the beginning of paragraph 39 in the following terms:
“1. [...]the truth, as a correlate of an identifying act, is a state of
affairs, and, as a correlate of an identification by covering, an identity: the
full agreement between the targeted and the given as such” (Husserl, 1996, p.
118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651-652] – author’s emphasis).
As can be seen, “truth” in this first meaning concerns the objective pole of the intentional filling structure, being defined as the result of the relationship between the objectality of the significant intention (the intended by the intention) and the objectality of the fulfilling intuition (the self-given as such): there is truth when there is full agreement between these two object poles. In this sense, Husserl points out, truth can be understood as a state of affairs and as an identity: a state of affairs, insofar as it encompasses the synthetic articulation between two objectalities, in the awareness that they agree with each other; and an identity because what this state of affairs manifests is that the objectality aimed at and the intuited one are precisely the same, only in different modes of giving. Therefore, as a correlate of the act of identification by covering, V1 describes the identity relation – an object identity – obtained through the concordance between the object correlates of the empty and filling acts and, therefore, we call it object agreement.
This first Husserlian determination of truth marks an important discrepancy in comparison with the well-known correspondence conception. As Taddei (2014, p. 32) observes, “traditionally, such a relationship is conceived as existing between two items ontologically heterogeneous”. That is, on one side, there is the “intellectus”, that is, the mind, the spirit, the consciousness, or even the thought, the judgment, the proposition; on the other, there is the “res”, that is, the external world, the things, the objects, the states-of-affairs, events, etc. In this relationship between two ontologically different entities, truth is configured, roughly speaking, as we know, when the subjective pole is duly adapted to the thing, agrees or corresponds to that about which it is realized. By conceiving truth as objectal agreement, however, Husserl moves away from this paradigm, since V1 is not the correspondence of two ontologically heterogeneous things, but rather of ontologically similar entities, since what agrees, from this perspective of looking at the process of fulfillment and the concept of truth, are not acts and correlates of different natures, but only the objectal correlates that appear as moments of the unity of identification. This represents a very relevant aspect of Husserlian treatment of truth, since the recognition of such a meaning of this concept would not be possible without the intentional distinctions made by him.
This meaning occupies a privileged place in Husserl's reflection on truth, insofar as the full agreement between the intended and the given as such is identified by him as the ultimate and insurmountable goal of all knowledge and, therefore, V1 must function as a mobilizing ideal of all scientific knowledge that aims to constitute itself in an absolutely rigorous manner. Herein lies the importance of the first phenomenological meaning of truth.
Immediately after presenting this definition of truth, Husserl resorts to the notion of evidence as experiencing the truth and states that “this agreement is experienced in the evidence to the extent that the evidence is the current completion of adequate identification” (Husserl, 1996,p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651-652]). In this sense, the evidence is articulated with V1 as concrete subjective act which identifies the correspondence between the two objective poles and thus has the object correspondence as its correlate. In other words: “thus, Husserl can speak of truth as an identity. In adequate evidence, we experience the complete coincidence between what is emptily intended and what is intuitively given” (Lohmar, 1997, p. 709)[4].
Furthermore, still regarding this determination of evidence as an experience of truth in the present sense, Husserl considers that, while “being completed by the identifying covering, [the evidence] is not yet a current perception of object agreement, only becoming so through a proper act of objective apprehension” (Husserl, 1996, p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652]). This means that the experience of the agreement between the targeted and the self-given does not carry with it a specific perception that brings to reflection the fact (more precisely, the state of affairs) that this identity is true. For this, another act would still be necessary, a proper act of objectifying apprehension, in the terms of the aforementioned passage, which is not present in the characterization of V1. In this sense, therefore, “one can experience this truth, this objective identity, in a way pre-reflexive” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 33 – emphasis added). “Pre-reflexive” here does not mean unintentional, pre-conscious or unconscious. Obviously, the experience of object identity is conscious and has its own intentional structure (notably that of the synthesis of completion). Pre-reflexive means that, beyond the synthetic act of evidence already linked to it, there is no consciousness in the configuration of V1propositional directed to the constituted object identity, which could express predicatively that such identity is true. In other words, “pre-reflexive means that the identity presents itself directly to the synthetic act and does not need to present itself as a 'state of affairs' about which a propositional statement is made” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 33). That is why, discussing the evidence related to this first meaning of “truth”, Husserl maintains that this synthetic act, this act of evidence, in which truth as object agreement is experienced, does not need to be properly a perception of truth this identity.
In order to clarify this difference, let us imagine that, when faced with a white paper, someone states that the paper is white. In this case, one experiences, through a static synthesis of completion, the agreement between what is judged and what is perceived: the paper is effectively white, as stated. In other words, one experiences the truth in the first sense presented by the phenomenologist. Now, this does not mean that there is a specific intentional experience apprehending that this state of affairs (the object identity) is true. There is only the experience that the targeted paper is the intuited paper, and not a particular apprehension that propositionally manifests this. In other words, there is no other assertion, based on object identity, that expresses the proposition “it is true that the paper is white”. This distinction therefore indicates two different, although related, intentional layers: one is the directing (significatively, intuitively and synthetically) directly towards objectality, experiencing object agreement (or, simply, truth); the other is to direct oneself for something about of this same identity, apprehending, for example, that this state of affairs is true. Of these two possibilities, only the first concerns the determination of the first sense of truth listed in §39 of6th Investigation. This first meaning, therefore, presents a pre-reflexive, pre-propositional or even pre-predicative sense of truth, which describes the result (endowed with its own object status) of the relationship in which what is intuited by the fulfilling intuition corresponds to what is targeted by the significant intention, which appears as a correlate of the act of identifying synthesis (or, simply, of evidence in the strict sense).
2.2 Second meaning: interactive adequacy
The second meaning of truth is outlined by Husserl through the following words:
2. Another concept of truth refers to ideal relationship that is valid in the covering unit, defined as evidence, between the cognitive essences of acts that cover each other. While truth, in the previous sense, was the object which corresponded to the act of evidence, truth, in the present sense, is the idea that belongs to the form of act, that is, to cognitive essence, understood as an idea, from the act of empirically accidental evidence, or even, the idea of absolute adequacy as such (Husserl, 1996, p. 119 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652] – emphasis added).
Thus defined, this meaning of the concept of truth is fundamentally configured through two characteristics: (i) being an intentional counterpart subjective of V1 and (ii) having an ideal character.
Regarding the first characteristic, Husserl points out that, if, in V1, “truth” concerns the relationship between intended objectalities, now, the application of the concept turns to the intentional experiences themselves. More precisely, this second sense of truth concerns the relationship between signitive and intuitive acts, unified in evidence, and will manifest itself when the result of this relationship is the absolute adequacy between such acts. Hence the name V2 as interactive suitability, that is, it is a sense of truth that expresses the correspondence between acts, or, as Heidegger explains (2002, p. 277), “the structural relationship between the acts of aiming and intuiting, the structure of the very intentionality of the evidence, is now considered”.
Therefore, just as in V1, there is also no ontological heterogeneity in the configuration of this second sense of truth, with the difference that the ontologically related entities whose relationship results in interactive adequacy are not the objective correlates, but rather the intentions. In any case, the discrepancy with the traditional adaequatio rei et intellectus also presents itself here: “according to the traditional formula of correspondence, truth consists in an adequacy of the mind to the thing; according to Husserl, the correspondence is between intention of meaning and intention of fulfillment” (Soffer,1991, p. 79). Understood in these terms, truth as interactive adequacy (V2) is strongly associated with truth as object correspondence (V1), since both senses describe the same intentional filling process, only describing the phenomenon of correspondence from different and essentially complementary perspectives: the targeted and the self-given referred to in V1 which, from the objective point of view of the intentional relationship, agree with each other are, respectively and precisely, the correlates of significant intention and intuition that, in the characterization of V2, from the subjective point of view of this relationship, fully fit together.
It is due to this correlation between such senses of truth that it can be argued that the perfect unity of identity characteristic of object agreement is intrinsically and essentially linked, at the subjective pole of the relationship, to evidence stricto sensu and that the analysis of the particular intentional structure of this manifests the second sense of truth: V2 is not to be confused with evidence in the strict sense itself, but the occurrence of this evidence – that is, the completion of the synthetic act of identification, of the most complete synthesis of covering in which the plenitude of the filling intuition provides the empty signifying act with the absolute plenitude of content – presupposes and carries within itself the adequacy between intention and intuition: there is only evidence (constituted act) because these two acts (constituting moments) form a unity based on the same intentional matter shared by them. Thus, in summary, the following phenomenological situation is outlined: evidence is the subjective correlate of truth understood as the full agreement between the intended and the given as such (as seen in the previous topic) and the adequacy between the significant and intuitive acts, as a result of the constitutive relationship of evidence, represents the subjective intentional counterpart of V1.
However, this is not just any adaptation, Husserl emphasizes. Unlike the first concept of truth, which “remains centered on the respective empirical experience of individual intentions (...), the meaning of the concept of truth goes beyond the individual act” (Lohmar, 1998, p. 196). In addition to being concerned with an absolute adequacy, what V2 specifically describes is not the relation between particular, concretely performed acts that constitute singular adequate evidence, but rather the result of the ideal relation between the cognitive essences of such acts.
In this sense, for example, if, seeing a white paper, someone states “this paper is white”, the truth as an interactive adequacy will not be constituted based on the relationship between the real acts of significant intention and intuition, but rather through the conformity between the ideal semantic essence instantiated in the assertion “this paper is white” and the ideal intuitive essence instantiated in the concrete sensory perception of the white paper. The distinction in force here is the following: taken as a real process, the synthetic act of identification is contingent, but the relationship between the contents of its founding acts is ideal and, therefore, can be promoted from connections between spatially and temporally different significant and intuitive acts: if another person makes the same assertion seeing another equally white paper or even a third person affirms the same at another time, in front of that paper, there will be different real occurrences, but of the same ideal relationship of adequacy between cognitive essences. In V2, therefore, emphasizes Zuidervaart (2016, p. 168), “the required synthesis is not between concrete acts, but between their epistemic essences” (semantic in the significant and intuitive in the perceptive), instantiated in those acts.
Thus understood, the absolute ideal conformity that characterizes V2 plays the role regulator of the real synthetic acts of fulfillment. In other words, this second sense of truth establishes the ultimate goal for evidence in the strict sense. Which means that evidence in this sense only exists if there is a complete adequacy between the cognitive essences of the acts that underlie it. In short, considering the two senses of truth examined so far, we can say that strict evidence, then, is that which, on the one hand, has truth as its correlate (as object agreement or V1) and, on the other, is that which has truth as its constitutive ideal element (as interactive adequacy or V2).
*** *** ***
According to the two meanings discussed so far, “truth” is defined as the result of the correspondence between members that appear on the same side of the intentional relation constituting the synthesis of fulfillment (empty and intuitive acts on one side, targeted object and intuited object on the other), so that it is the relation itself that delimits the concept of truth (relation of agreement between the objects in V1 and relation of adequacy between the acts in V2). However, Husserl argues that “truth” can not only designate relations, but also predicate one of the relata involved in the fulfillment process; that is, in addition to being a relational concept, it can also be an attributive concept. In light of this second possibility, two more meanings of truth are presented by the phenomenologist: as an attribute of what appears in the objective pole (V3) or as an attribute of the act, qualifying the subjective pole of the intentional relation (V4).
2.3 Third sense: Being true
According to Husserl, “truth” is said, in a third phenomenological meaning of the concept, in the following terms:
3. Furthermore, on the part of the act that brings fulfillment, we live in evidence the given object in the manner of what is aimed at: it is the fullness itself. It too can be designated as being, truth, the true, precisely insofar as it is lived here not as it was lived in the mere perception of adequacy, but as the ideal fullness for an intention, as verifier [wahrmachine]; or as the ideal fullness of essence cognitive intention specific (Husserl, 1996, p. 119 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652]).
As clearly stated in the passage, truth is here attributed to the “object given in the manner of what is aimed at,” which is to say that it is defined as a property of objectality apprehended by intuition exactly as it is aimed at by empty intention. In this sense, “we can say that the object itself is true” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 139 – emphasis added) and that “this rather unusual use of language reflects that, for Husserl, the qualifier 'true' applies not only to judgments but also to things, and even more especially to the latter” (Soffer, 1991, p. 80). Furthermore, due to the equivalence established here by Husserl between “being” and “truth”, it can be argued that, in this sense, such objectality is also designated as being true. In light of this, naming this third sense of truth as “being true” seeks precisely to highlight the existence of an ontological dimension of truth in this Husserlian reflection, insofar as this meaning of the concept concerns directly the things themselves and not what is thought or said about them. More precisely, this sense of truth concerns the objectality of intuition that, inserted in the synthesis of fulfillment, presents the content merely targeted by the empty intention to the unity of full identification. In other words, Husserl determines as true the object or state of affairs responsible for fulfillment, which provides the signifying intention with the targeted objectality (its “what”), precisely in the targeted manner (its “how”) and which, because of this, guarantees the achievement of evidence in the strict sense, as “an act of this synthesis of fulfillment (...) that gives the intention (...) the absolute fullness of content, the fullness of the object itself” (Husserl, 1996, p. 118 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651]).
This position that it occupies in the intentional structure justifies the link between “true being” and ideal fullness and its characterization as a verifier – elements that appear in the aforementioned presentation of V3.
First, Husserl points out the intuited object to which V3 refers as “fullness itself.” As explained in paragraphs 21 and 23 of the 6th Investigation, plenitude is the moment of the intuitive act (therefore, of the subjective pole of the intentional relationship) whose representative-apprehended contents – if they possess maximum extension, vivacity and reality – capture the thing itself, or, in other words, bring the objectality as intended to intuition. Taking this into consideration, it is possible to understand the way in which object and plenitude can be related in this definition of truth, preserving the subjective and objective perspectives inherent to each one, in the following way: the formulation “it [the object] is plenitude itself”(Husserl, 1996, p. 119 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652])does not seek to establish a relationship of identity in which plenitude and object would be the same thing. Interpreting it in this way would imply disregarding the fact that they are at different poles of the intentional relationship. The object is plenitude itself in the sense that this intuitive content of the fulfilling act (subjective pole), in the configuration of adequate evidence, corresponds completely to objectality (objective pole), or even in the sense that intuitive plenitude absolutely presents the object or state of affairs sought and, due to this, is capable of fulfilling the empty intention. In other words, the object is plenitude itself because “the given object is experienced as the fulfillment (...) of an intention” (Lohmar, 1997, p. 709). Between plenitude and objectality, then, there is a relationship of identification, but not of identity: one corresponds to the other, but one is not the other.
Thus understood, the third sense of truth, Husserl further points out, does not concern the fullness of a contingent intuition, but rather the fullness ideal of a possible intuition. This distinguishes the object as a true being from a singular object intuited by a concrete adequate perception. Here, therefore, a link is established between the object as a true being and the significant essence of the intention, indicating it as the “ideal fullness of the specific cognitive essence of intention” (Husserl, 1996, p. 119 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652]). Thus, we can once again observe the emphasis on the ideal nature of truth, also present in the determination of V2.
By articulating this ideal dimension of V3 with the interactive configurative relation of V2, then, the possibility that the cognitive essence of intuition can be adapted to the signitive essence of empty intention is justified: this happens because, even though they are instantiated in particular acts of perception and significant intention, what is correspondent in these acts are precisely the ideal plenitude of intuition (essentially linked to the true being - V3) and the ideal significance of empty intention (to which will be attributed, in turn, the fourth meaning of truth, as we will see below). This is why, in the formulation of V3, the phenomenologist points out as true not any objectality present in “flesh and blood” to intuition, but exactly the objectality as signitively intended – or, in Husserlian terms, as the object given in the manner of what is aimed at – and that, consequently, the object as a true being is the ideal plenitude, that is, it is that which is brought to the surface by intuition.
Secondly, fulfilling this function of providing the ideal plenitude capable of filling the empty intention, the true being manifests itself, strictly speaking, as a verifier, or even – in order to reveal more clearly the property that the term itself originally used by Husserl indicates –, as a generator of truth [wahrmachen].
To address this characteristic of V3, let us recall that, as pointed out in the introduction to this work, one of the most fundamental aspects of the traditional correspondence conception of truth is the understanding that truth consists of the result of the relationship between an element that bears truth, to which truth or falsehood will be attributed (such as knowledge, judgment, or concept), and another element, the generator of truth (such as the object, fact, event, state of affairs, or, in general, reality). The latter, as the name suggests, is responsible for making the bearer true or false: the bearer will be true if it corresponds to the generator; false if there is no correspondence. This implies assuming that the traditional correspondence relationship that constitutes truth is essentially asymmetric, since the element that generates truth is the measure or condition of the truth of the bearer element. In other words: there is a priority of the generator over the bearer of truth, since without the former – that is, if there is nothing to which thought, knowledge or judgment can turn, with the possibility of corresponding precisely to it or not – then the meaning of speaking of the truth or falsity of the latter is completely lost. Therefore, the truth of the bearer depends on the generating element.
Well, in the exposition of the third sense of truth, as already seen, Husserl, in turn, argues that: “it [the object] can also be designated as being, truth, the true, precisely to the extent that it is lived here (...) as the ideal fullness for an intention, as the generator of truth”(Husserl, 1996, p. 119 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652] – our emphasis). This Husserlian formulation reiterates his alignment with the correspondence paradigm, while also demonstrating yet another difference in the treatment of truth as correspondence from intentional foundation. On the one hand, Husserl recognizes the existence of an element that generates truth and does so by attributing this qualification to the objective pole of the correspondence relation. This means that the implications regarding the asymmetry between the members of the truth relation also mark Husserlian correspondence conception: the truth of the carrier element (which will be exposed below, through the fourth sense) depends on the effectiveness of the objectality to which this third sense of truth is attributed. On the other hand, the truth-generating element here is not the object, the thing or the state of affairs pure and simple, but rather the objectality specifically given in the manner in which it was aimed, which the intuitive act ideally grasps in its fullness. Thus, in phenomenological terms, it is the intuited objectality that appears as the generator of truth, because it is precisely this, absent in the correlation with the significant intention, that the intuitive act brings to the process of cognitive fulfillment. In other words, it generates truth because, if there were no objectality that is fully apprehended by intuition, there would be no intuitive plenitude; without this fulfilling plenitude, there would be no fulfillment of the empty intention; without this fulfillment, it would make no sense to speak of truth (or falsehood), nor of true knowledge, since “the significant intention simply indicates the object” (Husserl, 1996, p. 82 [Hua XIX/2, p. 607]), but does not effectively access it. The importance of truth as a true being for the Husserlian conception presented in paragraph 39 of the 6th Investigation thus becomes clear: as Husserl himself states, it is through it that “any intention (...) can become true (adequately fulfilled)” (1996, p. 121 [Hua XIX/2, p. 607]). The self-giving of objectality is, therefore, what produces the truth of empty intention.
2.4 Fourth sense: true intention.
This truth of empty intention, in turn, is addressed by Husserl through the fourth sense of the concept:
4. (...) from the point of view of intention, from the apprehension of the relation of evidence results the truth as the correction of intention (especially, for example, as the correction of judgment) or as its adequacy to the true object; or as the correction of the cognitive essence of intention in specie. From this last point of view, we have, for example, the correctness of the judgment, in the logical sense of the proposition: the proposition is governed by the thing itself; it says that it is so, and so it effectively is. But, with this, the ideal, and therefore general, possibility is enunciated that a proposition with such matter can be fulfilled, in the sense of the strictest adequacy (Husserl, 1996, p. 119 [Hua XIX/2, p. 653]).
As we can see in this passage, just like V2, this meaning of truth concerns the subjective pole of the intentional structure. However, unlike V2, it does not describe the result of the relationship between elements, but is instead attributed to one of the members of the synthesis of completion, in the same way as V3. However, while V3 concerns the intuited object, qualifying it as true, V4, in turn, refers to the empty intention, which, according to Husserl, becomes true when it adapts to the object as a true being (hence the name “true intention” for this fourth sense of truth). In Tugendhat’s words (1970, p. 93), “Husserl describes truth in this sense as a property of the target (especially, for example, of the judicial target), which is due to its identity with the thing itself”.
This meaning of the concept is characterized by the phenomenologist as (i) the correctness of the intention; (ii) the correctness of the judgment; (iii) the correctness of the cognitive essence of the intention in specie and also as (iv) the correctness of the ideal proposition. Each of these qualifications presents V4 from different perspectives – respectively, (i) from any particular intention; (ii) from a concrete intention, that of the real psychological process that instantiates propositions, that is, from the judgment; (iii) from the ideal semantic essence of the concrete act, whose matter is responsible for the objective direction; and (iv) from the ideal proposition that is instantiated as meaning in the judgment –, but which are fundamentally complementary because they deal with the same phenomenological situation: the intention, whether considered as a real (i) generic or (ii) concrete act, or considered in light of its direction to the ideal objective correlate (iii and iv), is true because of its correct orientation towards or its exact adjustment to the intuited objectality. That is, in order to V4 to exist,
the intention of the assertion must be “corrected” on the basis of the given evident object. In this sense, its truth is “correction”. In particular, the linguistic assertion of a state of affairs, that is, the declarative sentence, if it is to be true, must be “corrected” on the basis of the intuited state of affairs (Lohmar, 1998, p. 164).
Or, to put it briefly: “the act is 'correct', 'true' if it is regulated by the thing itself” (Tugendhat, 1970, p. 93). In this scenario, therefore, the true being (V3) is the measure of the truth of the intention (V4), which demonstrates the primacy of the third sense of truth over this last meaning: without the intuited objectality, there are no parameters for determining the truth value of the signitive intention. Consequently, “the fourth concept of truth in the sense of 'correctness' in relation to the self-givenness of the object shows that the original self-givenness (i.e. V3) is the primary starting point of Husserl's conception of truth” (Lohmar, 1998, p. 164 – our emphasis). Thus, since the truth of the intention depends on its adequacy to the thing itself intuited, we can say, bringing the Husserlian formulation closer to the traditional correspondence conception of truth, that V4 is the meaning that carries the truth, whose generating meaning is V3.
Another important aspect of approximation with the traditional conception refers to the propositional dimension of truth. Considered particularly as the correctness of judgment, this fourth sense reveals itself, for Husserl, as the locus of propositional truth, which can be observed in the following terms already cited: “from this last point of view, we have, for example, the correctness of the judgment, in the logical sense of the proposition: the proposition is governed by the thing itself; it says that it is so, and so it effectively is” (Husserl, 1996, p. 119 [HuaXIX/2, p. 653]). These words demonstrate that the phenomenologist is also in agreement with the traditional conception regarding the constitutive causal nexus of propositional truth: there is a certain state of affairs that is effectively a certain way and, because of this, the proposition that says that this state of affairs is the way it effectively is true. In view of this, in order to make its meaning more explicit, this Husserlian description of V4 as propositional truth can be reworked and presented in the following way: the proposition is governed by the thing itself: the thing is effectively like that and the proposition is true if it says that the thing is effectively like that.
3. General (and final) considerations on the four sense of truth
After proceeding with the exposition and a brief examination of each of the four senses, it is important to highlight, as a conclusion, some general aspects that articulate them. As can be seen above, the meanings of truth listed by Husserl can be grouped based on two criteria: according to a first criterion, the senses of truth can be articulated according to the pole of the intentional relation to which they are imputed. In this way, “truth” understood as objectal agreement (V1) and how to be true (V3) refer to the pole objective, while interactive adequacy (V2) and true intention (V4) refer to the pole subjective of the identifying filling synthesis[5]. On the other hand, in light of a second criterion, such senses can be grouped according to the type of characterization carried out: if truth is understood as result of the relationship or as attribute of one of the poles of the relation. According to this second criterion, the senses V1 and V2 clearly determine truth as a result of correspondence – more precisely, they determine truth as agreement in V1 and while adequacy in V2 –, while the senses V3 and V4 determine it as an attribute, respectively, of the objective pole (of the intuited objectality) and subjective pole (of the intention) of the synthesis of completion in question. Such distinctions can be presented as follows:
Table1- Summary of the four senses of truth in 6th Logical Investigation[6]
|
According to the pole of the filling synthesis |
As a result of the relationship |
While attribute |
|
Objective |
Object agreement(V1) |
Be true(V3) |
|
Subjective |
Interactive suitability(V2) |
True intention(V4) |
By distinguishing these four senses and granting each its legitimacy in light of the structure of intentional consciousness, Husserl provides a comprehensive proposal for interpreting truth: his four-dimensional conception of The truth phenomenologically explains the traditional propositional determination of truth from a broader perspective, by not restricting the bearer of truth only to judgment (relating act) or propositions, but also encompassing nominal signitive acts and affirming the importance of intuitive acts, notably perceptive acts, thus highlighting the complex intentional character of knowledge. This expansion of the scope of “truth” is recognized in the 6th Investigation, right after the exposition of the four senses:
Most often, however, the concepts of truth, correctness and truth are understood in amore restricted than ours, being applied to judgments and propositions or to their objective correlates, the states of affairs; and, at the same time, one speaks of being, preferably with respect to absolute objects (the non-states-of-affairs), although without a precise delimitation. It is indisputable the right we have to interpret these concepts more generally. The nature of the thing itself requires that the concepts of truth and falsehood be, at least in a first approach, extended to such an extent that they come to encompass the entire sphere of objectifying acts (Husserl, 1996, p. 120 [HuaXIX/2, p. 654-655])
The phenomenologist, therefore, claims for his conception the broadening of the understanding of truth in order to extrapolate the merely judicative/propositional sense and encompass all acts that aim at objectality, that is, that refer to objects or states of affairs, whether predicative, nominal, perceptive acts, etc.[7]
Another relevant aspect related to the four-dimensional structure of truth outlined above concerns the importance of the sense of truth attributed to intuited objectality (V3) for the Husserlian conception.
In relation to V1 and V2, the primacy of “being true” (V3) can be observed in the following way: the definitions of truth as object agreement (V1) and interactive adequacy (V2) are essentially relational, as already presented. Therefore, if one of the elements of the relationship is absent, the relationship itself and, consequently, the obtaining of relational truth become unfeasible. With this in mind, let us consider truth as object agreement. For it to occur, that is, for there to be full agreement between the targeted and the self-given, it is essential, first of all,(i) that there is an objectality and (ii) that it is available to intuition exactly as it is aimed at by empty intention. If this double condition is not met, that is, if V3 does not occur, then it is not possible to speak of truth in terms of V1, since there will be nothing to correspond to the intended and, thus, produce object agreement. Associated with this, since V2 is the subjective counterpart of V1, if this truth as object agreement remains unfeasible, then interactive adequacy will not occur either. From the perspective of acts whose relationship results in the second sense of truth, it can be considered that, (i) if there is no objectality capable of being grasped by the intuitive act, then intuition is frustrated and does not bring as its fullness the content corresponding to the objectality targeted by the empty intention; just as, (ii) if there is an objectality grasped by intuition, but it is not exactly like that targeted by the signifying intention, then the synthesis of covering between the acts will also not produce absolute adequacy as such. In both cases, the reason and the result are the same: something related to V3 (the absence of objectality in the first case or the mistaken apprehension in the second) makes it impossible to achieve interactive adequacy. In other words, it is the existence and the precise apprehension of objectality specifically as aimed at that guarantee the conditions for establishing the due adequacy between the acts of significant intention and intuition. In other words, V2 depends on truth as a true being. Finally, as already pointed out, V3 also directly grounds the truth of intention, the fourth sense of the concept listed by Husserl. In short, the sense of truth designated as a true being and qualified as a generator of truth, in fact, has primacy in Husserl's treatment of this concept, as set out in §39 of the 6th Logical Investigation: without V3, none of the other meanings of truth would be possible. Due to this, as Tugendhat (1970, p. 94-95) emphasizes,
this concept of truth, according to which “the true” means “the truly existing”, “the thing as it is”, is not only the basis of truth as correspondence and truth as correctness, but is also more comprehensive.
This meaning motivates a more comprehensive conception insofar as it is not limited to considering the result of a relationship that, if true, will confirm or, if false, will refute a presupposed correspondence, but focuses directly on the thing itself responsible for the entire process of realizing or not the other possibilities of glimpsing the truth. Thus, in addition to pointing out a non-propositional meaning (strictly speaking, pre-propositional), which is also inscribed in the first two meanings examined, this third meaning manifests a non-relational approach to truth, insofar as it focuses in detail on that which produces the truth, in the other phenomenologically delimited meanings of the concept. Therefore, this “third concept of truth” gains a clear priority over the other concepts of truth. It underlies all other concepts of truth” (Lohmar, 1998, p. 164).
*** *** ***
The recognition of the importance of the third meaning of truth linked to the intuited objectality opens the way for other inquiries into the meaning of the concept of truth in Husserlian thought of truth, considering, for example, that the transition to the specifically transcendental version is marked by fundamental transformations in Husserlian phenomenology, and some of them concern precisely the status of objectality that underpins the veritative relationship. Thus, we can ask: what changes mark the phenomenological-transcendental understanding of the nature of subjectivity, objectality, and the relationship between them? And to what extent do they imply (or should imply) modifications in the phenomenological conceptualization of truth in force in Transcendental Phenomenology? More precisely, how is it possible to conceive of adaequatio rei et intellectus according to the constitutive parameters of Transcendental Phenomenology? It is to this set of questions that we will dedicate ourselves in future reflections.
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João Marcelo Silva da Rocha
Philosophy professor at the Instituto Federal da Bahia, based at the Juazeiro campus. Graduated and earned a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (respectively in 2015 and 2018), and holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (2024). Participated in the academic mobility program at the Universidade de Coimbra (2015.1). He has a particular interest in contemporary philosophy, notably in topics related to Ethics and Politics and to Transcendental Phenomenology, with an emphasis on the question of transcendental truth.
The texts in this article were reviewed by third parties and submitted for validation by the author(s) before publication