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The phenomenological senses of truth in the 6th Logical Investigation

Os sentidos fenomenológicos da verdade na 6ª Investigação Lógica

João M. Silva da Rocha

0000-0002-4590-3081

joao.marcelo@ifba.edu.br

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 adequacy, 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 ‘locus’ of truth is assertion (judgment) [and] 2. The essence of truth lies in the ‘agreement’ of the judgment with 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]” (Aquinas, 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-bearer element (knowledge, judgment, proposition or concept) to a truth-maker element (object, fact or event), which makes the bearer true” (Perin, 2010, p. 98). In this context, 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 falsehood of a belief always depends upon something which lies 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 or think is ‘true’ when it gets it the way it is and ‘false’ when it doesn’t correspond to the way it is” (Putnam, 2010, p. I). Therefore, a thought or judgment will be true if it agrees with what lies outside, corresponds to the thing or is properly adequate 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 – emphasis added).

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 fullness” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 134 - emphases by author).

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 fulfillment with a view to knowledge and the characterization of the concept of evidence.

1.  Adequacy and Evidence

In the Logical Investigations, the Husserl 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 fulfilling fuction and the ideal of ultimate fulfilment), with the aim of describing the “goal in which inscrease of fulfilment terminates, in which the complete and entire intention has reached its fulfilment, and that not intermediately and partially, but ultimately and finally” (Husserl, 2001, p. 260 [Hua XIX/2, p. 647] - emphases by author)[3]. More precisely, Husserl uses the formulation consecrated in the tradition to summarize the ideal of all fulfilment in regard to knowledge:

Where a presentative intention has achieved its last fulfilment, the genuine adaequatio rei et intellectus has been brought about. The object is actually ‘present’ or ‘given’, and present as just what have intended it; no partial intention remains implicit and still lacking fulfilment (Husserl, 2001, p. 260-261 [Hua XIX/2, p. 647] - emphases by author).

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 meaning and that, in turn, “is realized when the object meant is in the strict sense given in our intuition, and given as just what we think and call it” (Husserl, 2001, p. 261 [Hua XIX/2, p. 648]). Adequacy, therefore, does not involve purely and simply “thought” and “thing”, but rather the perfect correlation between empty and intuitive acts and their respective correlates in the process of fulfillment, in such a way that the intuited thing can fulfill the empty intention and, thus, “res” and “intellectus” can adjust appropriately.

In line with this definition, two types of adequation are pointed out by Husserl “when an intuitive act serves to give fullness in connection with a signitive intention” (2001, p. 248 [Hua XIX/2, p. 629]). On the one hand, there is the adequacy between the intentional experiences involved in synthesis of fulfillment: there is adequation when the meaning, in all its parts, is fulfilled by intuition or, in Husserlian terms, when “there is a perfect adaptation to intuition, since the thought means nothing that the fulfilling intuition does not completely present as belonging to the thought” (Husserl, 2001, p. 261 [Hua XIX/2, p. 648]). On the other hand, “adequation” also designates the relationship between fulfilling intuition and intuited object: the intuition is completely adequate to that objectality as it was intended in the empty intention. This duplicity involved in the conceptualization of “adequation” demonstrates that there must be meaning intention in order to determine the objective reference to which intuition must be adequate, just as there must be intuition so that the empty intention, by being adapted to the intuition, can relate to the intended objectality. Summarizing this double meaning of adequation, Husserl explains that: “the first determines the completeness of the adaptation of signitive acts to corresponding intuitions; the second, the completeness of the adaptation of signitive acts - through complete intuitions - to the object itself” (Husserl, 2001, p. 248 [Hua XIX/2, p. 629] emphases by author).

Furthermore, corroborating this double dimension, Husserl argues that such ways of conceiving adequation, despite being clearly complementary, must be differentiated from one another: “we must therefore draw a distinction between the perfection of the adaptation to intuition, which is ‘adequation’ in the natural, wider sense, and the perfection of final fulfilment (…), which is an adequation with the ‘thing itself’” (Husserl, 2001, p. 261 [Hua XIX/2, p. 629] - emphases by author). There is, therefore, in broad sense, the attribution of a sense of “adequation” to the synthesis of intentional acts among themselves, but also the recognition of a 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 adapted more or less to the object or state of affairs intended at. More radically, despite not finding express recognition in the Husserlian text, it is worth highlighting that the broad sense of “adequation” depends in its strict sense, described by the phenomenologist as the “adequation to the thing itself”, since “only the intuition’ adequation [to the object] offers the final (letzte) fulfillment of the intention that terminates in it, for only it does not need any further fulfillment” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 135).

The recognition of this ideal possibility in which the complete and entire intention is fully fulfilled leads to Husserl’s reflection on adequation towards evidence, insofar as “the ideal of adequation yields us evidence [Evidenz]” (Husserl, 2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 647] emphases by author). In view of this, in §38 of the 6th Investigation, Husserl presents “evidence” through two senses. On the one hand, Husserl states: “we speak somewhat loosely of self-evidence wherever a positing intention (a statement in particular) finds verification in a corresponding, fully accommodated percept” (2001, p. 263 [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 that, in this broad sense, “speak of degrees and levels of evidence then has a good sense” (2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651] - emphases by author). In light of this meaning, therefore, Husserl “allows us to speak loosely of Evidence – indeed, of knowledge – where there are lower but still significant degrees of intuitive presence” (Willard, 1999, p. 153). On the other hand, however, in the strict sense, degrees 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 an intention, e.g. the intention of judgement, the absolute fullness of content, the fullness of the object itself. The object is not merely meant, but in the strictest sense given, and given as it is meant” (Husserl, 2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651] emphases add).

In both senses, evidence is conceived as the third act involved in the process of cognitive fulfillment, responsible for the synthesis between meaning and intuition and which, specifically considered in its strict sense, promotes the “most perfect synthesis of coincidence [Deckungssynthesis])” (Husserl, 2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651]), thus qualifying the act of fully adequate identification, by virtue of which “All the dimensions of the thing have been brought out, all the implications have been drawn”, as Sokolowski (2000, p. 58) points out, and thus, nothing more remains to be fulfilled in with the meant 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 Husserl’s attention to the concept of “truth”, insofar as the objective correlate of evidence, as he says, is “being in the sense of truth, or simply truth” (2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651] - emphases add). With this observation, Husserl 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 – objective agreement (or T1); second sense – inter-active adequacy (or T2); third sense – being true (or T3); fourth sense – true intention (or T4). 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. truth as a correlate of an identifying act is a state of affairs, and, as the correlate of a coincident identity it is an identity: the full agreement of is meant with what is given as such” (Husserl, 2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651-652] - emphases add).

As can be seen, “truth” in this first meaning concerns the objective pole of the intentional fulfillment 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 meant objectality at and the intuited one are precisely the same, only in different modes of giving. Therefore, as a correlate of the act of identification of coincidence, T1 describes the identity relation – an objective identity – obtained through the agreement between the object correlates of the empty and fulfillment acts and, therefore, we call it objective agreement.

This first Husserlian determination of truth highlights 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 ontologically heterogeneous items”. 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, broadly speaking, as we know, when the subjective pole is adequately adapted to the thing, agrees or corresponds to that about which it is performed. By conceiving truth as objective agreement, however, Husserl moves away from this paradigm, since T1 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, T1 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 appels to the notion of evidence as experience the truth and states that “this agreement we experience in evidence, in so far as evidence means the actual carrying out of adequate identification” (Husserl, 2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 651-652] emphases by author). In this sense, the evidence is articulated with T1 as concrete subjective act which identifies the correspondence between the two objective poles and thus has the objectual correspondence as its correlate. In other words: “thus Husserl can speak of truth as an identity. In adequate evidence, we experience the complete coincidence of the emptily intended and the 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 “the carrying out of an identifying coincidence is not as yet an actual perception of objective agreement, but becomes so only through its own act of objectifying interpretation” (Husserl, 2001, p. 263 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652]). This means that the experience of the agreement between the meant and the 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. To this end, 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 T1. In this sense, therefore, “one can experience this truth, this objective identity, in a prereflective manner” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 33 – emphasis add). “Prereflective manner” here does not mean unintentional, pre-conscious or unconscious. Obviously, the experience of objective identity is conscious and has its own intentional structure (notably that of the synthesis of fulfillment). Pre-reflexive means that, beyond the synthetic act of evidence already linked to it, in the configuration of T1, there is no propositional consciousness directed to the constituted objective 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 one makes a propositional claim” (Zuidervaart, 2017, p. 138). 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 objective agreement is experienced, does not need to be properly a perception of truth of 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 unity of fulfillment, 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 objective identity) is true. There is only the experience that the meant paper is the intuited paper, and not a particular apprehension that propositionally manifests this. In other words, there is no other assertion, based on objective 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 objective 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 of 6th 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 meant by the signitive intention, which appears as a correlate of the act of identifying synthesis (or, simply, of evidence in the strict sense).

2.2 Second meaning: inter-active adequation

The second meaning of truth is outlined by Husserl through the following words:

2. A second concept of truth concerns the ideal relationship which obtains in the unity of coincidence which we defined as evidence, among the epistemic essences of the coinciding acts. While truth in previous sense was the objective item corresponding to the act of evidence, truth in this sense is the idea which belongs to the act-form: the epistemic essence interpreted as the ideal essence of the empirically contingent act of self-evidence, the Idea of absolute adequation as such (Husserl, 2001, p. 264 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652] emphases by author).

This meaning of the concept of truth is fundamentally configured through two characteristics: (i) it is the subjective intentional counterpart of T1 and (ii) it is ideal.

Regarding the first characteristic, Husserl points out that, if, in T1, “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 T2 as inter-active adequation, that is, it is a sense of truth that expresses the correspondence between acts, or, as Heidegger explains (2002, p. 277), “the structural relationship of the acts of presuming and intuiting, the structure of the intentionality of evidence itself”.

Therefore, just as in T1, 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 inter-active 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 correspondence formula, truth consists in an adequation of mind to thing; according to Husserl, the essential correspondence is of meaning-intention to meaning-fulfillment” (Soffer, 1991, p. 79). Understood in these terms, truth as inter-active adequation (T2) is strongly associated with truth as objective agreement (T1), since both senses describe the same intentional fulfillment process, only describing the phenomenon of correspondence from different and essentially complementary perspectives: the meant and the given referred to in T1 which, from the objective point of view of the intentional relationship, agree with each other are, respectively and precisely, the correlates of signitive intention and intuition that, in the characterization of T2, from the subjective point of view of this relationship, fully accord with one another.

It is due to this correlation between such senses of truth that it can be argued that the perfect unity of identity characteristic of objective 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: T2 is not to be confused with evidence in the strict sense itself, but the occurrence of this evidence – that is, the performance of the synthetic act of identification, of the most complete synthesis of fulfillment in which the plenitude of the intuition provides to the empty signifying act with the absolute fullness of content – presupposes and carries within itself the adequation between empty 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 total agreement between the intended and the given as such (as seen in the previous topic) and the adequation between the meaning and intuitive acts, as a result of the constitutive relationship of evidence, represents the subjective intentional counterpart of T1.

However, this is not just any adequation, Husserl emphasizes. Unlike the first concept of truth, which “remains directed toward the specific, empirical experience of individual intentions (...), in terms of its meaning, the concept of truth [in this second sense] goes beyond the individual act” (Lohmar, 1998, p. 164). In addition to being concerned with an absolute adequation, what T2 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 inter-active adequation will not be constituted based on the relationship between the real acts of meaning-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 perception of the white paper. The distinction 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 empty 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, seeing the same that paper, there will be different real occurrences, but of the same ideal relationship of adequacy between cognitive essences. In T2, therefore, emphasizes Zuidervaart (2016, p. 168), “the synthesis required, however, is not between the concrete acts but between their epistemic essences” (semantic in the signitive and intuitive in the perceptive), instantiated in those acts.

Thus understood, the absolute ideal adequation that characterizes T2 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 adequation 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 objective agreement or T1) and, on the other, is that which has truth as its constitutive ideal element (as inter-active adequation or T2).

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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, meant 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 T1 and relation of adequation between the acts in T2). 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 him: as an attribute of what appears in the objective pole (T3) or as an attribute of the act, qualifying the subjective pole of the intentional relation (T4).

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. We also experience in evidence, from the side of the act which furnishes ‘fullness’, the object given in the manner of the object meant: so given, the object is fullness itself. This object can also be called being, truth, the ‘truth’ in so far as it is here not experienced as in the merely adequate percept, but as the ideal fullness for an intention, as that which makes an intention true [wahrmachender] (or as the ideal fullness for the intention’s specific epistemic essence)  (Husserl, 2001, p. 264 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652] - emphases by author).

As clearly stated in the passage, truth is here attributed to “the object given in the manner of the object meant” which is to say that it is defined as a property of objectality apprehended by intuition exactly as it is meant by empty intention. In this sense, “we can say 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 (phenomena), and even more primarily to these 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, provides the content merely meant 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 signitive intention with the meant objectality (its “what”), precisely in the meant manner (its “how”) and which, because of this, guarantees the achievement of evidence in the strict sense, as “the act of this most perfect synthesis of fulfillment, which gives to an intention (...) the absolute fullness of content, the fullness of the object itself” (Husserl, 2001, p. 263 [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 what makes an intention true (wahrmachender) – elements that appear in the description of T3 provided above.

First, Husserl designates the intuited object to which T3 as “fullness itself.” As explained in paragraphs 21 and 23 of the 6th Investigation, fullness is the moment of the intuitive act (therefore, of the subjective pole of the intentional relationship) whose representative-apprehended contents – if it possess maximum extent or richness, liveliness and substantial reality (Realitätsgehalt) – 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 “the object is fullness itself” (Husserl, 2001, p. 264 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652]) does not seek to establish a relationship of identity in which fullness 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 fullness itself in the sense that this intuitive content of the fullfilling act (subjective pole), in the configuration of adequate evidence, corresponds completely to objectality (objective pole), or even in the sense that intuitive fullness absolutely presents the object or state of affairs meant and, due to this, is capable of fulfilling the empty intention. In other words, the object is fullness itself because “the given object is experienced as the fulfilling or ‘truth-making’ object of an intention” (Lohmar, 1997, p. 709). Between fullness 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 ideal fullness 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 intentional essence, indicating it as the “ideal fullness for the intention’s specific epistemic essence)” (Husserl, 2001, p. 264 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652] – emphasis add). Thus, we can once again observe the emphasis on the ideal nature of truth, also present in the determination of T2.

By articulating this ideal dimension of T3 with the interactive configurative relation of T2, then, the possibility that the epistemic 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 signitive intention, what corresponds in these acts are precisely the ideal plenitude of intuition (essentially linked to the true being - T3) and the ideal signification 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 T3, Husserl states that what is true is not just any objectality present to intuition “in the flesh”, but precisely the objectality exactly as it is empty intended – or, in Husserlian terms, as the object given in the manner of what is meant – and that, consequently, the object as a true being is the ideal fullness, that is, it is what is apprehended by intuition.

Secondly, achieving this function of providing the ideal fullness capable of fulfilling the empty intention, the true being manifests itself, strictly speaking, as truth-maker.

To address this characteristic of T3, 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 truth-maker (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 truth-maker over the truth-bearer, 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 maker element.

Well, in the exposition of the third sense of truth, as already seen, Husserl, in turn, argues that: “This object can also be called being, truth, the ‘truth’ in so far as it is here not experienced as in the merely adequate percept, but as the ideal fullness for an intention, as that which makes an intention true” (Husserl, 2001, p. 264 [Hua XIX/2, p. 652], emphasis add). 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 truth-maker element 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 bearer element (which will be exposed below, through the fourth sense) depends on the objectality to which this third sense of truth is attributed. On the other hand, the truth-maker element here is not the object, the thing or the state of affairs per se, but rather the objectality specifically given in the manner in which it is meant, which the intuitive act ideally grasps in its fullness. Thus, in Husserlian terms, it is the intuited objectality that appears as the truth-maker, because it is precisely this, absent in the correlation with the signitive intention, that the intuitive act brings to the process of cognitive fulfillment. In other words, it is the truth-maker because, if there were no objectality that is fully apprehended by intuition, there would be no intuitive fullness; without this, 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 “a signitive intention merely points to its object” (Husserl, 2001, p. 233  [Hua XIX/2, p. 607]), but does not effectively apprehend 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 “a intention (...) can become true or fulfil adequately” (2001, p. 266 [Hua XIX/2, p. 607]). The givenness of objectality is, therefore, what constitutes 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 T2, this meaning of truth concerns the subjective pole of the intentional structure. However, unlike T2, it does not describe the result of the relationship between elements, but is instead attributed to one of the members of the synthesis of fulfillment, in the same way as T3. However, while T3 concerns the intuited object, qualifying it as true, T4, 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 designates truth in this sense – as a property of an assertion (specifically, for instance, a judicial meaning [Urteilsmeinung]) that it possesses by virtue of its identity with the thing itself”.

This meaning of the concept is characterized by Husserl 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 T4 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 right orientation towards or its exact adjustment to the intuited objectality. That is, in order to T4 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 (T3) is the measure of the true intention (T4), which demonstrates the primacy of the third sense of truth over this last one: 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 originary self-givenness (i.e. T3) is the primary starting point of Husserl’s conception of truth” (Lohmar, 1998, p. 164 – emphasis added). Thus, since the truth of the intention depends on its correspondence to the thing itself intuited, we can say, bringing the Husserlian formulation closer to the traditional correspondence conception of truth, that T4 is the truth-bearer, whose truth-maker is T3.

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: “we have, in the latter regard, the correctness, e.g., of the judgement in the logical sense of the proposition: the proposition ‘directs’ itself to the thing itself, it says that it is so, and it really is so” (Husserl, 2001, p. 264 [Hua XIX/2, p. 653]). These words demonstrate that him 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 T4 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 concepts of truth listed by Husserl can be grouped based on two criteria: according to a first criterion, they can be articulated according to the pole of the intentional relation to which they are imputed. In this way, “truth” understood as objective agreement (T1) and being true (T3) refer to the pole objective, while inter-active adequation (T2) and true intention (T4) refer to the pole subjective of the synthesis of fulfillment[5]. On the other hand, in light of a second criterion, such concepts 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, T1 and T2 clearly determine truth as a result of correspondence – more precisely, they determine truth as agreement in T1 and while adequation in T2 –, while senses T3 and T4 determine it as an attribute, respectively, of the objective pole (intuited object or states of affairs) and subjective pole (the intention) of the synthesis of fulfillment in question. Such distinctions can be presented as follows (Table 1):

Table 1- 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

Objective agreement (T1)

Being true (T3)

Subjective

Inter-active adequation (T2)

True intention (T4)

By distinguishing these four concepts 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 truth-bearer only to judgment 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 concepts:

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])

Therefore, Husserl claims a broadening of the understanding of truth for his conception, 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 (T3) for the Husserlian conception.

In relation to T1 and T2, the primacy of “being true” (T3) can be observed in the following way: the definitions of truth as objective agreement (T1) and inter-active adequation (T2) 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 objective agreement. For it to occur, that is, for there to be total agreement between the meant and the 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 meant by empty intention. If this double condition is not met, that is, if T3 does not occur, then it is not possible to speak of truth in terms of T1, since there will be nothing to correspond to the intended and, thus, produce the objective agreement. Associated with this, since T2 is the subjective counterpart of T1, if this truth as objective agreement remains unfeasible, then inter-active adequation 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 apprehended by the intuitive act, then intuition is frustrated and does not bring as its fullness the content corresponding to the objectality meant by the empty intention; just as, (ii) if there is an objectality apprehended by intuition, but it is not exactly like that meant by the empty intention, then the synthesis of coincidence between the acts will also not produce absolute adequation as such. In both cases, the reason and the result are the same: something related to T3 (the absence of objectality in the first case or the mistaken apprehension in the second) makes it impossible to achieve inter-active adequation. In other words, it is the existence and the precise apprehension of objectality specifically as meant that guarantee the conditions for establishing the due adequation between the acts of empty intention and intuition. In other words, T2 depends on truth as true being. Finally, as already pointed out, T3 also directly grounds the truth of intention, the fourth sense of the concept listed by Husserl. In short, the sense of truth designated as true being and qualified as a truth-maker, in fact, has primacy in Husserl’s treatment of this concept, as set out in §39 of the 6th Logical Investigation: without T3, 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 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 also 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 clear priority over the other concepts of truth. It underlies all other concepts of truth as a designation of the “truth-making fullness’ (Lohmar, 1998, p. 164 – emphasis added).

***                                                          ***                                                          ***

The recognition of the importance of the third concept of truth opens the way for other inquiries into the meanings of the concept of truth in Husserlian thought, 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 prevailing 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.

4. References

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HEIDEGGER, Martin. Logic: the question of truth. Trans. Thomas Sheehan. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010 (Studies in Continental thought). 

HEIDEGGER, Martin. Ser e Tempo. Parte I. Trad. Marcia Sá C. Schuback. 15. ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2005. 

HEIDEGGER, Martin. The Fundamental Discoveries of Phenomenology, its principle, and the clarification of ist name. In: MORAN, Dermon; MOONEY, Timothy (eds.). The Phenomenology Reader. London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 257-277. 

HUSSERL, Edmund. Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie: Vorlesung 1902/03. Hrsg. Von Elisabeth Schuhmann. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001 (Husserliana Materialien III). 

HUSSERL, Edmund. Investigações Lógicas: Sexta investigação (elementos de uma Elucidação Fenomenológica do Conhecimento). Trad. Zeljko Loparic e Andrea M. A. de Campos Loparic. São Paulo: Nova Cultural, 1996 (Coleção Os Pensadores). 

HUSSERL, Edmund. Logical Investigations. Volume II. Trans. by J. N. Findlay. Ed. by D. Moran. Routledge: London and New York, 2001.

HUSSERL, Edmund. Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Hrsg. von Ursula Panzer. In zwei Bänden. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984 (Husserliana XIX/1-2). 

KIRKHAM, Richard. Theories of Truth: a critical introduction. 5 ed. US: MIT Press, 2001. 

LANDIM FILHO, Raul Ferreira. Evidência e Verdade no sistema cartesiano. São Paulo: Loyola, 1992. 

LOHMAR, Dieter. Erfahrung und Kategoriales Denken: Hume, Kant und Husserl über vorprädikative Erfahrung und prädikative Erkenntnis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998 (Phaenomenologica 147). 

LOHMAR, Dieter. Truth. In: EMBREE, Lester et al (eds.).  Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997 (Contributions to Phenomenology 18). 

PERIN, Adriano. A verdade como um problema fundamental em Kant. Trans/form/ação, Marília, v. 33, p 97-124, 2010. Disponível em: http://www2.marilia.unesp.br/revistas/ 
index.php/transformacao/article/view/1023. Acesso em: 20 ago. 2024.  

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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

[1] The importance and strength of this way of characterizing truth in the history of philosophy is so great that it is stated that “the theory that truth is correspondence is certainly the natural one. Before Kant it is perhaps impossible to find any philosopher who did not have a correspondence theory of truth” (Putnam, 1981, p. 56). We consider the expression “theory of truth” to be structurally problematic, since it uses that which it seeks to explain, since each and every theory already raises claims of truth; thus, the concept of truth, to be determined, is already being presupposed. Therefore, in our text, we will choose to use “conception” to refer to the way in which truth is conceived and described. The expression “theory of truth” is only preserved in the citations in which its use is present in the original text cited.

[2] Such criteria, Heidegger indicates, reveal the formal structure of truth: “truth has the formal structure of just-as or as-so. The name we give to this whole formal structure of just-as is ‘correspondence’ or, in Latin, adaequatio” (2010, p. 32 [GA 21, p. 10]).

[3] Regarding the notation of references to Husserlian works: considering that pagination may vary depending on differences between translated editions, we will indicate, after the reference of the translation used and in square brackets, the volume of the Husserliana relating to the work in question, followed by the corresponding pagination.

[4] This intentional articulation with the evidence, prevailing in this first meaning of truth, is also clearly described by Husserl about two years after the Logical Investigations, in the winter lectures of 1902/03 that make up the work General Theory of Knowledge (Husserlian: Materialen III), as follows: “it is the full correspondence between what is meant at and what is given. The concept of this correspondence constitutes the concept of truth, at least it is one of the concepts of truth. Thus, evidence is the experience in which truth becomes conscious for us. Truth is given in it. Truth itself is the object of this consciousness: the identity of the meant object and the given object. Therefore, what is subjective in evidence is objective in truth” (Husserl, 2001, p. 133-134 [Hua Mat III] emphases add).

[5] Regarding this first criterion, Zuidervaart states (2016, p. 137): “the first and third pertain to what I label the ‘object side’ of intentional acts of objectification. The other two pertain to what I label the ‘subject side’ of such acts. His account moves back and forth between object side and subject side”.

[6] The elaboration of this graphic arrangement of the concepts of truth is based on a table proposed by Taddei (cf. 2017, p. 34).

[7] It is important to emphasize that this expanded sphere is strictly limited to positioning objectifying acts, insofar as these are the ones that, by intending objectality as effectiveness, raise a claim to truth and, therefore, can be true or false. On this subject, see Tugendhat, 1970, p. 97.