First, I note that Husserl takes the bodily givenness of a thing to be constitutively dependent on «anticipations» of possible further perception of the thing. Second, I argue that he implicitly construes the anticipations concerned as veridical. And I suggest that this, when combined with his internalism about justification, implies that his claim about the epistemic role of bodily givenness should be taken to concern seeming givenness. Third, I point out that Husserl also, and expressly, construes the anticipations as inductively justified by memories of past perceptions. From this, I conclude that he seems committed to holding that the justification provided by bodily givenness is mediate, depending, as it then does, on the justification that such memories provide for the anticipations involved.
What degree of justification should be required of epistemological cognition, the kind of cognition by which epistemological problems are to be solved? I consider the question by examining Husserl’s view of the matter. Challenging the current consensus, I argue that he is committed to the infallibility of epistemological cognition. I first present what he takes to be the leading problem of epistemology, which he designates as the ‘problem of transcendence’ or the problem of how ‘transcendent cognition’ is possible. I then give an account of what I call his Non-Transcendence Constraint, on which the problem cannot be solved by means of cognitions of the kind whose possibility it concerns, and so cannot be solved by means of transcendent cognition. Pointing out that he provides four specifications of the problem, I go on to argue that on the most fundamental of these it concerns the general possibility of fallible cognition. By the Non-Transcendence Constraint, however, this entails that the problem of transcendence cannot be solved by means of fallible cognition. I conclude that central aspects of Husserl’s metaepistemology commit him to the infallibility of epistemological cognition, at least as far as solving the supposedly leading problem of epistemology is concerned.
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