New Ways to Transcendental Phenomenology: Why Epistemology Must Be a Descriptive and Eidetic Study of Consciousness

Abstract

Husserl has spilled much ink motivating the transcendental reduction that is supposed to pave the way for the ultimate, subjective science, i.e., transcendental phenomenology. However, Husserl's original ways to the transcendental reduction are problematic. One such issue concerns the (in)fallibility of apodictic evidence. If apodictic evidence must be infallible, the project of transcendental phenomenology seems to be unattainable. However, if apodictic evidence is fallible, the project of transcendental phenomenology is not as well-motivated as seemingly implied by Husserl's Cartesian way. In the present paper, I put forward new ways to transcendental phenomenology that are based on arguments in current analytic epistemology. I show that the new evil demon problem, Laurence BonJour's example of clairvoyance, and the phenomenon of blindsight can not only be used to make a case against reliabilism, but also to motivate the core ideas of transcendental phenomenology. The underlying conviction of this paper is that any argument or line of reasoning that, for epistemological reasons, motivates the study of consciousness in a non-empirical descriptive and eidetic fashion can be considered a way to transcendental phenomenology. The thesis of this paper is that one such way to transcendental phenomenology can be found by engaging in current epistemological debates. I exemplify this new way to the reduction by discussing concrete problems, putting particular emphasis on the new evil demon problem as it allows us to motivate a phenomenological version of epistemic internalism, according to which two experiences that are phenomenologically identical are also justificationally identical, which means that they justify the same beliefs to the same degree.