Filosoofilise mõtlemise keelesõltuvusest fenomenoloogilises vaates / Philosophical Thinking and Language: A Phenomenological Approach

Abstract

Teesid: Filosoofilise mõtlemise kogemuse fenomenoloogiline analüüs toob esile filosoofia põhimõttelise sõltuvuse keeleteadvuse võimest tajuda asjade ja nähtuste empiiriliselt tajumatuid omadusi. Edmund Husserli, Martin Heideggeri ja Robert Sokolowski käsitlustele tuginedes võime öelda, et keelelise kogemuse registris on asjad meile antud teatud eriomasel „tühjal“ viisil – oma (empiirilise) kohaloleku puudumise ehk äraoleku kujul. Seega tuleb filosoofilist mõtlemist määratleda kui kogemust maailma kohalolematutest ehk äraolevatest asjaoludest ja omadustest. Ja kui see tees eelduseks võtta, jõuame tõdemuseni, et filosoofilist sisu pole keelevälistes teadvuse registrites, nagu näiteks kujutlusvõimes, võimalik luua. Filosoofia suudab midagi saavutada ainult seetõttu, et keel seda suudab.

The paper investigates the nature of philosophical thinking experience from the phenomenological point of view. Philosophical thinking is here understood as a subjective experience of engaging with philosophy in a cognitively heuristic and productive manner. It is the experience of ‘doing philosophy’ that occurs prior to, or interchangeably, or in parallel with the communication of the results of this subjective process in writing or speech. It is a mental experience when the philospher’s mind is occupied with solving a philosophical problem, understanding a particular phenomenon, intuiting the ‘right’ view or explanation, weighing the arguments, finding a good way of expressing a certain idea, etc.

The main goal of the paper is to demonstrate that non-lingual or pre-predicative philosophical experience is impossible, because linguisticity or linguality (Sprachlichkeit)—philosophy’s fundamental grounding in language and its cognitive limitations by the possibilities of language—is a necessary and irreplaceable feature of philosophical thinking. In order to understand the role linguisticity plays in a mental act of philosophical thinking, the paper compares philosophical concepts with the concepts related to empirical objects in our cognition. In carrying out this analysis the paper concentrates on the example of the inkpot, used in Husserl’s Logical Investigations, Book VI, where Husserl works on the categorial intuition. Then the paper generalises Husserl’s observations with the help of Heidegger and Robert Sokolowski to elaborate certain features of linguistic consciousness as such. This prepares us for drawing conclusions regarding this characteristic feature of philosophical thinking.

According to Husserl, the most important distinguishing feature of purely lingual cognition (comprehending a proposition, for example) lies in the fact that acts of linguistic cognition are ‘empty meaning intentions’ (leere Bedeutungsintentionen), whereas in the case of empirical perception our intentions are always formed by perspective and ‘filled’ with sense-data. However, by means of linguistic consciousness we are capable of becoming aware of something that is empirically not given to us. In other words, the act of cognition carried out by the subject in understanding a linguistic expression provides her with the content that sensory perception cannot offer. Husserl refers to this additional content as a ‘surplus of meaning’ or its ‘excess’ (Überschuß in der Bedeutung).

Thus lingual cognition can be understood as the perception of empirically absent or non-present features, aspects, or characteristics of the world. The cognitive contents achieved by linguistic intentions are empty of all features that empirical cognition could offer us. It does not mean that all intentional objects of linguistic cognition necessarily remain beyond the reach of empirical perception—some of them can, in certain situations, be ‘fulfilled’ by empirical intentions—but it does imply that in the modality of pure linguistic cognition they are given in a specific, ‘empty’ manner. Other objects and their features, such as categories, numbers, or certain types of propositions, can be merely intellective, and totally unapproachable by means of sensory experience.

While a lot of phenomena we encounter in our everyday life can be approached both empirically and linguistically, a large part of philosophical concepts is of such a nature that they cannot be apprehended in any other modality of consciousness than linguistic intentions. Thus philosophy works predominantly with the ‘surplus of meaning’ that is available by means of linguistic intentions only, which brings forth the purely intellective features and characteristics of the world and its phenomena.

Philosophical thinking, in this sense, is experiencing the (empirically) absent aspects of the world. Experiencing philosphical thinking means occupying oneself with either purely intellective properties of empirically perceivable things (such as types or essences of empirical things), or with entirely intellective, non-empirical phenomena (such as monads or necessary conditions of experience). What distinguishes philosophy from fiction, which also operates largely by means of lingual consciousness, is that the objects of philosophical intentions are real (even if not in the physicalistic sense) or at least objectively valid or objectively belonging to the real phenomena.

Now, if we maintain that the objects of philosophical thinking are given in experience as empirically absent features of the real world that cannot be addressed by sense-perception, imaginatively, or affectively, then it would be necessary to discard the idea of heuristic value of the input of sense-perception, imagination or affection for philosophical thinking. Instead, we would have to conclude that the objects dealt with in philosophical thinking can only be created through the work of linguistic intentions, meaning that philosophical content cannot be given to us in any other way than by lingual consciousness, and that outside of philosophically relevant linguistic expressions (propositions, arguments, and theories) we cannot experience philosophical thinking. This position brings us to a counterintuitive view of the subjective process of philosophical thinking, because it often seems to us that we first experience something pre-predicative—an intuition, a feeling, a hunch, an idea not yet verbalised, and then ‘translate’ it into words. Yet if the paper succeeds in its argumentation, then this kind of transfer of mental cognitive contents that are given in modalities other than lingual consciousness should be impossible for being used in philosophy. In other words, non-linguistic philosophical experience is not just unlikely, but fundamentally impossible.