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12 INTRODUCTION

This requirement in turn led Husserl to develop the methodological

technique of the phenomenological reduction, first detailed in five introduc-tory lectures to a course on the perception of material things in space.1 9

Reminiscent of the universal Car tesian doubt, it is nevertheless different

therefrom. Whereas the distinguishing characteristic of Cartesian doubt is that

it annuls the positing of an objects existence or the validity of a judgment,

the distinguishing characteristic of the phenomenological reduction is that it

refuses to understand this annulment as the opposite of the positing of the

existence of objects and the general validity of experience that characterizes

our natural experiencea positing Husserl calls the general thesis of the

natural attitude (Hua 3, 30 ). The pheno meno logical reduction, in otherwords, is not the negation of the general positing characteristic of our ordinary

experience. The content is not negated, but our affirmation is withheld. In the

performance of the phenomenolo gic al reduction, we attempt to call the

universal positing characteristic of ordinary experience into question, to hold

it reflectively before ourselves as a positing whose validity is to be examined.

Our participation in the affirmation characteristic of ordinary experience is

suspe nde d, and the objectivities given in experience are not lost to our

reflection but are instead considered only as presumed existents. They remain

available for reflection just insofar as they are ex perienced; the index

attaching to them, however, has changed, and their status as objects of

experience has been modified so that they are now viewed exclusively in their

being as objects of that experience in which they are posited. It is not,

therefo re, as it was for Descartes, the object that is disconnected in the

performance of the reduction; it is the philo sophers participation in the

positings that characterize the ordinary experiences of the natural attitude. The

reduction is a change in attitude that leads our attention back to the subjective

achievements in which the object as experienced is disclosed in a determinatemanner and to the achievements in which we realize the evidence appropriate

to confirming or disconfirming our natural experiences. These achievements

have a certain kind o f priori ty ov er the o bject that the y disclose in a

determinate manner, and the investigation of them reveals how it is that we

come to experience the objects in those determinate manners; how our

different experiences are related to one another; and, therefore, how the

different kinds and levels of objectivity are related; and, finally, how our

experience confirms or disconfirms in fulfilling intentions what was merely

emptily intended or mistakenly intended.The fact that I can be certaineven having performed the reductionthat

an object appears to me in a determinate manner opens the door to a critique

of knowledge focused on the intentional correlation between the act of

experience ( the experiencing) and the o bject just as experienced. This

discussion of the reduction connects with the earlier discussion of meaning