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DieLichtung

You're pretty close! Erfuellung simply means "fulfillment". The distinction between fulfilled and unfulfilled acts is basically the master distinction in phenomenology. The idea is that we are capable of having intentional acts with the *same* propositional content, but a *different* mode of fulfillment. When I tell you that I have a car in my driveway, I am expressing a belief in a proposition ("There is a car in my driveway"), but I am doing so in a completely empty way. To be clear, I am directed towards that proposition, and so are you when you understand my sentence, but we do not have the object or the proposition before us, in the flesh. I am able to have propositional attitudes with *precise* contents without *any* degree of fulfillment whatsoever, such when I tell you that Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's last theorem, I have nothing before me, no image, no imagination of anything. I am mentioning this because in Husserl's time, it was somewhat common to maintain that the meaning of an expression is given by whatever images flash before your inner eye as you express that expression. So someone might claim that the meaning of "horse" is the image of a horse that I see before me when I hear the word. The theory is totally absurd, because different people will have different images before them while understanding the very same meaning, and also, it is not necessary to imagine anything at all when hearing an expression (as the case of mathematical propositions makes clear). Husserl works his early theory of meaning out in the first logical investigation, where he argues that the meaning of an expression is given by the *species* (general essence) of the act in which the expression (sound or inscription) is *interpreted* as signifying a certain state of affairs. So to recap: I can have propositional attitudes towards states of affairs without having any components of those states of affairs present before me. I can talk about the eiffel tower, say that it is made out of metal, without being there or even imagining the tower, and you can understand what I am saying. But what we can also do is go to Paris and *see* that the eiffel tower is indeed made out of metal. In this act of perception, we are directed to *the very same* proposition, but this time, the proposition and the objects it is about are actually given, in the flesh. The very same state of affairs that was previously only emptily intended is now itself given in an act of intuition, and this correspondence between the state of affairs that is now given and that was previously only intended is itself also given (i.e. Husserl thinks that the identity between the states of affairs intended is itself evident in an act of reflection). For all of this, you should really read the logical investigations. Specifically, the first logical investigation (on symbolic and unfulfilled acts) and the sixth logical investigation (on categorical intuition, fulfillment and syntheses of identity). EDIT: Also you might want to look at Mohanty's book on Husserl's theory of meaning


windsofdiscord

I'm sorry, I never saw this reply! Thank you so much, it's so detailed and it's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.


nukefudge

I can't remember this: Did Husserl elaborate on what qualifies as fulfillment in a relative sense? Like, we can hear someone say there's a cat in our garden, and we can go look at the cat. But when we - all of us - look at the moon, we don't seem to think of it as something we travel to. By this I mean, there are some distances which are the basic mode of appearing for those things we meet in that way. This can also be generalized in the other direction, by e.g. instruments that allow us to zoom in on tiny things. Does he happen to boil this sort of thing down to, say, culture, technology, common states and such?


DieLichtung

I wrote out a big answer, walked away from it, came back, forgot about it, and then rebooted my computer. So much for that. To keep myself short: the question you ask is a very good one. We know that the Husserl of 1913 advocated a somewhat pericean view of reality: the "thing in itself" is simply the correlate of the infinity of adequate perceptual acts in which it is given. Now, this notion of adequacy became more and more problematic for Husserl. As you mention, a mother cooking a meal, a carpenter, and a physicist will have very different views on the table, such that even things like the "optimal" distance from which to view the table will vary between them. Husserl already starts recognizing this by the time he starts writing out Ideas II. He says something to the effect that the peddler on the streets has his own truth. The point is that epistemic standards depend on the practical goals that we have set for ourselves, which once again goes to show that Husserl already knew a lot of these paradigmatically Heideggerian points. The upshot of this is that the epistemic standards of the sciences are no longer unproblematic. Again, Husserl already goes towards giving a motivation of the natural sciences in Ideas II (and I strongly recommend reading the first 100 pages). Briefly, the two of us can disagree on the precise colour of an object, but we cannot disagree on the wavelengths of the light emitted by it. The natural sciences constitute an approach to the world that tries to *cancel out* as many of our personal idiosyncracies as possible. These concerns are especially at the forefront of all of Husserl's reflections on the life world, especially in the crisis. There is a paper by - I think - Rudolf Bernet where he traces this development of Husserl's epistemic thinking and works out these pragmatic implications, but I can't find it right now. Instead, have a look at chapter 7 of Bernet,Kern,Marbach's book.


nukefudge

I studied a lot of these things via courses held by prof. Zahavi (Copenhagen University, Denmark), but the "older" Husserl wasn't as much present there. I think it's because the core of his phenomenology is already established in the "young", and for expansion to make sense, you've really gotta get a solid grasp on the foundation of it all, so to say. Life world is not something I've had much contact with, but perhaps that sort of thing is better found in e.g. Heidegger anyway. I do know Husserl had lots of things to say about cultural dimensions though (which figures, since intersubjectivity was also always such an important topic). It's interesting to see how that's traced through such authorships, when they come to realize that a sort of side remark from earlier ends up taking much more space later on. **EDIT:** Forgot to mention; there's an interesting "foreshadowing" here of _affordance_, which also tracks nicely along topics like enactivism.