The As-Structure of Intentional Experience in Husserl and Heidegger

Maxime Doyon

* Penultimate draft. Forthcoming in Breyer, T. & C. Gutland (eds.) Phenomenology of Thinking. Investigations into the
Character of Cognitive Experiences. Routledge 2015. Please quote only from the published version.

In the phenomenological tradition initiated by Edmund Husserl, the task of phenomenology is to

investigate the essential and constitutive moments or structures of experience. For Husserl and his
followers, the realm of what can be experienced and described phenomenologically encompasses a
wide variety of phenomena, including self-evidently the varieties of activities realized in and through
what we commonly call thinking (like judging, imagining, wishing, hoping, considering, etc.).
However, what figures like an undisputable fact in the European tradition is not orthodoxy in the
English-speaking world. Albeit things appear to be slowly changing, it is still commonly believed in
the Anglo-American philosophy of mind that thoughts have no distinct phenomenology, and that
they fundamentally differ from perceptions on precisely that point. The now heated debate on
cognitive phenomenology (cf. Bayne and Montague 2010) raises precisely this question, as it
inquires into the possibility of a proprietary phenomenology of thinking (or simply PT). The question
addressed is whether PT is specific, that is to say, whether thoughts have phenomenal properties that
are irreducible to the accompanying sensory properties in which thoughts are sometimes realized (such
as mental imageryi.e. when one pictures what one thinks aboutor inner speech or auralization
like when one hears oneself speak in thinking).1
From the perspective of the phenomenological tradition, this question is a non-starter, as it is
(almost) unanimously assumed that there is a covariance relation that holds between the intentional
features and the properties of experience. Just as all forms of intentionality possess distinct
phenomenal features, the vast majority of conscious experiences are held to be intentional in

1 The silent premise of this whole issue is due, at least in part, to the particularly narrow signification the word
phenomenology has come to have in that tradition. As is well known, the specific use the word phenomenology has in
the English-speaking world owes much to Thomas Nagels (1974) now classic phrase something its like, which Block
(2002) succinctly describes as follows: What makes a state phenomenally conscious is that there is something it is like to
be in it. In Blocks view, a mental state is phenomenally conscious (or P-conscious) if there is something it is like to be
in that state. And if we reduce, as Blocks dictum invites to do, the what its likeness dimension of experience to
something like the raw feel of sensations, then the question whether there is a specific cognitive phenomenologya
proprietary cognitive phenomenology, as it has come to be calledis bound to emerge. For it is admittedly not self-evident
(to say the least) that experiences of thinking have distinctive phenomenological properties of that kind.

character.2 On this score, a phenomenology of thinking differs in no fundamental way from a
phenomenology of, say, perception. This does not entail that thoughts and perceptions are
indistinguishable, however; it just means that the dividing line does not run between phenomenal and
non-phenomenal types of intentionalities.3
If each intentional change brings with it a phenomenal change, as I think it is the case, then

thought experiences do have a distinctive phenomenology, just as any other experiential modality

does.4 The same holds for the intentional dimension of experience: the intentional structure of

thought is also specific in the sense of being irreducible to its phenomenal properties. For even if we

acknowledge that all thinking experiences must have a common phenomenological feel or property,

the overall phenomenological characters of the experiences of thinking about Chicago and thinking

about last years Christmas celebration still differ in important respects, and they do because the

contents of the experiences differ. This amounts to saying that the qualitative features associated

with the various modalities of object presentation do not tell the whole story. The content of

experience also has a determinant role to play in fixing the experiential properties of experience. If

that is correct, a phenomenology of thinking therefore commands that we investigate the intentional

side of the correlation too, for the experiential properties appear to be (at least in part) carried by

2 Husserls early take on sensation is a notable exception. In the 5th Logical Investigations, Husserl distinguishes between
sensations, which are non-intentional lived-experiences (Erlebnisse), and all other forms of intentional experiences (such as
thinking and perceiving). (cf. Husserl, 2001) As lived-experiences, sensations are conscious, but they are not intentional
inasmuch as they have no content (they are about nothing); they still contribute to establish the intentional moment of
experience, however, since they are said to found the intentional apprehension. For a detailed analysis of Husserls
foundational model of perception, see Doyon (2011).
3 Perceiving my children as they quietly go to sleep and wishing they would actually do so are conscious states with

distinctly different phenomenal properties. Generally, the distinctive phenomenal character of experience varies
corresponding to the different kind of attitude types we are in. In Husserlian terms, the experiential dimension varies
according to the different act-qualities. Perceiving, thinking, desiring, and, say, believing, all have a distinct phenomenal
feel, and it is in virtue of that feel that we can differentiate these modalities from one another.
4 I will not argue for this claim here. The classical strategy is to look at so-called phenomenal contrast phenomena. To

my knowledge, Husserl was the first to take recourse to that kind of argument more than a hundred years ago when he
claimed, in the Logical Investigation, that there is an experiential difference between hearing a string of sounds without really
understanding what is meant by it, and hearing it as a language that one understands. There is a surplus element
(Husserl, 2001b, p. 398) that distinguishes the second from the first scenario. (cf. Zahavi 2003 for a detailed analysis)
More recently, Galen Strawson and Charles Siewert have argued along similar lines. They both defend the idea that there
is an experiential difference between hearing a sentence that one understands, and hearing that same sentence
senselessly, as Siewert (1998, p. 275) puts it. There is a phenomenological feel associated with the experience of getting
it, and, crucially, this difference is not a mere sensory difference, but a cognitive one (Strawson, 2010, pp. 5f.), for the
sensory phenomenology (i.e. sound-patterns) is the same in both instances.

the intentional features of experience (whence the idea of a covariance relation alluded to earlier).

This, I think, corresponds roughly to the Husserlian picture, and I take it to be largely correct.

Given the very nature of the question that initiated the recent debate on cognitive

phenomenology (whether PT is specific), most of recent literature on the topic has focused on the

specifically phenomenal dimension of experience, and inquired into the well-founded character of the

alleged opposition between perception and thinking on that score. My strategy here is different: I

want to investigate the phenomenology thinking and, by the same occasion, dwell on the sense of

this opposition, but I will do so by drawing my attention on the content of experience instead. More

specifically, the aim of this chapter is to proceed to an analysis of the forms of manifestation of

intentional content and see whether the thinking mode of directedness stand out in relation to the

other modalities of experience, i.e. see whether thinking has unique intentional features. Given the

space at my disposal, this question will be investigated within the confine of the phenomenological

tradition by looking at Husserls and Heideggers analyses of intentionality. Methodologically, I will

use the intentionality of perception as a foil against which the putative specificity of thought will be

measured.

What, then, is intentionality? In the narrow and conventional sense of the term, intentionality
is the feature of experience in virtue of which consciousness relates to something or tends towards
an object.5 Precisely what kind of objects consciousness is related to will depend on the type of
experience one is having, but all these experiences will share a fundamental phenomenological
feature, as they will all present their objects in their meaning. Whenever one perceives, judges,
imagines or thinks about something, the object of that experience invariably shows up to
consciousness with a certain context and in a particular meaningful manner. This is because
intentional objects are always presented under a certain conception, through a particular description
or from a given perspective. One can, for example, think of Montral as the city of Leonard Cohen,
or recognize it perceptually as one rolls on the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, but experiencing Montral

5This does not mean that all forms of experience are object-directed. As is well known, phenomenologists distinguish
between a narrow and a broad concept of intentionality: whereas the former is object-directed in the conventional sense
of the word, the latter is more broadly conceived as openness towards alterity and includes all the various non-
objectifying forms of conscious experience.

consciously necessarily implies that Montral be presented in a certain meaningful way. Crucially, this
is true of both perceptual and thinking experiences.
In perception, there is a notable difference however, as intentional objects usually appear in
their practical or pragmatic meaning. The objects that make up the furniture of our everyday lives
manifest themselves originally as affording this or that possibility of action: I perceive the glass as
something to drink from, and the pen as something to write with. Any such perception refers to a
learned set of social conventions and institutional practices, thanks to which worldly entities appear
with a particular contextual significance. This is an idea that Martin Heidegger first developed in his
early lecture-courses in Marburg and then again in Being and Time. Specifically, Heideggers basic
insight is that the objects of our surrounding world are experienced in a totality of involvements
(Bewandtnisganzheit), where they appear in their usefulness or practical utility. Seeing something
amounts to grasping (practically) how this thing functions in what Heidegger (1962, 12, p. 167) calls
a referential context of significance (Verweisungszusammenhang der Bedeutsamkeit) where it reveals
itself as that which it is for.
One important, albeit often overlooked feature of Heideggers analysis is his insistence that
the intentional structure of our prepredicative experience of worldly objects still does not
significantly differ from how the content of that experience is thought or expressed in predicative
judgments. This is because in Heideggers view, even before I express my judgment about how
things are in an assertoric claim, the tools that are ready-to-hand (zuhanden) making up our
environment (Umwelt) are already intentionally experienced as such, that is to say, as meaningful. They
have, as Heidegger (ibid., 32, p. 189) puts it, the structure something as something (Etwas als Etwas).
This feature of intentional experience led Heidegger to argue that judgment, which is the dominant
form of conceptual thinking, if not of philosophical thinking tout court, is in fact a derivative mode of
experience, whose possibility is grounded in our original intercourse or acquaintance with things.6
One of the great lessons to learn from Being and Time is that the phenomenological as such just is the
structure of manifestation of intentional objects, the true shape of object-directed consciousness, regardless of the
specific modality in which this relation is realized.
This is not to deny the obvious differences between thoughts and perceptions (albeit
Heidegger was not especially interested in that question). Perceptions are causally dependent on their

6 Heidegger (1992, pp. 127f.) makes this point in a remarkably clear fashion in his 1928 lecture-course on The Metaphysical
Foundation of Logic: Making statements about objective things [Vorhandenes] discovers them in a mode peculiar to it,
namely, as a determining of something as something. This is the real sense of synthesis (symplok, connectio). Something as
something is of itself irreducible but nevertheless founded. It is only possible on the basis of the disclosing that is already
to be found in our having to do with things [Umgang-mit]. This discovering performed in the proposition is always in
reference to something; it is nurtured by the primordial discovering that there is our intercourse with things.

environment in a way that thoughts are not. This impinges on their respective range: whereas
thoughts have a scope that is virtually unlimited, perceptions are constrained by the physical features
of the environment and the psychophysical conditions of the experiencing agent. The role of
conceptuality in thinking and perceptual experiences also seems to differ in an important respect. It
is plausible that perception does not essentially require the mobilization of concepts, but it is hard to
imagine how one could think about anything without possessing the corresponding concept. The list
could go on and on, but over and above these important differences, one could still acknowledge
Heideggers basic point, which is that the intentional as-structure instantiated by both thoughts and
perceptions bears witness of a profound unity that reveals the meaningful character of all intentional
objects.
This is a conception of intentionality that was also operative in Edmund Husserls
phenomenology, albeit with a clearly different accent. Husserl conceived of judgments as the
expansion and refinement of the kind of meanings we already find in the prepredicative experience
of things, situations and events. From 1917 onward, Husserls view is that there is a genetic
continuity between the content of my perception and its (eventual) predicative expression, because
both perception and judgment share the same intentional structure of significance. Just as Heidegger,
Husserl thinks that even before it finds expression in judgments, perception already has meaningful
content: invariably, the perceived registers as such in intentional consciousness. As for Heidegger, this
does not imply that thought and perception are the same or, perhaps more subtly, that perception
has propositional content; Husserls point is rather that the content of perception can on occasion be
lifted up into judgment because its content is structured analogously. In other words, and again just
like Heidegger, Husserl thinks there is some kind of parallelism between the deliverances of
perceptual experience and potential future judgments of experience (what Husserl calls
Wahrnehmungsurteile). Husserl departs significantly from Heideggers hermeneutical phenomenology,
however, in that he maintains that it is ultimately the presence of sensation that allows to differentiate
between the intentionality of prepredicative and predicative experiences; whence the project of
accounting for the genetic constitution of the latter by referring it back to the concrete work of
associations in passive consciousness. This is what we are going to explain in some details in section
2, but, first, lets see how the as-structure plays out in Heideggers early phenomenology.

1. The As-Structure in Pragmatic Contexts

1.1. Being-in-the-World

In Being and Time, Heideggers analysis of Daseins being-in-the-world aims to show that the objects
of our Umwelt reveal themselves first and foremost in a network of relations in the form of
serviceability, that is to say, as that which they are for. In distinguishing the ready-to-hand (Zuhandensein)
from the present-at-hand (Vorhandensein), and arguing for the derivative character of the latter,
Heidegger wishes to demonstrate that we normally encounter things in a horizon of familiarity and
facility. Contrary to the empiricist picture, seeing something does not amount to seeing its physical or
material qualities; it is rather to see it in its referential structure (Verweisungszusammenhang) where it
appears as that which it is for. The now classic example here is that of the hammer, which, as
Heidegger explains, manifests itself as practically available for something, for building a house, for
instance. But for Heidegger, even natural objects as the sun or the south wind are ready-to-hand
(Zuhanden), inasmuch as they are firstly perceived in their function or relative utility.7
In Heideggers view, perceptual experience is embedded in pragmatic and social contexts
such that worldly objects appear to me originally with a certain practical valence that draws me to act
upon them in some way or other. Precisely what kind of action is triggered will depend on the
particular project of the experiencing agent (seeing a wineglass in the store might not elicit my
drinking from it but (perhaps) my buying it, for example); but any such action bears witness that we
see the objects of our environment interpretatively. They are perceived meaningfully as this or as
that.8 Since understanding is not just a mental activity for Heidegger, but is rather a pervasive
dimension of our being-in-the-world, Heidegger regards the phenomenological as-such as the
meaningful structure of Daseins whole experiential life, including what is going on in its pre-
predicative encounter with the world.

7 Here are the two relevant passages that support this claim: Thus the sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use,
has its own placessunrise, midday, sunset, midnight; these are discovered in circumspection and treated distinctively in
terms of changes in the usability of what the sun bestows (Heidegger, 1962, 22, p. 103). What gets taken as a sign
becomes accessible only through its readiness-to-hand. If, for instance, the south wind is accepted [gilt] by the farmer as
a sign of rain, then this acceptance [Geltung]or the value with which the entity is investedis not a sort of bonus
over and above what is already present-at-hand in itself. (Heidegger, 1962, 17, p. 111)
8 That which is disclosed in understandingthat which is understoodis already accessible in such a way that its as

which can be made to stand out explicitly. The as makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is
understood. It constitutes the interpretation. In dealing with what is environmentally ready-to-hand by interpreting it
circumspectively, we see it as a table, a door, a carriage, or a bridge; but what we have thus interpreted [Ausgelegte] need
not necessarily be also taken apart [auseinander zu legen] by making an assertion which definitely characterizes it. Any mere
prepredicative seeing of the ready to hand is, in itself, something which already understands and interprets. (Heidegger,
32, 1962, p. 189) See also Heidegger (1982, 9c, p. 71).

 Heidegger is indeed very clear about this: contrary to the dominant view in contemporary
philosophy of perception that tends to tie the intentionality of experience to representations and
concept possession,9 the phenomenological as does not only come about in our assertoric claims
about the world. It is already there in prepredicative experience, structuring Daseins pre-ontological
understanding of its own being-in-the-world before Dasein makes any thematic statement. The mere
seeing of somethinganythingalready contains an implicit as-structure in it, for that seeing already
understands and interprets. For Heidegger, then, the phenomenological as-structure provides
something like the intentional form of that which is understood, whether or not it is expressed in an
assertion or a judgment. In fact, Heidegger (1982, 69, p. 411) goes even further, as he explains that
it is precisely because the schema something as something has already been sketched out beforehand in
the structure of ones prepredicative understanding10 that the content of my experience can then be
expressed predicatively as such and such.11 In brief, the as-structure corresponds to the meaning
structure of our intentional engagement with worldly objects in general. From the intentional point of
view, whether this relation finds expression in judgment or remains that of a silent seeing does not
change anything at all.
We can thus distinguish two related, but nevertheless different aspects of the same
phenomenological as such in Heideggers analysis: there is, first, what I would like to call a semantic
dimension, which corresponds to the as-structure of statements, assertions, predication and, more
generally, conceptual thinking. Asserting something about something, or thinking about it
conceptually, necessarily takes the form X is Y, where X is explicitly understood and presented as
being Y or Y-ish. But there is, Heidegger insists, another, more primordial dimension of the
phenomenological as, a pragmatic dimension, as it were, that discloses worldly objects in their
significance for us at the prepredicative level of experience, so before any judgment or thematic
statements be made about them. And the point of Heideggers analysis in the above-discussed
passages of Being and Time is to show that the prepredicative as operates in much the same way as
the as of judgment and predication. Both are ultimately grounded in our interpretative

9 See Travis (2004, p. 58) for a survey of the relevant positions on this question.
10 My emphasis.
11 That which is understood gets articulated when the entity to be understood is brought close interpretatively by taking

as our clue the something as something; and this articulation [i.e. the as-structure] lies before [liegt vor] our making any
thematic assertion about it. In such an assertion the as does not turn up for the first time; it just gets expressed for the
first time, and this is possible only in that it lies before us as something expressible. The fact that when we look at
something, the explicitness of the assertion can be absent, does not justify our denying that there is any articulative
interpretation in such mere seeing, and hence that there is any as-structure in it. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 190; emphasis in
original)

understanding of our surrounding world and they both, for this very reason, present their objects as
being always-already meaningful.12

1.2. Dreyfus on Absorbed Coping

Given this, Hubert Dreyfuss appropriation of Heidegger in his longstanding debate with John
McDowell is unjustified in at least one fundamental respect.13 According to Dreyfus (2013), one
reason to reject McDowells claim about the pervasiveness of concepts in experience is that everyday
experience does not involve any as-structure.14 Things do not show up as this or that in our
everyday background coping practices (ibid., p. 19) such as sitting at our desk or picking up our
morning mug. In absorbed coping, the objects simply withdraw (ibid.) from our contemplative
gaze, for which reason perceptual experience must be non-conceptual.15
In this passage, Dreyfus borrows the term withdrawal from Heidegger, who explains in
Being and Time that the objects making up our familiar environment (Umwelt) solicit our action
without appearing thematically as what they are. In circumspection (Umsicht)which is Heideggers
concept for the mode of awareness of our everyday preoccupation, the kind of practical sight
discussed abovethings register in consciousness without our apprehending them in thought, as
Dreyfus (2013, p. 18) puts it. However, this unthought has a clear meaning for Heidegger (1982, p.
163), as Dreyfus himself recognizes: Unthought means that it is not thematically apprehended for
deliberate thinking about things. As we have seen, that objects withdraw or go unnoticed in the
kind of activity that characterizes the sphere of absorbed coping means for Heidegger that they do
not appear thematically as such in judgmental or deliberative consciousness. But this is not exactly how
Dreyfus reads that passage. Dreyfuss interpretation is much more radical, for he holds that familiar
objects do not appear at all in everyday absorbed background coping. In his own words:

12 In the rest of 32, Heidegger (1962, p. 150) analyses in detail the tripartite structure of that understanding, which is
caught up in a hermeneutical circle: the interpretation of something as something is essentially grounded in fore-having
(Vorhabe), fore-sight (Vorsicht) and fore-conception (Vorgriff). In 69, Heidegger then explains that the structure of that
understanding is grounded in the temporal structure of Dasein itself.
13 See Dreyfus (2013).
14 For McDowell, the presence of the as-structure in any of its guises suffices to make that experience conceptual in some

sense. This is, for Dreyfus, an untenable position, since the putative conceptual character of everyday experience simply
does not correspond to the phenomenology.
15 In his latest contribution to his debate with McDowell, Dreyfus glosses on the sentence absorbed coping by

gesturing at Heideggers characterisation of Dasein in the History of the Concept of Time as concerned absorption in the
world (Heidegger, 1985, p. 197).

 To be true to the phenomenon we should add that when we are ready to leave a familiar room we not
only do not need to think that the door affords going out. We need not even respond to the door as
affording going out. Indeed, we neednt apprehend the door at all. From the perspective of the skilled
coper absorbed in the solicitation of a familiar affordance, the affording object, as Heidegger puts it,
simply withdraws. We need not even be aware of the solicitations to go out as solicitations. (Dreyfus,
2013, p. 18)16

Inasmuch as objects solicit the absorbed coper in the usual, familiar way, he is directly drawn to act
upon it in an unmediated, unthought and unthematized manner. For Dreyfus (2013, p. 13), this
implies that such objects do not appear as such at all. It is only in the face of a disturbance or some kind
of malfunctioning that everyday background objects reveal themselves as such. Dreyfus (ibid.) turns
again to Heideggers classical example of the hammer to make his point:

In Being and Time Heidegger describes a case of hammering where the hammer does not withdraw, but
where the hammer show up as too heavy. [] In the face of a disturbance, a distance opens up
between the coper and what he is acting on which is bridged by a situation-specific concept. The
coper can make the judgment that the hammer is too heavy.

Manifestly, this interpretation is both philosophically and philologically wrong. First, in the light of
what has been intimated earlier about Heideggers analysis of prepredicative experience, it should be
clear why Dreyfuss reading misses the target at least on philological grounds. Not only does
Heidegger recognize that the phenomenological as-structure is pervasive in experience, but the
point of this analysis is precisely to argue that we need not wait that judgment kicks in to appreciate
its crucial contribution. Thinking, deliberating and judging only make more explicit what was already
present as such in perceptual consciousness. In Heideggers view, it is not because objects manifest
themselves without explicitly registering as such in deliberative or judgmental consciousness that the
as-structure was not in operation from the start. On the contrary, this is exactly what Heidegger
wants to convince us of. So much for the philological point.

16Similarly, it does not follow that in order to act kindly, the kind person must be aware of the situation as a situation
calling for kindness. Having dealt, successfully and unsuccessfully with thousands of previous situations involving
kindness, the helpful person has tuned his dispositions to respond directly to the whole situation. Thus, as Sartre sees, the
kind person will be directly drawn to help Peter-in-need. Such openness to a force isnt thinkable. It is only on the basis
of a retrospective illusion created by reflection that the situation will seem to all involved to have been one that required
kindness. (Dreyfus, 2013, p. 34)

 More importantly still, Dreyfuss thesis is philosophically unjustifiable. For, manifestly, the
kind of withdrawal Dreyfus has in mind here cannot be total. Whatever withdraws cannot be absent
tout court; otherwise it would not solicit my action at all.17 Indeed, if the objects of my everyday life
elicit my action, they need to appear in some way or other, otherwise I would not even notice them,
and this would render totally incomprehensible why I was drawn to act upon them in the first
place.18
As I see it, the root of the problem with Dreyfuss interpretation is that he opposes presence
and absence too crudely. As Heidegger shows in Being and Time, it is precisely as absent that daily
objects manifest their presence. The hammer is not absent simpliciter; it manifests its presence by
referring in a pragmatic or practical way to that which it is for. This is what he calls serviceability. So it
is true that the hammer withdraws from our contemplative gaze; but it does not withdraw completely.
If it did, it would not be ready-to-hand, i.e. practically available for something. In distinguishing
between Zuhandensein and Vorhandensein, Heidegger is not naively opposing presence and absence; he
is rather distinguishing between two different modes of the presence of objects,19 both of which
sharing a similar as-structure of significance.
In Being and Time, Heidegger is especially interested in the transition between these two
modes of manifestation. As Dreyfus rightfully recognizes, it is only when it stops fulfilling its task
properly that the hammer becomes an object for thought, that is to say, an object offered to a certain
(theoretical) look. However, Heidegger does not thinkas Dreyfus wants us to believethat it is
only then that it appears as such. It already did. The point is rather that the theoretical mode of
encounter is not primordial. When the hammer is not where it is supposed to be, or when it breaks,
our engaged attitude of absorbed coping ensues a certain modification. Things show up differently: we
look at them differently. The passage from Zuhandensein to Vorhandensein therefore marks a change in
the objects mode of presence, not a passage from absence to presence. For related reasons, the as-
structure ensues a similar change: it does not enter on the scene, it just becomes more explicit.

17 This is something Alva No (2012, p. 9) discusses as well in the first chapter of Varieties of Presence: even if they are
withdrawn into the background, worldly objects are there, after all, for the agent; they are within reach; they are taken
for granted, relied on. The baseball glove, and the hammer, like the view out the window, are always available. This is
why No insists that whatever recedes into the background is not simply absent; it is present as absent, or, better still, it is
present in and through absence. Obviously, this view is fully compatible with the phenomenological analyses of Husserl and
Heidegger from which, strangely enough, No distances himself from for having missed that basic phenomenological
truth (see the Introduction entitled Free Presence).
18 For similar reasons, Dan Zahavi (2013) argues quite justly that Dreyfuss position implies a no-consciousness thesis

that is phenomenologically indefensible.

19 These modes correspond to two different attitudes we may take regarding thema more practical (or absorbed) one,

and a more theoretical (or thoughtful) one.

2. Husserls Analysis of Prepredicative Experience in Experience and Judgment

Husserl (1973, 12, p. 53) concurs by and large with Heidegger that our life-world (Lebenswelt) is
structured as a web of meaning. In immediate sense experience, we encounter worldly objects as
useful, beautiful, alarming, terrifying, attractive, or whatever. During the genetic phase of his
phenomenology, Husserl worked out the details of this idea through recourse to the notion of types.
Our life-world is a typified world: immediately, we see the objects of our surrounding world as
belonging to certain types or general categories. Things are experienced as trees, bushes, animals,
snakes, birds; specifically, as pine, linden, lilac, dog, viper, swallow, sparrow, and so on (ibid., 83).
For Husserl (1952, 62) too, then, the as-structure is a pervasive feature of experience.
Contrary to Heidegger, who cast the problem exclusively in hermeneutical or ontological
terms, Husserl was also very much interested in investigating the elementary conscious processes that
underpin those acts of typification. In this light, we can describe Husserls genetic project as an
archaeological investigation into the prereflective and prelinguistic origin of these types in sensible
experience. The fundamental point of Husserls investigation is that newly experienced objects are
passively apprehended as being more or less alike other similar objects, and are, accordingly,
associatively experienced as partaking into this or that type. This is why every perceptual object has an
as-structure built into it from the start. Crucially, Husserl holds this to be true of all worldly entities:
even those objects we see for the first time have some kind of familiarity, even if only very vaguely.20
The concept of passivity that Husserl mobilizes to describe the work of associations is
notoriously complex and convoluted, but the basic idea is simple.21 In order to have a perceptual
experience of objects, these objects must first be available to me. Intentional relatedness presupposes
that objects first affect and stimulate consciousness originally. Such affection triggers a passive
experience where objects are pregiven in passive syntheses that disclose their intentional nature (cf.
Husserl, 1973, 15f.). Husserl is very clear that there could be no relation to the object without
consciousnesss receptive function, that is to say, without consciousness actively turning-to
(Zuwendung) the affecting object. And yet, even this minimal form of activity that Husserl calls
receptivity (Rezeptivitt) presupposes a prior affection. In Husserls view, the experience of this prior
affection is a passive experience that does not presuppose any particular involvement or spontaneous

20 The table is characterized as being familiar and yet new. What is given in experience as a new individual is first known
in terms of what has been genuinely perceived; it calls to mind the like (the similar) (Husserl, 1973, 83; cf. 26 as well).
21 See Anthony Steinbocks excellent Translators Introduction to Husserl (2001) for a good survey of the various

meanings the word passivity takes on throughout Husserls body of work.

activity on the part of the Ego. At the same time, however, it is an intentional (or proto-intentional)
experience that initiates a process of sense-formation that is responsible for the constitution of types. As
such, it is also at the origin of meaningful experience.
One of the fundamental ideas of Husserls genetic phenomenology is that the process of
sense-formation can ultimately be traced back to the concrete work of associations. The law of
association describes the pre-intentional experience of sense-formation where consciousness
establishes rudimentary connections between sensory items on the basis of their homogeneous or
heterogeneous character (contrast and similarity) (cf. ibid., 16). Since these associative performances
correspond to a pre-egoical organization of the manifold of appearances, this level of constitution is a
level of passive pregivenness. According to Husserl, the intended object has not yet been constituted at
this point. But as it achieves the synthetic unification of intentional contents, associations provide for
the possibility of objective reference because it is already structured in intentional consciousness.
Once these passive synthetic operations have done their work, the object is pregiven, preconstituted
and it is ready to be apprehended as this identical unity in an act of objectification that is founded
upon it (ibid., 13). In other wordsand this is what I would like to insist upon herepassive
experience opens up the possibility for grasping things as such in receptive consciousness.
Does that mean that the phenomenological as-structure belongs exclusively to the level of
receptivity? Not quite. Husserl does indeed mention that sense unities at the level of passivity are not
yet apprehended as such: A passively pregiven unity of identity is not yet one which is grasped as
such and retained as an objective identity (ibid., p. 59). For an identity to be apprehensively grasped
as such, there must be activity, a cognitive performance of the lowest level such as an experience
of pure perception, in which we let our glance wander here and there over the pregiven object
which affects us. The object then reveals itself as the same object seen from different sides (ibid.).
At the same time, however, the affecting object is pregiven, and this means that it already has
a proto-intentionality which guarantees it a minimal form and a basic identity.22 This identity may
very well not be grasped as such before spontaneity sets in, but it is manifestly already realized passively
thanks to the law of association. In other words, the fact that affecting objects are pregiven and
preconstituted in intentional life can only mean that their sense-structures are already predelineated
(vorgezeichnet) in some way or other. Even if only very rudimentarily, their as-structures are already in
place, ready to be picked up and refined by higher-level acts of conscious activity. Genetically, this, in
turn, implies that object-identity is re-grasped at the receptive level; it is not originally founded.

22Husserl addresses just this point in the following terms: In this domain, the existent is pregiven as a unity of identity
(Husserl, 1973, 13 p. 59; cf. Husserl, 1960, 38).

 I take Husserl to mean just that when he tells us that what affects us is never completely
indeterminate. 23 Every experience is meaningfully structured and typified in one way or other,
however vague and unarticulated that experience may be.24 Even [t]he apprehension object in
generalstill completely indeterminate and unknownalready entails an element of familiarity,
namely as a something that somehow or other is, that is explicable and can be known in conformity
with what is (ibid., 8, p. 38).25 Thanks to this element of familiarity, intentional consciousness is
always held in the space of meaning. Precisely for this reason, Husserl holds that typical precognition
is the general a priori (ibid., p. 36) of intentional consciousness.
Against this background, it seems to be Husserls position that we are always-already within
the ambit of the phenomenological as-structure, whose constitutive origin grounds in sensibility
thanks to the work of associative syntheses. As soon as there is intentionality, there is an as-structure
in place, which can be more or less developed depending on the particular constitutive strata we have
in view (passivity, receptivity, judgmental activity, etc.). At the same time, it is important to bear in
mind that what is achieved in the synthesis of association constitutes a layer of experience that we
reach by abstraction only (cf. ibid., 12). Whereas prepredicative experience is absolutely real and
concrete, as it corresponds to the phenomenology of experience, what belongs to passivity is an
abstraction, that is to say, a developed consciousness does not have worldly experiences that are even
apparently like anything associative synthesis achieves. Passivity is a stratum of constitution where
perceptual objects are not finished yet, but only pregiven. For there to be object-consciousness, there
must be an active believing cognizance (cf. ibid., 13). And yet, Husserl insists that there could not
be any kind of bodily or cognitive activity targeted at specific worldly objects if consciousness was
not intentionally related to these objects in the first place.

23 This means that what affects us from the current passively pregiven background is not a completely empty something,
some datum or other (we have no really exact word for it), as yet entirely without sense, a datum absolutely unfamiliar to
us. On the contrary, unfamiliarity is at the same time always a mode of familiarity. What affects us is known in advance at
least in so far as it is in general a something with determinations; we are conscious of it in the empty form of
determinability, that is, it is equipped with an empty horizon of determinations (certain, or undetermined, unknown).
(Husserl, 1973, 8, p. 37f.) In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl makes the same point: Everything known to us points to an
original becoming acquainted; what we call unknown has, nevertheless, a known structural form: the form object and,
more particularly, the form spatial thing, cultural object, tool, and so forth. (Husserl, 1960, 38)
24 Just as every object of receptivity stands forth since the beginning as an object of a type known in some manner or

other, so correlatively in every predicative formation there already takes place a determination as this or that on the basis
of expressions inseparably entwined with every predication (Husserl, 1973, 49, p. 204).
25 See also the following passage from Cartesian Meditations: Without a doubt, it can happen that an affect lacks a

particular typification, but at least it is still grasped as an object, as one within the absolutely necessary and most general
form object in general. (Husserl, 1973, 8, p. 39) Everything known to us points to an original becoming acquainted;
what we call unknown has nevertheless a known structural form: the form object and, more particularly, the form
spatial thing, cultural object, and so forth. (Husserl, 1960, 38, p. 80)

 So the situation is this: on the one hand, it is true that we experience worldly objects as such
only when the Ego actively contributes to make sense of what affects it. This, however, is nothing
very special; it is rather a description of nave consciousness in its everyday experience.26 On the
other hand, however, the phenomenologist can perform a series of abstractions and bracket off our
natural attitude and everything that belongs to it in order to uncover the various constitutive
performances of the Ego. In this exercise, we discover that sense making never starts from scratch:27
our worldly experiences are guided by certain meanings that are prefigured in passivity thanks to the
associative syntheses. It is in the interplay of these associations that the phenomenological as-
structure originally takes form.
This, in turn, implies that there is a deep continuity between the different phases of
constitution. The passive world-disclosing experience of the ego is not discontinuous with the
spontaneous activity of perceptual or even judgmental consciousness. It is the same (as-)structure, it
is just more rudimentary in character. It is true that associations, just as such, does not yield object-
consciousness. As Husserl puts it in Experience and Judgment (ibid.), passive consciousness is Einheit
vorkonstituierend (preconstituting unity), but it is not yet Gegenstnde konstituierend (constituting objects).
However, Husserl seems to think that this experience is still world-revealing, even if only minimally,
for this is where sense experience takes root. For this reason, Husserl sees associations as
constituting the (distant) basis for active thinking and judging. On this view, perceptual judgments
build up and elaborate on what is already present in passivity.
This conclusion follows naturally from Husserls genetic project, whose aim is to explain how
concepts gradually emerge out of the sensible. Very basically, the idea of genesis is that sensuous
experience gives rise to conceptual thinking, opens up its possibility by providing the experiencing
subject with a basic form of knowledge.28 For Husserl, then, conceptual thinking and judgments are

26 The nave consciousness, which, through all the perspectives, gradations, and so on in which the object of perception
appears, is directed toward this object itself, in its identity, has always in view only the result of this act: the object, which
is explicated in perception as such and such (Husserl, 1973, 13, p. 59).
27 Husserl is remarkably clear on this throughout Experience and Judgment. Here is what is probably the most revealing

passage on this: A cognitive function bearing on individual objects of experience is never carried out as if these objects
were pregiven at first as from a still completely undetermined substrate. For us the world is always a world in which
cognition in the most diverse ways has already done its work. Thus it is not open to doubt that there is no experience, in
the simple and primary sense of an experience of things, which, grasping a thing for the first time and bringing cognition
to bear on it, does not already know more about the thing than is in this cognition alone. Every act of experience,
whatever it may be that is experienced in the proper sense as it comes into view, has eo ipso, necessarily, a knowledge and
a potential knowledge [Mitwissen] having reference to precisely this thing, namely, to something of it which has not yet
come into view. This pre-knowledge [Vorwissen] is indeterminate as to content, or not completely determined, but it is
never completely empty; and were it not already manifest, the experience would not at all be experience of this one, this
particular, thing (Husserl, 1973, 8, p. 31f./26f.).
28 Gallagher and Zahavi (2012, p. 101) explain the continuity thesis by insisting on the fact that to detach sense and the

sensuous (Sinn and Sinnlichkeit) from each other [] would make it incomprehensible how the perceived could ever

not conceived as layers of a wholly different nature that would somehow interact with the sensible
upon which they are founded; they arise out of it.29 For reasons I cant get into here, one may be more
or less convinced by Husserls analyses,30 but one can hardly fail to notice that in the later, genetic
period, judication, predication and, more generally, conceptual thinking are the further articulation or
explication of what has been sensuously experienced in perception.31
To highlight this structural similarity, Husserl went as far as to affirm that prepredicative
experience is structured like a judgment: Thus, for example, a perceptive consciousness in which an
object is before us as existing, intended [vermeint] by us as such, is an act of judgment in this broader
sense (ibid., p. 61). As we have seen throughout the essay, Husserls point here is that the structure
of prepredicative experience is analogous to that of judgment (in the wide sense) because it, too,
presents its objects in a determinate manner, i.e. as such. It is precisely for this reason that there
could be perceptual judgments, or thoughts that captures facts about what one perceives.32

Conclusion

In his analysis of our being-in-the-world, Heidegger insists that the world we inhabit is structured in
terms of practical reference and contexts of use. Our way of being in the world is shaped primarily in
terms of practical action: perceptual objects appears as useful for this or that purpose, as well suited
in this or that situation. One fundamental, albeit often unnoticed feature of Heideggers analysis

function as a guideline for linguistic articulation. To deny the existence of prelinguistic cognition, and to claim that every
apprehension of something as something presupposes language use would make it incomprehensible how we ever
acquire language in the first place.
29 One recurrent idea of Husserl is that concepts emerge from perceptual experience when what one actually perceives

becomes problematic or doubtful or when it questions us in one way or other. As Rudolf Bernet (in this volume) puts
it: This question ordinarily leads not only to a more attentive perception or to a thematization of what one perceives; it
also leads to a search for names and categories. The most common origin or genesis of concepts thus lies in their
answering needs arising in perception.
30 For a very thoughtful (and convincing) critique of Husserl on this, see Crowell (2013, ch. 6).
31 I have argued elsewhere that if there is no radical break or change, that is to say, if the genesis of predicative experience

is a gradual process and there is continuity between the different layers of experience, the line between the conceptual
and the non-conceptual becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to trace. Accordingly, I have suggested that we consider
everything Husserl subsumes under the heading prepredicative experience as preconceptual experience (see Doyon,
2011).
32 The question of the genetic continuity between judgments and perception is a question that Husserl was especially

interested in his later works, but the idea itself goes back to the period prior to the Logical Investigations. As soon as in 1898,
Husserl thought that the subject-and-predicate form of judgment was somehow prepared (vorgearbeitet) in perception.
Aber obschon damit der Unterscheidung von Subjekt und Prdikation vorgearbeitet ist, so ist das noch nicht diese
Unterscheidung selbst (Husserl, 2005, p. 326). The word vorgearbeitet anticipates on vorgezeichnet (predelineated,
preformed), which Husserl uses regularly in works belonging to the genetic period, such as Active and Passive Syntheses and
Experience and Judgment.

concerns the parallelism between the intentional structure of our prepredicative experience of
worldly objects and how the content of that experience is expressed in predication. In Heideggers
view, both share the same fundamental structure: my assertoric claims about how things are just is
the expression of the very same kind of meaning we already find in our encounter with worldly
objects.33 They both present their objects as such.
A similar set of arguments was found in the late Husserls work, which concurs by and large
with Heidegger that our life-world is pervaded by an as-structure. Even if he never made of this
phenomenological as-structure an explicit theme of philosophical research, Husserl, too, thinks that
the as such operates in remarkably similar way in both predicative and prepredicative experience.
And just as Heidegger, Husserl also believes that it is because the content of predicative and
prepredicative experience shares a common structure that what is given in intuition can be taken up
in higher-order acts of objectivation such as predication and judication.
In brief, then, both Husserl and Heidegger conceive of the phenomenological as-structure
as a basic constituent of all intentional experiences. Clearly, the as such may be described in
various wayspragmatically, epistemically, etc.depending on the specific modality of experience
we have in view. It also admits various degrees: in certain situations, it is very minimally structured
(this unknown thing that I see belongs to the general category object), while it can be more
complex or more conceptually loaded in others (Look at this Belarusian plant!). Its sources may
also vary: while Husserl thought that the basic form of the phenomenological as-structure at work in
perception may be traced back to the work of associations, Heidegger rooted it in our pre-
ontological understanding of Being. These differences are important, but this should not prevent us
from seeing that Husserl and Heidegger agreed on one fundamental point, which I fully endorse: to
have intentional content is to experience something as something. Objects can only appear to consciousness if
they are apprehended in a non-neutral way as this or that, and in this light, the way in which objects
are present to mind in judgments and thoughts does not fundamentally differ from how they are
present to mind in perceptual experience.

33This reflects Heideggers Neo-Kantianism, or at least everything his hermeneutic shares with the Neo-Kantianism of
the time. Husserl, on the other hand, always stays conscious of the fact that it is sensation itself, which enables the
distinction between a prepredicative experience and a predicative experience.

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the department of philosophy of Universit Laval, in Qubec City, and
at the 12th annual meeting of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, in Helsinki, Finland, in the
spring of 2014. Heartfelt thanks to the organizers of both meetings: Sophie-Jan Arrien and Jean-
Sbastien Hardy (Qubec) and Sara Heinmaa (Helsinki). Many thanks also to Don Beith and
Virginie Palette for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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