§29. Introduction

1In the course of our investigation, we have twice encountered a view1 that we shall term epistemological conventionalism. This view, whose foundations lie in skepticism, says that the objects of cognition, paradoxically speaking, are not such as they are, but rather such as we make them. Or to put it another way, the “nature” or “essence” of an object is on this view not something that the object possesses independently of the cognizing subject, but rather, conversely, something that <140> the cognizing subject arbitrarily imposes on the object of cognition. One simply selects some property or characteristic of the object that is important to us for some theoretical or practical reason, ascribes to it an especially important role in the object, and proceeds to call it “the nature” of the object. But precisely which characteristic we select depends strictly on our personal preference. The situation is the same in the case of constructing any objects. Epistemological conventionalism, customarily advanced by mathematicians when they begin to “philosophize”, is for the most part applied to objects of mathematical research and finds its expression in the postulate of complete freedom in constructing the definition of an object, as for example in the trend of setting the various non-Euclidean geometries on a par with the Euclidean, and so on.2 But we also frequently hear analogous claims in reference to real objects, so on the whole this view has a rather general significance.

2The view we have just reconstructed contradicts the foundations of our standpoint; we must therefore deal with it in greater detail. However, since epistemological conventionalism ordains as the basis of its theories the dependence of the object of cognition on the cognitive act, instead of discussing the particular views of one author or another and attempting to eliminate various misunderstandings, we wish straight away to consider the fundamental question of whether such a dependence can obtain, and if so – within what limits. <141> It is in this way that the foundations of epistemological conventionalism will be placed under scrutiny. The result to which we aspire in the subsequent inquiries can be formulated as follows: Either some objects exist, in which case none of their properties (with the exception of what we called the “relative quasi-characteristics”, which cannot be put on a par with the object’s properties) can be altered or imposed on the object by the cognitive act, and consequently there can be no talk of a “dependence” of the object of cognition on the cognitive act, or there is such a dependence – in which case there are in the strict sense no objects, no being, but only fictions, at bottom therefore [there are] only certain presentations or non-intuitive intentions [Intentionen] contained in the intentional acts of consciousness. We shall take this opportunity to discuss one more new conception of the “nature” of an object, and to expose its incorrectness.

§30. Differentiation of Possible Cases

3We are faced with two possibilities. Either: 1) There exist objects that are different from the cognitive act and are in every respect selfsufficient and independent with regard to both the cognitive act and the cognizing subject. “In every respect” means both with respect to the being of the object itself as well as to its possessing all of its characteristics. “Selfsufficient” means that the objects exist in themselves entirely independently of whether there exists at the same time any cognitive act (or a cognizing subject) whose intention is directed at the given object; “independent”, finally, in the sense that no characteristic accrues to the object as a result of its being the target of the intention of an act of cognition – in other words, the object has no characteristic that is altered under the influence of the cognitive act. Or: 2) there are no such objects at all.

4 If such objects do exist, then it follows ex definitione that epistemological conventionalism cannot pertain to them. However, if we aspire to their cognition, we must bear in mind that we shall achieve our goal only if we guard against any kind of assertion3 that would ascribe to the <142> object of cognition any characteristic that is alien to it. Any step that attempts either to impose on the object a nature that is foreign to it or to ascribe to it a characteristic that it does not possess will be incorrect not only because it diverts us from the goal toward which we aspire, but also because it postulates a non-existent relation between the object and the act of cognition that cannot obtain in the situation delineated. Declaration of decrees or consensus on arbitrary conventions concerning the nature and properties of the object is in this case altogether absurd, and indeed for the simple reason that – if we may express it metaphorically – the object will not be troubled at all by any of these decrees and conventions; however, a single cognition well-suited [angemessene] to the properties of the object will contravene all of these decrees and conventions.

5 However, if objects do exist that are in every respect selfsufficient and independent with respect to the cognitive act or cognizing subject, it follows from their sense that they must have a nature that distinguishes them from other objects and from the act (or subject) of cognition;4 what makes up this nature depends on the idea under which the given object falls.

6 But if there are no such objects, then one must in turn distinguish two different eventualities: either certain objects of cognition exist but are in some manner dependent on the cognitive act or on a multitude of such acts, or there are no objects of cognition at all. In the latter case, of course, there is also nothing to cognize. But if objects of cognition that are dependent on the cognitive act do exist, then once again two different cases can be distinguished: either these objects are dependent on the cognitive acts for their being, or they exist selfsufficiently in relationship to the cognitive acts but are dependent on them with respect to some of their characteristics – with respect to some characteristics (and not all!), for if something that is selfsufficient with respect to the subject does indeed exist, it must possess a stratum of characteristics that accrue to it independently of that subject. For in what else would its autonomous being have its support if it did not possess such characteristics?

7 <143> Let us now examine more closely the cases distinguished, and accordingly what presuppositions pertaining to the cognitive acts are inherent in the distinct cases.

§31. Can the Being of Objects of Cognition Be Dependent on the Cognitive Act?

8If there were objects that would be dependent in their being on the cognitive act (or on a multitude of them), then these acts would have to possess the capacity to create [schaffen] objects and to sustain those very objects in their being. Yet it is impossible for the cognitive act as such to satisfy either of these conditions, since both of the cited operations are incompatible with its essence. An act of direct cognition5 is an act of consciousness to whose essence belongs above all the passive function of drawing the sense of the object out of what is given intuitively, in which the object’s characteristics or properties make their appearance. The cognitive act is, in accordance with its essence, a passive act; the moment of activity, which is undoubtedly also contained in it, has nothing to do with a “creating” of what the act refers to. This moment relies on (and is confined to) that “drawing” of the object-sense [out of what is given intuitively] being indeed an “extracting”, and not a purely passive “receiving” [Empfangen].6 The relation between that which creates something and that which is created belongs among the real relations and is a variant of the causal relation. However, what especially singles out the cognitive acts is precisely that they are acts of the object-oriented intention of something: but this object-targeting intending is by virtue of its essence foreign to any causal relationship. Object-targeting intending itself, even when founded on what is given in intuition, is incapable of exerting any real [realen] <144> influence on the intended object, not to speak of creating it ex nihilo.7 But if such is the case, it is clear that there are no objects of any kind that are dependent in their being on the act of cognition.

§32. The Objection that Appeals to the Fact of “Forming [Bildung]: Objects in the Imagination [Phantasie]”8

9But someone may ask: Do we not then occasionally form fictitious constructs [Gestalten] in the imagination (centaurs, ice palaces, etc.)? Do we not design plans for new kinds of machines and produce works of art, paintings, symphonies? Is it not true, after all, that we “create” objects that had not previously existed?9

10[We reply:] To be sure, we do all of that; however, irrespective of what the words bilden, schaffen, etc. might mean in all these cases, this “creating” cannot in any event be credited to the account of acts of cognition. The purportedly “created” objects are first of all the fabrications of so-called productive imagination, which no doubt can be “inventive”. Moreover, for some of the objects enumerated, it is products of psycho-physical activity that are involved, an activity that must be reckoned among the real processes, and which for this reason cannot be generated by any cognitive act, and most certainly not through any act of pure consciousness alone.

11“Good enough!”, one may perhaps retort, “[since] it is entirely irrelevant whether it is the cognitive acts specifically or other acts of consciousness that can bring this about. The only thing that matters is that we can de facto form and transform certain objects just as we please (owing to the imagination, or to some other faculty) and can eo ipso ascribe to them this or that ‘nature’. The objects of mathematics, among others, also belong to the sorts of objects formed in the imagination; these are therefore completely dependent on our volition, and it makes no sense to speak of some ‘nature’ for these entities that would be independent10 of us.” <145>

§33. Dispatching the Objection: On the “Formation [Bildung] of Objects in the Imagination [Phantasie]” and on Their Cognition

12We do not believe that one is entitled to draw the conclusions set forth in the preceding section from the fact we have conceded. In the line of reasoning we have reconstructed above, everything depends on the meaning of the verb ‘form’ [bilden] (or ‘create’ [schaffen]), on what objects we can form, and within what bounds we are free to do so. Since the kind of “forming” that involves performing physical activities obviously does not come into play for the problem we are examining, we confine ourselves here to investigating the “formation of objects in the imagination.”

13The question to be answered first and foremost is whether we can form a “glass castle” or a “centaur” in the imagination in the same sense that – in the view of some mathematicians – one “forms” a geometric figure in the imagination, say, a “square”. What does “to form” mean in the first case? To “form” a “glass castle” in the imagination means nothing other than to fashion a new presentational [vorstellungsmäßigen] or conceptual whole11 out of presentational or conceptual elements that we have acquired on prior occasions of experiencing real entities. Or, to put it succinctly: it is a matter of forming a determinate “presentation” [Vorstellung],12 or a determinate “concept”, that refers to a specific “object”.13 In conjunction with this, it needs to be noted that: (1) we do not form this presentation (concept) on the basis of a direct experience of the object to which the given presentation refers – we form it by trying out in some arbitrary manner combinations of presentational elements that we have at our disposal owing to prior experience of other objects that in virtue of their essence differ from the ones being fabricated [fingierten]; (2) it is in principle always possible to pinpoint the instant at which such a presentation originated; (3) it can be shown that said presentation was “generated” by us, i.e. that it did not exist prior to the given instant, that there was an instant or interval of time at which it had arisen, and, finally, that there was an actively-creative mental process or a transaction which brought forth this presentation; (4) we can demonstrate our power over such a presentation with respect to its existence, as well as with respect to its possible alteration and, ultimately, its <146> demise; finally, (5) the object to which such a presentation refers does not exist. We merely produce the appearance [Schein] of its existence by forming a certain whole [consisting] of intuitive presentation-like contents [anschaulichen vorstellungsmäßigen Inhalten]14 and by endowing this whole with a function – characteristic for a specific type of presentation [Vorstellungstypus]15 – of the “representation” [Represäntation] of something, a something that differs from the totality of the intuitive presentation-like contents, namely, an “object” to which the presentation refers but which nonetheless does not exist. Were it not for this function of “representation”, one could not speak of a presented object in this case – since the intending [Meinung] of what we present to ourselves could not then come about, and one would have to be restricted to ascertaining a whole [consisting] of intuitive presentation-like contents that is accessible [aktuellen] to us [only] at that very instant. Whereas as already noted, the appearance of the existence of an object corresponding to the presentation arises owing to this function, an appearance that can indeed in some cases lead to the illusion that such objects “really” exist – an appearance, however, which can in principle be exposed as an appearance by means of reflection. This appearance is further strengthened by the possibility of presenting such an “object” on multiple occasions with an awareness of the object’s “identity”. The “presentation” – that is not just a whole of intuitive, presentation-like, contents concretely experienced [erlebten] by us. Intentions that are in themselves non-intuitive also always occur in the whole of the presentation. These intentions are within certain limits independent of the changes that occur within the intuitive contents. It is therefore possible to retain the same complex of non-intuitive intentions even in the event of entirely new intuitive contents – provided they are similar to the contents of the original presentation. It is thus possible to carry out an identification between what we originally had a presentation of and what is now being presented. The identity of the presented with itself that is achieved in this manner – in contrast to the uninterrupted variation and novelty of the concretely experienced [erlebten] intuitive <147> contents – constitutes an analogue to the identity with itself of an object existing autonomously with respect to a cognizing subject, and contributes to strengthening the appearance of the existence of an “object formed in the imagination”. The appearance does nonetheless remain just appearance.

14The non-existence of an object “formed in the imagination” is also the indispensable condition for the freedom to form and transform objects of these sorts.16 For only because, on the one hand, this sort of object does not strictly speaking exist, because we are only entitled to speak of it as of an X which, if it were to exist, would be what the presentational intention [Vorstellungsmeinung] makes it out to be – an X that is merely the focus of an intentional targeting determined by the presentational intention – and only because, on the other hand, what really exists – that is, the whole of the intuitive and presentation-like contents, along with the representation function and the complex of non-intuitive intentions – is an immanent element of pure consciousness, [only because of that] does the cognizing subject have the freedom (a restricted one, at that) to form and transform the objects shaped in the imagination. The cognizing subject has this freedom because it can form an arbitrary presentation, and transform at will the already formed one, whereby the object “formed” – taken exclusively as the intentional correlate of the act of presenting – is also “altered”. But this is of course only an apparent “forming” and “transforming” of the object.

15However, even in this apparent formation of the object we are not completely free,17 insofar, of course, as we wish to “form” an object that is amenable to being “presented”. Obviously, we need not be concerned about the empirical laws that in fact govern in this or that region of reality; we can, for example, form presentations of objects that are in conflict with various physical, physiological, and even psychological laws.18 We are in fact capable of doing that, and are entitled to do so, as long as we are aware that our goal is neither the cognition nor the formation of presentations that are supposed to have exactly corresponding correlates in the real world or in ideal being. But we are not capable of constructing objects in the imagination that would have unextended colors, say, or that would produce triangular sounds, and the like. Just as little can we form a presentation of an object’s characteristic that would stroll around town on its own, <148> or of a causal relation that would be less than three, and so on. In cases like this we often say, inaccurately, that something of the sort is altogether “unthinkable”. De facto, however, all of them can be “thought”; whereas the impossibility of forming presentations of these sorts of countersensical objects has a different source: the condition for the appearance of the existence of an “object formed in the imagination” to arise is that the intuitive, presentation-like content-elements be chosen in such a way as to be capable of forming a coherent whole. Precisely that, however, is ruled out in the above cases. But it is of course ruled out not only because – as the exponents of psychologism assert19 – the factual nature of our mental structure, or a blind mechanism in our mental processes, would thwart the coming into being of such contradictory presentations, but first and foremost because determinate apriori laws govern the object-pertaining elements that are intended by means of the elemental [elementaren] intuitive presentation-like contents, [elements] from which we attempt to form coherent wholes.20 These laws demand the co-existence of some elements, on the one hand, but on the other, rule out the co-existence of others. And only because these laws obtain is it indeed impossible to form in the imagination objects that conflict with them factually [faktisch].

16Hence, already here, in the forming of fictitious objects, of creations of “free” poetic fancy,21 it turns out that we are actually not completely free at all, but must rather abide by a series of apriori laws. But even while forming objects in the imagination, we must at the same time make use of a great many elements as material [Material] that we are incapable of creating, forming, transforming, or obliterating – not even in the figurative sense in which we speak of forming “glass palaces”, a “golden mountain”, etc. To these elements belongs first of all a series of categorial forms such as e.g. being-object, being-property [Gegenständlichkeit, Eigenschaftlichkeit], and the like. Here belong also all the simple ideal qualities (sounds, colors, etc.) that we select with the aim of having them “realized” in fictitious objects. To say of ideal qualities <149> that we “form” them is utterly nonsensical, because it belongs to their very essence that they can be neither created nor obliterated – even apart from whether their existence is the indispensable presupposition for the existence of every sort of real objects, as indeed of quasi-real objects, which is to say of the sorts of objects that include the fictions of the real-entity-type that we form. At best, we can speak of trying to “realize” the ideal qualities in the fictitious objects. But just as the “forming” of the object is an apparent one in this case, so too is the “realizing” of the ideal qualities a mere “quasi-realizing”, a “realizing” that cannot be consummated; all we can achieve is the formation of a corresponding presentation or concept. For what is missing here is that which, if it existed, would have to serve as bearer for the realizations of the ideal qualities: the object itself that is actually formed. When we form the whole out of intuitive, presentation-like contents and confer on it the function of representation, we of course intend eo ipso a bearer on the one hand, the ideal qualities to be realized on the other, and we carry out the realization in fictione. But insofar as we do so, we have the awareness that the realization is not executed “for real” [“in Wirklichkeit”]; it is merely as if we had fictitiously cloaked a ghost in a ghostly robe, a ghost that is incapable of wearing the robe on its own. The fictitious object is not “rooted” – to employ Mrs. Conrad-Martius’ fitting word – in the sphere of objects of the type we ascribe to it in the imagination.22 Its roots are fixed – if we may put it that way – in our very selves; it spews forth, so to speak, out of our act of presenting, but even that it is incapable of doing realiter. With the mediation of an appropriate presentational moment, we are seemingly able to situate the fictitious object in this or that region of objects, but we can never succeed in bringing this about realiter. On the contrary, when with great force of presentation [Vorstellungskraft] we attempt to localize a fictitious object in some region of being, this region too appears to assume a character of fictionality [Fiktivität] (which is particularly striking in the case of historical novels, in which fictitious characters step onto a factually existing terrain, and into contact with once factually existing personalities). The fictitious object’s “dependence” on our imagination resides in its having its source in the fabricating [fingierenden] subject out of whom it spews forth; but <150> even this dependence is merely apparent in the sense that there are not two different entities [Entia] here, one of which is creator, the other creatum (creatura) (as are, say, father and son); here there is not even the sort of relationship that obtains between a plant and its flower, where the flower is the product of the plant but cannot live apart from it, nor the sort of relationship that holds between a light source and a “real image” [reelle Bild] (in the sense of physical science), where the real image is wholly dependent for its origin and being on the light source and an appropriate system of lenses. At best, one can compare the relation between a fantasizing subject and the fictitious object with the relation obtaining between a light source that projects light rays onto a convex mirror and an “imaginary (virtual) image” [“imaginären (virtuellen) Bilde”] in the sense of physical science. But even in this case one is dealing with a mere analogy.

17The question arises whether such fictitious objects formed in the imagination can be objects of cognition. Indeed, there is in fact nothing here to be cognized. And it is incontestable that there is no possibility of talking about a direct cognition of a fictitious object. Yet we often speak of the “cognition” of such objects in a figurative sense. In what then does the “cognition” of, say, a “golden mountain”, a centaur, etc., consist?

18One must distinguish two phases of the “cognition” of a fictitious object, of which the first refers not to the fictitious object itself, but to the corresponding fantasy-presentation [Phantasievorstellung], or to the corresponding concept, whereas the second refers to the fictitious object directly – but under the specific proviso that the latter be regarded as if it existed, and as if it possessed the properties ascribed to it in the corresponding presentation. In the first phase, which procures the material and basis for the second, we “cognize” the fictitious object by coming to know how someone presents it to himself. For example, when we engage cognitively with some character in a literary work, we are trying above all “to penetrate into the author’s intentions” – as we customarily say. This means nothing other than that by gathering the relevant details we wish to grasp the meaning-intention that the author had with respect to the character in question when he engendered the respective presentation, <151> and that we wish to form a similar one. When we succeed in this, we have “understood” the author; we have then come to know how the author had presented to himself, or had intended, the character in question. By this means we ostensibly and indirectly get to know the object itself formed in the imagination. But we can never be certain that we have not erred in this process. For all we can attain to here, on the basis of the descriptions offered, is the non-intuitive presentational intention [Vorstellungsintention] – ordinarily capable of being grasped only in part – which the author effected in the course of “shaping” the character in question; in contrast, the region of concrete, intuitive presentation-like contents experienced [erlebten] by the author is inaccessible to us. And we have no criterion for determining whether the descriptions offered us by the author are in fact in agreement with the concrete contents of his presentations. It is for this reason impossible to carry out an identification between the object of which the author had a presentation when conjuring up the given fictitious character and the object of which we had formed a presentation on the basis of the information received from the author, and to demonstrate the existence of the identity. There is no way to verify whether the “Mr. Zagłoba” from Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword is identical with the “Mr. Zagłoba” that we have fashioned in our imagination on the basis of reading that novel. But even the problem of the existence of such an identity, which we could rightfully pose in the case of every existing object, is senseless here. For the indispensable presupposition for an object’s identity is its existence (real or ideal); in the case of a fictitious object, on the other hand, there can only be talk of the accord or discord of the intentions contained in the presentations of two different consciousness-endowed subjects [Bewußtseinssubjekte].

19The “cognition” of a fictitious object is not however concluded upon completing the first phase. How often it happens that the reader of a literary work has more to say about a particular character than the author himself. And this not in the sense that the reader would wish to alter anything in the author’s central idea [Konzeption], or add something that was foreign to it, but in the sense in which a completed picture says more than a sketch to which it has remained faithful. In fact, we often correct the author, claiming that he has <152> not rightly understood the character he himself crafted, or that he has made a mistake, and the like. We do so with full awareness that the author did not mean to depict any reality but was shaping his fictions with an unfettered poetic license – or so it would appear at first.

20This procedure is only possible: (1) because every presentation (or concept) of any object is according to its essence at best only a sketch in which the constitutive characteristics of the respective object are unequivocally determined; (2) because every existing object possesses an infinite manifold of characteristics with the attendant relations among them, and because we ascribe to an object that we have fashioned in the imagination, and conceived on the model of an existing one, a set of characteristics that are not intended explicite in the respective presentation but accrue to it as a consequence of its possessing the characteristics that are intended explicite; (3) because even in shaping the most outrageously fictitious object in the imagination, we shape it, as already noted, from elements that were given to us in an earlier experience, or, more generally, in a direct cognition; and finally (4) because multifarious apriori, or even merely empirical, relations obtain among these elements which imply – even if only fictitiously – the object’s possession of characteristics not given explicite in the presentation.

21After we have understood in the first phase of the “cognition” of a fictitious object how the author wanted to construe it, and after having thereby stipulated its nature and constitutive properties, we can inquire on this assumption what additional properties or characteristics the fictitious object would have if it were to exist and possess the properties ascribed to it by the fabricating conception. Whereas we are relatively free while forming the conception of a fictitious object, we are here – in the process of ascertaining the fictitious object’s further properties – constrained by the fabricating conception and by the relations that obtain among those elements of the object which were intended by that conception. In this sense we can “cognize” a fictitious object and pronounce a series of true, though hypothetical, propositions about it.

22In conclusion: it must be conceded that within the bounds established above we are free to form fictitious objects in the imagination, <153> and that as a result we can ascribe to them this or that nature, but that everything is limited to the formation of a corresponding presentation, or of numerous presentations, or of a concept. In contrast, the fictitious object itself does not exist in reality. In other words, there exist no material objects corresponding to the presentations or concepts formed in this case. No categorical judgment – as understood by E. Husserl – can be pronounced concerning a fictitious object. (As we are well aware, the positive or negative existential judgment should not be reckoned among the categorical judgments.)

23Finally, the forming in the imagination of fictitious objects of the existentially autonomous type presupposes the ideas of real or ideal existentially autonomous objects (or of ideal qualities), of objects therefore that have their own nature which we cannot influence purely through cognition. Hence, anyone who would wish to understand by an object’s nature only what we form in the imagination and can ascribe to this or that fiction would be contradicting himself if he at the same time refused to acknowledge the existence of the idea of an object’s nature in our sense.

24For a radical idealist – and by that we mean anyone for whom only his own stream of experiences exists, and who rejects the idea of an object existentially autonomous with respect to the cognizing subject – there are of course no fictitious objects. For him, there are only various types of harmony and disharmony among the individual contents of his experiences. The question of whether through these contents there appear entities different from those contents is for him, strictly speaking, senseless. The, and hence the sole, actuality is for him the stream of experiences itself. But for this sort of idealist the question concerning freedom in the formation of objects is at the same time also devoid of sense, since first of all there is no mind-endowed individual (no person) who could form these objects. For him there are only relations of the simultaneous or successive occurrence of certain contents of experiences in the stream of consciousness. That is all. Such an idealist will obviously not speak of the “nature” of an object which is existentially autonomous with respect to the cognizing subject, since for him no such objects exist. But at the same time, he will not be able to avoid endorsing the existence of the nature and essence of the single existentially autonomous object that he does acknowledge – the nature of his very own stream of consciousness. He will consider entirely senseless the problem of anyone’s influencing or forming this nature.23

§34. Can Ideal Objects, Ideas and Ideal Qualities Be Regarded as Fictions?

25The question arises as to what the situation really is with the “formation” and cognition of objects that have ideal existence in our sense, but which epistemological conventionalism wishes to set on a par with such fabricated objects as, say, “golden mountains”, “ice palaces”, “centaurs”, etc. The objects studied by Euclidean geometry can serve here as our example.

26Everything we have said concerning the impossibility of forming any sort of object by a cognitive act (or in a cognitive act) also retains its validity here. So, if the objects of Euclidean geometry are to be dependent in their being on anything at all, it is only our creative imagination that can come into play here. With geometric objects, however, we run into a situation that is diametrically opposed to that of fictitious “ice palaces”. If in the case of fictitious objects we have at least conceded an apparent formation of the object while denying it existence, then in the case of geometric objects we must declare that objects such as “a square”, a “circle”,24 etc. (these expressions taken in the sense of individual ideal objects) do exist, but that one can neither form nor transform them, and that consequently they are independent of our imagination in their being. For we can only “form” something whose essence (in our sense) allows for its origination in time – [“form”] in the sense that what is formed would actually exist afterward without requiring us to sustain it in its being. If it were possible <155> to form something like a square in the sense of Euclidean geometry, there would have to be an interval of time in which no square existed, an interval in which it originated, and an interval, finally, in which it exists. It is self-evident that all of that is completely countersensical for such an object as a “square” in the established sense of an individual geometric object. There was no doubt an epoch when we knew nothing about a “square”, nor about the objects of Euclidean geometry in general, and an epoch during which our knowledge concerning such objects evolved; but all of that plays not the least role in the question concerning the existence or non-existence of the objects of this knowledge. Only the strong wave of psychologism, which wishes to reduce everything non-material to the elements of mental life or of consciousness, and the fear of making real something that is unquestionably not real, could elicit deceptive errors here. The objects of Euclidean geometry can neither come into being nor pass away, nor change with respect to any of their properties. Either they do not exist at all, or if they do exist, they do not admit of being formed or transformed.

27To this our opponent would answer: We agree to this “either-or”. But what disposes us to the assertion that objects like a square, a circle, etc. have ideal existence? Would we not be closer to the truth to say that these sorts of objects do not exist in the same sense as there are no sirens, centaurs, and the like – especially since we do not encounter anything of the sort in either outer or inner experience25 – and that the only entities that exist are the corresponding fantasy-presentations or concepts that thrust into the void, so to speak? Should the immutability of geometric objects – like that of ideal objects in general – compel us to acknowledge their existence? But then we could also present [vorstellen] to ourselves a completely fictitious and therefore non-existent object, and ascribe to it among other characteristics those of immutability, non-origination and indestructibility; would one then be able to say that on that account it becomes an ideally existent one – especially since no one has yet explained clearly and distinctly what is to be understood by an “ideal existence”? But geometry will suffer no loss just because we happen to regard the objects of Euclidean geometry as fictions. <156> Its value as science will remain unaltered if we treat it as a system of hypothetical propositions under the general proviso that there are such objects.26 As a result, we would gain the unrestrained freedom of continued development, the possibility of setting various non-Euclidean geometries on a par with the Euclidean, as well as the ouster of any kind of dogmatism from the realm of science.27

28We respond: All considerations pertaining to what we gain or lose in practical terms from this or that solution of the problem play for us a subordinate role. The only decisive question is which of the proposed views is true? However – as in every case in which the existence or non-existence of an object is at issue – only the appropriate direct cognition of geometric objects (or, more generally, of ideal objects), as well as of ideal qualities and ideas, can resolve this question for us. We are in this case in the fortunate position of not dealing with a cognition of the outer or inner experience type – in the narrow sense coined by E. Husserl28– which in accordance with its essence can never offer us absolute certainty of the existence of the objects given in it; we are instead dealing with direct apriori cognition, which is indeed capable of affording us this certainty.29 And it is precisely this cognition that certifies for us the existence of the entities at issue.30 We are left with no alternative but to express as adequately as possible what is grasped in this cognition.31

29We cannot convince the reader of the existence of these sorts of entities.32 We can only invite the reader to make the effort to achieve a direct cognition of the ideal objects. As long as such an attempt is not undertaken,33 none of our contentions about ideal entities will be able to bring about any kind of resolution here. It may well be that following such an attempt the reader will arrive at the conviction that we are in error. We must then be fully prepared to submit our results to renewed scrutiny. But neither will the reader be able to convince us by sheer declaration that he is right and we are not. He will only be able to extend to us an invitation analogous to ours. The situation is entirely similar here to the one in which real facts are to be ascertained <157> where ultimately one also has to appeal to the testimony of direct cognition.34 Even if35 someone were to prove that there is a contradiction in the characterizations and assertions we put forth pertaining to ideal entities,36 this would only be for us a sign that our characterizations are imperfect, that they do not express adequately what is given in direct cognition, and that therefore we must either better adapt the linguistic form of our characterizations to what is given, or better apprehend what is directly given. The appeal to direct cognition is therefore necessary and decisive also in this case.37

30We are not of course denying that the occurrence of immutability among the characteristics of a fictitious object cannot convert it into one that has ideal existence. A fiction remains a fiction even if it is conceived as non-originated, immutable and indestructible. (For example, a fictitious golden castle that, along with all its inhabitants, would be hexed by an evil spirit into eternal immutability and indestructibility!) But it must be noted in this connection that if the fictitious object is a figment [Fiktion] of a “real” object, and is perhaps presented as immutable, one must necessarily distinguish between the immutability of such an object and the immutability of an ideal object or ideal quality. One could say that in the first case this immutability is only a role that is imposed on the object, but is alien to it, a role which fictitious objects of this sort can, but do not have to, perform, and of which they can in principle be divested at any moment without being thereby obliterated or having their nature impacted [tangiert]. These sorts of fictitious objects satisfy, so to speak, all the conditions for being able to change, or for being the bearer of various kinds of processes or causal relations, and only by the fantasizing subject’s decree have these conditions or capacities had their efficacy suppressed. One encounters a diametrically opposed situation in the case of ideal entities. In this case, immutability is nothing contingent that obtains only owing to factors that are substantively extraneous to the essence (in our sense) of the object,38 but is instead so intimately interconnected with the essence of ideal objects and ideal qualities that to eliminate it would be tantamount not to a conversion of the respective ideal object into a real one, <158> but to its obliteration. The ideal object does not satisfy the conditions necessary for being able to change, for entering into causal relations with other objects, etc., and cannot satisfy them.

31For example, when in analytic geometry we say that changing the coefficients of a quadratic equation in two variables entails the “conversion” of a circle into an ellipse, that means nothing other than that we are dealing with a general idea (second degree curve) that has in its meaning-content39 a series of “variables” (in our sense) and from which – by way of transitioning to the particular values of one of the variables of that general idea – we pass over to less general ideas that are subordinated to it. Therefore, it is not the idea “second degree curve” that is being altered40 – it is rather we who pass over to a different idea. One should also guard against interpreting the concept of a “variable” of an idea’s content that we introduced, in the sense of its presenting that aspect of an idea which, appropriate conditions having been satisfied, undergoes change. It is for this reason that we said above: “The variable of an idea’s content is – if we may put it that way – a potential, possible being; it has ideal existence only as something that can be specified in these or those particular cases, determined with respect to their range by the essence of the variable in question, but does not go beyond this possibility, and consequently does not actualize the particular values within its range. One could say that a variable has actual existence only insofar as it determines the range of possible particular cases.”41 When we say, for example, that the variable “relative and absolute side-lengths” occurs among the variables of the general idea “the triangle”, that simply means that some constants of this idea’s content are length-elements which are not however unequivocally specified with respect to their length, and that the system of constants admits only those specific ones (or sets of them) that are in accord with the constants of this [general] idea. In this manner, each of these particular lengths can enter as a constant into the content of a corresponding idea that is directly subordinated to the general idea “triangle”, although none of them goes into the content of that general idea, but rather belongs to that idea only potentialiter in virtue of the well-defined range of such lengths as are admissible for the respective variable. <159> A “variable” therefore means neither something “self-altering”, nor something that is “variable” in the same sense that a real object is “variable” with respect to some of its properties. “Variable” in the latter sense means that the object has the property that certain real alterations that play out over time in certain of its characteristics do not yet entail the obliteration of the object. In this latter sense every idea is invariant, and it is in this sense that we spoke above of the immutability of all ideal entities. One could also characterize the difference in the “variability” as follows: “A real object O is variable with respect to the characteristic C that it possesses at time t” means that the characteristic C₁ C can replace C at an instant t₁ t while preserving the identity of object O (O/C = O/C₁).42 If however we imagine [uns vorstellen] that idea I contains a constant (or variable) K in its content, then no relation of identity can obtain between this idea and idea I₁ (I I₁), where I₁ contains in its content all the constants and variables of idea I, with the sole exception of K, which has been replaced by the constant (or variable) K₁.

32We readily concede that a host of further problems arises here (for example, the question concerning the conditions that must be satisfied in order for a real object to be changeable, or to be able to alter itself, and concerning the conditions that preclude anything of the sort for ideal objects), problems that would have to be solved in a more thorough inquiry. But our sketchy remarks will perhaps suffice to ascertain that the fictitious objects typical of real things, which we endowed with immutability, should not be set on a par with the ideal entities which are immutable in their very essence. We are obviously not claiming that ideal entities exist because they are immutable. We are simply saying: because they are immutable in their very essence, we cannot even form them in the imagination – insofar as they exist at all. But that they in fact exist, that in having a presentation of them we are not merely shooting into the void, so to speak, but are striking a being in doing so – about that we are instructed by what is given in direct apriori cognition.

33<160> It is not objectivities having ideal existence that are analogous to fictitious objects typical of real objects, but fictitious objects typical of ideal objects – which, however, do not exist objectively – as, for example, a “square circle”, the “singing redness”, and the like. The difference between the two cases of fictitious objects is that objects formed in the imagination which are typical of real entities are not internally “contradictory” (i.e. do not possess any mutually exclusive characteristics). It is therefore just an empirical fact that they do not exist, but they would not in principle be precluded from existing if the real world that in fact exists were somewhat different. In contradistinction to that, a square circle is afflicted with an “inner contradiction”, and not only does it not exist, but it cannot exist at all. Correlatively: we can present to ourselves fictitious, contradiction-free objects, whereas, in the case of a “square circle”, that is ruled out by the essence of the individual, mutually exclusive elements. The only reason we are able to speak at all about something like a “square circle” – and in the process utter actual words43 rather than empty sounds, like ‘abracadabra’ – is that it is possible to form a non-intuitive intention whose content includes non-intuitive intentions of object-referencing elements that are mutually exclusive. We are – so it appears – completely free44 to form these kinds of complex intentions, and we can obviously draw further consequences from such intentions.45 We do not wish to resolve here the issue of whether “truth” should be ascribed to them46 – even if only in that restricted sense in which we can attribute truth to hypothetical judgments about fictitious objects that we form in the imagination. We simply wish to note that, should it turn out that the objects of the various non-Euclidean geometries contain mutually exclusive elements, <161> then all such theories would in a strict sense have to be regarded as theories of contradictory fictions. It seems to us at least highly dubious, however, that such is the case. At any rate, one must attempt to find an interpretation of those theories that would do away with every threat of an inner contradiction in their objects prior to any such decision being made. Unfortunately, it must be conceded that prior efforts in this direction, especially those undertaken by philosophically oriented mathematicians, are for the most part laden with so much ballast of psychologistic and positivistic biases that any serious discussion is virtually impossible. Besides, the efforts mentioned almost invariably revolve along the lines of setting geometrical entities in general on a par with fictions.

34If, however, as we believe, the objects of Euclidean geometry are not fictions, but rather possess autonomous being with regard to the cognizing subject, epistemological conventionalism can still defend itself by pointing to the fact that the objects in question, in spite of their autonomous existence, possess certain characteristics that are dependent on the cognizing subject, and that the “nature” in our sense is indeed to be found among those dependent characteristics. We must therefore address this possibility as well.

§35. Whether Objects that Exist Autonomously with Respect to the Cognizing Subject May Possess Some Characteristics that Are Dependent on that Subject: Quasi-Characteristics, Illusions and Their Dependence on the Cognizing Subject

35In order not to complicate the whole discussion unnecessarily by segregating the cognizing subject from a real mind-endowed [psychischen] individuum, as well as by examining the problem of whether the mental states of the real individuum are selfsufficient with respect to the cognizing subject, we wish to confine our deliberations exclusively to those existentially selfsufficient objects that are different from both the stream of consciousness and mental dispositions. We are entitled to do so in view of the fact that geometric entities, insofar as they exist at all, are surely different from any mental dispositions – despite all theories47 by philosophizing mathematicians. It will suffice to point out here that <162> neither does any concept occur in the definitions of geometric and, more generally, of mathematical objects, that indicates any dealings with mental dispositions, nor can these objects – provided they possess those characteristics ascribed to them by the definitions – possess any property that accrues to mental states as characteristic of them, since those objects would then have to be encumbered with an inner contradiction.

36If we constrain in this way the theme of our deliberations then the situation looks as follows:48

37If an object exists that differs from both the stream of consciousness and the mental states of any real individuum and is independent in its being from the cognizing subject, then it is assured a range of properties [Eigenschaften] that accrue to it independently of any relations it might have to other objects. But because it has those characteristics [Merkmale], and because at the same time it has certain relations to other objects, it has simultaneously a series of so-called “relative characteristics”. The claim we must confront here purports that there are objects which are autonomous with respect to their being, but dependent on acts of cognition with respect to some of their characteristics. It is quite clear that the “characteristics” that might come into question here do not at any rate belong among the object’s properties. But neither can they be the characteristics that accrue to it owing to some real relations that obtain between this object and some other real objects (including the real object: human being, as a psycho-physical organism). For the relation between the cognitive act and the object of cognition is not any kind of real relation – and in particular no causal one; it is an intentional relation that consists of the intending of an object. It is impossible that owing to this relation any real characteristic – insofar as a real object is involved – or any property of an ideal object, originates, perishes, or is altered. This applies both to acts of direct cognition of every kind, as well as to presentational acts [Vorstellungsakte], and in general to those acts of consciousness that contain the intending of an object. No act of consciousness as such can “intervene” [“eingreifen”] (to make use of a fitting <163> word from Mrs. Conrad-Martius)49 – by means of the intention [Intention (Meinung)] inherent in it – in the real course of [the] being of objects50 and induce any kind of change in it, for the relation of “real transcendence”51 obtains between acts of consciousness and objects that exist autonomously with respect to the cognizing subject.52 It is for this reason clear that any talk of some characteristics of an object that is existentially autonomous with respect to a cognizing subject being dependent on cognitive or presentational acts53 – if it is to mean anything true at all – cannot at any rate be understood in the sense of the object itself intrinsically possessing characteristics that have arisen within it owing to the intentional relation between that object and an act of consciousness. And no other relation that could bring forth anything of the sort can obtain between act and object. The discourse introduced54 can however be employed in a figurative sense in which it pertains to only some, particularly exceptional, characteristics of the object. We just have to make this sense more precise.

38There are object-pertaining characteristics that can be spoken of as though the object possesses them, and yet does not “really” possess them. These are characteristics that, in a quite narrow sense of the word, are “relative”. They are, if we may put it this way, like a Reflex that arises and is projected [geworfen] onto the object as a result of its being compared by the cognizing subject in some particular respect with some other object. But we do not have in mind here cases in which an object of cognition only appears to be qualitatively endowed in some way in juxtaposition to some other object – as when we have two identically gray-colored <164> sheets of paper and the one set against a white background appears to be the darker.55 We cannot say here that the one sheet of paper is darker than the other, but only: owing to the circumstances that accompany the perceiving, the one sheet appears to be darker than the other. If, on the other hand, we compare a hundred-year-old oak with a nearby rose bush, we can say that the oak is “big” in comparison to the rose bush, that the rose bush is “small” in comparison to the oak. Here we are dealing with the case that interests us. On the one hand, this case must be contrasted with the one already cited in which we say, “how small this object appears to be in comparison to the other one!” (though we have the awareness of its factual size, and of its only appearing to be so small); on the other hand, this case must also be distinguished from the “dimensions” which the object has independently of its being juxtaposed to some other object – and owing to which it is “small” in comparison to another object with larger dimensions: “dimensions” that are subject to alteration only as a result of some real process having transpired (for example, heating). The “dimensions” of the object comprise its property; the “size in relationship to” comprises its relative characteristic,56 which accrues to the object not as a result of the occurrence of some real process having played out between this object and some other object, but only “in comparison with”, “in relationship to”, some other object. To ascertain that such a relative characteristic does accrue [to an object], it is indispensable for a cognizing subject to carry out a comparison of the objects involved with respect to one of their properties. Hence, in the case of relative characteristics there are always correlative pairs: e.g. “large/small”, “left/right”, etc. With respect to “size in comparison to”, one and the same object can be simultaneously “large” and “small”, namely in comparison with two different objects of differing dimensions. By means of a sequential juxtaposition, at first to an object of smaller dimensions, afterwards to one of larger dimensions, one and the same object’s “size in comparison to” can convert into its direct opposite without any real change having transpired in this object.57 <165> Finally, when we say, “how small something appears to be”, this “how small” is not a characteristic of the object itself, but is rather an element of how it looks under rigorously specified perceptual conditions. But if in the course of effecting the perceptual act this element of the look is ascribed directly to the object itself, then we are dealing with a “deception”. If we take into consideration this deception, along with the other two cases that were distinguished, we wind up with three examples of – roughly speaking – different sorts of “characteristics” of the object, among which the dimensions are not in any sense dependent on the cognizing subject, whereas both of the other “characteristics” are dependent on the cognizing subject only in a figurative sense (a different one for each). We are now left with characterizing this sense more precisely.

39When one speaks in a literal (not figurative) sense about the dependence of a characteristic of an autonomously existing object on the cognitive acts – in a sense to which, as we already noted, no actual state of affairs corresponds – then one ordinarily ascribes this putative dependence to those characteristics of the object which are in fact “inseparably” bound up with it. But by this “inseparability” we mean only that the characteristic which the object in fact possesses can be altered or obliterated, if at all, only by the execution of a real process in which the respective object participates alongside other real objects (the human being, as a psycho-physical organism, not excepted).58 Such an inextricable characteristic would therefore be “dependent” on the cognitive acts in a non-figurative sense if a cognitive act’s intending of an object could: (i) alone effect the genesis of a factually indissoluble relation between this characteristic and the object; (ii) be capable of being the sole necessary and sufficient condition for the subsistence of the relation; and finally, (iii) annul this relation at any time. Meanwhile, the essence of a cognitive act’s intending of an object brings it about, in conjunction with the object’s “real transcendence”, that the dependence on the cognitive acts of the factually <166> inextricable characteristics advocated by some researchers not only does not de facto exist but cannot exist at all. The notion of such a dependence could only arise on the basis of a wholly mistaken conception by natural science and psychologism of the relation between the cognitive act and the object of cognition, a conception that wishes to see in this relation a causal relation. Where the object is supposed to be the cause and the act with its content59 the effect, one speaks in accordance with such a [psychologistic] conception of an “objective” cognition; where, in contrast, the act of cognition serves as the cause, one speaks of the “dependence” of the object or its characteristics on the cognitive act. It would be wasted effort to show here to what a high degree this conception conflicts with the set of problems dealt with in epistemology, and with the conditions of its possibility. Besides, we have already done so elsewhere.60

40In the case of “relative characteristics” – as illustrated by the preceding example – the relation between these and the object to which they accrue can, in accordance with their essence, be “dissolved”. This means, first of all, that no real causal process is necessary for the alteration or obliteration of such a characteristic; the existence of a non-causal relation in some respect between the given object and other objects is sufficient for such a characteristic to be possessed by the object. It is quite sufficient for the cognizing subject to select a different relation than the one currently chosen in order to “alter” the object with respect to such a characteristic, but no real change is caused in the object as a result of implementing such a [new] choice. We encounter here a case where one may rightly speak in a figurative sense of the dependence on the cognition of a cognized object’s characteristic. To make this clear we must distinguish two different ways in which a characteristic can accrue to an object: the potential and the actual. Let us return to our example. Once a determinate class of objects with their own fully specified dimensions exists, all conditions for the subsistence of various sorts of relations among these individual objects with respect to dimension have eo ipso been procured.61 <167> These relations therefore exist irrespective of whether they happen to be cognized or not. But the corresponding objects are not augmented aktualiter by any new characteristics solely as a result of the subsistence of these relations. Say there are only two objects, and each of them has its own well-defined dimensions. A consequence of the fact that the dimensions are fully specified in each of the two objects is that a determinate relation obtains between them. The subsistence of this relation (or the relation itself) is, if one may say so, completely impotent with respect to the objects of which the terms of this relation consist, in contradistinction to other – for example, causal – relations between the objects.62 Or to put it another way: it cannot entail63 any real alteration in the corresponding objects. The genesis of this relation cannot alone be the cause of either the acquisition or the loss by the object in question of any active [aktuellen] characteristic.64 But the subsistence of this relation is the basis for determining [other] characteristics that accrue to the object potentialiter, as it were. This potential mode of accruing – e.g. of the characteristics “larger/smaller” – while the role of the cognizing subject has been completely eliminated, is especially typical of these kinds of characteristics. These sorts of characteristics are in this potentiality of theirs wholly independent of cognitive acts. They are only dependent on the class of objects and on their absolute properties, as well as on the relations that obtain between them on the basis of these properties. Only when the cognizing subject compares the objects in question with respect to their dimensions, and gains through this comparison some knowledge of the relation obtaining between them – only then are said characteristics “actualized” [aktualisiert], so to speak, by the cognizing subject. They are then dependent on the cognitive act in a two-fold manner: on the one hand, by virtue of the cognitive act’s selecting the relation that determines the relative characteristic, and on the other hand, by virtue of the act’s “actualizing” it. One should not of course think that this actualization would signify any sort of real alteration of the respective object. As already stated, <168> no cognitive act is capable of accomplishing anything of this sort on its own. And it is indeed for this very reason that characteristics like “small in comparison to”, “larger”, “on the left of”, etc., are not intrinsic [reellen] properties of the object, and absolutely not properties of it at all in the strict sense. They are merely “Reflexen” of a relation between A and B that are projected by the relation onto its terms. One could say that, in application to one of its terms, the relation “expresses” itself in such a way that object A is, say, “larger”, and therefore object B is “smaller”. By means of that predicative application of the relation to one of its terms – an operation effected by the cognizing subject – we bind the Reflex of the relation to the object and thereby “actualize” its corresponding relative characteristic. But since what we only bind intentionally is not bound realiter, the object also does not possess this characteristic realiter. If we nonetheless have the right to say that object A “is larger”, this only happens because a relation obtains objectively between the objects themselves, the Reflex of which is the potential characteristic “larger”.

41One can also speak of “relative characteristics” in another sense, namely, for designating those of an object’s properties which are conditioned both with respect to their origin and their accruing to an object by virtue of a real relation obtaining between this object and some other object, and which the object possesses realiter (as, for example, the shape of a liquid in a vessel, the magnetic properties of a metal rod when it is surrounded by a solenoid through which an electric current flows, etc.). We therefore wish to term the relative characteristics discussed above (“larger/smaller,” “left/right,” and the like) “relative quasi-characteristics”.65

42On the other hand, where we are dealing with an object that “appears to be so small” (“much smaller than it in fact is”), we are faced with a deception like that evoked by a sudden contrast, for example. The fictitious characteristic “so small” is here determined neither by the object’s properties nor by the relations that objectively obtain between the objects (these indeed determine a quite different relative quasi-characteristic!), but rather by a determinate simultaneous or successive ordering of the occurrence of certain contents experienced by the cognizing subject in the course of performing the corresponding cognitive acts. <169> It is indeed for this reason that the object only “appears” to be so, but it “is” not so. This fictitious “characteristic” is therefore completely dependent on the content of the corresponding cognitive act, yet it is eo ipso merely a fiction which is totally irrelevant to the object, and with which the object can form no unity, no cohesive [einheitliches] whole. The fictitious characteristics must therefore be reckoned among the fictions – in the sense discussed earlier – with the sole proviso that their origin is conditioned by a certain determinate ordering in the simultaneous or successive occurrence of certain contents in the stream of consciousness. The freedom of assigning such fictitious characteristics by the cognizing subject is therefore dependent on whether the latter is or is not capable of creating on his own the kinds of situations in which this ordering occurs.

43One can therefore speak of a characteristic’s dependence on the cognizing subject in only a single instance, namely, when a relative quasi-characteristic is involved. As already noted, for a pregiven object this dependence rests on the fact that all of the following depend on the cognizing subject: (1) the choice of the second term of the relation whose manifestation is to form the respective relative quasi-characteristic; (2) the choice of the pertinent relation out of the manifold of relations that obtain between the object in question and the chosen object; and (3) the “actualization” of the respective relative quasi-characteristic. But since anything at all without restriction can be chosen for the second term of the relation, the freedom of the cognizing subject in the assignment of relative quasi-characteristics is totally unrestrained. It is for this reason that the characteristic “actualized” by the cognizing subject is still just a “quasi-characteristic”.

§36. Summary of the Results of §§31-35.

44Before we proceed any further, let us summarize the results of the foregoing discussions in this chapter.

1. If there are any objects at all that are different from the cognizing subject and from the cognitive act, and are independent from them in every respect, then they must have a nature of their own and a determinate stock of absolute properties; their cognition, however, if it is to be objective, must conform in its content [Inhalt] to the nature and properties of these objects. The cognitive act is capable of influencing neither the nature nor the properties of such objects. <170> Epistemological conventionalism can therefore not be correct in reference to them.
2. Only fictitious objects typical of real or ideal entities would be dependent in their being on the subject of consciousness, were they to exist at all. But they do not exist. Only in some exceptional cases are there presentations or non-intuitive intentions [Meinungen] of them.
3. Freedom on the part of the subject of consciousness to form presentations of fictitious objects is constrained by the apriori relations and laws that govern ideal qualities, and by the range of object-pertaining [gegenständlichen] moments that have been given in prior experience. It would appear that we have complete freedom only in the case of forming non-intuitive intentions of fictions typical of the real or ideal [objects].
4. The cognition of fictitious objects typical of real entities is limited to understanding the66 intentions [Intentionen] of a pertinent presentation and to developing from the content [Inhalt] of the resultant presentation a series of consequences in the form of hypothetical judgments with the general premise: “if the respective object exists and possesses the properties ascribed to it”.67
5. Statements that some characteristics of an object – an object that is existentially autonomous with respect to the cognizing subject – are “dependent” on the cognizing subject are correct only in a figurative sense, and only in reference to the relative quasi-characteristics. Otherwise, there are only characteristics that are independent of the cognizing subject, or fictitious characteristics to which nothing corresponds in the object, and which are ascribed to it only on the basis of a deception or common error. Should there be a deception, it will always be exposed.68 In the case of the relative quasi-characteristics, the cognizing subject has the freedom to choose the characteristic that will be actualized out of a range of characteristics, which [range] is determined by the domain of relations that obtain among the objects independently of the cognizing subject; but the subsistence of these relations presupposes the existence of the corresponding properties and natures of the objects that are the terms of these relations.69

45Let us draw from all of this the inference important for us:

46The cognizing subject would have the freedom to form the “nature” of an object, or to choose the qualitative moment of the nature, only if the respective <171> object were a fiction, or if the nature of an autonomously existing object were a relative quasi-characteristic.

47The fact that one can “form” the nature of a fictitious object does not contradict our standpoint. For this fact actually rests on the freedom, albeit limited, in the formation of certain presentations or non-intuitive intentions. Our position relies only on the claim that this freedom is ruled out in the case of objects that exist autonomously with respect to the cognizing subject. One might perhaps propose in defense of epistemological conventionalism that there are no objects at all which exist autonomously with respect to the cognizing subject, but exclusively fictions. Yet it is highly dubious that the conventionalists themselves would wish to appeal to such an argument. We therefore need not concern ourselves with this case.

48On the other hand, our position would be mistaken if one had to regard an object’s nature as a relative quasi-characteristic.70 We must therefore consider this possibility as well, especially since some circles of philosophically leaning natural scientists are inclined to conceive the individual nature of an object in this manner.

§37. Refutation of the Objection that the Nature of the Object Is a Relative Quasi-Characteristic

49Some researchers are attracted to the following line of reasoning:

50Various sorts of objects are given to us in experience [Erfahrung].71 Each of them possesses an infinite set of characteristics, all of which play approximately72 the same role in the object. We find nothing in the object apart from these characteristics (or to put it differently: every one of the object’s moments is a characteristic!). The object itself is nothing other than a “bundle of characteristics”.73 When we compare the objects given in experience, we notice that the same characteristics occur in numerous “bundles”. <172> We then say that these bundles are “similar” with respect to these characteristics. But since we shall always find two such bundles in which some characteristic will be “the same”, to which objects the given object is similar depends first and foremost on the characteristic we choose as the fundamentum relationis, and on the set of objects we select out of the objects given in the experience. The similarities we have established partition the objects given in our collective experience into distinct groups. The lines of demarcation into groups can in principle intersect in a variety of ways and depend on the selection of the similarities we chose. We can order the similarities in such a way that a hierarchy of higher and lower groups arises and the boundary lines within the lowest groups no longer intersect. We then speak of “genera”, “species”, “families”, “orders”, and the like.74 If in this situation anyone speaks of an object’s “nature”, then – given the system of similarities we have chosen – this means nothing other than that said object belongs to a particular group of objects. The “nature” of an object is therefore nothing other than a “relative characteristic”, a Reflex of the relation of belonging to a group – in the language of §35: a “relative quasi-characteristic”. And since at the same time the world of objects does not at all decompose into groups objectively, but it is rather we who form these groups at our discretion, then the so-called “nature” of an object is also dependent on us – and may be altered as we wish. To speak of “nature” in any other sense is absurd. But if the glimmer [Schein] of some other specific “nature” of the object arises, that simply happens because, for reasons of convenience, we execute a mental shortcut and designate the particular groups with different names, depending on the characteristic that serves as the foundation for forming a particular group. Subsequently, we transfer these names to the individual elements of the respective groups, as if the characteristic from which the entire group obtained its name played some special role among the elements of this group. We ultimately forget the true source of the newly-coined name along with its original meaning and hypostasize a peculiar “nature” for the object, and then wrack our heads to figure out what such a “nature” “genuinely” is.75

51<173> The view we have just related has its origin in the most diverse motives, as well as in epistemological and metaphysical commitments almost all of which we could find in the British empiricists. The multitude and diversity of these motives do not permit us to discuss them all at this juncture. We must instead confine ourselves to the following remarks:

1. The view we presented is, among other things, the consequence of confusing the two goals we have distinguished: 1) to cognize the object in its essence, and 2) to classify the object. Whoever has the classification of objects uppermost in mind and reduces other epistemic goals to this one will be compelled to endorse the view put forth. He will be inclined to do so for two reasons: first, he will regard as important in the object only what he included in the outcome of the classification; secondly, he will only acknowledge in the object that which plays a direct role in the classification. As already follows from our deliberations in Chapter III, however, an object’s individual nature need not at all show up among the moments contained in the outcome of carrying out its classification. Nor is acknowledging its nature at all necessary for a classification of the object. The classifier is therefore inclined from the outset to overlook its individual nature – in our sense – or to seek it among those moments that are important to him in the classification process and thereby reinterpret the meaning of a nature. Eo ipso, he will also deploy the same freedom in determining the nature – taken in such a reinterpretation – as he has at his disposal when classifying. Distinguishing classification from cognition of the object in its essence (or, of the object’s essence) shakes one of the foundations of the view under discussion.
2. Further, the thesis indispensable to upholding this view is that an “object” is nothing other than a “bundle” of “characteristics”, in which every element plays a role equal to all the others – and in particular the role of belonging to the bundle. There is supposed to be nothing else in the object apart from these characteristics.76 Only on this assumption would it in fact be false that there is some special moment in the object <174> (its individual constitutive nature), and only then would it be totally irrelevant which of the characteristics we select as the basis for forming a class, and consequently, which – in the sense of the false [reinterpreted] conception of nature – we choose as the object’s individual nature.

52The claim that the object is nothing but a bundle of characteristics all of which play the same role, is indefensible. A “bundle” of characteristics signifies nothing other than a “class” (a “set”) of characteristics. We shall often enough find this formulation in modern literature. But if this claim, given our interpretation of “bundle”, were to be true, every characteristic would have to be something selfsufficient and separate, and in this separation something self-enclosed (in the sense we have established earlier).77 However, quite independently of how much more accurately we may determine the essence of the characteristic, it is in any case certain that non-selfsufficiency belongs to its essence (since every characteristic is the characteristic of something), and that among one and the same object’s characteristics there are no segregations or demarcations, but rather that – in contrast to the elements of one and the same class – all characteristics of one and the same object (except for the relative78 quasi-characteristics) form a unitary, “inextricably” grafted together, “concrete” whole. It is only possible to “sever” the bond between a characteristic and its object, or between one characteristic and others, by impacting the object in such a way that the given characteristic, or in some cases even the object as well, gets obliterated.

53We can undoubtedly ascribe selfsufficiency and separateness to characteristics in an intentional manner in order to create by this means the conditions necessary for the existence of a “class” of characteristics. But one must then clearly realize that a characteristic endowed with these properties is a fiction, and that consequently the entire “class” of such characteristics is also a fiction. That is to say, if one is to be at all entitled to speak of an autonomous existence of a class, then it is in any case only where the elements of the class in question exist selfsufficiently. Thus, if we define the “object” as a “class of characteristics”, we are eo ipso characterizing79 a fiction. It therefore turns out that the view we are contesting achieves quite the contrary of what it set out to achieve. <175> It was supposed to eliminate the “object” in our sense as a fiction to which nothing corresponds in reality,80 and replace it with the “object” as the one – according to the theory we have presented – that actually obtains, and now it turns out that this putative actuality is at bottom a contradictory fiction.

54The object as a class of characteristics could not exist also for another reason: that characteristic common to all the elements of one and the same class – that characteristic which forms the basis for membership in this class – would be missing. For the question then becomes, what is it that the characteristics of one and the same “object” truly have “that is common”? That they are all “characteristics”? But that feature belongs to all characteristics, and it would therefore remain inexplicable why just certain characteristics C₁, C₂, C₃, ..., Cn are included among the elements of a particular “bundle”, whereas others, say G1, G2, G3, ..., Gp are excluded from it and are assigned to other “objects”. Or should perhaps this “common” characteristic consist in all of one and the same object’s characteristics being indeed its characteristics? Such is undoubtedly the case, as long as we see in the object something that differs from the characteristics, and in no instance see any “class” of characteristics. But as soon as we conceive of the object as a class of characteristics, as soon therefore as the object exists because some elements form a “class”, this talk loses all rational sense. For in the contested conception of the object “to-be-a-characteristic” means nothing other than “to-belong-to-a-class-of-some-kind-of-elements (the so-called ‘characteristics’)”. So if that “characteristic” which is common to all the characteristics of one and the same “object” is supposed to consist in all of them belonging to one and the same class, and [that characteristic] is at the same time supposed to serve as the basis for forming that very class, that would signify nothing other than that the elements of this class belong to it because they do indeed belong to it. Or to put it another way, the moment which is supposed to bring about the membership of some “characteristics” in one and the same class, and thereby first make the genesis [Entstehung] of this class possible, would here first follow from presupposing without any basis the existence of this class and the membership of certain elements in it. Should we, however, wish to rescue ourselves from this desperate situation, and yet sustain the false conception of the object, then <176> we can only find the last refugium in the wanton “sic iubeo” of a cognizing subject, although its consequence – given the presuppositions of the contested theory – could only be the formation of a non-intuitive intention of something that is intrinsically self-contradictory, and for this reason cannot exist.81

55Starting from differing perspectives, we arrive at the same result: that on the assumptions of the contested view there are no objects at all, not even in the sense of a “class of characteristics”. But the claim that objects have no “nature” (in our sense) would eo ipso, in the strict sense, also be “groundless”. If, however, the entire conception of the object as a class of characteristics, along with the attendant subsidiary conception of the characteristic, is untenable, then the conception of the object’s “nature” – as an idol erected along the path to classifying objects, or as a relative quasi-characteristic – also loses its indispensable basis. All this, apart from the fact that nothing would remain to be classified if we held to the contested conception of the object.82

56(3) The conception of an object’s nature with which we are here dealing is already susceptible to being attacked on its own.83

57Let us assume for a moment that the object’s individual constitutive nature is in fact a quasi-characteristic, and that one could not speak of any other kind of “nature” for the object. It is then clear that such a “nature” could not arise [entstehen] and exist at all. For a relative quasi-characteristic can, in accordance with its essence, exist only if objects in our sense do, along with their absolute properties and natures. The instant all of this is denied by said theory, the existence of the relative quasi-characteristics also becomes impossible. We therefore need no longer occupy ourselves with this whole fundamentally absurd theory.84

§38. Retrospective on the Context Question and the Essence-Questions in the Narrow Sense: Conclusion of the Treatise85

58Let us glance back once more at the schema-question, “What is an X?”

59In §8 we had distinguished three different interpretations of the schema-question relative to what forms its unknown. This unknown shapes the role in which the problem appears, a role that is constituted either (1) by the Reflex of a relation of subordinating the problem-subject [Subjektproblem]86 under <177> one of its species, or (2) by the relation of belonging to a class of objects, or finally, (3) by the Reflex of some other relation that obtains between the object at issue and some other object.

60Following the deliberations of §35, we may now state in general that in all the cases distinguished, the “role” (“schema”) that determines the unknown of the problem is constituted by a relative quasi-characteristic which is indeed not known. But one must here distinguish two different cases:87 (a) the qualitative moment of the corresponding relative quasi-characteristic is of such a kind that there is a moment completely like it among the doubly non-selfsufficient qualitative moments88 that are distinguishable in the qualitative moment of the individual nature; (b) the qualitative moment of the relative quasi-characteristic is entirely different from any of the moments that are distinguishable in this nature, as well as from the qualitative moments of the properties of the problem-subject. In the latter case there must then be a property of the problem-subject, the possession of which enables the problem-subject to stand in a relation to some other object. It is then this relation that determines the relative quasi-characteristic that is relevant to the question at hand.

61We have an instance of the first case when the object’s role is constituted by a “Reflex” (as we have earlier put it) of the relation that consists in subordinating the problem-subject under some genus. For if the judgment “This horse is a mammal” is true, then ‘mammalhood’ is no doubt contained in the ἱππότης of the respective object [‘this horse’] as a doubly non-selfsufficient moment. But this moment takes on the form of a relative quasi-characteristic only because the respective object falls, through the mediation of a particular idea, under a general idea whose meaning-content [Gehalt]89 is constituted by the morphe “mammalhood”, and because the object is grasped precisely in this “falling under an idea”. The relation of “falling under an idea” rests here on the agreement [Gleichheit] between a moment contained in the nature of an individual object and the immediate morphe of the content of a general idea. It is this relation which brings it about that the general idea in question takes on formaliter the role of a “species”, and that the object assumes the role of an “exemplar” of precisely this species. But since a particular species is involved, the role in which the object appears as exemplar is also determined materialiter. But this determination can be no other than precisely that determination <178> through the moment whose agreement between the object and the correlative idea’s content entails the object’s falling under the given idea, i.e. through the moment that comprises the immediate morphe of the content of that idea. In this manner, the state of affairs of the judgment “This dachshund is a mammal” exceeds the stock of properties belonging to the object-correlate90 [S-G] only with respect to the form of the role imposed on the object by the predicate of the judgment, and presupposes the existence of a relation between that object-correlate [S-G] and something different from it. On the other hand, the qualitative moment of this role, its “matter”, finds its correlate [Korrelat] in one of the absolute moments of the object-correlate [S-G]. It is for this reason that our freedom in replying to the question “What is this dachshund?” in the first of its interpretations91 is constrained by the number and scope of doubly non-selfsufficient moments contained in the nature of the problem-subject. Which of these moments we select is up to us, but we have to choose one of them if the given object is to be apprehended at all in the role of the exemplar of a species. This is the reason for our earlier claim that if we wish to classify an object relative to membership in one of its species, we must first investigate its individual nature and the moments that can be distinguished in it, along with their dependencies and interrelations. And it is for the very same reason that we should consider the schema-question in its first interpretation as one of the essence-questions, i.e. questions in which the “essentia” or the essence (in the broader and narrower sense) must be taken into account if the question is to be answered correctly at all.

62On the other hand, neither of the other interpretations of the schema-question shows even this loose connection to the nature or essence of the problem-subject. Here, the role comprising the unknown of the question can be constituted by any arbitrary relative quasi-characteristic of the second of the types we have distinguished above (p. <177>) – by a characteristic, therefore, whose qualitative moment finds no correlate among the moments that are distinguishable in the nature of the problem-subject, and which is only partially and indirectly determined by any property of the latter. Indirectly – because it determines directly a relation that obtains between the given object and some other one, <179> and partially – because the determination of this relation is dependent not only on the properties of the given object, but also on the properties of the second term of the relation. Therefore, the moment that constitutes the role of the problem-subject is here entirely different from any of the qualitative moments, properties, and nature of the problem-subject, and is only partially and indirectly dependent on them. Thus, in asking a schema-question in its second or third interpretation, we are seeking something that has nothing directly to do with the essence, and in particular with the nature, of the problem-subject. Nor do we need to have any knowledge of this object’s essence in order to answer the question correctly and exhaustively. Neither of these latter two interpretations of the schema-question can therefore be counted among the essence-questions. The scope of the essence-questions that we have circumscribed at the beginning of our treatise by enumerating the questions must accordingly be restricted. At that stage we could not have done this, since we had not yet become aware of the ambiguity of the schema-question.

63The questions “What is that?” and “The X, what is that?” can also, in all of their ambiguity, not belong to the essence-questions. Only those interpretations of these questions belong among the latter in which the question “What is that?” requires in reply a determinative judgment (in our sense)92 and in which the question “The X, what is that?” requires a judgment pertaining to essence (in the broader sense).93 When we take the said questions in this interpretation, their connection to the object’s essence (in the broader, though for some objects in the narrower sense)94 is much closer than in the first interpretation of the schema-question. In none of them, to be sure, is the essence of the problem-subject asked about directly, i.e. in none of them does the essence (or nature) of the problem-subject make up the unknown of the problem. Nor does the problem itself consist here in the question concerning the having of some particular essence, as is the case for example with the questions: “What constitutes the nature of this object?” or “What belongs to the essence of this object?” But in the question “What is that?” the nature of the problem-subject does occur in the content of the unknown – the nature, i.e. the most important of the moments of its essence. In contrast, the immediate morphe of an idea’s content is to be found in the content of the known in the question “The X, what is that?”, whereas a distinctive system of <180> constants in the idea’s content makes up the problem’s unknown, a system that is necessary and sufficient for identity to obtain between the idea’s content as apprehended through the immediate morphe and that content as grasped through this system of constants. We can also say that the problem’s unknown in the question “The X, what is that?” is comprised of that which “belongs to the idea” when its content is constituted by some particular immediate morphe.

64Suppose, in conjunction with an individual object whose nature and essence are unknown to us, we first receive the answer to the question “What is that?” in the form of a determinative judgment “That is a P”, and afterward come by the answer to the question “The X, what is that?”. Then the two answers provide us with knowledge either of the most important elements of the essence of the problem-subject, if an individual entity that falls under an inexact idea is involved, or of all the elements of its essence (in the narrower sense) if an individuum that falls under an exact idea replaces the problem-subject. It is altogether impossible to give correct answers to these questions without knowing the nature of the pertinent individual object, or the content of the corresponding idea.

65In concert with this result of our deliberations, we can once again narrow the extension of the concept ‘essence-question’ and take it to refer only to the pair of questions (1) “What is that?” and (2) “The X, what is that?” – both questions taken in the selected interpretation. For only the answer to both questions can offer us an exhaustive rigorous knowledge of the object in its essence.95 We wish to exclude all other interpretations of these questions from the realm of essence-questions.

66The essence-questions must be distinguished from the question concerning the nature of an individual object (“What comprises the nature of this object?”) and the question pertaining to essence (“What comprises the essence of object X?”). But we cannot deal with these here.

67We are therefore satisfied that we have treated exhaustively the main points of the theme of our treatise.

68In conclusion, I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Drs. Oskar Becker and Fritz Kaufmann, who were kind enough to publish the German version of my work.

Notes

• 1 [Ftn. in P: “Cf. p. <94> (§20) and pp. <116-17> (§26).”]
• 2 We certainly have no intention of following the bad example of those mathematicians who without adequate preparation delve into the realm of philosophy (which is wholly alien to them) by involving ourselves in purely mathematical discussions. Thus, provided there are no logical flaws in any of the various non-Euclidean geometries, we fully endorse the demand made by mathematicians that the non-Euclidean geometries be accorded the same scientific value as the other mathematical disciplines. The question we need to pose lies outside the scope of purely mathematical deliberations: Should the objects of the non-Euclidean geometries be set fully on a par with those of Euclidean geometry as far as the metaphysical form of their existence is concerned? We do not wish to decide at this juncture how the question is to be answered, since the whole problem calls for more detailed investigation. We lack the proper preparation for this task. But it seems to us that many of those who advance various claims on the subject also lack such preparation.
• 3 [Cont. in P: “or ‘definition’”]
• 4 [Ftn. in P: “I discuss the conception of an object as a ‘bundle of characteristics’ in §37.”]
• 5 Only direct [unmittelbare] cognition can come into play here. Would it be reasonable to surmise even for an instant that any act of indirect [ mittelbare] cognition were capable of creating an object? [Cont. in P following the word ‘cognition’: “– and therefore one in which, when performing it, we do not comport directly with the object in its very self –”]
• 6 One must distinguish between an “active passivity” and a “passive passivity”, to make use here of Husserl’s language. In my paper “Über die Gefahr einer Petitio Principii in der Erkenntnistheorie”, I have spoken of a “dead” and a “living” subject of cognition. We are dealing in this instance with a special case in reference to which we can speak of the distinction between the two “passivities” (see, Ingarden 1921, 559-60).
• 7 See in this connection the very interesting expositions by H. Conrad-Martius in her treatise “Zur Ontologie und Erscheinungslehre der realen Außenwelt”, Jahrbuch, v. III, 1916, 434-42. [Henceforth, HC-M 1916] We shall come back to this later. [The last sentence replaces: “See §35 <161-69> of our work.”]
• 8 [In P, the title reads: “The Objection that Follows from the Fact of ‘Forming’ Fictions ‘in the Imagination’”]
• 9 [This last interrogative added in G]
• 10 [Reading ‘unabhängigen’ for ‘abhängigen’]
• 11 [“presentational or conceptual whole” replaces “whole of presentational or conceptual contents”]
• 12 [As he spells out in this sentence, Ingarden splits all Vorstellungen into two major groups: 1) intuitively (perceptually)-based “presentations”; and 2) concepts. We employ the verb ‘to present’ for vorstellen.]
• 13 [All quotation marks in the sentence were introduced in G. Last two instances of the word ‘determinate’ in this sentence were inserted in G.]
• 14 The expression ‘intuitive presentation-like contents’ is only meant to call our attention to that moment of the content which Mrs. Conrad-Martius designates with the expression ‘concealed intuitiveness’ [verdeckte Anschaulichkeit]. Cf., ib 366. [This ftn. reads as follows in P: “With the expression ‘intuitively presentation-like content’, I wish to indicate that intuitive contents are involved here, but [contents] that at the same time differ in a specific manner from the intuitive contents which occur in direct experience (e.g. in external perception); I wish to indicate a peculiar type of intuitiveness. In this regard, see HC-M 1916, 365f., who speaks here of a verdeckte Anschaulichkeit [concealed intuitiveness].” All instances of the term ‘content’ in this Section translate the German Inhalt.]
• 15 Cf. HC-M 1916, 365-78, concerning the two types of presentation.
• 16 [This sentence inserted in G]
• 17 [Cont. in P: “even if we were (as is commonly put) to ‘completely let loose the reins of poetic fancy’,”]
• 18 [Cont. in P: “(provided that by psychology we understand an empirical science pertaining to real mind-endowed individuals and their states), in a word – [in conflict] with laws whose applicability is at bottom only a contingent fact”]
• 19 [“as the exponents of psychologism assert” replaces “as various positivistic-psychological theories of knowledge would have it”]
• 20 As is well known, it was the phenomenologists, with E. Husserl at the helm, who in contemporary literature first called attention to the existence of such apriori laws in both the material and formal spheres. The ultimate bases for these laws are the relations that obtain among ideal qualities. [The ftn. reads as follows in P: “It was the phenomenologists, with Husserl at the helm, who for the first time in the contemporary literature pointed out the existence of such laws (cf. the so-called ‘material apriori’). It is not our thing to demonstrate their existence here. The reader unfamiliar with these issues can easily find the relevant analyses in the writings of Husserl, Reinach (e.g. in the work Über die apriorischen Grundlagen der bürgerlichen Rechtes), Scheler, and others. The ultimate bases for these laws are the relations that obtain among ideal qualities and among exact and simple ideas.”]
• 21 [“, of creations of ‘free’ poetic fancy,” inserted in G]
• 22 [The expression between dashes replaces the ftn. in P: “I employ here an expression from HC-M 1916, 373, 377, etc.”]
• 23 The reflections of the last section were simply meant to emphasize that our position regarding “epistemological conventionalism”, which is the sole target of our attack in this chapter, would remain sound even if we were forced to subscribe to one sort of idealism or another. In this treatise, however, we take no stand regarding the problem of idealism. In our opinion, the final resolution of this issue can only be reached along the path so admirably forged by E. Husserl’s transcendental “constitutive analysis” and must await the conclusions of the latter. We cannot however give a treatment of the constitutive problems within the framework of our treatise.
• 24 [As in this case, Ingarden is not always consistent with regard to placement of articles inside quotation marks. We preserve his choices.]
• 25 [“experience” replaces “perception”]
• 26 [“that there are such objects” replaces “si existeret”]
• 27 [“the ouster ... science” replaces “the only possible elimination of ‘metaphysics’ from mathematics”]
• 28 [The expression between dashes added in G]
• 29 [Note in P: “Obviously, that is just a hollow claim, and we are unable to substantiate it in any greater detail here, because that would require separate, extensive investigations that would far exceed the bounds of this treatise. I shall only point out at this juncture that whoever denies the validity of direct apriori cognition, and on that basis reduces ideal objects to the order of fictions, ought for his part to demonstrate that such properties of this cognition exist as enjoin us to doubt its objectivity. As far as I know, this has thus far not been done. Ordinarily we only hear about the possibility of manifold characterizations of the objects of mathematical studies, whereby the difference between the unequivocal specification of an object and its cognition is not taken into account. Moreover, how many the disparaging remarks about so-called ‘intuition’ – and how superficial.”]
• 30 [This sentence added in G.]
• 31 [Cont. in P: “We ought to appeal to that cognition in every particular instance, i.e. wherever we are for the time being only assuming the existence of a certain ideal object, or idea or ideal quality. It is possible to resolve in principle the very existence of something like an ideal object, idea or ideal quality, by demonstrating in at least one particular instance the existence of a certain ideal object (quality, idea). And here we can only say that in certain particular instances we managed to achieve such cognition.”]
• 32 [Cont in P: “by making pronouncements of one kind or another on the issue, just as we cannot convince someone in this manner that such and such a lamp stands on my desk, until that someone, in a mindset of disbelief, comes and looks at how things de facto are”]
• 33 [Cont. in P: “without any sort of previously held beliefs concerning the alleged impossibility of something of the kind,”]
• 34 [These last three sentences, commencing with “However, the reader…” replace “, but no one will manage to convince us of that by means of assertions to the effect that it is impossible to learn how to swim, because one will drown before learning to do it (to make use of a well-known joke of Bergson’s)”]
• 35 [Cont. in P: “, in the worst-case scenario for us,”]
• 36 [Cont. in P: “the existence of such contradictions does not yet decide the non-existence of the objects that we are trying to apprehend with the aid of these characterizations. Hence,”]
• 37 [Cont. in P: “in order to eliminate the errors committed and convey characterizations free of contradiction, or even expose that we have succumbed to a fallacy. Meanwhile, the direct cognitions that we have thus far attained and the frightening consequences to which the rejection of the existence of ideal objects, ideas, or ideal qualities leads, consequences that make knowledge and the existence of any science impossible – all too well-known to be worth repeating – incline us to the position adopted here”]
• 38 [Cont. in P: “, not something that is, despite the existence of all the conditions [necessary] for it not to be”]
• 39 [Gehalt: for the remainder of this section abbreviated by ‘content’]
• 40 [Cont. in P: “(the way in which e.g. the volume of an iron ball changes by exposing it to heat)”]
• 41 [The passage Ingarden “cites” here is in fact a partial paraphrase of the one he claims to be quoting “above”. See p. <54>.]
• 42 [Cont. in P: “In doing so, a real process of transitioning from C to C₁ must exist that lasts over some interval of time.”]
• 43 Concerning the distinction between lack of sense [Sinnlosigkeit] and counter-sense [Sinnwidrigkeit], see E. Husserl, LU II/1, Invest. IV, §12, 326 ff. (Husserl also speaks of “ Unsinn” and “Widersinn”).
• 44 The question may still arise whether we are completely free here, so that e.g. we can form non-intuitive intentions without paying heed to the categories and basic laws of formal ontology (in Husserl’s sense). But we cannot answer this question here since it extends well beyond the scope of our treatise and poses serious difficulties.
• 45 [“draw further consequences from such intentions” replaces “build deductive theories on their basis”]
• 46 [“them” replaces “those theories”]
• 47 [“all theories” replaces “the psychologistic interpretations”]
• 48 [“the situation looks as follows” replaces “we shall not encounter any serious difficulties”]
• 49 [The parenthetical expression was inserted in G.]
• 50 [reading in den realen Ablauf gegenständlichen Seins]
• 51 See MC-H 1916, 437: “Real transcendence does not therefore signify, say, factual reciprocal exteriority [Auseinander] (like the reciprocal exteriority of two material things which, considered in principle, can be nullified by contact at any time), but [signifies] rather the reciprocal exteriority that is essentially grounded in a disparity of spheres [of being] – [and is] therefore in principle inviolable [nicht aufhebbare]. An entity is transcendent realiter in relationship to another when, in accordance with its peculiar “inner Gestalt”, it has an inner locus of existence [ Daseinsstelle] that makes it in principle inaccessible to the other entity (whereby “accessibility” must be taken in the strictly determinate sense which in principle includes a possible incursion into [its] being [Seinseingriff]”. [‘includes’ in the line above: reading einschließt for ausschließt (as in HC-M’s printed text, and as quoted in P)] “ ... real transcendence and the possibility of relations among objects are not mutually exclusive contraries [ Gegensätze] ... ” (ib 439) (Apropos the entire issue, see ib 435-41.)
• 52 [Cont. in P: “, and this applies equally to both real and ideal objects”]
• 53 [“cognitive or presentational acts” replaces “acts of consciousness”]
• 54 [Cont. in P: “concerning the possession by the object of characteristics dependent on an act of cognition”]
• 55 [Cont. in P: “when the other is simultaneously set against a black background”]
• 56 [Cont. in P: “(for reasons to be presently spelled out, we shall call it a ‘relative quasi-characteristic’)”]
• 57 [Cont. in P: “This is typical of all ‘relative quasi-characteristics’.”]
• 58 From this factual indissolubility of the relation between the object and its characteristic must of course be distinguished the essence-governed [wesensmäßige] inextricability of the essential properties from their object, with respect to which properties the object cannot be altered if it is to continue existing at all, and do so as object with the same essence (“essence” taken in our narrower sense).
• 59 [In this instance, and all subsequent occasions in the remainder of the section, the word ‘content’ translates Inhalt.]
• 60 [See Ingarden 1922, Part II, Chapter II, 426-36].
• 61 Let us assume for the sake of simplicity that a class of extended objects is involved whose dimensions do not undergo any changes during some particular interval of time. [In P, the word ‘real’ follows the word ‘any’]
• 62 [“in contradistinction…objects” added in G]
• 63 [“cannot entail” replaces “is not and cannot be the cause of”]
• 64 One could speak here of a “static” relation in contrast to a “dynamic” one. [This ftn. added in G.]
• 65 [Cont. in P: “, quasi, precisely for emphasizing the looseness of the bond between them and the object”]
• 66 [Cont. in P: “non-intuitive”]
• 67 [The phrase in quotes replaces “ si existeret et talis esset.”]
• 68 [This sentence added in G]
• 69 [Cont. in P: “6) Objects of the research of Euclidean geometry should not be identified with fictions. The same obviously applies to ideal objects, ideas, and ideal qualities, the existence of which can be disclosed by means of direct apriori cognition.”]
• 70 [Cont. in P: “Such a conception of the nature of an object would admittedly be in conflict with the characterization of it that we advanced in the second chapter of our treatise. Someone could indeed say that this characterization of ours only specifies a certain fiction about which, in the spirit of our own expositions, the objects do not at all trouble themselves.”]
• 71 “Experience” can be taken here in the narrower sense, which embraces outer and inner experience, as well as in the broader sense, in which it designates every direct and intuitive cognition. [This ftn. replaces the following ftn in P: “Advocates of this position almost always understand by ‘experience’ only that cognition which we gain in outer and inner perception, or on their basis.”]
• 72 [This word inserted in G]
• 73 73 By identifying a characteristic of an object with an element of the perception’s content [Inhalt], someone like Locke, or even Hume, will say that the object is a bundle of “ideas” (perceptions [Perzeptionen]). [This footnote added in G.]
• 74 [This sentence added in G]
• 75 [Cont. in P: “: a fiction”]
• 76 Lurking behind this assertion is the sensualistic conception of direct cognition.
• 77 77 See above, p. <73>.
• 78 [Reading relativen for realen.]
• 79 [“characterizing” replaces “‘creating’”]
• 80 [Cont. in P: “, since its existence cannot be demonstrated by what is given in ‘experience’”]
• 81 [Cont. in P: “And so too the second bedrock of the contested theory of ‘nature’ totters at its foundations.”]
• 82 [This entire paragraph added in G]
• 83 [Cont. in P: “, irrespective of the flaws in the foundations of this theory”]
• 84 [The text of this paragraph following the first sentence replaces “Then, nonetheless, either a relative quasi-characteristic (in the sense we adduced in §35) does not exist, but only a pure fiction, or else if belonging to a certain group is a relative quasi-characteristic, then this is only possible if we accept the existence of an object’s nature in our sense. This follows directly from the very characterization of a relative quasi-characteristic. There is therefore no need to deal with this in any greater detail. And so, the conception of an object’s nature discussed here is flawed by any measure. It follows from this, however, that from the fact that within the bounds specified above we have the freedom of grouping objects according to one principle or another, we are not entitled to draw the inference to the effect that the same kind of freedom exists in establishing, and all the more so in ‘creating’, an object’s nature in our sense. We can therefore move on to the order of the day past both epistemological conventionalism itself and the theories based on it.”]
• 85 [The middle line of the section title added in G.]
• 86 [See Ch. III, ftn. 4.]
• 87 [Cont. in P: “(in view of which we arranged these three interpretations into two groups)”]
• 88 [See Ch II, ftns. 21 and 50.]
• 89 [Since the word Inhalt does not appear in this section, all subsequent instances of Gehalt will be abbreviated by ‘content’.]
• 90 [Here and in the immediately following two instances (this sentence and the next) the term ‘object-correlate’ abbreviates our standard expression for Subjektgegenstand: ‘object-correlate of the subject-term’, still signaled by [S-G].]
• 91 Cf. above, p. <176>.
• 92 [“requires in reply a determinative judgment (in our sense)” replaces “has as the unknown of the problem an object constituted by an individual nature”]
• 93 [“judgment pertaining to essence (in the broader sense)” replaces “reply in the form of a judgment that explicates the content of a certain idea (possibly of a real definition)”]
• 94 [Ftn. in P: “Depending on the kind of object the word ‘that’ indicates in the question ‘What is that?’, or on what value the variable X has in the question ‘The X, what is that?’.”]
• 95 [Cont. in P: “Moreover, the place of the variable X in the second question must occupy the concept of that idea whose content is constituted by the immediate μορφή which is the ideal correlate of the individual nature of the object in the first question. Hence the first of these must precede the second – both questions of course only in the interpretation indicated somewhat above.”]