First Meditation
Section 2: "The necessity of a radical new beginning in philosophy"
The positive sciences have paid such little attention to the base ideas of the meditations
The Meditations were epoch-making, but because they went back to the ego cogito.
The whole of thought and society were to be illuminated with scientific insights.
We now have a "philosophical literature growing beyond all bounds"
The philosophers meet, but not the philosophies.
We must engage in a new set of meditations avoiding "seductive abberations"
Section 3: "The cartesian overthrow and the guiding final idea of an absolute grounding of science"
A new beginning
Is it even possible to presuppose a science grounded absolutely?
That would mean presupposing a whole logic as a theory of science; whereas logic must be included in the things being overthrown.
For Descartes, it was a truism that science must have a deductive system.
Is geometrical knowledge even grounded?
None of that shall determine our thinking, but that does not mean we abandon the aim.
"We must be careful about how we make an absolute grounding of science our aim."
Naturally, we get the general diea of science from the sciences that are factually given. If they have become for us, in our radical critical attitude, merely alleged sciences then their ideas have become a mere supposition.
As a presumption, we take "the general idea of science." The notion that a science can exist.
How to give science actualisation. Make science!
Section 4: "Uncovering the final sense of science by becoming immersed in science qua noematic phenomenon."
We can't just go "that's a science, that's a science, what do these sciences have in common"?
Sciences are not cultural facts
Science as an idea lies in the "claim" which "ought to be established as one they already satisfy".
There is nothing to keep us from "immersing ourselves" in the scientific striving and doing that pertain to them.
We must "immerse ourselves in the characteristic intention of scientific endeavour"
At first the "differentiation is itself general"
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Here belongs an initial clarification of "judicative" doing and the "judgement" itself, and discrimination of immediate and mediate judgements
Mediate - sense-relatedness to other judgements
Mediate judgements are such that believing B implies A as grounding; there is a "getting-at". If light behaves like this between two slits, that implies knowledge about photons.
The showing of "grounding judgements" is itself mediate - one can "return" to the grounding at will once it is determined. The discovery of grounding is an enduring acquisition and is called a "cognition".
Judgements which are "correct" are also "agreeing."
"Grounding" is an agreement of the judgement with the judgement-verdict, i.e. the facts of the case
The judgement is a "complex of states of affairs," but there is sometimes a pre-eminent judicative meaning.
e.g. Judgement: Cells need ATP to generate glucose
e.g. Pre-eminent judicative meaning: Some indispensable sign this is happening?
The pre-eminent judicative meaning is called "evidence"
Now it seems we have a typology:
Mediate judgements: The witnessing of cell behaviour
Immediate judgements: The grounding theory of cell respiration
Evidence: The grounding of cell respiration in cell behaviour in hypoxic environments
A scientist does not accept something as scientific unless he can freely return to its grounding.
Distinguishing "judgement" without qualification and "evidence" without qualification from "pre-predicative judgement" and "pre-predicative evidence."
That which is meant or evidently viewed receives "predicative expression," i.e. something is said of the thing.
But the predicate can fit or not fit the evidence variably.
Evidence for the predicate fitting the state of affairs is thus also an input into the system.
Scientific truth is predicative complexes that can be grounded absolutely.
Section 5: "Evidence and the idea of genuine science"
If the goal of a scientist is to find grounding through judicative inferring, and well-evidenced predication of some grounding state of affairs, then there is inevitably, here, a trajectory toward universality.
Evidence is an "experiencing" of something that is
It is a mental seeing.
Conflict with what evidence is yields "negative evidence", i.e., "positive evidence of an affair's non-being"
Perfect evidence is assumed as something that must exist, and pure and genuine truth is its corrollary.
"By immersing ourselves in such a striving, we can extract those ideas from it."
Science looks for truths that are valid and remain (i.e. are an enduring acquisition) once and for all and for everyone, i.e, "without qualification"
Science never obtains actualisation as a system of absolute truths; rather, it reconciles itself to an "infinite horizon of approximations."
The idea of science involves an "order of cognition, proceeding from intrinsically earlier to intrinsically later cognitions": ultimately, a "beginning and a line of advance" exist which is not chosen arbitrarily but has its basis in "the nature of things themselves."
The general intentions of science reveal the path to "genuine science".
Logic is deprived of acceptance by a universal overthrow. Everything that gives rise to a philosophical beginning we must acquire by ourselves. Thus, the general intentions of science must be ascertained before a science of logic can re-gel and re-materialise.
Our preliminary investigations here give us a first methodological principle: if we are doing science, we are deriving grounding from evidence from experiences.
Moreover, one must constantly reflect on the evidence, and what range of insight it actually grants.
All judgements then are a possible intermediate stage on the way to final validity
They are judgements with qualification?
The sciences "aim at predications which express completely what is beheld pre-predicatively", i.e., they choose the right predicates which get at what is perceived directly (and unify)
We require a "new legitimation of significations by orienting them to accrued insights," i.e., we need to back up our predicates.
We need to make sure that our words are coherent and not too vibey, so that we can check whether they fit reality easily
The question of the beginning: the question for first cognitions, which give rise to the drive to do what scientists do.
We mediators must have access to evidences that already "bear the stamp of fitness" for proceeding everything.
These first cognitions must have a certain perfection.
Section 6: "Differentiations of evidence. The philosophical demand for an evidence that is apodictic and first-in-itself."
The phrase "absolute certainty" and "absolute indubitability" need clarifying, because when we say we need perfect evidence, we need to lay out what kind of perfection we mean. In our prescientific understanding, imperfection is about incompleteness. It is about holes. Another way of saying "evidence without too many holes" is adequate evidence.
Absolute indubitability: In other words, apodicticity. This is the type of absolute indubitability "a scientist demands of all his principles." It is revealed by the scientist's endeavour to, regarding groundings that are already self-evident, to ground them in further groundings and bestow upon them the "highest dignity" of apodicticity.
A definition of apodicticity: Consider evidence; evidence presupposes the existence of the thing. But it does not exclude the possibility that "what is evident could become doubtful." This possibility can always be recognised when you critically reflect on what the evidence "does." An apodictic evidence, upon this sort of critical reflection, shows that the possibility of non-being for said evidence is unimaginable.
Apodicticity is recursive: evidence of apodicticity must be apodictic, and so must the evidence of the evidence of the apodicticity…
This absolute indubitability is Descartes' principle for building genuine science: the exclusion of all doubts, even frivolous brain-in-vat ones.
We have acquired that principle in a clarified form now, and seen that the project of science is a striving to reach it.
Now, how do we use absolute indubitability to get to an actual beginning? Husserl proposes that we question whether it is even possible to get apodictic evidences, and if not, whether our first evidences can still have some firmly-secured, apodictic kernel. But Husserl says this is a matter for later consideration.
He never clarifies absolute certainty!! Just absolute indubitability!! What was he thinking?
Section 7: "The evidence for the factual existence of the world not apodictic; its inclusion in the Cartesian overthrow."
Test case for apodictic evidence: the existence of the world?
All sciences relate to the existence of the world, and find their grounding in it. "Matter-of-fact" sciences (physics, biology, etc)
Section 8: "The ego cogito as transcendental subjectivity"
We now only have a "world that claims being."
Existence of everything and everyone (including one's own existence as human) is now only a "phenomenon of being."
This phenomena is not nothing; rather, it is precisely what makes these critical decisions possible at all. It accordingly makes possible "whatever has, for me, sense and validity as 'true' being".
Even if one were to abstain, the abstention itself would be about as real, and be part of the same "life-stream" as all the phenomena being abstained from.
It is given "with the most original originality as 'it itself,'" which I think is to say that there is no reason to believe for artifice in it.
Also worth noting is that the world is "experienced" the same as it was before; just with a new philosophical reflection "said of" it.
Everything is part of the life-stream, but with the modification of "mere phenomenon."
This "paranthesizing" or "phenomenological epoche" does not leave us confronting nothing.
The epoche can also be said to be "the way in which I apprehend myself purely", "in and by which the entire Objective world exists for me and is precisely as it is for me."
"By my living, by my experiencing, thinking, valuing, and acting, I can enter no world other than the one that gets its sense and acceptance or status in and from me, myself."
Therefore, the being of the pure ego, is antecedent to the natural being of the world - i.e., for the cogito'd ego to exist, the world has to exist for it to be prior to, since it only emerges upon reflection of the world cogito'd.
Section 9: The range covered by apodictic evidence of the "I am".
Does this "phenomenological reduction" make possible apodictic evidence of the transcendental subject?
Descartes emphasises the apodicticity of sum cogitans; but can we say the same for our own ego cogito?
We still have to work on the apodicticity of memory
It may be wrong to deny the apodicticity of "I am", but it is not hard to deny the apodicticity of memory.
An earlier remark: adequacy and apodicticity of evidence need not go hand-in-hand.
In transcendental self-experience, only the immediate ego (i.e. the buddhist mind) is accessible.
There is a "presumptuous horizon" that includes more necesary things like memories, "transcendental abilities" and "habitual peculiarities."
A physical thing merely being present is also an experiencing of something itself, but there is an "indeterminate, general horizon."
Similarily, there is an "indeterminate, open horizon" with respect to the trancendentality of the I-am.
But where does the indubitability end and the horizon begin?
Section 10: Digression: Descartes' failure to make the transcendental turn
Scholasticism lies hidden as unclarified prejudice in Descartes' Meditations (no shit)
We must rid ourselves of the prejudice that ego cogito is an "axiom" from which conclusions are "deducted". It is less of a "clinging-bit" and more of a "seed"
This "math wannabeism" was active already when Descartes deduced from the ego cogito the notion of a res cogitans.
Section 11: The psychological and the transcendental Ego. The transcendency of the world.
The "momentous" fact is that I remain "untouched" in my existential status, regardless of whether or not the world exists.
Which is to say, phenomena do not care about your opinion of them. Or, facts don't care about your feelings.
Phenomenological epoche (which the course of our purified Cartesian meditations demands of him who is philosophizing)
It thus prohibits acceptance of any facts that are "appercieved," including internal things like memories
Someone standing in the attitude of epoche posits "exclusively himeself as the acceptance-basis of all objective acceptances.
But this is different than deduction because there is a necessary recognition that this is antecedent of an outer world? And that the epoche is purely methodological?
This concept of the transcendental "must be derived exclusively from our philosophically meditative situation."
"Just as the ego is not a piece of the world, neither is any part of the world a piece of the ego."