On Color: The Husserlian Material a Priori

Jairo José da Silva

1 Introduction

My goal in this short paper is to present and discuss Husserl’s conception of the
synthetic a priori and show that Schlick’s argument against it fails. For Schlick,
Husserl’s synthetic a priori rests on the meaning of words, being thus analytic.
For Husserl, however, as I point out, the rules for the meaningful use of the terms
of a language, insofar as they are not purely conventional and impose themselves
with necessity, reflect essential semantic legalities related to the things these terms
denote. And it is precisely such legalities that synthetic a priori (also material a
priori) truths, in Husserl’s sense, express. For him, synthetic a priori truths give
voice to essential legalities related to material essences, which semantic rules for
the meaningful use of their denoting terms capture. It is important to keep in mind,
however, that essence, in this case, is phenomenological, not metaphysical essence.
The difference being that whereas the metaphysical essence of an object is that
which makes this object what it is in itself, the phenomenological essence of an
object is that which makes this object, conceived now as an object-for-the-ego, i.e.
an intentional object, what it is for the intentional ego.

2 A Priori and a Posteriori, Analytic and Synthetic

Let us start recalling some definitions. A priori propositions (assertions, utterances,

etc.) are those whose logical value does not depend on the testimony of experience,
or better, the type of experience adequate for validating assertions of this sort,

J.J. da Silva ()

Researcher, CNPq, MCT, Brasília, Brazil
e-mail: dasilvajairo1@gmail.com

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 97

M. Silva (ed.), How Colours Matter to Philosophy, Synthese Library 388,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-67398-1_5
98 J.J. da Silva

whatever it may be. A posteriori assertions are those that do. For Kant, a priori
propositions are characterized by necessity and universality. The uncontroversial
example of a priori propositions are analytic ones. Kant characterizes analytic
truths as those in which the idea contained in the predicate is part of the idea
contained in the subject. In a semantic characterization, true analytic propositions
are those in which the meaning associated with the subject-term includes that
associated with the predicate-term, such as “all bachelors are unmarried”. When the
structure subject-predicate was no longer believed to cover the logical structure of
all propositions, the characterization was maintained in a more general formulation:
analytic truths are those that are true only in virtue of the meaning of their
constituting terms. Bolzano and Husserl define analyticity differently; for them,
analytic propositions are those whose logical value is preserved under formalization.
To formalize is to substitute variables for names (Bolzano required at least one such
substitution, Husserl required complete formalization).1 Frege offers still another
characterization; analytic truths are those that are logically necessary. However, no
matter how analytic truths are characterized, they are true no matter what; even if
they refer to the empirical world, they are true regardless of the state of the world.
But for some philosophers (not the logical empiricists, of course) the class of
a priori propositions is not exhausted by analytic ones; they claim there are also
synthetic a priori propositions. Synthetic assertions are all those that are not analytic.
For Kant, synthetic a priori truths express necessary aspects of experience and
this is why they are independent of experience: they characterize experiences as to
their possibility. For Husserl, propositions whose complete formalization does not
preserve logical value are synthetic. Some propositions, however, preserve truth-
value under restrict formalization, that is, their logical value is preserved provided
the variables are confined to more restrict domains of variability. If we think of these
domains as extensions of concepts, synthetic truths are conceptual truths involving
at least one concept whose scope is restricted to a proper subdomain of the domain
of all objects; a posteriori and a priori synthetic truths are, respectively, contingent
and necessary conceptual truths. Conceptual truths are analytic if the scopes of the
concepts involved extend to the domain of all object.
Explicit definitions of these notions are given in Husserl’s Third Logical
Investigation. As presented there, the notions of analytic and synthetic have to do
with conceptual laws and conceptual truths. For Husserl, concepts can be either

1
This poses a problem for “all bachelors are unmarried”. Its formalization is, or so it seems,
“all x’s are y’s”, which is not even in general true. One can solve this problem by imposing
that formalization requires that terms are definitionally independent; in case they are not, the
proposition must be reduced to independent terms by substitution of definitionally equivalent
terms. Hence, “bachelor” must be substituted by “unmarried man” and the formalization gives
“all x’s are x’s”, which is indeed true no matter what x stands for. So, in general, a truth is analytic
if there is a proposition definitionally equivalent to it whose truth is preserved under formalization.
Of course, there is, as one knows, a host of problems related to how to define definitionally
equivalent terms. So, some would prefer to say that, from a strict Bolzano-Husserlian perspective
“all bachelors are unmarried” is actually synthetic, whose truth depends only on how words are as
a matter of fact used.
On Color: The Husserlian Material a Priori 99

formal or material; the former lack content, that is, their scope is the largest possible,
encompassing the totality of objects, whatever they are; the latter have restricted
scopes, i.e., they characterize particular domains, which Husserl calls material
domains. A law or relation among concepts is, he claims, analytic if it involves
only formal concepts, such as number, order, whole, part, magnitude, collection,
object, relation, property and similar concepts that are applicable to all objects
whatsoever. Laws involving material concepts are synthetic. They are a posteriori
if the conceptual truth is a contingent one and a priori if they are necessary.
: : : we sharply distinguish [concepts and propositions which have content] from purely
formal concepts and propositions, which lack all “matter” or “content”. To the latter belong
the categories of formal logic and the formal ontological categories [ : : : ], which are
essentially related to these, as well as to all syntactical formations they engender. [ : : : ]
This cardinal division between the “formal” and the “material” spheres of Essence gives us
the true distinction between the analytically a priori and the synthetically a priori disciplines
(or laws and necessities) (Third LI, §11)
What are called “analytic propositions” are in general analytically necessary
connections : : : We may define analytic necessary propositions and propositions whose
truth is completely independent of the peculiar content of their objects [ : : : ] and of
any possible existential assertions. They are propositions which permit of a complete
“formalization” [ : : : ] In any analytic proposition it must be possible, without altering the
proposition’s logical form, to replace all material which has content, with an empty formal
Something, and to eliminate every assertion of existence by giving all one’s judgment the
form of universal, unconditional laws (Third LI, §12)
Each pure law, which includes material concepts, so as not to permit of a formalization
of these concepts salva veritate – each such law, i.e., that is not analytically necessary – is
a synthetic a priori law (id. ibid.)

3 Husserl’s Synthetic a Priori

But, one may ask, if a relation among concepts is necessary, isn’t this only a matter
of what the concepts mean? Aren’t, then, all necessary propositions analytic? Kant,
of course, disagrees; for him, there are a priori necessities that are not analytic; for
example, empirical assertions – in the sense of assertions referring to the empirical
reality – which express necessary features of experience, for example, the principle
of causality. These propositions, he thinks, are not a matter of experience and hence
not a posteriori. But, despite of being a priori, they do not express mere analytic
necessity. In short, assertions of this type are synthetic a priori.
For Husserl, too, there is a synthetic a priori; namely, laws expressing the
essence of given ontological regions, including empirical reality.2 They are synthetic

2
Husserl has often been thought to be an essentialist. In a sense, he was, but not in the sense
that things (for example, the physical world) admit a core of objective properties which together
characterize what they are, but in the non-metaphysical sense that things have as intentional
objects an intentional meaning which characterizes them as the objects they are meant to be.
Phenomenological essence is not metaphysical essence.
100 J.J. da Silva

because they involve material concepts (ontological regions are extensions of

material concepts), and a priori, for their truth does not depend on the type of
evidential support available in their respective domains (perception in the case of
empirical regions) but on a different sort of evidence, namely, conceptual intuition.
Husserl would not deny that a priori truths are true by virtue of meaning; he,
however, distinguishes purely formal from material meaning; propositions that are
true only by virtue of formal meaning are analytic (ex: if 2 is odd, then 2 is odd or
there is an even prime, which is true due only to the formal meaning it expresses:
if A, then A or B); those that are true by virtue of material meaning are synthetic
(in synthetic propositions, a priori or a posterior, matter matters).3 The notion of
material meaning is central in answering Schlick’s criticism of the Husserlian notion
of synthetic a priori, as we shall see.
Let’s consider Husserl’s classical example of a synthetic a priori truth: “there
is no color as such without a colored extension”. This law of essence, as Husserl
calls it, expresses the necessary fact that the concept “colored thing” is subordinated
to the concept “spatially extended thing”. Both concepts are empirical, and so
material, since only objects of perception fall under them and the class of objects
of perception is a proper subclass of the class of all objects; nonetheless, the
truth expressed by the relation of subordination between these concepts is not
extracted inductively from empirical experience (sensorial perception). In the words
of Husserl, this is “no mere empirical fact, but an a priori necessity, grounded in
pure essence” (Third LI. §4). How is this truth available to us, then? A synthetic
necessity is true by virtue of essential relations among the concepts involved, by
virtue of what these concepts mean, we could say. Conceptual meaning, Husserl
thinks, implies the existence of constraints imposed on the meaningful applicability
of concepts. Any object,4 concepts included, has a manner of being, which can
in principle be directly given in some form of intuition or presentification. The
manner of being or, equivalently, intentional meaning, imposes necessary, a priori
constraints on the manner of being intuited. “The structure of the experience in
which an object is given was, for Husserl, a set of invariants. [ : : : ]. These invariant,
organizing structures are what is called ‘the eidetic essence’, ‘the phenomenological
essence’ or simply ‘the essence’ of the object” (Heelan 1988, 3). The eidetic essence
of any region of being can be brought to consciousness or, equivalently, intuited in
what Husserl calls essential intuition.

3
Assertions are formally meaningful if the logical-syntactical types they involve (subject, predicate,
copula, etc.) are combined according to the a priori laws of the pure grammar of logical-syntactical
types; those that do not are senseless combinations of words. For example, “green ideas sleep
furiously” is formally meaningful, “prime not 2 is 3” is not. Assertions are materially meaningful
if they are formed by combining material types according to a priori laws of their compatibility and
incompatibility; those that do not are meaningless, even if they are formally correct. For example,
“green ideas sleep furiously” is materially meaningless since the type of ideal objects (such as
ideas) is materially incompatible with the type of real properties (such as being green).
4
For Husserl, object is anything about which one can say something meaningful, i.e. something
that could in principle be true.
On Color: The Husserlian Material a Priori 101

4 Essential (or Eidetic) Intuition, Imaginative Variation

Realms of experience (for example, perceptual experience in general or visual

experience in particular) have, for Husserl, as just said, a structure which translates
into a priori constraints on experience. These constraints express themselves as laws
of essence. Husserl calls essential intuition the process of accessing laws of essence.
Essential intuition boils down to bringing the necessary structure of the specific type
of experience in question to consciousness. Essential intuition is no more mysterious
than trying to figure out the disposition of the furniture in a dark room by carefully
walking through it. The room is the field of possible experience, the disposition of
the furniture in the room its essential structure.
By examining freely objects of a type (for example, perceptual or visual objects)
in imagination (imaginative variation), one can clearly bring to consciousness the
set of invariants that condition the intuitive presentation of objects of this type.
Husserl says that “whenever therefore the word ‘can’ occurs in conjunction with
the pregnant use of ‘think’, there is a reference, not to a subjective necessity, i.e. to
the subjective incapacity-to-represent-things-otherwise, but to the objectively-ideal
necessity of an inability-to-be-otherwise” (Third LI, §7). (In a note, Husserl tells
that the idea of subjective impossibility-of-imagining as denoting impossibility-
of-being is already at work in his recensions of 1984 (p. 225, note 1) In this
note, Husserl makes clear that the impossibility of imagining an ontologically
dependent content existing by itself (color without extension, for example) has
objective validity and metaphysical significance). Essential or eidetic intuition is
basically imagining. Essential necessities manifest themselves as constraints to free
imaginative variation.
Let us consider, as an illustration, another well-known instance of a synthetic a
priori proposition, the essential law stating that different colors cannot uniformly
cover the same extension simultaneously. In order to justify this law, we must
investigate the realm of possible visual perception; we do it by trying to imagine
two different colors simultaneously covering the same extension all over, that is,
by trying to conjure an imaginary visual perception of the required type. The
impossibility of so doing, the impossibility of imagining reveals the impossibility
of being, since being is, from a phenomenological perspective, always being-for-
the-subject. So, subjective impossibility does have objective relevance, since the
objective realm is not that which is simply “out there” but that which can in principle
be given to the subject. The subjective experience of frustration in imagining
discloses objective constraints in the realm of possible experience. Since I cannot
imagine two different colors simultaneously covering the same extension all over,
then this experience is forever excluded from the field of experiences that are
possible for me or any other subject essentially similar to me. This translates into
the essential law that two colors cannot simultaneously cover the same extension all
over.
102 J.J. da Silva

5 Essential Laws and Empirical Laws

But what is the difference between empirical laws and laws of essence? Attempting
to imagine is attempting to presentify a content to consciousness; i.e. attempting to
intuit this content, which can only succeed if the imaginary content is a possible
content of intuition. A failure in imagining reveals, in short, that the content which
one is trying to imagine is not a possible content of intuition, that there is an essential
incongruity in it that makes its clear presentification in intuition impossible. Since
from the phenomenological perspective what cannot in principle be intuited does
not exist, the impossibility of imagining translates into the impossibility of being.
Now, this does not rule out the possibility that radically different subjects, with
radically different structures of consciousness, may exist who can intuit a content
whose intuition is impossible for me and beings like me. On the other hand, a law
of nature, for example, can be imagined to be different from what it is; one can
imagine that earth’s gravitational field acts on massive bodies according to different
laws. Such a change in the way the world is is not incompatible with the possibility
of perception. An empirical law, then, is a law that tells how things in the empirical
world are that is not incompatible with them being different, the perceiving subject
remaining the same. A law of essence in the empirical domain is a law that tells
how the empirical world is that is incompatible with them being differently, the
perceiving subject remaining the same. One is contingent, the other, necessary.

6 Schlick’s Criticism of Husserl’s Material a Priori

In a paper entitled “Is there a factual a priori?” (“Gibt es ein materiales a priori?”
1930/1931) Moritz Schlick criticizes Husserl’s notion of a material a priori. For
him, to say that two different colors cannot cover the same extension all over
simultaneously reveals as much of the inner structure of reality as saying that a
man cannot be simultaneously 1:60 m and 1:80 m tall. In both cases, he says, it is
only a matter of giving an object two contradictory determinations. Let’s consider
the situation more closely. In what sense is the attribution to a person of two
different heights simultaneously formally contradictory that does not command the
formal contradictoriness of the attribution of two different colors to an extension
all over simultaneously? Moreover, why is the proposition that a spatial extension
cannot be uniformly green and red all over at the same time, for Schlick, formally
inconsistent but the assertion that a temporal extension can be uniformly covered by
a high-pitched C and a low-pitched F is not? Why is the latter determination also
not contradictory? If simultaneously covering a surface all over with two different
colors is merely a fact of experience, why can’t we even imagine this, given that
we can very well imagine counterfactual empirical facts (for instance, the earth’s
gravity being repulsive rather than attractive)? Schlick says that the impossibility
expressed in “different colors cannot simultaneously cover the same extension” (call
On Color: The Husserlian Material a Priori 103

this assertion L) does indeed reveal an a priori, but it is the analytic a priori; this
impossibility, he says, comes from trying to use terms against the rules for their
use. My argument against Schlick is the following: rules for the meaningful use
of linguistic terms are not conventional, but express, at the semantic level, intrinsic
compatibilities and incompatibilities of semantic types and, ultimately, the a priori
structure of experience. Therefore, although the impossibility expressed in “one
cannot cover an extension simultaneously all over with two different colors” can
be said to derive from linguistic meaning, linguistic meaning itself depends on
synthetic a priori essential legalities, disclosable in essential intuition.
In details. For Schlick, A D “o is uniformly green all over” and B D “o is
uniformly red all over” are contradictory assertions. B, he thinks, is logically
equivalent to not-A. So, A and B D “o is uniformly green all over and uniformly
red all over” is equivalent to C D A and not-A. Now, since not-C is a logical truth, A
and B is a logical contradiction. For Schlick, an extension being uniformly covered
in green logically requires that it cannot be also uniformly covered in red. But why
colors are different from sounds in this aspect? Why logic should care more about
colors than about sounds?
Let us for a moment consider Schlick’s example of a clear-cut analytic contra-
diction: a man can never be simultaneously precisely x and y meter tall if x ¤ y
(call this assertion T), to see whether L can be considered analytic on the same
grounds, as Schlick seems to believe. One obvious difference stands out, whereas
color is a perceptual property of empirical objects, height, at least to the extent
that it is precisely measurable by real numbers, that is, height, as a mathematical
determination, is not. Thus conceived, height is a mathematical, not perceptual
concept; we are not capable of attaching a precise real number univocally to a
man’s perceptual height. Who can tell, based solely on perception, that a man is
1:60 m, not 1:6000000000000000000000000001 m tall? No matter how refined the
perceptual faculties of a person (any person) are, it is in principle possible to find two
lengths that are, for him, perceptually indistinguishable but that are mathematically
idealized as being different. The perceptual concept of length, on the other hand, is,
in Husserl’s terminology, a morphological (or descriptive) concept, which can be
mathematized only approximately. Morphological concepts are approximate, vague,
without neat boundaries, and if one decides to measure perceptual lengths in meters,
one must cope with the fact that x perceptual meters can be mathematically idealized
as either y or z mathematical meters, y ¤ z (this, of course, is a version of the
paradox of continuity). So, as an assertion about perceptual experience T is not
only not analytic, but actually false: two mathematically different lengths can be
perceptually identical. In this sense, Schlick’s original example, “a man cannot be
simultaneously 1:60 m and 1:80 m tall”, taken as a perceptual assertion, is actually
a synthetic truth.
Considered, however, as an assertion about mathematical idealities, i.e. real
numbers that idealize perceptual lengths, T is indeed analytic; as a mathematical
assertion, it simply states that two different real numbers are never equal, a mere
instance of the principle of non-contradiction. But thus considered, T is not a
phenomenological (perceptual) assertion; so, it is not the same sort of assertion as
L, which is a perceptual assertion.
104 J.J. da Silva

It is not contradictory to say that, perceptually, a man can have different

mathematical heights simultaneously. The concept of length involves comparing the
length of a body with that of another and expressing this relation as a number; the
fact that one and only one number expresses it involves an idealization (see Weyl’s
Das Kontinuum, 1918). By idealization, lengths are measured by well-determinate
real numbers. So, the fact that a body cannot have two different mathematical
lengths at the same time follows analytically from the mathematical characterization
of length. Consequently, attributing two different number to the mathematical height
of a man is indeed a logical contradiction and does not say anything about the
structure of the world. But color concepts are an altogether matter. They are not
mathematical, but perceptual concepts, and there is nothing analytically contained
in the perceptual concept of, say, green and red implying that an extension uniformly
covered in green cannot also be uniformly covered in red. So, if this is an a priori
truth, it must be synthetic; i.e. it must uncover something necessarily contained in
the structure of perception.
Now, one can also idealize colors in terms of electromagnetic frequencies or
wave-lengths. The mathematized version of L, considering that colors, scientifically
reconstructed, are physiological reactions to radiation incident on the retina, would
read more or less like this: “electromagnetic radiation of different frequencies
incident on the same point on the retina does not elicit two simultaneous but different
color-responses”, or something analogous (I am not a color physiologist). But,
obviously, this is through and through a synthetic empirical assertion; we could
be physiologically built differently and this assertion could be false, as it actually is
in case of sounds. After all, we do interpret as two different and simultaneous notes
two simultaneously incident sound-waves of different frequencies.
Let us consider now Schlick’s positive argument against the synthetic a prioricity
of L. For him, L is a “grammatical”, not factual assertion, having nothing to do with
the a priori structure of either experience (as Husserl claims) or reality (insofar
as reality, phenomenologically construed, is the totality of all experiences that
are possible in principle for a subject in general). Schlick seems to believe that
grammatical rules are freely chosen rules for the use of terms; I instead claim that
grammatical rules are sensitive and reflect the a priori structure of experience and
reality. Language, according to a worn-out metaphor is a “game”, and rules of games
are arbitrary. However, rather than a game, language is a technology, evolved so as
to allow us to better cope with our experience of reality, whose rules must, then,
reflect fundamental aspects of the structure of experience. For “grammatical” rules
to have jurisdiction on what we can imagine, not only on what we can say, they
cannot be arbitrary rules of a game.
Husserl agrees that to state both A D “o is uniformly green all over” and
B D “o is uniformly red all over” is meaningless, not formally – A and B is not
an instance of A and not-A -, as Schlick believes, but materially. Whereas formal
meaning is determined by syntactical rules for the uses of linguistic categories,
which basically discloses the internal structure of the language, material meaning
depends on semantic rules that rest on the a priori structure of experience. For
Schlick, on the contrary, the truth of Husserl’s essential laws is only a matter of
On Color: The Husserlian Material a Priori 105

meaning. Since meaning is expressed in rules for using linguistic terms, in this
last example the term “color”, and linguistic rules of usage only express linguistic
practices, Husserl’s synthetic a priori essential law are, for Schlick, nothing beyond
analytic “grammatical” remarks. The proposition that two different colors cannot
simultaneously cover an extension all over expresses, for him, a linguistic practice,
being then an analytic assertion. For Husserl, however, rules of linguistic usage do
not reflect conventional practices but instead the a priori structure of experience.
They must be justified by inquiring experience. Language, we could say, is not for
Husserl a game with freely established rules, but a technology for expressing the
world adequately. Grammatical rules are rooted in the pre-linguistic structure of
possible experience, expressible as synthetic a priori truths.

7 Conclusion

With Bolzano, Husserl believes that the synthetic a priori is the conceptual a priori
involving material concepts, in particular empirical concepts. Empirical concepts
are, of course, related to empirical experience, which can have a priori determi-
nations only insofar as empirical experience has necessary features. Imaginary
variation is the method Husserl advocates to investigate the necessary structure
of experience; that which is imaginatively impossible is objectively impossible
in experience. Constraints of experience determine constraints of language, that
which cannot be, cannot be meaningfully expressed either. Linguistic meaning goes
beyond syntactical meaning, it involves material meaning too; instead of being
determined by linguistic practices, meaning determines linguistic practices.

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