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The New Yearbook for Phenomenology
and Phenomenological Philosophy
In cooperation w ith
M . B R A IN A R D , London • R. BR U ZIN A, Kentucky

S. C R O W E L L , Houston • A . M IC K U N A S , O hio
T. SEEBO H M , Bonn • T. SH EEH AN, Stanford
edited by
BURT HOPKINS
JOHN DRUMMOND
□□
X - 2010
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy
General Editors
Burt Hopkins, Seattle University
JohnJ. Drummond, Fordham University
Founding Co-Editor
Steven Crowell, Rice University
Contributing Editors
Marcus Brainard, London
Ronald Bruzina, University o f Kentucky
Steven Crowell, Rice University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
Thomas Seebohm, Bonn, Germany
Thomas Sheehan, Stanford University
Consulting Editors
Patrick Burke, Gonzaga University, Florence
Damian Byers, Sydney, Australia
Nicholas de Warren, Wellesley College
Ivo de Gennaro, University ofBozen-Bolzano, Italy
R. O. Elveton, Carleton College
Parvis Emad, L a Crosse, Wisconsin
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
Kathleen Haney, University o f St. Thomas
James G. Hart, Indiana University
Patrick Heelan, S.J., Georgetown University
Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, University o f Freiburg, Germany
Nam-In Lee, Seoul National University, Korea
Christian Lotz, Michigan State University
James Mensch, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada
Dermot Moran, University College, Dublin, Ireland
James Risser, Seattle University
Hans Ruin, Sodertorn University College, Sweden
Karl Schuhmannt, University o f Utrecht, Netherlands
Marylou Sena, Seattle University
Panos Theodorou, University o f Crete
Olav K.Wiegand, University o f M ainz, Germany
Dan Zahavi, Copenhagen, Denmark
Editorial Assistants
Annie Rose Favreau
F. M. Kellog
The Greek font used to publish this work is available from www.linguistsoftware.com.
Articles appearing in this journal are indexed in the Philosopher’s Index.
Copyright © 2010 by Taylor & Francis

ISSN 1533-7472
ISBN 13: 978-0-9843890-0-1 (pbk)
All rights reserved. No part o f the material protected by this copyright may be reproduced or trans
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage or re
trieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Aim and Scope: The New Yearbookfor Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy will provide an annual inter
national forum for phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy in the spirit of Edmund Husserls ground
breaking work and the extension thereof in the phenomenological tradition broadly conceived. The editors welcome
the submission of manuscripts containing original research in phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy,
contributions to contemporary issues and controversies, critical and interpretative studies of major phenomenological
figures, investigations on the relation of phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy to the natural and human
sciences, and historical studies and documents pertaining to phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy.
Translations of classic and contemporary phenomenological texts are also welcome, though translators should make
arrangements with the editors in advance.
First published 2010 by Noesis Press

Published 2015 by Routledge
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Contents
L Essays
W a lter H o pp
How to Think about Nonconceptual Content 1
J eff Y o s h im i
Husserl on Psycho-Physical Laws 25
M ark van At te n
Construction and Constitution in Mathematics 43
R o n a l d B r u z in a
Husserls “Naturalism” and Genetic Phenomenology 91
A n d r e a S t a it i
Different Worlds and Tendency to Concordance: Towards a New
Perspective on Husserls Phenomenology of Culture 127
R o se m a r y R . P. L e r n e r
The Cartesian Meditations’ Foundational Discourse: An Obsolete Project? 145
S e b a s t ia n L u f t
Lerner on Foundation, Person, and Rationality 167
G eo rg e H e ffe r n an
The Phronimos , the Phainom ena , and the Pragmata : Are We Responsible
for the Things that Appear to Us to Be Good for Us ? An Axiological
Exercise in Aristotelian Phenomenology 171
M ic h a e l J. S ig r is t
Husserl on God, Existence, and Transcendental Analysis 201
H a n s P ed e rse n
On Heidegger’s Appropriation of Aristotle’s Concept of Phronesis :
Where and How Does Phronesis Show Up in B eing and Time ? 217
V
VI CONTENTS
K a -w in g L e u n g
Heidegger on Animal and World 237
A b r a h a m Sto ne
On the Teaching of Virtue in Plato’s M eno and the Nature of
Philosophical Authority 251
M ic h a e l K elly
A Glimpse of Envy and its Intentional Structure 283
A nne C . O zar
The Value of a Phenomenology of the Emotions for Cultivating
One s Own Character 303
U. R eview Essay
M o ll y B r ig id F ly n n
The Agent of Truth: Reflections on Robert Sokolowski’s Phenomenology
o f the Human Person 319
N o t e s o n C o n t r ib u t o r s 337
vi
How to Think about Nonconceptual Content
Walter Hopp
Boston University
The current debate over nonconceptual content is of fundamental impor-

tance for both phenomenology and the theory of knowledge. It is, moreover, an
area in which phenomenologists working within a broadly Husserlian tradition
can and have made important contributions.1 Despite this, the debate as a whole
remains something of a mess. Consider, for instance, this rather standard defini-
tion of nonconceptual content: “X is in a state with nonconceptual content iff X
does not have to possess the concepts that characterize its content in order to be
in that state.”2 As many times as I read that statement (and others like it), I have
trouble understanding what it says. First, it is unclear whether it defines a special
kind of state or a special kind of content.3 Apart from that ambiguity, what is a
content? And what is a concept? What is it to possess one? And what is it to
characterize one? And what, finally, is the phenomenological basis of any of these
concepts? My goal here is to provide the beginnings of a phenomenological ac-
count of conceptual and nonconceptual content and a couple of considerations
in favor of the latter’s existence.
——————
1. See, e.g., Michael K. Shim, “The Duality of Non-conceptual Content in Husserl’s
Phenomenology of Perception,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2005),
209–29 and Michael Barber, “Holism and Horizon: Husserl and McDowell on Non-con-
ceptual Content,” Husserl Studies 24 (2008), 79–97.
2. Tim Crane. “The Nonconceptual Content of Experience” in Tim Crane (ed.), The
Contents of Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992), 136–57, here 149. Also
see José Luis Bermudez, “From Perceptual Experience to Subpersonal Computational
States,” in York H. Gunther (ed.), Essays on Nonconceptual Content (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT, 2003), 183–216, here 184, and Alex Byrne, “Consciousness and Conceptual Con-
tent,” Philosophical Studies 113 (2003), 261–74, here 265.
3. As is widely recognized. See, for instance, Richard G. Heck, Jr., “Nonconceptual
Content and the ‘Space of Reasons’,” Philosophical Review 109 (2000), 483–523, and Jeff
Speaks, “Is There a Problem about Nonconceptual Content?” Philosophical Review 114
(2005), 359–98.
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and

Phenomenological Philosophy X (2010): 1–24
ISSN 1533-7472 • ISBN 978-0-9843890-0-1
2 WALTER HOPP
§ 1. Act, Content, Object

In contemporary philosophy, the term ‘content’ is often a catchall term that
designates just whatever is related to minds in any way whatsoever. Sometimes it
means the object of an intentional experience, what it is about. And sometimes it
means something like a Fregean sense, which is about the object of an intentional
experience and related in some way—a way almost never specified—to the experi-
ence itself. Calling contents “representational contents” leaves this ambiguity in-
tact, since ‘representational’ is subject to the -ing/-ed ambiguity. Are such contents
represented, or representing? Robert Hanna uses the term ‘content’ for both sorts
of things: “Broadly speaking, the mental content of an animal’s conscious mental
state is what that state refers to or describes, and how it does so.”4 Unless the what
of a conscious state is always identical with its how—and if it were, the definition
above would be redundant—following this terminological practice cannot fail to
produce at least some confusion. And it does not seem at all obvious that they are
identical. For instance, I can be conscious of my kitchen by thinking about it, re-
membering it, perceiving it, imagining it, and so on, but these are not differences in
the object of which I am conscious, but the manner in which I am conscious of it.
And when I perceive a friend, the thing I perceive is something whose hand I could
shake. But I could not shake hands with how my perceptual state refers to him.
Virtually everyone acknowledges that, at least in wide range of cases, there is
a clear distinction between a mental act and its object. My act of thinking about the
Great Wall of China is not a wall, is not in China, and is not particularly great. And
it is about something, while the Great Wall is not. But this distinction is not near-
ly enough. Rather, we must recognize something in addition to the object of my act
and the act itself, namely, the act’s content. This is so for three reasons.
The first traditional reason for distinguishing contents and objects is that
some acts of thinking, desiring, hoping, and perhaps even perceiving are about ob-
jects that do not exist. Such acts could not be individuated by their objects. If a
child wants Santa Claus to come to his house tonight, what he wants is a certain
state of affairs—Santa Claus’s coming to his house—and that, along with its star
constituent, does not and will never exist.
A second traditional reason for believing in contents is that the same object
can be represented via different modes of presentation. The sentence ‘Silver con-
ducts electricity’ is about the very same state of affairs as the sentence ‘The element
with 47 protons in its nucleus has numerous free electrons’. But the sentences do
not mean the same thing. Furthermore, any object that can be presented percep-
tually can also be merely thought about, and there are massive and obvious differ-
——————
4. Robert Hanna, “Kantian Non-conceptualism,” Philosophical Studies 137 (2008),
41–64, here 42. Also see Christopher Peacocke, “Does Perception Have a Nonconceptual
Content?” Journal of Philosophy 98 (2001), 239–64, here 241.
HOW TO THINK ABOUT NONCONCEPTUAL CONTENT 3
ences between those ways of being conscious of an object. I can see my couch, or I
can merely think about it. This is not a difference in the object; when I think about
it, I am evidently thinking of the very same object that I just perceived. And, con-
trary to one line of thinking, perception and thought are not distinguished by their
respective fineness of grain, that is, by how determinately they represent their ob-
jects. That distinction cuts right across the distinction between thinking and per-
ceiving. Perception often presents us with very determinate properties for which
we do not have general concepts. And very often we can think about properties
that we could not perceive. I can think that an object is square without being able
to perceive that it is—because, for instance, I can conceptually but not perceptual-
ly distinguish between a side’s being 100 cm long and 101 cm long. And as one
thinks of an object more and more determinately—‘Mars is a physical object’;
‘Mars is a planet’; ‘Mars is an uninhabited planet’—one does not come any closer
to perceiving. “Empty intentions,” writes Husserl, “can also be determinate.”5
A third reason for recognizing contents is that there seem to be certain sorts
of entities which philosophers, psychologists, semanticists, and logicians regular-
ly and justifiably invoke that a) play a critical role in a variety of mental activities
but b) are not normally the objects of thought and experience. Concepts and
propositions are among the most conspicuous.6 When the content of my mental
state is the proposition that Beethoven is a great composer, what I am thinking of
is not this proposition, but a certain state of affairs, among whose constituents is
Beethoven himself. The proposition is about something, but what I am thinking
about is not in turn about something. And my act of thinking is about the same
thing that the proposition is about, and the proposition is not, like certain well-
known deviants, about itself. Again, when I think that water is wet, I employ the
concept of water in order to think about water, not the concept of water. Just as we
typically talk with, rather than about, sentences, so we typically think with, rather
than about, contents.
Contents must also be distinguished from the acts whose contents they are.
Mental acts are particular, dateable individual episodes that belong exclusively to
one subject. My act of thinking that Beethoven is a great composer arose and
passed away in time. But its content—the proposition that Beethoven is a great
——————
5. Edmund Husserl, Ding und Raum, ed. Ulrich Claesges, Husserliana XVI (The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 58; English translation: Thing and Space, trans. Richard Rojcewicz
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 49 (henceforth, cited as ‘Hua XVI’ with German and English
references, respectively). Also see A. D. Smith, “Perception and Belief,” Philosophy and Phe-
nomenological Research 62 (2001), 283–309, here 285–86.
6. Though both terms, and especially ‘proposition’, are themselves party to the con-
tent/object confusion. By a ‘proposition’, I will generally mean what Fregeans and Husser-
lians mean by it, namely, a structured body of senses that represents objects—the True or
the False, for orthodox Fregeans, and a state of affairs (Sachverhalt), for Husserlians.
4 WALTER HOPP
composer, along with the concepts making that proposition up—did not arise
and pass away with my act of thinking. Many mental acts may have the same con-
tent. The concept of water and the proposition that water is wet are not anyone’s
private property.
These distinctions should strike us as natural, since we easily draw them all the
time in the case of massively simpler representational devices such as books, adver-
tisements, computer files, and other vehicles of information. I just saw several
posters alerting the neighborhood of a missing kitten and asking for help in find-
ing her. Each of these posters has the same words and pictures (types, not tokens)
on them. Each poster is about the missing kitten rather than those words and pic-
tures. And each is about the missing kitten in virtue of containing those words and
pictures. The words and pictures, finally, are not identical with any one poster.
Each individual poster shares them in common, without being about them. Those
are the posters’ contents, the having of which accounts for the fact that each of the
posters represents its objects in the precise way that it does. Similar distinctions can
be made with respect to mental acts. I conclude, then, that Husserl is right when he
writes: “Since such talk is so highly ambiguous, we shall do well never to speak of
an intentional content where an intentional object is meant, but to call the latter
the intentional object of the act in question.”7
§ 2. Concepts
The term ‘concept’ is also ambiguous. On the one hand, a concept is, as David
Wiggins puts it, “something with instances” that “belongs on the level of refer-
ence.”8 On the other hand, in its “Kantian” use, the term ‘concept’ belongs on the
level of sense. Unlike Wiggins (and Frege), it seems rather clear to me that the lat-
ter meaning is the more prevalent. The concept of plaid is not the property plaid,
for instance. Most plaid things, such as tartan scarves, do not possess the concept
of plaid. And most of the things that possess the concept of plaid are not plaid.
Concepts, moreover, are of or about things, while properties, quite typically, are
not. As such, I will understand concepts and conceptual contents to be a type of in-
tentional content.
It is also important to distinguish the property of being conceptual and the
property of being conceptualized. To say that something is conceptualized is, min-
——————
7. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Zweiter Teil: Unter-
suchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana
XIX/2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984), 416; English translation: Logical Investigations, trans.
J. N. Findlay, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 580. Henceforth cited as
LI with German and English page references, respectively.
8. David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity, 2001), 10.
imally, to say that someone is conscious of that object by means of exercising a con-
cept of it. For instance, when I think that water is wet, water is conceptualized. But
I do not, in conceptualizing water, conceptualize the concept of water. Concepts in
use, like contents generally, are self-effacing, and when I employ the concept of wa-
ter, it modestly directs my mind, not to itself, but to water. In order to conceptual-
ize the concept of water, I would have to exercise a concept of it, namely, the
concept of the concept of water. And even if I do conceptualize the concept of wa-
ter when I think of water, we will be on the brink of a vicious regress if we insist that
the concept by whose means I do that—the concept of the concept of water—is
also conceptualized. Eventually that regress must end with an unconceptualized
concept.
On the other hand, water is not conceptual, and neither are most of the or-
dinary things we think and talk about. (Of course, we can think and talk about
contents too, but in such acts they are not functioning as contents, but as the ob-
jects of other contents.) There are no conceptual trees or cats or lakes; conceptu-
ality just is not the kind of property that can intelligibly be attributed to such
things. What is conceptual, in this example, is the content by whose means I con-
ceptualize water, namely, the concept of water.
Unless some rather robust version of idealism is true, being conceptualized is
not an intrinsic or essential property of an object. Water does not change, as far as
we can tell, in any way whatsoever as a result of being conceptualized (or not). Be-
ing conceptual, on the other hand, is an intrinsic property of contents. Concepts,
which are a type of content, are intrinsically conceptual. Michael Huemer, on the
other hand, writes, “Conceptuality is not an intrinsic property of a content. Rather,
it is a way that a content can be entertained. One can entertain a content concep-
tually (by means of concepts) or nonconceptually (not by means of concepts).”9 It
seems clear that here Huemer means ‘object’ by ‘content’, and ‘being conceptual-
ized’ for ‘conceptuality’. Otherwise, his would be the position that when I think of
water by means of the concept ‘water’, but without conceptualizing the concept it-
self, the concept ‘water’ is a nonconceptual content. That, I suggest, is not the re-
sult we want.
That something does not become conceptual in virtue of being conceptual-
ized is, finally, clear from the fact that in thinking, speaking, and judging about a
content of an experience, it does not follow as a matter of course that it is a con-
ceptual content, even though it is conceptualized. An utterance of the statement ‘C
is a nonconceptual content’ is not a pragmatic contradiction, and to my knowledge
no one has leveled such an objection against the defenders of nonconceptual con-
tent. Yet it would be if being conceptualized entailed being conceptual.
——————
9. Michael Huemer, Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2001), 74.
6 WALTER HOPP
Some contents are concepts, and some contents, such as propositions, contain
concepts as constituents. My understanding throughout will be that a content is
conceptual just in case it is of that sort, and nonconceptual otherwise. Mental states
can be either conceptual, nonconceptual, or, as in the cases of fulfillment to be dis-
cussed below, both, depending on what sorts of contents they have. But just what is
a concept or a conceptual content? I suggest we start by looking at a few relatively
uncontroversial claims about conceptual contents. Paradigmatically, conceptual
contents are what we employ in thinking and judging. Christopher Peacocke
writes: “I shall be taking it that conceptual content is content of a kind that can be
the content of judgment and belief. Concepts are constituents of those intention-
al contents which can be the complete, truth-evaluable, contents of judgment and
belief.”10 If we understand propositions to be those truth-evaluable intentional con-
tents to which Peacocke is referring, then concepts are constituents of proposi-
tions. Conceptual contents, then, are either concepts or wholes composed of
concepts. And, since the content (matter) of a thought is independent of its qual-
ity or assertoric force, concepts are also constituents of questions, commands, and
at least some “mere” presentations.
Another widely endorsed thesis concerning conceptual contents is that any
linguistically expressible content is conceptual. Alex Byrne writes, “Since everyone
agrees that propositions expressed by sentences are of a kind that can be believed,
linguistic content is automatically conceptual.”11 And Peacocke writes, “any content
that can be expressed in language by the use of an indicative sentence, including
sentences containing indexicals and demonstratives, will be a conceptual con-
tent.”12 Of course, a content that is expressed by a word or sentence is not, in most
cases, what the word or sentence is about. The word ‘water’ expresses the concept
of water, but is about water. And the English sentence ‘Water is wet’ expresses a
meaningful proposition whose constituents are concepts. But it is not about a
meaningful proposition or any concepts, but rather a state of affairs whose con-
stituents are water and wetness.
In a nutshell, then, conceptual contents are the stuff of thought and talk.
These two truisms about conceptual content do not, in themselves, tell us much, or
at least not much that is obviously relevant about the phenomenology of concep-
tual content. But when we consider them in conjunction with some rather uncon-
troversial phenomenological facts, and when we consider the sorts of mental states
that are the best candidates for having nonconceptual content, they are quite help-
——————
10. Peacocke, “Nonconceptual Content?” 243.
11. Alex Byrne, “Perception and Conceptual Content,” in Matthias Steup and Ernest
Sosa (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005), 231–
50, here 234.
12. Peacocke, “Nonconceptual Content?” 243.
ful. In particular, these claims about conceptual content hook up in interesting

ways with a distinction that, to phenomenologists, is rather more familiar: the dis-
tinction between signitive or empty and intuitive acts.
There is a vast difference between merely thinking that my table is messy,
without perceiving or otherwise intuiting (by imagining or pictorially remember-
ing) it, and perceiving or otherwise intuiting that my table is messy. The states of
affairs intended by two such acts are identical: one can come to perceive the same
things one thinks about. But the acts themselves are phenomenologically quite dif-
ferent. A great deal of our thinking is performed emptily, and much of it must be
empty since any perceptual states or mental imagery would be massively inade-
quate to the intended objects. Any attempt, on our part at least, to intuitively il-
lustrate the content of the thought that a mole contains 6.022 x 1023 atoms is futile.
For now, I will rest content with the claim that perceptual and other intuitive acts,
including hallucinations, imaginings, dreams, and pictorial memories, have a dis-
tinctive sort of phenomenological character that mere thoughts, as such, do not
possess. I will refer to this feature or set of features as their “intuitive character.”
In general, the intuitive character of an act can be varied independently of its
conceptual content. Suppose, to borrow Husserl’s example, I see a blackbird flying
through the garden. There is no conceptual content C such that, in virtue of per-
ceiving this blackbird in the determinate way in which I perceive it, I am enter-
taining C. On the basis of precisely this perceptual experience, I can entertain the
contents ‘That is black!’ or ‘That is a black bird!’ or ‘There it soars!’ or any other
number of others (LI, 550/680). And I can think any one of those thoughts on the
basis of experiences that differ from my present one. There is no perceptual expe-
rience E such that, in virtue of thinking ‘That is a black bird’, I am undergoing E.
My utterance, and the thought it expresses, does not change in either reference or
sense when the bird flies by or I move two feet to the left. This is why you do not
need to have an experience exactly, or even approximately, like mine in order to un-
derstand precisely what I have said. It is worth noting that these examples include
demonstrative concepts, and Husserl fully intends these claims to apply to them as
well. The demonstrative content expressed by the sentence ‘That is Dan’ does not
change in either reference or sense when he turns to the side or I move two feet to
the right. But those experiences differ in intuitive content. As Husserl says, “a
pointing reference remains the same, whichever out of a multitude of mutually be-
longing percepts may underlie it, in all of which the same, and recognizably the
same, object appears” (554/684). Accordingly, “our reference to ‘this’ is fulfilled in
perception, but is not perception itself ” (555/685).
What is phenomenologically distinctive about conceptual content, I think, is
that for almost any conceptual content C, there is no intuitive character I such that
being in a mental state with C entails or is entailed by being in a state with intuitive
character I. In Elisabeth Camp’s terminology, conceptual content is “stimulus-in-
8 WALTER HOPP
dependent.”13 There are some counterexamples, however. Consider, for instance,

the conditions for understanding the content ‘This sensation feels this way’. Ar-
guably one could not entertain such a content if one were not experiencing the
sensation in question in precisely the way in question. But in this case, the distinc-
tion between the conceptual content and the sensation is obvious. Experiencing a
sensation is surely not identical with entertaining such a content. The reason this
conceptual content entails undergoing a distinctive sort of experience is grounded
in the peculiar mode of givenness of sensations, namely, that they cannot be pre-
sented in the flesh via many different modes of presentation. Any change in the way
a sensation feels is a change in the sensation itself. Even though the proposition is
sufficient for undergoing a particular sort of experience, the experience does not
have its intuitive character in virtue of the proposition’s content, but vise versa.
Husserl, for what it is worth, appears to have something very much like this in
mind. After drawing a tight connection between “conceptualizing thought” and
“the formation of generalities taking place in it,”14 he writes: “Only general thought
leads to determinations which create a store of cognitions available beyond the sit-
uation and intersubjectively” (EJ, 384/319). And again, “It is only the act of ap-
prehension in the form of generality which makes possible that detachment from
the here and now of the experiential situation, implicit in the concept of the ob-
jectivity of thought” (ibid.). Although it would appear, from these remarks, that
only general contents are conceptual, this is only because Husserl has a very un-
orthodox conception of generality. According to Husserl, even the contents ex-
pressed by proper names are general, a generality that consists not, as in the case of
common nouns, in the fact that their extensions include numerous objects, but in
the fact that each of their meanings covers “an ideally delimited manifold of possi-
ble intuitions, each of which could serve as the basis for an act of recognitive nam-
ing endowed with the same sense” (LI, 563/692). And that is precisely to say that
the meaning of a proper name is such that it can be the content of acts that differ
from one another in their intuitive character. He makes the same point, as we have
already seen, about demonstrative contents.
This account also explains why conceptual contents are fit to serve as the
meanings of linguistically communicable contents. Conceptual contents—most,
at least—are objective in the sense that entertaining them does not require one to
——————
13. Elisabeth Camp, “Putting Thoughts to Work: Concepts, Systematicity, and Stim-
ulus Independence,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (2009), 275–311. Also
see my “Husserl, Dummett, and the Linguistic Turn,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 78
(2009), 17–40.
14. Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Meiner, 1985), 240; English
translation: Experience and Judgment, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe, trans. James S. Churchill and
Karl Ameriks (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1973), §49, 204. Henceforth cited
as EJ with German and English page references, respectively.
adopt any particular point of view. They are, therefore, fit to serve as the contents
of different minds whose owners occupy potentially radically different points of
view in a way that determinate perceptual contents, which are necessarily perspec-
tival, are not. The existence of contents of that sort is, quite plausibly, a condition
for the possibility of linguistic communication.
§ 3 . T h e Pr o b l e m o f No n c o n c e p t u a l C o n t e n t
In light of this, we can pose the problem of nonconceptual content as follows:
is there any type of intentional content that does not exhibit the sort of independ-
ence from an act’s intuitive character that either fully conceptual or demonstrative
contents possess? Note that this question leaves out of consideration one type of
nonconceptual content, namely, hyletic data or qualia. If they exist—I am not at all
confident that they do—they are not both nonconceptual and intentional. But it
is the nonconceptual and intentional sorts of contents that I am principally inter-
ested in and around which the contemporary debate has in large measure revolved.
One could attempt to explain the intuitive character of experience in terms of
such nonintentional components. Husserl himself seems, at times, to endorse such
a view. He often speaks as though perceptual states and mere thoughts share the
same intentional content or matter, and differ insofar as perceptual states have a
third, non-intentional component of fullness, which he characterizes as “a charac-
teristic moment of presentations alongside of quality and matter, a positive con-
stituent only in the case of intuitive presentations, a privation in the case of
signitive” (LI, 607–8/729). If the fullness, rather than the intentional essence, of an
act is responsible for the difference between intuitive and signitive presentations,
then perceptual acts and mere thoughts can have precisely the same intentional
content. Thus, Husserl writes, “However the fullness of a presentation may vary
within its possible gradients of fulfillment, its intentional object, intended as it is
intended, remains the same: its ‘matter,’ in other words, stays the same” (618/738).15
Elsewhere, however, he seems to hold that perceptual intentionality is sui generis:
“Perception has its own intentionality that as yet does not harbor anything of the
——————
15. Several commentators interpret him as holding the same view. Dallas Willard—in
Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University, 1984), 152 (my em-
phasis)—remarks that in fulfillment, “The act (or meaningful word), through the identity of
its meaning with that of the corresponding intuition, actually attaches itself to the meant.” Also
speaking of fulfillment, Klaus Rosen—in Evidenz in Husserls deskriptiver Transzendental-
philosophie (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1977), 27—writes: “Signitive und intu-
itive Akte können in der Weise einander zugeordnet sein, dass sie identische Materien
haben.” Rudolf Bernet—in “Desiring to Know Through Intuition,” Husserl Studies 19
(2003), 153–66, here 155—writes: “The synthetic act which unifies these two elementary
acts benefits from the fact that the (at least partial) identity of their intentional ‘matter’ goes
hand in hand with a difference as to their intuitive fullness.”
10 WALTER HOPP
active comportment of the ego and of its constitutive accomplishment. For the in-
tentionality of perception is rather presupposed in order for the ego to have some-
thing for which or against which it can decide.”16 This is also a natural conclusion
to draw from his arguments that conceptual contents or meanings and perceptual
acts can be varied independently of one another.
It seems clear to me that the intuited aspects of a perceived object are intuit-
ed precisely because of a distinctive type of essentially intuitive content, and not be-
cause some intentional content that may just as well be empty is wedded, in some
way, to a non-intentional quale or hyletic datum.17 I think there are many reasons
for thinking so, but one of the most important is that conceptualism cannot ac-
count for the distinctive role of perception in the production of knowledge. This
is somewhat surprising, since the idea that only conceptual contents can be epis-
temically relevant is one of the more popular arguments for conceptualism. Only
mental states with propositional content can stand in logical relations with other
states, the argument goes, and only logical relations can be reason-giving.18 So if
perception justifies beliefs—and it does—it must have conceptual content.
This argument does, I think, rest on a real insight, which is that only states
with intentional content, and, specifically, a kind of intentional content that rep-
resents how things are, can be reason-giving. This rules out raw feels and mere sen-
sations. The mistake is to suppose that only conceptual contents can represent how
things are. This mistake is especially clear in some of McDowell’s work. He suggests
that the alternative to his conceptualist view is that the justification of an experi-
ential belief must terminate in “pointing to a bare presence.”19 That is, the alterna-
tive to conceptualism must be the Myth of the Given, which presents us with the
following picture of epistemic justification:
once we have exhausted all the available moves within the space of concepts,
all the available moves from one conceptually organized item to another,
there is still one more step we can take: namely, pointing to something that
is simply received in experience. It can only be pointing, because ex hypothesi
this last move in a justification comes after we have exhausted the possibili-
——————
16. Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungs-
manuskripten, 1918-1926. Hua XI, ed. Margot Fleischer (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 54;
English translation: Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, trans. Anthony J.
Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 94. Henceforth cited as APS with German and
English page references, respectively.
17. Shim (“Nonconceptual Content”) argues convincingly that the difference between
perception and mere thought is not one of thetic quality either. See also APS, 36/74–75.
18. For two of the more prominent presentations of this argument, see John Mc-
Dowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1994), and Bill Brewer,
Perception and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002).
19. McDowell, Mind and World, 39.
ties of tracing grounds from one conceptually organized, and so articulable,

item to another.20
And that will not do.
This argument critically depends on the claim that the objects of nonconcep-
tual states of consciousness must be bare presences, raw givens, or something equal-
ly remote from what we actually experience. After all, “pointing to something that
is simply received in experience,” provided that something is an ordinary object or
state of affairs, is a perfectly legitimate way of justifying a belief. If I ask you why you
believe that it is raining, the justification of your belief would terminate, in any
context that is even approximately normal, by your pointing to the rain. Justifying
a belief by directing someone’s perception and attention to the very chunk of the
world that it is about is typically a conversation stopper. It is the act of pointing to
a bare presence, not the act of pointing as such, which we must regard as epistemi-
cally useless.
Why should we think that the objects of nonconceptual mental states must be
bare presences? I suspect that McDowell may think so because he confuses objects
and contents of awareness: “That things are thus and so is the content of the expe-
rience, and it can also be the content of a judgement. . . . So it is conceptual content.
But that things are thus and so is also, if one is not misled, an aspect of that layout
of the world: it is how things are.”21 But the phrase “that things are thus and so” is
ambiguous between propositions and states of affairs. The proposition that snow
is white, for instance, is not the same thing as the state of affairs that snow is white.
The first consists of concepts and is about snow’s being white. The latter is what
that proposition is about. Furthermore, the state of affairs cannot be the content of
an experience; it can be the object of an experience. And the proposition cannot be
“how things are.” It represents how things are. Once we distinguish the proposition
(P) that things are thus and so from the state of affairs (S) it represents—the truth-
bearer from the truth-maker—we cannot conclude from the fact that an experi-
ence has S as its object that it has P as its content, since S might also be the object
of a different kind of content P*. Different sorts of contents might have the same
objects. Even bare presences can be objects of conceptual contents, as McDowell’s
own discussion proves. I suspect that anything whatsoever can be conceptualized.
As I have argued more extensively elsewhere,22 the case for nonconceptual
content is aided considerably by the fact that in order to explain the difference be-
tween merely thinking about something and perceiving it, we need to appeal to
something that is both epistemically relevant and unique to perception. I can mere-
——————
20. McDowell, Mind and World, 6.
21. Ibid., 26.
22. See my “Conceptualism and the Myth of the Given,” European Journal of Philos-
ophy 17 (2009), 363–85.
12 WALTER HOPP
ly think that my desk is messy. I can also perceive my messy desk. If the conditions
are right, I will think that my desk is messy while I perceive that it is messy, and that
will typically result in my knowing, or at least having a very good justification for
believing, that my desk is messy. I will find my desk to be just the way I think it to
be. Because merely thinking that my desk is messy does not result in being justified
in believing that it is, and neither does thinking it twice, there must be something
that the experience possesses that the mere thought lacks, and this feature, far from
being a mere sensation that attaches to a propositional content the experience
shares with the belief—the sort of thing a conceptualist would, I think rightly, re-
gard as epistemically epiphenomenal anyway—is what distinguishes experience
epistemically.
Even resorting to demonstratives is not sufficient to explain the epistemic con-
tribution of experience, since two mental states might have the same demonstrative
content and still differ epistemically. I can think “that is a messy desk” if I perceive the
messy desk from afar in dim light, or if I perceive it from up close under favorable
light. The thought receives more support in the second case than the first, despite the
identity of demonstrative contents. What accounts for the fact that perceptual expe-
riences are so phenomenologically distinctive and play such a preeminent role in
knowledge is something that sets them apart from beliefs, not some feature they share
with them.
That perceptual experiences have a different sort of content from beliefs is fur-
ther supported by the fact that the reason-giving relation between perceptual experi-
ences and beliefs is fundamentally different from the reason-giving relations that hold
among beliefs. Finding my desk to be as I think it to be is fulfillment—or, more pre-
cisely, epistemic fulfillment. In epistemic fulfillment, I “experience how the same ob-
jective item which was ‘merely thought of ’ in symbol is now presented in intuition,
and that it is intuited as being precisely the determinate so-and-so that it was at first
merely thought or meant to be” (LI, 566/694). This way of justifying a belief is very
different from justifying it inferentially. First, if my belief B is supported by other be-
liefs B*, B**, etc., and if B is justified, then those beliefs must themselves be justified.
If, however, B is justified in virtue of being fulfilled by a perceptual experience, the
perceptual experience is not itself warranted. Perceptual experiences are not the kinds
of things that could be justified or unjustified.23 Good eyesight is not a sign of intel-
ligence, and hallucinating is not a form of irrationality. Second, the constituent acts
in fulfillment must have the same objects. If a belief B is epistemically supported on
the basis of B*, B**, etc., however, it is rarely the case that any of those supporting be-
——————
23. See Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, ed. Ullrich
Melle, Husserliana XXIV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984), 8; English translation: Introduction
to Logic and Theory of Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07, trans. Claire Ortiz Hill (Dordrecht:
Springer, 2008), 9.
liefs have the same object as the belief they support, and never the case that all of them
do. Third, fulfillment is not reasoning. In reasoning, I come to believe that the world
is a certain way by thinking of the other ways I take it to be; reasoning is a matter of
determining what is the case given that something else is the case. In fulfillment, I
come to believe that the world is a certain way because I find it to be just that way—
not, it is worth emphasizing, because I believe the proposition that I have found it to
be that way, but because that proposition is true.
One might argue that the conceptualist can explain the role of experience in
knowledge, since fulfillment itself is a distinctive kind of act with its own sort of in-
tentional object. In fulfillment, I am not just conscious of my messy desk. I am also
aware that the desk is present as I think it to be. The desk is not merely given, and
not only meant, and not only given and meant—as happens when one is wonder-
ing about the whereabouts of one’s glasses while staring right at them. Rather, it is
given as it is meant. I take this to be part of Michael Barber’s point in response to
my objection to McDowell. According to Barber, in fulfillment “a new level and
kind of content accrues to the object perceptually experienced, which is now ex-
perienced as ‘fulfilling’ (or not) a formerly empty signitive intending.”24 This is
not, he argues, any sort of bare presence to which McDowell objects, since “the
content ‘fulfilling’ only appears only after conceptualized contents of experience
have been brought into relationship with one another.”25 This means that “the
meaning-content of ‘fulfilling’ belongs to a conceptual network . . . and hence ‘ful-
filling’ is in no way a bare presence independent of any conceptual relations.”26
Of course I have no interest in defending bare presences or any alleged per-
ceptual awareness of them, or any experiences which are incapable of bearing epis-
temic relations to conceptual contents. And I agree with Barber’s claim that
fulfillment differs from mere perception. The main problem with this response,
however, is that no account of perception or fulfillment which attempts to explain
them in terms of their objects will suffice, since, again, any object whatsoever can
be merely thought about. Fulfillment is not just a matter of being conscious that an
object is given as it is meant. It is a matter of being intuitively conscious of that. In
fulfillment, the correspondence between perceived object and meant object is itself
given rather than emptily represented. I can merely think, right now, that I am hav-
ing an experience that fulfills my thought that Moscow is cold. And I can merely
think that the object of my present experience fulfills that thought. But it does not,
nor am I intuitively conscious of its doing so. So merely predicating ‘fulfilling’ of ei-
ther an object or an experience does not amount to having an experience of fulfill-
ment, since one can think that of any experience or object whatsoever—including
——————
24. Barber, “Holism and Horizon,” 83–84.
25. Ibid., 84.
26. Ibid.
14 WALTER HOPP
the experiences of others, which could never fulfill any of one’s own thoughts. The
problem of distinguishing intuition and thought has just reappeared at the level of
fulfillment itself. And conceptualizing the relation of fulfillment does not seem to
be necessary for fulfillment to occur either. When a perceptual experience fulfills a
thought, we are hardly ever in the business of applying the concept ‘fulfilling’ to
that experience or ‘fulfilled’ to the thought. When one reads Husserl’s Sixth Logi-
cal Investigation, one learns to apply the concept of fulfillment to a kind of experi-
ence which one already had prior to and independently of reading Husserl.
Finally, appealing to the distinction between ‘receptivity’ and ‘spontaneity’
will not help either. According to Barber, who fully acknowledges that McDowell
does not elaborate on the distinction with sufficient care, McDowell might ac-
count for the difference between perception and mere thought by claiming that
“perception involves conceptually shaped experiences . . . that resist our ability to
manipulate them away and that mere thoughts about an empirical object would
lack.”27 I am not so sure our empirical thoughts are susceptible to that kind of ma-
nipulation. Try, for instance, to convince yourself that the stars are little holes
poked in the firmament. More importantly, this poses a dilemma for McDowell.
What accounts for the phenomenological and epistemic properties of perception
is either the fact that it is passive, or it is (also) one’s awareness that it is passive. If the
former claim is right, then some feature of experience besides its conceptual con-
tent is epistemically relevant. But if a feature like that can be epistemically relevant,
why couldn’t nonconceptual content? And if one must be aware that the experi-
ence is passive, then we face our original problem all over again. I can just think that
any mental act whatsoever is passive, or I can be intuitively aware of its being pas-
sive, and that difference makes a massive epistemic difference.
That perception has nonconceptual content is also supported by more
straightforward considerations. It is true that most attentive perception is more
than just perception; it occurs within the context of epistemic fulfillment. And
that means that most of the focal objects of perception are conceptualized. But
perception is not fulfillment, and, unlike fulfillment, does not essentially involve
concepts. Most perceptual experiences present us with far more than we think
about. They would fulfill a wide variety of thoughts, if we entertained them, but
they do not actually fulfill those thoughts unless we actually do. An infant can have
a stinging pain in its leg, but cannot fulfill the thought ‘I have a stinging pain in my
leg’. I might hear every note in Chopin’s Black Key Etude without having thoughts
about each note fulfilled—and just try to do that! Better yet, try to fulfill thoughts
not only about each note, but each perceived chord, transition, phrase, volume,
timbre, and so on. I might see 56 books on a shelf without having the thought
‘There are 56 books on the shelf ’ fulfilled. Even on my own terms, there is some
——————
27. Barber, “Holism and Horizon,” 85.
number of books that I see, and I do not know what it is. If asked “How many
books do you see?”—which differs entirely from the question “How many books
are on the shelf ?”—I will sincerely and correctly answer “I don’t know.” I might see
a certain color and only fulfill the thought that it is red. But my experience already
has the right stuff to fulfill the thought that it is alizarin, and when I do acquire the
concept ‘alizarin’, I will do so in consultation with the very thing that I already see.
Moreover, even in the context of fulfillment, perceiving something very often
explains why one thinks about it. If I come home to find my basement flooded, the
proposition ‘My basement is flooded’ occurs to me because I am presented with my
flooded basement. I do not perceive the basement because I am entertaining that
proposition, nor do I first need to think that proposition in order for perception to
take place. Indeed, perception often explains our ability to think about objects in
the first place. It is not as though we are, ab initio, stocked with thoughts that we
can then go attempt to verify experientially. Rather, perception explains the abili-
ty to think certain thoughts at all. As John Campbell puts it, “We are not to take
the intentional character of experience as a given; rather, experience of objects has
to be what explains our ability to think about those objects.”28
Although this is by no means the final word on conceptualism, I am con-
vinced that intuitive contents are one type of nonconceptual content.29 The same
conclusion has been drawn by Michael Shim, who argues that what Husserl calls an
act’s “fulfilling sense” is nonconceptual. I think this is right, both when such a con-
tent is functioning as a fulfilling sense and when it is not. However, my account dif-
fers significantly from Shim’s. First, on my view, intuitive contents are noetic, not
noematic, at least as Shim understands ‘noematic’. According to Shim, noemata
——————
28. John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 122.
29. For a more thorough treatment of some of these and other arguments, see my
“Conceptualism and the Myth of the Given” and Perception and Knowledge: A Phenome-
nological Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University, forthcoming), esp. chap. 2–4. More-
over, establishing that experiences do not have conceptual content does not establish that
they have nonconceptual content, since they might have no content at all. Experiences
might, that is, be nothing more than a sheer, content-free awareness of an object. That is the
view of most sense-data theorists, who individuate perceptual acts on the basis of their (im-
mediate) objects, not contents. Bertrand Russell extends such a view to all mental acts: “At
first sight it seems obvious that my mind is in different ‘states’ when I am thinking of one
thing and when I am thinking of another. But in fact the difference of object supplies all the
difference required” (Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript, ed. E. R. Eames with K.
Blackwell [London: Allen & Unwin, 1984], 43). I present several considerations against
such a view in my Perception and Knowledge, chapter 6. For present defenses of the view, see
Campbell, Reference and Consciousness, chap. 6; M. G. F. Martin, “The Reality of Appear-
ances,” in Alex Byrne and Heather Logue, eds., Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2009), 91–116; and Bill Brewer, “How to Account for Illusion,”
in Adrian Haddock and Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action,
Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008), 168–80.
16 WALTER HOPP
are objects of perception. Indeed, he maintains that “perceptual noemata are all we
ever perceive.”30 This has the unfortunate consequence that either cats, trees, and
other people are perceptual noemata, or that no one has ever perceived a cat, a tree,
or another person. Setting that worry aside, contents on my view are bearers, rather
than objects, of intentionality. Colors and cats are not conceptual contents, and
they are not nonconceptual contents, because they are not contents.
It seems to me that in characterizing perceptual noemata as ‘nonconceptual
contents’ Shim means that they are unconceptualized objects. But, as we have seen,
that cannot be an intrinsic property of them. They can be conceptualized as well.
Furthermore, it leaves open the question: if we can be conscious of perceptual noe-
mata (or anything else) without conceptualizing them, what accounts for that?
That is, since it is not a feature of the object, what features or parts of the act (or
West Coast noema qua mediator rather than object of intentionality) are respon-
sible for that? The answer, it would seem, is nonconceptual contents of some sort.
Those, rather than unconceptualized objects, are the proper objects of phenome-
nological interest in this case.
§ 4 . Ho r i z o n s
Intuitive contents are the most obvious candidates for nonconceptual con-
tents. But they are not the only kind. The horizons which are partially constitutive
of perception are another. And in some ways the case for nonconceptual content is
even stronger here, since, thanks to the fact that many horizonal contents are emp-
ty rather than intuitive, there is no temptation to confuse them with hyletic or sen-
suous data.
One of Husserl’s greatest contribution to our understanding of perception is
his insight that no perceptual experience consists solely of intuitive or self-giving
content; rather, each experience necessarily harbors empty intentions towards un-
seen or undetermined parts and aspects of the object perceived. I see the cup. But
in seeing the cup, I do not see every part and piece of the cup. Nor do I see every-
thing there is to see about the parts that are intuitively present. I can determine the
color, or the features of its facing surface, more closely. Perception contains a sur-
plus of empty content, and, since objects such as cups cannot possibly be ade-
quately given, having such empty content is a necessary condition for perceiving
those sorts of objects. The failure to recognize the empty content in perception
might be called the myth of the adequately given—a myth to which many philo-
sophical theories of perception have succumbed.
What Husserl thought he had found in the Logical Investigations is that per-
ceptual acts are composed of intuitive and signitive intentions. The empty con-
tents present in perception are concepts or meanings. The story appears rather
——————
30. Shim, “Conceptual Content,” 214.
different after the development of his theory of horizons, however.31 Exactly what
Husserl means by ‘horizons’ is not always clear, and it is beyond the task of this pa-
per to work that question out. We should, however, distinguish all of the following
relata of a perceptual act:
a) The unperceived and further-determinable sides, parts, and properties
of a perceived object.
b) The totality of possible experiences in which those sides, parts, and prop-
erties would be perceptually exhibited.
c) The actual empty or partly empty intentions by whose means at least
some of the entities in (a) and (b) are intended or indicated.
By the “horizons” of an experience, I mean to exclude both (a) and (b), with the un-
derstanding that both do bear very interesting relations to horizons. Horizons, as I
will understand them, are features of acts, not objects. Furthermore, the horizon of
an act is not a set of possible filled intentions, but a living body of actual empty ones.
The table I currently see looks, right now, as though it has more to it than I see.
And it does so in virtue of some actual features of the actual act I am carrying out
right now, and not (just) in virtue of bearing (possible) relations to a set of possi-
bilia. The horizon is a “horizon of reference to potentialities of consciousness”32—
without itself being those potentialities.
The horizon of an act, on at least one of Husserl’s understandings of ‘horizon’,
namely, the inner or internal horizon, consists of those intentional contents that
point beyond what is intuitively given in an experience and prescribe which other
perceptions are compatible with or would count as perceptions of the same thing
as what is perceived now. “The ‘horizons’ of perceptions are another name for emp-
ty intentions . . . that are integrally cohesive and that are actualized in the progres-
sion of perception in and through different orientations” (APS, 99/144). In order,
for instance, for my current perception to count as a presentation of a table, it must
be partial and experienced as such. My current perception must have a horizon of
empty intentions that point to unseen parts and properties of the table and pre-
scribe, with varying degrees of determinacy, what the table would look like if I were
to perceive it from different angles or under different conditions.
Horizonal contents can vary massively in how determinately they prescribe
——————
31. See Donn Welton, The Origins of Meaning (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983), chap.
6–8, for what is perhaps the most comprehensive account of the development of Husserl’s
thought on these and related issues.
32. Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. Stephen
Strasser, Husserliana I (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), 82; English translation of the former:
Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 44. Henceforth
cited as CM with German and English page references, respectively.
18 WALTER HOPP
the non-intuited properties and parts of an object and, correspondingly, the expe-
riences in which they would be perceptually given. The more determinately the
horizon specifies the object, the more possibilities there are for frustration and sur-
prise. If I see a mound of snow and anticipate very little concerning its composition,
my experience leaves open many more possibilities than if I anticipate that it con-
sists entirely of soft, powdery snow. In the latter case, there are a lot more ways in
which my anticipation can be frustrated: I might kick it and discover that it is coat-
ed in a hard layer of ice, or that it is really a thin veneer of snow encasing a fire hy-
drant. These experiences will not surprise me if all my present experience specifies
of the snow mound is that there is more to it, but if I anticipate that it is a soft pile
of snow, they will.
What I have said above pertains, above all, to an act’s internal horizon, which
points towards further parts and determinations of the thematic object of percep-
tion and, correlatively, the experiences in which they would be perceived. But every
perceptual act also has its external horizon. The table before me is, and is perceived
as, an object in a surrounding environment. Apart from the fact that it belongs with
the objects co-given with it—a felt belongingness that can, plausibly, be chalked up
to a rich background of previously acquired knowledge—it has the more basic fea-
ture of appearing alongside and in the midst of other appearing things. There is a
floor that supports it, and a window above it, and a lamp on top of it. These objects
are there for me even when I do not attend to them. And the surrounding envi-
ronment itself is both intuited and emptily intended. The door at end of my
kitchen opens into another room, which is emptily intended but also present as a
possible object of immediate perception. So is the space behind my head. The
world does not end there. The field of possible further perceptual experiences is un-
limited, and at least some of this sense of the limitlessness of the world is provided
by the external horizon. The external horizon provides, then, not (just) an objec-
tive context in which perception uncontroversially takes place, but a consciousness
of the context in which it takes place.
Husserl’s doctrine of horizons is manifestly a development of his Investiga-
tions doctrine that every perceptual experience contains both signitive and intuitive
components. But the horizon is not—this is my view, at least—a body of meanings
or concepts. Horizonal contents do not provide a framework of conceptual con-
tent in which intrinsically dumb, atomic sensations can be inserted as a kind of fill-
ing. Rather, intuitive contents themselves depend, in some way, for their very
whatness on being united with their horizons. If, for instance, one learns of what
appears to be a barn that it is a barn façade, it appears differently.33 Note that I am
——————
33. Sean Kelly provides a similar example, contrasting the same objects when they are
perceived as buildings in an Old West town (saloons, banks) and when they are perceived
as fixtures on a movie set. See his “The Non-conceptual Content of Perceptual Experience:
using ‘appears’ in a phenomenal rather than, or in addition to, an epistemic sense.

It does not just intellectually seem to be different, as it would, for instance, if some-
one were to correct our beliefs about its age or microphysical structure. It also ap-
pears differently. Husserl expresses the dependence of intuitive contents on
horizons clearly:
It is clear that a non-intuitive pointing beyond or indicating is what char-
acterizes the side actually seen as a mere side, and what provides for the fact
that the side is not taken for the thing, but rather, that something tran-
scending the side is intended in consciousness as perceived, by which pre-
cisely that is actually seen. (APS, 4/41)
The strictly intuitive contents of perception “are nothing for themselves; they are
appearances-of only through the intentional horizons that are inseparable from
them” (APS, 6/43).34 Here Husserl is adumbrating a view that is much closer to,
say, Aron Gurwitch’s theory of Gestalt-contextures than the view, discussed at
length in the Investigations and making its appearance throughout even his late
works, that perception is a matter of intrinsically non-intentional sensations un-
dergoing “interpretation” or “apperception.”
On the other hand, the horizons are not autonomous either. They are not in-
tentional contents which, in their indifference to variations in the intuitive charac-
ter of consciousness, descend to the body, from time to time, to bestow the gift of
meaning on its pangs, twinges, and raw feels. Rather, horizonal contents are what
they are in virtue of being united, in very determinate ways, with intentional intu-
itive contents. The contents in virtue of which I am conscious of the unseen back-
side of the chair did not “interpret” the “sensations” in virtue of which I intuit the
front, since they could not exist at all if I were not presented with the front of the
chair, and in the precise way that I am.
Furthermore, horizons themselves change with changes in the intuitive con-
tent of an act. Horizonal contents are “constantly in motion; with every new step
of intuitive apprehension, new delineations of the object result, more precise de-
terminations and corrections of what was anticipated” (EJ, 137/122).35 As I walk
——————
Situation Dependence and Fineness of Grain,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
62 (2001), 601–8, § 1.
34. See also Hua XVI, § 16, and Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänome-
nologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einfuhrung in die reine
Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuhman, Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), § 138;
English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1982), § 138.
35. Also see CM, 82/44: “Every subjective process has a process “horizon,” which
changes with the alteration of the nexus of consciousness to which the process belongs and
with the process itself from phase to phase of its flow—an intentional horizon of reference
20 WALTER HOPP
around a barn, previously perceived portions fall away into emptiness, while previ-
ously empty intentions become perceptually fulfilled. With each change in the
properly intuitive contents in an act of perception, there is a change in the inten-
tional horizon as well. What was previously intuited falls away into horizonal
emptiness, and what was emptily anticipated comes to proper perception. Hori-
zons, then, are radically situation-dependent, so much so that any two experiences
with different intuitive contents must have different horizonal contents. But con-
cepts are not individuated that finely. When I walk around a barn and simultane-
ously think that it is a barn, my thought that it is a barn does not change as I walk
around it. The concept ‘barn’ retains an identical sense across a multiplicity of ex-
periences with different intuitive and horizonal contents. So, for that matter, does
the demonstrative ‘that’, provided it actually refers to a barn rather than, say, a barn-
adumbration.
Michael Barber also suggests that horizons are a kind of nonconceptual con-
tent, though it seems that what he means is that the objects of horizonal contents
are not conceptualized. The focal objects of perception, such as the barking of a
dog, always occur against a background of which we are marginally aware but not
actively conceptualizating. For instance, you do not conceptualize the white space
behind and in the midst of these letters and words as you read, but without some
sort of background against which these words can stand out, these words would
not appear. But if we can be conscious of something without conceptualizing it,
then we do so by means of contents which are not conceptual (in my sense of the
terms in question).
It should also be clear that horizonal contents are nonconceptual on my own
understanding of conceptual content, since they are not the kinds of contents that
can be freely varied with the intuitive content of an act. Similar points have been
made by several philosophers, though apparently independently of one another.
Adolf Reinach expressly distinguished between the empty contents involved in per-
ception and meanings.36 When I see a book, he points out, the whole book is pre-
sented, but only some of it is intuited. But we should not say that the non-intuited
parts of the book are meant or conceived of. Rather, the non-intuitional contents of
perception are intimately bound up with an act of presentation, an act in which the
book itself is perceptually present. We can see their difference, he argues, when we
perform a judgment of the form ‘The rear side of the object is . . .’ Here, says Reinach,
——————
to potentialities of consciousness that belong to the process itself.” Also see Jeffrey Yoshi-
mi, “Husserl’s Theory of Belief and the Heideggerian Critique,” Husserl Studies 25 (2009),
121–40, 125: “the horizon is dynamic, changing on the basis of our ongoing experience.”
36. Adolf Reinach, “On the Theory of the Negative Judgment,” trans. Barry Smith,
in Barry Smith (ed.), Parts and Moments: Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology (Munich:
Philosophia, 1982), 315–77, here 326–28. Also see James M. Dubois, Judgment and
Sachverhalt (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), 18–20.
we can readily grasp the difference between the enduring non-intuitional or hori-
zonal content that is bound up with the perceptual experience and the “linguistically
clothed, temporally punctual, self-contained” act of judging itself.37 The latter is
not enduring and is not bound up with any particular perceptual experience. We can
extend this observation by noting that such a judgment can be performed even
when a) the rear side comes into view and is therefore intuited and b) the object is
not perceptually present at all. Here the horizonal content varies or disappears en-
tirely while the judgment remains constant. But if horizonal contents can vary in-
dependently of any conceptual contents, then they cannot be identical with any
conceptual contents.
More recently, Daniel Dahlstrom has argued that horizonal contents are
not conceptual, since, first, the horizon is something that is “interwoven” with
and “pervades” an act of perceiving and, more importantly, because “there is a
new horizon for every appearing-of-a-thing at every phase of perception.”38 And
even more recently, Jeff Yoshimi has given several reasons for rejecting any as-
similation of horizonal contents to conceptual ones, most notably that horizons
do not have a linguistic, propositional structure, are not discrete units of infor-
mation, cannot be modeled algorithmically, constitutively depend on the fine-
grained details of a perceiver’s embodied condition, and, most importantly for
my purposes, alter with changes in one’s experience. An experience’s horizon “is
dynamic, changing on the basis of our ongoing experience.”39
There is one worry that needs to be addressed, however, and that is that ful-
fillment is a relation into which empty horizonal contents and intuitive contents
can enter. After all, it is just such a relationship the obtaining of which renders a se-
quence of perceptual acts harmonious. And since horizonal contents are empty
contents whose objects can come to givenness in harmonious perceptual series,
there is a perfectly legitimate sense in which they can be fulfilled (or frustrated). As
a piece of music unfolds, anticipatory intentions find their fulfillment or frustration
when later phases of the piece are intuited. The piece unfolds as I expected, or not
as I expected. But if fulfillment is best regarded as a species of verification involv-
ing both intuitive and conceptual contents, then we must regard the horizonal con-
tents as conceptual.
It is true that fulfillment takes place in any harmonious series of perceptions.
But it is not what I have called ‘epistemic fulfillment’. Rather, I think that this is a
distinctive sort of fulfillment taking place at the level of perception itself. When
——————
37. Reinach, “Negative Judgment,” 327.
38. Daniel Dahlstrom, “Lost Horizons: An Appreciative Critique of Enactive Ex-
ternalism,” in Alfredo Ferrarin (ed.), Passive Synthesis and Life-World (Pisa: Edizioni ETS,
2006), 211–31, here 209.
39. Jeffrey Yoshimi, “Husserl’s Theory of Belief and the Heideggerean Critique,”
Husserl Studies 25 (2009), 121–40, here 125. Also see 135–37.
22 WALTER HOPP
a piece of music unfolds as I anticipate, it is not a matter of explicit, proposition-

ally structured beliefs being verified on the basis of experience. It is not a matter
of me comparing the world as it is given with the world as it is thought to be, as is
the case in epistemic fulfillment. Epistemic fulfillment presupposes that percep-
tion reaches the relevant object on its own so that it can be there for thought to
take hold of it as well. Rather, this is a process of fulfillment (or frustration) oc-
curring at the level of perception itself. It is a process whereby empty contents be-
longing to the fabric of perception give way to intuitive contents that present the
same objects. If that is right, then we have isolated a radically different category of
fulfillment than any yet discussed: intuitive fulfillment.
I do not think Husserl was ever especially clear on the distinction between
these sorts of fulfillment, largely, I think, because he was never especially clear on
the question of whether perception has nonconceptual content or not. But he does
distinguish between Bewahrheitung (confirmation) and Bewährung (verification),
which correspond to syntheses of fulfillment occurring at the passive and the active
levels, respectively.40 But the distinction between perception and thought is not the
distinction between the two “levels” of passive and active synthesis. If we think of
the (second, founded) level of activity as one where “we voluntarily direct our at-
tention in interacting with objects,”41 then perception is certainly often active.
Husserl, for instance, writes, “a consciousness of the object is actually and genuine-
ly carried out only first in egoic acts; an object—an object as object—is only first
there for the active ego.”42 But objects as objects are there for us constantly in per-
ception and the distinctive sorts of syntheses that unfold therein. This is not to dis-
pute the existence of the two levels, active and passive, to which Husserl and
Yoshimi draw our attention. Those two levels do not, however, match up in any
neat way with the levels in which I am interested.
Perception is always passive to some degree, but is also typically active, and of-
ten to a high degree. And while attentional modifications and various other forms
of activity can transform a perceptual process, it always transforms it into another
kind of perceptual process. Attention on the part of the ego or subject, whatever else
it does, does not transform a perceptual experience into a thought—even if at-
tending to something also gives rise to various thoughts—and does not transform
intuitive fulfillment, which belongs essentially to perception as such, into epistemic
fulfillment. The perception of the unfolding of a piece of music, including the ful-
——————
40. Hua XI, Division 2, throughout. See the translator’s remarks in Passive and Ac-
tive Synthesis, 107 n. 62.
41. Yoshimi, “Husserl’s Theory of Belief,” 126–27.
42. Edmund Husserl, Aktive Synthesen. Aus der Vorlesung “Transzendentale Logik”
1920/21. Erganzungsband zu “Analysen zur passive Synthesis”, ed. Roland Breeur, Husser-
liana XXXI (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), 3; English translation: Active and Passive Synthe-
sis, 274.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The third illustration facing page 134 is interesting as
representative of a type of coasting steamer introduced about the
year 1855. She shows very well the simplest form of an iron ship
propelled with a screw, and evinces sufficient resemblance to the
dying sailing ship before the steamer had taken on a distinctive
character of her own. In a word, here is the steamship not in her
crudity, as in the case of the Clermont, but certainly in her
elementary form without any of those extra decks and houses which
were still to come, and which to-day give such distinct personality to
the steamship. It will be seen that she is just a flush-decked vessel,
with a central protection amidships for her engines and boilers.
There is no forecastle, no poop, and in the development of type she
stands at the beginning. She was built for the North Sea trade, and
in bad weather must have been a singularly wet boat. She was only
of 677 tons gross register, and the absence of any shelter would,
when steaming to windward in a bad sea, cause her to be swept
from end to end. Similarly, her stern being equally unprotected by
either poop or quarter deck, she would be at the mercy of a bad
following sea. It was not surprising that this elementary type soon
gave way to those modifications that we shall see hereafter. In
design of her body this present model illustrates again Scott
Russell’s system of obtaining a capacious ship combined with the
qualities of slipping through the water with the minimum of
resistance. This will be especially noticeable by regarding the long
straight middle body. She was propelled by oscillating engines, and a
two-bladed screw, having also sails on her three masts.
And so we come to that famous monstrosity and wonder of her
decade the Great Eastern, some idea of whose appearance will be
obtainable from a model of her, illustrated herewith. Here again will
be found a repetition of a curious rig with the half-dozen masts, of
which the second and third carried yards and square-sails, and the
others the usual fore-and-aft sails set on the gaffs here seen.
Although she carried one triangular headsail, yet this was a staysail,
and it is significant that in this notable ship we find the
disappearance of the bowsprit, a change that is so characteristic of
the modern liner. Much more than either the Great Western or the
Great Britain this epoch-making monster stands for something
altogether distinctive in the evolution of the steamship. Frankly, in
spite of her virtues, she was a creature born out of due time.
Historically, she exhibits in no uncertain manner the extraordinary
and almost incredible speed at which the development of the
steamship had progressed in fifty years, during which period
designers, ship-builders, and engineers had to feel their way in the
most cautious manner. No ship was built with such a length as hers
until the White Star Oceanic in 1899; no vessel ever had such a
beam until the coming of the Mauretania and Lusitania, and even
they only exceed the Great Eastern’s extreme width by a mere five
feet. But it is half a century since the latter was built, when all the
experience that we possess now was not yet obtained.
THE “GREAT EASTERN” (1858).

From the Model in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Originally she had been named the Leviathan, and her beginning
happened as follows: Already the fact had come to be appreciated
that there was a superior advantage in a large steamer compared
with a ship of smaller size when voyages of considerable distances
were contemplated, and that, as already pointed out on a previous
page, length of hull, other things being equal, makes for speed. In
designing the Great Eastern with an extreme length of 692 feet she
spanned over so large a number of wave-lengths that the possibility
of pitching was very decidedly reduced. But even in smooth water
length still means speed, and to take the case of a rowing “eight” and
compare it with a single “sculler,” we find that this law is well
exemplified. Without pursuing so interesting a point beyond our
limitations of subject, we might remark that quite recently an expert
took the trouble to work out data obtained from the performances
respectively of a Leander “eight” and a “sculler” as observed at a
Henley Regatta. Although the displacement of the eight-oared craft
works out at about 240 pounds per rowing man, or including the
coxswain at about 217 pounds, whilst the sculler only displaces 208
lb., yet for all that the speed of the longer boat was found to be
greater in the proportion as 9.75 knots are to 8.12 knots, and this,
bear in mind, while the eight is carrying a ninth man who contributes
nothing to the speed of the craft. We mention this as a simple
example of that important fact of the superiority of length in ship-
making, an importance that is now exhibited so clearly in the
enormous lengths of the latest liners.
Brunel, who had already broken steamship records by his
previous daring essays, suggested to the Eastern Navigation
Company the building of such a ship as would be able to carry an
unheard-of number of passengers, a very large amount of cargo,
and at the same time be capable of steaming all the way to Australia
without having to coal on the voyage. These virtues, together with
her speed of fifteen knots, would, it was thought, enable her to
attract such a large amount of business that she would handsomely
repay her owners. The contract was eventually given to Scott
Russell’s firm, who were entrusted with the building of the ship,
together with the paddle-wheel engines. The screw engines were
made by Messrs. James Watt and Co., so that three of the names
most prominently connected with the history of the steamship were
especially associated with the construction of this leviathan. Brunel
was assisted in the designing by Scott Russell, and the latter’s wave-
line principle was followed. The building of the ship began on the 1st
of May, 1854, and on the last day of January, 1858, she was sent
into the water at Millwall. But this was not done without some
difficulty. The first attempt to launch this enormous mass of 12,000
tons was unsuccessful. Her weight was resting on a couple of
gigantic cradles which were to slide down an incline to the water; but
they only moved a few feet and then stopped. Finally, three months
after the first effort, she was slowly persuaded into the water, side-
ways, by hydraulic machinery. Instead of running her on the route for
which she had been built, where her exceptional abilities might have
been utilised, she was put to compete with the steamships already
running on the Atlantic, for which short voyage she was not specially
suitable, and financially she spelt ruin all round. First, the attempts to
launch her, and the ensuing delay cost £120,000 and the company,
unable to bear the expense, was wound up. Then the new company
which bought her for £160,000 were ill-advised to employ her in the
American trade, for neither as a passenger ship nor as a cargo
carrier could she be made to pay her way. Subsequently she was
used in laying the Atlantic cable, and was handed over to the ship-
breakers in 1888, who brought her career to an end during the next
couple of years.
PADDLE ENGINES OF THE “GREAT EASTERN.”
SCREW ENGINES OF THE “GREAT EASTERN.”
The Great Eastern was, in accordance with Brunel’s idea,

propelled by both paddle-wheels and a screw. An illustration is here
given of a model of her paddle-engines, which were of the oscillating
type. It will be borne in mind that the leading advantages of this type
lay in the fact of their comparative lightness in weight, and their
economy as regards space. If the reader will just glance at the
illustration which faces page 138 of the Great Eastern’s longitudinal
section, he will be able to see what little room these engines actually
needed. It will be noticed in her paddle-engines that each of two
cylinders drove a crank, the cylinders being placed vertically but at
an inclined angle. Each paddle-wheel could, if desired, be driven
separately. The condensers were of the jet type, and there were two
air-pumps, which were driven by a single crank in the middle of the
paddle shaft. The paddle-wheels were tremendous, weighing ninety
tons each, and measuring fifty-six feet in diameter. But the Great
Eastern amply proved how unsuitable the paddle-wheel was for
ocean work. Every time the big monster rolled in a bad sea a great
strain was put on the machinery; these vast projections, too, offered
not merely increased windage and accentuated the ship’s general
unwieldiness, but afforded a fine target for the Atlantic waves to
smash against. Once the Great Eastern, during a gale in the year
1861, suffered pretty badly in this respect, when the paddle-wheels
were destroyed. She was afterwards fitted with wheels five feet
smaller in diameter, and of greater strength.
In the next illustration will be seen a model of her screw engines,
whose position in the ship will be found on referring again to the
longitudinal section. These were, it will be noticed, no longer of that
early type which needed gearing, but worked directly, the cylinders
being placed horizontally. The number of cylinders was four, each of
which had two piston-rods, and steam was supplied by half a dozen
double-ended tubular boilers of the rectangular or “box” type. For the
benefit of the non-technical reader we may explain that the object
seen in the foreground of the picture, extending from the centre to
the right-hand side, is what is commonly called the “link motion
gear,” which is employed for reversing the engines when it is
required to send the ship astern. This controls the slide valves which
allow the steam to enter the cylinders. The principle of the link
motion is just this: two eccentrics are placed side by side on the
shaft, but opposite to each other. Each of them is connected by a rod
to one end of the “link,” which is curved in shape. In this illustration it
will be easily recognised at the right-hand side in the front. Now, as
the link is moved up or down, so it controls the eccentric. If it is
lowered, for instance, then one eccentric only is working the valve,
but if the link is raised the other eccentric will control the valve, and
so the latter will work in the opposite direction to which it did before.
Thus, by using one eccentric, steam enters the cylinder at one end
first, while if the other eccentric is employed steam will enter first at
the other. Thus it becomes possible to make the engine turn in
whichever direction is desired by regulating the end of the cylinder
by which the steam shall first enter.
The Great Eastern’s propeller had four blades, and an interesting
arrangement was adopted so that when the ship was proceeding by
means of her paddles, sails, or both, the screw propeller was kept
revolving by means of two auxiliary engines in order that the speed
of the ship through the water might not be diminished by the drag of
the screw. Actual results showed that this ship could do her fifteen
knots with screw and paddles, but her average speed was one knot
less. Under screw alone she could do nine; under paddle power
alone she did seven and a quarter. It will thus be noticed that when
using both paddles and screw she ought to have done better, and
this failing is explained by asserting that the paddle-wheels and the
screw caused a resistance too great for their respective engines.
The construction of this ship calls for more space than we can
here devote thereto, but some of the important features may be
enumerated. She was of great strength longitudinally, and from the
keel to the water-line her hull was double. The longitudinal
bulkheads extended to the topmost deck, and materially added to
her strength, while the inner skin just mentioned not merely gave
added strength, but was an extension of the double-bottom idea, and
so increased her chances in case of collision. Furthermore, the
space between the two skins was available for water ballast, so as to
preserve the trim of the ship as she neared the end of her voyage,
and her coal bunkers were becoming lightened. Transversely, also,
the ship was divided by iron bulkheads into water-tight
compartments in addition to the longitudinal ones. The iron plates
out of which the ship’s skin was made varied from a half to three-
quarters of an inch thick. The Great Eastern was able to give the
world a very convincing proof of the utility of the double bottom, for
she had the bad luck to run on a rock, and although more than a
hundred feet of her outer hull was afterwards found to be damaged,
yet she was able to complete her voyage without the water getting
through into her hull proper.
For steering so large a vessel as the Great Eastern the usual
type of steering-wheel would clearly have entailed the expenditure of
very considerable physical effort; so, for the first time, was
introduced in this ship a steam steering gear, an example that is
nowadays followed by almost all steamers of any size, including
even excursion boats. This arrangement necessitates the use of a
miniature steam engine, the two cylinders working cranks, and the
shaft causing the drum containing the steering chain to revolve. Any
movement of the steering wheel admits steam, and as soon as the
steersman ceases to turn his wheel so quickly does the little engine
cease to work.
We have no desire to try the patience of the reader by presenting
a mass of statistics, but those who delight in comparisons may be
interested to learn how the Great Eastern would appear if put
alongside the Mauretania. The latter displaces 40,000 tons, the
Great Eastern displaced 32,000. The big Cunarder is 790 feet long,
between perpendiculars, while the Great Eastern was 680 feet. The
latter possessed a combined horse-power—paddle and screw
engines—of 11,600, while the Cunarder has 70,000. And so we
could continue. But now that we have seen to what unheard-of limits
the steamship had shown herself capable of reaching by the end of
the sixth decade in the nineteenth century—how she had, step by
step, grown from moderation to exaggeration—let us now examine
her progress during the next twenty years, in which she passed
through her transition period.
CHAPTER V
THE LINER IN HER TRANSITION STATE
The period which follows after about the year 1862 is notable as
witnessing not only the gradual universal adoption of the screw in
steamships, but the more general appreciation of iron as the material
from which to construct a vessel’s hull. After the prejudices which
already we have seen arising at different stages of the steamship’s
history, it was scarcely to be wondered at that iron should come in
for its full share of virulent criticism and opposition. The obvious
remark made on all sides was that to expect iron to float was to
suppose that man could act exactly contrary to the laws of Nature,
and this notwithstanding that already, besides barges, a few ships
thus built had somehow not only managed to keep afloat, but to
traverse channels and oceans in perfect safety, carrying such heavy
weights as their own machinery, to say nothing of their cargoes and
human freights. But slowly the public prejudice began to wane.
Already the Cunard Company had given way to iron in 1856, and in
1860 the Admiralty were at last convinced that the new method was
just and sound. Within the limited scope at our command we have
not space here to enter into the elaborate discussion of matters
which have to be taken for granted before the building of the
steamship begins. But the plain answer to the natural inquiry, as to
how and why a vessel made out of iron does not immediately sink to
the bottom as soon as ever she is launched, is this: whereas iron in
itself is far heavier than water, yet the iron ship has not the same
specific gravity as the iron from which it is made. Therefore, the ship
of this material will be supported by the water in which it is placed.
In actual displacement, an iron ship is proportionately lighter
than a ship built of wood, and by “displacement” is meant the amount
of water which a vessel displaces through being allowed to float. Of
course, the quantity of water which a ship displaces (or pushes to
one side) depends entirely on the weight of the vessel, and is exactly
equal to the weight of the ship. Thus, suppose we were to fill a dock
with water up to the level of the quay and then lower down into it by
means of gigantic cranes a Mauretania or Lusitania, the water would,
of course, flow over on to the quays. Now the amount of water thus
driven out would be the exact equivalent of the liner’s displacement.
When we say, for instance, that the displacement of the Mauretania
is 40,000 tons, when loaded, we mean that her total weight when
loaded is this number of tons, and her hull when afloat puts on one
side (or “displaces”) just that amount of water.
Now, as compared with wooden ships, the use of iron meant a
saving in displacement of about one-third, taking the wooden and the
iron ships to be of the same dimensions. From this followed the fact
that the iron ship could carry a greater amount of cargo with
consequent greater profit to her owners. And, as I have already
indicated in another chapter, before it was possible to build ships of
great length iron had to be introduced to enable them to endure such
longitudinal strains. Again, a wooden ship must have her skin and
ribs made of a thickness far greater than an iron ship, for the clear
reason that one inch of iron is much stronger than one inch of wood;
in other words, to obtain a given strength the iron will take up less
room in the ship. Thus in an iron steamer there will be more space
available for cargo than in a wooden ship of the same design. We
could go on enumerating the advantages of iron, and quote
instances of iron ships, whose cargo had got on fire, arriving safely
in port and coming into dock where the assistance of the local fire-
brigade had enabled the vessel’s own pumps to get the conflagration
under. It is only as recently as December of 1909 that the Celtic, the
well-known White Star liner, during a voyage between New York and
Liverpool, had the misfortune to get on fire while at sea. By means of
tarpaulins and injections of steam it was possible to control the
burning until the Mersey was reached, when it was intended to flood
her holds. Had she been a wooden ship instead of steel, or even
iron, the Celtic would undoubtedly have ended her days in the
Atlantic.
The first Atlantic company to build all its steamers of iron was the
Inman Line, which had been founded in 1850, and until 1892 was
one of the foremost competitors for the coveted “blue ribbon” of the
Atlantic. Their first ships had been the City of Glasgow and the City
of Manchester, and these, inasmuch as they were built of iron, and
were propelled by a screw at a time when prejudice had not yet died
down, were entirely different from the prevailing type of steamer; and
this, it should be remembered, at a period six years before the
Cunard had built their iron Persia. This City of Glasgow was built by
a Glasgow firm of shipbuilders, and Mr. Inman had sufficient
confidence in her to purchase her and form a company. Barque-
rigged, with a single funnel, she was of only 1,610 tons and 350
horse-power. Under the command of Captain B. E. Matthews, who
had been on the famous Great Western, she had already crossed
from Glasgow to New York and back in 1850, and on December 11th
of that year began her regular sailings between England and
America. The City of Glasgow—all the ships of this line were named
after cities—was fitted up in a manner which at that time called forth
the greatest admiration. “One room,” wrote a correspondent in the
Glasgow Courier, about that date, “is being fitted up as an
apothecary’s shop, from which the surgeon will dispense his
medicines.” She was provided with five water-tight bulkheads, and
had a propeller whose diameter was 13 feet, with an 18 feet pitch. It
was in connection with the Inman ships that the custom was
inaugurated of carrying steerage passengers on the best Atlantic
liners, although hitherto they had been taken across solely on board
sailing ships.
THE “CITY OF PARIS” (1866).
THE “RUSSIA” (1867).

From a Painting. By Permission of the Cunard Steamship Co.
The City of Glasgow and the City of Manchester began to

quicken the pace, and at once ensued a contest between the
paddle-steamers and those propelled by screws. In 1857 this
enterprising company instituted the custom of calling at Queenstown
on the way to America, and began running their steamers to New
York in place of Philadelphia. Their success was so great that these
ships were followed by the City of Philadelphia, and, in 1866, by the
City of Paris, of which a beautiful little model is here illustrated. This
was the first of their steamships of that name, and is not to be
confused with another ship built in 1888. It will be seen that the liner
before us was ship-rigged and had a single screw. She measured
346 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 26 feet deep, her tonnage being
2,651. She was driven by horizontal trunk engines, with steam at 30
lb. pressure, consuming 105 tons of coal per day, and giving her a
speed of 13½ knots. Her name was afterwards changed to the
Tonquin, and the superstitious will find interest in the fact that she
subsequently foundered at sea in the year 1885. In the City of Paris
the reader will be able to remark some of the last traces of the old
sailing ship, which were destined presently to be altered
considerably. The long, narrow wooden deckhouse going down
almost the length of the ship, and leaving but little room for the
passengers to promenade; the high, stout bulwarks, which rise
almost to the top of the deckhouse, were among the last links which
connected the steamship with the sailing ship. We must not forget
that about the time when the City of Paris was built, the great clipper
sailing ships were enjoying their prime, and no one will deny that
their influence is very clearly marked in the model before us. As an
interesting lesson in comparisons, showing how the tendency since
the ’sixties has been to raise the decks of the steamships higher and
higher, the reader is invited to compare this illustration with that of
the Majestic, facing page 162, and also that of the Kaiser Wilhelm II.,
facing page 180. In the sailing ship the deckhouse had to be small,
for the reason that the deck space was required for the crew to work
the sails; in the steamer this space was encroached upon, so that
the deckhouse was elongated, and extended from the break of the
anchor deck to the hood at the stern.
The City of Paris’s great rival came with the launching of the
Cunard Company’s steamship Russia, which is here illustrated, and
began running across the Atlantic in 1867. But though the latter’s
quickest passage from New York to Queenstown was eight days
twenty-four minutes, the City of Paris, in 1867, crossed in eight days
four hours, which at the time had broken the record, though the City
of Brussels reduced it still further to under eight days. The Russia
was another Clyde-built boat, and measured 358 feet long, 43 feet
broad, and nearly 28 feet deep, having a gross tonnage of 2,960,
and an indicated horse-power of 2,800. Her average hourly speed
was 13 knots on a coal consumption of 90 tons per day. She was, of
course, built of iron and had a single screw—two characteristics
which practically all the crack Atlantic liners possessed from about
1862 until the end of 1883, if we except the Cunard Servia, which
was launched in 1881, although the Allan liner Buenos Ayrean had
been the first steel ship on the Atlantic.
During this period the liner was steadily adapting herself, her
design, her engines, and her build, to meet the increase of
experience gained at sea, and the increase of knowledge which
shipbuilders and engineers were accumulating was in readiness for
the continuity of advance. In 1881, after a period of much usefulness
and great popularity among passengers, the Russia was sold to the
Red Star Line, who lengthened her, changed her direct-acting
engines to compound engines, and named her the Waesland. But
the Russia was not the first screw-ship possessed by the Cunard
Company. Already I have mentioned that though this line had
introduced the screw-steamer into their fleet, it had not met with the
reception it had expected, and for a time a return had been made to
the paddle-wheel. It was the China, which had begun running in
1862 to New York, that helped to convince those who were
prejudiced against the newer form of propulsion. She was 326 feet
long, and was driven by a type of surface-condensing engine geared
down to the propeller shaft by means of tooth-gearing after the
manner already described, her engines being of the oscillating kind.
But we approach now another of those important crises in the
history of the steamship when her future, for some years to come,
became so definitely moulded. On other pages I have already
alluded to the boilers in use on the big steamers, and to the
important adoption of the compound engines using the expansive
force of steam to do additional work after it has entered one cylinder.
The increase of steam-pressure necessitated the adoption of a
different type of boiler, with a cylindrical shell and flues. Thus the
type which is known as the “Scotch” boiler was introduced about the
year 1870, and is still in use even on the Mauretania. It was not until
this type was adopted that the compound system began to make
progress. At the same time it is only fair to state that the latter
method had been introduced by the Pacific Steam Navigation
Company as far back as 1856, and by the National Line in the early
’sixties. But it is when we come to the pioneer steamship of the
White Star Line that we see the real influence which was at work to
make the final cleavage between the old-fashioned steamship and
the new type of liner. That flag which is now so familiar to all who
travel across the Atlantic used to fly at the masthead of a fleet of
sailing clippers. In 1867 the managing owner of the White Star Line
retired; Mr. T. H. Ismay took over the control and began by
introducing iron for the clippers instead of wood. Two years later and
a fleet of steamships, especially constructed for the American
passenger trade, was ordered to be built. The order was given to
that famous Belfast firm, Messrs. Harland and Wolff, who have built
the White Star steamships ever since. In August of 1870 was
launched the first Oceanic, which made the old-fashioned rub their
eyes in surprise and shake their heads in distrust. For the Oceanic
simply threw convention to the winds and set going an entirely new
order of things in the steamship world. From her have followed most
of the modern steamship improvements up to the coming of the
turbine. Some idea of her appearance may be gathered from the
illustration facing this page, but in the fewest words we will now
endeavour to indicate some of her especial characteristics.
THE “OCEANIC” (1870).
From a Painting by W. L. Wyllie, R. A. By Permission of Messrs. Ismay, Imrie & Co.
When she came into the Mersey that memorable day in

February of 1871 her immense length in comparison with her beam
was instantly noticeable. I have already explained the value of length
in ocean travel, but here was a ship with a beam exactly one-tenth of
her 420 feet length. Sir Edward Harland knew what he was about
when designing so novel a craft, and in spite of the general
comments that the Oceanic would prove a bad sea-boat, and unfit to
face the terrors of an Atlantic winter’s gale, she showed that science
in ship-building is of more avail than the blind following of an existing
convention. Nor did she encumber herself with the usual heavy, high
bulwarks that we noticed in the City of Paris, but, instead, she
substituted iron railings, and for a perfectly sound reason. The old
method gave to a ship a false security, for it could not altogether
prevent a sea from coming on board, and when the latter had come
over the ship the bulwarks tended to keep it there, whereas the
Oceanic’s railings allowed the sea to flow off immediately and freely,
as she shook herself and rose to the next wave. The long, narrow
wooden deck-house that we also noticed on the City of Paris was
also discarded, but another deck of iron was added. With her, too,
disappeared most of the objections to the propeller—at any rate, in
the higher-priced accommodation, since the saloon passengers for
the first time were placed not at the stern of the ship (where the
vibration and jarring of the propeller were most felt), but amidships
and forward of the machinery. The saloon extended the entire width
of the ship, whilst the numerous state-rooms were forward and abaft
of the saloon. Furthermore, to an extent that had never been known
on an Atlantic liner, the use of glass side-lights was employed, and
these were made much larger than was customary, so that the
interior of the ship was rendered much lighter, as it was also made
more airy.
The Oceanic also introduced an improved type of water-tight
doors. The old-fashioned candle-lamps which lit the rooms were
replaced by oil-lamps, and instead of the old-fashioned form for
seating, the passengers had the comfort of revolving arm-chairs,
which have since become such features of ocean travel. On deck,
her forward and stern ends were fitted with turtle decks, so that a
wave sweeping over this dome-like shape could swish across it
without doing the damage it could have effected on the first City of
Paris, for instance. The importance of this in a following sea of any
size is obvious, and we must remember that whereas to-day the
stern of a modern liner towers high above the waves, and can
usually defy them, yet in those days the Oceanic and her
contemporaries were still of modest altitude. From the illustration
before us some conception of the bow turtle deck, painted white,
may be gathered, but a much better idea may be seen of a similar
arrangement at the stern of the Britannic (facing page 154). The
addition of that extra deck of iron in the Oceanic shows the
commencement of the many-decked modern liner, to which attention
was drawn in the German liner and her successors, so that in the
Mauretania, as we look down on her decks, she seems to be built up
over every possible inch of space that is permissible.
But the Oceanic was something more than a comfortable boat
and an ingenious example of the naval architect’s originality; she
was also a “flyer.” With her four-cylinder compound engines she was
able to reel off her 14¼ knots on an average. There were two high-
pressure cylinders and two of low-pressure, the high-pressure
cylinder being above the low-pressure and driving the same crank.
Her indicated horse-power was 3,000, and her tonnage came out at
3,808 gross. She even attained to 14¾ knots, and showed herself to
be the fastest liner afloat, faster even than the Inman liner City of
Brussels. It is a proof of the excellence of her design and the
perfection of her build that on her sixty-second voyage in October,
1889, after she had been transferred to the Pacific service running
between San Francisco and Yokohama, she made the quickest
passage on record across the Pacific.
THE “BRITANNIC” (1874).

As she appeared as a transport during the South African War.
From a Photograph by F. G. O. Stuart, Southampton.
THE “SERVIA” (1881).
From a Painting. By permission of the Cunard Steamship Co.
The owners of the Oceanic followed up their success by the

Britannic and the Germanic in 1874. A photograph of the former is
here reproduced as she appeared when leaving Southampton during
the Boer War for South Africa, acting as a transport, with British
troops aboard. From this picture it will be noticed that she is purely a
steamship, but when launched she was rigged as a four-masted
barque with yards and sails, but, following the fashion of the
Oceanic, the bowsprit had been discarded. At one time the Britannic
was given a curious arrangement by which she could lower her
propeller so that it was almost level with the keel, and being placed
thus low it was hoped that all tendency to race when the vessel
pitched would be eradicated. To this end a hollow recess was made
in the hull at the stern so that the shaft could be made to work up or
down as desired. But the results were disappointing, so that after
giving the method several months’ trial it was discarded. Both the
Britannic and the Germanic were larger craft than the Oceanic, and
had a tonnage of just over 5,000 tons, and a length of 468 feet, with
45 feet beam. They also were fitted with compound engines, which
gave 5,000 indicated horse-power, and a pressure of 75 lbs. to the
square inch. The Britannic broke the record again by her speed of 16
knots, but the year after her launch the Inman Line, with the City of
Berlin, also developed 16 knots, and wrested the record from the

The New Yearbook For Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 1st Edition Burt Hopkins Editor John Drummond Editor

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The New Yearbook For Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 1st Edition Burt Hopkins Editor John Drummond Editor

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The New Yearbook for Phenomenology

and Phenomenological Philosophy 1st

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological

Phenomenology and Perspectives on the Heart

Heidegger and his Anglo American Reception A

Varieties of Self Awareness New Perspectives from

The Indian Yearbook of Law and Interdisciplinary

M . B R A IN A R D , London • R. BR U ZIN A, Kentucky

Copyright © 2010 by Taylor & Francis

First published 2010 by Noesis Press

The current debate over nonconceptual content is of fundamental impor-

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and

§ 1. Act, Content, Object

ful. In particular, these claims about conceptual content hook up in interesting

dependent.”13 There are some counterexamples, however. Consider, for instance,

ties of tracing grounds from one conceptually organized, and so articulable,

using ‘appears’ in a phenomenal rather than, or in addition to, an epistemic sense.

a piece of music unfolds as I anticipate, it is not a matter of explicit, proposition-

THE “GREAT EASTERN” (1858).

The Great Eastern was, in accordance with Brunel’s idea,

THE “RUSSIA” (1867).

The City of Glasgow and the City of Manchester began to

When she came into the Mersey that memorable day in

THE “BRITANNIC” (1874).

The owners of the Oceanic followed up their success by the

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