Edmund Husserl conceives of human consciousness as intentional in its structure and orientation. From this point of view, unexpected can be understood as unexpected only according to this intentionality which is included only through the temporal flow of our consciousness.
The world of conscious experience is intended, meant, constituted, constructed by consciousness. Thus, what happens can have meaning only within the domain of the subject, the realm of consciousness. It is not that the existence of the objective world is constituted by consciousness, but that the meaning of that world is so constituted. In Husserlian language, the existence of the objective world is transcendent, i.e., independent of consciousness; but the meaning of the objective world is immanent, i.e., dependent on consciousness. We can actually say that despite we know now that this phenomenological emphasis upon the immediacy of experience is a new transcendental illusion. A kind of new metaphysics...
Nevertheless, time may be said to possess an objective existence, but the meaning of time is constituted or constructed according to the intentional concerns of thought. The meaning of time ("what has happened") is defined by an experienced consciousness that is rooted in a present and that is opening upon a newly emergent future.
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
Enter La métabole as a member
