Establishing A Transcendental Basis For Ethical Judgment
And Its Phenomenological Description

	In this paper I hope to establish what might be meant or entailed by the concept of a transcendental ethics. This project would prepare the ground work for the possible confirmation of the same through a phenomenological discovery, investigation and description. Establishing the meaning and possibility of a transcendental ethics would also allow us to investigate the potential relationship that might exist between this analysis and that work done by Edmund Husserl in this same type of field?
	The word transcendental in phenomenological usage I believe has at least two strands of meaning that need to be distinguished and kept separate unless adequately accommodated. A first component to be distinguished is Kantian in origination and concerns itself with the transcendental as it relates to the a priori grounds of necessity as it pertains to the constitution of consciousness in general or, in particular, to a particular type of consciousness. Explication of such essential features in the constitution of the same effectively gives us in part, or in whole, a phenomenological description hence our phenomenological interest in this aspect. A second component arises through psychological considerations of the act of reflection and matters of judgment exercised therein. Kant, perhaps with some equivocation in this regard, treated transcendental reflection as a logically conducted exercise in which, in general terms of reference, products of cognitively entertained consciousness were examined in their genesis and the nature of their constitution in order to understand how those constructed products were put together or synthesized - discriminating whether those constructions were put together by the power of our sense faculties or arose through acts of will for the conceptual purposes of the understanding. It is my contention that in order to conduct such a state of transcendental reflection, and such an ability appears self-evident, higher terms of reference are necessary in order to achieve such discrimination and that such an argument applies across the board to all types of judgment.  Kant, it would seem; reading his appendix titled Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection (Arising From the Confusion of the Empirical with the Transcendental Employment of Understanding) in his Critique of Pure Reason, appears to logically conduct such an exercise (in accordance with a transcendental topic) although distinguishing transcendental reflection from logical reflection. He is correct if we perceive his efforts as retrospective in their treatment, however, transcendental reflection in its ongoing spontaneity must transcend the conceptually based location of the logical for the trans-logical, the dialectical and what I would believe would be in effect a limited synthetic a priori. Let me argue out some of the reasons for taking this position.
	With respect to transcendental reflection higher terms of reference than those that apply to the perceptual and the conceptual are called for in order to adequately appreciate the same. As a consequence judgment exercised in an act of
transcendental reflection cannot be reduced purely to conceptual and/or perceptual functions of consciousness hence its transcendental status as that transcending the cognitive, moreover, this status is applicable to all forms of judgment. Let me repeat this latter point in the following argument.
	Conceptual products of consciousness are enriched by perceptual instantiation although the former cannot be reduced to the latter, indeed, depend on each other and reflect each other like hand and glove. Now it is impossible for one perceptual image in its clarity of presentation to coincide with another through the inherent materiality of the perceptual-like image. On the other hand conceptual constructions can interact when treated as dynamic force-like vectors to produce an effective force-like vectorial resultant. It is this property that can allow the process of judgment to occur between two or more objects through their being encoded as conceptual structures. However, although judgment utilizes conceptual structures along vectorial-like lines it implies that judgment itself per se cannot be conceptual in its primary function hence the process of judgment must be trans-conceptual in its epistemological organization, i.e. transcendental. Put another way we could say that judgment is from, between or within concepts but cannot itself be conceptual in its primary function hence the trans-cognitive or transcendental nature of reflection and its processes of judgment.
	An accommodation of these two strands would cause us to restrict the meaning of the term transcendental to that part of the psyche that psychologically exercises judgment and then in terms of those features essential to such a type of process. However at this stage let us not put such a restriction into effect but merely be aware that these two senses are to co-exist.   

	At this point in time let me introduce an analogy that might illustrate this idea of the transcendental as I perceive it.
	Imagine a bank manager being informed by the police that they have been tipped off about a teller at the bank who is being used to put counterfeit currency into circulation for a ring of master counterfeiters. The police as yet do not know who this teller is and warn the manager that these counterfeit bills are so good that there was no quick way they could be distinguished from legal tender. Of course this worries the manager who doesn't want such a person on his staff nor for the bank he manages to be left with a valueless sum of counterfeit currency.
	As it was he has an inspiration and informs the police he will closely watch the tellers on close circuit television in his upstairs office and video record the entire day's transactions.
	During the first day of monitoring the tellers he perceives one systematically replacing bundles of notes from the cash drawer with equivalent amounts from his pockets. At the end of the day he informs the police and keeps this teller's collection for the day separate.
	Microscopic analysis and other forms of investigation eventually confirm what the manager suspected. He tells the detectives that he could not see that these bills were counterfeit but that he knew they were by the nature of the way the bank came to receive them.
	Transcendental reflection has analogical similarities to this illustration of mine. In the first place reflection necessitates higher terms of reference. Also, as in the story, mere looking was not going to be of an immediate assistance to us. In a like fashion if one was dreaming or hallucinating and saw an imaginary bank bill with vivid detail no act of perception by definition could discern its real status as a product of the imagination. On the other hand if one was also in a position to reflect upon one's processes of imagery and became aware it was constructed by the powers of the mind alone; that we able to perceive its true genesis or history, one would then be in a different position in regards to our attitude towards such realistic perceptual-like detail. Such appreciation conducted in depth would then no longer need to accept imagery at the level of its mere presentation or face value.

	This preamble of mine hopefully will throw some light on some comments made by Landgrebe in his collection of essays titled - The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, edited by Donn Welton. In the essay titled - Husserl's Departure From Cartesianism page 87  he states...

But these indications already make it clear that the distinction between psychological reflection and phenomenological reflection and analysis of consciousness, which is viewed as something foreign, indeed, superfluous by many phenomenologists, is of central importance for understanding Husserl's phenomenology.

 	This distinction between psychological and phenomenological reflection I believe approximately parallels this distinction I have just noted between the two senses of the transcendental that I have distinguished in that phenomenological reflection partially parallels logical-transcendental reflection  and psychological reflection parallels the act of judgment that permits the process of logical-transcendental reflection (in the Kantian sense) or any other type of judgment for that matter. This distinction is noted again on page 89, ibid. with the additional qualification that there is also the need for a theory of reflection. I have come to a similar understanding for just such a need through my own investigations into the nature of the reflective-process and its exercise of judgment.
	Basically the distinction is made between the essentially necessary a priori-like features of a particular type of consciousness in effectively a phenomenological mode and the actual psychological exercise of this phenomenological-orientated  reflection.
	An appreciation of these strands in the use of the term transcendental in its phenomenological context will help us come to understand what might be meant by a transcendental ethics or a basis for a transcendental ethics.
	Fink states according to Conversations with Husserl and Fink edited by Dorion Cairns, page 57, that Husserl surely believes in the legitimateness of the idea of a transcendental ethics whereas Fink himself did not hold with such a proposition or position. We may well ask ourselves what might be meant by this expression transcendental ethics. Having made a start in trying to understand the term transcendental in its phenomenological context let us continue.
	Firstly, realizing the process-like nature of the act of transcendental reflection we can make the following artificial distinction, namely, that all processes can be treated as processes with transformational content and that we can focus our attention on either the process aspect of the process or its content. In this manner we can investigate the process of transcendental reflection in its psychological manifestation a little more closely. But first let me draw your attention to another aspect that seems to be implicated in the concept of the phenomenological transcendental, namely, the covert resurrection of the synthetic a priori in this desire by Husserl, other phenomenologists, and most of western philosophy for
that matter, for the apodictic; absolutely certain and useful knowledge about the world.
	As a process of judgment cannot be directly reduced to conceptual functions nor constructions (neither conceptual processes nor conceptual content) it implies the truth determination of the act of judgment in its own spontaneity cannot be purely analytical. Equally as judgment cannot deal directly with perceptual images per se it follows that judgment in its spontaneity cannot be purely synthetic either. As the transcendental transcends equally the perceptual and the conceptual, both the synthetic and the analytic hence its synthetic a priori-like status given its correctly conducted exercise? Perhaps in this manner we can perceive the Humean insight into vividness and the Cartesian search for the clear and distinct along with the Kantian synthetic a priori? This implicit or explicit apodictic-like quality of the transcendental also seems to be a feature of the judgmental process qua judgmental process correctly conducted?
	Assuming a transcendental ego exercises transcendental reflection and a psychological ego exercises psychological reflection, for that would seem to be the consequence of this Husserlian machinery for double reflection, we could then ask ourselves in what relation do these two spheres of influence operate in regard to the other, hopefully, circumnavigating the dichotomies of a Cartesian-like dualism?
	It seems that in Ideas I Husserl reduced the tension between these two aspects of the phenomenological and the psychological by his observation that...

we are now no longer compelled to distinguish psychology as an inductive science of experience from phenomenology as an eidetic science, for there must be both a psychological and phenomenological factual science, as well as a psychological and a phenomenological eidetic science... (Landgrebe, Departures From Cartesianism, pg. 88.)

	In this matter it could be argued that Husserl has adopted; in the form of an accommodation some sort of process/content-like distinction whilst at the same time preserving the sense or orientation of the psychological as distinctive from the phenomenological along the same lines as I have explicated the complex sense of the transcendental in its phenomenological usage.
	On the subject of the apodictic little truth in the world appears to be of such invariance, indeed, in general the human condition is such that it needs such inconstancy in order for us to adapt to this world and expand and deepen our vision of the same, that we survive quite well without this pathological philosophical addiction for mathematical-like foundations. Put quite simply people are prepared to accept the totality of the world-experience and it various tastes of truth apparent in its various portions until events and conditions induce them to reconsider these judgments on a relatively individual basis. It is quite natural to accept things at face value unless they are generally out of harmony with this world as we come to know it. We find one teaspoon of seawater to be salty and that a second to be the same, etc. and that no one in their right mind would insist that we swallow all the oceans of this planet in order to prove or disprove that this general or essential fact that seawater is normally salty to the taste. It is reasonable to expect that a phenomenology of judgment is possible and that the presentation of truth-semblances would be accountable within the same. A thorough
phenomenological investigation of reflection and its internal powers of judgment would I believe indicate how the transcendental-phenomenological and the transcendental-psychological must cooperate in this regard and induce the semblance of a transcendental-apodicity. 
	Using my process/content distinction let me briefly outline what I believe are some of the distinctive features of the psychology of transcendental reflection considered phenomenologically and then relate some of these findings to the question of a transcendental basis for ethical reflection and judgment.

The Nature Of The Transcendental Process

	As a process transcendental reflection and all types of judgment for that matter would seem to demand...
	Firstly, an adequately prepared cognitive basis in order for an act of judgment to be entered into with an acceptable degree of productive fruition.
	Secondly, judgment as a type of psychological process appears to necessitate the interplay of thematized conceptual structures generally enriched directly or indirectly by perceptual processes.
	Thirdly, all matters of appreciation necessitate a relevant and prepared field of context as a background for the generation of meaning and meaningfulness in the entertainment of that under examination because significance cannot arise in a semantic vacuum.
	Fourthly, judgment itself must primarily transcend the cognitive in order to function as an act of judgment.
	Lastly, as judgment transcends the spacio-temporal psychological properties that attend upon the cognitive in its perceptuality and conceptuality it follows that the psychological experience of judgment as qua judgmental must also transcend cognitive forms of time and space. It is in its transformation of cognitive forms of experience that I believe we are presented with the experience of judgment as spontaneous and non-historical or ahistorical, e.g. in its manifestation as apodictic-like, existential or authentic, etc.

The Nature Of Transcendental Content

	On the other hand the phenomenologically orientated content of the transcendental appears to have for me the following features...
	Firstly, a dealing with essentials - the vectorial force-like resultants of conceptual reconstruction that cannot be reduced to conceptual components that generated that essential product.
	Secondly, judgments once delivered need not remain trans-conceptually structured but can be treated  conceptually as cognitive products although the same must not then be confused with the act of judgment itself.
	Thirdly, the fruits of reflection, namely judgments, can appear with varying degrees of aptness or harmony in their essential context and that this quality imparts to the judgment its sense of finality, or otherwise, however reconstruction of the essential context in which it was gestated will reconstitute that truth-value (although non-essential changes are effectively non-influential in this regard).

	An attempt to come to an understanding of what might be meant by Husserl's affirmation of a transcendental ethics is no easy task what with insufficient English translations in this field, developmental changes in his thought, etc. However an essential understanding of this project may well be open to us though an in depth examination of what is meant by the word transcendental in its Husserlian usage? This I have attempted to do and at this point would like to make a modest contribution in order to leave my proposals as provisional and that way leave them as propositions to be debated and by this means open up, rather than close, research into this subject.
	I opened this paper by my distinguishing two prominent strands of the logical and the psychological in the meaning of the term transcendental in its phenomenological usage adding a third sense at a later point, namely, the limited synthetic a priori inter-subjective judgmental aspect. As ethical judgment necessitates ethical reflection and assuming all types of judgment to be transcendentally conducted in their epistemological and psychological organization it follows that what applies to the judgmental in general applies to the ethical in particular. Let me illustrate this point by noting the following comments.
	Assuming a transcendental-like ethical reflection and judgment to be possible it would imply that the essential features of the ethical judgment would be the ability to determine whether an ethical-like response in an ethical context has the necessary degree of ethical aptness or harmony or for that matter authenticity for it to be so judged. An affirmation of a transcendental ethics would imply that in ethical reflection the individual as a human person was able through their humanity to arrive at an objective-like ethical decision preparatory to its instantiation as an ethical response and that retrospectively with the same essential information, contextual understanding, ethical consciousness and conscientiousness that decision would for that person or some other receive reconfirmation. Applying the three strands distinguished by myself in the complex phenomenological concept of the transcendental we could restate this equation along the following lines -
that transcendental objectivity can be discovered in an intersubjective mode in our third sense to the term transcendental and that this was psychologically entertainable in our second sense and open phenomenologically in our first sense to an investigation into its distinctive essential features.  

	A deeper investigation of this controversial field of transcendental ethics would I believe uncover a number of interesting features. Because ethical judgment is a type of judgment and aesthetical judgment from the transcendental point of view is also a type of judgmental process a number of correspondences could be drawn between these two fields of human endeavour, indeed, the very concept of harmony e.g. is equally shared by both. In Conversations with Husserl and Fink a small number of these themes appear to surface. Let me point out one of these insightful comments and leave it as a further opening for a very interesting debate on this subject.

The whole of life and the activity of self-constitution and the constitution of objects, is guided by a telos, is directed toward the achievement of consistency and harmony. The unethical is that which is contrary to this telos. In the individual, Ehrlichkeit (honesty) is a characteristic of this self-consistency. Acts of all sorts that I cannot affirm genuinely are unethical. This is applicable not merely to the individual but also to society. The harmony of monads is something to be striven towards. I must be able to affirm the acts of others as well as my own acts (pg. 35).

	I have indicated that Husserl was of the opinion that a transcendental ethics was a practical possibility. In my analysis of the term transcendental in its historical and phenomenological context I discerned three senses or strands that co-existed not necessarily consistently but which could be accommodated adequately given a sufficient investigation and theoretical underpinning. It was indicated that all forms of judgment necessitated processes of reflection and that the same functioned in the psychological organization of the psyche transcendental to cognitive functions of the perceptual and the conceptual. It was further argued that the spatio-temporal perception of the transcendental was also different from that which operates in cognitive terms of reference. Further it was argued that the experience of transcendental truth determination produced the semblance of an objectivity open to intersubjective assessment and reconfirmation. 
	It was indicated in a tentative and provisional form that apparent intersubjective ethical objectivity (in our third transcendental sense) was psychologically entertainable (in our second transcendental sense) and that its essential distinctiveness (in our first transcendental sense) as a judgment  in general and as a particular type of judgment (as the ethical) was open to a productive phenomenological investigation.
	In effect ethical consensus is possible in transcendental ethical consciousness in our interaction in the life-world between the world and other egos and ourselves as we stand in relation to these two directions of the objective and the intersubjective. That the essential features of such an interaction constitutes the phenomenological nature of the ethical equivalent to that of the transcendental as we defined it logically, psychologically and intersubjectively; or more correctly, inter-intersubjective-objectively.

	At this point let me lighten the intellectual heaviness of this concept of the transcendental by engaging your examination of a type of transcendental experience that naturally presents itself whenever we go to the theatre or the cinema. I always find it wonderful that a dramatic presentation artfully constructed and contrived can lure, and seemingly suspend, our powers of judgment putting in its place our taking at face value a world of fantasy fabricated and controlled by the actors and actresses. Our imagination is set alight, manipulated and made to accept appearances indicated or merely hinted at by the scene as it confronts us. In the unfolding of a sequence of events before us our fascination with the novelty of this vista of pretense lets us suspend our otherwise automatic rejection of such misrepresentation as a patent misrepresentation of reality. In the limbo of such suspension the artfulness of the deception gives a powerful reinforcement to the deceptive reality of the deception.
	The moment arrives when the hero or heroine is about to be dispatched by the villain of the piece and our sympathy reaches out to that tragic character as we identify with their misfortune as if it were our very own. We tensely anticipate the horrible event about to be unfolded in front of us, our pulse races a little faster and we find ourselves filled with dread. 
	Now, under the situation all things considered, a rather strange thing happens. Confronted by this vivid simulation of reality when the act of murder is about to happen the people in the audience just sit there. We don't find people hiding under their seats or running for the doors nor do we find some brave souls rushing onto the stage to prevent the gruesome act from being allowed to unfold. Yet, for all this inaction on our part, the simulation of reality is felt to be very real! Do we not feel an anxiety and fear along with a sympathy for this heroic person? It would seem that one part of the person entertains the situation at its face value and another part of the person sees through the situation for the simulation that it is. On one hand we have the illusion of reality and on the other the reality of the illusion.
	When we phenomenologically investigate this type of psychic situation I am sure we would come to some understanding of the transcendental element or dimension that constitutes a considerable proportion of our conscious existence. However this important facet will be misread if we treat the natural flow of our-living-in-the-world as a mere presentation on one level of unfoldment. In truth that transcendental aspect is that level of appreciation that ensures we stand back from the world as it presents itself and in the midst of such suspension takes upon itself such transcendental distance that allows itself to correctly apprehend the presentation of consciousness it finds the rest of our psychic self or selves immersed in. That part of us that intuitively appreciates the reality of the illusion for what it is, is I believe, that part of us that will also try to understand the beauty of the situation along with its ethical merit and the applicability of such judgment and responses that we should happen to enter into.
	The transcendental it would seem is that part of us that struggles in its cooperation with those cognitive processes that would allow us to formulate some idea of the way the world appears not merely tasting such presentations but digesting the very constitution of such produce. In other words it is that part of us that can metaphorically tap us on the shoulder to remind us that not every thing is always as it seems.

	Not long after writing this paper, and giving it a first reading, a number of other points surfaced. In dealing with the topic of a transcendental ethics it came to my attention that we could borrow and transform a number of other concepts developed by Husserl. Two concepts in particular could well be mentioned in this regard, namely, the concepts of intentionality and transcendental suspension. 
	No correct or insightful analysis of ethical interaction could be achieved without taking into account the intentionality of the situation. An ethical situation has not only its spatio-temporal context but also a horizon of ethical significance generated from the ethical and cultural environment of the participants. In so far as it is impossible for people to completely detach or dissociate themselves from such a milieu it is to that extent that we must also take it into account. Moreover, the directedness of ethical behaviour is its very life blood for surely behaviour that has no intentional direction can be neither ethical nor conscious.
	Ethical reflection in a philosophical mode is also parasitic on the pre-existence of value-judgments. However, the correct phenomenological approach would be to suspend our acceptance or rejection of such ethical evaluations and determine in the midst of the recreation of the ethical situation itself the ethicality of such previous ethical-like judgments as it finds itself coming to retrospectively reflect upon. Just as transcendental suspension neither rejects nor affirms the existential or ontical merit and validity of those reports or judgments it comes to phenomenologically investigate; taking them at face value, or as it finds them, so too in a phenomenological investigation of the ethical the same approach must be adopted. When this is done the essential characteristics of a particular ethical experience or a series of ethical experiences can be reductively examined, i.e. be subjected to a transcendental reduction. Such an approach, I believe, is in the very spirit of how the mind phenomenologically operates in a process of judgment. Without some form of suspension of the conceptual process and its content and a detached transcendental transcendence from the same the very process of judgment could not be entered into. As I have previously argued the transcendental operation of judgment necessitates a reflection upon conceptual material and thence its appreciation otherwise judgment would merely be the arbitrary construction or de-construction of concepts without any true feeling for their relative worth. In this light a transcendental ethics would promote the independence of an ethical situation and allow it to present its own case. In this manner even cultural prejudices that surround an ethical situation must stand up and defend themselves in our receptivity to the transcendentally ethical. Indeed it would appear that a transcendental suspension; and reduction, of the intentionality of an ethical situation would contribute to a scientific-like analysis of ethical interaction and that Husserl was perhaps right in entertaining an objective-intersubjective transcendental basis for ethics!

				Noël Tointon, Macquarie Uni., 17/5/87.   

Edited: 15.10.99