Internalism and externalism in transcendental phenomenology

AbstractIn this paper, I discuss an alternative conception of internalism and externalism for transcendental phenomenology. Recent debates of internalism and externalism in phenomenology start from familiar notions of internalism and externalism about content. This, I believe, is an unhappy match: internalism and externalism in common philosophical usage are perspectives on representational content; yet phenomenology deals with intentionality, which is not primarily representational. I argue that phenomenology is better served by understanding the distinction between internalism and externalism as a distinction about constitution. Drawing on Kant and Davidson for inspiration, I explore varieties of this alternative—transcendental—understanding of internalism and externalism in the classical phenomenological literature. I conclude with a suggestion on how this alternative conception of internalism and externalism could be put to use. As its founders noted, phenomenology occupies an uneasy place between idealism and realism because idealism and realism are metaphysical positions with distinctive ontological commitments; yet phenomenology purports to examine structures of subjectivity without committing to any specific ontology. To this day, the phenomenological literature is divided on whether this is a weakness or strength. Siding with the latter view, I suggest that transcendental internalism and transcendental externalism allow us to explain, and potentially to challenge, ontological commitments such as those of transcendental idealism and eliminative materialism.