§ 38. REFLEXIONS ON ACTS. IMMANENT AND TRANSCENDENT PERCEPTIONS We add the following: Living in the cogito we have not got the cogitatio consciously before us as intentional object; but it can at any time become this: to its essence belongs in principle the possibility of a “reflexive” directing of the mental glance towards itself naturally in the form of a new cogitatio and by way of a simple apprehension. In other words, every cogitatio can become the object of a so-called “inner perception”, and eventually the object of a reflexive valuation, an approval or disapproval, and so forth. The same holds good in correspondingly modified ways, not only of real acts in the sense of acts of perception (Aktimpressionen), but also of acts of which we are aware “in” fancy, “in” memory, or “in” empathy, when we understand and re-live the acts of others.
We can reflect “in” memory, empathy, and so forth, and in these various possible modifications make the acts we are “therein” aware of into objects of our apprehending and of the attitude-expressing acts which are grounded in the apprehension. We connect with the foregoing the distinction between transcendent and immanent perceptions and acts generally. We avoid talking about inner and outer perception as there are serious objections to this way of speaking. We give the following explanations:— Under acts immanently directed, or, to put it more generally, under intentional experiences immanently related, we include those acts which are essentially so constituted that their intentional objects, when these exist at all, belong to the same stream of experience as themselves.
We have an instance of this wherever an act is related to an act (a cogitatio to a cogitatio) of the same Ego, or likewise an act to a given sensible affect of the same Ego, and so forth. Consciousness and its object build up an individual unity purely set up through experiences. Intentional experiences for which this does not hold good are transcendently directed, as, for instance, all acts directed towards essences, or towards the intentional experiences of other Egos with other experience-streams; likewise all acts directed upon things, upon realities generally, as we have still to show. In the case of an immanently directed, or, more briefly, immanent (the so-called “inner”) perception, perception and perceived essentially constitute an unmediated unity, that of a single concrete cogitatio. The perceiving here so conceals its object in itself that it can be separated from it only through abstraction, and as something essentially incapable of subsisting alone. If the perceived is an intentional experience, as when we reflect upon some still lively conviction (expressed, it may be, in the form: I am convinced that—) we have a nexus of two intentional experiences, of which at least the superimposed one is dependent, and, moreover, not merely grounded in the deeper-lying, but at the same time intentionally directed towards it.
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas (Muirhead Library of Philosophy) (pp. 126-128). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.