Aspetti fenomenologici nella psicologia della forma: il problema interno-esterno

In Gestalt Psychology, the psychophysical problem emerges as the question of the relation between the physical and phenomenal worlds. This relationship can be traced back to Kantian epistemology and to the “forms” that phenomena assume through Kantian schematism, as an intermediate representation between sensibility and understanding. Kant develops a semantics of knowledge on three levels: ontic-referential, ontological-semantic, and synthetic-applicative (hermeneutic). This tri-partite semantics, however, becomes ambiguous in the transition from ontology to hermeneutics, since the logical form of phenomena must also include material and extra-logical aspects, which are raised to the status of form through the unity of consciousness. To overcome this difficulty, Ernst Mach eliminates the unity of con-sciousness as a formal instance and addresses form directly as a phenomenon of experience, inserting it into a pure theory of multiplicity in the logical-mathematical sense. For Gestalt psychologists, Mach’s correction to Kantianism remains insufficient, since it fails to distinguish between the different senses of re-ality that formal instances can assume. In this regard, they draw on the phenome-nological method, situating phenomenal forms within structures and models by analogy with physical forms and structures. Yet this kind of phenomenology ne-glects the subjective and intentional aspects involved in the constitution of experi-ence. For this reason, it remains anchored to the eidetic and objective dimension, thus never rising to the transcendental level.