selves as being for consciousness. In addition, this explication
of the world includes the determination, unfolding, spelling
out, and elucidation of objects and the consciousnesses of
them. These latter activities extend the descriptions to encom-
pass not just what is presented immediately but to include
what is also-meant, what is foundational to the present object,
what is represented, and so forth, along with the description of
the consciousnesses of these. In no case does this mean inter-
preting or causally explaining what is to be explicated. To
further develop how this project of explication can be carried
out I turn to Descartes, then to Husserl.⁶

Recall the piece of wax Descartes describes in Meditation
II. "Fresh from the hive it still has the sweetness of the honey it
contains, and the odour of the flowers"; its colour, figure, its
size are apparent; it is hard, cold, easily handled, and if you
strike it with the finger, it will emit a sound. If I take it towards
the fire, "what remains of its taste is exhaled, the smell evapo-
rates, the colour alters, the figure is destroyed, the size in-
creases, it becomes liquid, it heats, scarcely can one handle it,
and when one strikes it, no sound is emitted." Descartes then
asks, "Does the same wax remain after this change?"⁷Previous
to this, Descartes has reported his discovery that he knows
with certainty he is a thing that thinks, and "it is at least quite
certain that it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and
that I feel heat."⁸

Descartes' tconcern with the piece of wax comes from an
apparent dualism between what appears and what is. Or, to
put this dualism in terms of a problem, one which is also very
Humean, because I have access only to what appears, and that
like an onion when I peel off all the experienced or experience-
able layers of an object I am left with nothing, there seems to be
no transcending object or world. The picture I get from
Descartes is of a mind or consciousness able to directly experi-
ence the representations or appearances but not the real ob-
jects, or the world. This sealed domain of consciousness allows
no checking of appearances against the reality which they
purport to represent. I sense the various changes in the ap-

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