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of experience is correlated to a particular experience. What is experienced is alwayscorrelated with how it is experienced by someone. Intentionality is the fundamental,invariant, transcendental condition for the possibility of experience. The methodologicaltechnique of bracketing, or the phenomenological reductions, are rules for directing ourattention toward experience. What we bracket is the temptation either to make judgmentsabout the ontological status of an object of experience, or to theorize and explain ratherthan describe experience. Instead, we are treating all experience simply as given in consciousnessas a phenomena, or a meaning presenting itself to a consciousness. Furthermore,the reductions are geared toward uncovering essences, or what is invariant inexperience. The goal of a phenomenological description is to explicate experience in termsof the intentional relationship to the world. Ricoeur’s conception of phenomenology ismuch like it is for Husserl: a descriptive analysis based on the doctrine of intentionality,and the methodological principles of bracketing and the eidetic reduction. As he explains,in phenomenology “our relation to the world becomes apparent as a result of reduction;in and through reduction every being comes to be described as a phenomenon, as appearance,thus as a meaning to be made explicit.” 1Implicit in the Husserlian conception of intentionality is the notion of evidence as aform of experience that satisfies or fulfills the conditions that guarantee certainty. Thephenomenological conception of evidence is not a set of truth criteria, but rather theexperiences that guarantee that an assertion is warranted. Various forms of evidence arepossible, depending on the type of object, or assertion, or validity claim in question. Inall cases, evidence involves the kind of experience that guarantees the reasonableness ofthe assertion, object, or claim. Such justification involves seeing proof with our own eyes.All proofs, arguments, deductions and inferences are derivative from what we perceiveabout the object or assertion. The validity basis for any form of evidence or argumentstems from our direct perception of the matter in question. Evidence is nothing more thana particular kind of experience.According to Husserl, the condition for objectivity is that the object of consciousnessmust be given in such a way that nothing is missing from the lived experience of thatobject. Truth is grounded in experience -- not the experience of the natural attitude, butexperience that has been phenomenologically reduced. Objectivity is given to a certainkind of consciousness in which the object corresponds with the act that intends it andbestows meaning upon it. Something is given to consciousness objectively, when theexperience satisfies or fulfills an intention. Thus, evidence is a kind of seeing and intuitingthat grasps things that present themselves in full clarity and evident intuition. The thingitself is given in itself to me, but not by means of an idea, a hypothesis, or an emptymeaning. An unverified judgment is a mere opinion that has not been confronted by howthings actually are. The meaning of such an intention is empty; it can only be fulfilled bya confrontation with the things that would satisfy the requirement of validity for thatparticular judgment. A fulfilled intention is the relevant, direct experience of whatever isrequired in order to have a clear grasp of the object in question. The evidence that wouldfill an intention would be different, for example, for a claim about a material object, aremembered event, an aesthetic judgment, the correct pronunciation of a word, and so on.The same object can be meant in an empty or filled way; the difference is, if the objectis meant in presence or meant in absence. For example, an empty, absent intention is aremembered name; the fulfilled, present intention is the experience of perceiving the namenext to a picture in the high school year book. A scientific hypothesis is an empty1Paul Ricoeur, “The Question of the Subject: The Challenge of Semiology,” in idem, The Conflictof Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don Ihde, trans. Willis Domingo et al. (Evanston, Ill.:Northwestern University Press, 1974), 247.84