I can’t agree. Or it’s not so simple. From Moran we learn the following:
Husserl enrolled in the University of Leipzig that autumn, and for the next three semesters attended lectures in mathematics, physics and astronomy. He took philosophy lectures from the renowned philosopher and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), lectures that, at the time, made little impression. However, encouraged by another philosophy student, Thomas Masaryk (1850-1937), he began reading the British empiricists, especially Berkeley, who held a lifelong fascination for him.
Evidence has to be construed as correlated with givenness. Following the empirical tradition of Aristotle (as revived by Brentano), Berkeley and Hume, Husserl maintains that knowledge begins from experience: ‘living is … in a certain sense, an experiencing.’ Evidence is experience.
As we have seen, Husserl, who was both familiar with and deeply impressed by Berkeley (as we know from the Second Logical Investigation), always denied that he was advocating a subjective or Berkeleian idealism (see Ideen I §55), since such idealism involves an ‘absolutizing’ of the world that actually turns the sense of world into a ‘counter-sense’ (Widersinn). Similarly, he denied that he was advocating the ‘dissolution’ (Aufliisung) of the world to a stream of appearances (EP I; Hua 7: 246) or treating the world as a ‘fiction’. There really is a ‘being in itself’ (An-sich-sein) of the world and indeed of all objectivities. The point is to grasp how this being in itself arises; how does it get its sense (5: 152)? Husserl believes he has determined the correct sense of world: the world only has the sense of something that has received its ‘sense bestowal’ (Sinngebung) from consciousness. First reality is absolute consciousness. But there is no question of the world being ‘swallowed up’ (verschlingt; Krisis §53, p. 180; Hua 6: 183) in the subject. The next step is to grasp how the subject can both constitute itself and the world and also be a contingently occurring object within the world, among a plurality of other objectivations of transcendental egos. This transcendental intersubjectivity, for Husserl, is the deepest problem of transcendental philosophy.
Husserl saw himself as engaging in fundamental investigations of meaning or ‘sense investigations’ (Besinnungen) of a most radical kind; he was struggling at the very base of the structures of meaning, but the structures which gave rise to meaningful acts of cognition and those structures which belonged to the essence of meaning itself in all its forms. In this respect, i.e. in the area of sense-clarification, even the most rigorous mathematical science is not better placed than common experience (IP, p. 21; Hua 2: 25). Philosophical reflection is a new kind of reflection. It is not meant to complete the task of the sciences but to enter into radical thinking of an entirely different kind. Nevertheless, he took over many tendencies from previous philosophy and gave them his own peculiar stamp. He rejected metaphysical speculation and construction, and drew on the older British Empiricist tradition of Berkeley and Hume, and its revived form in Mill and Brentano, as well as the positivism of the French thinker Auguste Comte (1798-1858). He always admired the rationalists, especially Leibniz, but also saw deficiencies in their approach. He was a lifelong critic of all forms of philosophical irrationalism and anti-scientism. To that extent he was a natural ally of empiricism and logical positivism, whose basic positions he sought to reformulate in a coherent way. In Ideen I, he even calls himself a ‘positivist’: ‘If “positivism” is tantamount to an absolutely unprejudiced grounding of all sciences on the “positive,” that is to say, on what can be seized upon originaliter, then we are the genuine positivists’ (Ideen I, §20, p. 39; Hua 3/1: 38).
From another source, we get:
In order for me to be able to put myself into someone else’s shoes and simulate his (or her) perspective upon his surrounding spatio-temporal world, I cannot but assume that this world coincides with my own, at least to a large extent; although the aspects under which the other subject represents the world must be different, as they depend on his own egocentric viewpoint. Hence, I must presuppose that the spatio-temporal objects forming my own world exist independently of my subjective perspective and the particular experiences I perform; they must, in other words, be conceived of as part of an objective reality. This result fits in well with—in fact, it serves to explain—Husserl’s view, already stressed in Ideas, that perceptual objects are “transcendent” in that at any given moment they display an inexhaustive number of unperceived (and largely even unexpected) features, only some of which will become manifest—will be intuitively presented—in the further course of observation.
However, according to Husserl this does not mean that the objective world thus constituted in intersubjective experience is to be regarded as completely independent of the aspects under which we represent the world. For on his view another condition for the possibility of intersubjective experience is precisely the assumption that by and large the other subject structures the world into objects in the same style I myself do. It is for this reason that Husserl can be said to adhere to a version of both “realism” and “idealism” at the same time.
Compare this to J. S. Mill:
I see a piece of white paper on a table. I go into another room e. If the phenomenon always followed me, or if, when it did not follow me, I believed it to disappear, I should not believe it to be an external object. I should consider it as a phantom — a mere affection of my senses: I should not believe that there had been any Body there.
But, though I have ceased to see it, I am persuaded that the paper is still there. I no longer have the sensations which it gave me; but I believe that when I again place myself in the circumstances in which I had those sensations, that is, when I go again into the room, I shall again have them; and further, that there has been no intervening moment at which this would not have been the case.
Owing to this property of my mind, my conception of the world at any given instant consists, in only a small proportion, of present sensations. Of these I may at the time have none at all, and they are in any case a most insignificant portion of the whole which I apprehend. The conception I form of the world existing at any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I am feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation: namely, the whole of those which past observation tells me that I could, under any supposable circumstances, experience at this moment, together with an indefinite and illimitable multitude of others which though I do not know that I could, yet it is possible that I might, experience in circumstances not known to me. These various possibilities are the important thing to me in the world. My present sensations are generally of little importance, and are moreover fugitive: the possibilities, on the contrary, are permanent, which is the character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or Matter from our notion of sensation.
…
The whole set of sensations as possible, form a permanent background to any one or more of them that are, at a given moment, actual; and the possibilities are conceived as standing to the actual sensations in the relation of a cause to its effects, or of canvas to the figures painted on it, or of a root to the trunk, leaves, and flowers, or of a substratum to that which is spread over it, or, in transcendental language, of Matter to Form.
…
But though the sensations cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they are independent of our will, our presence, and everything which belongs to us. We find, too, that they belong as much to other human or sentient beings as to ourselves. We find other people grounding their expectations and conduct upon the same permanent possibilities on which we ground ours. But we do not find them experiencing the same actual sensations. Other people do not have our sensations exactly when and as we have them: but they have our possibilities of sensation; whatever indicates a present possibility of sensations to ourselves, indicates a present possibility of similar sensations to them, except so far as their organs of sensation may vary from the type of ours. This puts the final seal to our conception of the groups of possibilities as the fundamental reality in Nature. The permanent possibilities are common to us and to our fellow-creatures; the actual sensations are not. That which other people become aware of when, and on the same grounds, as I do, seems more real to me than that which they do not know of unless I tell them. The world of Possible Sensations succeeding one another according to laws, is as much in other beings as itis in me; it has therefore an existence outside me; it is an External World.
The problem with Mill is that he feels the need to use “sensation” to get himself understood, and “sensations” are traditionally understood as internal psychical entities. So Mill’s explication of what we mean by “the external world” is misappropriated as the claim that the world is made out of “mind stuff.” Ayer and Mach are more careful to emphasize the neutrality of “the given.” The term “sense-data,” as I read it, is a gesture at “present or immediate quality.” For instance, the red apple is present as an apple in its redness and roundness. No particular passing sensation-perception of the apple “is” the apple, but the “real apple” is not hidden behind all possible and actual sensations but is instead their open, ideal unity — their logical-temporal-interpersonal synthesis. This is how time is entangled with being. All presence includes absence. Each aspect occludes all others. The apple is never fully present. Instead only a “moment” ( aspect) of the apple is present. Time shows by hiding, or rather time is a showing that includes hiding.
Another source:
Husserlian metaphysics is indeed a form of phenomenalism, although we must be careful to distinguish Husserlian from Berkeleian or subjectivist phenomenalism. This is a distinction that is too quickly brushed aside by Philipse. Husserl, I will argue, did indeed hold that there is no reality “behind” or “beneath” the phenomenal stream (= ontological phenomenalism), yet this does not entail that all things exist “inside the mind” (be it of man, God, or transcendental subjectivity), as opposed to “out there” in the world. Rather, the phenomenal stream precedes the subject-object (or mind-world) dichotomy, and thus it is misleading to categorize it without qualification as subjective (or mental or immanent). It is precisely this inside-outside dichotomy that transcendental phenomenology attempts to undercut by positing the ontological primacy of the phenomenal stream.
…
Husserl was an ontological phenomenalist, but of a more radical type than Berkeley,
in that he did not situate phenomenality inside the mind, but rather defined the
“mind” or “subjectivity” as a property of phenomenality (section 4). It is not the
mind, properly speaking, that is ontologically ultimate in Husserl, but phenomenality
itself. Thus, ontological phenomenalism, in the sense that I will here define and
ascribe to Husserl, is committed only to the thesis that there is no other reality than
phenomenal reality (by contrast with epistemological phenomenalism, which is
committed to the weaker, skeptical claim that we can only ever know anything about
phenomenal reality, as opposed to a trans-phenomenal or noumenal reality).
…
The main reason Husserl rejects phenomenalism is that he associates the term with thinkers such as Berkeley, Hume, and Mach, all three the heirs of Locke’s “data- sensualism.” As Zahavi rightly points out, “Husserl vehemently criticizes the view that the intentional object can be reduced to a complex of sensations” (2003, 69; see also Zahavi 2017, 37-41 and 99-100; see Husserl LI V, §7 (1 st edition) and 2014, §55; I will return to this claim shortly). However, as stated earlier, it is entirely possible to conceive the phenomenal in a non-sensualist manner. Ontological phenomenalism is committed only to the assertion that being and phenomenon are identical, and there is no doubt that Husserl held this thesis, which is in fact nothing other than phenomenology’s fundamental axiom, as Fink stated above. Indeed, if the equivalence between being and phenomenality did not hold, there would exist a region of being outside of the reach of phenomenology, which could thus no longer aspire to be a “universal science.” As to whether phenomenality can ultimately be reduced to complexes of atomized sensations that combine according to associative laws, as the sensualists believe, or if it rather has an irreducibly hylomorphic nature, being animated through and through by something like an instinctive intentionality (Triebintentionalität), as the post-genetic-turn Husserl will effectively assert (Bégout 2006; Bower 2015), this is a secondary matter that is left undecided by the core phenomenalist thesis. Phenomenalism is thus not necessarily a sensualism, but it is necessarily an immaterialism in the Berkeleian sense, to the extent that it is defined principally by its opposition to the idea of an independent substrate lying “behind” or “beneath” the phenomenal. If Husserl explicitly rejects the first, sensualist thesis by Berkeley, nothing opposes him to the second, immaterialist one. Far from it, the post- transcendental-turn Husserl, as we have seen, explicitly denied the existence of a trans-phenomenal being, thus agreeing with Berkeley that the concept of a Ding an sich is pure nonsense (unless it is reinterpreted as an Idea in the Kantian sense).
Finally a passage from a Husserl manuscript, quoted in the same paper:
Consciousness, and this is the fundamental error constituting the ultimate error of
psychologism (an error to which not only all empiricists succumb but all rationalists
as well), is not a psychical experience, not a network of psychical experiences, not
a thing, not an appendage (state, action) to a natural object. Who will save us from
the reification of consciousness? He would be the saviour of philosophy, indeed,
the creator of philosophy.