An object (not just a "temporal" object, but
One way Husserl approaches this issue is to ask the Heraclitian question, "What is constant in the flux of time?"
In his description of consciousness, he finds at least four constancies:
The identity of the self-same MOMENT in time. Each time phase is individual, different and distinctive and remains so as it flows off into the past. Noon this Tuesday will remain that noon forever. We can never experience the same moment twice.
The CONTENT of each phase is also constant. The note I heard five minutes ago remains that note forever.
The temporal flux as a whole remains self-identical. Every experience is part of MY life-experience. It is all the same stream of consciousness. The stream of consciousness is itself a self-identical unity.
The melody I'm hearing now is the SAME melody I was hearing one minute ago. This sameness, this identity, is the identity of an experienced object. It is a different identity than the previous three, though it depends on them. I experience a melody, like any object, as one self-identical unity appearing to me through many temporal phases and contents within the one stream of consciousness.
Descriptively, I experience this note as a note of this melody. Husserl calls this OBJECTIFICATION, that is, the process of attributing the notes to the object (melody) of which they are apearances. Each partial experience is given as part of the perception of the whole, i.e., as an appearance of the whole (NOT as a representative). WHAT I perceive is an enduring entity, not an instant, it is structured. The flux builds up a unity of "what is meant;" it integrates "THAT WHICH IS PRESENT."
The capacity of consciousness to attribute momentary phases of the temporal flux to an enduring, self-identical object, is INTENTIONALITY.
In Husserl's own words,
"The thing is constituted in the flowing-off of its appearances, which are themselves constituted as immanent unities in the flux of primordial impressions and necessarily constituted one with the other. The appearing thing is constituted because unities of sensation and homogeneous apprehensions are constituted in the primordial flux; therefore there is always consciousness of something, exhibition [Darstellung] more precisely, presentations of something and, in the continuing succession, exhibition of the same." (Internal Time Consciousness, p.120.)