Category: Phenomenology
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Intentionality in Thomas and Husserl
My Serbian correspondent Milosz sent me a reference to an article in which we read: What attracted these Catholics to Husserl was his theory of intentionality—the notion that human consciousness is always consciousness “of” something. This appealed to Catholics because it appeared to open a way beyond the idealism of modern philosophy since Kant, which…
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Desert Light Draws Us into the Mystical
Today, the feast of St. Augustine, is a clear and dry day in the Valley of the Sun. A meditation, then, on light and the ascent to the Light. Just as the eyes are the most spiritual of the bodily organs, light is the most spiritual of physical phenomena. And there is no light like…
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A Problem in Husserl
Edmund Husserl has a beef with Descartes. In Cartesian Meditations, sec. 10, Husserl alleges that the Frenchman fails to make the transcendental turn (die transzendentale Wendung). He stops short at a little tag-end of the world (ein kleines Endchen der Welt), from which he then argues to get back what he had earlier doubted, including…
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Faith, Reason, and Edith Stein
Today, August 9th, is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy. She is better known to philosophers as the Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic church.…
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Of Veils and Visibility
I glance for a brief moment at a trio of women, two facially unveiled, the third thinly veiled. The face of the veiled one attracts my attention. The visibility of her face is helped, not hindered, by its being veiled. I generalize: it is not always and everywhere the case that veils are impediments to…
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Intentionality, Potentiality, and Dispositionality: Some Points of Analogy
The influential Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch.…
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Husserl, Knight of Reason
Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859. Ich muss meinen Weg gehen so sicher, so fest entschlossen und so ernst wie Duerers Ritter, Tod und Teufel. (Edmund Husserl, "Persoenliche Aufzeichnungen" ) "I must go my way as surely, as seriously, and as resolutely as the knight in Duerer's Knight, Death, and Devil." (tr.…
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Sartrean Consciousness as Nothing and as Something: Contradiction?
I put the following questions to Professor Butchvarov: 1. Are you troubled by the following apparent contradiction to which you are apparently committed, namely, that consciousness is both nothing and something? This (apparent) contradiction comes out clearly in your 1994 Midwest Studies in Philosophy paper "Direct Realism Without Materialism," p. 10. 2. You say above…
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Seeing versus Imagining a Ghost: Another Round with Hennessey
It is plain that 'sees' has many senses in English. Of these many senses, some are philosophically salient. Of the philosophical salient senses, two are paramount. Call the one 'existence-entailing.' (EE) Call the other 'existence-neutral.' (EN) On the one, 'sees' is a so-called verb of success. On the other, it isn't, which not to say…
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Seeing: Internalist and Externalist Perspectives
This is a second entry in response to Hennessey. The first is here. Consider again this aporetic tetrad: 1. If S sees x, then x exists 2. Seeing is an intentional state 3. Every intentional state is such that its intentional object is incomplete 4. Nothing that exists is incomplete. The limbs of the tetrad…
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The Epistemologically Primary Sense of ‘See’
Richard Hennessey questions the distinction between existentially loaded and existentially neutral senses of 'sees' and cognates. He quotes me as saying: 'Sees’ is often taken to be a so-called verb of success: if S sees x, then it follows that x exists. On this understanding of ‘sees’ one cannot see what doesn’t exist. Call this the…
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Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization
Peter and I discussed the following over Sunday breakfast. Suppose I want a table, but there is no existing table that I want: I want a table with special features that no existing table possesses. So I decide to build a table with these features. My planning involves imagining a table having certain properties. It…
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Phenomenon and Existence
E. C. writes: In the recent post Mary Neal’s Out of Body Experiences you state: "No experience, no matter how intense or unusual or protracted, conclusively proves the veridicality of its intentional object. Phenomenology alone won't get you to metaphysics." I have been attempting to reconstruct your reasoning here, and the following is the best…
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Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Transcendental Idealism
This entry extends and clarifies my post, Blackman Versus Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Modes of Existence. Preliminaries For Butchvarov, all consciousness is intentional. (There are no non-intentional consciousnesses.) And all intentionality is conscious intentionality. (There is no "physical intentionality" to use George Molnar's term.) So, for Butchvarov, 'consciousness' and 'intentionality' are equivalent terms. Consciousness, by…
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Blackman Versus Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Modes of Existence
(UPDATE: 23 March. Butchvarov sent me some comments via e-mail the main ones of which I insert in the text in red.) This post assumes familiarity with Panayot Butchvarov's "protometaphysics," as he calls it. But I will begin by sketching the distinction between objects and entities. Then I will present an objection that occurred to…