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6893
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Phenomenology aims to describe experience directly, rather than by its origins or causes [Husserl, by Mautner]
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Full Idea:
Phenomenology, in Husserl, is an attempt to describe our experience directly, as it is, separately from its origins and development, independently of the causal explanations that historians, sociologists or psychologists might give.
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From:
report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.421
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A reaction:
In this simple definition the concept sounds very like the modern popular use of the word 'deconstruction', though that is applied more commonly to cultural artifacts than to actual sense experience.
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21216
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Husserl says we have intellectual intuitions (of categories), as well as of the senses [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol]
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Full Idea:
The novelty of Husserl is to describe that we have intellectual intuitions, intuitions of categories as we have intuitions of sense objects.
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From:
report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900], II.VI.24) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 2.4.4
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A reaction:
This is 'intuitions' in Kant's sense, of something like direct apprehensions. This idea is an axiom of phenomenology, because all mental life must be bracketed, and not just the sense experience part.
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6616
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Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005])
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A reaction:
As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects.
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6615
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A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action.
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6614
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A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out.
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6612
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Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90)
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A reaction:
Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences.
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