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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1392
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If we split like amoeba, we would be two people, neither of them being us [Parfit]
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Full Idea:
In the case of the man who, like an amoeba, divides….we can suggest that he survives as two different people without implying that he is those people.
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From:
Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §1)
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A reaction:
Maybe an amoeba is a homogeneous substance for which splitting is insignificant, but when a person has certain parts that are totally crucial, splitting them is catastrophic, and quite different. I'm not sure that splitting a self would leave persons.
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1391
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Concern for our own lives isn't the source of belief in identity, it is the result of it [Parfit]
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Full Idea:
Egoism, and the fear not of near but of distant death, and the regret that so much of one's life should have gone by - these are not, I think, wholly natural or instinctive. They are strengthened by a false belief in stable identity.
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From:
Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §6)
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A reaction:
This raises some very nice questions, about the extent to which various aspects of self-concern are instinctive and natural, or culturally induced, and even totally misguided and false. I can worry about the distant death of my guinea pig, or my grandson.
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12709
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Motion is not absolute, but consists in relation [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
In reality motion is not something absolute, but consists in relation.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Motion [1677], A6.4.1968), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
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A reaction:
It is often thought that motion being relative was invented by Einstein, but Leibniz wholeheartedly embraced 'Galilean relativity', and refused to even consider any absolute concept of motion. Acceleration is a bit trickier than velocity.
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