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Instructions

Note: this assignment, due Feb. 17, is for students in Group I only.


Please respond to the following question in approximately two pages (double spaced). (Needless to say this should be your own original work.)


In §142 (p. 341), Husserl says that ``Of essential necessity [germanprinzipiell] ... to every truly existing object there corresponds the idea of a possible consciousness in which the object itself is seized upon originarily and therefore in a perfectly adequate way.'' This repeats the doctrine we saw already in the Logical Investigations, that the ``truth'' of a meaning-state refers to its possible fulfillment (by an intuition ``adequate'' to its meaning).

As Husserl goes on to point out at the beginning of §143, however (p. 342), this appears to contradict what he said earlier (in §138), namely that -- also ``of essential necessity'' -- ``something physically real [germanein Dingreales] ... appears only `inadequately''' (p. 331, p. 286 in the original). How does Husserl resolve this contradiction? What are we intending when regard, for example, a judgment about germanDinge (such as: ``A blackbird is flying outside the window'') as true?



Abe Stone 2011-02-15