2024
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Monadologie und Intersubjektivität: Drei Konzeptionen der Einfühlung in Husserls PhänomenologieMatías Graffigna2024Diese Monographie präsentiert eine phänomenologische Monadologie, in der drei Ebenen der Monade unterschieden werden: das transzendentale Bewusstsein, die psychophysische Einheit und die Person. Dazu wird die Hauptthese vertreten, dass drei unterschiedliche Konzeptionen der Einfühlung in der Phänomenologie (Husserls) zu unterscheiden sind und zwar: die transzendentale, die natürliche und die alltägliche Einfühlung. Bei der transzendentalen Einfühlung handelt es sich um die Suche nach der letzten Evidenz unserer Erfahrung des alter ego, die den Solipsismuseinwand gegen die Phänomenologie überwinden sollte und ist hauptsächlich in der V. "Cartesische Meditation" (Hua 1) zu finden. Die natürliche Einfühlung betrifft dagegen die Akte, die wir in natürlicher Einstellung vollziehen, durch die mir ein Anderer auf jeder seiner monadischen Ebenen gegeben werden kann. Die alltägliche Einfühlung umfasst alle möglichen intentionalen Leistungen, durch die man Wissen über Andere in natürlicher Einstellung erwerben kann. Jeder dieser Konzeptionen wird ausführlich diskutiert.
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Sci-Fi’s Lessons in NeutralityMatías Graffigna2024Can we, and should we, ever really be neutral? In a new series, Zócalo explores the idea of neutrality—in politics, sports, gender, journalism, international law, and more. In this essay, philosopher Matías Graffigna explains how science fiction and fantasy can help us contemplate a wider range of possibilities.
2019
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Living in a Marxist Sci-Fi World: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Power of Science FictionMatías GraffignaJournal of Science Fiction and Philosophy, 2019The state of our current world has brought about a very active discussion concerning possible alternatives to our current society. In this article, I wish to consider Marx’s idea of communism as a possible alternative, by understanding it as an undetermined concept that only proposes a society without classes and private property. The thesis I will defend here is that we can meaningfully think about such an alternative through the means of Science Fiction literature. In particular, I will take Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (2006) as a case study. To clarify this relation between science fiction (SF) literature and communism as a particular case of an alternative society, I will introduce some concepts of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological theory. Thus, I shall argue that in SF we can presentify in bounded phantasy an alternative life-world, so furnishing with content the undetermined idea, and in doing so, strengthen the belief in the possibility of such an alternative society.
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Outlines for a Phenomenological Foundation for de Ronde’s Theory of Powers and PotentiaMatías Graffigna2019Starting with the claim that Quantum Mechanics (QM) is in need of a new interpretation that would allow us to understand the phenomena of this realm, I wish to analyse in this paper de Ronde’s theory of power and potentia from a phenomenological perspective. De Ronde’s claim is that the reason for the lack of success in the foundations of QM is due to the reluctance of both physicists and philosophers to explore the possibility of finding a new ontology, new concepts for the physical theory. De Ronde proposes such new ontology and the question I wish to address here, is whether his ontology is conceptually plausible. I will, for this purpose, recur to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. After presenting some of the basic concepts and methodological tools of this theory, I shall apply them to de Ronde’s ontology to determine the viability of his theory.
2016
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The Possibility of a New Metaphysics for Quantum Mechanics from Meinong’s Theory of ObjectsMatías Graffigna2016According to de Ronde it was Bohr’s interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (QM) which closed the possibility of understanding physical reality beyond the realm of the actual, so establishing the Orthodox Line of Research. In this sense, it is not the task of any physical theory to look beyond the language and metaphysics supposed by classical physics, in order to account for what QM describes. If one wishes to maintain a realist position (though not nave) regarding physical theories, one seems then to be trapped by an array of concepts that do not allow to understand the main principles involved in the most successful physical theory thus far, mainly: the quantum postulate, the principle of indetermination and the superposition principle. If de Ronde is right in proposing QM can only be completed as a physical theory by the introduction of ’new concepts’ that admit as real a domain beyond actuality, then a new ontology that goes beyond Aristotelian and Newtonian actualism is needed. It was already in the early 20th century that misunderstood philosopher Alexius von Meinong proposed a Theory of Objects that admits a domain of being beyond existence-actuality. Member of the so called ’School of Brentano’, Meinong’s concerns were oriented to provide an ontology of everything that can be thought of, and at the same time an intentionality theory of how objects are thought of. I wish to argue that in Meinong’s theory of objects we find the rudiments of the ontology and the intentionality theory we need to account for QM’s basic principles: mainly the possibility of predicating properties of non-entities, or in other words, the possibility of objectively describing a domain of what is, that is different from the domain of actual existence.