Recent studies in developmental psychology have found evidence to suggest that there exists an innate system that accounts for the possibilities of early infant imitation and the existence of phantom limbs in cases of congenital absence of limbs. These results challenge traditional assumptions about the status and development of the body schema and body image, and about the nature of the translation process between perceptual experience and motor ability.

There is a difference between the direct and the indirect encountering of things. The emphasis in the history of phenomenology, as in the rest of modern philosophy, has been on direct encountering. But at least in industrialized societies, there is acquaintance with vastly more things through indirect encountering. A clarification of what encountering is in general will first be attempted, some traditional doctrines will be objected to, and then the difference between direct and indirect encountering will be explored. The goal (...) is a modest phenomenological investigation that invites the reader to verify, correct, and extend it. Terminology, genre, and the secondary emphasis on thetic or positional components of believing, valuing, and willing are central to the reflective analysis. (shrink)

In a number of papers, Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre have claimed that Husserl is an internalist. In this paper, it is argued that their interpretation is based on two questionable assumptions: (1) that Husserl's noema should be interpreted along Fregean lines, and (2) that Husserl's transcendental methodology commits him to some form of methodological solipsism. Both of these assumptions are criticized on the basis of the most recent Husserl-research. It is shown that Husserl's concept of noema can be interpreted (...) in a manner that makes his theory far more congenial to a certain type of externalism, but ultimately it is argued that his phenomenological analysis of intentionality entails such a fundamental rethinking of the very relation between subjectivity and world that it hardly makes sense to designate it as being either internalist or externalist. (shrink)

Please read the abstract in the section 08summary, of this document

© University of Pretoria 2001

Please cite as follows:

Botha, CF 2001, _ Heidegger : technology, truth and language _, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed _yymmdd_ < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd- 12192005-113542/ >

H153/th

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The aim of this article is to contribute to a philosophy of technics by proposing an answer to the following question: what is the nature of the human body as an element of technical systems? The argument focuses on an examination of the phenomenon of bodily technics. This examination is guided by the conviction that Pierre Bourdieu's social theory can be read as contributing significantly to an answer to the above question. However, since Bourdieu's project is not directly aimed at (...) enhancing our understanding of the technicity of the human body, a reading of Marcel Mauss's seminal essay on bodily technics is also discussed to set the stage for an examination of the technicity of the body and to justify the manner in which Bourdieu's theory is read here. Through a careful study of the key notions of habitus, field, practice, time and rule, Bourdieu's social theory is systematically presented and explored for its contribution to an understanding of the question raised in this article. In conclusion, a number of remarks are made on how the relation between Mauss and Bourdieu is to be understood and on the argumentative strength of Bourdieu's work. (shrink)