Abstract
This paper revisits the debate between Mach and Husserl on thought economy and argues that, to a considerable extent, they talked past each other, insofar as the latter rejected thought economy as a principle of theoretical rationality, whereas the former conceived of it as a principle of practical rationality. This is further supported by their correspondingly different readings of the so-called principle of the permanence of forms.
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Notes
- 1.
See “Ein Brief Edmund Husserls an Ernst Mach”, edited in 1965 by Joachim Thiele, Zeitschrift fuer philosophische Forschung, 19, 134–138.
- 2.
For a recent discussion of Mach’s doctrine of thought economy, see Eric Banks’ book Ernst Mach’s World Elements: A Study in Natural Philosophy, esp. chapter 8, and his article “The Philosophical Roots of Ernst Mach’s Economy of Thought”, Synthese, 139, 23–53.
- 3.
For the historical context of Husserl’s verificationism, see Kevin Mulligan’s article “Brentano’s Knowledge, Austrian Verificationisms, and Epistemic Accounts of Truth and Value”, The Monist, 100, 88--105. See also my Objectivity Sans Intelligibility: Hermann Weyl’s Symbolic Constructivism, PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, esp. chapter 2.
- 4.
The author acknowledges support by the PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2016-0531 project at the University of Bucharest, and by the MTA BTK “Morals and Science” Lendület Research Group.
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Toader, I.D. (2019). Talking Past Each Other: Mach and Husserl on Thought Economy. In: Stadler, F. (eds) Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04378-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04378-0_16
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