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The phenomenology of negation

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Abstract

Negation is a fundamental component of communication (no-answers), cognition (logical negation), perception (different color), attitude (dislike), emotion (hatred), and volition (disagreement). Its many uses make it difficult to provide an integrated definition of the concept. The aim of this paper is to show that an integrated definition of the concept can be arrived at by means of a phenomenological method structuring it into three general essences labelled lack, otherness and obstruction.

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Notes

  1. For a review see Saury (2004).

  2. It seems to have been Piaget's view as well: Bärbel Inhelder states it as follows in her foreword to his last work (Piaget & Garcia, 1987): Le projet de Piaget était de mettre en évidence les origines mêmes de la logique en remontant jusqu'aux implications entre actions au niveau sensori-moteur (p.6).

  3. “As soon as an open horizon of like objects is present to consciousness as an horizon of presumptively actual and really possible objects, and as soon as it becomes intuitive as an open infinity, it gives itself as an infinitude of particularizations of the SAME universal” (Husserl 1948:328).

  4. The assessment procedure can be assumed to carry out a recognition operation where only a limited number of critical properties are checked, making the selection preliminary at this stage. Only after some object has been retained will a more precise comparison operation be performed between the found object and the expected one. The occurrence of mistake presupposes that the second operation is not carried our properly.

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  1. Department of Linguistics, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden

    Jean-Michel Saury

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  1. Jean-Michel Saury
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Correspondence to Jean-Michel Saury.

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Saury, JM. The phenomenology of negation. Phenom Cogn Sci 8, 245–260 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-008-9113-3

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