Husserlian Discovery

LOLZ

Wait...

Huh?

One's agency over one's bodily actions allows one to recognize oneself as an animate organism. One is capable of seeing oneself as an object-for-oneself, who is nonetheless subjectively also that very object. The ability to understand oneself as an embodied subjective being can then become a point of departure for recognizing an Other embodied subject (with agency over their own organismic body). Husserl's phenomenological approach to an Other involves discovery and verification. However, in verifying the Other as actually Other from me I have access only to the phenomenal and never to their mind, and so I must rely on behaviors. I must find these behaviors harmonious yet different from my own. They must be harmonious to my own because I must be able to recognize agency apart from simple movement (a self-aware being would presumably duck if a stone where thrown, whereas a chair would not). These behaviors cannot be -- spatio-temporally -- exactly like mine (I must have some element of surprise) otherwise I would be incapable of differentiating the Other from myself. Giggle.

-Philosophy Slut
Edmund Husserl: Cartesian Meditations; An Introduction to Phenomenology