Husserl’s Phantom, According to Ullrich Melle and Filip Mattens of the Leuven Husserl-Archief

by Corry Shores
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Husserl’s phantom is the object resulting after the spatial features of a physical thing are abstracted from its “causal properties." These causal properties are not ones involving the causal chain of which the phantom is a part. Rather they are properties of the object which are observed when altering its physical circumstances, for example, the results of heating it. When we abstract merely the physical object's visual-spatial features away from these causal properties, we obtain a phantom. Some phantoms, however, are not derived from physical objects, for example rainbows and shadows.

*My sincerest thanks to Filip Mattens for correcting my original mistaken use of "phantasm" instead of "phantom."