What is Being?
Why *is* there not nothing is like saying "why is there something?"
It's a fundamental question, and presupposes existence by the very act of questioning. The "is" in this sentence is apparently referring to being, but being is presupposed when using the "is." So it's almost like asking "What is 'is-ness'?"
The question also has something it's asking about, and therefore "knows" about to a degree beforehand -- so we must know something about "being" before asking about it. Yet being is not an object, not a being.
This is all similar to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," in a sense, although perhaps inverted -- and is somewhat reminiscent of Kant in that the subjectivity of the subject has to be taken into account here; i.e., we're the ones who are conscious, thinking, perceiving, and questioning. We are ourselves beings while we're questioning beings (and being in general).
Heidegger is the person to read on matters of being, in my view (he later distances himself from the word "ontology"). Whatever else you can say about him, his entire corpus is centered on this question.
What I gather from his analysis, in a nutshell, is a very simple point: in the West, we've traditionally interpreted being in terms of presence.
Thus the "metaphysics of presence" is our philosophical ancestry, with several major variations: phusis, eidos, ousia, substance, God, nature, matter, energy.
The interpretation of beings in terms of presence occurs in a certain mode of the human being -- the "present at hand," as Heidegger calls it, which is a quite derivative or "privative" mode of our existence, because we're coping, habitual beings engaged in the world through our "ready-to-hand" activity, mostly unconsciously when looked at it in terms of average everyday behavior. To see something as an object, present before us, with properties is not how we usually see things -- unless things break down or we're in a contemplative mood.
This interpretation of being as presence also presupposes time. (The present moment.)
But time itself has been interpreted as a present-at-hand fact, beginning with Aristotle and continuing up to Kant. Kant gives time an important place in his philosophy (along with space), "bringing it back into the subject again," but still operates within the framework that Aristotle established. Time gets interpreted as a present-at-hand "now" point, with the past as "no longer now" and the future as "not yet now," with common examples being a number line or a clock pointer.
When looking at average human behavior in a phenomenological way (meaning a focus on what's usually hidden, concealed, covered over, or absent), we can begin to develop a different understanding of time from the traditional one -- one closer to average experience and less about quantification. Heidegger calls this "temporality," but I like "existential" or "experiential" time, related to the mostly unconscious (absent, concealed), habitual activities of daily life: things like skills, projection, anticipation, concern, flow, memory. What we call the future, the past, and the present all seem to occur simultaneously rather than in distinct places or as distinct quantities. Furthermore, there's no reason to believe they're occurring simultaneously simply in the "now." The future holds the present and past; the past holds the future and present; the present holds the past and future. There is a lot of privileging about the "present moment," in Buddhism and elsewhere, but is that not simply a prejudice? Are we not living the future as we speak? It's the future even if taken in terms of the number line -- this "was" the future in 1991 -- the deep future (consider Terminator II, a favorite of mine at the time -- the future scenes were dated to 2029, which we're rapidly approaching; or, a better example, Orwell's 1984.
So the interpretation of being as presence presupposes temporality, which we are. Like the awareness of being and the questioning of being, the interpretation of being also presupposes us, human beings.
Since we're the ones questioning and interpreting in the first place, we're the beings which "disclose" being. We're the beings for which being is a concern or an "issue." If it's true that we are embodied time, then we cannot help but interpret beings this way -- much in the same way we cannot help but perceive the phenomena of the world through the forms of space and time in Kantian philosophy.
The trouble in the West is really that of thinking. When we go to think about being, we (Westerners) have consistently done so as presence. But this way of thinking has led, through many generations, to an objectification of the world -- eventually taken or seen as "nature," as matter in motion -- and so to materialism, scientism, technological nihilism and, in political and economic affairs, to capitalism, which I argue is also an outgrowth of this objectification.
(As an aside, a digression: I think the Buddhists have interesting things to say about change and time that are much different than the West for the simple reason that they take present-at-hand thought, and thinking generally, as itself an object of awareness, and so the future and past become almost illusory to them -- thus, what is instead given privilege is change (anicca), especially our reactions to continuously changing pleasant and unpleasant sensations, the craving/aversion that coincides with them, and how best to cultivate it. Unlike the Buddhists, however, Heidegger tends to emphasize more the importance of the future more so than the present, calling human beings generally future-oriented beings.)
It's a fundamental question, and presupposes existence by the very act of questioning. The "is" in this sentence is apparently referring to being, but being is presupposed when using the "is." So it's almost like asking "What is 'is-ness'?"
The question also has something it's asking about, and therefore "knows" about to a degree beforehand -- so we must know something about "being" before asking about it. Yet being is not an object, not a being.
This is all similar to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," in a sense, although perhaps inverted -- and is somewhat reminiscent of Kant in that the subjectivity of the subject has to be taken into account here; i.e., we're the ones who are conscious, thinking, perceiving, and questioning. We are ourselves beings while we're questioning beings (and being in general).
Heidegger is the person to read on matters of being, in my view (he later distances himself from the word "ontology"). Whatever else you can say about him, his entire corpus is centered on this question.
What I gather from his analysis, in a nutshell, is a very simple point: in the West, we've traditionally interpreted being in terms of presence.
Thus the "metaphysics of presence" is our philosophical ancestry, with several major variations: phusis, eidos, ousia, substance, God, nature, matter, energy.
The interpretation of beings in terms of presence occurs in a certain mode of the human being -- the "present at hand," as Heidegger calls it, which is a quite derivative or "privative" mode of our existence, because we're coping, habitual beings engaged in the world through our "ready-to-hand" activity, mostly unconsciously when looked at it in terms of average everyday behavior. To see something as an object, present before us, with properties is not how we usually see things -- unless things break down or we're in a contemplative mood.
This interpretation of being as presence also presupposes time. (The present moment.)
But time itself has been interpreted as a present-at-hand fact, beginning with Aristotle and continuing up to Kant. Kant gives time an important place in his philosophy (along with space), "bringing it back into the subject again," but still operates within the framework that Aristotle established. Time gets interpreted as a present-at-hand "now" point, with the past as "no longer now" and the future as "not yet now," with common examples being a number line or a clock pointer.
When looking at average human behavior in a phenomenological way (meaning a focus on what's usually hidden, concealed, covered over, or absent), we can begin to develop a different understanding of time from the traditional one -- one closer to average experience and less about quantification. Heidegger calls this "temporality," but I like "existential" or "experiential" time, related to the mostly unconscious (absent, concealed), habitual activities of daily life: things like skills, projection, anticipation, concern, flow, memory. What we call the future, the past, and the present all seem to occur simultaneously rather than in distinct places or as distinct quantities. Furthermore, there's no reason to believe they're occurring simultaneously simply in the "now." The future holds the present and past; the past holds the future and present; the present holds the past and future. There is a lot of privileging about the "present moment," in Buddhism and elsewhere, but is that not simply a prejudice? Are we not living the future as we speak? It's the future even if taken in terms of the number line -- this "was" the future in 1991 -- the deep future (consider Terminator II, a favorite of mine at the time -- the future scenes were dated to 2029, which we're rapidly approaching; or, a better example, Orwell's 1984.
So the interpretation of being as presence presupposes temporality, which we are. Like the awareness of being and the questioning of being, the interpretation of being also presupposes us, human beings.
Since we're the ones questioning and interpreting in the first place, we're the beings which "disclose" being. We're the beings for which being is a concern or an "issue." If it's true that we are embodied time, then we cannot help but interpret beings this way -- much in the same way we cannot help but perceive the phenomena of the world through the forms of space and time in Kantian philosophy.
The trouble in the West is really that of thinking. When we go to think about being, we (Westerners) have consistently done so as presence. But this way of thinking has led, through many generations, to an objectification of the world -- eventually taken or seen as "nature," as matter in motion -- and so to materialism, scientism, technological nihilism and, in political and economic affairs, to capitalism, which I argue is also an outgrowth of this objectification.
(As an aside, a digression: I think the Buddhists have interesting things to say about change and time that are much different than the West for the simple reason that they take present-at-hand thought, and thinking generally, as itself an object of awareness, and so the future and past become almost illusory to them -- thus, what is instead given privilege is change (anicca), especially our reactions to continuously changing pleasant and unpleasant sensations, the craving/aversion that coincides with them, and how best to cultivate it. Unlike the Buddhists, however, Heidegger tends to emphasize more the importance of the future more so than the present, calling human beings generally future-oriented beings.)
Comments (895)
Nothing but an empty name. A transcendental, or categorical, placeholder. The shadowing of shadows ...
"[s]Being[/s] of beings"?
Void of (swirling, swerving) atoms. Nameless dao of the ten thousand things. (Unmanifest) natura naturans of (manifest) natura naturata. Brahman of m?y?. Etc.
"The meaning of [s]being[/s]?"
(Look at how "being" is used in any language-game.)
Here are two puzzles, from Frege and Russell, that must be explained if one is to treating "exists" as a property.
1. What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that exists? The difference between a red apple and a green apple, or a sweet apple and a sour apple, is pretty clear. But explaining clearly what is added to an apple by existing...?
2. It's not difficult to understand an apple that is not sweet, or an apple that is not red - but an apple that does not exist? What is it?
This is why existence is not treated as a predicate in logic. That is, there is no simple way to parse. "Xtrix exists".
This goes for the sentence at the beginning of the puzzlement expressed in the OP: "There is something" has no straightforward translation in logic. Now that of course doesn't mean one cannot use it, but if you are going to use it you have some obligation to be clear about what it is you are doing with it.
One way to picture this that saying that something exists is not yet doing anything; it's akin to putting the pieces on the board in preparation for playing the game, and so not a part of the game as such.
We can add some more complexity to the discussion by noting the presumption involved in equating "being" and "existing". The etymology of "be" is complex, "It is the most irregular verb in Modern English and the most common"*; while "exist" and "exit" are standing out and stepping out, respectively. So take care, lest you exit instead of exist.
The actual apple.
Quoting Banno
It is an idea about a non-existing apple. What else could it be?
Quoting Banno
? Xtrix = there exists Xtrix
? Xtrix = there does not exist Xtrix
But "what is being?" is best answered with "Yes, being is what is". An alternative and even more informative response would be "Being is, and nothing happens." That is to say that being refers to the static state at a moment in time, and nothing to the continuous flow and transformation that being undergoes from one moment to the next.
[quote= His Bobness]Too much of nothing
Can make a man ill at ease
One man's temper might rise
While another man's temper might freeze
In the day of confession
We cannot mock a soul
Oh, when there's too much of nothing
No one has control.[/quote]
In the beginning there is existence. Existence is not a property of anything, it simply is, eternally. It is what is. Existence has properties. Evolved things are properties of existence. With Russell's apple for example, taste, colour etc. are properties of existence. When these properties form a set we call that set 'apple'. Existence is the substance of the set.
Existence evolves properties and becomes being, life (if we define being as an evolution over and above primordial existence.)
Existence is God and God evolves and becomes being, life. This is creation. (we need to make a clear distinction between primordial existence and being)
Great question, Banno. My tentative response has me taking recourse to that rascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I'm supposing that when we claim something exists, we're withdrawing credit from the Bank of The Social Contract. Dubious though they be, socially sanctioned claims of an independent, objectively existing reality are needed (by most of us) in order to secure a functional society. Consensus about what's really "out there" is a necessary (if fictional) binding agent for social organization and culture
Looks like I'll be paying additional visits to that neologizing esoteric, the ever fearsome Heidegger.
Better yet , from a Heideggerian perspective , asking ‘what is being’ is asking ‘what is the condition of possibility of ‘use’? Whist is it that is structurally common to any and all varieties of use? Heidegger says it is the structure of temporality.
In "What is Metaphysics" he says it's what we experience when we contemplate the void. I guess it's a matter of which "Being" we're talking about.
I think the title is not very clear: "Being" with a capital raises questioning and ambiguity. E.g. "What does 'being' mean?" would be something more concrete and could be easier discussed. So, I will stick to your first clear-cut (to me) question:
Quoting Xtrix
This is a quite interesting question and subject, and certainly debatable in this place!
I would describe "is-ness" as apparency of existence. It refers to something that apparently exists as true or fact. It persists in time and we agree upon that it exists, i.e. it is real for us.
Two examples:
1) When I say "My name is Alkis", I state that the name "Alkis" exists and this is how I am called. Usually such a statement is not disputed and we expect that the other person agrees! :smile:
2) If I say "This tree is big", I state that 1) a tree exists somewhere near and that 2) I consider a fact (true) that it is big. However, either of these two premises can be disputed: one may disagree that it is a "tree" (he would call it a "plant") and/or that it is "big" (he may found it "medium-size" or even "small").
We can see that personal agreement (and thus reality) plays a key role in what is and what is not.
(The description of the topic is quite long, and I don’t want to get involved more in it. Yet, I believe that my "selective" reply covers the subject well ...)
In other words "The beings are the frames and Being is the reel" :smirk: (and "frames moving" corresponds to (Einstein's) "persistent illusion" of (Newton's) time).
Whatever else it may be, you are going to get stuck on the word "is" and try to find some "essence" or a common attribute common to the word which may not (dare I say it?) exist. "Is" can only make sense in relation to something else. So what is "is-ness" cannot be answered unless it's connected with something else.
The problem comes when you say what is it that you are saying "is". For as soon as you say this is a table or this is a river, you've shifted from the word "is" to a concept "table", "river". But you aren't going to find something common to "is" by saying that a table is or a river is.
As one would expect, the ‘void’ means something different for Heidegger than what normal usage would suggest. It links to his writings on the ‘nothing’ and primordial anxiety. Taking a cue from Nietzsche, nothing is not to be thought in classical or dialectical
terms as a negation or lack but as productive, as no-thing. Btw, which translation do you have? Mine only mentions void once.
I'm not sure why you call attention to this since that's made extremely explicit in that essay. :chin:
I called attention to it because you wrote “I guess it's a matter of which "Being" we're talking about.”
I may have misinterpreted you, but I thought you were referring to my previous comment on Being as condition of possibility for understanding ‘use’.
Did you instead mean to contrast Heidegger’s notion of Being with that of other philosophers?
Excellent point. Heidegger argues that the copula ‘is’ has been treated since Plato and Aristotle as a neutral connector binding a subject and predicate together.
Heidegger says that when we say S is P , we are seeing something AS something within a wider context of
pragmatic relevance. Making sense of something is an act that always has the ‘as’ structure.
“The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act.” (Heidegger 2010b)
Quoting Manuel
Heidegger addresses this by making the problem the assumption objectively present objects that the ‘is’ simply links together.
“ If the phenomenon of the "as" is covered over and above all veiled in its existential origin from the
hermeneutical "as," Aristotle's phenomenological point of departure disintegrates to the analysis of
logos in an external "theory of judgment," according to which judgment is a binding or separating of
representations and concepts. Thus binding and separating can be further formalized to mean a
"relating." Logistically, the judgment is dissolved into a system of "coordinations," it becomes the
object of "calculation," but not a theme of ontological interpretation.""If the kind of being of the terms
of the relation is understood without differentiation as merely objectively present things, then the
relation shows itself as the objectively present conformity of two objectively present things.”
:100: Quine says "to be is the value of a bounded variable", no? Makes pragmatic sense. Besides, "what is" is a sentence fragment, a cipher (or koan), that does not say anything. "Table is" and "river is", for instances, are oracular noises mistaken by Heideggerasts for reflective articulations (i.e. more charlatanry than mere sophistry).
Maybe you could explain what the structure of temporality has to do with contemplating Nothing?
Seems like that would be more about Becoming than Being.
Being and becoming are the same thing for Heidegger. He doesn’t begin with objectively present objects and then set them into motion or transition. He argues that this is the traditional idea of time we inherited from Aristotle. Instead he begins from change and derives. presence from it.
“What does it mean to be "in time"? This "being-in-time" is very familiar to us from the way it is represented in natural science. In natural science all processes of nature are calculated as processes which happen "in time." Everyday common sense also finds processes and things enduring "in time," persisting and disappearing "in time." When we talk about "being-in-time," everything depends on the interpretation of this "in." In order to see this more clearly, we ask simply if the glass on the table in front of me is in time or not. In any case, the glass is already present-at-hand and remains there even when I do not look at it. How long it has been there and how long it will remain are of no importance. If it is already present-at-hand and remains so in the future, then that means that it continues through a certain time and thus is "in" it. Any kind of
continuation obviously has to do with time.”(Zollikon)
Heidegger shows how the common notion of time dates back to Aristotle’s derivation of time
from motion.
“ The thoughts of motion, continuity, extension—and in the case of change of place, place—are
interwoven with the experience of time.”(basic problems of phenomenology)
“ So far as time is kineseos ti, something connected with motion, this means that in thinking
time, motion or rest is always thought along with it. In Aristotelian language, time follows, is in succession to, motion.”
“Because the now is transition it always measures a from-to, it measures a how-long, a duration.”
Time is making present according to Aristotle, (the present at hand) and in so doing is a counting
of time as now, now, now.
“And thus time shows itself for the vulgar understanding as a succession of constantly "objectively present" nows that pass away and arrive at the same time. Time is understood as a sequence, as the "flux" of nows, as the "course of time.”(Being and
Time)
The past, present and future don’t operate for Heidegger as sequential modes which mark distinct states of objects. They interpenetrate each other so completely that they together form a single unitary event of occurrence.
“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is
in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.”
But you start by saying he saw no difference between Becoming and Being, then you say he derived one from the other (as Hegel did.). Is that a contradiction?
Heraclitus is supposed to be the original philosopher of Becoming. Parmenides is the Being guy. Interestingly, we don't know if Parmenides was answering Heraclitus, or if it was the other way around.
One of Parmenides' proofs of the One has to do with conundrums related to the progression from present to future. I'm not sure how Aristotle was different. I'm sure Heidegger would have known, but this:
Quoting Joshs
Is the way Parmenides thought about time. He just thought time is impossible.
Quoting Joshs
Then he agreed with Parmenides. That's weird.
Quoting Joshs
So this is fine (although heavily mystical), but what does it have to do with Nothing?
You’ll have to let me know how this differs from Hegel, but when I say that Heidegger derives Being from Becoming , what I mean is that he has to somehow explain where Western philosophy and science got the idea that there is such a thing as static being or ‘is ness’ , given that becoming is fundamental. His answer is that the concept of objective presence is a distorting abstraction, a leveling down or forgetting of the larger totality of relevance that gives sense to such notions.
In the following quote, you can see Heidegger trying to explain how such ideas as external sensation are generated as ‘artificial’ modifications of the ‘as’ structure of becoming:
“Acts of directly taking something, having something, dealing with it “as something,” are so original that trying to understand anything without employing the “as” requires (if it's possible at all) a peculiar inversion of the natural order. Understanding something without the “as”—in a pure sensation, for example—can be carried out only “reductively,” by “pulling back” from an as-structured experience. And we must say: far from being primordial, we have to designate it as an artificially worked-up act. Most important, such an experience is per se possible only as the privation of an as-structured experience. It occurs only within an as-structured experience and by prescinding from the “as”— which is the same as admitting that as-structured experience is primary, since it is what one must first of all prescind from."(Logic,The Question of Truth)
Quoting frank
It may sound mystical only because it’s so alien to the conventional thinking. To be honest , the traditional notion of time as sequence of nows sounds mystical
to me. Eventually , a reformed understanding of time will offer a new grounding for empirical science. There are already many efforts to move on from the old idea of time within cognitive science.
The nothing for Heidegger is the uncanniness of becoming.
“Uncanniness is the fundamental kind of being-in-the-world, although it is covered over in everydayness. Tranquillized, familiar being-in-the-world is a mode of the uncanniness of Dasein, not the other way around. Not-being-at-home must be conceived existentially and ontologically as the more primordial phenomenon." "The publicness of the they suppresses everything unfamiliar"
"Even as covered over, the familiar is a mode of the unfamiliar
“In order to continue to be recognizable and familiar to itself, experience must at every moment come back to itself otherwise. It must continue to be the same
differently. In each occurrence, Dasein is thrown into a world, is never at home with itself, is absent to itself and thus always uncanny to itself. It is this structure of uncanniness that Heidegger claims we uncover via primordial anxiety.
“Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence...Man is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence. Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment-being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing.”(Heidegger 1995)
But didn't Heidegger do a lecture on Parmenides? He must have known his reasoning. If Parmenides' reasons weren't persuasive enough, Zeno slam dunked it for centuries of philosophy. Christianity was built on that foundation. I'm just saying, people did give the topic some sober thought, whether they were right, or half-right, or totally wrong.
Quoting Joshs
It's always a pleasure to read your posts because you give examples. Thank you.
Yep, which is why with Heidegger one has to be a bit careful. He can be interpreted many ways, but sometimes some who read him pose questions that can have no answer, simply because the question isn't correctly articulated. One can, of course, form sentences that look like questions such as "what is here?" or "does being have being?", but that can lead you to word puzzles more than to phenomenology.
:up:
I think Dreyfus' Heidegger was interesting, but others just up his obscurity to the max and don't go far.
I agree, traditional pragmatism can help for a lot of these issues.
Quoting Manuel
Yes, for example:
Quoting Joshs
Why "now and then" but not "here and there"? After all, whatever being is, if it is structured by time it is also and just as much structured by location... Why the Heideggerian preoccupation with time?
Manuel has the right diagnosis, I think. Heidegger's approach lacks clarity. It doesn't help.
That your sentence is ill-formed is the point. You would populate the world with non-existent apples.
Quoting Banno
You mean location as in the localization of points in an objective geometry of space-time? Because that’s an idealization that desperately needs to be deconstructed.
That’s a good description of the approach to Being and ‘is-ness’ that Heidegger is critiquing.
“…what can be shown to have the character of constantly remaining, as remanens capax mutationem, constitutes the true being of beings which can be experienced in the world. What enduringly remains truly is. This is the sort of thing that mathematics knows. What mathematics makes accessible in beings constitutes their being.”
Heidegger explains that the fundamentally undiscussed ontological foundations of empirical science since Descartes are based on his formulation of objective presence.
“Thus the being of the "world" is, so to speak, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of being which is embedded in the concept of substantiality and in terms of an idea of knowledge which cognizes beings in this way. Descartes does not allow the kind of being of innerworldly beings to
present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its "true" being on the basis of an idea of being (being = constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the justification of which has not been demonstrated.”
Do I? Not words I would use.
That's a game you might like to play with your friends.
Quoting Joshs
He really doesn't.
Correct. "Being" means "being labeled".
Well, when has that mattered? Being need merely be; it need not say or show anything. Like ontology, it merely is.
Being doesn't exist - cars, chairs and people exist. "There is an x such that x is a car" tells us something about x. "There is an x such that x is a being" says nothing about x that is not in "there is an x"; that is, it does nothing.
This by way of objecting to treating being as the name of something.
Hence the question: What is NOT Being?
In saying that such questions are ill-formed, I'm pointing out that they do not ask anything; or at least if it does mean something, the answer will be a list of things.
The Reel
For the duration of a bounded eternity
They had only been dreaming
Dreaming of thinking, dreaming of endless presuppositions
And propositions of the standing imagination
overarching the bristling forests of sense
from the unencompassed watershed mountains
from the quiet inceptions to the teeming outcomes
soon lost, all lost to the unstoppable flood of dreams
and it wasn’t reckoned, not by them
nor how ancient the dripping frond, emerging lung
and the perapatetic neurons, and what lay hidden
inside the cave, what arachnid net of confusion
carefully and skillfully woven, notwithstanding flaws
and although it seemed the fatal dreams must bend
or end as they had before many, many times
yet in the end they wouldn’t, they couldn’t in the end
and nothing, nothing remained undreamed
in all the deserts of impossibility the oases
or hovering mirages of possibility drew the feet
drew the swelling tongues and ignited infernos
in the instructed rawness, in structured throats
in all the vessels, large and small that flood
the roar of blood, and float like pimples
across the encompassing stream
yet nothing weighed so, in the unified organ
as was quickly and repeatedly remembered
and forgotten, where the bolt that shot
from heart to head tortured the once idle
hands, nails then tore at the skein of mortality
and overturned the bed of world-weariness
now they are all flipped-out and never tired
calling for the impossible to be served
all the while the neurons are constellated like armies
mounting a series of campaigns against
an invincible foe for the imagined benefit
of loyalty to preposterous benefactors
and the matrix is disheveled, sliding into ruin
other previously neglected bits of the dream
pop up here, there and everywhere and not
unfortuitously, given the gloaming
when the missions were ranged all along
the rivers, and the sedition of the dreams
were simply overwhelmed they had to remember
to forget the lure of the ancestral
they thought it didn’t really matter then, as nothing
really does now, for the moving pictures displaying
against billions of darkened backdrops
were the sum of revelations on the available reel.
If the goal of philosophy is conceptual clarification, then he's not high on my list of philosophers. Some folk find him enlightening, I find him muddled.
Quoting Banno
I appreciate that his ideas are difficult to grasp, but I think the muddle is in your reading rather than in his ideas.
Quoting Banno
He is saying something very different from Frege.
Quoting Banno
If you look over my previous quotes on this OP, you’ll see that that is precisely the notion of time that Heidegger is critiquing.
Dreyfus' Being-in-the-World is quite good. He is pretty clear.
Another thing is if you find the whole account convincing. I used to be a huge fan, but less so now. Like Banno said, a lot of it is complicating simple things.
However, in fairness, I do think that on certain occasions his way of speaking about things is unique and special, in a sense that I can't explain if pressed.
In general the pragmatists do a better job, I think, though Joshs will very much disagree.
Ok - what?
Who - Dewy and company? Or their more recent renderings? What is it that they say?
I'll second that.
The classical ones. Probably more Peirce and Dewey than James.
I have in mind C.I. Lewis and am currently re-reading his Mind and the World Order. Instead of being, he speaks of the "given". It's a lot to say now and am currently working my way through it.
The point being that yes, he often complicates things without needing to do so.
Thanks, my view of Heidegger is entirely personal and no reflection on the work (whatever it is). What is it you go to these thinkers for?
There are plenty of philosophers I think this is true of , but not the Heidegger of Being and Time( I feel differently about his later work). I look for clarify, systematization and unity in a philosophy and I find them in Being and Time. You will not find them there to the extent that traditional preconceptions turn it into a muddle.
What we take to be a simple rock depends on many factors, including language, social convention, perception, categorization, recurrence of experience on the same object and so on. We can, for instance, isolate as aspect of the rock, say it's grey colour (qualia) and somehow conclude that the colour is not fundamental to the existence of a rock.
Likewise, we predict this never before seen object, a rock, based on previous examples found in similar situations in which, based on our experience with such objects, we are able to conclude that this other object is a rock too. What's included? A certain texture, a consistency of the object, its location in our environment (it would be strange, but not impossible, to find a rock on top of a flower, for instance) as well as our use of it.
Do we use rocks as decorations, weapons and so on. If we have no conceivable use for an object, we probably could not categorize it as anything.
This can be thought of in the framework of "disclosure of being", or analyzing what's in "the given of experience" or consider that it is a construction of several categories, such as Peirce thinks it is. And so on, depending on which author you tend to think is on the right track.
That's the rough idea.
If one were to label Wittgenstein a pragmatist , I think he is a different kind of pragmatist than Peirce, James or Dewey( for one thing, he moved away from
empiricism and they haven’t).
I believe that understanding the later Wittgenstein brings one fairly close to what Heidegger was aiming at.
That's fair. And I also agree that B&T (and some of his lectures) is quite better than his Contributions and latter work, which I don't even get the point of.
You mean the Wittgenstein of the Investigations? Sure, pragmatism can be used for him too, and in some respects he could be one. Then again, that's stretching pragmatism a bit much.
They called Rorty a Pragmatist as well as Quine. I don't think Peirce or Dewey would've agreed with that. Not sure about James in this case.
I quite agree. I think it's spectacularly silly to study or treat being as if it is a thing, and so am silly in doing so.
And we can be pretty specific here: what more is there to the analysis of being in Heidegger. than is found in the analysis of existence from Frege on down?
Don't know enough about Quine, but would agree with Susan Haack and others that Rorty and other "neo-pragmatists" do pragmatism a disservice.
Yeah, she's right about Rorty.
I don't know Quine well either, but his focus seem to me to be more narrow than the traditional figures. Might be wrong about that though.
:wink: Yes, I've been sucked in to this thread against my better judgement. If one of Heidegger's interpreters came out in agreement with the view you express here, there might be grounds for agreement. But it remains very unclear just what is being asserted about being.
...you say that as if it were a bad thing. Being clear about something small is an improvement on being obtuse about something grand.
Not bad at all, more narrow, no implication on quality.
He also was the first to show that the being of things in the world as sheer opaque presence is not prior to their being as transparently ready to hand for us.
I agree, but this is not an apt criticism of Heidegger, as he does not treat being as a thing.
The pretence is that somehow being - treated apparently as a thing - is structured by time.
Explain that.
I've been told more than once by those who've been initiated into the mysteries of Heidegger that it's incumbent on me to learn what he's saying (what the words he uses really mean), and that I shouldn't expect clarity from him, clarity being a kind of childish concern to begin with. When I was less kind then I am now, I used to reply I knew he was capable of clarity since he was perfectly clear in his praise of Der Fuhrer. But now I refrain from calling him a loathsome Nazi toady.
Quoting Banno
The point is that at soon as the questions become critical of the ideas in question (criticisms which may or may not be apt), then the recourse is to "read the bloody text".
Heidegger does not treat being as a thing; but there is no point trying to explain that to someone who has not read his work.
His work may not be to your taste; it may have nothing for you, you wouldn't know until you made a real effort to read and understand it. It is not sound judgement to conclude from your superficial understanding of it which is due to your apparently total lack of interest in it, that that it contains no insight for others. Where you may merely lack interest, others :wink: make a weird fetish out of detesting Heidegger.
Here's the state of play: second-order logic gives us a neat analysis of existence. If there is more to being than is encapsulated in this analysis - and doubtless there is - and if it is found in Heidegger, then tell us what it is.
At the least, give us a reason to think it worth our time to read the bloody text.
Quoting Janus
But that is what is done in the OP: Quoting Xtrix
...so at the least you might critique the OP for misrepresenting Heidegger.
Try adding something to the conversation.
Heidegger's analysis is phenomenological. If I recall you have little respect for phenomenology in general, so it probably wouldn't be to your taste. But critiquing phenomenological works in terms of first order logic is beside the point, totally misses it.
Quoting Banno
What makes you think @Xtrix has misrepresented Heidegger?
:smirk: :up:
That's interesting, because it represents the above view rather well -- that of "presence." That which is present before you, as an "encountering." Everything else is absent -- a kind of "nothing."
Being seems very similar to no-thing indeed. Because it isn't a "thing" at all.
Quoting tim wood
Exactly. So if we go back to the Greeks, where being of beings is phusis and truth is aletheia, but have similar meanings: disclosure, openness, emergence. This loops back to what you mentioned about the concern of the questioner -- that's exactly right. If we are this "openness" -- if we are world-disclosers, so to speak, then we "are" truth in the same way as we "are" beings.
When we're concerned about this question, we're in a specific mode of being --- a theoretical, abstract mode. But we walk around with a pre-theoretical understanding of being all the time. Our existence doesn't stop when we stop thinking, any more than life stops when we're sleeping or our breathing stops when we're not paying noticing it.
Quoting 180 Proof
A "vapor," as Nietzsche says. Indeed. But as Heidegger argues, and I agree with, is that this is currently the case and often argued because the question of being has been completely forgotten. What was so fascinating to the Greeks has become taken as self-evident, trivial, empty, or meaningless.
To say it's an empty name ignores, however, that we're all walking around with an understanding of it, even if pre-theoretical and pre-linguistic. Much the same way as to say that "human being" is an empty name, or "culture" is an empty name; perhaps, but that doesn't negate our (largely unconscious) views about ourselves, our place in the world, and the social and physical environment that has shaped our beliefs, values, and behavior.
Quoting 180 Proof
From your linked response a while back:
Quoting 180 Proof
My response is worth looking over again -- I stand by that. But to add something I didn't before: Heidegger isn't offering another interpretation of being. The talk about time, in my view, is his Kantian moment minus the subject/object distinction. Aletheia, "truth," is our being, which is temporal. We cannot help interpret being in terms of time -- and for the Greeks it was interpreted as presence, ousia.
I'm happy to get into it more, but if you're convinced that it's all nonsense and Heidegger is basically a charlatan, no hard feelings -- I don't fault anyone for that view.
Quoting Banno
It's not simply a matter of words or definitions, though. It's undoubtedly the case that being, like other things, can be (and has been) interpreted and defined in many ways. A linguistic analysis of the word itself is interesting, but doesn't get us too far. The perspective for this analysis has plenty of assumptions and a long history behind it as well, which is itself grounded in a very definite interpretation of being -- specifically, in this case, the being of words and grammar.
Quoting Banno
But recall that being isn't a property, really. This is only an analogy, but consider a chair. The chair has properties, but we don't say one of those properties of the chair is light. Yet without the light, we'd see no chair.
Quoting Banno
(1) An apple is a being, yes? As I said above, being is not some property that's added or subtracted.
(2) An apple that does not exist is not a being at all.
Quoting Banno
What we call "logic" has quite a history as well, which we can get into if you'd like, but analyzing being in terms of the kind of logic I assume you're talking about is a dead end.
Quoting unenlightened
This reminds me of something similar to Plato's forms, in a sense: the unchanging prototype. The constant and permanent as opposed to all becoming and impermanence/change, yes?
:up:
Well, maybe I'm just as ignorant as Ciceronianus. – Das Man sneezes– "Gelassenheit!" :mask:
Quoting Banno
To give Xtrix the benefit of the doubt, I think he is alluding to the fact that Heidegger begins Being and Time by asking the question ‘What is Is-ness’?
His answer is that terms like ‘Is’ , Being’ and existence don’t point originarily to such notions as presence, identity, inherence and thingness , but show these concepts to be derivative of a more fundamental structure of becoming.
That's what Hegel said.
Heidegger writes a lot about Hegel , indicating his debt to him.
Hmmm. Indeed. Logic doesn't seem to go with phenomenology of your sort.
Quoting Banno
And Adorno, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty, Tillich, Gadamer, Rorty, Wittgenstein, Jonas, Ortega Y Gassett, Barth and Levinas , to name a few.
If he is saying that such terms do not point at all, that pointing is not something one does with such terms, then we have agreement. One can point to an apple, but not to the being of an apple.
"...a more fundamental structure of becoming"? That relation to time still needs explaining.
Haven’t you thought about the origins of logic? Wouldnt a primordial theory of Being have to begin with the conditions of possibility for logic rather than simply presuppose it as a starting point?
Quoting Banno
Only figuratively, afaik
Of course. Quoting Joshs
What? Wouldn't such an theory have to presuppose a logic, a grammar in which it might be set out?
I would never say you are an ignorant man; that's kinda cute, though!
Quoting 180 Proof
Phenomenology? Maybe it just doesn't do it for you. Have you looked at Braver's account of the commonalities between the early Heidegger and the late Wittgenstein?
Yes, it's a profound (or trivial) truth that a language is needed. The question is, what kind of language?
It could. Or it could try to burrow deeper , and find a way to build self-reflexivity into its terms, so that rather than setting out a formal scheme, it can enact what makes particular schemes and grammars possible without itself being any one of these. Wittgenstein said you could only show. Heidegger tried to tell
To the extent I've warmed to phenomenology, I've been fascinated by various works of (those who come to mind) E. Levinas, M. Merleau-Ponty, J-L. Marion, F. Varela, D. Abrams, D. Dennett ("heterophenomenology") & T. Metzinger ("synthetic phenomenology").
No, but Groundless Grounds has been on my Amazon "List" for quite a while now. One regret, going back nearly forty years, is that I had read far too much of obscurant H before I studied gnomic W (which, nonetheless, affected me like "cult deprogramming"); had I engaged the latter first I would have been spared reading the former beyond "the introduction" of SuZ (to me H's most "lucid" work). Nonetheless, I still engage his oracular writing/rantings because H's influence is so pervasive and close reading of so many of "The Continentals" requires, for better or worse, some fluency with H's concerns.
I prefer "being" rather than "existence," although I do use both occasionally. To say being is eternal or has other properties is a mistake, in my view. It's one interpretation, yes, but is confusing being with a being (with an entity).
Quoting ucarr
A very generous thing to say, considering it was your thread that stimulated it.
As for Heidegger as "fearsome" -- I don't think there's so much need for trepidation, it just takes a little dedication and some time to get familiar with his peculiar language, but once you do it's very interesting indeed. The question itself gets at the heart of philosophy and, arguably, defines philosophy.
Quoting Joshs
Right -- the very method of analysis, a linguistic or grammatical analysis, has plenty of assumptions behind it on the nature of language, truth, meaning, usage, etc. etc. The sciences, including linguistics, and the philosophy of language often overlook their own ontological foundations.
Quoting frank
Being is experienced when we "contemplate the void"? You'll have to cite the passages you're thinking about...this looks completely wrong.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
No, it's a good point. I only capitalized "Being" because it's in the title. Notice I don't capitalize it elsewhere. So just ignore that.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
You describe being as "apparency," as truth and fact, as persisting in time and agreed to be "real." There's a lot there to unpack!
So being is that which is real, true, factual?
Quoting Alkis Piskas
It sounds to me like what you're describing are substances with properties which we may agree upon. But remember, when you say "This tree is big," or "My name is Alkis," what we're asking about is the "is." The is-ness, the being, of the tree, of Alkis, of bigness, of redness, etc. All the beings you can think of, every property and action and process, "are," yes?
That's the question.
Quoting Manuel
But it has been answered in many ways, throughout history. Remember I'm not looking for an attribute or property. But "what is "is-ness"" I'm saying, "What is being?" All beings, whether trees or rocks or humans, "are." Being is not a being (a particular entity), nor a property of a being (green, large, soft). Historically, the being of beings has been defined as substance (ousia).
What I'm arguing (using Heidegger as a launching point) is that Western philosophy has interpreted being as variations of presence, since the Greeks. Thinking, in the sense of theory and, later, mathematical physics, comes to dominate -- it defines the human being (rational animal, animal with reason/language) as a subject that thinks and the world (nature) as its object.
Quoting Manuel
Tables and rivers are beings. In that respect, they do indeed share a commonality: being.
Quoting Manuel
To associate Quine with pragmatism and oppose this to Heidegger somehow seems awfully strange to me. Heidegger is far more "pragmatic" than Quine in any sense of the word.
Quoting Banno
As I mentioned in the OP, the claim is that being gets interpreted, from the Greeks on, as presence.
:rofl: This was great.
Quoting Heiko
So only that which is labeled "is"? Oddly enough that's close to the traditional Western view -- although this would be more like "only that which is thought."
Quoting Banno
Being is not a being, yes. Cars, chairs, and people are beings. That doesn't make being a car, or chair, or person.
Quoting Banno
I don't recall him once claiming that being "is" temporal. Being gets interpreted in terms of time, yes. That's not the same thing.
Quoting Banno
Indeed, which is why you should contemplate the "if."
Quoting Banno
Again, if...there's a role for that, of course. To say that's the goal of philosophy is not very interesting, in my view.
Quoting Banno
He's difficult, and again I don't fault anyone for thinking so, or not wanting to spend time getting involved in him. Remember similar things get said about Hegel, Spinoza, Kant, Aquinas, etc. For many people, it gets said about all of them, from Plato to Nietzsche. So this isn't saying much either, really. But since I started this thread, the onus is on me to explain/defend my reading of Heidegger, and I'm willing to do so, provided it's approached in good faith. If you're unwavering in your belief that Heidegger is a charlatan, then there's no sense in continuing and, again, no hard feelings.
Quoting Janus
I'll "third" that.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Me too. Which is why I have repeatedly said: being is not a being.
Quoting Banno
I haven't read Frege. If Frege asserts that being, since the Greeks, has been interpreted in terms of time -- specifically as presence (and thus the "present"), that time itself has been interpreted as something present (as a sequence of now-points), and that this has lead to both to an interpretation of the human being as the zoon echon logon, the rational animal, the animal with language, the res cogitans (the thinking substance), and the "world" as an object, "nature" as matter in motion -- all of this is the basis for our modern technological/nihilistic understanding of being, then yes, perhaps they're saying the same thing. From the little I've heard, second-hand, this doesn't seem to be Frege's concern. Happy to be corrected.
We have certain capacities to do something with the world. One kind of "thinking", whatever this may be, is to try and find what's the nature of the world, mind independently. The best approach we have for that are theories as postulated by the sciences, as (I believe remembering) you say.
But thinking goes way beyond the sciences. You only need to consider the arts and everything in it, which is an awful lot, and you can see all kinds of approaches.
As it currently stands we need a world for the subject. But not as a matter of principle. If we had enough intelligence to create a vat, we could stimulate the world exactly as we perceive it. That's important, I think.
Quoting Xtrix
Do ghosts have being? Does Winston Smith have being? What about that red colour I caught off the able, does that have being?
I'll use exist, for clarity. Tables and rivers exist, we interpret them as such. They do not have the commonality of existing absent people. And them existing, do not show what's common to "existing", for in a sense rivers were here before people, but not tables.
Quoting Xtrix
I'd agree actually. Sometimes Quine is lumped in with the pragmatists, I'm not sure why.
From What is Metaphysics:
"Conclusion. Granted that the question of being-as-such is the overarching question of metaphysics, the question of the nothing proves to be one that encompasses the whole of metaphysics. The question of the nothing also pervades the whole of metaphysics insofar as it forces us to confront the problem of the origin of negation – that is, to finally decide whether the domination of metaphysics by “logic” is legitimate. Putting the questioner in question. The nothing ‘’gives” being."
The last sentence there, that the nothing gives being is an attempt to answer the question from the inside rather than to talk about being as if we've got some objective vantage point on it.
I took it as a kind of poetry. I guess I'm not keen on explaining Heidegger. I just know I really love that essay.
Nothing is being asserted about it. We're questioning what it is -- if anything.
Quoting Banno
Perfectly fair.
Quoting Banno
Being is not treated as a thing. I would also take issue with "structured" by time. Being is interpreted by human beings, and human beings, in Heidegger, are "embodied time" -- what he calls temporality. The claim is that in the West, since the Greeks, being was taken as phusis and, later, ousia -- that which is constantly present.
The "present" in this case is simply an interpretation based on one mode of the human being: what he calls the "present-at-hand." This is the mode we're in, for example, when things break down, the case he uses being a piece of equipment, like a hammer. When the hammer breaks down, or a doorknob sticks, or something goes wrong with our car, we look at these entities differently -- more theoretically, one could say -- than we do when using this equipment (what he calls the "ready-to-hand"); in this latter case, the hammer "withdraws"...or the door, or the car. They go unnoticed, they're absent. I like the example of breathing. It's constantly going on, but how often are we aware of it until something negative happens? Most of the time, breathing is absent -- we're unconscious of it, take it for granted; it withdraws. So in this ready-to-hand mode, these examples are not present-at-hand objects -- they're transparent to us.
We notice the hammer as an object with properties (weighing one pound, being of x length, having this color and shape, etc) usually when it breaks down or we're in a more theoretical (or "scientific") mood. This is the present-at-hand mode of being. It's this mode, Heidegger argues, that is the basis for the West's interpretation of being as "constantly present," as idea, ousia, substance.
This may all be uninteresting or unconvincing, but I hope it at least clears away some misconceptions. Again, being is not an entity/thing, as odd as that sounds -- and Heidegger is not offering an interpretation himself, for example that being = time.
Quoting Banno
I fail to see how this suggests being is a being. The "is" in the sentence "What is being" is apparently referring to something, "being." But the "is" itself presupposes being. Nowhere am I saying being is *a* being/object. In this case I'm discussing the difficulty of even asking the question.
Quoting Joshs
An important point.
So if Heidegger succeeded in telling, then tell us...
There's that germ of something not unlike Wittgenstein's showing in aletheia - unconcealment. But on top of that is so much apparent bullshit - using the word in it's technical sense - authenticity, angst, death... and anti-semitism.
Others speak with greater clarity, and with less baggage.
Certainly.
Quoting Manuel
Yes indeed. How could it be otherwise? Unless, of course, we're taking "being" to mean something more restricted, like "empirically verified" or "physical" or something to that effect. But that's not how I'm using it. Any particular being has being.
Quoting Manuel
This is the first I've ever heard that, yeah.
Quoting Banno
I don't get this attitude. I myself have shared this judgment -- for example, with "thinkers" like Zizek. But it's not because I couldn't find much of interest in reading/listening to them, it's because their adherents couldn't begin to explain anything interesting about them either. At that point, I'm left with no other conclusion. So take Heidegger out of the equation and talk to me. If I'm failing to convince you, then that's my fault, and it would help to know where I'm failing. I'm still not sure, though...once the misunderstandings are cleared away, that is.
No. I've read Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Kripke, Wittgenstein and others; I'm no stranger to difficult texts. But there are authors who rejoice in their obscurity, who do not intend to be understood by their readers, but to balkanise intellectual space for their own benefit. Is Heidegger amongst these? The evidence points that way.
What evidence? You've already made two claims which are complete misinterpretations. If that's the evidence, I don't blame you for thinking this. But I would hope once that's clarified, you'd perhaps reconsider. Like I said, if you're settled in your opinion of Heidegger, fine -- then deal directly with me. If you're not interested in any of it, why continue here at all?
So what? That is, what does this mean, if not that things commence, endure and pass? But also the same is true specially - the thing is here, and it is not over there...
Quoting Xtrix
Well... have at it. Sort this out. I'll get the beers in.
Hmmm. His biography. The common wisdom was that the life of a philosopher is of no account in evaluating his ideas. Should that view be continued when the dasein leads to the anti-dasein of the Black Notebooks?
Just between you and me, authenticity and death are two foci of analysis in Being and Time that lead to confusion and, as far I’m concerned, can be removed without losing much from the heart of the work. Derrida , whose reading of Heidegger is my favorite, said as much. Angst is kind of an ingenious idea, encapsulating the essence of becoming in terms of its uncanniness.
Quoting Xtrix
...?
Ah, we might allow angst. I do appreciate Waiting for Godot.
It's too broad. I'm far from being a prescriptivist with language use, but if the word is used that amply, its meaning can lead to mistakes.
I think it can obscure the distinction between red as I perceive it in my own experience and the red attributed to the object. The object (so far as we know) has no colour. But it doesn't make much sense to me to say that the object has red being and that in addition to that or separate from that I have red being experience. The apple has no red being, we add that on to the apple.
You could say that what I'm doing is forcing the subject-object distinction on what we should take for granted, the world. But if we are, in addition to analyzing the world, also speak about word use, then this distinction is going to have to rise. Unless you can say why it's a wrong way to think about colour experience.
Let’s go over this a little. What does Heidegger say about the propositional form ‘S is P’? He says this is derived from the more general way in which we make sense of anything. Heidegger explains that in taking something to be the case in a propositional judgement (for instance, S is P) , we are taking something as something within a wider context of pragmatic relevance. Making sense of something is an act that always has the ‘as' structure , as Heidegger tells us, but this structure of relevanting is covered over and flattened down in causal models.
“The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act.” (Heidegger 2010b).
This pragmatic approach should remind you of Wittgenstein. In taking something AS something , we are not simply associating two externally related entities in relation to each other. If a cognition or intention is merely about something , then it functions as external binding, coordinating and relating between two objectively present participants. This is the presumption behind formal
logic , but Heidegger says it misses the larger pragmatic context.
“If the phenomenon of the "as" is covered over and above all veiled in its existential origin from the hermeneutical "as," Aristotle's phenomenological point of departure disintegrates to the analysis of logos in an external "theory of judgment," according to which judgment is a binding or separating of representations and concepts. Thus binding and separating can be further formalized to mean a "relating." Logistically, the judgment is dissolved into a system of "coordinations," it becomes the object of "calculation," but not a theme of ontological interpretation.""If the kind of being of the terms of the relation is understood without differentiation as merely objectively present things, then the relation shows itself as the objectively present conformity of two objectively present things.“
Heidegger (2010) offers:
“What is to be got at phenomenally with the formal structures of "binding" and "separating," more precisely, with the unity of the two, is the phenomenon of "something as something...In accordance with this structure, something is understood with regard to something else, it is taken together with it, so that this confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, at the same time takes apart what has been put together.”
In experiencing something as something, Dasein comes back to its having been from its future, which is to say, it interprets a global context of relevance via the ‘as' structure. In so doing, it “takes apart' the relation between what it encounters and a previous instance of it by coming back to the previous instance from a fresh context of relevance. Seeing something as something makes sense of what is encountered in a new way, on the basis of a newly implied totality of relevance. This taking apart of what has been put together brings us back to the structure of temporality.
“Because my being is such that I am out ahead of myself, I must, in order to understand something I encounter, come back from this being-out-ahead to the thing I encounter. Here we can already see an immanent structure of direct understanding qua as-structured comportment, and on closer analysis it turns out to be time. And this being-ahead-of-myself as a returning is a peculiar kind of movement that time itself constantly makes, if I may put it this way.”(Heidegger 2010b)
I think Josh was referring to "use" there, not being.
Quoting Banno
That's the thing -- being is interpreted as presence, meaning the enduring, the constant. Which is opposed to all "becoming," all passing away, all transigence.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
What does his biography have to do with his alleged "rejoicing in obscurity"?
Quoting Banno
"Apparently." Which, in context, should be clear that I'm not making a claim but rather, as I stated:
Quoting Xtrix
What *is* being? seems to indicate that "being" is an object, but it isn't.
Quoting Manuel
Heidegger anticipates all this:
Being and Time, page 2.
Quoting Manuel
"Red" isn't a thing? Of course it is. A thing is a being. Red, concepts, numbers, music, feelings, dirt, justice, words, Proust, and Boston are all beings.
Quoting Manuel
I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" to separate the property "red" from the apple, but then we're off into secondary and primary qualities. Locke wasn't an idiot -- there's plenty of merit to this view. All I'm saying is that the term "being" certainly applies to all of this.
Quoting frank
I think I can clarify the role of ‘the nothing’ for Heidegger. In Being and Time he explains that he doesn’t mean it as a complete absence of sense or meaning , but rather as a comportment toward experience in which one no longer is interested in particular beings. So in this mode of relating , one discloses ‘no things’, no beings. Instead, authentic Dasein has bigger fish to fry, Being as a whole.
“In what Angst is about, the "it is nothing and nowhere" becomes manifest. The recalcitrance of the innerworldly nothing and nowhere means phenomenally that what Angst is about is the world as such. The utter insignificance which makes itself known in the nothing and nowhere does not signify the absence of world, but means that innerworldly beings in themselves are so completely unimportant that, on the basis of this insignificance of what is innerworldly, the world is all that obtrudes itself in its worldliness.”
“ What Angst is anxious for is being-in-the-world itself. In Angst, the things at hand in the surrounding world sink away, and so do innerworldly beings in general. The "world" can offer nothing more, nor can the Mitda-sein of others. Thus Angst takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding itself, falling prey, in terms of the "world" and the public way of being interpreted. It throws Da-sein back upon that for which it is anxious, its authentic potentiality-for-being-in-the-world.”
OK.
The "as" structure is... seeing that x is p is seeing x as p, an intent. That intent is embedded in way of life, it's only understandable as a whole.
That gets me to about your fourth paragraph, and then it turns into mud.
Is red a thing? I think we can say there are red things, or I can say look at the red object or red landscape, but I'm unclear if red is a thing, if by "thing" we have in mind something in the world. Red is a quality. Is quality a thing? A quality is a quality. You can say a quality is a thing...
But, I don't recall someone saying "I saw a red" or "I saw a yellow", they add "thing" to it usually. Meaning that red, yellow, blue, etc. aren't thought of as things.
I remember that passage of Heidegger's. I think he makes interesting observations in his unique language.
Quoting Xtrix
Yeah sure, Locke was no idiot. So essentially everything name-able is a being?
This is where it gets very tricky, and where Heidegger’s definition of temporality is crucial. When we see something as something, we are, as you say, drawing from what we already know about why we care about it , what we are using it for , how it fits into our current goals and concerns. All that background informs what it is for us. But in encountering it right now, in incorporating it into our activities right now , we are also modifying that totality of relevance ( that interconnected web of background concerns and goals). That past is changed by what it functions in. This is the strange approach to time that Heidegger has.
“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.”(Heidegger 2010)
Gendlin(1997b) echoes Heidegger's view.
“The future that is present now is not a time-position, not what will be past later. The future that is here now is the implying that is here now. The past is not an earlier position but the now implicitly functioning past.”“......the past functions to "interpret" the present,...the past is changed by so functioning. This needs to be put even more strongly: The past functions not as itself, but as already changed by what it functions in”(p.37 )
So when we encounter something as something, this new item is already familiar to us because we link it to a pre-existing totality of relevance. At the same time , the very encounter with it alters that totality of relevance. So the past is changed by the present that it defines.
Wittgenstein is saying something similar by making use always person and context-centered. Background knowledge of rules, grammar and criteria dont simply remain as themselves when they come into play in a language game. They are freshly determined by contextual interactions( the past is changed by what it functions in).
What is being, with a small "b"? In my book, it's, very loosely speaking, properties: An apple is red; the apple, being red, is red.
What is Being, with an uppercase "B"? Being includes, in addition to being (properties) that which posseses said properties. The red apple is Being.
Parmenidean ontology, it seems, posits the existence of "something" that lacks any and all properties for Being and being are different notions. Apophatically then how does he (Parmenides) distinguish this "something" from nothing?
[quote=Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World)]Now what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?[/quote]
A bit of recursion - what it is to me for that thing to be a pencil depends not only on my previous experience of pencils but what I do with the pencil now.
That's a bit private-language, isn't it - that there is a what it is like for me for that thing to be a pencil... or some such nonsense.
As if he were to say that the private meaning of "Pencil" changes as the pencil goes blunt with use.
But there isn't a private meaning. There's only your asking to borrow my sharpener.
Further, the primacy of time here seems misplaced What it is to be a pencil changes with position, too - rubber at one end, pointy bit at the other.
And then there is the confusion of what happened in the past with what one believes happened... evident in the Gendlin stuff.
Finally, Wittgenstein did not make use always personal. Quite the opposite. Use is inherently social.
Here's were the account you are providing starts to drift apart. It is based on the presumption of the primacy of a subjective viewpoint, as with almost all phenomenology; hence when it tries to account for our place in a social world, it becomes fuddled.
But thanks for trying. Much appreciated.
Having gained more knowledge over the years, I think there must always be another for "being", because something can only know what it interacts with. While in theory, there could be a single entity of "some thing", it would forever be unknown to anything. If a being falls in a forest of nothingness, it makes no sound.
A being is what exists, and we can only define what we are able to glean exists. We do this through some form of interaction, indirect, or direct. So beings will always be known in their interactions with other. For our purposes, it is when we can define a meaningful enough "thing" that creates an observable unique interaction from what is around it. The word "being" is a generic word meant to capture this concept. Words like "being" are formulas that can expand or contract as we shorten or widen the scope.
If you are looking for a definition of being that fits all scopes, then "that which interacts with something besides itself" is about all you can get. If that is unsatisfying, that is the nature of broadly scoped generalities. They have a very small sense of truth that will endure through more narrowly defined scopes, but will rarely reveal anything meaningful or useful for specific circumstances.
Is it no-thing? I would say it's something. It "is."
This may be true for beings, but seems unlikely for being, which is not itself a being. Beings are individual entities, and are numerous.
Quoting Tom Storm
This is a good question. "Who gives a damn?" Well, for me it's getting at the basic assumptions that underlie our modern world. It would be as if we're discussing the nature of God in the middle ages -- something nearly everyone just "knew," and to question would seem rather absurd. In today's "secular" age, religions of course still exist, but there are other dogmas afoot -- even in science. (The belief in the results of science, for example, has largely "replaced," in some respects, the faith in gods.)
Still -- so what? It helps make sense of the world, of people in the world, of the beliefs, values, choices, and behavior of these people -- up to and including those in power, who control humanity's future and fate. I think capitalism, for example, can ultimately be seen as an outgrowth of this long philosophical (ontological) tradition.
So how does examining 'being' accomplish so much? Can you provide an applied example?
I am sorry you didn't get the joke about formal logic.
There are no objects without properties.
I agree by and large. The negative formulation certainly highlights the absurdity of the question to me. As Aristotle said, there can be no science of being because it's an all-encompassing category.
1. The cat is sitting on the mat.
2. The cat on the mat is sitting.
3. The sitting cat is on the mat.
4. The cat is on the mat, sitting.
5. The cat sitting on the mat is ...
And this grammatical function is becoming confused with the relation between object and idea.
An architect makes plans of a house that does not exist. Sometimes his idea of a house is realised, and sometimes not, according to the whim of the planning dept. Architects are haunted by invisible incorporeal buildings - that's the job. Humans are driven by ideas that they try to realise; they dig and sow they build, they forage they form governments; they live always haunted by demons that do not exist. The chef is haunted by his menu, the carpenter by her furniture drawings, the tailor by her jacket pattern; everyone is busy realising their ideas as best they can. everyone is haunted by what is not, {yet}.
It is very hard to have a discussion when the words are used in different ways. 'Being' and 'existence' are often confused with each other. It has to do with the difference between the 'presence' or something as opposed to nothing which I call 'existence'. It is also known as necessary existence. Being is evolved and contingent. It is more than existence because it is evolved. Existence is the void, the no-thing. No-thing is no created thing as opposed to nothingness which is non existence.
Interesting! It makes sense...in a weird way. Your view is, let's just say, rather unconventional, counterintuitive, yes that's the right word. I lost count of the number of times our intuition was proven wrong. That reminds me...
For me it is fairly simple if we can agree to read from the same page. In the beginning as have a lump of bronze (existence: that which is). The bronze is cast in the shape of a horse or an eagle or whatever. This is being.
There seems to be 3 levels of existence.
1. The positive, necessary existence that is. The uncreated void which is existence.
2. Contingent things: stars, planets, rocks, the physical universe. These are said to be contingent because they depend on a previous state; existence. Existence becomes these things.
3. Life and consciousness, which are the most evolved form of being.
There is such a confusion of semantics when it comes to this subject. It is necessary to agree on the meaning of words. For me existence is the primordial, eternal positive that is. Being is evolved existence.
If existence is eternal then what do you mean by beginning? If existence simply is then what could its properties be? Without time, how can existence evolve into anything else?
That's the problem right there. How does Parmenides distinguish what must necessarily be, given the distinction he makes between Being and being, a "something" devoid of any and all properties that just is, no more no less, and nothing?
Being for Heidegger (Of Being and Time) is the meaningful presence of something. Ontical aspect here is that there is something concretely, there is some concrete being, and ontological aspect is the Being of that being, which gives sense to that being so that it can manifest as something. Being is the transcendental dimension that makes particular empirical beings possible. But it is not anything logical or theoretical as with Kant and to some extent with Husserl. Being is the complicated relations of the "live" significations making a "world" as well as the understanding, emotional subjectivity carrying these relations. "Irrational" (personal-historical) "dynamics" are involved there too unlike with Kant or Husserl.
Transcendental point of view is a good, more traditional way to gain access to Heidegger. That is, Being is the transcendental "worlding" (a verb) that makes beings possible. In Being and Time are described the structures of that transcendental complex of relations (not tr. logic) that makes existence or living (not theoretical knowing) in the world possible.
Temporality is the sense of the Being or truth of the Being (mentioned above). When questioned what "is" (the world and the existence in it constituting) Being itself or as such, answer is that Being "is" time or that Being "yields" ("zeitigt", Time = Zeit) or "produces" (more or less transient or enduring presences making up the Being of the world). Temporality is a kind of a pure becoming or nothingness only that the moment of present produces certain stability or persistence or actual beingness to it. Selfhood is not possible without the presence. If temporality were pure becoming there would be no presence at all, only past and future? Heidegger's relation to presence is somewhat ambiguous. "Historical presence" as the world (relative stability of the being-there-ness of the various references or significations; the problem of the selfhood) is something positive or necessary whereas ideal presence or abstract repetition is derivative and negative?
Thank you.
Unfortunately, I cannot follow easily the analyses by and about the mentioned (and other) philosophers anymore, as I could in the distant past (when I had the patience and eagerness to study them). :sad:
In connection with the "ecstasies" (hasbeen, present, forthcoming) of temporality H. talks about "schemas" which is of course a Kantian term. For Kant the temporality or temporal schemes were mediating between "Being" or categories and beings or empirical. Through the temporality the categories or concepts of understanding received intuitional content and were linked to the empirical world. For Heidegger temporality provides a "dynamic horizontality" through which the Being as ontological constitutes the ontical beings. Hereby the traditional ontology is related to the (empirical) historicity and receives a new meaning. Later "Heydegger" doesn't no more use the term ontology. On the other hand, he does use the expression "ontological difference" (which, the difference between Being and beings, is still a central idea for him.)
There is a distinction between nothingness and no-thing. Nothingness is absolute nothing. It is so vacuous it is not even there. It is not even an 'it' because if it were an it, it would be something. Nothingness is not.
No-thing is no contingent/created thing. The void. The eternal positive that is existence/God. (What Heidegger calls Being).
Existence/God becomes, by evolving into being. God becomes the living God. This is consciousness.
Yes, indeed! We need to work on the definition of "exist" and "existence". Wanna give it a shot?
Existence is the eternal positive. Existence cannot be a property of any previous state.
Proof
Assume X has the property 'existence'. We assume X and existence are two distinct entities, otherwise X is existence and there is nothing to prove.
Now ask the question 'Does X, as a distinct entity, exist?' There are two answers-
1. X exists: In this case existence as a property of X is superfluous whence X is existence.
2. X does not exist: It is incoherent to say a non existent X has properties.
This means existence is not a property, even a property of God. Therefore existence is God. God becomes. This is being, which is evolved existence. God is existence and being. But existence is a prerequisite for being. This is the Cosmological Argument - first necessary existence then contingent creation/being.
OK. But I still find the question/subject ambiguous, since you did not agree with my "What does 'being' mean?" interpretation ...
Quoting Xtrix
:grin: I have the habit to clarify my thoughs as better as possible in the first place so thet there are the least possible misundestandings and doubts about them. What I have added after a first description are attributes of "being".
Quoting Xtrix
No, not at all! It is that which apparently is real, etc. My stress was on the word "apparency", since the beginning. It seems that dispite of all the things I said, I have not said enough to clarify that! :grin: APPARENCY: "The quality or state of being apparent". APPARENT: "Appearing as actual to the eye or mind. (Both from Merriam-Webster)
Quoting Xtrix
Right. Although I would use the word "substances"; it's too restrictive.
Quoting Xtrix
I said that the statement "This tree is big", contains two "is"es, existences: 1) There is a tree (it is implied) and 2) it is big. (1) refers to the existence of the tree itself and (2) to an attribute of the tree, which has its own existence, in a different context: "is big", implies that there exist trees that are big and/or that the attribute "big" itself has its own existence, in general.
But from all that, one thing is the most essential: That "is-ness" is an apparency of existence.
Ah now, you've hurt my feelings.
And why? I've already acknowledged that I haven't been initiated in the cult of Heidegger, and so you should expect I'm unable to interpret him; no, perhaps "experience" or "encounter" him is more appropriate.
All I've said is that he was capable of clarity even to the uninitiated, and this is indisputable, I think. For example, from a letter to his brother:
With each day that passes we see Hitler growing as a statesman. The world of our Volk and Reich is about to be transformed and everyone who has eyes with which to watch, ears with which to listen, and a heart to spur him into action will find himself captivated by genuine, deep excitement—once again, we are met with a great reality and with the pressure of having to build this reality into the spirit of the Reich and the secret mission of the German being […]
He even uses "being"! The German being has a "secret mission" but perhaps you already knew that. I confess I find that unclear, though suggestive. Is "being" here a thing, a German thing?
And who can forget this perfectly unambiguous statement: The Fuhrer himself and he alone is German reality and its law, today and for the future.
It's not a thing, it's a quality. It "is not", if predicated about the world, not about our way of interpreting it.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
I don’t think Anthony would agree with the distinction you’re making between the private and the public for Wittgenstein, as witnessed by his discussion of the personal experience of pain in the absence of others. (One can show to oneself). Neither would a number of other Wittgenstein interpreters. For instance, Phil Hutchinson says:
“ “In short, Baker's post -1990 ‘position'—expounded throughout BWM—is that Wittgenstein's method is radically therapeutic: therapeutic in that the aim is to relieve mental cramps brought about by being faced with a seemingly intractable philosophical problem; radically so in that how this aim is achieved is person relative, occasion sensitive and context dependent.”
Quoting Ciceronianus
Have you read any biographies of Heidegger? It sure doesn’t sound like it from your superficial attacks on him. Even though I’m quite invested in his philosophy, I don’t mind even the most bellicose condemnations of his political activities. But yours just aren’t interesting. If you’re going to prove to us he’s the villain you believe him to be , put a little effort into it. Everybody knows the basics facts , his declaration of allegiance to Hitler , etc. that you’re simply regurgitating.
But where are the quotes from those who knew him best , especially his Jewish friends? What makes his politics interesting are such details as the fact that he wasn’t particularly anti-semitic compared to the larger culture. Wittgenstein, a Jew, was at least as anti-semitic as Heidegger.
If you can’t participate in a philosophy forum on the philosophy of Heidegger , at least give us a substantive historical-biographical analysis.
Heidegger is trying to offer an alternative to causal
logics. You can answer our own question by turning it around. How does formal and empirically causal logic accomplish so much? I can’t offer an applied example of Heidegger’s new logic without first introducing you to the ideas from which to derive an application. As far as I’m concerned , there is no shortcut to reading Being and Time, although you could attempt secondary sources.
This sounds a lot more like Kant than Heidegger (Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind). Understood most primordially, there is no presence of something objective, no empirical being. The transcendental basis of Being is not an idealism ala Kant but the transcendent as transit and transformation.
Quoting waarala
There is no moment of presence, alongside a moment of future and past. These together form one moment of occurrence. Selfhood for Heidegger isnt presence to self but a relation of change. Temporality is pure becoming, not because there is no present, but because present, past and future belong to the same moment, as movement.
Quoting Joshs
I'm sure you are right.
Quoting Joshs
Indeed, such stuff is easy to find. Why?
Heidegger’s Feeble Excuses
The Trouble with Martin
Mahon O’Brien
The picture on that page says enough.
My presence on this thread is indicative of how unsettling I find Heidegger. I don't know what to do with him. There are those such as yourself who find his writing enlightening. To me it vacillates between being pretentious and being wrong.
I can't understand what you see in his writing.
I've presented, in a disjointed fashion, a methodological critique of phenomenology stemming from its reliance on first person accounts. One can't help but draw a connection between this self-obsessive methodology and the self-obsessive personality of it's greatest advocate.
In the end I'll just have to walk away, repeating the mantra "There's nowt so queer as folk".
I see. You're impressed that some his best friends were Jewish. I know he, when 36 and married, was pleased to seduce his young Jewish student, Hannah Arendt. Perhaps you think that's to his credit as well. I know how he treated his mentor, Husserl, turning his back on him and even removing the dedication to him appearing in Being and Time in 1941 (putting it back in after the war). Didn't attend his funeral/cremation either. I wonder how his Jewish best friends would feel about him if they had the opportunity to read his Black Notebooks.
But I haven't referred to Heidi's anti-Semitism. You brought that up. Why defend him to me for his bigotry?
What is there to gain from a historical-biographical analysis? The basic facts of his history can be obtained easily enough. I don't think he was a villain in any case. He was simply someone who greatly admired Hitler, urged German students while he was rector to follow Hitler, was a member of Nazi Party continuously through the war, never condemned the Nazis, never condemned or even mentioned the Holocaust (except very briefly in a single instance and tangentially, comparing it to the industrialization of agriculture), never expressed regret for being a Nazi--that sort of fellow. For me, that makes for a pretty damn disagreeable person. You may not find any of that concerning, of course.
All that aside, tell me--what is the German being and its "secret mission"? Perhaps if I knew that I'd think him to be a hero.
There is a reverse cult of Heidegger, those who as I said earlier "make a weird fetish out of detesting him", and you may well just be its grand master. Have you Heidegger haters organized yourselves into a coven or lodge yet?
I don't agree with this. I think those ideas are central to Being and Time. They may lead to confusion in some readers, but they certainly don't inevitably.
Are they? I had thought that primarily humans, and some of the other higher animals, are referred to as 'beings', and that tables are 'artifacts', rivers, 'natural phenomena'. Surely there's a distinction to be made there, isn't there?
For that matter, why is the term 'being' used for beings such as us? When scientists search deep space for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, they're searching for 'other beings', are they not? A search which has so far proved barren.
This sounds a little whiny tbh. Like: I'm here because I thought there might be something to this and maybe Heidegger found that one doesn't have to push the ladder away at the end but you haven't shown me anything, but instead have failed me like everyone and everything else in my life.
Whyyy???
Quoting Ciceronianus
Quoting Ciceronianus
Like hell you don’t. At least be honest about it. You may be right , so why the bullshit posturing?
He could be everything you say he is . In fact, he has to be everything you say he is because you haven’t given us anything beyond the reader’s digest version of the nazi villain Heidegger , and you’ve admitted it.
Maybe a lawyer has nothing to gain from a historical-biographical analysis of a defendant. After all, their job is to create a simple overwhelmingly negative caricature of the person on trial, leaving out all ambiguities and redeeming features. You have done exactly that. Contributing to your cartoonish presentation is your choice to portray me as ‘defending’ Heidegger. Let me make something clear. I am not invested in protecting Heidegger from character assasination. I am perfectly open to the possibility that he had no redeeming personal qualities.
My beef with you really isnt about Heidegger. It’s about your laziness This isnt a trial, it’s a philosophy forum. Don’t give us the cartoonishly one-sided argument of a prosecutor. Play devils advocate . Do a little research. Banno quoted a biographer of Heidegger who displays the even handedness that’s lacking from your comments.
He doesn’t portray Heidegger in a positive light , but as a philosopher he understands his work and the historical context well enough to go beyond your superficial condemnation.
Quoting Ciceronianus
What about his Jewish enemies? Eugene Gendlin was a Viennese Jew who , at age 13 , just barely made it out of Austria alive in 1939. As a philosopher and psychologist at the University of Chicago, he avoided reading Heidegger for years because of his political activities.
After finally reading and embracing aspects of his philosophy, Gendlin wrote a remarkable analysis of the historical context of Heidegger’s actions. He didn’t excuse Heidegger or explain away what he did , but , like another famous Jewish philosopher who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, Emmanuel Levinas, he showed Heidegger’s faults to be symptomatic of a weakness endemic to European thinking. Rather than conveniently indulging in a pose of moral superiority, patting himself on the back for his righteousness, he looked beyond the individual to a climate of thinking common not just to the Nazis but to those who opposed them.
Here’s the first part of Gendlin’s article , plus the last paragraph:
“Jung offers deep and indispensable insights. I did not like knowing that Jung had said: "Hitler is the embodiment of the German spirit." The Nazis knew his views. Records show that they considered sending for Jung to help Rudolph Hess with his mental trouble.
Similarly, I had not wanted to know that Dostoevsky hated Jews, Germans, and Poles. He gave influential speeches in favor of the Panslavic movement. That movement was a direct cause of the Russian-French alliance and the World War.
What I heard of Heidegger's Nazi views made me decide not to read him at all. I read him when I was almost 40 years old. Then I realized that Heidegger's thought was already in mine, from my reading of so many others who had learned from him.
With these three we are forced to wonder: Must we not mistrust their seemingly deep insights? How could we want these insights for ourselves, if they came out of experience so insensitive to moral ugliness? Perhaps it might not matter if the insights were less deep. But they open into what is most precious in human nature and life. The depth is beyond question. The insights are genuine.
So one attempts to break out of the dilemma on the other side: Is there a way Nazism or hatred of other peoples might be not so bad? Could it have seemed different at the time? No chance of that, either. I am a Jewish refugee from Vienna, a lucky one to whom nothing very bad happened. I remember what 1938 looked like, not only to a Jew, but to others. I remember the conflicts it made in people. They could not help knowing which instincts were which. Many writers and ordinary people had no difficulty seeing the events for what they were, at the time.
So we return to question the insights again. But by now they are among our own deepest insights. We go back and forth: Nothing gives way on either side.
Did these men simply make mistakes? We can forgive mistakes. A human individual can develop far beyond others, but surely only on one or two dimensions. No one can be great in more than a few ways. And Heidegger did write of his "mistakes" in his application to be allowed to teach again at Freiburg (1946). He also distanced himself from the Nazi party already in 1934, long before most Germans. I have no difficulty understanding any person's mistake, and less difficulty if someone is highly developed in other ways. No human can have every kind of strength and judgement. On a personal level there is really no problem.
Why he was so silent about the mistake is also more than personal. It is the silence of a whole generation. I will return to this silence.
The problem is not about him, personally, at all. I pose a problem for us. The problem is, why his kind of philosophy---our kind of philosophy---fails to protect against this "mistake." That is the philosophical question.
His philosophy allowed for this mistake. It is therefore not just the personal accident. There is an inherent, systematic connection. These deep insights permit inhuman, racist views. To find the systematic connection, we must look exactly where these views---our views---are deepest, most precious, and not false but true. What was lacking at that most true point?
Something very important was lacking at the deepest point. We don't notice the lack, because when we read these writings today, we assume and add what is lacking.
I became an American when I was 13. As a child I had not belonged in, or identified with, Austria. I had been alienated in some confused and inarticulate way. I found I could really be an American, and I am one.
But, some European peculiarities remain from before. At the Heidegger Circle I laugh silently to myself, when other Americans discuss and share Heidegger's view that to be human is to dwell historically as a people on a soil. How do my fellow Americans manage to dwell with Heidegger on German soil?
My colleagues read this in a universalized way. For us, in the Heidegger Circle, the human is the same everywhere in this respect, and equally valuable. Humans are culturally particularized, certainly, but this particularization is itself universal. Humans are one species. They are all culturally particular. This universal assertion holds across us all, and we see no problem.
Indeed, after 1945 Heidegger writes of the dangers of technological reason on a "planetary" level. But it is reason, which is thus planetary---the same universal reason he says he had always attacked. (Spiegel Interview.) Heidegger's planetary view differs from our more recent understanding of human universality. The difference has not been much written about, so there are no familiar phrases for it. For Heidegger there is no common human nature which is then also particularized and altered in history. There is no human nature that lasts through change by history. There is only the historical particular, no human nature.
Humans eat and sleep differently in different cultures. They arrange different sexual rituals, build different "nests," and raise their young differently. In an animal species the members do all this in the same way. Humans are not even a species. So, at least, it seemed to those thinkers who entered into what is most deeply human.
To them, the deepest and most prized aspect of humans was the cultural and historical particular.
In our generation we easily and conveniently universalize the particularization. Not Heidegger. For him, what is most valuable is the necessarily particular indwelling in one people's history and language, on its land, and not another's. We change it without noticing, to read: any indwelling in any people's history is this most highly valued aspect.
**************************
Last paragraph:
It is partly the influence of his work in us, which now makes us unable to grasp how he could have failed to sense the nonrational universality of humans. Today, in Chicago, when we look at Louis Sullivan's buildings, the ones that created modern architecture, we wonder why he used so much granite. Why didn't he use just steel and windows?
To understand may be to forgive, but it is certainly not to excuse. Without pretending to lighten the horror, we need to understand why that tradition of thought also brought
horror. Only so can we think through what we draw from our immediate past. Only then can we recover the other past, right behind that one. We need both, to articulate our own, non-rational universalization of human depth.“
Complete paper:
http://previous.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2018.html
If we remove Heidegger’s analysis of authenticity, for me what’s left are the most remarkable features of his model, including his analysis of mood , interpretation and pragmatic ready to hand dealings with the world , being-with-others, the origin of empirical objectivity and formal logic. What the shift to the mode of authenticity does is take this pragmatic engagement and make it thoroughly self-reflexive. We become concerned with Being as whole
rather than beings. But as Heidegger says, only on rare occasions do we think authentically.
Interesting. I never knew what you though of Heidegger. He has useful things to say, I think that is not too controversial if you just read B&T with just a little sympathy.
But I agree with you, there is something in his use of being that can be potentially misleading.
I can see the distinction you want to make, but nonetheless even apparently 'static' entities are be-ings. They are also, despite their apparent stasis, becomings. We also have dynamic non-sentient entities such as tornadoes and lightning.
To return to the subject of this thread, Heidegger distinguished between beings and being in his use of the terms 'existential' and 'existentiell':
Existentiell and existential are key terms in Martin Heidegger's early philosophy. Existentiell refers to the aspects of the world which are identifiable as particular delimited questions or issues, whereas existential refers to Being as such, which permeates all things, so to speak, and can not be delimited in such a way as to be susceptible to factual knowledge. In general it can be said that "existentiell" refers to a "what", a materially describable reality, whereas "existential" refers to structures inherent in any possible world. In other words, the term "existentiell" refers to an ontic determination, whereas "existential" refers to an ontological determination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentiell
I don’t know that the being of things has any status for Heidegger except as a distorted and flattened modification of the ‘as’ structure’ of disclosure. Objective presence is deconstructed over and over in Being and Time. The being of things as presence implies extension, duration and self-identity. Heidegger shows such thinking to be in need of clarification.
I've resisted reading Heidegger although quite a bit has filtered through in these debates and from various readings I've done.
Thanks although I think that differntiation obfuscates as much as clarifies. I prefer E F Schumacher's ontology in his Guide for the Perplexed - that there are levels of being.
A quality is nothing? Sounds like something to me.
There isn’t such a distinction for Heidegger. To exist is movement and becoming, not static presence to self.
It's seems to be true that it is only in self-reflective moments or with those who are highly concerned with living an "examined life" that authentic thinking commonly occurs. The concern with authenticity and being-towards-death are more aligned with the existentialist dimensions of Heidegger's thought, I'd say.
Some Buddhists are also interested in this aspect of Heidegger as can be seen here.
I know of one interpreter of Heidegger, Blattner (Heidegger's Temporal Idealism) who seems to be interpreting all being for Heidegger as "being-for-us" only, which could be seen as a form of idealism. Dreyfus, if I remember right, sees Heidegger as a realist in the sense that he acknowledges the mind-independent existence of things. It is quite a while since I read Being and Time, Blattner, Dreyfus and others so it's hard for me to judge now without going back to the text (which I don't have time to do); do you see the Heidegger of B & T as an idealist?
That a colour is not a "thing" does not mean a colour is nothing. A colour is a quality.
Again, do people say "I saw a red" or "I'm seeing a yellow"? No, because they colours aren't recognized as things.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why resist?
I remember reading that book thirty years ago when I was interested in Gurdjieff's ideas. If memory serves, Schumacher was heavily influenced by Gurdjieff and references him in that work, but I could be confusing it with another book. Gurdjieff certainly thought there were different levels of being in terms of ever more subtle "energies".
Being-towards-death certainly reminds many of Kierkegaard, but the feature of Heidegger’s analysis of death that I find valuable doesn’t rest on death as the end of life but death as the end of every moment of time. That is, the finite nature of temporality , the fact that each néw moment of time is the death of a previous sense of meaning. So I link death directly to the nothing , angst and the uncanny.
You’re right about Dreyfus’s interpretation, but Dreyfus has gone out of fashion as a reader of Husserl and Heidegger. I suppose I’d could call Heidegger an idealist in the sense that I don’t believe that things have an indeed et existence for him. But neither do contents of the world conform to faculties of mind ala Kant. Instead , world and self mutually form each other , which makes for an odd kind of idealism.
Exactly! Death for Heidegger doe not represent (merely) the end of life, but the closing of of possibilities; hence angst and the desirability of living authentically in full acknowledgement of that closing off.
Quoting Joshs
If I understand correctly Heidegger rejects the notion of the transcendental ego as constitutor of the self and world. The mutuality of self and world as an interactive process then would seem to lead to the possibility of enactivism. Whitehead also seems to have run with this kind of idea in a very different way, and his philosophy also seems to be either an odd form of idealism or not really idealism at all. Not realism as usually understood, either. Maybe relational realism.
I wouldn't say that to exist means becoming and not stasis. In that case we're in the being/becoming distinction again, only taking the side of the latter. But Heidegger rejects that as a false choice, as you know. Not sure what you're saying here.
In ontology, being is not restricted to human beings or sentient beings. It's a matter of terminology. We can make all kinds of distinctions, and we do. But within this context, we're talking about what's usually thought of as the most "universal" of concepts.
Quoting Manuel
If it is, it is a being. If it's not nothing, it's something. True, it's not a "thing" like a rock or tree, but neither is justice and sound and numbers.
Quoting Manuel
Come on. Do we really have to continue this? "I'm seeing red," "I see green" gets used all the time. "The sky is blue," "I like the color yellow," etc. If it's not nothing, it has being. Qualities have being, numbers have being, sound has being, light has being, love has being, a unicorn has being. This is a matter of nomenclature. If you define "thing" or "being" as something physical, then none of this is true. But as I've stated many times, this is not what I mean when I'm discussing beings. Think of it as "phenomena," if you like. There's all kinds of phenomena -- mental phenomena, physical phenomena, for example -- a common distinction in our culture.
All have being.
Quoting Banno
Being is not treated as a thing. I would also take issue with "structured" by time. Being is interpreted by human beings, and human beings, in Heidegger, are "embodied time" -- what he calls temporality. The claim is that in the West, since the Greeks, being was taken as phusis and, later, ousia -- that which is constantly present.
The "present" in this case is simply an interpretation based on one mode of the human being: what he calls the "present-at-hand." This is the mode we're in, for example, when things break down, the case he uses being a piece of equipment, like a hammer. When the hammer breaks down, or a doorknob sticks, or something goes wrong with our car, we look at these entities differently -- more theoretically, one could say -- than we do when using this equipment (what he calls the "ready-to-hand"); in this latter case, the hammer "withdraws"...or the door, or the car. They go unnoticed, they're absent. I like the example of breathing. It's constantly going on, but how often are we aware of it until something negative happens? Most of the time, breathing is absent -- we're unconscious of it, take it for granted; it withdraws. So in this ready-to-hand mode, these examples are not present-at-hand objects -- they're transparent to us.
We notice the hammer as an object with properties (weighing one pound, being of x length, having this color and shape, etc) usually when it breaks down or we're in a more theoretical (or "scientific") mood. This is the present-at-hand mode of being. It's this mode, Heidegger argues, that is the basis for the West's interpretation of being as "constantly present," as idea, ousia, substance.
This may all be uninteresting or unconvincing, but I hope it at least clears away some misconceptions. Again, being is not an entity/thing, as odd as that sounds -- and Heidegger is not offering an interpretation himself, for example that being = time.
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I think this sums it up well enough. Plenty to dive into there.
I'm not convinced of that, though I do agree that this has to do a lot with nomenclature, but I'll drop it. I guess we're not connecting here. Just like you get intense in political stuff, I get involved in these type of arguments. :cool:
In the quote below, Heidegger equates occurrence with existing , and existing with transition( elsewhere he uses the word ‘becoming’), and transition with the structure of temporality. Where does stasis fit in here? If stasis is equivalent to objectively present , enduring , subsisting , self-identical, inhering, then he is determining stasis as an inadequate way to think about existing. Becoming isnt at one pole and stasis at the other, and neither is becoming the sequential movement of things becoming present ( stasis) in time and then passing away. Rather , the becoming of time is a single unified occurrence that is future, present and having been in the same moment. There is no room for stasis or objective presence here.
“Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence...Man is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence. Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment-being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing.”(Heidegger 1995)
Quoting Xtrix
He certainly is, if you are referring to the ontological understanding of the being of Dasein.
“We defined the being of Da-sein as care. Its ontological meaning is temporality.”
“ The task of the foregoing considerations was to interpret the primordial totality of factical Da-sein with regard to its possibilities of authentic and inauthentic existing and to do so existentially and ontologically in terms of its very basis. Temporality revealed itself as this basis and thus as the meaning of being of care. Thus what the preparatory existential analytic of Da-sein contributed prior to setting forth temporality has now been taken back into temporality as the primordial structure of the totality of being of Da-sein.”
I fail to see how, if it’s a matter of definition, but so be it.
Quoting Manuel
I like to think I’m intense with everything I care about. :strong:
Quoting Joshs
In that case there isn’t room for becoming, either.
Thinking of being as becoming is just as inadequate as thinking of being as constant presence.
I don’t see “becoming of time” meaning anything. Time— temporality— is, essentially, us. It’s dasein’s being as ecstatic openness. Things persist and change, sure, but first they’re here, they are.
The being of dasein is temporality, which interprets being. Not being in general.
Oh no, you most certainly are. :sweat:
Just that there's more room in politics to get really upset at some people. It's a bit harder (though not impossible) to get pissed of at someone for not agreeing on a word, or if tree exists or not. I fall more into the latter category, especially with some rather niche topics.
In any case, thanks for the conversation. Great threads, as usual. :ok:
The distinction between ‘beings’ and ‘things’ is a fundamental ontological distinction. If you lose sight of that then what ontological distinctions are there? Why are ‘beings’ called beings and not things?
Quoting Xtrix
This sounds like the view of time Heidegger is critiquing, that events occur ‘in’ time , that things come into presence and ‘ occupy’ time and then disappear.
“What does it mean to be "in time"? This "being-in-time" is very familiar to us from the way it is represented in natural science. In natural science all processes of nature are calculated as processes which happen "in time." Everyday common sense also finds processes and things
enduring "in time," persisting and disappearing "in time." When we talk about "being-in-time," everything depends on the interpretation of this "in." In order to see this more clearly, we ask simply if the glass on the table in front of me is in time or not. In any case, the glass is already
present-at-hand and remains there even when I do not look at it. How long it has been there and how long it will remain are of no importance. If it is already present-at-hand and remains so in the future, then that means that it continues through a certain time and thus is "in" it. Any kind of continuation obviously has to do with time.”(Zollikon)
“Time is making present according to Aristotle, (the present at hand) and in so doing is a counting
of time as now, now, now. And thus time shows itself for the vulgar understanding as a succession of constantly
"objectively present" nows that pass away and arrive at the same time.”
Temporality for Heidegger isnt simply ‘us’ as ecstatic openness. It is what is happening to us NOW as a future ( a totality of relevance) which is in the process of having been. The structure of temporality is transition as unified occurrence. ‘We’ ‘are’ only as being changed.
“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.”(Heidegger 2010)
I should add that your reading is consistent with a number of Heidegger scholars, including Dreyfus. Mine is consonant with Derrida’s reading.
Past , present and future.
What’s the difference between being in general and the totality of being of dasein?
Beings are things, yes. Rocks, trees, particles, love, music, toothpaste, apes, snakes, numbers...you get the point. The fundamental ontological distinction is between being and beings, not beings and things. Beings and things are interchangeable.
I get the point, and I think it's mistaken. I don't know much about Heidegger, but I do know he speaks of 'the forgetfulness of being'. Maybe that could cast some light.
But, my argument is that we deploy the word 'being' with respect to beings such as ourselves, because it designates something which is absent in rocks, trees, and toothpaste. Not in apes, which are beings, albeit not rational, language-using beings. But the abandonment of the distinction between beings and things is characteristic of the dominant philosophical stance of modern culture, which has a monistic ontology comprising only one category of substance, namely, matter~energy. And that stance is called 'materialism'.
[quote=SEP Entry, Heidegger; https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#Que]According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being, and thus Being as such, has been forgotten by ‘the tradition’ (roughly, Western philosophy from Plato onwards). Heidegger means by this that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. In this way Being as such has been forgotten.[/quote]
That resonates with Buddhist philosophy - because of the attempt to 'objectify' Being as those various terms that are named in that passage (idea, substance, etc). By labelling 'Being' as some concept or putative 'entity' or 'thing', then the 'open' nature of being (is that what he means by 'clearing'?) is forgotten, because we think we've got it described. This is exactly the criticism that Buddha makes of the putative '?tman'.
It's not a view of time. Persistence and becoming both presuppose being. They are also thought of in terms of the present-at-hand, as things that persist or change "in time," as I think you agree, and this itself rests on an interpretation of time which is also present-at-hand. When looked at phenomenologically, this doesn't appear to be dasein's state of being, for the most part. Dasein seems much more engaged with and coping with a world than seeing things as objects that persist or "become." This distinction is an old one, of course, but itself rests on a present-at-hand mode of being -- beginning with Plato's characterization of Parmenides and Heraclitus.
Quoting Joshs
Dasein is ecstatic openness. Temporality is a unity of these ecstasies. That's what I gather. He's trying to re-interpret time and human beings as temporality and dasein, respectively, and in terms of ecstatic openness. The ecstatic refers to the ecstases of temporality, the openness to dasein's "disclosure," aletheia.
Quoting Joshs
It's odd that you use "now," which Heidegger explicitly says is the move Aristotle makes and which the tradition has taken ever since, when thinking about time: as a series of now-points.
Quoting Joshs
We are only as being temporal. He's not saying we're embodied change, he's saying we're embodied time/temporality. He is not equating temporality with change. How can we think or "know" change in the first place? We first have to "be" before we can even comprehend change.
Quoting Joshs
I can't say I've dived deep into Derrida, but from what I have read and heard I'm not terribly impressed. I could be wrong about that. I find Dreyfus far more honest and more careful. Most of my opinion comes from reading the texts several times, particularly Being and Being, Introduction to Metaphysics, Basic Problems, and an underrated 'book' called "Basic Questions of Philosophy," which is well worth the read. His interviews (available on YouTube) are also very helpful, I think, because he's forced to condense his material and give an overview. Many don't take these very seriously, but I don't know why -- they seem very consistent with the written work that I've encountered.
Quoting Joshs
What do you mean by the totality of being of dasein? Remember the title: being and time. If dasein is essentially time, and is the entity that interprets being and questions being, then we begin to understand why in the West being was interpreted as "presence." But Heidegger doesn't himself offer an interpretation of being, only the human being.
Yes, but this thread is about ontology, which is using "being" very differently than exclusively for sentient entities.
~Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, 1657-1757
I don't think it provides the liberty to re-define the term according to your preference.
It is true that the term 'being' used as a noun, refers generally to living beings, and not to inanimate objects. I think it's legitimate to ask why this is the case, and what the implicit distinction is between these usages. I can't see why that question, of all questions, is not a legitimate question about the subject of 'ontology', when the subject itself is about 'the meaning of being'. I would have thought it the most basic question of ontology.
Xitrix has said that 'being' can be said of 'anything that exists' - the examples being 'Rocks, trees, particles, love, music, toothpaste, apes, snakes, numbers.' Isn't there an obvious problem here? Isn't there an in-principle difference between the kind of being that numbers represent, and the kind of being that rocks represent? And apes? They are beings of different kinds - not just different kinds of object or thing, but their natures have differences, don't they? Is it controversial to assert that rocks are not beings?
Quoting StreetlightX
That essay is 'The Problem of Being and the Greek Verb 'To Be''by Charles Kahn. I think it supports the point that I was seeking to make,with respect to the derivation of the word 'ontology'. My argument was that the meaning of 'being' and 'existence' were differentiated in the Greek in a sense which has been lost in subsequent usage as per the following:
It absolutely does not. It rightly makes a distinction between being and existence, but it in no way goes on to situate 'being' on the side of living or sentient things or what have you. The rest of your post is special pleading, and is irrelevant. There is no 'obvious problem' to anyone who does not drag their own personal and unwarranted presuppositions into the study of ontology.
that is the only distinction I wished to make, and up til now, there has been no acknowledgment that there is such a distinction to be made.
Love you too! :heart:
Quoting Wayfarer
No it wasn't.
Yeah this is your own little napkin distribution of the distinction that accords to nothing in philosophy. Please stop acting as though anyone but you sticks by it.
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics Z:
"Now substance (=being) seems to belong most evidently to bodies. That is why we say that animals and plants and their parts are substances, and also natural bodies, such as fire, water, earth, and each thing of this sort, as well as such things, whether all or some, as are parts of these or from which they are composed (for example, the heaven and its parts, stars and moon and sun)".
What you call a 'forgetting' is a 'Wayfarer projecting into history'.
(Let's keep things simple. :smile: )
A noun. Nothing more, and nothing less. It's not even an intelligible concept. An artifact of the English language: "To be, or not to be."
Talk about human-beings and animal-beings, living, or persisting, are a whole new ballgame.
(-ing! :chin: ) Do rocks be? or do rocks exist? Are rocks being? or are rocks existing?
(Note also that the word that is given as 'substance' here, was in the original 'ouisia', which is nearer in meaning to 'being' than 'substance' in the usual sense of 'a material with uniform properties'. But the point remains that exploring the different modalities of the verb 'to be' is a fundamental concern of the Metaphysics.)
Quoting Wheatley
You can't even spell it, much less explicate it.
Another snippet from Kahn:
Well, go and chat with your dog, then, if you have one. He might know.
" 'The world is my idea' — this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows,
though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness' ~ Schopenhauer.
We're not in ancient Greece. :yawn:
Wheather or not this is the case is utterly irrelevant because the study of being has never been about this. Listen: why are you fabricating history? Why are you literally lying? Why do you always lie when this topic is brought up?
You know you can just say: "I am of the opinion that 'being' ought to be reserved for sentient creatures, even though historical useage does not accord to my preferred usage (at all)?" Why do you attribute your quirks which nobody shares to history just because you think it ought to be the case?
Still hanging in there with the being thing I see.
The point I would make here is that this is irrelevant to how the word being is used in philosophy. You have a pet usage scheme, perhaps deriving from pop culture--"the being from another world"--and you think this supports the distinction you want to make.
But you can make this distinction without distorting "being" and "existence". Some beings are inanimate, some are sentient, and some are alone in having X.
They are two separate issues.
Has anyone else, or will anyone else, seek to make this distinction? In a discussion of the nature of being, isn't it a legitimate subject for discussion? And what do you think is behind the kind of hostility that is shown when I raise it? Why is it such a hot-button issue?
Quoting jamalrob
Can you find one quote from anything I've said that remotely suggests that I believe that?
Quoting StreetlightX
You referred me to that Charles Kahn paper, 'The Greek Verb To Be and the Problem of Being ', and I read it carefully. It supports just the kind of distinction between the Greek use of the verb 'to be', and their conception of the nature of being, how that differs from, and is broader than, the modern definition of 'existence'. So, who is 'lying'?
It does not support the further distinction, made up by you whole-cloth, that being accords to sentient beings and existence to rocks. If anything, being is a broader, not narrower, category than existence. There is a being not only of rocks, but ficticious rocks too.
Ironically it is not a hot button issue because no one would be so brash as to make this stuff up and pretend like it is a contentious issue at all, and the fact that you have done just that is what makes it absurd. So please stop lying, and then shifting the goal posts when you are called out for lying.
It's true, alas, that I'm only a lawyer, though not the sadly stereotypical lawyer you evoke, and so can't aspire to be a real philosopher like yourself. Is stereotyping something philosophers get to do? I'm curious. But perhaps we lawyers are indeed too calculating and hustling to have or understand Dasein, like the Jews according to Heidegger as I'm sure you know. Would I be more acceptable as a philosopher if I was a Nazi, like him?
But let me explain regarding "villain." I tend to think of villains as being seriously evil. I think Heidegger was too craven a person to be a true villain, but acknowledge that villains in literature, for example, need not be seriously evil. So it may well be that he was a villain in a small, mean sense. Like Uriah Heep, for example (Dicken's Heep, not the rock band). You have your wish, then; I think he was a villain, or at least villainous.
I should also explain what I mean by "cult." I don't refer to the Heaven's Gate or Jim Jones kind of cult. I mean a cult of the kind which existed in ancient Greek or Rome (primarily Rome), like that of Isis or Mithras, or the Great Mother. These were "mysteries" because what was taught to or learned by initiates was considered secret. Especially in the case of Mithraism, the secrets were very well kept. Isis was said to chose her initiates, through dreams. Initiates obtained special knowledge which gave them enlightenment and salvation. The knowledge was, naturally enough, expressed through certain words, which had meaning only the initiated could truly understand and interpret. Just as only the initiates of Heidegger can understand or interpret his words.
You seem disappointed that I refer only to well known statements or actions of Heidegger, because they put him in a bad light. Well, perhaps some other stash will be discovered one day and even more about him will come to light. Until then, we know what he did, and said, and wrote. Ecce Homo!
Still waiting for an explanation of the German being and its secret mission.
I’m not re-defining the term. This is the historical usage. If you want to restrict the meaning of beings exclusively to human being (or sentient beings), you can — but that’s not how I’m using the term. I’m using it in the context of ontology.
I don’t consider it controversial, I consider it irrelevant to ontology.
If we define beings as sentient beings and “things”as everything else, there’s nothing left to say — that’s fine — but it’s not ontology. If we define “work” as the job we go to, that’s fine too — but not in a physics class.
Beings here refers to everything— all entities, all phenomena. Not exclusively to sentient beings. I can’t make it clearer.
No one is saying that there aren’t differences between beings. Of course apes are different from rocks. But they’re still entities, beings. To say an ape isn’t a thing or a rock isn’t a being is simply assuming your definition, which as I’ve stated repeatedly is not how the term is being used here.
Because he said it himself, in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, and when asked about it over the years, he shrugged a lot. I think he was kind of drawn to the idea because he thought of science as a pragmatic enterprise, so it made sense that philosophy, being continuous with natural science, would be too. I think somewhere he says that, once he read him later, he felt closest to Dewey out of the classic trio, for just that reason.
Well, in that case it makes sense I suppose. It's not as if there's some hard criteria that forbids people from being pragmatists, though Rorty does distort the term a bit, to my eyes.
Quoting StreetlightX
:up:
:up:
Quoting Xtrix
Let me see if I’m understanding what you mean when you say persistence and becoming both presuppose being.
Are you arguing that we need both the concept of persistence and that of becoming in order to understand being?
This is the way I understand persistence and ‘isness’.
If we say that something appears just for a moment and then vanishes, we still have to assume that it occupies that moment of time, and we can assume that this space of occupation has a duration, even if it is only infinitesimal. In theory, then , we can measure this very brief persistence as a certain number of milliseconds of duration. But what is it we are doing when we count a duration? A quantifiable, mathematizable nature presupposes the kind of time which consists of self-presences transitioning from future to present to past in sequential movement (existing ‘in’ time).
What does it imply to make a time measurement, to state that it takes certain amount of time or for some process to unfold? A time calculation counts identical instances of a meaning whose sense is kept fixed during the counting . To count is to count continuously changing instances OF something that holds itself as self-identical through a duration or extension.
I am arguing that Heidegger is deconstructing the idea of self-identical persistence.
It is widely assumed that there can be no notion of change or becoming without this idea of at least a momentary self-presence. Something would seem to have to be there before we can then say that it changes or disappeared. But Heidegger and also Gendlin disagree.
If change is modeled on motion , the notion isn’t really change in the sense of the generation of novelty, because all one really has here is the repetition of a previous scheme, an identical self-infolding.
Heidegger asks, why does change require the notion of something sitting still as itself for a moment? Instead of founding the idea of change on sequences of things that sit still for a moment, (which is really founding change on bits of stasis that we cobble together), why not recognize that there are no things that sit still. Why not found the illusion of stasis on change , rather than the other way around? Why is it not enough to point to a crossing between past and present as the ‘now’? And by ‘now’ I mean a hinge, a crossing , an edge. The now is a complex now , what Husserl
calls stretched or specious, not a simple presence , but a transit, an act , a ‘from this to that’. From this vantage, any ‘presence’ is split within itself , it is internally articulated as a change from this to that. But the prior , ,this’ must also be understood as a hinge, and so on.
Quoting Xtrix
Heidegger didn’t consider Dasein as just a human being, which is an empirical concept . He wasn’t anthropomorphizing Dasein. Dasein is priori to the thinking of human beings or living things. In this he was following Husserl.
Im adding a snippet from a paper I’m working on which compares Gendlin’s model of time with Heidegger’s. It deals with your question: how can we understand change and becoming without beginning from objects which are present for a least a moment ? Gendlin’s ‘occurring into implying’ is comparable to Heidegger’s notion of the ‘is’.
“In various writings, Gendlin distinguishes his Heideggerian account of time from phenomenologically-influenced causal interactionist readings such as those of Gallagher , Varela, Fuchs and Sheets-Johnstone (See Gendlin 2008, 2012).
“I propose an expanded model of time. Time does not consist only of nows.” Linear time consists merely of positions on an observer's time line. The positions are supposed to be external and independent of what happens. Linear time is an empty frame.““ The linear unit model of successive self-identical times is generated from the more intricate model of time.”
“If only what appears exists, then what exists is “external,” in front of us, other than us, as if alone from us, over-there from here. To “exist” came to mean to appear to us. The very word for things became (and still is) “phenomena.” This is the old subject-object puzzle: what exists can only be a known-by. The metaphysical puzzle comes here only if we first assume that what
exists must have a self identical shape in space and time. Then there seems to be nothing but formed forms imposed on — nothing“
As Gendlin(1997b) argues,
‘The continuity of time cannot first be made by things next to each other, because sucha continuity is passive; each bit IS alone, and must depend on some other continuity to relate it to what is next to it...”(p.71).
In embodied cognitive models, interaction spreads in a reciprocally causal fashion from point to point, whereas for Gendlin, each point somehow implies each other point; each part of a meaning organization somehow “knows about”, belongs to and depends intrinsically on each other part. And this happens before a part can simply be said to exist in itself(even if just for an instant).
What kind of odd understanding concerning the interface between identity and relation could justify Gendlin's insistence that the inter-affection between parts of a psychological organization precedes the existence of individual entities?
Gendlin(1997b) explains:
In the old model one assumes that there must first be "it" as one unit, separate from how its effects in turn affect it.. In the process we are looking at there is no separate "it," no linear cause-effect sequence with "it" coming before its effects determine what happens. So there is something odd here, about the time sequence. How can "it" be already affected by affecting something, If it did not do the affecting before it is in turn affected?...With the old assumption of fixed units that retain their identity, one assumes a division between it, and its effects on others. (This "it" might be a part, a process, or a difference made.) In the old model it is only later, that the difference made to other units can in turn affect "it." (p.40)
Addressing causally interaffecting organizational models, Gendlin explains:
If one assumes separate events, processes, or systems, one must then add their co-ordinations as one finds them, as if unexpectedly...“Inter-affecting" and"coordination" are words that bring the old
assumption of a simple multiplicity, things that exist as themselves and are only then also related. So we need a phrase that does not make sense in that old way. Let us call the pattern we have been formulating "original inter-affecting". This makes sense only if one grasps that "they" inter-affect each other before they are a they(p.22).
Gendlin digs beneath such causative approaches to locate a more fundamental notion of interaction. “This ‘interaction’ is prior to two separate things that would first meet in order to interact. I call it ‘interaction first’.” ‘Interaction first’ functions as what Gendlin(2008) calls
implying into occurring, and in this way carrying forward a previous change.
“Here we chose to put occurring and implying first in our model, and we will derive perception and objects from these. We put occurring into implying (carrying forward) at the start, and these will inhere in all the other terms. Space, time, and perception are derivative from them. The body and its environment as one interaction is prior in our model. From this we can derive separate
individual things and units.”
“Implying has (makes, brings, is .....) time, but not only the linear merely positional time. Though far from clear (we are only beginning), we want the sequence to define time for us. We did not begin with a clear notion of time. Let us say that the relation between occurring and implying
generates time, rather than saying that life processes go on in time. (The latter statement would involve an already assumed time.)”(Process Model)
Implying is not an occurring that will happen. It is not an occurring-not-yet. It does not occupy a different time-position than the occurring. Rather, one implying encompasses all three linear time positions, and does not occupy an additional linear time position of its own. (See A Process Model, IVB. This is a more intricate model of time. It includes a kind of “future” and a kind of “past” that are not linear positions. This time model can be reduced back to the liner model by considering just
occurring-occurring-occurring as if it were cut off from implying.”
Comparing Gendlin’s model of temporality with Heidegger’s, we see that for Heidegger also , the past,
present and future don’t operate as sequential modes which mark distinct states of objects. They interpenetrate each other so completely that they together form a single unitary event of occurrence.
“Because my being is such that I am out ahead of myself, I must, in order to understand something I encounter, come back from this being-out-ahead to the thing I encounter. Here we can already see an immanent structure of direct understanding qua as-structured comportment, and on closer analysis it turns
out to be time. And this being-ahead-of-myself as a returning is a peculiar kind of movement that time
itself constantly makes, if I may put it this way.”(Heidegger 2010b)
The returning from a totality of relevance in the act of understanding something constitutes temporality not as a present object happening IN time but a temporalization.
“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is
in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.”(Heidegger 2010)
Gendlin(1997b) echoes Heidegger’s unification of the components of time.
“The future that is present now is not a time-position, not what will be past later. The future that is here now is the implying that is here now. The past is not an earlier position but the now implicitly functioning past.”“......the past functions to "interpret" the present,...the past is changed by so functioning. This needs to be put even more strongly: The past functions not as itself, but as already changed by what it functions in”(p.37)
"If what the term "idealism" says, amounts to the understanding that Being can never be explained by entities but is already that which is 'transcendental' for every entity, then idealism affords the only correct possibility for a philosophical problematic. If so, Aristotle was no less an idealist than Kant." B&T p. 208
Heidegger doesn't of course mean with transcendental something that makes the scientifical objects possible. It is not anything logical or theoretical but the structures of existence through which the beings manifest themselves as significations in the world (= in the whole of references).
If one reads closely how H. "argues" in B&T it is always through "essential judgements". That is, he describes what kind of Being makes some ontical phenomenon possible. For example, he argues that there is not Dasein as "being-with" because there is many people gathered together but that there is many people gathered together because Dasein is essentially a being-with. There is not made generalizations from the observed data and then theoretically deduced something but instead there are essential characteristics of phenomena which make possible in the first place to access something and observe it and make generalizations. Instead of Kantian categorical, logical functions ordering the natural world there are essential characteristics of the human historical existence and which can differ from case or phenomena to other. They don't make any rigid system (for logical deductions). For Heidegger to intuite essentialities behind facticities or what is empirically given is a genuine philosophical way to address these phenomena, that is, it is his phenomenological method. Essentialities doesn't mean here platonic eternal ideas but something pertaining to "normal" philosophical reflection. Philosophy operates with essentialities not with empirical generalizations.
:up:
Quoting Wayfarer
As an Epicurean-Spinozist, I agree with you, sir, that they are different discourses, but in this way: "the study of what exists" (re: atoms; natura naturata) concerns entities dependent ultimately upon less-dependent, or more fundamental, entities which are (or entity which is) the only concern of "the study of being" (re: void; natura naturans). "Sentient" entities (i.e. subjects) exist ineluctably dependent upon, or grounded by, more fundamental entities and therefore are not synonymous with being. So whatever else your quixotic 'subjectivism' might be, sir, it's conspicuously not (an) ontology as even the earliest philosophers had conceived of it.
I don't think this is fair. It can be said of Kant and Hegel as well. Heidegger is difficult, yes, but open to everyone. If I can make sense of it, anyone can (and I mean that), if one is so inclined to devote some time and energy into it. Ontology is fascinating to me, and I don't think you can be really serious about it unless you hear Heidegger out in good faith.
Regarding Heidegger as Nazi and villain and all that: who knows. That's debated, but frankly I'm in the group who doesn't really care all that much.
Quoting waarala
These essential characteristics of historical
existence are nothing other than the historicality of existence itself. I wouldnt say the essentialities are intuited ‘behind’ facticities. - Rather they are ahead of or beyond themselves. Dasein comes to itself
from out of the world. Essence as being , is temporalizarion , history, existence, becoming.
Quoting waarala
If essence is becoming , temporalization, then an essential characteristic , as a condition of possibility , means nothing other than an analysis of something in terms of a moving structure of pragmatic relevance. There are not generalizations made from data, but instead there is a totality of relevance being changed by what occurs into it from the world. So the ‘accessing’ and ‘observing’ of the world via its incorporation into a
totality of relevance is already modified and changed by what this prior totality discloses. This is the essence of being as temporality.
“Because the Dasein is constituted by being-in-the-world, it is a being which in its being is out beyond itself. The epekeina belongs to the Dasein's own most peculiar structure of being. This transcending does not only and not primarily mean a self-relating of a subject to an object; rather, transcendence means to understand oneself from a world. The Dasein is as such out beyond itself. Only a being to whose ontological constitution transcendence belongs has the possibility of being anything like a self. Transcendence is even the presupposition for the Dasein's having the character of a self. The selfhood of the Dasein is founded on its transcendence, and the Dasein is not first an ego-self which then oversteps something or other. The “toward-itself” and the “out-from-itself” are implicit in the concept of selfhood. What exists as a self can do so only as a transcendent being. This selfhood, founded on transcendence, the possible toward-itself and out-from-itself, is the presupposition for the way the Dasein factically has various possibilities of being its own and of losing itself….The Dasein does not exist at first in some mysterious way so as then to accomplish the step beyond itself to others or to extant things. Existence, instead, always already means to step beyond or, better, having stepped beyond."(Basic Problems of Phenomenology).
No, I'm saying persistence and becoming, stability and change, are "in" being themselves. There's the being of stasis and the being of change. So being is presupposed.
Remember Heidegger's "restriction of being" chapter in Intro to Metaphysics: being and becoming is the first restriction he analyzes, as being one of the most ancient. He talks about how Parmenides and Heraclitus get incorrectly interpreted as opposing one another, and how in Plato this problem (and the problem of "being and seeming") is solved through the Forms -- the Forms being the enduring prototypes. Thus "being" becomes "constancy" and "permanence," the un-changing, as opposed to all that is transient, perishing, unstable -- becoming.
But later he'll say "Becoming -- is it nothing?" "Seeming -- is it nothing?" His is "No, it's not nothing." So if it's not nothing, it's something -- and so belongs just as much "in" being as anything else does. He'll also go on to explain how these concepts were originally a unity and how they got disjoined.
I hope that's perhaps a bit clearer.
Quoting Joshs
I see what you're arguing but I'm not convinced by it. When you say "sequences of things," the "things" you're referring to he will describe as "now-points." That's why I find the use of "now" to be a problem.
Also, I don't see stasis as being an "illusion" any more than change is. Yes, things change. Things also stay the same. We talk about matter changing forms but never being created or destroyed, so matter itself doesn't change...and all of that jazz. Again, we don't want to get caught in the restriction of "being and becoming," where we associated being with permanence. But we also don't want to say being is becoming.
In any case, if change isn't nothing, then it's part of being. To equate it with being is an interpretation, and not a bad one -- it's claimed that Heraclitus did so, and the Buddhists do so in a sense, etc. -- but it's still just that, an interpretation. An interpretation "grounded" in what? In dasein, who cares about being and interprets being (including itself).
You seem to be saying: in the West, being has been interpreted as "presence," as constancy/stasis, and everything, including change, has been grounded on this basis; let's instead ground stasis on change.
I don't think this is what Heidegger is getting at. He's much more cautious than to give any interpretations or recommendations. He is always emphasizing questioning, opening new lines of analysis -- and frequently talks about how a lot of this is probably off track, that new obstacles will arise, etc. He wants to reawaken the question of being.
If anything, I see his main attack being against the objectification of the world and its implications for the future in terms of nihilism and technology. One way to combat this nihilism, according to him, is precisely to stop "staggering" in history, to reawaken the question -- to wake up from our mesmerization with beings and our forgetfulness of being itself.
Quoting Joshs
Agreed, but I'm running out of ways to talk about "us." So if I say "human being," don't take me to mean anthropologically -- Heidegger is avoiding that, which is why he uses "dasein" to begin with. Take me to me "us," the entity which we are.
Quoting Joshs
But that isn't my question at all.
Quoting Joshs
I agree.
I want to get back to what you said in your OP. You asked the question ‘What is ‘isness’? I don’t know how comfortable you will be with this , but what if , in the aim of finding a point of focus, we agree to discuss being in terms of Heidegger’s analysis of the copula ‘is’?
What I have in mind specifically is his analysis of what he calls the statement in B&T. He refers to this as an extreme
modification of interpretation and of the present to hand.
He derives the ‘is’ from the ‘as’ structure, in which we take something as something. I consider the following analysis to inextricably link the ‘is’ to the ‘as’ , the ‘as’ to temporality, and temporality to being ( the ‘is’).
From my paper:
Heidegger explains that in taking something to be the case in a propositional judgement (for instance, S is P) , we are taking something as something within a wider context of pragmatic relevance. Making sense of something is an act that always has the ‘as' structure , as Heidegger tells us, but this structure of relevanting is covered over and flattened down in causal models.
“The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act.” (Heidegger 2010b)
In taking something AS something , we are not simply associating two externally related entities in relation to each other and with reference to a more encompassing causal framework. If a cognition or intention is merely about something , then it functions as external binding, coordinating and relating between two objectively present participants.
Heidegger(2010b) says:
“If the phenomenon of the "as" is covered over and above all veiled in its existential origin from the hermeneutical "as," Aristotle's phenomenological point of departure disintegrates to the analysis of logos in an external "theory of judgment," according to which judgment is a binding or separating of representations and concepts. Thus binding and separating can be further formalized to mean a "relating." Logistically, the judgment is dissolved into a system of "coordinations," it becomes the object of "calculation," but not a theme of ontological interpretation.""If the kind of being of the terms of the relation is understood without differentiation as merely objectively present things, then the relation shows itself as the objectively present conformity of two objectively present things.”
The ‘is' connecting S with P is not a causal copula, but a transformative relevanting altering in one gesture both the S and the P. In Gendlin's terms, the ‘as' enacts a crossing of past and present such that both are already affected and changed by the other in this ‘occurring into implying' ( context of dealing with something). When we take something as something, we have already projected out from a totality of relevance such as to render what is presenting itself to us as familiar and recognizable in some fashion. But in this act of disclosure, we only have this totality of relevance by changing it. This is why Heidegger says that in the process of interpreting what is projectively familiar to us, the ‘as' structure takes apart what it puts together in a kind of crossing.
Heidegger (2010) offers:
“What is to be got at phenomenally with the formal structures of "binding" and "separating," more precisely, with the unity of the two, is the phenomenon of "something as something...In accordance with this structure, something is understood with regard to something else, it is taken together with it, so that this confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, at the same time takes apart what has been put together.
In experiencing something as something, Dasein comes back to its having been from its future, which is to say, it interprets a global context of relevance via the ‘as' structure. In so doing, it “takes apart' the relation between what it encounters and a previous instance of it by coming back to the previous instance from a fresh context of relevance. Seeing something as something makes sense of what is encountered in a new way, on the basis of a newly implied totality of relevance. This taking apart of what has been put together brings us back to the structure of temporality.
“Because my being is such that I am out ahead of myself, I must, in order to understand something I encounter, come back from this being-out-ahead to the thing I encounter. Here we can already see an immanent structure of direct understanding qua as-structured comportment, and on closer analysis it turns out to be time. And this being-ahead-of-myself as a returning is a peculiar kind of movement that time itself constantly makes, if I may put it this way.”(Heidegger 2010b)
The returning from a totality of relevance in the act of understanding something constitutes temporality not as a present object happening IN time but as temporalization. The past, present and future don't operate for Heidegger as sequential modes which mark distinct states of objects. They interpenetrate each other so completely that they together form a single unitary event of occurrence.
That sounds like you’re invoking the ‘rule’ against explaining something in terms of itself — not so much a rule as a definition of failure — but you’re not, which is curious. (The ‘rule’ would be violated if you presupposed logic as a starting point in your primordial theory of logic, not Being.) But if logic can only be explained (or grounded, or theorized, or even primordially theorized) in terms of Being, and Being in terms of logic, then we would have circularity.
The word ‘presuppose’ is tricky though: the rule proscribes explaining something in terms of itself, not relying on it in your explanation. Using logic while explaining logic is not circular.
For instance, I cannot fix this hammer using this hammer (our no-circularity rule), but I can fix it using another hammer, or using anything else as a hammer. So far as logic is concerned, we’re talking about predication here. But it looks like there may be room for an analysis of hammers and hammering and things with which you can hammer — roughly, of the usability and intention-answering possibilities of things — which could function as an account of predication, rather than the other way around.
That only clearly gets you to phenomenology. But in Being and Time, this is the first step in an analysis of the being of things, right? Maybe it’s taking that step, from phenomenology to ontology, that most needs clarification.
It's not 'my' definition, it's the definition. Objects are not beings, as they are not subject of experience. (This is the origination of the hard problem of consciousness, by the way.)
Quoting Xtrix
Where do abstract objects fit into this? Numbers, scientific principles, and the like? Because they're *not* phenomena, their nature is noumenal i.e. they're intelligible objects, not sense objects. And your analysis completely misses that distinction. If you label them all as 'existents' or 'phenomena' then you're not accounting for the fundamental distinctions that ontology is concerned with.
Quoting 180 Proof
But you say that that because of materialist ontology, which inverts the relationship between mind and matter, making matter fundamental and mind derivative from it. That is of course the universal assumption of philosophical materialism. But what are the putative 'fundamental entities' which you propose are the ground or basis for rational beings? They can hardly be said to be material atoms. Current physics operates in terms of mathematical models, where the most fundamental level are mathematical abstractions, and therefore not the purportedly 'mind-independent' material entities materialism supposes - which is why the the Copenhagen interpretation of physics is directly relevant*. You might argue the 'fundamental entities' are instead fields - but fields are not entities at all, merely distributive patterns of causal relations. Again, whatever such 'entities' are supposed to be, can only be disclosed by rational judgement, which is epistemologically prior to any of those suppositions. 'Cogito ergo sum.'
------------
* 'the inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of the atom, which had become apparent even in the ancient discussions about smallest particles, have also appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the present century.
This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.
During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?
I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.' ~ Werner Heisenberg, The Debate between Plato and Democritus.
The key phrase in the above passage is whether atoms 'exist in the same way as stones or flowers'. And that is an ontological distinction.
I'm happy to grant them cult status as well.
Quoting Xtrix
The study of the "nature of being" doesn't fascinate me, I'm afraid. You're welcome to it, however.
Quoting Xtrix
I don't think even his most frenzied, fanatic followers dispute the fact he was a Nazi, or if they do have at least stopped doing so openly. As Joshs will tell you, this is common (and so uninteresting) knowledge. But it seems there are good Nazis, or perhaps that a certain Nazi is, shall we say, "beyond good and evil."
This interpretation of Spinoza I can go with:
That is entirely in keeping with my philosophical stance: that the reason human being is significant, is that it is in this form that the Universe comes to self-awareness. Philosophy is 'anamnesis', un-forgetting or recovering this fundamental reality. And, as discussed earlier in this thread, the term 'substance', derived from 'ouisia', is better interpreted as 'being' or 'subject', which means Spinoza's definition reads as 'God is the eternal, self-causing, unique being (or subject)'. The Amor Dei Intellectualis is then an expression of theosis or union with that subject, similar to that expressed by non-dualist philosophies. Which is why Spinoza was outcaste as a heretic: for disintermediating the priesthood!
I think this is the crux of the matter. I believe that all of us, including Heidegger and Hitler, are beyond good and evil. That is to say, following Nietzsche, I interpret others’ actions from a psychological rather than a moralistic perspective. For me, understanding personal behavior in the context of sociological, historical and psychological influences isnt just a question of locating mitigating factors, but constitutes the central explanatory system for dealing with others. I mentioned your legal background because we all tend to choose a profession that reflects our ways of understanding the world. I chose psychology and philosophy as consonant with my belief system. It seems to me that you view personal behavior primarily from the vantage of character and individual responsibility and choice. I’m not saying you don’t take social, historical and psychological
factors into consideration, but I suspect that you see them as only peripheral to what you see as the central consideration, which is that of personal moral choice.
So Heidegger represents for you a morally flawed personality , and any wider sociological analysis is seen by you as excuse making.
It's not the definition in ontology. Objects are beings, like everything else.
Quoting Wayfarer
They're beings.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's not what "noumenal" means. Numbers are not "noumenal." Numbers are beings, like everything else.
Quoting Wayfarer
As I already said, there are plenty of distinctions among beings. All kinds. They're still beings.
Quoting Ciceronianus
So every philosopher has a cult following?
Objects are entities.
And entities are beings.
Quoting Janus
But...Quoting Janus
Hmm.
Sartre strikes me as far clearer in his analysis and more astute in his arguments than Heidegger. But then Sartre could write.
Heidegger is dense. I gave up reading him.
I just don't see how saying 'being = everything that exists' says anything whatever. There are such things as 'ontological distinctions' which I think are being totally ignored, but I'd better shut up before I start copping abuse again.
Tough love. :smile:
But my thought was that putting whatever your point was in terms of being-for-itself and being-in-itself might avoid a beating from the thought police.
Quoting Caldwell
That implies that he says a lot in a small space. My impression is rather that he says very little, but in the most obtuse fashion. So:
Quoting Joshs
...all this and more to say much the same thing as Wittgenstein's reply to Heraclitus, that we don't even walk through the same river once.
I can't divorce myself of the impression that Heidegger's style is an affectation. That seems to fit his general self-important demeanour.
But so far as being goes, this otherwise horrid thread has brought me back to Sartre, and if time permits I might reconsider his ontology. I'm taken with the notion, in his SEP article, that the principle of identity holds for being-in-itself but not for being-for-itself.
No, they aren't.
:yawn:
Yes, we know. Very original take.
This thread isn't about Heidegger. If you have nothing to contribute, then there's no sense continuing. Go start a more interesting thread. I've tried explaining things several times, and this was ignored. So I assume you're here just to bitch. Talk about "affectation."
I replied to the bits you wrote that I found interesting. I also made my exit, only to come back for Wayfarer, not you. I'm content with my contributions, which have elicited some interest amongst others.
If you don't like my posts, refer them to a Mod. Elsewise, suck it up.
If you have something you would like me to address, try asking nicely.
Glad to understand your standards. :up:
The "is" discussion isn't of that much interest to me. The main points I wanted to make are as follows:
(1) From the Greek inception onward, being has been interpreted as presence. Starting at the end of this inception, with Plato and Aristotle, being becomes associated with idea and ousia and sets the stage thereafter for "thinking" being the predominant issue, with man seen as the animal with reason and logos (as assertion) and eventually leading to the modern era in Descartes and Kant.
(2) A conscious (thinking) subject contemplating objects ignores absence -- it ignores the fact that most of the time we are acting unconsciously, and that thinking itself (as philosophical or scientific thinking) is but one mode of human activity.
(3) We should question what being is and thus, and more importantly, what we are -- which means where we're going and what we're doing in the world. Because every action, choice, routine, speech, etc., operates with a "pre-ontological" or "pre-theoretical" understanding of both (the Christian era being a good example).
(4) Our current pre-theoretical understanding seems to be a nihilistic one, largely thanks to the end of Christianity and the rising of scientism, technology and capitalism. There's no common understanding of what we are. It's a very anxiety-provoking, rootless, and directionless understanding of being.
I see all of this as ultimately relevant to both individuals and society as a whole. It's hard to look around and be an optimist, but if real change is going to happen we have to wake up or re-awaken our questioning.
Much the same as the distinction between calling a chook "it" or "her". Depends whether it/she is your dinner or your pet*.
I dragged out my old SOD to check, and found nothing supporting this use of "being". Nor does the etymology look promising: *bheu?-, also *bheu-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to be, exist, grow."(ref). That last, to grow, is interesting, perhaps relating to "build" and "bustle". We talk of human being and supreme being, not human existent and supreme existent;
*A fox got in to the hen house and played "shake the chook" last night, with only one survivor, who (not 'which'...) as a result is getting unusual attention and sympathy, including being elevated from "it" to "she".
Do you have an example of what you would call an ontological distinction?
Yes, the ontological distinction: being and beings.
The former is what we’re inquiring about.
!. Yes. being becomes associated with the form, soul, eidos or substance, and in turn with God. What Heidegger refers to as "ontotheology".
2. The absolute presence of the thinking subject and its object. Although the absent is still lurking in the form of the transcendent.
3. I'm reminded of the other thread re Collingwood and the idea of absolute presuppositions that we are unaware we are making at our peril.
4. The rise of science, technology and colonialism in the West (which was around the 10th century well behind China technologically) can be understood to be on account of the scholastic idea that, apart from the revelation of the scriptures, God reveals himself in the Book of Nature written for the benefit and understanding and use of Man. There is an interesting reversal in the notion of nihilism as presented by Nietzsche; (if memory serves), he saw Christianity itself as nihilistic insofar as it imposes meaning from above and deprives humans of the possibility of creating their own meaning from the ground up, so to speak.
The twin evils of scientism and capitalism, with their total disregard for nature, stand in the way of any new socialist order which would seem to be the only hope for civilization going forward. That our destinies are determined by a tiny cabal of individuals and giant corporations who would rather see the world burn than give up their power and privilege is quite an horrific scenario to contemplate.
On the one hand we have to listen to what science is telling us about climate change and the devastating effect of capitalism on the ecosystem and on the other hand we cannot expect science (in the form of technology) to save us if we want to survive. As Heidegger pointed out the way to destruction is to see nature as a "standing reserve", rather than as something to be nurtured and preserved.
No, he makes things too complicated what could be explained in shorter, simpler words. From latin definition.
Quoting Banno
Sorry to know about it. :( Yes, give her much love.
It's interesting to watch her wander around the coop; she's never not had company. One wonders what, if any, sense of absence is there when she doesn't have to compete for the grain thrown on the floor, or when she finds herself alone on the perch at roost.
The relevance to this topic? Does a chicken exist to itself if it is not being watched by other chickens?
For your viewing pleasure, a metaphor for these forums:
Check out who plays Joseph Garcin.
I'd be interested in how such views are compatible with Heidegger's work on being (and no I am not trying to be a dick) I am always curious how complex theoretical positions translate into or are compatible with world-views such as these.
Quoting Joshs
I imagine there might be endless possible readings of a given person in the context of sociological, historical and psychological influences. How do you determine you have an appropriate reading of these influences in constructing an explanatory system?
Does not your statement, "How to determine an appropriate reading of these influences.", just underline the absurdity of the concept of free will.? Being, its sins and responsibilities need to be reframed.
The mere complexity of so many variables acting through time is a job for the new science of chaos, butterfly effects all over the place. Humanity might not be able or willing to deal with the overwhelming complexity that is the human experience. An experience that conditions and molds the individual. To say an individual is responsible, accountable for his state of being at any given time is simply absurd. The full realization of the truly overwhelming complexity would reek havoc with the ideas of sin or being legally accountable to a legal system.
We'd be in free fall, how is a society to function without sin or full accountability for the individual's behaviors, it would be chaos itself, and perhaps it would be a little to frightening. I think if humanity ever embraces this challenge, it would be a new step in social evolution, a brave new world. Chaos theory and neurology I believe will lay this out, so as to be undeniable. When you express bewilderment, as to how to discern a science of all these variables mentioned, it just state to me, the absurdity of the concept of free will.
This has of course to do with Heidegger's concept of truth and his critique of the traditional conception of truth i.e. that the truth is "situated" in the logical judgment or statement. Husserl could be an influence here. Husserl tried to "ontologize" the logical judgment as a part of his scheme consisting of an act of judgment, the content of the judgment and the object of the judgment. Logical judging happens i n the "reality" or Being where it expresses some experience. It (or logicality in general) is not just a separate given form but it presupposes certain phenomenological-ontological structures. Logical relations or forms presuppose phenomenologically described ontological relations of "foundations" (phenomena are founded in each other essentially = philosophical logic). Heidegger however transfers Husserl's position from the "consciousness" into an "hermeneutical situation". "World" as hermeneutical situation.
"as" is precisely that what is called "transcending"? Experiencing something as "as" is to be "in" the world of "relevant" references. Judgement is an particular expression for this experience. But it, or its form, tends to somehow distort the original experience. Is the language in itself already a "distortion" of an experience? Language should express as closely as possible (truly) the articulations of the as-structures? Language or discourse expresses and stores more or less confidently these original articulations. To be in the truth means, according to Heidegger, that the discourse and being are one.
Being and Time chapter 33 "Assertion [statement, judgment] as a Derivative Mode of Interpretation" is essential reading in this connection. (Following chapter 34 is entitled "Being-there and Discourse. Language".)
Interesting quotes and comments. Is the Heidegger 2010b his 1925 lectures?
I agree in general with your points. I would just say about 2) that Heidegger doesn’t. accept the concept of consciousness. Dasein is not a consciousness.
The reason for this is that consciousness implies
self-reflexivity and sel-affection on the part of the subject. To be a conscious subject is to reflect back on the previous moment of awareness without this reflection altering and transforming the immediately prior self. For Heidegger we are never conscious to ourselves , because reflection is transformation. So absence for Heidegger makes its way into the heart of experiencing every moment, in that the self is never present to itself as consciousness, self-reflexivity and self-awareness. We are fundamentally absent to ourselves.
As far as ‘thinking’ , Heidegger seems to use it in an idiosyncratic way to cover any and all sorts of experiencing.
Yes.It’s ‘Logic: The Question of Truth’(1925-26)
Is that even the aim?
Look at the academic texts published about other (academic) texts, people, and events. In one sense, academia exists in order to produce a vast variety of views of the same things.
(I was once at an introductory lecture of a new professor. His doctoral thesis and so his lecture was on the application of systems theory in literary studies. The head of the department, his immediate boss, a woman in her 40's/50's, gave him the approval for the position of lecturer, but on the topic of systems theory, she made a derisive remark to the effect of "But we both know that's not true, and that's not how to approach literature." She was old-school like that. It was both funny and sad to watch.)
If your quest is in more general terms: Most people are confident that they can quickly know the truth about another person, and they insist in this to the point of being willing to publicly criticize the person for it, up to and including killing them.
Just look at this forum. One would think that people with advanced degrees in philosophy or people who are at least interested in philosophy would care about whether they have the correct idea about another poster's views. But for the most part, they don't. Most people function by the principle "You are whatever I say that you are. I define you. I am the arbiter of your reality. And you better comply, or I will punish you."
IOW, people ordinarily don't ask the question you do, they find it absurd.
That said, I, personally, wouldn't ask myself that question either, but would just focus on the interaction at hand, rather than seeking to get a definitive idea of who the other person is.
They're social animals, like almost all animals are.
The notion of "absence" -- many animals possess this. That notion is very strong when they first realized it -- elephants, cats, dogs for example. Then, of course, there's decay of that notion after certain amount of time.
No. I'll reflect your level of politeness.
Quoting Janus
Unpack what you mean in the second sentence for me a bit, if you please.
Quoting Janus
Yes. How many people truly question anything? This gets said a lot, I'm sure, but it's absolutely true. If you're not a philosopher, scientist, theologian, perhaps psychologist or psychotherapist, you may encounter these questions a handful of times over the course of several years, if at all. It doesn't have to be all that profound, either -- it's simple questions. Socrates asked simple questions too. But what they do is uncover the hidden beliefs and decisions we're acting on.
Quoting Janus
I wonder why you say the 10th century...the Carolingian renaissance?
Quoting Janus
Very well said. Our secular age, with its scientism and capitalism is ultimately based on "naturalism" and "materialism," or even "physicalism." Two other -isms branch off from these: hedonism and consumerism. That's a lot of -isms. But if we look around, this explains a large part of our world. It shows up in the "American Dream" of basically aspiring to be nothing more than a wage slave who can maybe one day own a house and a little land (property, assets -- "stuff"). It shows up in our addictions to technology, the most obvious being smart phones.
There's also Christianity lingering in the background. But the Church is nearly irrelevant, and the evangelicals are first and foremost Republican "free enterprise" capitalists, more willing to go with Trump than Jesus. So whatever they profess, they live their lives like everyone else: capitalists.
The United States is the ruling nation in the world today, and so whoever controls the United States essentially controls the world and the future of humanity. That control is currently in the hands of big business, and in particular the financial sector. Obviously Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Pharma, all are powerful -- but I'd say the banks and investment firms and asset managers hold the most power. They're the only industry that can get propped up by creating money by fiat -- which the Fed happily does, since they're "too big to fail."
Financial corporations are structured in the same way as any corporation. So these CEOs and the board of directors who make the decisions regarding what to do with the company and, most importantly, where to distribute the profits -- these are the people who run the companies that buy and run the government that runs the country that rules and runs the world. Quite a linear narrative, I realize, but I'm a simple man.
So who are these people, and what do they believe? Just look. They're all capitalists too. They go to fancy schools, most were raised wealthy themselves, they've all been baptized at the Church of Capitalism, growing up imbibing the values of their class and the preachings of their prophets -- Hayek, Friedman, Rand, etc.
The question of being, like many philosophical questions, ends up exposing quite a bit about the world we live in today, why it is how it is, how it happened, what decisions were made and policies created to shape it, and out of what belief system. In the age of nuclear weapons and climate disaster, the people driving the car either don't care that we're going over a cliff, or believe they're going to heaven anyway, or both...turns out that beliefs and an understanding/interpetation of what it means to be human really matters.
Don’t forget Marxism, and its associated dialectical materialism.
Right, in the same way "human being" isn't used. The terms are too loaded to use. But if we throw out the subject/object distinction, and read it more as "awareness" or "openness" or "perception" or "apprehension" (words he prefers), then of course that's happening. Dasein is an activity, a being-in-the-world, a caring entity pressing into the future. Difficult to describe because we have so little language for it.
Sure, but Marx's influence has been rather diminished as well. Frankly I never cared much about Hegel's influence or Marx's philosophical positions -- more about his analysis of class and how it functions. On that point there's hardly a more penetrating analyst.
Stay safe.
Awareness , apprehension and perception may be a bit too close to the passivity of subject-object oppositionality. I noticed that, surprisingly, he doesnt use the word ‘awareness’ a single time in Being and Time , openness is used only a handful of times, and he’s not too crazy about perception either. I think he loves terms like disclosure. thrownnes and projection because they get away from the idea of a subject over here staring at a pre-existing object over there.
So parsing this into Sartre's ontology, being-in-itself is explicitly definable, while being-for-itself is a process of self-definition - or more clearly, we can set out explicitly what it is to be an igneous rock, but we can't set out explicitly what it is to be Wayfarer; and this is because what it is to be Wayfarer is in a state of flux as Wayfarer makes his way through the world. An igneous rock does not make itself in the way a person does.
So we can reply to
Quoting Janus
Static entities do not get to choose what to do. This is the relevant sense of "becoming".
I hear you and largely agree. But my question came out of the debate earlier around interpretations of Heidegger as a man who appeared to make choices and what might be a more useful method of conducting such an exegetical task - an approach focusing on a man's politics/morality, or one that bundles historical/psychological influences to make an interpretation. I generally take the view that if this activity is worth doing it should lead somewhere and was trying to understand this and the methodology of the task better.
Back to being....
As I read it, Heidegger's analysis of beings as ready-to-hand and present-at-hand offers a way t understand the rise of technology and capitalism. Heidegger says that entities are ready to hand for dasein, meaning that primordially they present themselves to us as to-be-used. This is not conscious, we just use things for our purposes, and this is normal, both for humans and animals.
When things go wrong or we have nothing to do, we may begin to contemplate entities as "present at hand"; something to be wondered about, analyzed and understood. This is where science begins. The understanding that comes from this ever more complex present at hand analysis of entities leads to more advanced technologies which. accompanied with the basic unreflective ready to hand view of entities as "to-be-used" leads to the idea of nature as a "standing reserve: to be exploited at will. Thus capitalism arises.
Merleau-Ponty and many other phenomenologists critiqued Sartre’s distinction between the in-self and the for-itself as an unsustainable remnant of Kantian dualism .
What next?
I probably should have used the term 'transcendental'. We understand the world through our models; thus it is present to us in the "vorhanden" sense. In our self-understandings we are also present to ourselves in this kind of sense. In the senses of zuhanden and dasein the world and ourselves are transcendental. " The map is never the territory".
If any static entities, entities which don't change at all, exist, then by definition they are not becoming."Apparently static" entities, however, are only relatively static; so they do change and thus can be said to be "becomings". The point you have highlighted is the difference between entities which self-organize their becoming to some extent and those which don't. I have no argument with that.
Me, neither. What about you, @Joshs? It's just that even if the distinction between the in-self and the for-itself is a remnant of Kantian dualism, it might still be of some use.
There's an important point where he uses awareness -- or at least that's how the Robinson version translates it:
(p. 48 H26, B&T)
This entire passage is fascinating.
Remember what gets translated as "thinking" is actually "apprehension" (noein), so when Parmenides says "to gar auto noein estin te kai einai" he's saying being and apprehension are one (this is a point Heidegger delves into in Intro to Metaphysics), not being and thinking.
So it's a complex story. There's the inception that begins with Anaxamander, Parmenides, and Heraclitus, and "ends" with Plato and Aristotle. But the "end" sets the stage for everything else, and the beginning gets forgotten. Idea, logic, substance -- ????, ?????, ????? -- come to dominate, and does "thinking" (as logic), of which everything else becomes an object for. Then of course we have mind/body of Descartes and subject/object of Kant and others.
But originally, phusis was the word for beings in the sense of this blooming, emerging.
I see him saying we need to re-discover the beginning in order to overcome it, and the beginning is two things: this simple present-at-hand awareness as phusis and noein, and the ontological difference: the distinction of being and beings. From there we can begin to find to footing.
So again, from the very beginning of Western thought, we've been oriented towards thinking as presence, and so later beings can be frozen and objectified, objects for a thinking subject. As @Janus mentioned, it's no wonder it eventually devolves into scientism and capitalism.
I mean, this approach has its merits. Him stressing the present at hand and our day to day absorbed dealing in the world and points out (as I read him, nowhere near yours or Joshs or Janus' level) that it's only on occasion that we stop and deal with items as objects.
Nevertheless, while we did get capitalism which shows a kind of detachment from nature in many instances, we also got science, modern philosophy, art and much else of good value. The scientism, I don't think has much to do with this, that is taking into account time.
It's the way science works, it advances through a specific mode of investigation. And a good one for what it aims to do: provide theoretical explanations of the world.
I think scientism has more to do with us being stuck in physics for a long time and not properly incorporating QM, as Russell and Whitehead did, as they later described the world in terms of events and not objects. Events "temporalize" everything we deal with. But many others still speak of objects and speak of "mind" and "matter", as if those are metaphysical distinctions, they're not.
So we have to take this into consideration, apart from our ordinary experience of the world. I believe the "manifest image" as described by Sellars, is something that needs to be fleshed out. Raymond Tallis (somewhat a Heideggerian to some degree) has done good work here.
Sorry if I was out of topic, but I had to comment.
Dasein has always a certain "sight" (not just a "feel") of itself in its interaction with beings. It can also attain a "Durchsichtigkeit" (transparency, literally a "see-through-ness") of itself or its hermeneutical situation. For normal everyday Dasein his state doesn't appear as hermeneutical situation, as a situation, where Dasein is more or less "conscious" of the context of the interpretation. Transparent grasp of one's situation means "reflecting" or explicating its "formal structure", that is, its fore-having (Vorhabe), fore-sight (Vorsicht) and fore-conception (Vorgriff) i.e the sense implied in one's understanding or interpretation of the current situation (cf. Being and Time Chapter 32. Understanding and Interpretation). Making the situation more transparent means going beyond the immediate understanding of the "ready-to-hand" we are currently dealing with. The disclosedness (Erschlossenheit), which opens up the truth of the situation, is reflected or made more explicite in itself. Heidegger's own literal existence, his philosophical reflection, means to make more transparent his (and at the same time ours) situation. In the end it is a certain historical situation which we have to try to elucidate.
I think that for Heidegger we are absent to ourselves when we are completely identifying ourselves with the "things" or entities we are dealing with. That is, in "normal" everyday "falling" (Verfallenheit) we are basically absent to ourselves. But then we are in a danger to interpret ourselves as mere things or tools i.e. as something present-of-hand or ready-to-hand and not as an human historical existence.
In this line Herbert Marcuse's Heideggerian Marxism from the 20's and 30's is interesting reading. Marcuse was more like an active communist than mere a critic of capitalist society though. For Marcuse Marxism represents a historical project to which one has to "resolutely" (Heidegger's Entschossenheit) commit oneself. The view is that the disclosedness of the modern world is characteristically a capitalistic one. The production of commodities or exchange values determine our "free" transcendence. Being = capitalistic society and its life form.
https://www.amazon.com/Heideggerian-Marxism-European-Horizons-Herbert/dp/0803283121
"The Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) studied with Martin Heidegger at Freiburg University from 1928 to 1932 and completed a dissertation on Hegel’s theory of historicity under Heidegger’s supervision. During these years, Marcuse wrote a number of provocative philosophical essays experimenting with the possibilities of Heideggerian Marxism. For a time he believed that Heidegger’s ideas could revitalize Marxism, providing a dimension of experiential concreteness that was sorely lacking in the German Idealist tradition. Ultimately, two events deterred Marcuse from completing this program: the 1932 publication of Marx’s early economic and philosophical manuscripts, and Heidegger’s conversion to Nazism a year later. Heideggerian Marxism offers rich and fascinating testimony concerning the first attempt to fuse Marxism and existentialism.
These essays offer invaluable insight concerning Marcuse’s early philosophical evolution. They document one of the century’s most important Marxist philosophers attempting to respond to the “crisis of Marxism”: the failure of the European revolution coupled with the growing repression in the USSR. In response, Marcuse contrived an imaginative and original theoretical synthesis: “existential Marxism.”"
Quoting waarala
I disagree. Average everydayness covers over the uncanniness and fundamental absencing of Dasein.
"Uncanniness is the fundamental kind of being-in-the-world, although it is covered over in everydayness. Tranquillized, familiar being-in-the-world is a mode of the uncanniness of Dasein, not the other way around. Not-being-at-home must be conceived existentially and ontologically as the more primordial phenomenon." "The publicness of the they suppresses everything unfamiliar"
"Even as covered over, the familiar is a mode of the unfamiliar.”
I agree with William McNeil’s analysis of Heideggerian ‘absence’ as the in-between of the ontological
difference, that is , the structure of temporality itself.
“…human beings are necessarily held in and drawn into this possibility. Their presence can only ever be a presence that has already been; their future presence will be a presence that will have been: with respect to the presence of what is present, they exist in an essential absence. And this is the possibility and necessity of their actions, of their existing futurally and, from out of what has been, bringing forth in their actions what has never yet been-of their being an origin that remains
indebted to a historical world as a world of others. In the concluding remarks of the course, Heidegger characterizes the occurrence of this held presence, of the moment of human existing and as the happening of an essential absence that is at once worldly, historical, and finite.”
“ Man is that inability to remain and is yet unable to leave his place. In projecting, the Da-sein in him constantly throws him into possibilities and thereby keeps him subjected to what is actual. In the occurrence of projection world is formed, i.e., in projecting something erupts and irrupts toward possibilities, thereby irrupting into what is actual as such, so as to experience itself as having irrupted as an actual being in the midst of what can now be manifest as beings. It is a being of a properly primordial kind, which has irrupted to that way of being which we call Da-sein, and to that being which we say exists, i.e., ex-sists, is an exiting from itself in the essence of its being, yet without abandoning itself.
“Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence. Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enraptured in this transition therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence. Transposed into the possible, he must constantly be mistaken concerning what is actual. And only because he is thus mistaken and transposed can he become seized by terror. And only where there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment-being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing.”( Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics)
In one sense , Heidegger may agree with you. He made a distinction between human Dasein and rocks. He said that inanimate objects were ‘devoid of world’. By this he meant that only human Dasein could be said to experience a world in terms of a present that was informed and guided by a past.
Meanwhile , we have the phenomenologist Dan Zahavi who makes a distinction between for-meness and relation to objects.
“Any convincing theory of consciousness has to respect the difference between our consciousness of an object, and our consciousness of our own subjectivity, and must be able to explain the distinction between intentionality, which is characterized by a difference between the subject and the object of experience, and self-awareness, which implies some form of identity.”(Zahavi 2004)
“Unless phenomenology were able to show that there is in fact a decisive and radical difference between the phenomenality of constituted objects and the phenomenality of constituting subjectivity, i.e., a radical difference between object-manifestation and self-manifestation, its entire project would be threatened.”
It's not at all clear what this might be.
Being-for-itself is defined by choice rather than experience. Being-for-itself is found in the decision to turn right or Left at Oak Street. Perhaps "consciousness of one's own subjectivity" is just an obtuse way of talking about making a choice, in which case we would be better served by talk of freedom and decision than of subjectivity. After all, consciousness consists in the capacity to act.
All this by way of yet again questioning the usefulness of talk of subjectivity.
“you can always make something out of what you've been made into”
Quoting Banno
“As Sartre also once wrote, “pre-reflective consciousness is self-consciousness. It is this same notion of self which must be studied, for it defines the very being of consciousness” (Sartre 2003: 100). Indeed, as he points out in the chapter
“The self and the circuit of selfness” in Being and Nothingness, consciousness is by no means impersonal
when pre-reflectively lived through. Rather it is characterized by a “fundamental selfness” (Sartre 2003:
127). As I read Sartre, his proposal is that rather than starting with a preconceived notion of self, we should let our understanding of what it means to be a self arise out of our analysis of self-consciousness.
Put concisely, the proposal is to identify the self with the subject of experience, and to conceive of the subject, not as an independent, separable entity, but as the subjectivity of experience, which is then claimed to be something no experience can lack, neither metaphysically nor phenomenologically.
To use a formulation of Strawson’s, if experience exists, subjectivity exists, and that entails that subject-ofexperience-hood exists (Strawson 2009: 419). On this construal, the self is something that is essentially present in each and every experience. It is present, not as a separately existing entity, i.e., as something that exists independently of, in separation from or in opposition to the stream of consciousness. Nor is it
given as an additional experiential object or as an extra experiential ingredient, as if there were a distinct self-quale, next to and in addition to the quale of the smell of burnt hay and roasted almonds.
No, the claim is that all experiences regardless of their object and regardless of their act-type (or attitudinal character) are necessarily subjective in the sense that they feel like something for someone. In virtue of their inherent reflexive self-consciousness, in virtue of their self-presentational character, they are not anonymous, but imbued with a fundamental subjectivity and first-personal character, and the proposal has been to identify this first-personal presence, this experiential for-me-ness, with what has been called the minimal self (Zahavi 2005, 2014). To deny the existence of this for-me-ness, to deny that we have a distinctly different acquaintance with our own experiential life than with the experiential life of others
(and vice versa), and that this difference obtains, not only when we introspect or reflect, but already in the very having of the experience, is to fail to recognize an essential aspect of experience.“
Well, I don't quite agree with this reading of Sartre; but I might be misapprehending what you are saying. For Sartre, the self (the subject in subjective) is not found through introspection, but is manifest in the fact of choice and the presence of the other.
Cross- fertilising with Wittgenstein, the self is not private.
Now that's a huge advance over what I understand of other phenomenologists.
From what I’m reading, Sartre makes a
distinction between positional and non positional , and between reflective and pre-reflective consciousness.
Pre-reflective consciousness is pre-supposed by introspection, and accompanies rather than is for me strobing choice and the presence of the other. Only positional consciousness is determined by the other, consistent with Husserl.
“Of course, Sartre describes this self-awareness as an immediate relation to my interiority rather than a special kind of perception directed towards the inner; however, the difficulty, here, is exactly the same Husserl was trying to avoid when he criticized Brentano’s distinction between inner and outer perception in the appendix to the Logical Investigations. Sartre’s reasoning lies on a metaphysical rather than a descriptive distinction between on the one hand an immediate and nonintentional access to myself, and on the other hand a mediated and intentional access to objects, among which is to be located the empirical ego.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pierre-Jean-Renaudie/publication/257620150_Me_Myself_and_I_Sartre_and_Husserl_on_Elusiveness_of_the_Self/links/579da60b08ae5d5e1e14c74d/Me-Myself-and-I-Sartre-and-Husserl-on-Elusiveness-of-the-Self.pdf?_sg%5B0%5D=QL6CcHrC190dNoNl0DP4zTwStecV7FFHmbxq02vTvO7jHVs_PvLF1Z4PODn5beu6tT957ul1-nfGhxnh9C6Dkw.3_-yLxT1VW3lCqukwsfo3foY2GPfnbR5zCID1hTCo5InCRSBugzt3K6-ncGct7EyJMnCyaBiTa0Ck7W7YX-crQ.s6zdDZusqwj02MU_oo0Rz1yGbF7fLZPOfbOyBUpveFrQN9yRmLTuqeDFWCLfGLCdeRi2DnlwbiQj5Pfelp1Bbw&_sg%5B1%5D=1MiSbLg0KODtUig5qYd0oz5Yu8CBxvGkzhQrsscJ0Zir0dKe0PLWY4oYqGgHZ4ac0CeyNouw7LCxWmpszs2a-8pahGUaXmHD1WCunzNt6SrJ.3_-yLxT1VW3lCqukwsfo3foY2GPfnbR5zCID1hTCo5InCRSBugzt3K6-ncGct7EyJMnCyaBiTa0Ck7W7YX-crQ.s6zdDZusqwj02MU_oo0Rz1yGbF7fLZPOfbOyBUpveFrQN9yRmLTuqeDFWCLfGLCdeRi2DnlwbiQj5Pfelp1Bbw&_iepl=
Hmm. That's not what one sees in No Exit, nor in The Look. Notice that transcendence of the ego is early work. Perhaps you find Husserl because you are looking for him.
But even if that were an accurate account of Sartre, it is open for us to still reject that part of his account while accepting the other...
I think the paper I linked to draws from Being and Nothingness, too. I should mention that I dont agree with those who talk about a pre-reflective self-awareness as some kind of feeling of for-meness or what its like-ness. I don’t think there is such a constant self dimension lurking in the background of all expereinces of objects. And I think Zahavi misinterprets Husserl as holding such a view. For Husserl the pre-reflective ego is nothing but a zero point of experiencing, the intersection of the streaming of retentions, primal impressions and protentions. It has no content in itself, no feeling of what it’s likeness or anything like that. I don’t believe there is a for-itself for Husserl, at least not one opposed to an in-itself. His whole approach is based on associative synthesis, the way a sense of meaning is created on the basis of similarities with respect to previously formed meanings. Empirical objects , as well as our concept of the self, are constructed out of such syntheses of similarity.
:up:
Quoting Wayfarer
:cool:
Quoting Wayfarer
Your 'dualistic' caricature of my monism demonstrates a profound misunderstanding (or dogmatic misrepresentation) which says more about you, Wayf, than the topic or argument at issue.
:roll:
Philosophical materialists assume ontological monism and not ontological (i.e. substance) dualism like e.g. Cartesians, Platonists ... supernaturalists / spiritualists.
The same (groundless) "ground" as for all beings: "Being" (i.e. atomists' void, spinozists natura naturans) as I wrote ... "Ontological difference" is only a conceptual distinction – being of beings (which includes Dasein) – and not a Cartesian postulate of separate substances of "being" and "beings". After all, SuZ is explicitly anti-Cartesian in this regard (and though greatly influenced by Heidi, Sartre returns to Descartes' mind-body (mind-matter) duality with "being-for-itself" versus "being-in-itself" and describes the former as "consciousness is the nothingness" in the latter being, thus the title: Being and Nothingness.)
Quoting Wayfarer
This gnostic-conceit may be the case ([s]Beyng[/s] forgive me!) in the mainstream of the Western philosophical tradition but it's also irrelevant to the daily reflective ("spiritual") exercises for cultivating eudaimonia which I describe as unlearning self-immiserating habits – reducing the frequency and scope of foolery and thereby also its oblivious forms of self-harming/sabotage aka stupidity – which inversely optimizes agency. We become our habits (capabilities, practices) which are ineluctable (real) to sentience. Re: aponia, ataraxia, apatheia (wu wei), ekstasis (moksha) ... scientia intuitiva ... amor fati ... beatitude (jouissance) ... :death: :flower:
We were both raised Roman Catholic, and it seems in similar economic circumstances. He stayed with the faith quite a bit longer than I did, though, and apparently took it quite seriously; studied theology for a time at Freiburg. I'd maintain this tells us little or nothing about either of us, however. No doubt he felt angered and betrayed by the Treaty of Versailles as did many Germans. Again, though, what does this tell us about the person that's beyond supposition? Romanticism and a peculiar sense of German worth and superiority (and a belief in "secret missions" of being) characterizes his writings that I've read (not Being and Time, which I don't think I can read). Perhaps this tells us as much about him as any German of his time, but unless we're to consider individuals as part of a collective in judging their worth, it isn't a basis on which to do so. Such factors may provide insight into one's character but provide no rationale (or justification) for one's conduct.
Quoting Joshs
I've always maintained that the law is, quite simply, the law, and nothing else. It's not morality; it's not justice. I'm a sort of legal positivist. If someone violates the law, it isn't necessarily the case that an immoral act has taken place. We lawyers are often accused of seeing things as grey rather than black and white. Someone famous, I forget who, condemned lawyers who said that nobody is guilty of a crime until the law (a court) decided they were. But that's merely the case. Someone who murders someone isn't guilty of the crime of murder until convicted of murder. Someone who's convicted of the crime of murder isn't necessarily a murderer.
So a legal background doesn't necessarily mean that a lawyer sees all as matters of responsibility and individual choice. A Catholic might do so, however.
So, I think, would an aspiring Stoic or any other adherent of virtue ethics, and perhaps other kinds of ethics as well. Much as we're influenced by psychological and sociological factors, there are certain things which are substantially, at least, within our control. We can make judgments for good reasons and bad. Joining the Nazi party wasn't forced upon Heidegger. He wasn't forced to praise Hitler so extravagantly. He wasn't compelled to treat Husserl so shabbily. His condemnation of the Jews as being calculating hustlers without Dasein isn't something that issued unthinkingly from his brain and pen. he made judgments and choices and bears responsibility for them.
I've read his essay called (in English) The Question Regarding Technology and thought it so Romantic as to approach silliness. I've read his What is Metaphysics and am inclined to agree with Carnap's view of it. I think I'd feel the same about those works even if he had been a saint instead of a Nazi. I doubt I'd be impressed by Being and Time.
Not all of them, no. I think there are conditions which must be met to acquire cult status. Not all of them are satisfied by the philosopher alone.
Obscurity is needed. The philosopher must sometimes seems to be deliberately unclear. The philosopher's must be difficult to understand, even difficult to read. The fact that others, in despair, give up the effort to read the works of the philosopher is taken by the philosopher's adherents to establish the greater worth of the writings and those who read them to the end.
The writings of the philosopher must be interpreted, translated in effect, for the benefit of those unable to read them. Interpretations and translations may differ, with some claiming preference for one over another. Esoteric pronouncements of seemingly profound and vast import must be made. The philosopher takes on the aspect of an oracle.
Sometimes, the obvious is made to appear of titanic significance; sometimes the mundane is the subject of contempt. Claims are made regarding what is "really" the case. The fact that we experience the rest of the world exactly as humans must experience it, being the kind of creatures we are, is declared to be a colossal insight, for example--sometimes more by the philosopher's adherents than the philosopher. The fact that a pine tree will look different to someone 15 feet away from it than it will to someone 100 feet from it leads some to question whether we're capable of knowing anything.
Which is to say that the extent to which a philosopher's adherents believe him/her to be surpassingly insightful is significant in determining whether a cult exists.
Or maybe the philosopher happens to be surpassingly insightful and claims of deliberate obscurity and unclarity are rationalizations on the part of those who simply don’t have the philosophical background to read them.
Xtrix and I both think Heidegger is a profound thinker. We don’t interpret him exactly the same way , which is as it should be , but we agree on the most important general
features. of his work. Is this because we have both drunk the Kool-aid? Or is it because there really are key insights Heidegger contributed that a large community of philosophers can agree on, and can also agree that these insights are not delivered ( at least in his work up through Being and Time) in a particularly obscure manner. Rather , the style reflects the originality of the ideas. It is almost a guarantee that he will come across as deliberately unclear if the reader has failed to comprehend a host of necessary precursors. This includes Hegel, Nietzsche. Wittgenstein and Husserl ( a background in Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard wouldn’t hurt either ).
Why don’t you let Xtrix and I show you why ‘The Question Regarding Technology’ is not “so Romantic as to approach silliness”, and in fact has nothing to do with Romanticism.
One might think that positivism of any sort is the farthest one can get from morality. But in actuality , positivism presupposes a moralism. Positivism believes it can separate the knower from the known, and as a result it fails to see that all empirical facts are value-laden, leading to a perpetuation of the status quo. This is why positivism tends to be associated with a certain range of political views.
As John Austin said, legal positivism merely provides that:
The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry.
Whether a law or system of law exists, therefore, has nothing to do with whether it's good or bad, or whether it should be modified, or amended or repealed, or perpetuated. I'm not sure what you mean by "value-laden" but suspect that it's the equivalent of saying everything that human beings do is value-laden because human beings are human beings, and everything which human beings do is necessarily value-laden, which doesn't strike me as a useful insight.
It's the point of view of a practitioner, not a moralist, not a liberal, or conservative, or Marxist or anarchist. or revolutionary. Physicians don't seek to perpetuate the "status quo" of a person. Lawyers don't seek to perpetuate the "status quo" of the law.
Incomprehensible verbiage.
Are you familiar with the fact-value distinction in analytic philosophy, and the critique of it by Quine, Putnam, Sellers and others? Or the myth of the given?
These were the beginnings of a recognition that facts only exist within accounts , and there is no fact of the matter that can settle differences between accounts. This contributed to the downfall of positivism. An account is another word for value-system, a scheme of meaning that interprets and makes sense of phenomena in a certain way.
Here’s an example of fact-value inseparability:
“To be objective, the interpretationist points out, one would have to have some set of mind-independent objects to be designated by language or known by science. But can we find any such objects? Let us look at an extended example from the philosopher Nelson Goodman.
A point in space seems to be perfectly objective. But how are we to define the points of our everyday world? Points can be taken either as primitive elements, as intersecting lines, as certain triples of intersecting planes, or as certain classes of nesting volumes. These definitions are equally adequate, and yet they are incompatible: what a point is will vary with each form of description. For example, only in the first "version," to use Goodman's term, will a point be a primitive element. The objectivist, however, demands, "What are points really?" Goodman's response to this demand is worth quoting at length:
If the composition of points out of lines or of lines out of points is conventional rather than factual, points and lines themselves are no less so. ... If we say that our sample space is a combination of points, or of lines, or of regions, or a combination of combinations of points, or lines, or regions, or a combination of all these together, or is a single lump, then since none is identical with any of the rest, we are giving one among countless alternative conflicting descriptions of what the space is. And so we may regard the disagreements as not about the facts but as due to differences in the conventions-adopted in organizing or describing the space. What, then, is the neutral fact or thing described in these different terms? Neither the space (a) as an undivided whole nor (b) as a combination of everything involved in the several accounts; for (a) and (b) are but two among the various ways of organizing it. But what is it that is so organized? When we strip off as layers of convention all differences among ways of describing it, what is left? The onion is peeled down to its empty core.”
Here is another argument against positivism:
“Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.”
I try to imagine saying the same thing regarding other philosophers. Does Aristotle come across as deliberately unclear if we haven't read Plato; does Hume if we haven't read Hobbes; does James if we haven't read Peirce? I don't think so. Perhaps it's merely a personal preference, but if I philosopher can't even produce sentences one can read without referencing the work of other philosophers as a kind of dictionary or thesaurus, I don't think that speaks well for the philosopher.
Hence the designation, "being".
If we dont intuitively understand the philosophical background to a set of ideas, it will appear incoherent. Today we don’t need Plato to read Aristotle , although it would help. The reason is the social , technological and intellectual foundation of our contemporary Western culture is based on two thousand years of philosophical insights, all of which i’m turn are founded on the Greeks. So a member of our culture already implicitly understands the philosophical background to Aristotle without having to read Plato. The same cannot be said of philosophy of the past 100 years. Our wider culture is really subcultures within subcultures . The philosophical background that most far right social conservatives have does not go beyond 18th century authors.This is why Breitbart and the right-wing Claremont institute pointed to essentially all philosophy after Hegel ( Marx, postmodernism, critical theory, etc) as being wrong-headed.
Much of what is produced in the art world today is difficult to appreciate without background in the philosophical , institutional and cultural framework that it arises out of and speaks to.
When I read Being and Time , I had not read Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl or Wittgenstein. I was able to understand it because I had assimilated the ideas that these other authors put forth from other sources, mainly psychology, which had been influenced indirectly by Heidegger and Husserl through the human potential movement, client centered therapy, Sartre , gestalt and existential psychology. After all, philosophy is just one mode of expressing a worldview. One can find parallel ideas in the social sciences and the arts and literature. So what is key to understanding the work of a particular writer isn’t necessarily having read previous authors in their field , but having assimilated the background ideas in some from from one’s culture.
I wonder to what extent these views, if accurate, matter to us in our day-to-day lives--what Goodman calls our "everyday world." There may be instances where they're significant, in which case they should be considered and accounted for, but in others I think they're what James (supposedly) called differences which make no difference (that may be a paraphrase).
How often are we disturbed by, or do we even contemplate, "the myth of the given"? Are we fearful the chair we sit in will turn out "really" to be something deadly to us, something utterly unlike a chair? Do we wonder while driving whether the highway we drive on may really be a river? When has it turned out to be one, or a lava flow? Do we find it difficult to communicate with each other or understand what's taking place when confronted with a plate of ravioli? Do we hesitate to piss, wondering what the urinal-in-itself really is? Not at all. We have more important things to baffle and frustrate us.
Certainly there are cases where we disagree, and for various reasons. Those become problems we may or may not be able to solve. But if we can't resolve them chances are it won't be because what we think is something we use every day turns out not to be real.
I don’t think it’s a question of meanings not being real but of meanings not being fully shared, being perspectival.
What we call physical objects are intersubjectively constructed. No two people ever see the exact same ‘object in the same way, so we say that each of us perceives a different appearance of the ‘same’ object. In everyday life this leads to no major misunderstandings because the objects we interact with are defined in very general terms. The problem with positivism comes to the fore when we deal with each other every day in social situations. Every misunderstanding, frustration, annoyance, disappointment we experience in dealing with one another reveals the fact that we are not living in the same world, but interpret according to different vantages and perspectives. When we rely on positivism here, we assume a person-independent reality, and attempt to explain other persons’ intransigence or failure to meet our expectations as a result of irrationality, stubbornness, malicious intent. etc. , rather than an outlook on the world which we are unfamiliarity with.
I think that's true across a much wider spectrum than simply positivism.
:100: :fire:
Back to that blind spot :party:
Yeah you know I'm a tomcat and you's my kitten
And I'm scratching around in your windowpane
Yeeeah you know I'm a tomcat and you's my kitten
And I've been scratching around in your windowpane
Let me in let me in baby
So I can feel good all over again
I see a mouse. You see a mouse. What is the different appearance I see, compared with the different appearance you see? Do I see if from the side, and you see if from the front? Why does this indicate we see a "different reality"? Why doesn't it merely indicate I'm seeing the mouse from the side, and you're seeing it from the front?
Quoting Joshs
Can't we have different vantages and perspectives and yet live in the same world? When I look at a mouse from the side, am I living in a different world than the world you live in while looking at it from the front? Does someone looking at the mouse from the back inhabit yet another world?
Our differences arise from the fact that we live in the same world but have different desires, different thoughts, different resources which sometime conflict or provide some of us with advantages or disadvantages others don't possess in competing with one another for resources or opportunities existing in the same world we all inhabit. If we lived in different worlds, there would be no conflicts. If they conflict, how would they be different from one another?
:up:
:cool:
See if you can understand this for now the 100th time:
Being in ontology does NOT refer exclusively to sentient entities.
But feel free to go on ignoring this over and over and over again. You’re truly a dead end.
I understand that perfectly well, but I think it's a fault with the modern usage of the word. I think there's a legitimate and fundamental distinction to be made between beings and objects, and that the loss of this distinction signifies an absence or shortfall in modern thinking, generally.
Note also the context in which I made that remark. It was in response to this:
Quoting Joshs
Notice the scare quotes around "reality". I think the requirement to enclose that term in quotes, actually points to the issue that the quote highlights. That is: what we take to be real, independently of any act of judgement or perception on our part, is actually 'suffused with mind-dependent structures'. And this is part of the meaning of 'being' - humans are called 'beings' because they inhabit a 'meaning-world', not simply a world of objects and forces. And that understanding is basic to the phenomenological analysis which Joshs is pointing towards.
Whereas, as Joshs went on to say, the 'positivist' attitude is that the 'objective domain' is in its real nature 'mind-independent'.
So there's actually a profound issue lying at the bottom of this.
It doesn't exist in any ancient useage of the word either. In fact outside of your fringe fabrication, it doesn't exist at all. You're of course welcome to your eccentricities, so long as you don't falsely project them onto fake histories.
Sentient beings and objects, you mean. Which is like saying human beings aren't simply objects. Fine. Noted. Move on.
:up:
You'd be amazed how many people act like this is not so. The extreme case, which is useful for its clarity, is eliminative materialism, which explicitly denies that humans are anything other than objects.
A note from the Wiki entry on 'ontology':
I'm basically defending an hierarchical ontology, although I've not previously encountered Hartmann.
Why does there have to be an ‘it’ independent of my perspective and your perspective if we can reach agreement? Isnt that the usefulness of the idea of ‘same thing’ or ‘same world’? These concepts of perspective-independent things don’t do a damn thing for us unless they contribute to our getting along with each other and cooperating together. It’s not an identical world that allows us to do science and create complex culture, it’s an intimately reciprocal network of intersubjectivitely connected subjective worlds that accomplishes this.
Quoting Ciceronianus
If someone disappoints you, violates your moral
principles , rejects you, humiliates you , embraces political views you find dangerous and cruel, acts in seemingly irrational, incoherent or inappropriate ways, ‘same world’ means there are external sources of standards of rationality . ‘Same world’ provides the basis of norms of empirical correctness , which we can then use to determine individual rationality. Since everyone is experiencing this ‘same world ‘ , everyone has the opportunity to test their understandings of the facts of the world using this external existing ‘same’ world as the universal yardstick of truth. This leaves no room for the idea that the facts we perceive are determined by a larger network of values, so that , try as we might, we cannot get your sense of meaning of the facts to align precisely with mine.
The more complex and important the facts are, the deeper they penetrate into what is most vital to our being as social beings , the less your sense of meaning of the facts will align with mine. We’re not talking perceiving mice here, we’re talking political, spiritual, moral and philosophical ‘facts’. We’re talking about our core concept of ourselves, what we stand for, our sense of how those we care about perceive us. Even though those values and concepts that are most precious to who I am as a person belong to a world which is different for me that for every other person , our individual worlds are never completely separate from those of others. On the contrary, they are related at some level even among those from the most disparate cultures. And they can be very closely related indeed among lovers and friends. In fact, only when we recognize this perspectival basis of individual worlds, are we able to achieve a form of mutual
understanding, intimacy and empathy with others that is impossible when we begin from the assumption of a ‘same’ world.
With the latter belief , we are stuck with an explanation of others behavior that relies on arbitrary drives, motives and personality quirks that we can’t get beyond , such as that others have different desires, thoughts and resources( “Our differences arise from the fact that we live in the same world but have different desires, different thoughts”). There is no recognition here that the most important source of conflict is a differences in the way that people interpret socially relevant facts (different worldviews) completely independent of motive.
You ask “If they conflict, how would they be different from one another?”
The conflict between worldviews is two conflicts. That is , it is perceived as one kind of conflict from the first participant and another kind of conflict from the second participant. What makes it a conflict of worldviews is that the two parties can’t agree on the nature of the conflict. Each ascribes it to different set of ‘facts’. They talk past one another , as we see in today’s polarized political world. You would say they simply have different desires, and leave it at that. It’s a short distance from that conclusion to choosing one ‘desire’ over the other as more socially beneficial or moral or rational, and then suppressing the unwanted ‘desire’ or its products.
Realizing this can allow us to bridge the gap between worlds by construing the other’s way of understanding their world in their terms , from our own perspective. Failing to do this leaves us with only motive and intent-based ways of making sense of others, which drives us to punish, blame and condemn with no real insight. So the supposedly dependability and solidness of a ‘same world’ has the opposite effect of what one might think. Rather than allowing for mural understanding, it reifies disagreements by forcing the participants to blame each other’s motives as arbitrarily capricious, malevolent, irrational , lazy, thoughtless , and prevents the creation of a bridge between worldviews.
Not only do each of live in our own ‘world’ with respect to others, but from one moment to the next our own ‘world’ changes into a néw one. We need never notice this because the transformation of sense is subtle enough as to go unnoticed by us most of the time. Only after a long period might we look back at our prior self and find its interest and beliefs to be unrecognizable reprieve to who we are now. So each of us moves into a subtly different world every moment , and that means the gap between us and others is only a variation on the gap from
moment to moment between who we are now and who we were yesterday, how we understand our world today and how we did yesterday.
Quoting Joshs
That's something like what Kuhn meant by the incommensurability of paradigms.
Quoting Xtrix
Which is similar to the point I've been trying to make. But the way that I put it is that secular-scientific thought tends to 'objectify' human beings, and in so doing looses what makes human beings different from any other object of rational analysis; that's the sense in which I'm saying that 'beings' are different from 'objects'. That 'objectification' is what finds its most dogmatic form in eliminative materialism - which is why the whole focus of the debate about the hard problem of consciousness is about the reality of 'the subject' in human experience (the subject being, of course, what eliminativism wants to eliminate.) That loss of the sense of the centrality of the subject is the kind of 'cultural amnesia' that I'm objecting to. Which is not idealise the subject but simply to emphasise the fact that even supposedly objective knowledge is always the attribute of a subject - as Joshs is also arguing, I believe.
//ps// which is why I believe the Heidegger adopted the term 'dasein' to compensate for the loss of that sense of being in modern lexicons. //
Scenario 1. Two, let’s say, scholars disagree over the meaning of a text because they interpret it differently, despite having a shared interpretive framework, which they simply apply differently.
Scenario 2. Two scholars disagree over the meaning of a text because they interpret it differently because they use very different interpretative frameworks (maybe one’s a Marxist and the other a Freudian, like that).
Scenario 3. Two scholars disagree over the meaning of a text because they interpret it differently, despite having a shared interpretive framework, because they’re actually interpreting different editions of the text, and the words to be interpreted aren’t even 100% the same. We still refer to these alternatives as the ‘same’ book (don’t tell MU) even though they vary.
Scenario 4. 2 + 3, you get the idea.
When you drop in the word ‘interpretation’, you don’t mean to suggest something like scenario 1 or 2, but more like 3 or 4, right? Competing interpretations aren’t even of the same text, since there are no facts (like, say, the actual words of a specific edition of a text) to interpret.
One thing that feels off to me comes out in the idea of different editions of a text: the overlap between editions of some classic novel, say, is staggering. There may be a correction here, an emendation there, an addition or a deletion, but they are overwhelmingly the same. Davidson, among many others for different reasons, has made the same point, that people overwhelmingly agree about the world, and we fight over our differences against this backdrop of agreement.
Your talk of worlds makes them seem so separate. Don’t your world and my world have some things, many things, in common? It would be awfully surprising if they didn’t, given that we both speak English, live at the same time in the same part of the world, talk a lot about philosophy and psychology. Our individual worlds share some ‘sources’, it seems to me. We didn’t have to intersubjectively construct that commonality, since we filled our plates, at least partly, at the same cultural salad bar, and we took some of the same stuff. Is it ‘transformed’ once I make it part of my world, so that it’s not the same as what’s in your world?
Agreed. He states that Intentionality is basically to be conscious direction. Consciousness cannot be directed as consciousness because that makes no sense. Consciousness can be directed at the concept of consciousness and at memories and possible futures.
As for Heidegger ‘dasein’ doesn’t mean anything as far as I can tell. In Being and Time all I found was a couple of points already made by Husserl articulated in a slightly better manner and a whole lot of fluff and needless explanation (as if he was talking to someone with little to no exposure to Husserl’s work).
I know. You're reserving "being" for human beings (or sentient beings). That's not the use in ontology or in this thread. Human beings are indeed different from other beings, and are intimately interconnected with the question of being. That beings become "objects" is a historical fact, one that really takes root in the modern era, starting with Descartes and reaching its apex in Kant. The res cogitans, the thinking (read: conscious) substance ('res') over and against the res extensa, the extended substance, is the mind/body issue and, later, the subject/object issue. The development of science out of natural philosophy takes it further.
All of this is worth exploring. But it doesn't get off the ground if you repeatedly refuse to understand the terminology, which you seem incapable of not doing.
One more thing along these lines.
There’s a heartbreaking story Tim Alberta did for The Atlantic about the chairman of the Michigan state house committee that investigated claims of fraud in the 2020 election, and then wrote the report saying it was all crap. This is a middle-aged Republican, farmer, church-goer, who now has friends who hate him. Despite knowing him and trusting him for decades, they believe some dickhead on Facebook rather than him. That takes some explaining. It’s not just ‘different worlds’ to me; one of them has had a toxin deliberately introduced into their system. Polarization in my country has a basis in diverging cultures, in our absurd inequality, but it was also engineered by people who benefit from it. How much of the difference between one person’s world and another’s is down to the choices someone (or many someones) made, perhaps neither of them?
:up: Well said.
Yes, lies matter, and one disposes of the concept of truth at one's own risk... Deception, toxicity, con jobs are different from just having an opinion. They are attempts at abusing people. There is a difference between unwittingly wrong and consciously evil.
There is a book about that on my reading list: I and Thou by Martin Buber. Which apparently explains that we can engage in two types of relationships: with objects and with subjects. The distinction has little to do with the thing in itself we relate to, as one can treat things as subjects or people as objects. It's about whether the relation is closed, instrumental or rather is an open-ended dialogue.
If I understand you correctly, then, you're speaking metaphorically when you claim we each live in different worlds. If that's so, well and good, but I'd prefer not to, as I think it merely leads to confusion in these circumstances, and can be misleading.
I don't think of myself as independent from the world, or apart from it. I think we're all part of the world (or universe, if you prefer). That means, to me, that I'm not "independent" from the world. I'm inseparable from it. Nor is it "independent" from me if that means that I'm separate from it. I'm not somewhere outside the world. I'd say you're not, either, nor is anything or anyone else.
Because we're parts of the world, our lives are a series of interactions with the rest of the world.
Quoting Joshs
I'd say it's incorrect to speak of "external sources" because nothing is external to us in any significant sense. We don't find standards somewhere "outside" of us. What we think, do, value, feel, all takes place in the universe. Our thoughts, values, conduct, feelings, desires, etc., are parts of the universe and are interrelated with it as they arise from living in the world as a part of it. So are our cultures. We don't find anything in the world (considered as separate from us); we discover things about the rest of the world and discover things about ourselves and others.
It isn't necessary to think of each person as living in their own worlds to explain disagreements. Those can be explained by various things, all a part of the world, which relate to living as parts of the world. The environment or culture in which we live will influence our way of thinking, our values, our desires, etc. So will our education, our social status. There's nothing special about this; it's the natural result of being a living organism that's a human being.
We do quite a few things based on understandings about the rest of the world successfully. Sometimes, we're unsuccessful. Lack of success doesn't mean that we don't or can't know anything about the world of which we're a part.
Davidson wasn’t ever able to shake off a ‘same world’ realism , as Rorty showed. Do you think a fight between a rightwing supporter of Trump and a far left supporter of critical race theory occurs against the backdrop of overwhelming agreement about the world? Do you think that Descartes and Derrida, or Aquinas and Kierkegaard would view their philosophical disagreements against a backdrop of overwhelming agreement about the world?
If I show you an optical illusion where the picture of the old woman becomes a young woman with a gestalt shift of perception, are the details of the world of the first picture in overwhelming agreement with the details of the world of the second picture? Notice that what constitutes a line or a nose or a leg in the first picture becomes something different in the second picture.Let’s say that, no matter now hard we try, I can only see the old woman and you can only see the young woman. If we stand very close to the image, we seem to be in overwhelming agreement on what we’re seeing, a bunch of abstract colors and lines. But the greater the breadth of perspective , the more divergent our worlds become.
Of the words tho at you wrote me and that I am
reading now , the simpler , more concrete words ( the , will produce the greatest agreement between my construal and what you intended. As the words become more abstract , and as I move from
individual word to the the larger context of the sentence and the even larger content of the paragraph , overwhelming agreement morphs into an reading that is increasingly disparate from what you had in mind , which can be demonstrated by the questions that will
flow back and forth between us over the sense of the ideas. So do we determine sameness of ‘ world’ on the basis of subordinate details and simple words , and conclude because we seem to agree on these that we live in an overwhelmingly same world, or do we determine the sameness of this world in the basis of the most superordinate concepts and values that each of us make use of to make determinations of meaning?
I guess it depends on whether you buy into the idea that each of us do in fact organize our interpretation of events in this hierarchical, functionally unified manner.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
People are already profoundly separated fro each other
according to the ‘same world’ thesis. Their separation is a function of arbitrary desire, value, will. My notion of individual worlds sees the interrelationships among them to be much more intimate than is possible with a ‘same world’ view which rests on the capriciousness of iintent and desire.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
We have to subjectively construct the objects as well as intersubjectively construct them. The sources are never the same , only similar. A ‘ spatial object’ is constructed by me out of a flow of constantly changing senses of what appears, and those changing sense never repeat themselves as the same. I convince myself
that this flow is emanating form a self-identical
object because I fill in from expectation and memory what I don’t actually see in front of me. The empirical
object that is the same for all of us is constructed in a similar manner , by a coordination of multiple perspectives of multiple participants. We turn what are similar worlds into the ‘same’ world in this way, by an idealization. So the point is that when we reach agreement on the basis of ‘sameness’ , it is more primordially a question of similarity.
Dasein is inextricably linked to his model
of temporality. Do you see how his model of time differs from Husserl’s internal time consciousness? For
one thing Husserl says that retention holds
the just past in front of us as aril part of the present. Heidegger days the past, as the having been , is created by the present. It is a past already changed by the present.
I think this is expressed in the biggest difference between Heidegger and Husserl. Husserl says intended objects of perception don’t bring into play the entire history of our experiencing as a unified whole, but they do for Heidegger’s
I’d say very little. This is a temptation. we are drawn to when we cannot rethink
how on earth someone could
possibly seriously brice something f without being brainwashed, irrational or pathological. Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Toxin is an other name for brain washing , conditioning , irrationality , etc.
Heidegger calls "Dasein" an "existential title" - it is an objectivized form of the subject with strong connotations to Hegel. It is literally a "being there" and at it's core a reflection.
There is nothing objectivized about Dasein. It is not an. object or a subject. It is between the two as transition. ‘Being there’ isn’t a stasis or state or object, it is a becoming. Dasein doesn’t ‘reflect’ back to itself as a pre-existing subject, it It is always beyond or ahead of itself.
Which was to be shown. The subject reflects on itself as Dasein, therefor the reflection is never appropriate.
Let’s talk about what a subject is for Heidegger or for you, so we can see what exactly is going on in this structure of ‘reflection’. How do you think the concept of reflection differs for Heidegger from the ordinary understanding of it , or from a Kantian understanding of it?
The reflective element is embedded to Dasein as it bears the concept of self. It is the "being that I am". Therefor it is "seiend" or ontic. Heidegger did not put forth any further ground-laying designations but continues to analyze the "way it is". If that is not a reflection, then what is?
Reflection is considered to be a turning back of consciousness to draw an experience from memory in order to examine it. It is generally distinguished from intentional acts that deal with present objects rather than objects from memory. So how does Heidegger’s ‘reflection’ differ from this model? First of all , Heidegger doesn’t make such a distinction between remembering and experiencing something new. All experiencing is of something new. That being the case , when Dasein turns ‘back’ to itself , it is not encountering a previously existing self that it then examines. Instead, it is experiencing something utterly fresh and new. One could say that it gets its sense of ‘self’ always from a new experience of its world.
“The Dasein does not need a special kind of observation, nor does it need to conduct a sort of espionage on the ego in order to have the self; rather, as the Dasein gives itself over immediately and passionately to the world itself, its own self is reflected to it from things.”
Or it can be what you see in a mirror. For me reflection is more like self-description, self-observation or anything where you are "your own object". You cannot write about yourself without reflecting.
Quoting Joshs
If you put aside the mirror....
Quoting Joshs
So, which things, do you think, told Heidegger that about his Dasein?
Sure. But my point is that it was necessary for him to introduce such a term, to distinguish the meaning of being for the human from mere existence, in my view.
Full responses will have to come later for me, but I can give you a quick idea of why I say 'yes' here with a joke:
"A conservative and a liberal pull into a gas station" -- I'm actually done already, but if you want more -- "and then do *exactly the same thing*." They'll both put the car in park, turn off the engine, get out, stick a card in the machine, put card back in wallet, pump gas, replace the gas cap, blah blah blah, even if one is headed to a Trump rally and the other to a Sanders rally. That's what I mean.
But that is the point I do not buy exactly. As I read Hegel "Dasein" is just some "completely undetermined something" (for lack of better words). In my oppinion, the (only) thing that makes human Dasein special is that it determnines it's own being. Because of this, so I read his argument, we can not simply say "what Dasein is" but have to resort to such an "empty" "existantial title".
Correct.
In german, "Dasein" wrt to "human existence" has a strong connotation towards "poor"/"pittyful". Think "a human" losing all human qualities.
The Wiki entry says 'Dasein (German pronunciation: [?da?za?n]) (sometimes spelled as Da-sein) is a German word that means "being there" or "presence" (German: da "there"; sein "to be"), and is often translated into English with the word "existence". It is a fundamental concept in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger uses the expression Dasein to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Thus it is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.'
Is that wrong? Ought we to edit it?
"I like to Watch"
Peter Sellers: Being There.
Quoting Heiko
When you look in a mirror in order to reflect on yourself you are studying an object ( the image of yourself) and comparing it with your memory of another object( your recollection of your sense of your self. Here you’re using self to refer to some substantive thing in the world.
For Heidegger , the self isnt one object among others in the world. when you look in the mirror what you see is no more or less your ‘self’ than when you experience anything else in your world. Why is this? Because your ‘self’ consists of two indissociable features. First, it all of your past as a single unified totality of relevance as it participates in the present. Second , it is whatever you are experiencing in the world. What you are encountering makes a change in this past ‘self’ and that ‘being changed by’ is the only site of your ‘self’ for Heidegger. There is no self outside of this pairing. So reflection for him is not one self-object studying another self-object (the image in the mirror). The self is nothing but the way I myself
in the world.
Quoting Heiko
All things tell us about our Dasein , because Dasein is nothing outside of this ‘being thrown into things’. ‘Reflection’ is being changed by the world every moment.
A film that should, along with Life of Brian, be watched once a year.
I note the 'sink into despair and resignation' option is quite a popular choice, however. :wink:
Why? I'd say that is correct. Heidegger uses the term throughout the book in the way he does. I just pointed out that he chose that term because it does not have any conrete determinations and not because he wanted it determined as human existence, if you understand.
Exactly. And that’s what I mean by subordinate details of life that are informed , organized, guided and defined by the superordinate aims , goals, concerns and meanings that each of us carry with us each moment. Even the rituals surrounding pumping gas reflect the superordinate differences in worldview between people , but these activities are so general
as to mask those differences until an issue arises conceding how to fix a broken pump or something like
that.
So, are there beings other than human beings whose existence can be described in terms of 'dasein'?
Quoting Heiko
That’s Hegel , not Heidegger. Big difference between the two here. Nothing undetermined about Heidegger’s Dasein.
Honestly, I do not see why you come up with memory in this context. If you say my intent to move, reflected by the mirror as movement, is just a memory of itself, then what is not memory? Do you mean to say I would not know where I am without memory? Maybe. But when I move my hand along the mirror and it's reflection also moves, where is memory involved? I see both things move simultanously.
Quoting Joshs
So... Heidegger says "We need to get rid of predeterminations and hence use the term 'Dasein'" that is a difference to Hegel?
A huge difference , when you add what else he says about Dasein.
What do you mean? Heidegger describes human existence. It is purely speculative if such experience applies to other "things" (can apes lie?)
Hegel uses the term in the sense of undetermined matter, I guess, so this could be used for anything.
But who was talking about that? We talked about the intention for chosing that term.
Self is determined by its world , and the world ‘worlds’. That is, the world for me ( AS me) is an intricate unfolding of continuous change. There is no pre-determined plan for this unfolding It is not a dialectic.
Being-there comes from being in the world. The central focus for Heidegger has always been Being. That is, a questioning of the word ‘is’ that we stick between subject and predicate as some sort of neutral glue.
Except that they really don't seem to. You can work alongside someone for years, or see them at the grocery store every few days, and never have any idea what their political or religious (or ...) views are.
Yes, the same action can carry different meanings. It's one thing to throw a pitch during warm-up and another to throw it facing a batter.
My agreement here doesn’t rest on my sense of my self
being a memory. It could be a non-reflective intention. My point remains that you are treating ‘self’ here as an object in the world.
Pre-determined is not the same as determined.
Quoting Heiko
My point, exactly. He has to use the term 'dasein' because 'existence' doesn't convey the correct meaning. Of course, the Wikipedia entry on 'dasein' says that dasein is 'usually translated into English as "existence"' - which makes the point yet again.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Three guys looking at a field. One is a real estate developer, one a cattle farmer, and one a geologist. Even though they're looking at the same scene, they all see different things, because they're looking at it from different perspectives. That's an analogy for the sense in which 'the world' is, for us, a construction, 'vorstellung' in Schopenhauer. Having insight into how we construct it is what wisdom is, according to him.
You’re right. ‘ Determined’ implies a notion of causality. Empirical causality , because it presupposes enduring, self-identical objects, allows for something to remain as itself throughout a series of changes. This is what allows for the translation of a causal sequence into a formula that predicts future outcomes. Heidegger abandons empirical causality in favor of a model in which causes
can only be determined by what is ahead of them , a d are altered by this interaction.
Quoting Joshs
Dasein has to be what it is. Whenever you determine something, it is and can only be an "object".
Heidegger said something about the very term "existence" meaning something like "standing out into being". You are right with Heidegger's focus: He is not primarily concerned with the being of Dasein, but asks more or less, why it is the way it is. Being has given itself the form of innerworldy Dasein. Why?
PS: The appropriate reply, for you, is of course: Because it _is_ innerworldy Dasein.
Getting back to the gas station example, notice what our empirically oriented way of thinking causes us to miss or tuck under the rug. When you and I go into a BP to fill our tanks, notice the difference in our ‘choreography’. My routine is different than yours. I pull in to the pump closer than you. I pick up the nozzle and hold it differently . I may purchase the gas using a different sequence than tou. We think of these behaviors of ‘use’ as peripheral to the objects that we both see Ao we speeder empirical object from our interactions with the object. Of course , Wittgenstein as well as Heidegger wouldn’t make such a separation. If I ask you not just i. general terms what one does when they fill their car with gas , but get i to these behavioral differences , they are sloughed off as irrelevant to the facts of filling a car with gas. If I then ask you what you think I might do when I leave the
gas station , and you know me only slightly, you will have no idea. Even if you know me well ther are many details of my day to day behaviors that you can’t anticipate but I can. So we treat these behaviors in a different category than what we mean by the facts of daily life(getting the train, working on the computer).
We put many behaviors into the category of randomness , whim, arbitrary desire. So when we say that we can be in overwhelming agreement about the ‘same’ world, we tacitly assume that the arbitrariness of behavior doesn’t count. It is instead built into the model of ‘agreement ‘.
This is not unlike the claim of a theory of everything in physics to be able to eventually model all future behavior on a computer( with limitations provided by quantum uncertainty).
The predictiveness that physicists pat themselves on the back for conveniently leaves out the mountains
of arbitrary randomness that is left unexplained in so many aspects of life. This is becuase the randomness is built into the model as a presumed
irreducible feature of the world rather than a limitation of
the theory.
I agree with the gist of what you're saying, and the language I quoted is so suggestive that it must capture something essential, must be somehow right. I don't really want to say, that's just a metaphor and pass on by. But there's a reason philosophers in the analytic tradition have felt themselves pushed toward externalism. There's a reason we find it hard to escape the idea of culture. Even someone in the trenches of cognitive science like @Isaac finds a need for social roles in behavior that are not merely the individual agent's 'conception' or 'idea' of that role, but more like borrowed scripts they act out.
In short, anything that paints what's going on when two people 'see different things' is going to come up short if it treats them as isolated beings confronting the world on terms that are theirs individually, uniquely, and alone.
Interpreters go back and forth about where Heidegger stands with respect to the self and the social. For instance,
Zahavi is among those thinkers who interpret Heidegger's ‘we-self' of every day das man as taking precedence over his authentic self of ‘ownmost' possibilities. As das man , Zahavi claims
“group belongingness, rather than being founded upon an other-experience, preceded any such experience.”
“...an everyday being-with-one-another characterized by anonymity and substitutability, where others are those from whom “one mostly does not distinguish oneself” (Heidegger 1996: 11)
He surmises that Heidegger would approve of Schmid's(2005) assertion that “...the we, the “sense of us” or “plural self-awareness,” precedes the distinction between yours and mine, is prior to any form of intersubjectivity or mutual recognition, and is itself the irreducible basis for joint action and communication.”
Zahavi is far from alone in interpreting Heidegger's discussions of the discursive practices of Das man as assuming an introjection of norms by a socially created self or a socially conditioned self-affecting subjectivity. Heidegger's critique of Husserl's model of empathy was taken by many interpreters as evidence that the primacy of being-with for Dasein functions as the conditioning of a self by an outside.
On the other hand, other writers take the exact opposite stance.
“Gallagher(2010) says: “In Heidegger, and in thinkers who follow his line of thought, we find the idea that a relatively complete account of our embodied, expert, enactive, pragmatic engagements with the world can be given prior to or without reference to intersubjectivity.”
Gadamer(2006) writes:
“Mit-sein, for Heidegger, was a concession that he had to make, but one that he never really got behind. Indeed, even as he was developing the idea, he wasn't really talking about the other at all. Mit-sein is, as it were, an assertion about Dasein, which must naturally take Mit-sein for granted..."Care" [die Sorge] is always a concernfulness [ein Besorgtsein] about one's own being, and Mit-sein is, in truth, a very weak idea of the other, more a "letting the other be" than an authentic "being-interested-in-him."”
So who’s right? I think they are both right and both wrong.Heidegger shows that it’s possible to model being in the world for me as interaubjective from
the start, but at the same time it is ‘the world for all of us’ as seen from my unique vantage.
The three guys are looking at a field, it's not that they are in the same spot and one sees a field, another a mountain and the third a river. "They're looking at the same scene"—your words. They see "different things" only in that they see different potential uses, or things to discover, or to be gained, there. The field is there; we didn't "construct it".
But they are, as described, oriented toward the field as something, and that something is different in each case. In turn, that changes what they will notice about the field, what they will pay attention to, and so on.
None of which is too say 'the field' isn't there, or is constructed. I just to want to allow that they are, in one sense, doing the same thing, and in another, doing three different things. A veteran cattleman will also look at the field differently from someone less experienced. All of these distinctions are 'off the rack', though not wrong for being stereotyped.
Nothing here strikes me as decisive.
Agree. It's interesting too how we bring who we are to our observation of things. Each object we look at is also poured full of our history and our personal experience with objects, colors, a multiplicity of associations. The cattleman is a good example - what he sees when he looks over the landscape is an entire realm of signs and signifiers that you and I do not see and can't access. We see a different world - to an extent.
But your question is apropos: Is this decisive?
Further to that, when we look at, or stand in, a field, we all have our unique associations and about such experiences we could even write poems that would all be very different. Or set twenty people to paint or draw the field and see how different the works are.
I agree nothing is decisive; we don't want to make too much or too little of the sameness or too much or too little of the differences.
Verily. Verum est factum. What peculiarity of ours leads some of us to claim otherwise? Though of course we don't actually "see" potential uses; we consider that what we see may, in the future, be used in certain ways.
I first read Being and Time nearly forty years ago. Just started re-reading it yesterday, so I will return with all the answers shortly.
True, we don't literally see the potential uses or possibilities there. But I think it is fair to say that, even unreflectively, these possibilities colour and change the way we see things. And these pragmatic orientations to things are more primordial than the analytical view which sees things as merely present objects standing in front of us in all their ontic brutishness, to be simply stared at so to speak.
Maybe we have to see things as what they essentially are: sources of pure negativity, footprints of nothingness, phantastic structures of pure chaos.
If a fact of the matter has no status outside of an account which gives it its structure and sense, then there can be no facts independent of accounts. We can say that ‘something’ is there to act as affordances or constraint on our accounts, but we can’t identify it as a field , since that’s already an account.
But we can all agree, no matter what our interests might be, that it is a field. That commonality seems to be more than a mere account.
In other words , is agreement that it is a field due to its being a neutral fact or thing, or is agreement on its being a field an example of one of many possible accounts, beyond which there is only an empty core?
Is the above example different from below?
“If the composition of points out of lines or of lines out of points is conventional rather than factual, points and lines themselves are no less so. ... If we say that our sample space is a combination of points, or of lines, or of regions, or a combination of combinations of points, or lines, or regions, or a combination of all these together, or is a single lump, then since none is identical with any of the rest, we are giving one among countless alternative conflicting descriptions of what the space is. And so we may regard the disagreements as not about the facts but as due to differences in the conventions-adopted in organizing or describing the space. What, then, is the neutral fact or thing described in these different terms? Neither the space (a) as an undivided whole nor (b) as a combination of everything involved in the several accounts; for (a) and (b) are but two among the various ways of organizing it. But what is it that is so organized? When we strip off as layers of convention all differences among ways of describing it, what is left? The onion is peeled down to its empty core.”(Nelson Goodman)
In English, that’s a field, and that it is a field, is a fact. For speakers of English, the fieldhood of that field is as neutral as it gets.
“In English, we call that a ‘field’, but who knows what it really is.” What could that possibly mean? **
Conventions don’t block neutrality; they create it.
**
Some variations:
“In English, we call that a ‘field’, but maybe we’re wrong.”
“In English, we call that a ‘field’, but that’s just what we call it.”
“In English, we call that a ‘field’, but maybe real fields aren’t like that at all.”
That-s what you see. A field. The other three guys see something more. You might think your view is detached of observers, but it's still a view. That's the human being condition. We all want our views to be objective. But all we have are views. Worldviews. For different people or groups the views can diverge. One's objectivity is the others fantasy.
'First there is a field. Then there is no field. Then there is.' Zen saying (paraphrased for context).
There is the 'realist' view, that things just are as they are, and will always be so, whether we know them or not. (First there is...)
Then there is the realisation of the conditional nature of perception, of how we bring perspective to everything we see, and things have no separate reality outside that. That is the 'realisation of emptiness' (Then there is no....)
Finally we see things 'how they truly are', which is the perspective that balances both of these earlier stages of insight (Then there is.)
It sounds trite compressed to a few lines but I think it makes an important point regardless. The point I take from it, is that the natural acceptance of the reality of the objects of perception has to be modulated by critical awareness of the role of our own faculties in arriving at such judgement. This is something like what I believe is meant by 'critical realism'.
Quoting Wayfarer
But things are as they are. That's logic, not realism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, we see things only through our own perspective. Concluding from this that we do not see things as they are is Stove's gem. You know better. Further, concluding that they have no identity apart from what we see is as unjustified as concluding that they have an identity about which we can know nothing. Further still, that we do know about things, so this approach is patently false.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure. But this is a job for psychology and physiology, not philosophy.
The reason that this is not logical is that it presumes 'we know how things are'. But, being mortal, I contend that we don't know this. We only ever know a very, very small fraction of that.
Quoting Banno
Sure, I did two semesters under Stove. But Stove's Gem only applies to bastardized versions of such arguments - lazy relativism, about which see this critique by Jim Franklin:
I have no argument with that. Note that, except in the somewhat confused second stage, there is a field. Sure, 'field' is just one possible name for it. It could be called "a stretch of grass", "a flat grassy area', "a habitat for plovers", but these are all synonymous with "field".
I don't see how it could ever be denied that our faculties play a role in arriving at such judgements, If we had no senses we could experience nothing and make no judgements, I believe you could take a person from every culture and bring them together in a (very large) field and, assuming that translation difficulties could be overcome, they would all agree that they were in a field. Even the pygmy from the Congo who has never left the forest would agree that she was in a place of no trees (assuming for the sake of argument that we are talking about a treeless field).
Interesting story from my university days. I think it might have been in cognitive science, or possibly anthropology. It concerned some anthropologists who took a pygmy chieftan up to a mountain lookout by jeep. This individual had never before been outside the dense forest he and his tribed lived in. From the lookout they had panoramic views out over the plains in the distance. They noticed the chieftan was squatting down and reaching towards the ground in front of himself. After some back and forth, they realised he was trying to touch the herd of wildebeest that could be seen grazing on the distant plain, as he had never seen anything that distant before and so thought they were small animals right near his feet.
I am not interested by his mysticism as much as by the way people evolve and define themselves through dialogue and otherwise interacting with others, IMO an understudied aspect of the human mind in philosophy. Sure, cogito ergo sum, but not alone. We dialog therefore we are.
I'm reading the Stanford article on Buber, a very interesting entry written by someone with a good sense of turn-of-century Vienna.
So much so that we are often a different person when surrounded by different people.
* The term "pygmy" is derived from Greek mythology and regroups artificially different communities that have nothing to see with one another. It has no more scientific value than the term "amazon".
“...Not only in judgements, however, but even in conceptions, is an a priori origin manifest. For example, if we take away by degrees from our conceptions of a body all that can be referred to mere sensuous experience—colour, hardness or softness, weight, even impenetrability—the body will then vanish; but the space which it occupied still remains, and this it is utterly impossible to annihilate in thought. Again, if we take away, in like manner, from our empirical conception of any object, corporeal or incorporeal, all properties which mere experience has taught us to connect with it, still we cannot think away those through which we cogitate it as substance, or adhering to substance, although our conception of substance is more determined than that of an object. Compelled, therefore, by that necessity with which the conception of substance forces itself upon us, we must confess that it has its seat in our faculty of cognition a priori....”
(CPR B6)
Maybe interesting......Goodman makes this analogy on pg 118 of his 1978 text, to which it may be considered as conclusion, whereas Kant states the similar analogy as a 1787 introductory major premise upon which an entire thesis is built.
.....maybe not.
—————-
Quoting Wayfarer
Keyword: first. The subtlety being ghostly or explosive.
Yeah. Tickle me, therefore you are. :smirk:
Applying this to Goodman’s example of points and lines, one would have to extract from the various accounts he offers of them a single word to unite all these descriptions. But there may be no single word uniting the accounts. A single word, however, can describe one of the accounts. So, one could say that , in English, each one of the accounts describes what the points and lines together produce with a unique word, and within the bounds of that account , the thingness of that word is as neutral as it gets. So the convention established by an account doesn’t block the perceived neutrality within the account , it creates it. If we apply this analysis to the word ‘field ‘, there would be different accounts, with their own English words to match them , of the space that , within one account, might be called a ‘field’. But to be more Wittgensteinian, the same word would be used in an infinity of different senses( there are force fields, fields of grass, baseball field, fields of study), each sense expressing a different account , a different convention, a different ‘as neutral as it gets’.
Which is a statement about the present. The non-logical part is about what things will be. You give account of this by saying "Then there is". So the problem is not "being" anymore but "becoming". It would be an antinomy to say things were not what they are. More than this, it is purely speculative that things will become something else.
I'm recognized in my family as a tickler of great dexterity and experience. You'd be surprised. :wink:
What Kant fails to do is to take away his notion of space
as and idealized abstract geometry in order to reveal how it is produced by primordial acts of synthesis.
“The consciousness of its [the object’s] existence is here a belief in act; by virtue of the accord in which the perceptive appearances flow off in original presentation, retention, and protention, an accord of continuous self-affirmation, belief is continuous certainty of belief, which has its certainty in this originality of the object in its living being-present.
The object is “a unity which “appears” continually in the change of the modes of its givenness and which belongs to the essential structure of a specific act of the ego.” “The "object" of consciousness, the object as having identity "with itself" during the flowing subjective process, does not come into the process from outside; on the contrary, it is included as a sense in the subjective process itself and thus as an "intentional effect" produced by the synthesis of consciousness.”(Husserl, Experience and Judgement).
“If we think of monadic subjects and their streams of consciousness or, rather, if we think the thinkable minimum of self-consciousness, then a monadic consciousness, one that would have no "world" at all given to it, could indeed be thought - thus a monadic consciousness without regularities in the course of sensations, without motivated possibilities in the apprehension of things.”(Husserl, Ideas II)
“Thus what can be shown to have the character of constantly remaining, as remanens capax mutationem, constitutes the true being of beings which can be experienced in the world. What enduringly remains truly is. This is the sort of thing that mathematics knows. Thus the being of the "world" is, so to speak, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of being which is embedded in the concept of substantiality and in terms of an idea of knowledge which cognizes beings in this way. Descartes does not allow the kind of being of innerworldly beings to present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its "true" being on the basis of an idea of being (being = constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the justification of which has not been demonstrated.”(Heidegger, Being and Time)
“It was long held that what exists must be self-identical. Since self-identical things have space and time locations, it was assumed that only what fills space and time can exist.” (Gendlin)
Yeah, smoke 'em out of that platonic cave, counselor. :fire:
There is a more fundamental thinking that penetrates beneath the idea of a world as a container with ‘parts’(existing beings) of which we are just one more. Rather than the world being just object beings that are presented before a subject being ( who is also an object within that world), the world ( including the subject) is enacted , produced , synthesized rather than just mirrored and represented. From this vantage , ‘being’ isn’t the existing parts, it’s the synthesizing, enacting , producing activity that creates and recreates the subject and object poles. The being of this world is in its becoming, and our own indissociable becoming. ( Is that obscure enough for ya?)
As parts of the world, though, we're active participants in it. We aren't mere observers. As products of evolution, we're even in a sense are created by the world, which is to say we developed--we became human, and took on the characteristics of humans--by our interaction with the rest of the world over time. No world, no humans. The conditions of the rest of the world shape us, and we shape certain parts of the rest of the world. Speaking of Being, how do we explain why and how human beings exist if we doubt the existence of the rest of the world or doubt we can know or understand it? Do we resort to God or magic of some kind?
I guess it's up to linguists and philosophers to clarify them.
One way is to differentiate fictional/imaginary and real, where "exists" sometimes is used instead of "real", though fictions exist too, they're just not real.
We might speak of ontological categories, like substance, event, property, relation, ...
In a general sense, being can have no complement.
Which is also why you can't really miss it.
The interesting question: If the world, the things, just everything is the real production of "being", why should we not concern ourselves with them? The mysticism is of a kind that says "Okay, these things _are_ but beyond those, if you try hard, there is the world of being." But being "mediates" itself towards itself by those things. When shifting view away from the things as they _are_ towards "being", you are hunting a mere abstraction. The absolute nothingness.
One of my favorite psychologists says that every experience we have of the world is a construct. To experience anything is to construe it. And he defines a construct as a referential differential. Specifically, a construct is a dimension along which to perceive an event along dimensions of likeness and difference with respect with a prior meaning in our construct system. Furthermore, every new moment in time must be construed, so our construct system is changing from
moment to moment.
Let me ask you , is a construct an ‘object’? Is it something that just ‘is’? Or it it a way that we are changing? Does it make sense to point to a content of the construct , what it ‘is’ , apart from the way it makes a
change over what went before? If we try to point to what it supposedly ‘is’ in itself , it vanishes, because it isn’t anything ‘in itself’. It is only what it is as a comparison, and we need both sides of the comparison in order to have the event, the construct. The event is this thing that is what it is by differing in a very specific way from what it changed from. So it is not a thing, it is a difference , a xomparison, an edge , a hinge, a ‘from there to here.
So what we have here with a construct is a change, a transition, a movement , a difference, a becoming, that doesn’t consist of something that simply ‘is’ what it is in itself as a static state or inherence or substance or res extentia before being changed or moved. The change (consisting inseparably of a ‘what was’ paired with a ‘what is’) prior to the supposed stasis, the ‘pure content’ of an in itself.
I would argue it isn’t ‘being’ that is the abstraction , it is the idea of a thing in itself as static state,
I am sure they are diverse. It wasn't intended to stereotype pygmies. It was an anecdotea about a particular individual from a particular environment.
Quoting Ciceronianus
That would mean recalling that science deals principally with what can be measured. And that, as Max Planck said, 'science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.'
You are missing the point. The "in-itself" is a speculation. The "thing" will negate any phantasm you might have about it by itself. This is what is called reality. For example, if you mistake a table decoration for a real apple you will recognize it when it really matters.
Quoting Joshs
There is no construct, that is the real thing. If there is no reality preventing you from upholding a belief about it then the description, in fact, matches the subject. Propagating a general doubt "just because" is not backed by any reality, irrational, destructive and dishonest.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, "in itself" - you got it.
Built into your model of reality is an ‘in-itself. You wouldn’t call it reality otherwise. How else does what happens negate or correct if not by the effect of something that persists or endures as what it ‘is’, independent of the context of your expectations and background of undersranding , and independent of social context of use?
What makes an apple real? How would you define it ? Does it endure over time as what it is, does it have properties and attributes? Is it the same apple regardless of who is interacting with it or how they are using it?
No, that is a supposed identity of the object. If the object crumbles into pieces the identity is lost. The identity certainly does not lie in the thing.
What if the object doesn’t crumble into pieces? Does it have an identity up till the time it crumbles? If the identity doesn’t lie in the thing , where does it lie?
In "being" itself. The point is that a vase is just a vase. It doesn't matter the slightest that it could turn into a pile of broken glass any moment - until it really becomes one. It is a "real vase". You could not convince yourself the vase was a pile of broken glass. It could even become a pile of sand if we started grinding it. Doesn't matter at all. It _is_ a vase. That is what "being" itself wants it to be.
To show the stupidity I'll borrow your own vocabulary: Say the vase is a construct. That is deemed of missing something therefor you should reflect on the construct "construct"? Doesn't that miss something? More than that: I could not convince myself the vase was a pile of glass. So, taking the vase as a vase means there was no contradiction. But now there is a construct "construct" because constructs were deemed to not tell "the truth"? Please....
It is identifiable up until the time it crumbles. The idea that it "has" a fixed identity is an abstraction from its identifiability.
What would it mean for it to have a fixed identity? If we say
that it is composed of subatomic particles , do these particles have a fixed identity? Let’s say a quark exists for a millisecond. Does it have an identity that endures for this span of time?
I’m nit sure I understand why a construct is ‘missing something’ or doesn’t ‘tell the truth’. Missing what? What truth?
I just cite your argument:
Quoting Joshs
It is not me who doubts the vase is a vase until it isn't anymore.
Yeah, the common counterargument. Acts of synthesis are phenomena given by imagination, as far as the notion of space is concerned. Failing to show how space is produced by imagination prevents it from having to be phenomena, hence alleviates the possibility of space being represented in us as an object of perception, and from that, experience. Pretty hard to justify space as an phenomenal experience, methinks.
Besides, to say “primordial” acts of synthesis requires faculties correspondingly primordial, more so than those to which such acts are already accountable. That, or, the present faculties would be required to accomplish acts of synthesis, the primodality of which is beyond their respective capacity. Can’t synthesis something not given, or something not within the capacity of that to which it is given. Both of which may be speculated, but iff authorized by a theory with sufficiently different initial conditions.
Idealized abstract geometry is the science of quantifiable spaces on a priori grounds, which allows there to be a notion of space in general, as idealized intuition, that isn’t itself a science.
I was just showing one analogy pre-dated by one just like it, that’s all.
Who said anything about doubting it is a vase? I can construe something as a vase but there are many, many different ways of doing this. Remember, to construe something is to compare and contrast it along dimensions of similarity and difference with respect to something else. The purpose of a construct is to anticipate patterns within changing events. So the aim of my construal of something as a vase is to anticipate a regularity in an ongoing flow of experiences. The criterion of success for a construct is its usefulness in guiding my interaction with the world such that I am. it being surprised at every turn by changes in my world.
I could construe a vase as having fixed properties and attributes that is nonetheless breakable. This construct is quite useful up to a point, but there are always alternative ways I could construe the events that I am calling a ‘vase’.
There it is again. "You can construe". This is not the relation between you and a vase.
What about the relationship between me as a scientist and an empirical realm? A construct is like a scientific paradigm. Do you think Kuhn’s paradigms describe the relation between the scientist and the vase? If not, tell me how you critique Kuhn’s approach.
Reality becomes visible when theories do _not_ hold. I doubt you can "construe" a vase out of thin air.
not according to KUHN. He says that reality appears differently under different scientific accounts. It is up to the scientist to choose which account appears more useful. There is no account of reality which is truer than any other. Sounds like you prefer Popper.
I am really not concerned with Kuhn. I am more or less talking to you. But if you take his words to mean that assuming a flat earth is scientifically justified, you must have read him wrong or he is an idiot.
It was Popper’s way of showing that he was stuck in a Kantian time warp.
Exactly - the _negative_ account is the corrective.
We cannot speak about things which are not identifiable as having an identity except in the minimal sense that to speak about them is already to posit an identity.
Wouldn't the difference be that one is an abstraction, subject to an individual perception, and the other an apple physically realized? I would say that existence adds a quality that denies human intervention for it to be perceived as true, e.g even I can't see something, it can exist. I may be wrong in this though.
I think it does, in the same sense that belief in God does. This is why I bring up religion often as being in a similar dimension as philosophy. I think they both ask and try to answer fundamental, universal human questions— and the answers (tacit or explicit) manifest themselves in our culture and our lifestyles.
Although Christianity is still around, I’d argue that this is a secular age, defined by capitalism and scientism — based solely on looking at how we actually live, and who our leaders are (and the beliefs on such they make and justify their decisions).
Thoughts on this? Am I way off?
Quoting john27
"an abstraction"...? What's that? What sort of thing is an abstraction?
"subject to an individual perception..." Do you often see nonexistent apples?
"...an apple physically realized" is an apple. Is an apple that is not physically realised an apple? It might well be a thought about an apple, or an imagined apple, or a story about an apple, but is it an apple?
Consider Meinongianism.
"Ronald McDonald does not eat spinach" is not like ""Ronald McDonald does not exist".
And you might furtehr consder
Quoting Banno
I would argue an abstraction is simply that; the vivid image of a red, juicy, sweet apple without its direct connection to our material world. I think the crux of this argument can be assessed as:
Do thoughts generate existence?
If yes then, I would find that you are correct, as there would not be any innate difference between two red apples "existing" per say.
If no however, and a thought remains solely the image of a red juicy and sweet apple without any substance beneath, no physical properties constraining it, then I would be more inclined to say that I am correct.
Whats the difference between an apple that exists and one that is generated by thought? well one you can eat, one you can't.
I don't know if I have fully understood Meinongianism so i'm going to refrain from saying anything right now :sweat:
It also might be more accurate to say that instead of do thoughts generate existence, do thoughts exist?
I forgot to address a point oops. Ill state it here:
Quoting Banno
I would argue in this sense it is an apple, but incomplete, because it does not contain a major part of the apple which is its physical properties. My thinking kind of falls in line like this:
You watch a Bruce Springsteen show on youtube. then, you go to see one in real life, where it has the ambience, the entirety of the sound, hundreds of thousands of people around you etc.
The video could be considered the same thing as the real concert, but obviously its lacking something, which were physical properties that you could enjoy had you been there, had you entertained its physical existence.
Quoting Banno
Well when I read I see things that aren't "there"(physically-or in a way that I can perceive naturally) all the time.
Existence is not like being a video, or a simulation, or a story.
Would you buy front-row tickets to a concert, with back stage pass and after-gig party, if the only catch was that it didn't exist?
What would you have purchased?
I agree. I think this statement is what differentiates thought from existence, being that my point was thought is similar to that of a simulation, a video, an image, or an intricate story of existence the we perpetrate ourselves. An abstraction.
Quoting Banno
I would buy a ticket, and walk through the door. Unfortunately, as I open the door to this concert, I find there is nothing there; a complete absence of existence. For no particular reason, I close my eyes. I then create a simulation of the concert within my mental capacities; incomplete of course, I cannot know what the ambience of the concert was, and heck, I probably can't even pinpoint what song is being played, but my simulation is correct enough to make my way back stage and enjoy the supposed concert nonetheless.
What a rip off!
I would much rather buy a ticket that doesn't exist to go to a real concert. At least then, if they don't accept my mentally simulated image of a ticket, I could just hop the fence.
Wouldn't this mean Harry Potter exists? It is just that he is no real person but a fictive figure.
Quoting john27
If you imagine an apple then there surely is an imagination of an apple. I do not see inaccuracies of spoken language to be a problem. If you buy a painting of a dragon there must be an idea of what a dragon looks like.
I agree. Is this mental picture of an apple in your opinion in existence?
A mental picture of an apple, for example. Could be a painted image as well.
So far as the surface grammar goes, sure. “Exists” is after all an English verb, so it’s something English noun phrases can do.
You can imagine someone — many years ago now — who had not heard of Harry Potter coming into the middle of a conversation and asking who Harry Potter is. When we say, “He’s a character in a book by a woman named ‘J. K. Rowling’,” are we saying he doesn’t exist but she does? Or are we saying he exists in one way in she in another? Or are we saying he’s one sort of thing and she another?
Here are some different comparisons. Does Robert Galbraith exist? He’s J. K. Rowling, so he must, right? But he doesn’t exist as Robert Galbraith. Did J. T. Leroy exist? Not like J. K. Rowling. Someone did write the novels, and someone did appear in public answering to the name “J. T. Leroy” but they weren’t the same person. Does Oobah Butler exist? Oobah Butler wrote the articles that won awards — about a restaurant that didn’t exist but then did — but sometimes the person who showed up to collect the award, answering to “Oobah Butler”, was no more Oobah Butler than Savannah Knoop was J. T. Leroy. Does Erin Hunter exist? Someone writes the Warriors books, but not always the same person, and none of them are called “Erin Hunter”.
Honestly, I don’t think any of these puzzles are any help in understanding existence, not on their own. They are all — Harry Potter, Robert Galbraith, J. T. Leroy, Oobah Butler and the Shed at Dulwich, Erin Hunter — instances of one sort of pretending or another. Pretending is very interesting, but I’m not sure it’s the ‘master key’ to understanding existence.
It adds a layer to be analyzed; maybe that helps clarify the layer that was already there, but maybe not. This pencil is not a rocket. Two predicates there and some existence. If I pretend this pencil is a rocket, does that make it clearer in what sense the pencil exists? Or even in what sense it exists as a pencil but not as a rocket? Or in what sense no rocket exists where the pencil is? Maybe? If you incline to a ‘the pencil is a mental model’ view, then you kind of want to say everything’s pretend, all we do is pretend, so maybe the cases of obvious pretense are helpful if you can show they’re not different from ‘normal’ cases in any important way.
Pretending a pencil is a rocket is pretending something is a rocket, and that’s different from holding up your hand in a certain way and saying, “Pretend I’m holding a pencil.” Is that a funny way of saying, “Pretend I’m holding something you (and I, and everyone else) would pretend is a pencil”? (You’ll have to spruce up your vocabulary, because you only can pretend a pencil is a pencil if you mistakenly think it isn’t. Fun!) Even if it is, have you learned anything about the difference between having something in your hand and not?
Question -- Since your example sentence provides (1) subject (pencil), (1) complement (rocket) and (1) verb (to be), when you write
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
am I failing to understand your intentions? Please clarify. :smile:
Of the thing in question, ‘__ is a pencil’ can be truly predicated, ‘__ is a rocket’ cannot; and there’s a thing in question.
So that’s two (logical) predicates and some existence.
I’m not in love with that analysis, but it’s the usual way people do it.
Ok, I think my naivety can withstand this pressure. Yes, we can say that Potter exists in one way and Rowling in another. Existence is a predicate. Also '..is red' is a predicate. The apple is red. My trousers are red. But they are different colours. Am I saying that the apple is red in one way and my trousers are red in another? Yes, that's just what I'm saying. So Potter exists in one way - as a character - and Rowling in another - as the author.
You have just given a very good account of the kind of existence that Erin Hunter has and doesn't have. That's like any predicate. The apple is a shiny bright red and my trousers are a dull dark red. Nothing to bother my naivety here. There are different kinds of existence, redness and noise. I'm ok with that.
I wasn’t really arguing against treating ‘__ exists’ as a predicate, just suggesting that most of the examples we think of are really about something else (pretending).
Quoting Cuthbert
Of course, no one is confused about any of this. It’s just hard to figure out how we keep it all straight, logically. How would we explain it to someone unfamiliar with the idea of fiction?
For instance, when you say Harry’s a character, you don’t mean that in the same way you might say Harry’s a magician. In the book, he’s not a character in a book, but a real person.
Quoting Cuthbert
Have I? There is nothing on earth that answers to “Erin Hunter”. She doesn’t exist. Some people pretend she does, and some people mistakenly believe she does. None of that means she exists in some special, different way. Why should it? If I pretend this pencil is a rocket, does that mean ‘in some sense’ it is? Why? It’s still a pencil and I must think it’s a pencil to pretend it isn’t. I don’t even think it’s a rocket — I’m not mistaken, like the readers of the Warriors books, but pretending, like the authors.
What kind of existence do you think Erin Hunter has? (It is evidently not the kind that allows you to write books, because only people can do that.)
When Tolkien pretends that what he offers to the public is a translation of The Red Book of Westmarch, he pretends both that there is such a thing and that his work is a translation. If you want to say that ‘in some sense’ the Red Book exists, then is Tolkien’s work ‘in some sense’ a translation? In what sense could that possibly be true?
I would say instead that Western philosophy of a certain stripe and era treats existence as a predicate( we can trace this logic back to Aristotle), but that wasn’t always so, and it isn’t the case for Wittgenstein or the phenomenologists( or for the OP).
A predicate isnt something simply added onto a subject as an additional piece of information that can be correct or incorrect. A predicate pragmatically and contextually transforms a subject in a certain direction. Not only the redness of an apply, but the nature (the sense) of the connection between the predicate and the subject are understood within a unique context of sense. We ignore all this and pretend that we are dealing with a picture of an apple and potential attributes or properties that transcend the context of their invocation.
Or having one’s life changed by a novel whose characters ‘don’t exist’.
:up:
Quoting Cuthbert
No it isn’t.
Does the pencil as writing instrument have at least one existential attribute in common with the pencil as rocket?
Exactly. Which is why the statement "Harry Potter exists" is underdetermined and misleading. We would understand it as "Harry Potter is a real person" which he is not. "Harry Potter is a fictional character" on the other hand explicitely expresses the mode of his existence and makes perfect sense.
Roughly, to be is to be the subject of a predicate. Harry Potter is a fictional character.
A mental picture of an apple is not an apple. It's a mental picture - whatever that is.
In the introduction to Being and Time, Heidegger addresses the two senses of ‘phenomenon’: (1) something that is shown, or brought to light, or shows itself in itself, all that; (2) something that seems to be something else, that shows itself as something it is not, a semblance. The two are related, and you can see how they would be, but he also wants to block an identification of seeming with appearing (as). It’s confusing enough that MacQuarrie and Robinson include a lengthy analytical footnote, and I don’t intend to go through all that.
We might hope to find something to do with pretending here, because it is possible for something to show itself in itself or as something else, and it’s possible for us to treat something as what it is or as something else. (If there is a connection, it might explain why talk of existence often gets hung up on cases of pretending.)
But pretending is not like a mistake, which is also taking something to be something it’s not. When your child comes out in their Halloween costume, you can pretend not to recognize them, to think they are actually Jack Skellington, say, which would indeed have been a mistake. In this case, the child may be pretending to be Jack Skellington, or not. They’ll let you know if you get it wrong. You can pretend to be Jack Skellington without dressing up at all, so the costume doesn’t tell you whether they’re pretending.
What we do in pretending does not seem to be grounded in how things can seem to be something they’re not; nor does it bring about any such seeming. Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find much of a connection.
Quoting ucarr
Do you mean, do they both exist?
I don’t think ‘as’ confers or conjures existence. You can use a rock as a hammer, but you don’t thereby bring into existence the-rock-as-hammer alongside the rock itself, do you?
Or going the other way, in abstracting, you can look at a basketball as a toy, as a shape, as a souvenir, as a commercial product, and so on. Those are ways in which the basketball can be seen, but it’s the basketball being seen in this specific light, the basketball that is the thing here, and how it is viewed is not another and separate thing.
Or is none of this what you meant by ‘existential attribute’?
Perhaps the one useful thing in phenomenology is that the cat is only on the mat because we pretend it is so. We can pretend things that are true.
Oh, sorry - I said "pretend" instead of "intend"...
We might owe a debt to Husserl.
Davidson phrased the same point in a less misleading way when he pointed out that the world is always, already, interpreted.
Is that what you have in mind?
No.
Maybe we can ask the question straight up: is it because things can seem to us to be something they are not that we can pretend that they are something they are not?
I have ‘no’ so far for that question. The seeming things do and the pretending we do have a very abstract similarity but are not actually connected. So far as I can tell.
If you come at it from the analytic tradition, you might want to say that there’s not even a question here: something seeming like now one thing and now another is just us conceptualizing it variously. If we can do that, we can obviously pretend using the same tools. (Talk is cheap.) That looks like just a denial of Heidegger’s first sense of ‘phenomenon’, and if you do that then you just can’t have phenomenology. I’m not ready to say that.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Seeming is what we do to things, isn' it? This says that they seem to themselves.
And this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
...which is...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It's not a hammer until one uses it to hit a nail. Use is pivotal.
So, when talking about being, we would predicate being. Therefor being would have to be something that exists. But this seemingly cannot be the case as being alledgedly isn't ontic. Any thoughts on this?
No. That's wrong.
Rather, in predicating to something one assumes that the something is there for discussion.
"The cat is on the mat" presumes a cat.
This is why logic treats existence as a second order predicate:
"There is a something such that it is a cat and it is on the mat".
So being literally has no properties?
Quoting Cuthbert
Quoting Banno
Alrighty then. Anyone for the idea, expressed to the OP I think, that existence is in the relation between subject and predicate rather than inhering in one or
the other?
Does being happen?
Your enquiry is spotlighting issues that raise questions that impel us toward intriguing considerations of subtle distinctions between ways of existing.
The intention of my question is to focus on whether a common, general attribute-of-existence can be distilled from a comparison of pencil-as-writing-instrument and pencil-as-imaginary-rocket. I figure the more disparate the two things compared, given that a common, general-attribute-of-existence can be distilled, the more generally we have identified general existence.
I have long suspected as, in its prepositional mode, functions as a philosophically rich grammatical form.
If I can make bold and conclude Heidegger, in saying, human is a being for whom being is an issue, means (along with other things) human cannot live without narratives, then I will also dare to speculate that for human, the statement x as y is a serious claim, which is to say, within the narrative, metaphor (and simile) is necessary, not optional.
This leads me to saying that human, with its big brain, cannot live locally, which is to say x as y statements are, for human, truth statements. Furthermore, I speculate human, by force of the necessary status of x as y statements, gets drawn toward this very thread overall (and others like it), which tries to comprehensively grasp existence in its phosphorescent super-abundance.
Let me truck out a notion now rolling around in my head for years.
An existing thing, whether material or conceptual, is a road map to somewhere else. Perhaps the thingliness and even the hereness & whereness of things are not primary to existence. Instead, perhaps how a thing spins out, as if by centrifugal force, its observer to another destination is what is primary about existence. All this is to say that what our senses perceive of existence might be secondary to how a particular thing spins out its observer onto another en route to (whatever).
As I recall, Aristotle said being is the means by which all beings are revealed as it remains unrevealed..
These speculations lead me to assert, being is transcendental to all beings.
This might mean then, regarding pencil-as-imaginary-rocket, while we don't want to cease discerning hallucinations as such when they occur, we do want to push things to the point where we find ourselves within the feathering-boundaries of identity statements as truth statements.
What say you to approaching general existence as existential incandescense?
Harry Potter is a thing. Harry Potter is a being. That's where we start. Whatever else we want to say about it is up to us. He's a fictional character, yes. In common usage, if we were to say that Harry Potter is "real," people would think we're insane. But does Harry Potter "exist" -- if by "exist" we mean is a being? Yeah, of course. So do unicorns and Santa Claus.
What is the subject - following Frege?
Is ?(x)f(x) to be understood as a relation between things that f and existence?
I don't see that. ?(x)f(x) says "we can talk about things that are f"
Just as (a, b, c, d...), in setting out the domain of discourse, says "we can talk about a, b, c, d and so on".
Just as putting the pieces on the board sets us up to play, but is not part of the game.
It's a property of properties, in one way.
How about, a thing is a dimensional construction which we create in order to organize and anticipate future events?
From what I gather, phenomena appear in various ways, but all are "manifestations" (phusis), related to unconcealedness (aletheia). So that which manifests or is uncovered. That's phenomena, as traditionally thought. Heidegger will go on to talk much more about this relation to "presence" (time), and basically say that phenomenology is the study of absences. Or that's what I gather from him anyway.
His talking about "seeming" is important because it shows up right away in early Greek thought, along with "becoming," and leads directly to Plato's ontology. Being, as opposed to mere seeming/semblance and inconstancy, becomes thought of as the constant, the enduring.
Beings have properties. Being is not a being.
It depends on the context in which they’re doing it. If someone who never played chess puts the pieces on the board the sense and purpose of what they are doing can’t be part of the game. If they are a chess player, then this act already presupposes and belongs to the context of playing just as every subsequent behavior they make throughout the actual game. Same is true of a pool player racking up the balls.
An idea which comes directly from Heidegger, in his treatment of hermeneutics and developed by Gadamer. Davidson may or may not have encountered the idea via Heidegger, but it at least was enunciated by the latter long before Davidson. I sometimes wonder whether some analytic philosophers have not claimed originality and got away with it because their fellow analytics are not familiar with the phenomenological tradition.
Yes, being is a happening.
Who, as I said, got it from Husserl.
I'm not much interested in who said it first, so much as who said it best - the point is to be clear about what is being claimed.
Or if you prefer, setting the game up is usually a different language game to playing, although of course one can imagine a game in which setting up the game is part of the game.
Banno's game, for instance.
Did you already say the idea came from Heidegger via Husserl? If so, my apologies I missed it. I'm not aware of that idea deriving from Husserl, but in any case it is abundantly clear in Heidegger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_already
The first is exemplified in ?(x)f(x), Quine's
The second extends Quine's logic to allow for individual constants, specified as part of the structure of the logic itself.
Or, in a simpler mode, the first is talk of the way things are and the second is giving things proper names.
Quoting Banno
Existence would be the way that the particulars ( a thing that is f) alters the sense of the subject that they are particulars of. Formal logic supposes that the subject and predicate sit still as self-identical contents , while we cobble them together in an external relation. Existence as subject-object relation claims
instead that taking the predicate as the subject ( taking this apple as an apple) isnt just a neutral cobbling of already fixed contents. Rather , when we deal with a particular , we are altering the original context of the subject. The subject morphs in such a way that it freshly frames the particular.
Putting the pieces on the board isnt just prelude to the game. It establishes a fresh context out of which the context of game is dependent and shaped.
Next?
Quoting Janus
This is how Husserl modeled the pre-interpreted basis of experience:
“Every apperception in which we apprehend at a glance, and noticingly grasp, objects given beforehand- for example, the already-given everyday world- every apperception in which we understand their sense and its horizons forthwith, points back to a "primal instituting", in which an object with a similar sense became constituted for the first time. Even the physical things of this world that are unknown to us are, to speak generally, known in respect of their type. We have already seen like things before, though not precisely this thing here. Thus each everyday experience involves an analogizing transfer of an originally instituted objective sense to a new case, with its anticipative apprehension of the object as having a similar sense.”(Cartesian Meditations, Husserl)
But Heidegger didn’t simply copy Husserl’s approach. There are important differences , and they go way behind Davidson’s grasp of the pre-interpreted.
The first sentence took me some time. I don't think that "alteration" is the right word there - "defines" would be more appropiate, I think. When using the existential quantor the "x" typically appears in the predicate as well. It does not seem to make sense to say "There is an x, so that 3=3" (atough the grammar indeed seems to allow this - but I would have to look that up).
I don't agree with this.
Being isn't any-thing, including a "happening," including "becoming," including "change." It is very much like nothing. We interpret this "nothing," but that's all we can say about it.
If we are talking about folk you might expect to meet in the street, or read about in history books, then "Frodo doesn't exist" says that the name "Frodo" does not refer. "Frodo walked into Mordor" is an empty sentence.
If on the other hand we are talking about Mordor and surrounds, then "Frodo" does indeed refer, and "Frodo walked into Mordor" is, we are told, true.
If we want to talk about both - to explain the difference between Tolkien's The Red Book of Westmarch and, say, Gibbon's Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, we will need suitable predicates to differentiate them - "...is historical", "...is fiction", or some such.
Quoting Xtrix
I don't see being as separate from becoming; the only difference I could imagine would be to see it as becoming abstractly considered by putting the idea or sense of change aside. Do you understand being as changeless?
I am suggesting that an examination of the language of being looks more productive than musings about time.
I’m getting this from Heidegger. He uses lots of similies for Being. Happening, occurrence, the in-between , the ontological difference, the ‘as’ structure are some of them.
“Understanding as the Dasein’s self-projection is the Dasein’s fundamental mode of happening. As we
may also say, it is the authentic meaning of action. It is by understanding that the Dasein’s happening is characterized—its historicality. Understanding is not a mode of cognition but the basic determination of existing. We also call it existentiell understanding because in it existence, as the Dasein’s happening in its history, temporalizes itself. The Dasein becomes what it is in and through this understanding; and it is always only that which it has chosen itself to be, that which it understands itself to be in the projection of its own most peculiar ability-to-be.”(Basic Problems of Phenomenology)
Quoting Xtrix
As you know , Heidegger has lots to say about the nothing, authentic angst , the uncanny, absence. These are not the totality of what he has to say about being, but one aspect of it. Heidegger closely links projection , temporality , the ‘as' structure, the ontological difference and ‘Dasein as absent’. There is no Being without beings and vice versa. They are inseparable as the ontological difference between Being and beings , otherwise referred to as the in-between , occurrence, happening , the ‘as’ structure and projection.
It sounds like that from the quote , but for Husserl there isn’t a primordial beginning of consciousness in terms of a particular content that all higher acts of constitution are built on. The primordial beginning for him is the formal
structure of associative synthesis that he call internal time consciousness, the structure of retention-presence-protection that associatively connects one moment to the next as a unified synthetic flow.
The difference I see with Heidegger is that Heidegger takes pragmatic awareness as a totality of relevance that unifies our total past as background ‘framing’ of every disclosure of a ready to hand thing. Husserl begins instead with the perceptual object that only indirectly links back to a larger totality of our past experience.
Except that if you examine the language of being primarily via predicate logic you’ll have Wittgenstein rolling over in his grave. Witt didn’t write about time but I think it’s an important element implicit in his concept of use as radically situational and contextual.
The world as always already interpreted should not be conflated with the world as already named in my view. Meaning is not an artifact or "after-fact" of language; meaning is also pre-linguistic and is what makes language possible in the first place.
Thanks Josh, the way you encapsulated the distinction between Husserl's and Heidegger's approaches makes it clear. I haven't read much of Husserl, but I'll have to make it a priority
By all means, fill that in. I suspect time only enters in a secondary sense, since use occurs over time. But it also occurs over place.
Sure, but think in terms of what we are doing rather than of meaning, and see that language is a part of what we are doing. It's what we do that is sometimes non-linguistc.
Interpreting is pretty much making use of.
Is he? It’s a phrase that occurs in some books and movies, and we understand how fiction works so we understand that we are to pretend it’s a story about a person called “Harry Potter”. He’s definitely not a person. I could see an argument for “Harry Potter” naming an aspect of those books and movies, an abstraction (and this is what we would mean by saying he’s a character in a book). But I’m iffy on whether abstractions are things, or just ways of seeing things.
Quoting Xtrix
But you have to say a lot more than, for instance, “Santa Claus exists — as an idea,” or something like that. An idea of what? Not of a person. Not only does there not happen to be the person stories call “Santa Claus”, there cannot be. Ditto for unicorns.
Do you have a criterion besides “__ is a noun phrase”?
Every discussion of existence turns into a discussion of Santa Claus and I think that’s just a mistake. I don’t see any point in talking about Santa Claus without a much better understanding of pretending than I have.
Quoting Banno
Is it? How do we do that?
Say I see a fallen tree with a bit over a foot of a broken limb sticking straight up. If the branch had broken just so, and the light were just so, I might (as my ex-wife did) think I was seeing an owl perched on a fallen tree. Is that a seeming I impose? You could say that. But on what do I impose it? Is there not a primary phenomenon there of a fallen tree? This, I think Heidegger says, is what is manifest, what has been brought to light, what shows itself in itself.
Will you say that I have imposed ‘tree’ on a selection of my visual field? Or that I have ‘constructed’ the tree? If you want to say it is ‘already interpreted’ for me as a tree, I’m not really inclined to deny that, but I’d want to know a lot more about what ‘interpreted’ means here. There has to be the back and forth between what is given — not to my consciousness, but to me as a person — and how I understand it, its meaning for me. So whatever ‘interpretation’ means here, it’s not going to be something I impose on the world I find.
Quoting Banno
And there’s a similar story here. Is an affordance imposed or discovered? It’s not simply one or the other, right?
I’d have to think about how Wittgenstein would distinguish place from time , but my sense is it would be secondary and derivative from context, which is temporal.
One sees (is shown) the cat on the mat as "the cat is on the mat". So, both. Or the question is senseless...
Sorry, you lost me. "It" is the mooted distinction made by Witti between place and time...? I doubt there is much to be found on this. Irrelevant, rather than derivative.
It’s the same pattern: yes, the world is ‘already interpreted’ (one of the points Sellars is making) but it’s also a denial that we can say such interpretation is ‘mere appearances’, or the likes of ‘it looks blue to me’, all the way down. The tie, in all its being-blue, is given, but its givenness is not the mythical sort that is Sellars’s target.
I'd indeed say the "interpretation" or recognition as a tree comes after the "that thing there". It happens all the time that one can not exactly identify what he is seeing. It's an undetermined "Dasein"(being-there) which becomes "Etwas"(a determined something) - lending from Hegel.
When it comes to the determination I'd indeed say, this is imposed, but also happens without reflection to some degree. After seeing a tree for the first time, it is likely following trees of the same kind will be recognized as similar to the first. More detailed classifications likely require reflection of the concept and a more thorough investigation.
One answer would be that abstraction is what we resort to under uncertainty or dispute, but I don’t think that’s an argument that we don’t generally start from the terribly abstract and whittle down the possibilities until, for whatever reason, we settle at a somewhat lower level of abstraction.
I’m not sure what the argument against that would be, except that I can’t think of any reason for us to do that. It’s tidy in an analytic sense, but
All of that is about us, as creatures that find what we expect and want to find, what suits us, and adjust as we are surprised. We can give no meaning to ‘that thing’ and have no use for it, so it’s unlikely to be our first choice if we can guess ‘tree’ instead and change it ‘telephone pole’ later if we have to. But insofar as it’s ‘all about us’, that’s only because we are just the sort of creatures that can be sustained by the sorts of environment we find ourselves in, so we’re, in turn, all about where we live.
Did you mean "making use of"?
But in this sense it is not about use, it is about what gains identity and so just "is" without spending any further thought. It is purely phenomenological. With further determinations we get into socially mediated concepts. I do not know many kinds of trees, so which "level of abstraction" would be low enough? And which woods are suitable for telephone poles? That would require some inquiry. And is that tree even a tree or is there some biological distinction, for example, is it a small tree or a giant mushroom? While thinking about those questions and considering what remains the same is "the thing there". In fact this seems to be the quickest, most immediate notion that one can possibly have. Maybe the "thing" is exaggerated and in fact it is just a "there"
For what it’s worth, Grice says something like this too with his thing about “natural meaning” and “non-natural meaning”. He claims a kind of continuity between “clouds mean rain” and “‘clouds’ means clouds”. (Heidegger slips ‘signs’ and ‘symbols’ into that torturous discussion of phenomena and appearance, so we’re not far off.)
Quoting Janus
Quoting Banno
Might have been better the other way. I was all set to write a series of long (possibly tedious) posts about how we make ‘us’ of things through interpretation. ’Twas but a dream.
But it sounds pretty empty. Does it make sense for me to be oriented toward something as something that ‘just is’? People aren’t cameras. I could see arguing for logical but not temporal priority here, and that perhaps this is what phenomenology uncovers. Something like, only by (‘first’ in the logical sense) being oriented toward something as a thing that is, can we be oriented toward it as anything. That looks more than a little like the Fregean conception of predication — if that’s a flower, it’s an existing thing that is a flower, and its existing is purely presupposed.
My impression, though, is that Heidegger thinks logical relations are themselves in need of grounding, rather than grounding what we might have to say about the being of things. I suppose that passes over your point about identity, but here identity seems to be a sort of raw demonstrative ‘that’.
I think it does. You do not need to know what is flying towards you to react. You do not need to know if it is a telephone-pole or a streetlight that you nearly walked into.
That said I agree that recognition of known things does not necessarily seem to require additional thought - one is usually too relaxed when in a known environemt to be continuously asking if the "thing there" might be dangerous.
PS: On the other hand all unexpected "movement" raises suspicion.
Your language foregrounds ratiocination to a derived conclusion, whereas my language foregrounds an involuntary response, something like a chemical reaction.
From your language I see a thing that is a complex cognitive construction that encompasses a mental journey via intention. From my language I see an autonomic journey as thing that participates in an ever-branching serial.
Your statement is more at intentional exercise of reason. My statement is more at stream of consciousness, the foundation on top of which reason operates.
As soon as we posit intentional creation of a thing, we're inhabiting the mind-space. Some argue this is epiphenomenal, thus lacking the causal power of existence.
I see now that I want to simplify my proposition; Material things are road maps to somewhere else.
No, but I don’t see “it” as separate from change either. I don’t really see it as anything. Yet there are all kinds of things in the world— obviously. Beings all over the place. When asking about the beingness of beings, I think all we can say is that there have been many interpretations, and perhaps ask about the human beings doing the interpreting.
Quoting Banno
This is like saying it doesn’t depend on human being. But Frege and Russell were indeed human beings.
Quoting Joshs
Where does Heidegger say being is a “happening”? Or that being is anything at all?
Occurrence, so far as I’ve read, is another term for the present at hand. That’d be like saying Heidegger agrees with the western tradition.
The ontological difference is the distinction between being and beings— it is not a description or claim about being itself.
Again, I don’t see Heidegger ever offering another interpretation of being. What he’s trying to do is analyze the human being asking this question/ interpreting being. The basis for the various western interpretations, for example, is presence — which indicates time. So he sets off to “explicate” dasein in terms of a new conception of time (i.e, temporality) brought to light by a phenomenological analysis of everydayness.
Quoting Joshs
Indeed. Would be worth getting into.
On the other hand, coming back to the use-character, Heidegger points out that such stuff really "isn't" in some sense. I guess this has to do with the intention the things were created with. Again, going back to Hegel it is totally unclear what was meant with "Dasein", which cannot be said of a hammer or some other "human" invention.
Well said. :clap:
I would invoke an analogy to perception at this point, but perhaps that’s not helpful in this context.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What else would they be? Are they nothing? If they’re not nothing, then they’re “in” being along with everything else— clouds, feelings, sound, force, Bach’s fugues and strawberry candles.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well yes— Santa is usually thought of as a person. But regardless, as I said before in normal usage it’s perfectly fine you say Santa doesn’t exist. But ontologically, yes the concept of Santa claus is a being— it’s something; it “is.”
This is like saying it doesn't depend on German, but both Husserl and Heidegger arranged their arguments in German.
An inapt argument?
Quoting Xtrix
I don’t have a dogmatic position on abstractions. My gut feeling is that we’re not talking about new objects, which are abstract, but new ways of relating to given concrete objects. Abstraction is when I count the forks in the drawer as all the same sort of thing regardless of their size, material, or handle design. ‘Fork’ is an abstraction over those concrete objects. I’m not motivated by some sort of ontological purity — but if abstraction is a way of relating to a concrete object, then my taking an object as a fork tells me something about how I relate to it.
An example I used to think about is doing trigonometry: you draw a ‘generic’ triangle on the blackboard by drawing an actual, non-generic triangle, but then interacting with it in a particular way, not relying on the actual, measurable length of its sides or interior angles — in some sense pretending that you could not just measure. (And maybe abstraction is always like this — we’ll say ‘ignoring’ all except the features you’ve chosen, but maybe ‘ignoring’ means ‘pretending not to notice’.) Here it’s almost as if the burden of abstraction is carried by a methodology, by careful control over what you may do with the picture and what you may not. That’s interesting.
Yet you invoked Erin Hunter in your example. If I had invoked Eric Hunter as the author you would have had good reason to correct me: ''No, it's Erin, not Eric." You could accuse me of a failure of reference. Erin Hunter is not of flesh and blood and as you say not to be found walking on the earth. That's not quite enough to establish non-existence, however.
But you didn't spot that I contradicted myself. First I wrote that Potter doesn't exist and that Rowling does. Then, after your challenge, I wrote that they both exist, only in different ways. So, in my role as the naive non-philosopher, how do I get out of that one? I would mumble something like - "Yeah, but Potter doesn't really exist." I would invent a whole new ontological category - Real Existence vs a lowly mere Existence - and I would be in a bit of a mess.
The line I'm taking is to see how far naivety gets us and when it breaks down. It gets us somewhere and we can brave out some initial challenges but only at the cost of raising new problems.
A triangle can be little, large, flat or pointy. To me, it is not clear at all which same- or alike-ness would make up for the essential properties of an arbitrary determination.
Quoting Banno
Because he is a hack. Anyone who using a contradiction to explain their way out of a corner then leaves other instances of contradictions unattended is playing at the worst kind of sophistry. ‘Dasein’ doesn’t mean anything and no matter how many times he repeatedly reframes the ‘meaning’ of the term ‘Dasien,’ in this or that context, it didn’t fool me for a second that such explicit contradictions didn’t make an ounce of sense.
I also find it tiresome when I’m told he makes more sense when you’ve read his earlier work. If so why can’t anyone explain what he meant? And given that he wrote pages of waffle explaining the most basic points why didn’t take any care whatsoever to explicate the use of the term ‘dasein’ … because there isn’t one is the answer. He simply hid everything behind this obscure term and elsewhere openly uses contradictory terms and frames them as ‘not contrary’ as if that is a good enough explanation. He requires the reader to literally reconstruct their language (I’m not against that) yet offers no guiding principles and simply moves on quickly by re-presenting ‘dasein’ over and over as if it will hypnotise the reader into believing it (which happened to work on some sadly).
In Logical Investigations (1901) Husserl notices that when we hear a word we are i n the meaning i.e. we are living in the meaning and not in the hearing the sound of the word. We are always already (i.e. a priori) interpreting (Deuten) or apperceiving the physical. Similarly, we are always already interpreting the sensually given things around us. Sensations' function is to present to us something that is understood. They serve the intentionality, as the active directedness, of the experience. For Husserl these significations or noemas were more like given ideal ("logical") senses, he didn't examine their "worldhood" like Heidegger did. In fact, for Heidegger the a priori structure of the experience is "always-already-ahead" (note the temporality). Through this structure Dasein as a signifying comportment returns or comes back and encounters the being as something. The moment of returning in or from the "always-already-ahead" is "disclosing" (Erschlossenheit). (cf. Heidegger's 1925/26 lectures to which referred to in one of his posts). I think that Heidegger tries to here give an original sense of the "(transcendental) a priori"?
For Heidegger there is no perception of the corporeal things at all? Everything is "had" as significations in circumspection (Umsicht). Dasein is in relations i.e references and "sees" only these i.e. the as-articulations that make up or compose the world.
For Husserl the live experience of the perceived thing was the basic foundation. For example, a valued thing (cultural artifact) had always the basic layer of being perceived which founded the layer of being valued, willed etc.
Quoting Xtrix
The ‘is’ is a happening, and the ‘is’ is another word for being.
“ As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way. We intimated that we are always already involved in an understanding of being. From this grows the explicit question of the
meaning of being and the tendency toward its concept. We do not know what "being" means. But already when we ask, "What is being'?" we stand in an understanding of the "is" without being able to determine conceptually what the "is" means. We do not even know the horizon upon which we are supposed to grasp and pin down the meaning. This average and vague understanding of being is a fact.
No matter how much this understanding of being wavers and fades and borders on mere verbal knowledge, this indefiniteness of the understanding of being that is always already available is itself a positive phenomenon which needs elucidation. However, an investigation of the meaning of being will not wish to provide this at the outset. The interpretation of the average understanding of being attains its necessary guideline only with the developed concept of being. From the clarity of that concept and the appropriate manner of its explicit understanding we shall be able to discern what the obscure or not yet elucidated understanding of being means, what kinds of obfuscation or hindrance of an explicit elucidation of the meaning of being are possible and necessary. “
“ The question to be formulated is about the meaning of being.”“Hence what is to be ascertained, the meaning of being, will require its own conceptualization, which again is essentially distinct from the concepts in which beings receive their determination of meaning.”
“ If the question of being is to be explicitly formulated and brought to complete clarity concerning itself, then the elaboration of this question requires, in accord with what has been elucidated up to now, explication of the ways of regarding being and of understanding and conceptually grasping its meaning, preparation of the possibility of the right choice of the exemplary being, and elaboration of the genuine mode of access to this being.”
Quoting Xtrix
“...projection is an occurrence which, as raising us away and casting us ahead, takes apart as it were;-in that apartness of a raising away, yet as we saw, precisely in such a way that in this process there occurs an intrinsic turning toward on the part of whatever has been projected, such that that which has been projected is that which binds and binds together. Projection is that originarily simple occurrence which-in terms of formal logic-intrinsically unites contradictory things: binding together and separating. Yet-as the forming of the distinction between possible and actual in its making-possible, and as irruption into the distinction between being and beings, or more precisely as the irrupting of this 'between'-this projection is also that relating in which the 'as' springs forth.“
“Man is that inability to remain and is yet unable to leave his place. In projecting, the Da-sein in him constantly throws him into possibilities and thereby keeps him subjected to what is actual. Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition, transition as the fundamental essence of occurrence.”
“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general.”
Quoting Banno
An account of being doesn't depend on German either, it depends on the human being -- and Frege, Russell, and Quine were human beings.
I have done so multiple times. I'm happy to do so again -- I'll even give references. I'm also interested in criticism -- because maybe there's something I've missed. But when you or others come to this thread with conventional views about Heidegger, which in my view amounts to little more than a dismissive hand wave, and want to post nothing more than your feelings about his often unclear and difficult style, there's very little I can do with that.
-- Heidegger himself, emphasis mine
I wanted to add a comment on the Heidegger quotes I took from the introduction to Being and Time. He begins the book saying his aim is to answer the question of the meaning of being in general. But by the end of the book, he says he still hasn’t quite answered it.
Instead he leaves us with the following questions:
“The existential and ontological constitution of the totality of Da-sein is grounded in temporality. Accordingly, a primordial mode of temporalizing of ecstatic temporality itself must make the ecstatic project of being in general possible. How is this mode of temporalizing of temporality to be interpreted? Is there a way leading from primordial time to the meaning of being? Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?”
Personally , I don’t need to know the meaning of being in general, although I believe that it is closely linked with temporality, as his 1962 book, On Time and Being suggests.
In the 1972 work he writes “ Time, which is addressed as the meaning of Being in Being and Time, is itself not an answer, not a last prop for questioning, but rather itself the naming of a question. The name "time" is a preliminary word for what was later called "the truth of Being." “ Being and Time is on the way toward finding a concept of time, toward that which belongs most of all to time, in terms of which "Being" gives itself as presencing. This is accomplished on the path of the temporality of Dasein in the interpretation of Being as temporality.”
I am satisfied with knowing Dasein’s kind of being ( the ontological difference , the in-between , happening , occurrence , the ‘as’ structure , projection).
“ Something like "being" has been disclosed in the understanding of being that belongs to existing Da-sein as a way in which it understands.”
Quoting Xtrix
It is a claim about Dasein’s kind of being.
Quoting Xtrix
I can add to that :
If we were to be shown right now two pictures by Paul Klee, in the original, which he painted in the year of his death-the watercolor "Saints from a Window," and "Death and Fire," tempera on burlap -we should want to stand before them for a long while-and should abandon any claim that they be immediately intelligible.
If it were possible right now to have Georg Trakl's poem "Septet of Death'· recited to us, perhaps even by the poet himself, we should want to hear it often, and should abandon any claim that it be immediately intelligible.
If Werner Heisenberg right now were to present some of his thoughts in theoretical physics, moving in the direction of the cosmic formula for which he is searching, two or three people in the audience, at most, would be able to follow him, while the rest of us would, without protest, abandon any claim that he be immediately
intelligible.
Not so with the thinking that is called philosophy. That thinking is supposed to offer "worldly wisdom" and perhaps even be a "Way to the Blessed Life." But it might be that this kind of thinking is today placed in a position which demands of it reflection that are far removed from any useful, practical wisdom. It
might be that a kind of thinking has become necessary which must give thought to matters from which even the painting and the poetry which we have mentioned and the theory of math·ematical physics receive their determination. Here, too, we should then have to abandon any claim to immediate intelligibility. However, we should still have to· listen, because we must
think what is inevitable, but preliminary.”(Time and Being, Heidegger)
A weak point. Xtrix and I have differing readings of Heidegger , but they’re not that different. We both grasp in our different ways what makes Heidegger’s work an important advance over what came before it. Both of us were able read read and grasp Being and Time without too much difficulty , probably because we already had the background ideas. There are large communities of Heidegger scholars who , despite their disagreements , reach a general consensus over the most remarkable ideas in his work. Why dont you find one of these communities and enroll in a class so you can get the background and method for making your way through his work , as many others have done?
Btw, Dasein is the relation of a self to its world before we make a split between subject and object.
Dasein is temporality. Being "here" (da-sein) is being the present moment, but only if we don't define the present exclusively as a present-at-hand now-point (that is, thought abstractly) -- but instead as the experience from which all time tenses arise. That's my understanding. So dasein (its being) is temporality, and dasein is the being that cares about, questions, and interprets being.
I think the quote below justifies the views above.
B&T, p. 39 (18) Macquarrie/Robinson translation -- emphasis is Heidegger's.
Dasein is temporality. I can't be more concise than that. If that's a failure, then indeed his entire project is a failure. But explain to me where it fails.
It's saying something very similar to Kant, in my view. Where Heidegger thinks Kant failed was in (1) not asking about our being and (2) in still holding to a traditional view of time.
Mine too.
So Division Two should read ‘Da-sein and Da-sein’ rather than ‘Da-sein and Temporality’?
Other garbled language like this:
Quoting Xtrix
Why not just say Time isn’t something we can readily atomise? The ‘Now’ is merely a way of framing time appreciation just like a second is a measure of physical time a ‘moment’ is merely a human reference to unregulated and vague demarcation of felt time.
Now that’s what I call garbled. It’s garbled but I can still recognize the traditional notion of time dating back to Aristotle in it. This is what Heidegger calls the vulgar concept of time and Husserl calls constituted or objective time.
Heidegger, in a move similar to Husserl, traces the origin of the mathematical and of empirical science to the concept of enduring objective presence undergirding constituted time (what Heidegger calls the vulgar concept of time).
“What does it mean to be "in time"? This "being-in-time" is very familiar to us from the way it is represented in natural science. In natural science all processes of nature are calculated as processes which happen "in time." Everyday common sense also finds processes and things enduring "in time," persisting and disappearing "in time." When we talk about "being-in-time," everything depends on the interpretation of this "in." In order to see this more clearly, we ask simply if the glass on the table in front of me is in time or not. In any case, the glass is already present-at-hand and remains there even when I do not look at it. How long it has been there and how long it will remain are of no importance. If it is already present-at-hand and remains so in the future, then that means that it continues through a certain time and thus is "in" it. Any kind of continuation obviously has to do with time.”(Zollikon)
“Thus what can be shown to have the character of constantly remaining, as remanens capax mutationem, constitutes the true being of beings which can be experienced in the world. What enduringly remains truly is. This is the sort of thing that mathematics knows. What mathematics makes accessible in beings constitutes their being.
Heidegger explains that the fundamentally undiscussed ontological foundations of empirical science since Descartes are based on his formulation of objective presence.
“Thus the being of the "world" is, so to speak, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of being which is embedded in the concept of substantiality and in terms of an idea of knowledge which cognizes beings in this way. Descartes does not allow the kind of being of innerworldly beings to
present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its "true" being on the basis of an idea of being (being = constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the justification of which has not been demonstrated.
Thus it is not primarily his dependence upon a science, mathematics, which just happens to be especially esteemed, that determines his ontology of the world, rather his ontology is determined by a basic ontological orientation toward being as constant objective presence, which mathematical knowledge is exceptionally well suited to grasp.”(Being and Time)
Heidegger shows how the common notion of time dates back to Aristotle’s derivation of time from motion.
“The thoughts of motion, continuity, extension—and in the case of change of place, place—are interwoven with the experience of time.”(basic problems of phenomenology) “ So far as time is kineseos ti, something connected with motion, this means that in thinking time, motion or rest is always thought along with it. In Aristotelian language, time follows, is in succession to, motion.” “Because the now is transition it always measures a from-to, it measures a how-long, a
duration Time is making present according to Aristotle, (the present at hand) and in so doing is a counting
of time as now, now, now. “And thus time shows itself for the vulgar understanding as a succession of constantly "objectively present" nows that pass away and arrive at the same time. Time is understood as a sequence, as the "flux" of nows, as the "course of time.”(Being and
Time).
“The succession of nows is interpreted as something somehow objectively present; for it itself moves "in time." We say that in every now it is now, in every now it already disappears. The now is now in every now, thus constantly present as the same, even if in every now another may be disappearing as it arrives. Yet it does show at the same time the constant presence of
itself as this changing thing.”
Compare this to Husserl on time and objective presence:
Husserl, Heidegger and Gendlin have shown in different ways that a quantifiable, mathematizable nature presupposes the kind of time which consists of self-presences transitioning from future to present to past in sequential movement (existing ‘in’ time).
The consideration of the conditions in principle of the possibility of something identical that gives itself (harmoniously) in flowing and subjectively changing manners of appearance leads to the mathematization of the appearances as a necessity which is immanent in them.”
“A true object in the sense of logic is an object which is absolutely identical "with itself," that is, which is, absolutely identically, what it is; or, to express it in another way: an object is through its determinations, its quiddities [Weisheiten], its predicates, and it is identical if these quiddities are identical as belonging to it or when their belonging absolutely excludes their not belonging.”
“ “Every thingly being is temporally extended; it has its duration, and with its duration it is fit within Objective time in a strict manner.”
The time of constituting subjectivity corresponds to a more primordial time that consists not of self-identical objects which endure for a ‘period of time’ but a flow of qualitative change that forms no process of continuous succession. Without the concept of continuous succession to ground them, notions like ‘faster’ and ‘slower’ lose their sense. It is never precisely the same noematic object that is filling out the temporal duration from moment to moment. The meant sense is that of an enduringly identical tone because of the noetic idealizing unification of the varying sensations that it encompasses.
For Husserl, primary sense data represents a more fundamental form of temporality than adumbrated ‘real’ spatial objects . Notions of nowness as a countable duration occurring IN time, occupying a moment of time, correspond to Husserl’s apperceived time of real spatial
objects, but underlying this level of constitution is a more primordial temporality.
The problem I see is that he deep dives into language whilst losing sight of the phenomenological act - hence Hermeneutical Phenomenology.
I still recommend Heidegger to people who seem to be more attuned to his lingo.
I believe the separation between what you call "the vulgar conception of time", and the modern conception of time, is initiated by Hegel. He's the one who firmly rejected Aristotelian principles, offering an alternative starting point.
Aristotle maintained a categorical separation between being and becoming, commonly presented to modern philosophers as the ontologies of Parmenides and Heraclitus. He demonstrated a fundamental incompatibility between the two, which was elucidated by Plato. This was represented as the incompatibility between 'points' of being, and a 'continuous' line of becoming. The incompatibility was manifested as Zen's paradoxes.
Hegel dissolves the separation by allowing that 'being', along with 'not-being', might be subsumed within the category of becoming. And modern mathematics allows an infinity of points within a continuity. This also provides the foundation for Heidegger and phenomenologists to portray 'being', and consequently 'beings', as forms of becoming. For Aristotle, becoming is neither being nor not- being (apparent violation of the law of excluded middle). For Hegel, becoming is both being and not-being (apparent violation of the law of non-contradiction)
In one sense, Banno represents this correctly Quoting Banno To know what "being" is is to know what is referred to with "being". But when the uses of "being" are distinctly divergent, then no amount of endless analysis of use will determine what "being" is. The word refers to distinct things (or conceptions). Then we must turn to something other than use (which only leads us into confusion), to determine what being is. And in this sense Banno is clearly incorrect Quoting Banno
The problem with Banno's perspective is that it has become evident that any attempt to understand the nature of becoming, will lead one into the realm of the unknown, and the unintelligible, as what violates the fundamentals of logic, and consequently the principles of what can be said. However, this does not lead to the conclusion, as some believe, that these things cannot be talked about, it leads to the conclusion that the principles of what can be said are wrong, and need to be altered.
Since the human understanding of time is infantile, the principles we hold as to what can be said, in relation to time, are very crude and immature.
Fixed i.e. reliable definitions are needed as parts when constructing reliable or persisting machines. Heidegger's discourse is not a machine. :wink:
What is the difference between how I relate to a real apple, how I comport myself toward it, and how I relate to an imaginary apple?
I can, for instance, juggle three apples a little, but not for long and no more than three. Imaginary apples? I can juggle as many of those as I like for as long as I like.
Your way of approaching the question treats the being of the apple as a category, analogous to ‘green’ or ‘sweet’, and you quickly find there’s nothing much to say about ‘being’ as a category. But that’s not to say there’s no criterion of being here, because the criteria are implicit in our behavior.
That’s fine, but it’s not that we can’t atomize it— we can and do. It’s that we don’t want to mistake this for “lived” or “felt” time.
I'd rather say the point is that time is the measure of change, not the other way around.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
One doesnt have to accept Heidegger’s reading , but his analysis of Hegel’s model of time concludes that:
“Hegel's concept of time presents the most radical way in which the vulgar understanding of time has been given form conceptually…”
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Husserl and Heidegger derive mathematical continuity from the idea of enduring objective presence, on which the vulgar concept of time is based. They deconstruct the idea of objective presence and determine that authentic time can’t be likened to a mathematical continuity.
I'm good with that, but I'm not sure it provides a 'way in' for someone starting from a 'categorical' understanding. If you think categorically, then you can still say, a real apple is an apple and an imaginary apple isn't; a real apple can be sweet or tart, crisp or mushy, but an imaginary apple can't be. And then you're just puzzled, because imagination is puzzling, and now you're thinking about that instead of being. The whole approach of taking a 'complete' description of an object, as a collection of properties, and just adding or subtracting instantiation, checking the 'exists' box or not -- it's not that that doesn't lead anywhere, but it leads you in the wrong direction.
You can instead, in a vaguely Wittgensteinian way, see that juggling apples and pretending to juggle apples are different language-games. It's not a difference that can be summed up by saying that the apples being juggled go in the 'exists' box or not. (Juggling invisible apples might look exactly the same as pretending to juggle apples, but it would be a lot harder. That's an example of 'subtracting a property'.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Here’s a phenomenological way of putting it:
“ “Equipment is “in order to.” This proposition has an ontological and not merely an ontical meaning; a being is not what and how it is, for example, a hammer, and then in addition something “with which to hammer.” Rather, what and how it is as this entity, its whatness and howness, is constituted by this in-order-to as such, by its functionality. A being of the nature of equipment is thus encountered as the being that it is in itself if and when we understand beforehand the following: functionality, functionality relations, functionality totality. In dealing with equipment we can use it as equipment only if we have already beforehand projected this entity upon functionality relation.”(Heidegger, Basic Problems of phenomenology 1927)
But wasn't the point of existentialism that the categorial understanding follows the apple's existence?
An apple is stating itself as an apple - all we can ever say about it would be a reflective category, that is, a negation. The apple asserts it's own existence which is why a language game can never create apples but can distinguish if a given thing is an apple or some other fruit.
We can refecively think about apples but not the apple itself.
I take this to mean that the hammer was manufactured with a certain, known intention and therefor it's being is in-itself when we understand that intention. But note that this happened in an act of human work and is different to a mere revelation of being in that the hammer was invented by reflecting over use, need and purpose.
One doesn’t have to know why it was manufactured or for what purpose. Heidegger’s larger point is that , not only when we use something as a tool , but when we simply see something like an apple , our seeing of it occurs in the context of an ongoing relevance and significance it has for us in relation to our goal-oriented activities. He is saying that the identification of the apple as what it is is derivative of a more primary role that the apple plays for us in relation to our ongoing concerns , and this is the fundamental meaning of the apple for us.
“ The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act. The non-explicitness of this “as” is precisely what constitutes the act's so-called directness. Yes, the thing that is understood can be apprehended directly as it is in itself. But this directness regarding the thing apprehended does not inhibit the act from having a developed structure. Moreover, what is structural and necessary in the act of [direct] understanding need not be found, or co-apprehended, or expressly named in the thing understood. I repeat: The [primary] as-structure does not belong to something thematically understood.
It certainly can be understood, but not directly in the process of focally understanding a table, a chair, or the like. Acts of directly taking something, having something, dealing with it “as something,” are so original that trying to understand anything without employing the “as” requires (if it's possible at all) a peculiar inversion of the natural order. Understanding something without the “as”—in a pure sensation, for example—can be carried out only “reductively,” by “pulling back” from an as-structured experience. And we must say: far from being primordial, we have to designate it as an artificially worked-up act. Most important, such an experience is per se possible only as the privation of an as-structured experience. It occurs only within an as-structured experience and by prescinding from the “as”— which is the same as admitting that as-structured experience is primary, since it is what one must first of all prescind from.” (Logic,The Question of Truth,p.122)
Emphasis mine - sorry for bad copy&paste.
In German, the formulation is somewhat stronger
Equipment, taken strictly, never "is".
I take this passage to mean that Heidegger really does make such a distinction. A speculative reason is given above.
Yes, he makes the distinction between the ready to hand and the present to hand ( objectively present ). But he derives the present to hand from the ready to hand as an extreme modification of it. His discussion of the statement and subject-predicate logic shows how a thing which just ‘is’ is derived from the hermeneutic structure of concernful dealings, rather than use and value being attributes just added onto an objectively present thing.
“The kind of being of these beings is "handiness" (Zuhandenheit). But it must not be understood as a mere characteristic of interpretation,* as if such "aspects" were discursively forced upon "beings" which we initially encounter, as if an initially objectively present world-stuff were "subjectively colored" in this way. Such an interpretation overlooks the fact that in that case beings would have to be understood beforehand and discovered as purely objectively present, and would thus have priority and take the lead in the order of discovering and appropriating association with the "world." But this already goes against the ontological
meaning of the cognition which we showed to be a founded mode of being-in-the-world. To expose what is merely objectively present, cognition must first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of. Handiness is the ontological categorial definition of beings as they are "in themselves. "
The OP is about the question, "What is being?"
When we say, in our modern world, that everything consists of forces acting on matter, as in the field of physics, then this is one possible answer. It determines what things are, and implies an interpretation of being -- in this case, ultimately a naturalistic/materialist ontological view (being = material, substance, the empirical, etc).
By asking the question I'm not necessarily looking for a definition, any more than I'd ask "What is God?" Many different definitions and interpretations of that word as well, represented by many sects of Christianity.
Rather, we're asking "Whereon is every answer to the question about beings based?" This is similar to the Kantian move, because the answer is basically the same: human beings. But Kant's conception of being, human being, and time, are still all within a Cartesian and Aristotelian framework -- one with a particular view about "truth," a deep concern for epistemology, and a modification of dualism of the world as "subject and object," where objects become representations for the subject.
Where Heidegger is interesting here is in the same way as Nietzsche is interesting when discussing values and morality. He's going beyond the tradition, questioning things that have been either forbidden to question, taken as self-evident, or totally forgotten altogether (as "God" was at one point).
So I'm not looking for a definition, really -- I'm looking into how we've interpreted being (and most importantly ourselves) in the ways in which we have, and why. Can we ask this question without already imposing an ontological interpretation? Can we look at things anew? That's the purpose.
For a hammer this might be true. There is not too much to doubt about the meaning, purpose or function of a hammer, because it is just a human-invented tool. The world, the sky and the stars, on the other hand, have a mode of being which is not grounded in a process of reflected reasoning. Their existence is, in a stronger sense, revealed rather than "planned".
Not for Heidegger. He has a very particular understanding of ‘world’ that is neither planned nor just ‘revealed’ , and not a product of reflective reasoning. World for Heidegger is projected out from a pragmatic background
And the stars?
I am sorry. The point, again, is that the being of mere tools made for a purpose, is not what seems worth a lengthy discussion. A hammer is a tool to put nails into walls.
A couple of points in reply.
Philosophy is about clarifying concepts rather than making up a neat story. The examination of existence in the tradition of Frege, Russell, and so on, the one that lead to modern formal logic, is a strong contender for providing at least part of such an account.
An imaginary apple might not be an apple, but it is an imaginary apple. It enters into our conversations as an imaginary apple, and we can at least try to put parts of this conversation into a first-order predicate format, extending and developing the conversation as we go, with the usual problems of the intensional context. So we might discuss whether the imaginary apple was imagined to be red, or green, and play with the applicability of predication in the context.
Further, as Austin pointed out, being imagined might better be contrasted with being real than with existing. An imaginary apple is not a real apple, but it is, as already noted, an imaginary apple, and hence we do make use of the already contentious "is". The question is "What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that exists?", and not "What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that is imagined?".
And this is a large part of the clarification that is needed. "Exists" is surrounded by a host of related, but slightly distinct terms - real, actual, substantial, physical, corporeal, true - all with different nuance. In addition each can be contrasted with their negations. being real can mean not being imagined, not being a fake or forgery, not being genuine; what being real is depends very much on the context. A look at the more naive posts here will reveal plays on such ambiguity.
The question "What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that exists?" is not answered by an imagined apple, but by an apple that is not even imagined. The question seeks to show that an apple that does not exist cannot enter into the conversation, at least in any ordinary way - it might enter in the way the little man does in Antigonish.
And frankly it seems to me that much of the discussion here is an extended version of Antigonish. I suspect Wittgenstein might agree. The discussion of time is particularly pertinent here, perhaps taking the place of the stairs.
You said my way of approaching the question treats the being of the apple as a category, analogous to ‘green’ or ‘sweet’, and you quickly find there’s nothing much to say about ‘being’ as a category. That's quite unfair. What I am doing is pointing out the problems with an account the treats existence as a category. I have been quite explicit in saying that existenceis not a predicate, preferring this more accurate term over the archaic one. So your characterisation is exactly wrong.
Isn’t that what stories do?
Not always.
How so?
But not by by saying something like "There is something that is an apple and is imaginary", surely.
"Category" being roughly the same as "predicate".
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
One would presumably take care to remain inside the intensional scope, sure; and then face the difficulties of that context. But not something I am interested in pursuing.
As you like. What problems were you pointing out with the predicate "__ is an apple"?
How so?
Says who? Pretty strange to reduce philosophy to this. Try thinking outside the analytic tradition.
Me.
I'm sorry, that should have said "good philosophy is about clarifying concepts".
Carry on.
What a pity.
Well, that’s the thing. Whatever Being is, it’s not a Fregean concept, so philosophy done this way can — by choice, mind you — have nothing at all to say about Being.
I suppose in mischaracterizing your position as taking the being-as-category approach, what I was really trying to get at is this: if the analytic approach — Frege, Russell, Quine — yields nothing, are we just done? Is there nothing to do unless it’s done this way?
If this is true , then one can be justified in saying no more than this about the accomplishments of science. Newtonian physics did no more than clarify Aristotelian physics, Relativity and quantum theory did no more than clarify Newtonian physics, Darwinian biology did no more than clarify fixed-species doctrines, Chomskian linguistics did no more than clarify behavioral models of language acquisition.
The OP asks the question "why is there something?" - does it provide an answer?
@Xtrix? Does your dialogue answer this?
What of the title question - "What is being"? For my money an account of how we use the word "being" goes a long way to answering this.
Some folk like answers, right or wrong. Other folk are comfortable saying that they don't know.
If you like. Newton's laws set up the notions of force and momentum with sufficient clarity that whole Fields of enquiry followed.
More commonly it is understood that a degree of clarity is eventually reached that allows a science to bud off from philosophy.
No, in my view philosophy is a kind of thinking, which is a human activity. It does indeed consist of questions, but they are not limited to "clarifying" words -- a belief which is an outgrowth of science and mathematics. Because they've been successful in many ways, this has come to dominate what constitutes "philosophy." You see it as an improvement, but it's simply another ontology. A powerful one, no doubt -- but restricts "philosophy" to the narrow questions of logic and language. But the philosophy of language isn't philosophy. I think we need to grow out of that and return, as you mentioned, to the Greeks. You see Socrates as being interested mostly in "clarification," I see him as simply one who was willing to question.
The question of questions, of course, is the one in this thread.
I'm comfortable saying I don't know, which is why I give no answers. Looking at the word "being" itself -- its grammar and etymology -- is fine, but doesn't tell us everything. An understanding of history, of culture, of values, of the religious and political context of the Greeks, etc., are all necessary as well to round out a picture.
Whatever "this" is that's happening and which we're all a part of, is worth questioning indeed -- and the interesting part, in my view, is that we're all already living the answer.
Right, and that's mostly mathematics. Physics being the best example. In other sciences, there are explanatory theories and technical notions defined within this context. All well and good. But philosophy is not the philosophy of mathematics, or the philosophy of science, or the philosophy of language. It's just a mistake to believe it is.
You suggest that clarification is an outgrowth of science. Rather, science is an outgrowth of clarification. It was the clear understanding of momentum and force that permitted the development of physics, the clear understanding of atoms that led to chemistry, the clear understanding of speciation and evolution that led to biology. Clarification is not an ontology.
And analytic philosophy is not the same as philosophy of language.
Nor is there any restriction in looking at language. On the one hand, what is there that is outside of language? On the other, understanding language will show us what is outside of language.
"Being" is not central to philosophical concerns. If you doubt this, take a look through your favourite dictionary or encyclopaedia of philosophy. "Being" is a topic pretty much restricted to one branch of European philosophy from last century.
Contrast this with "existence". Go on, do a search.
I agree science is an outgrowth of philosophy, but if philosophy is clarification to begin with, then should we conclude that everything is a science? What "degree" do we reach which determines something as a science? Which is to say, what do we mean by "clarification"? When is a question or word clarified, and how do we decide?
Quoting Banno
If by "clear understanding" you mean mathematically formulated, sure. Quoting Banno
Chemistry existed far before atomic theory.
Quoting Banno
Biology has existed long before Darwin's theory as well, as you know.
Did Chomsky's "clear understanding of UG" lead to linguistics?
Quoting Banno
What do you mean by this emphasis, that clarification is ontology itself?
Quoting Banno
I never said it was.
Quoting Banno
Well first we have to ask: what is language? Is language everything? No, I wouldn't say that. I'd say it's something worth studying, and an important part of what it means to be human. But I would say yes, there are things outside of language: experience, thought, desire...but also being (the very fact that we "are"). Language is a kind of being.
I would say that's restricted, yes. Unless we define language as being itself, which would be rather odd.
Quoting Banno
True, the question has largely been forgotten. But it constitutes the object of philosophy. Whenever we think, we think in terms of beings. To ask "what is being?" is, in the end, the question of philosophy. It busies itself with many other subjects, no doubt.
It'd be helpful perhaps to talk more about consciousness, thought, and language to flush out what I mean. Invoking Descartes and Kant is helpful, I think, as this underlies most of the last few hundred years, including the linguistic turn.
This leads right into the analytic tradition. Frege, Moore, Russell, Quine, Kripke, Chomsky, etc. I'm not putting this down, really -- it's still very much a part of a long and powerful tradition. But we should recognize its historical development.
"What is being" is one question among several of philosophical concern. Add "what is knowledge?", "What is beauty?", "What am I?"... and a few others. Each has at one time or another been claimed to be the prime, defining question in philosophy. My favourite amongst these is "What ought I do?".
But I think this an impoverished way to discuss philosophy. Better to look at what philosophers do. Few philosophers restrict themselves to one of these questions, after all.
I haven't read Grice, is his work worth exploring? Off the top of the head the general difference I see between signs and symbols is that signs are pre-linguistic (mostly?) and non-arbitrary, while symbols are linguistic, or at least dependent on language, and arbitrary.
It seems that beingness should be though of as a noun. I can't remember if Heidegger uses that term or simply 'being'. The being (verb?) of a being (noun?) would seem to be its existing. ( Interestingly 'existence' is, like 'beingness', a noun while 'existing' is a verb). The logic seems to be that just as being is not a being, that it doesn't exist in other words, so it is with existence, which does not exist either.
The thing is language is pretty loose and sloppy. So while we seemingly cannot be precise about these kinds of things, we can kind of think around them intuitively feeling the logic of how we use terms.
Not sure what you mean, but I'm intrigued...
Those other questions have, at their heart, the question as to what kind of thing (being) they are. The "is" in the questions guarantees that.
I think metaphysics/ontology has always been seen as the most general and the most basic. There are many important questions worth asking— but when we do so we’re asking about beings. I can’t see how it could be otherwise. Even in the questions you posed, there’s the “is”.
But the question of being is the first in rank — as the broadest, deepest, and most originary. Here I agree with Heidegger. That’s not to say it is the only question, or that it’s the first one we ask in philosophy or in life.
Quoting Banno
Sure— nor should anyone. But yet there’s an understanding of being in every inquiry, whether explicitly stated or not. If we inquire about nature, about language, about life, or about stamps, we’re inquiring about beings. Perhaps we say they’re objects of thought or physical objects— doesn’t matter.
I am assuming you are thinking with 'language' here? Can you think without 'language'? As in this worded stuff I'm using here? If your answer is no you probably won't be able to understand that the answer isn't no for everyone.
I don’t think so. Remember that nouns and verbs, as the two main groups of words, has a history as well. It dates back to the Greeks, in fact. But the Greeks, when analyzing Greek language, were still doing so from a certain understanding of being — being as phusis. What later became noun and verb was initially a unity.
When you say meaning being prior to the word, I think of perception. There are so kinds of beings around us — pre-linguistic humans (babies) and non-human primates can sense and perceive just as human adults. Most of us are still pre-linguistic in out activity, in fact. Our habits and various skills are testament enough that we don’t even have to be fully conscious, let alone “thinking” in the sense of words and concepts, most of the time.
These are open questions, but my opinion is that we can indeed think without language. You can visualize a scene without a verbal commentary, for example. Or rotate an imaginary object in your head— which doesn’t involve words but which nevertheless happens internally.
There’s also the issue of awareness. When I’m imagining something or talking to myself, projecting into the future or remembering an experience from my past, I consider it thought. Yet who’s noticing that— and how? What is it that recognizes thought as thought?
It seems the answer is Awareness, or perhaps our consciousness. (I use the terms interchangeably.) Awareness, then, seems “bigger” than thought — in the sense that we can “hold” thought in awareness.
I assume your answer is 'being'. This is just a trick of language (that is Heidegger's concern not Husserl's).
Even so, if this is your view then what exactly do you mean by 'being'? Many people state 'being' as if they know what it is because it is a common colloquial term of reference. In hermeneutical sense there is an investigation, but in terms of consciousness it is an overlay.
When, in whatever language used, the term 'being' is uttered they is an automatic assumption that meaning is possessed in the term, and that the term is directed towards something (Intentionality). The 'being' is not Intentional, the 'being' is an example of Intentionality.
I'm with Banno in regards to words. If Heidegger cannot make clear what 'dasein' means then the reader should have serious concerns about everything that follows.
Note: I'm fairly charitable when it comes to using terms loosely and for multiple purposes, but when such a term is used so often and ubiquitously the author should take better care. It is also clear that Heidegger wasn't exactly shy of stating he obvious with verbosity yet he shied away from doing the same for 'dasein'. Alarm bells should ring there for anyone looking critically at his work.
Meh. Only because I followed your posts, which made use of it.
Earlier I returned the discussion to the OP: The OP asks the question "why is there something?"
Does the theory of being you are presenting answer this question?
Asking for a friend.
@Joshs?
How can this be contended? '-ness' forms a noun from an adjective, expressing a state or condition.
It's this very move that is contended: treating existence as a state. As if there were things that do not exist, waiting to change their condition into one of existence. That is, treating existence as a first order predicate.
This is where I find Kant to be very useful in how he frames Noumenon. When we speak of Noumenon we are necessarily talking about phenomenon, yet the idea of Noumenon - which is not anything - is 'existing' only as a negation NOT as an item of experience or potential experience. Phenomenon, and any other term, creates a mental space into which humans tend to shoehorn some antithesis.
Edit: Thinking on that, it seems a rookie mistake for Heidegger to have made. I guess his attention was elsewhere.
I'm not wanting to present such an argument, but simply to point out that such arguments as this, and yours for "being" being at hte centre of philosophy, have a common, and erroneous, structure, in that they place one thing at the centre of philosophical discourse before the discourse begins.
Better to look at what philosophy is in terms of it's method - critical analysis that seeks clarification - than in terms of this or that content.
Except 'being' is not an adjective, but a verb. 'kind', 'calm', 'cold', 'fierce'. 'wild' are all adjectives. What about 'wilder'?
Perhaps 'beinghood' would have been clearer. Think of parent and neighbour, both nouns to which hood may be added to indicate a state or condition. Interestingly, 'parent' may be a verb too (not sure about 'neighbour').
I wonder if I've I've clarified anything. Although I agree with @Xtrix that looking at language use, and critical analysis in general are not enough to constitute the whole of philosophy, I also don't think they can hurt. Clarity is not always the aim; sometimes we can expand our more or less fuzzy 'feels' or intuitions, which themselves can constitute kinds of understanding; understandings which may be expressed more aptly in metaphor than in proposition.
Indeed.
Can't see that this helps, if the point is to defend a misuse of language. What would be needed is a new language game in which the use is clear... which I suppose @Xtrix and co. say they have.
But when the entire work of Heidegger hinges on the term then it is a problem. That was my point and has remained my point about Being and Time.
No one can really point out where Heidegger articulates what he means with any real precision. the fact that he goes to such ends to explain some more obvious points tells me he merely covered up his ignorance with the pretense of some deeper understanding. He is a hack, but not a useless hack ;)
Except that’s exactly what Heidegger did not do. He comes to phenomenological ontology as his rethinking of Husserl’s phenomenology, and the argument he makes in the beginning of Being and Time is that this is the only methodology which can support a properly scientific philosophy.
Quoting Banno
Which is exactly what Heidegger did, but without the parenthetical claim that we already know the right method for doing philosophy.
Not for nothing, but Timothy Williamson, in his role as defender of the project of philosophy as a theoretical science, has relentlessly attacked your claim that philosophy is just conceptual clarification.
It’s not like it’s an accident that Being and Time birthed existentialism.
One more note on philosophy as clarification.
So Heidegger’s your guy on both counts.
Hurrah. Russell and Quine. What the thread needs, I do agree.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
:100:
Quoting Banno
Like this, though?
Quoting Banno
Pretending to talk about? Agreeing to pretend there is something that is named Mordor? Agreeing to pretend that "Frodo" does indeed refer? It doesn't seem that you care at all to remain inside the scope of such clarifications.
Quoting Banno
Reassurance welcome, of course.
No, I would say awareness— wouldn’t you?
Quoting I like sushi
This is the question of the OP. But I don’t give any definition or interpretation myself. Again, it would be a little like asking “What is God?” I could add to a long list of interpretations, but I’d rather delve into the question itself, who’s asking it, and its history / development.
Quoting I like sushi
I agree. He should be clear about it. This is why he dedicates 100s of pages to expand upon it. In the end, dasein (literally “being there”) is interpreted as temporality.
Quoting I like sushi
Well what are you getting at here? Are you of the opinion that Heidegger is a charlatan, or simply misguided? Perhaps you agree with what Russell said was “language running amok” (paraphrasing) or when Chomsky says its “empty verbiage.”
I respect these men and I sympathize with this view, yet I also feel I’ve learned a great deal from Heidegger — so the onus is on me to explain what’s so interesting. Apparently I’ve failed to do so up to this point. But I can only keep trying, against the charge of charlatanism and obscurantism.
Quoting Banno
This will sound evasive, but no. Nor would I say I'm presenting a theory of being, since I've not defined what being is. Perhaps it's best to look at a positive claim, one made by Heidegger and one which I agree: the traditional interpretation of beings, starting with the Greeks (especially Plato and Aristotle) and stretching throughout the history of the West, is the that of constant presence. If we agree on this, we can proceed with the more general question.
Quoting Banno
@Janus
If I may preface this by something relevant here:
This is important to keep in mind.
Lastly:
(All from Intro to Metaphysics, "The Grammar and Etymology of Being.")
So appealing to grammar doesn't help much. We can categorize the word itself, but that's not really the point. If being isn't a "thing," then it's not a noun. "Is" isn't a noun either.
But remember, the question isn't "What kind of word is 'being'"? The question is what is "it"? What is the meaning of being?
Well then here we agree. Being (or existence, whatever we like) isn't a "state." It's not as if being emerges from a void of nothingness and "comes into being." That's certainly not the claim I want to be making.
Quoting Banno
Heidegger is well aware of Kant -- in fact he had several lectures on him.
B&T p. 94
He goes on, of course, but I won't bother quoting the entirety of it. Needless to say he's certainly aware of the mistake you claim he's making.
(p. 205)
I think many on this forum are largely operating within this purview as well -- which is to say, one oriented towards subjects representing objects, and a picture of the human being as an evolved animal with reason, or a mind. Zoon echon logon holds true to this day.
Quoting Banno
But here I think you fail to notice that these questions of ethics and morality, which I'd agree are ultimately what we're after, are rooted in our beliefs, values, and attitudes towards the world. They're rooted largely on the question "What am I?" "What is a human being?" etc. Aristotle is a well known example, of course. Politics and governance are grounded on answers to these questions, even if held tacitly as unquestioned presuppositions. If it is assumed that we're created by God, for example, the answer to "What should I do with my life?" is answered in a very definite light indeed.
So most niche intellectual pursuits I would agree are ways of avoiding the "real" questions of action, of living in the real world, etc., and questions about being could be added to this list. But from my view, I keep the question you raised in the background at all times -- and this is in fact what motivates me to even care about the question at all. On the surface it seems the most hifalutin, abstract bullshit you could imagine.
Quoting Banno
Critical analysis presupposes thought and awareness and, in fact, human being, does it not? When we analyze, question, interrogate, investigate, dissect, clarify, etc., we're engaging in a very human activity. We can call it "philosophy" or "thinking" or anything we like, but my claim is about the question of being as first in rank -- as the broadest of questions and deepest. I don't think this should be controversial, really. If you ask about being, you're asking about everything. Hard to get broader than that. It may not be the "central" concern, or the most interesting, or the most relevant to our lives, or the most studied, or the most popular, etc.
I would say the "method" of philosophy is really phenomenology, by the way. But replacing this word with "critical analysis" doesn't matter that much to me. The point above stands either way, as both assume the human being.
[Reply="TheMadFool;619286"]
I think the invisible dragon can be said to exist in a number of cases, even if we assume it has zero possible interaction with our world.
A. If exists in its own parallel world, and there it interacts with shadow physical objects, and could be observed by shadow people there.
B. It has one way interaction with our world. We cannot ever see the dragon, but it can see us.
However, if you turn the dragon into a non-observer, a sort of fundemental particle that interacts with nothing, not even other particles of its own type, what can be said of its potential existence then?
The way I see it, the problem for some contemporary forms of materialism, for example eliminative materialism, is that they base their claims to knowledge in empiricism, and correspondence definitions of truth. However, the limits of empirical verification are necissarily the limits of observation, and so the role on an observer becomes inextricably tied up in definitions of existence.
Leaving aside tautologies, Kant's analytic knowledge, Hume's relations of ideas, etc. (these are quite limited and I'm of the opinion that Quine dealt them a serious blow) - to verify a factual statement e.g. "Socrates is standing," requires an observation to assess if the factual statement corresponds to reality. Saying it is true something exists, requires an observer. But obviously this is different from saying existence requires an observer. Pluto existed before anyone observed it, but there was always the ability for it to be observed.
So, the limits of what can be, appear to become the limits of observation. Otherwise, if you posit that things can exist that cannot be observed (i.e. they cannot interact with anything observable), it seems like existence as a whole becomes non-sensical as a term. Things that exist can be indistinguishable from things that don't exist. Existence is reduced to a brute fact, but a brute fact that relates to nothing and can't be verified
On the other hand, if you allow that the potential for observation is an essential component of defining existence, doesn't the existence of an observer become an essential element of what it means for something to exist?
Generally materialist models get around this by positing a sort of hypothetical God's eye view through which the world can be viewed, detached from the messiness of finite observers. Limitless observation means that the limit of observability doesn't need to define what it means to exist. The problem here, is that you now have God in your definition. However, these systems generally want to define existence outside the role of an observer, and they definitely don't want to have to resort to God, even as a hypothetical, to define reality.
I don't see how you get around this, aside from moving towards a sort of pragmatist definition of truth, which feels more like a punt.
Then let's have the discussion. Give me a paper to read.
Then their's folks who quote their sacred texts and then say "See!"
One thing I really like is Heidegger's hermeneutic approach: you start from the asking of whatever question, and you don't skip right over how the question is asked, and why, and by whom, and what they think they're up to, but start there, with that vague understanding. And it's fascinating to see how he treats this not just as methodology but as part of the essential structure of the world: we ask vague questions about things we kinda already understand because some of what we understand or could understand is hidden, and that's part of what we investigate too.
Wittgenstein never quite seems to manage that unifying of method and subject matter, so to speak. The explanation of why, say, we're misled by language never really comes, and is never really brought into focus. Here we're misled or tempted or whatever, he'll say, and that's it. But his talk of reminding us of what we already understand could obviously support the hermeneutic approach.
Frodo walked into Mordor. "Frodo walked into Mordor" is true.
But Expecting to find the flag of Mordor outside the UN - that'd be an error of scope.
He does t say beingness or existence are predicates. Or subjects. They mark the original relation between self and world before we idealize this binary into a for-itself
subject encountering an in-itself object.
No, it's A good answer. I'd have been disappointed in anything else. @Srap Tasmaner was looking for something more in the analytic tradition, I'm happy to point out that neither tradition has an answer for him - and that's as it should be.
Quoting Xtrix
So now we have three ways of talking about existence: this; subject of a predicate; and and something like member of the domain of discourse.
My previously expressed qualm about "presence" is that it apparently preferences time over space - my prejudices, from my previous life as a student of physics, lead me to think that as far as possible we ought treat them in much the same way. So the being of this armchair extends back to when to was constructed, and forward to when it is destroyed. But also sideways to the bookcase and downwards to the floor.
Is there a preference for temporality, or is that a misunderstanding on my part? And if so, why?
My next criticism would be that presence reduces to being a member of a domain of discourse. That woudl need some filling out, but basically it is saying that the things we talk about ar in a sense given - a familiar notion for you, I suppose. But if I am right, nothing is added to the analysis of being by including presence.
Sorry, I thought both passages were clear enough.
The word that jumped out at me in the first passage was "decision". I remember reading this sort of thing as a young man and deciding immediately, as young men do, that I was an existentialist. This sense that your very existence is something you have to decide what to do with, and to understand what it means to have the kind of existence that needs to make those kinds of decisions -- that was thrilling stuff. A whole generation read Heidegger as helping them frame exactly the question "How should I live?" and take some steps towards answering it. The translation I'm quoting is by an existentialist theologian.
I'm not sure there's much to say about the second bit. As I just noted above, you can see the hermeneutic approach here: why our understanding is muddled is also interesting and part of what needs explaining.
Does that help at all?
Another example of the sort of reply I criticised above. Quoting the sacred texts without interpretation is as good as useless to we heathens.
What proof (my bolding)?
Spoken with a certain amount of frustration.
?
I don't have a text on front of me, but from context I thought he was talking about 'proof of the external world', that sort of thing.
And his response is almost exactly Wittgenstein's.
...and the rest is special pleading.
The point was not to present an alternative but to critique the very idea of a core subject for philosophy.
I've in mnd my own sacred texts, in which it is shown that what counts as a simple ,as the core of a given language game, depends on that language game; and add that Philosophy is more than one game. Hence, what counts as a core depends on what one is doing.
Is that a lost "not"?
Yes, thank you for finding it. Hard to type and hike at the same time.
My generation read Sartre to the same a ends. I have admitted some sympathy for that view.
I don’t see a contradiction here with either Wittgenstein or Heidegger. They are both talking about ‘doingness’ and ‘use’ in general, as you are.
Here:Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Apparently yielding nothing is something @Xtrix and I have in common.
A quick point and my lunch break is done.
The best scientific theory tells you not just that earth in fact goes around the sun, but why it looks like the sun goes around the earth. That one might be straightforward, but not every case is.
Sure, they are both talking about use. But @Xtrix seems to want to give a primacy to certain aspects that I find unacceptable - and my reply was directed at his account, not yours, which has a closer feel to WIti.
I now have three interrogators - you, Xtrix, and Srap; there's a need to keep the threads of each conversation clear. You and Xtrix are not in complete agreement. A critique of what he says is not a critique of what you say.
Cheers.
I think of neuro-cognitive models of the development of concepts of spatial relations which reveal perceived space as a product of a progressive process of coordinated activities between my body and objects in my environment. These activities are sensory-motor processes taking place over time , out of which we form the idealized abstractions of geometric space.
We are reminded of the temporal , embodied and subjective basis of space in studying the effects of brains injuries and pathologies like Schizophrenia, where fundamental aspects of spatial
concepts fragment.
Yeah, we work out what space is by moving around in it.
But is there a preference for temporality, or is that a misunderstanding on my part? And if so, why?
Quoting Banno
I’m not sure how to answer this. If we equate space with ‘use’ as contextual performance and interaction we can clearly see the fundamentally temporal nature of a language game , given that it rests on change, that a move ina game is itself a transformation.
Quoting Banno
Whether you want to view the origin of spatial localization , and space itself , in empirical or ideal terms, it is determinable as having an essence independent of time. But is this still the case if we construe the spatial relation between myself , the bookcase and the floor ( ‘sideways’ and ‘downwards’) as contextually useful and contingent doings? What then is left of what would be required to retain a concept of space as anything outside of contingent sense? Perhaps we could talk instead about space as space or horizon of possibilities.
Exactly, and with the emphasis on "hidden." I think the aim of phenomenology, in Heidegger's hands, is aimed precisely at that: what's hidden, what's concealed. There's much in life that we take for granted, after all.
Quoting Banno
But remember Heidegger is not doing mathematical logic, and so far as I know doesn't use "being-ness" - at least not in B/T or Intro to Metaphysics. I've invoked that term here, as I have "is-ness," but only in an attempt to understand. Heidegger isn't treating being as a predicate.
Quoting Banno
Well there are many more ways I'm sure, but the thesis is that underlying these various Western interpretations is a fundamentally Greek one: constant presence, ousia. That's the claim.
Quoting Banno
I agree with you that it should be treated the same way, from the purview of physics. But let's put that aside for a minute and just see if there's any truth in the claim itself (made above, about presence). I think there is, especially if we do a historical and "hermeneutical" analysis of Greek texts (in which this interpretation is said to originate).
If we do agree that there is truth to this claim, you then rightly anticipate the next question: what do we mean by "time"? But again, before we get into that I want to make sure we're on the same page, because it's a very big claim to make indeed.
Quoting Banno
Well here I have to nitpick a little bit, because in Heidegger "temporality" will not mean "time" exactly. But I think you mean time in the sense of physics, so in that case no, time isn't preferred. Temporality is preferred -- and we can get into that afterwards, it takes up a lot of pages in Heidegger as you know ("time" is right in the title, after all).
Quoting Banno
I'm not sure how to proceed here, because I'm not sure what "member of a domain of discourse" really means frankly. But just to be clear what the claim is: I'm not saying being is presence, I'm saying being was interpreted as essentially meaning that which is constant, stable, unchanging -- that which arises and is there before us, "present" before us. That is to say: Ousia -- this often gets translated as "substance" but it has connection to Plato's "idea."
You're right -- my fault. It's funny, because I was about to put what he was referring to in brackets, but had to run out. The "proof" he's referring to is the existence of the outside world. Here's the prior paragraph:
I don't want to be "quoting scripture" either. I posted this because I came across it when reading something else in the text, and thought it pertinent. I don't consider citing Heidegger to be settling anything -- but he does word things well on occasion.
I'd say you're thinking too much in terms of propositions if you think the point is about defending anything.
Quoting Xtrix
When we ask 'what is being?' we are asking what being is for us, no? Surely the usages of the word and its relatives should give us some clues, Of course we can also extrapolate upon those usages and try to examine what it is to be a human, which is the work of phenomenology, so I agree that looking at language use alone is not enough.
Past the Linguistic Turn?
I think this may have been his inaugural address on becoming Wykeham Professor of Logic.
Quoting Janus
Grice fits in this little sub-discussion because he was unwilling to renounce his theoretical ambitions, so you get a very different version of some of what you find in the late Wittgenstein, some things that look enough like full-fledged theories in fact that they’ve been taken up variously in linguistics.
Respect? If I had to use that word I would say actively don't respect ANY philosopher!
Ideas are not for respecting though. They are for slapping sense into if possible.
When it comes to ideas you wouldn't be thinking about "slapping sense into them" if you respected them.
I just said I don't 'respect' them though.
You don't agree that in an extensional, referentially transparent context, all fiction is false?
Quoting Joshs
Language games take place in space, too.
Space has an essence independent of time? Essences are a very odd thing, modal or otherwise. There's much to be said about them. And placing space somehow independent of time would also be problematic - they have been together since Einstein. SO there's not much there I can make use of.
That is Husserl. Good summation here:
https://iep.utm.edu/huss-int/#H1
OK - so let's drop "beingness".
Quoting Xtrix
...and why should we fall back to this anachronistic greek interpretation when we have better ones in our formal logic?
Cheers. I don't see much there that undermines my view of philosophy as conceptual clarification, especially given the conclusion. Perhaps I missed something?
Why not set up a extensional, referentially transparent domain that is Tolkien's world?
Any evidence-quotes from the later Wittgenstein for the idea that a language game is ‘in’ space? I don’t think you’ll find him describing space in this way, as a picture frame. This a question for Antony. Quoting Banno
I was going to mention Einstein. In the case of modern physics , it is true that space-time are inseparable , but that doesn’t resolve the issue of the relation between space and time , or the priority of one over the other, from a Wittgensteinian perspective.
Quoting Banno
Because formal logic depends on the notion of the self-identical object.
“A true object in the sense of logic is an object which is absolutely identical "with itself," that is, which is, absolutely identically, what it is; or, to express it in another way: an object is through its determinations, its quiddities [Weisheiten], its predicates, and it is identical if these quiddities are identical as belonging to it or when their belonging absolutely excludes their not belonging.”(Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences)
So you are suggesting to ditch the positive identity and fall back to identity as difference? How could this look for "Dasein"?
Quoting Joshs
Not only is this not an answer, it's not even on the same topic; but also, a=a is an extension of first-order calculus; and certainly not something it is dependent on.
The conclusion is, again, that there is nothing to be learned in this thread.
Quoting Banno
Because fiction isn't meant to be read as fact.
Why isn’t it an answer? What does first order calculus depend on? A=A is a relation between A and A. But what presupposition lies behind the invocation of ‘a’? What does A have to consist of at minimum in order for it to play a role in a=a? We obviously have to assume that it is present in front of us as an entity of some sort. Doesn’t first order calculus assume this? Isn’t first order calculus a syntax, and doesn’t a syntax need something to operate on?
Bongo, if you have a point to make, please go ahead and make it.
Ok, I will grant that it is an answer. But it is an answer that is both irrelevant and wrong. So it's not a good answer.
Why are philosophers experts on clarifying concepts?
I've learned that it is possible to fill 23 pages about one not very interesting word. I'm not sure it makes philosophy look particularly effective or useful but I had a good time reading some of it. It just leaves me with a simple question: What the fuck is being? :gasp:
It may be wrong , but why don’t you do me the courtesy of answering my questions?
Quoting Joshs
It does not depend on a=a.
And I have previously, several times, mentioned the domain of discourse. And yes, it is taken as granted in some first-order formal systems.
It is not what logic is based on.
Quine, remember.
Quoting Tom Storm
Here are two answers.
In the first, it is what is taken as granted in our conversation. In formal logic, it's the things named by the constants a, b, c... In a natural language it's the stuff to which we give proper names. It's what is sometimes called the domain of discourse.
The second is that it is to have an attribute or property. In formal logic this is done with an existential quantifier: ?(x)f(x) - there is something that is f. In a natural language this is done with a predicate: something is on the mat.
Now there are those who claim there is more, but what that "more" is remains obscure.
Quoting Tom StormYeah. Might be time to leave this thread. Nothing to see here.
There is no way around the fact that logic and any variety of mathematics cannot begin without first assuming a ‘present’ object ( which includes empty symbols). We can’t get anywhere in inquiring into the basis of a present object in these conversations because that is such an irreducible , a priori notion for you that any alternatives appear wrongheaded or incoherent from your vantage. So that leaves out of consideration the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty, Husserl , Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein.
Sure, but that's not what is represented in a=a.
And we agreed earlier, in answer to Srap's question, that your account says nothing more.
It wouldnt be more, it would be less. That is, the ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ presume too much about the minimal condition for ‘presencing’.
Tell me what is represented in a=a.
It's a definition of "=".
Last chance.
This is a branch of first order logic that does not assume that singular terms denote anything.
How cool. Finding this might even be enough to justify having spent so much time on this otherwise unhelpful thread.
Are these discussions a competition for you?
Take a look at the two paragraphs below by Husserl. The first describes sensations as we identify them objectively, as enduring, stopping and starting , speeding up or slowing down, like his example of a perceived tone. It doesn’t explicitly describe mathematical or logical symbols, but it shows how such objective sensations act as a model for symbolic objects.
Now look at the second paragraph. It describes what we really, originally perceive in a stretch of time. In actuality , there are no enduring tones or colors or shapes, just a flow which is changing so constantly that nothing ever doubles back , remains , extends, endures. How do we derive the objects in the first paragraph from this flow of the second paragraph? We discern similarities and regularities in the flow, and from these likenesses we ‘imagine’ identities such as a ‘tone’ or color or shape.
My question to you is, is it possible to generate the ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ of logical and mathematical symbolization fromthe moment to moment changes of the second paragraph? Keep in mind that, consistent with the dynamics of the second paragraph, recalling an instance from memory changes it , so ‘a’ is no longer ‘a’ when we refer back to it.
This is what I mean when I say that we derive the symbolic basis of logic and math from a temporal process that is more originary.
“Each individual object (each unity, whether immanent or transcendent, constituted in the stream) endures, and necessarily endures -that is, it continuously exists in time and is something identical in this continuous existence, which at the same time can be regarded as a process. Conversely: what exists in time continuously exists in time and is the unity belonging to the process that carries with it inseparably the unity of what endures in the process as it unfolds. The unity of the tone that endures throughout the process lies in the tonal process; and conversely, the unity of the tone is unity in the filled duration, that is, in the process. Therefore, if anything at all is defined as existing in a time-point, it is conceivable only as the phase of a process, a phase in which the duration of an individual being also has its point. Individual or concrete being is necessarily changing or unchanging; the process is a process of change or of rest, the enduring object itself a changing object or one at rest. Moreover, every change has its rate or acceleration of change (to use an image) with respect to the same duration. As a matter of principle, any phase of a change can be expanded into a rest, and any phase of a rest can be carried over into change.
Now if we consider the constituting phenomena in comparison with the phenomena just discussed, we find a flow, and each phase of this flow is a continuity of adumbrations. But as a matter of principle, no phase of this flow can be expanded into a continuous succession, and therefore the flow cannot be conceived as so transformed that this phase would be extended in identity with itself. Quite to the contrary, we necessarily find a flow of continuous "change", and this change has the absurd character that it flows precisely as it flows and can flow neither "faster" nor "slower." If that is the case, then any object that changes is missing here; and since "something" runs its course in every process, no process is in question. There is nothing here that changes, and for that reason it also makes no sense to speak of something that endures. It is nonsensical to want to find something here that remains unchanged for even an instant during the course of its duration.”(Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness)
No, more a game.
In this game, I ask a question and others quote holy writ. It's not that much fun.
That's not a terrible place to start, although you might have said in our lives rather than our conversations.
I think the question is, can you give an account of what "taking as granted" is? How does it work? How is it possible?
Logic, by design, has nothing to say here: existence and truth are taken as primitives, and are *prior* to logical operations. (Originally Frege included "judgment" as well.) You can continue to add on formalisms like model theory, but to specify a domain of discourse, you'll need a "membership" primitive as well. (You'll also need membership to treat predicates extensionally.)
Logic, like math, gets along fine without defining its primitives -- that's rather the point -- but that's not to say we do not in fact bring to logic and to math an understanding, some kind of understanding from somewhere, of the meaning of those primitives, or that there's no reason to give them some thought.
Epoché?
Yes, a thoroughgoing reduction leads us to this simpler beginning.
I've mentioned that the account given in the first hundred or so items in Philosophical Investigations provides a fine account. To that we might add Anscombe's, and Searle's, accounts of Intentionality. But none of this is to say that the account is complete.
But moreover, little in this thread seems to help.
To me this seems like a mere thought experiment. The totally of sensations always provides for a reference of duration. The body itself generates difference all the time - think of circulating blood or breath. It is not only external objects one would focus on that generates change. It is not even sensations that come clearly to mind as such if you think of the feelings of rest or unrest.for example.
Wittgenstein and Heidegger are, in part anyway, barking up related trees: what it means to be in an interpreted and interpretable world. (Anscombe and Searle, I can't speak to.) And Wittgenstein's story is precisely that classical logic lacks the resources needed for such an account. (He tried.)
I would have said rather that he showed there was no question here - that the notion of being was not the sort of thing that might be subject to further analysis, but just the sort of thing that has to be taken as granted; that there is stuff to talk about is a fine candidate for a hinge proposition. It's much the same as presuming the bishop moves diagonally is a precursor to playing chess.
Which is much the same as the answer given by Headgear, only far clearer.
It's hard to know what to say here.
Wittgenstein doesn't always and unconditionally give in to the temptation to say "here my spade is turned". He dissects many things other people are happy to take for granted. And some of what he says looks enough like an explanation that people take him to be advancing some doctrine or another, despite his protests to the contrary.
He spends twenty years or so on the new project, trying over and over again to explain why there's nothing much to say, or trying not to explain it but just show that it is so. It is possible that something was going wrong there, that he was himself in a fly bottle he could not find the way out of. And the result is that those few remaining philosophers who care about Wittgenstein argue endlessly over what he meant. Why is that?
Sure, and if there is a dissection of "being" that somehow helps, I'm for it - see Free Logic.
I don't wish to close off the discussion, but improve it. The challenge was to clarify the notion of being in the OP.
Are you suggesting that Wittgenstein begins from hinge propositions ( taking them for granted) in the way that Frege begins from formal logic?
I'm not recommending we go back to this. The claim is that this is what permeates the western tradition. Formal logic is still very much included in this tradition.
So far as I am aware, persistence is not a notion used in formal logic. Nor does formal logic presume that individuals persist over time.
Closer to the nature of being it seems
It's timeless, because it was designed for mathematics. That's why Frege's logic is missing modality too.
Hence we have definitions of "is" (existence, being) which are not dependent on time.
Formal logic is an abstract activity of the human being, dependent on a certain mode of a human being. Like mathematics. Formal systems do indeed presume persistence -- the persistence of symbols, as mathematics presumes a persistence of number. Hence why Plato talks much of mathematics.
Mathematics do not know time. For example the law of the excluded middle states that any sentence must be either wrong or true. It doesn't matter if one or the other or none was shown. It does not know change. To conclude from this that is presupposes "persistence" is not directly correct as there simply is no difference that would allow to say such a thing.
You don’t get formal logic without assuming that you can return to the same identical symbol from moment to moment in reflection or perception. The enterprise would collapse before it could begin without the idealization that allows this repetition of identity of ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ over time. They must sit still as what they are long enough for you to manipulate them. You might respond , ‘but we do manipulate them, and successfully’. And I agree, we manipulate moving targets without noticing that fact thanks to our convincing idealizations.
The fact that it does not know change and time doesn’t mean that change and time don’t underlie it. If you stare at the period at the end of this sentence you say that it remains identically what it is as you continue to stare at it. But this is an idealization on your part. It is something slightly different from moment to moment. Or if I ask you to recall from memory the period you just looked at , you would say that recollected period brings back the identical period from memory. But memory reconstructs what it recalls. So recollection and perception do not preserve identity from moment to moment. We can ignore this fact for the sake of convenience of doing logic and math, but it comes back to bite us on the ass when we try to create psychological models of perception , empathy and social meanings based on formal logic.
We also have definitions of God that are not dependent on time. Or I should say, that believe themselves not to be dependent on time.
2*a = b
b = 4
follow each other but they "happen" at the same time. There is only one "b" - it denotes one and the same object. Of course this is an idealization. But note this not me starting at the period as the object itself is ideal in first place. When it comes to senses: There is a qualitative difference between seeing, hearing, tasting and so on. Are those senses identical to themselves?
The problem which Aristotle demonstrated is the fundamental incompatibility between the two distinct ways of describing what you have named as "enduring objective presence". The one way is based in an assumption that what remains the same as time passes (being) provides the fundamental description,, and the other way assumes that things not remaining the same as time passes (becoming) provides the fundamental description. These two fundamental descriptions are incompatible ways of describing the proposed "enduring objective presence".
The issue you point to, with Hegel and Heidegger, is that "enduring objective presence", or what we commonly call "continuity", is itself a descriptive phrase which implies "remains the same as time passes". Therefore this description, "enduring objective presence", get's placed in the category of "being", and is rejected as a true representation of temporal existence, when one is in favour of the other category, becoming.
Rejecting one for the other does not resolve the incompatibility, which Aristotle exposed though. What Aristotle showed, which was derived from Plato, is that it is necessary to allow that the two fundamental, and inherently incompatible descriptive forms, are both real. So the solution is not to reject one for the other, but the arduous task of determining which parts of reality require the one descriptive form, and which parts require the other.
To make "change" intelligible requires that we assume an aspect which remains the same as time passes, and an aspect which does not stay the same as time passes. So physics for example, assumes laws which stay the same (being), and a thing which does not stay the same (becoming), as the physical world. It does not help to say that one assumption is more real or "objective" than the other.
Quoting Banno
Time is what provides us with change, and that is what you might call the spice of life. Wouldn't life be an absolute bore if nothing changed? Time provides us with the ability to do things, change things, want things etc.. The reason why temporality is commonly given priority in philosophy is that this is the only way to make sense of spatiality. Spatial existence can then be seen for what it is, a construction, created by the sensing being to provide it an advantage in its temporal existence. What we sense is the passing of time, but we create a spatial representation which allows us to understand the passing of time. Once we see temporality as the true reality, spatial representations can be understood as just that, representations. And the vast majority of humanity takes these spatial representations to be reality, as Plato's cave dwellers, not having seen through to the temporal reality on the other side.
Mathematics is a human activity. Humans do indeed exist “in” time (or, better, “as” time). When we think in symbols, we’re thinking in a certain moment in time.
Mathematics does indeed presuppose time.
But Heidegger claims that for Aristotle time itself is derived from motion, a continuous change within something enduringly objectively presence. So it would seem for Aristotle the scene of being and becoming is the objectively present frame of time as motion.
“The thoughts of motion, continuity, extension—and in the case of change of place, place—are interwoven with the experience of time.”(basic problems of phenomenology) “ So far as time is kineseos ti, something connected with motion, this means that in thinking time, motion or rest is always thought along with it. In Aristotelian language, time follows, is in succession to, motion.” “Because the now is transition it always measures a from-to, it measures a how-long, a
duration.”
Time is making present according to Aristotle, (the present at hand) and in so doing is a counting
of time as now, now, now. “And thus time shows itself for the vulgar understanding as a succession of constantly "objectively present" nows that pass away and arrive at the same time. Time is understood as a sequence, as the "flux" of nows, as the "course of time.”(Being and
Time).
“The succession of nows is interpreted as something somehow objectively present; for it itself moves "in time." We say that in every now it is now, in every now it already disappears. The now is now in every now, thus constantly present as the same, even if in every now another may be disappearing as it arrives. Yet it does show at the same time the constant presence of
itself as this changing thing.”
There’s another way to look at this though: whatever understanding of being is implicit in logic (classical logic, Frege’s logic) and mathematics is an understanding appropriate to unchanging, timeless — i.e., eternal — entities. Whatever sort of being we have, or anything else we’re familiar with has, it’s not like that.
So the second sentence supposes an identity that is not there? That's the wonder of logics. They are not dialectical in nature.
No, it supposes human beings. Human beings are certainly "there." As are mathematical objects.
This is like arguing that mathematics presupposes oxygen.
In a way, it does. Without oxygen, there aren’t human beings. Without human beings, there is no mathematics. In a sense there is no “time” either, if by time we mean in the traditional sense.
The whole argumentation that the things were really always different and so on overlooks the very topic of the discussion: It is still the same thing nonetheless. If things can be identified and referred - and this is in fact the usual habit - this seems to lie in the nature of being. In fact it seems to be the primary way of recognition. Given: there are moments when this is not the case but in my view it requires some thinking about what is there to even arrive at the point where things "logically have to" be constructed from raw sensual input.
This is not really the case, because Aristotle distinguished two senses of "time", the primary sense as a tool of measurement, and a secondary sense as the thing measured. The secondary sense is often overlooked, in modern interpretations, but it is important to his physics and metaphysics. When we assume an "objectively present frame of time", this is "time" in the primary sense, a conceptual presupposition, assuming a 'point of being at the present', from which we may observe and measure. Assuming this point of unchanging being, at the present (within which no time passes) enables us to produce principles of measurement.
Notice in your quoted passage, the human act of measuring is what is referred to by Aristotle: "the now...always measures..". This describes how we apply a "now" as a point in time, then some particular motion occurs (the apparent movement of the sun for example), and we apply another "now" to mark off a measured time period (an hour or something). These are like non-dimensional points on a line, there is no line within them, but a continuous line between them.
This application of "nows" in relation with motion provides us with a number which is used as a principle of measurement. The nows are an aspect of the measuring tool, the conception of "time" as a tool of measurement, just like "points" are an aspect of the spatial conception which is a tool for spatial measurement..
If we move to the secondary sense of "time", as what is measured, we find the conception of a continuity without any nows. The nows are seen as artificial. Therefore, when Heidegger says “The succession of nows is interpreted as something somehow objectively present..." in your quoted passage, this is a misunderstanding of Aristotle. It conflates the distinction between the primary sense of "time", and the secondary sense of "time", which Aristotle tried to establish.
.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
:smirk:
Quoting Xtrix
:roll:
Then it needs to be made clearer. If we assume that what makes mathematics and logic possible is the view of time as the processual transformation of the past into the future via the appearance, endurance ( brief or prolonged) and disappearance of temporary objective forms, then we are thinking of time as external grid. This is the meaning of humans existing ‘in’ time, but not ‘as’ time, which requires a more fundamental and original concept of time.
The idea is you capture some life i, deer, horse, elephant, ant, ... capture some life, we die life still exist,
Molecule get life from life, it dies back to common life...
Idea is how we can decise what is your air and what is mine after we pop up ballons ?
By hand, it might take you a minute or two to work out that 357 x 68 = 24,276. A calculator or computer will do it faster, but still take a measurable amount of time. But how long does it take 357 x 68 to be 24,276?
I think I would be okay with saying that time in mathematics is truncated to an eternal and unchanging now, and that this is what people mean when they say mathematics is ‘timeless’; and indeed the very idea of ‘now’ derives from a certain way of conceiving time, certainly.
But that’s addressing the content of mathematics — which I have no objection to, even in this somewhat oblique, conceptual way — rather than arguing that whatever is true of mathematicians is true of mathematics. Pierre de Fermat was French but his theorem was not. Andrew Wiles, unlike Fermat, continues to breathe every day, but his proof of Fermat’s theorem has never drawn a breath.
Timelessness has the idea of change wrapped up in it. The concept of change is dependent on eternity.
Surely H understood that well enough not to try to put all the eggs in one basket.
But it is a continuity based on the continuity of magnitiude.
“Aristotle says that time ‘follows’ change and change ‘follows’ magnitude. Aristotle uses the notion of following to justify a claim he makes about the continuity of time and of change: the claim that time is continuous because change is, and change is continuous because magnitude is.”(Time for Aristotle)
Artistotle is interpreting time as something present-at-hand, according to Heidegger. Whatever secondary sense you're referring to, it's not at all clear. "Continuity without any nows" is what, exactly? Perhaps citing Aristotle to support whatever claim you're making would be helpful.
This sounds like the Aristotelian idea of time as change , change as continuity and continuity as akin to the continuity of magnitude. Eternity is linked to infinity via continuity.
Heideggerian time is not a continuity, it is finite.
This assumes "time" in the sense of physics, as sequence of seconds. That's not what I'm referring to.
When we see something as "present" before us, as "here," this is a mode we're in as a human being. Heidegger calls this the present-at-hand. Something being "present" in this case does also indicate time -- the time of the "present" -- but how we conceptualize this present can vary. The traditional way of thinking about it is as a measurement, a "second," a moment, a "now-point." Time itself gets objectified, quantified. Time itself gets interpreted as something "present-at-hand," in other words.
This is the point.
So how else can we interpret time? First we should use a different word when talking about something other than the traditional/ordinary view of time: temporality. Temporality refers to various "ecstasies" of human activity -- for example, projection and anticipation. Both projection and anticipation is where the concept "future" will arise from, and where we will eventually quantify as a "not-yet-now," an approaching now-point.
So you see that in this respect, asking how long it takes for a number to be a number is meaningless. Numbers -- and words -- are products of the human mind, of the human being.
Wittgenstein says the meaning of something like 357x68 is the foundation of a language game, just as the statement ‘this is my hand’ is the foundation of a language game wherein it doesn’t occur to us to doubt the truth of the statement. One could then ask, how long does it take this thing to be my hand? The type of certainty that we accord the solution to the equation is what he calls a form of life. So the ‘time’ of the equation or ‘this being my hand’ is the time of its contextual use in a language game. It has no existence outside of the occasion of its use as a particular sense.
Aren't you doing now what you accused logics of, namely sacrificing meaning and sense to form? Now we are doing "language games" - Chips are dealt, we'll throw a few forms around and see what being and time are. Yey!
But wait - a game is something with changes of states of affairs so maybe they are time after all. Damn...
Good luck to everone and congratulations to the winner in advance.
Time as change is Carlo Rovelli, actually.
Quoting Joshs
I don't know where this is coming from. Think of Einstein's thought experiments. Motion is relative to a stationary point.
Yes, well, that’s the point of saying that mathematics is ‘timeless’, but you and @Joshs keep wanting to say something else, only I don’t know what it is.
I can see the argument that mathematical objects are present-at-hand, and connecting that to a conception of permanence and so forth. I don’t happen to know if that’s how Heidegger talks about them, but it’s what I would expect.
Quoting Xtrix
And? What does their being the products of Dasein tell us about their being?
Mathematical objects are locked in a permanent now because we have made them so. They cannot be what we intend them to be unless they are ‘timeless’ in this way. Is there some reason we cannot so intend?
Quoting frank
“Einstein's theory of relativity established the opinion that traditional philosophical doctrine concerning time has been shaken to the core through the theory of physics. However, this widely held opinion is fundamentally wrong. The theory of relativity in physics does not deal with what time is but deals only with how time, in the sense of a now-sequence, can be measured. [It asks] whether there is an absolute measurement of time, or whether all measurement is necessarily relative, that is, conditioned.* The question of the theory of relativity could not be discussed at all unless the supposition of time as the succession of a sequence of nows were presupposed beforehand. If the doctrine of time, held since Aristotle, were to become untenable, then the very possibility of physics would be ruled out. [The fact that] physics, with its horizon of measuring time, deals not only with irreversible events, but also with reversible ones and that the direction of time is reversible attests specifically to the fact that in physics time is nothing else than the succession of a sequence of nows.”( Heidegger, Zollikon seminars)
The English language has an atomistic view of being, which tends to reduce being to discrete entities and objects. This view underlies modern logic, mathematics, and science. Ever since the German logician and mathematician Frege and the English philosopher Russell laid the foun-dation for "logical atomism" in modern, analytic philosophy, it has been argued that there are three meanings of Being: "the 'is' of existence," "the 'is' of predication," and "the 'is' of identity." 7 This atomistic view is especially contrary to Heidegger's understanding of the unified meaning of being (BT 202; ZS 155). Heidegger argued that this atomistic view reduced the primordial multidimensional meaning of being to these three theoretical categories, in spite of the fact that they are always already based upon an implicit preunderstanding of being (ZS 20, 96, 155, 236, 325) by human Da-sein in its contextual, practical being-in-the-world [Zuhandenheit, ready-to-hand].
By treating the "is" of existence, which Heidegger called the presence-at-hand of things [Vorhandenheid , as a mere propositional function ("there is at least one value of x for which the propositional function is true"), Frege and Russell tried to eliminate the whole "question of being" from philosophy altogether. Via the existential quantifier (3x) "being" was reduced to the meaning of "a" bring, that is, an entity. The "ontological difletence" between being and beings (entities) (ZS 20-21) was overlooked or forgotten as was the "analogical" character of the concept of being as understood in ancient and medieval ontology (analogia entis) . 8 Modern science too had come to deal only with "objects" (ZS 136-44). Yet being can never be totally made an object of reflection because of Dasein's finitude and being's historical self-concealment (see BT sec. 71-76; Contributions to Philosophy, 75-87, 312-54).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Husserl makes a distinction between bound and free idealities. Spoken and written language, and all other sorts of gestures and markings which intend meaning, exemplify bound idealities.Even as it is designed to be immortal, repeatable as the same apart from any actual occurrence made at some point, the SENSE of a spoken or inscribed utterance, what it means or desires to say, is always tied to the contingencies of empirical circumstance.
Mathematical idealization is unbound (within the strict limits of its own repetition); no contextual effects intervene such as was the case in the attempt to repeat the same word meaningfully.
Derrida picks up on this , arguing that contextual change implies change in meaning-to-say, and a mathematical ideality can be manipulated without being animated, `in an active and actual manner, with the attention and intention of signification'.Such an ideality can be repeated indefinitely without alteration, because its meaning is empty.
“Numbers have no present or signified content. And, a fortiori, no absolute referent. This is why they don't show anything, don't tell anything, don't represent anything, aren't trying to say anything (Dissemination,p.350).”
I believe Wittgenstein says something similar , asserting that mathematics is pure syntax and is meaningless by itself.
I should note that Husserl and Derrida treat the concept of idea in the Kantian sense:an ideal object of any kind is an ideality in the extent to which it is identically repeatable again and again. So mathematics wouldn’t be ‘timeless’ since it only exists by being repeated, but content could be considered timeless in that it is empty and thus unchanging.
But we never invoke number without an intentional meaning context to which we want to apply it, and here is where Wittgenstein and Heidegger disagree with authors like Russell and Frege on the role and basis of mathematics.
There was a time when you seemed to understand that A and not-A are two sides of the same coin. You forgot?
So mathematical objects (expressions, theorems, etc.) are not ‘timeless’ but are perfectly repeatable, either because they’re unbound by the context of their use, or because they’re meaningless. At least the idea of repetition gets time in there, so I’ll think that over.
BTW: turn off autocorrect or proofread your posts.
Just to show you’re being read......
I can’t show you a time that is not right now. I can’t show you a time at all.
I can show you something that is in time now, and was in its own time before and probably will be later.
Sorry.
In classical logic, ‘not-A’ is represented by everything in a specified universe of meanings that is not ‘A’. In phenomenology, the ‘A’ springs out of the same pragmatic context as the ‘not-A’. The two sides belong to a shared context of relevance. Relevance is ‘irrelevant’ in classical logic.
When did I say mathematics is timeless? That's what I'm arguing against.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, I don't like the word "product" either really.
I think what it tells us about their being is that they occur in a certain mode of our being -- call it an abstract or linguistic mode, of which I would include mathematics and music. Quantities and geometric shapes are human phenomena. This is a Kantian move, really, but with the "subject" and "time" as interpreted differently.
Thnks for answer,
try time think one time you consider cycles and another time you say there is no cycles. If it is only now, tomorow never comes, past doesnt exist, or you show me, where ? Please try with cyles. I am looking into: time exist because cycle exist
That’s helpful for explaining what you’ve been trying to get at. There’s more to do, but I could definitely see preferring to start here.
If time is objectified it appears as a flow or movement from past through present to future. But this is an abstraction; for lived time there is only now, not a 'dimensionless-point' now but an infinitely expansive now in which, and only in which, the future and the past exist as such.
No offense, but you seem kind of like a computer that's been programmed to have philosophical discussions, but the code needs some tweaking.
Was it the reference to Kant that helped? I'd like to know for future exchanges I might have with others.
It's difficult for me to follow you. When you say "Please show me, where? Please try with cycles," I'm at a loss, for example.
So even though this wasn't directed to me, I'd ask: What is your question, exactly? What do you mean by "cycles"?
I think you're taking liberties, because Heidegger is never so clear, but I also think that you almost have to be correct. When meditation is taught in eastern traditions, there is an emphasis on the "now" as well -- and past and future are seen as an illusion of some kind. The only "reality" is the one unfolding in the present.
Seems true. On the other hand, is this not simply another interpretation from a present-at-hand mode of being? While the now might not be quantified, we're stilling conceptualizing it and speaking of it. If anything, I see us as only being able to piece it together second-hand, in a way -- like automaticity or even deeper aspects of our being that are unconscious, and in fact largely beyond our ability to be it to individual awareness (like the internal workings of our liver and circulation).
That’s why I’m on this forum, to invite tweaking. But that usually works better with substantive replies and questions than with one-liners.
It is provocation. Time doesnt exist because you have to know time is consequence of pyhsical nature, so you notice time because cycle occur, people know it hapened one day because sun make one cycle, and if you go as deep as you can, you know smth happened because you saw cycle, change happens out of this, and we say this happening: time. It is a consequence not a real thing to hold on
I am taking liberties in the sense that I don't claim what I am saying is what Heidegger would say. I don't say the past or future are illusions, but that they exist, as past and future, only now. This does relate to Husserl's notions of retention and protention. Do you think Heidegger would say that dasein, the 'being-there', is now?
I am not suggesting that there is a succession of nows, although it might appear that way as we hop from one 'island moment' of conscious awareness to the next. Underlying that there would seem to be no succession, but a continuity or continuum.
Perhaps everything we say "is another interpretation from a present-at-hand mode of being", but isn't it true that we experience the past and future only now? The present can be thought as the now regardless of what is consciously experienced as present. Or it can be thought simply as what is consciously experienced as present. Same word, different senses.
I think it was something about the phrase “occur in a certain mode of our being,” which is terribly vague, but I found myself thinking about how mathematics could be seen as something we add to our own world, and that can mean not that mathematical objects have our mode of being, but that they can be part of it. It’s a funny thing, the way we make sense of the world in part by furnishing it with the things we use to make sense of it, all of which have a sort of human feel about them, although it can be hard to notice with mathematics. Those things we make can form a sort of fabric that holds the rest together. [hide="*"](Like a rug, they tie the whole room together.)[/hide]
Maybe it just clicked for me while you were standing there!
That is only the time of my thinking. This now I think cycles, that next now I don’t. Doesn’t mean the cycles are dependent on what I think.
Quoting Nothing
Logically correct, insoar as when what is now tomorrow arrives, it is no longer then tomorrow, ad ininitum . Past time doesn’t exist if time itself doesn’t exist, also logically correct.
Quoting Nothing
Cycles merely represent determinable repetitive change. But change presupposes a necessary condition for it, and for us, as humans, that condition is time. So technically, cycles exist because of time, not the other way around.
Quoting Mww
Suppose we did not live in an environment of natural cycles, no sun rising and setting, no moon waxing and waning, no predictable seasons. That’s presumably how we first measured duration. Would we have even formed such a concept as ‘duration’ without an obvious and always available way to measure it? Without natural cycles, life might be somewhat more dreamlike, chaotic, and it could mean time would also be experienced quite differently.
Jus’ speculatin’.
Then it seems what you're saying is that time is a measurement of change (e.g., the sun rising and setting). In which case we're equating time with what clocks measure (the sun being one kind of clock).
wont you agree, because time we can think, not around ? .... western people think to much of a thought - it gives all luxuries we have, but how to get deeper ? Even body, mind dont need to think all the time, i agree cycle are not dependent what we think, even doesnt need to be noticed
I think this is a matter of presentism and eternalism, with you seemingly arguing in favor of the latter.
I think Heidegger would say we don't often think about time in this respect -- we're too busy "being" (coping, interacting with, engaging with, "on the way to," etc).
You can do a heavyweight, substantive reply with one line, or offer tons of fluff.
I just meant that time and timelessness are concepts that are bound together, so it's fruitless to try to make a master-slave relationship out of it. Let them synthesize.
If phenomenology is the thing that points this out, then Plato was a phenomenologist, and it doesn't get much more classical than that.
If time exist on his own and that would make a cycle, change,... i have a problem if cycle doesnt happened in any way how would "universe" count time ? cylce makes time, i would argue
It surprises me that you say I am arguing for eternalism when I am saying that only the now is. But then I can also see the sense in this because there is no privileged now.
But I wasn't proposing any metaphysic, I was trying to speak phenomenologically, which is to try to articulate lived experience. When we are "busy "being" (coping, interacting with, engaging with, "on the way to," etc)" is it not always now that we are doing that?
Universe need changes, counting to make it happend for us. Universe need cycle that anything as pyshicall happens in any way, i would say. And then we came,....
I would say it's right there in that looking forward or looking back or looking out or looking down or looking up. The moment is not fixed or dimensionless, but nor does it move or have a particular dimension; it simply is; not something to be found or determined.
Hmmm. I’m guessing you’re asking if I agree we think about time and can’t get around it. If that’s what you’re asking, then, yes, we think about time as a conception, which is represented in us as change. I don’t agree we think time, but only the co-existent or successive relation of something to its parts.
Quoting Nothing
I’m one of the western people, and I hold that we can’t get any deeper than thought.
Quoting Nothing
Yup. But don’t think too little, either.
And Frank decides to go with the third option: a one line reply of fluff.
I know what you're saying, and I wouldn't say "no," I would say it doesn't come up very often. When it does, I can't see a way around what you're claiming. I think there's plenty of truth in it. There is this activity, there is this being, but it's hard to pin down a "now." That's why I was thinking you were arguing for eternalism: that a past and future are real, but occur in the present.
“ Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enraptured in this transition and therefore essentially 'absent'. Absent in a fundamental sense-never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, in his essentially being away, removed into essential having been and future-essentially absencing and never at hand, yet existent in his essential absence.”( Heidegger)
That's it; we cannot pin down a now. I tend to think it's important to be aware of what we are doing in the kind of Buddhist sense of "mindfulness". That's not a presence which can be pinned down, or elaborated into a theory; not a 'thin' present-at-hand kind of presence, but it seems to be the foundation of any examined life,and I can't see phenomenology as important except in this regard.
Maybe it's off-topic and more in line with Heidegger's idea of authenticity. Do you see that idea as being related to his treatment of being?
Quoting Janus
Heidegger would agree with you and Husserl that the past and future are not unreal , but rather the having been and future dimensions belong to the now equally with the present dimension.
I think....speculate....that without us, there are no natural cycles; there are only natural events, occasions. With us, or because of us, natural events are susceptible to being ordered according to rules, which reside a priori in such a rational agency as ours.
But then, what’s to say natural events weren’t already naturally ordered and we just perceived them as such. There are argument both ways, same as it ever was.
I relate to the way you've articulated that; that the now is not exclusively identified with the present dimension, and not even identified any more with the present than it is with the past and future dimensions.
You may understand Special Relativity correctly, but just can’t get it into English quite right.
Look for the contradiction in your comment, as it was written.
Yeah, but I think I probably have more assets than you do, so per capitalist rules I'm a better class of person.
I'm prone to want to merge a lot of what I've learned in meditation with Heidegger's ideas, yes. I, like you, see the meditative practices of the east to be phenomenology. Their concepts about "time" don't mirror Western conceptions -- the focus tends to be more on "impermanence," change, flow, and desire. Heidegger doesn't talk that much about desire, however. He does bring in the term "care," which I'd like to say is similar to "willing," but I don't find much textual support for this move.
Quoting Janus
Yes, in the sense that there is no "ground" of being, and that the acceptance of the anxiety that arises from this groundlessness is liberating. You don't "flee" it and conform to the rules and norms of society in an unthinking way, you face up to it (to death, to contingency, to the un-grounded nature of the world) and take ownership of your life. I think this is what is meant by authenticity.
Again, this isn't very clear from his writings. But I haven't read enough division II to be able to cite much supporting textual evidence.
It's true though. In a capitalist world, you don't have to wait for the government to give you equality. You can take it by getting rich
But then, were you always equal and the money just forced people to treat you that way?
Or does the money actually change you?
IOW: what more is there to equality than the way people behave?
What more is there to being than the way people behave?
Is that a question? You could not ask it if it did not presume the contrary as something to be denied. Are you asking if being human is a hypothesis?
No. The concept of being was treated in ancient times as something primordial. That continued into medieval times when Existence is what God is.
What if we deflate the concept so that it's just an aspect of human action. It's a word we do things with.
What do we lose if we look at it that way?
You would lose the uncertainty of how it was approached at the beginning, The fragility of the ground to be asking about such things against the terrible silence of what obviously existed.
Do you mean we'd lose touch with the history of the idea?
What does magnitude have to do with "now"? The point was that Heidegger wrongly portrayed Aristotle's conception of the continuity of time as a continuity of nows. "The 'now' is no part of time...any more than points are parts of a line..." Physics 220a, 18.
Quoting Xtrix
Read Physics 220a, 13-23. Here's a sample: "In so far as the 'now' is a boundary it is not time, but an attribute of it..." 220a 20.
The conclusion here is that time is "a number" with respect to before and after, ('before and after' having been distinguished by the application of a 'now'). It is continuous, because it has been designated to be an attribute of motion and magnitude, which are continuous. And it is in theory, divisible by the application of a now which separates before from after.
The issue I had was with Heidegger's portrayal of a succession of nows as being proposed as an objective present. I do not think that Aristotle proposes any objective present because "present" is defined as the time "not far from now". But the objectivity of "time" is based in "before and after", not on the application of a 'now'. The 'now' is simply used for marking before and after, and in counting time.
That’s an interesting topic. Here’s what Heidegger says about willing in B&T:
“ "The phenomenon of care in its totality is essentially something that cannot be split up; thus any attempts to derive it from special acts or drives such as willing and wishing or urge and predilection, or of constructing it out of them, will be unsuccessful. Willing and wishing are necessarily rooted ontologically in Da-sein as care, and are not simply ontologically undifferentiated experiences which occur in a "stream" that is completely indeterminate as to the meaning of its being. This is no less true for predilection and urge.”
“If willing is to be possible ontologically, the following factors are constitutive for it: the previous disclosedness of the for-the-sake-of-which in general{being ahead-of-oneself), the disclosedness of what can be taken care of (world as the wherein of already-being), and the understanding self-projection of Da-sein upon a potentiality-for-being toward a possibility of the being "willed." The underlying totality of care shows through in the phenomenon of willing.”
So what on earth does this mean? I don’t think it denies a place for will and desire. But I think he’s trying to do two things. First, like Nietzsche, he wants to get away from the old philosophical idea of will as the choice of an autonomous metaphysical subject. Instead, he sees will as just as much determined by the matter as by he who who wills. Second, he wants to avoid the impression that will is a ‘free’ choice , unattached to ongoing relevant concerns and goals. Instead, before we choose to will anything , we are already thrown ahead of ourselves into a totality of relevance. So , really, we find ourselves willing just as we find ourselves in the world, pulled by the matter and projected by pre-existing concerns and engagements.
I was thinking of it more as a proposition. So. not very historical as something that has to be weighed against other statements. It declares something to be the case and challenges those who think otherwise.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Heidegger’s critique of Aristotle’s concept of time goes well beyond whether Aristotle marks off ‘now’ points. You’ll notice that for Aristotle , before and after occupy separate positions. The after succeeds the before. This creates a continuity akin to motion and magnitude , as you point out. Motion and magnitude cannot be thought without presupposing an objectively present basis for motion and magnitude. motion and magnitude are changes in something that remains self-identically present through its changes. What difference does it make whether I mark off ‘now’ points on a line. It’s the supposition of the line ( the geometrical
realization of magnitude) thats the issue for Heidegger. Each before and after is identical in its difference from the previous, creating an endless continuous string of before and afters.
We use it to specify a state of the world, like "He is guilty."
Do you think this aspect of human life, this specification of states, is covered by the idea of language games? Or not?
At this point, it seems you are mostly interested in promoting a particular political point of view.
Whatever.
My own answer would be that we assume there is an aboutness to language.
Being is about what's real, what's authentic, what's here vs what's absent, etc.
I like the idea that we lose touch with the rich history of the idea if we deflate it too much. The demand for deflation isn't too strong anyway.
Used for counting time, exactly. I don't see the problem.
That's interesting, thanks.
When we talk about the "real world," or "reality," or the world in general, or the universe, we have a certain conception in mind. What's going on in people's heads comes mostly from two sources, at least in the West: Christianity and science, and to be honest it seems as if the Christians use the story of science a lot themselves (excluding creationists, of course).
I'd like to quote from an post a while back which is relevant here.
From Phusis: The Basis of Modern Science?
So we can see some connection here with the question of being. If "phusis" is the Greek term for being, and which is later the basis for both physics and nature, which comes to dominate our modern understanding -- is this not ultimately one part of the "metaphysics of presence" described in the OP?
We may ask: so what? So we see the world in terms of nature, or matter, or energy, or in the language of science. Science is the best we currently have, so what's wrong with that?
I think we simply have to look around and see how things are turning out to really understand where this tradition has come to. In Heidegger it's come to the "dead end." To Nietzsche, it's come to nihilism. I think both are correct. I would add: capitalism, as an offshoot of this way of thinking about nature and human beings (namely, materialism), is the most destructive force in the world today. It's not government, it's not socialism or communism, it's not what's traditionally thought of as religion (although capitalism is a kind of religion) -- it's the creation of a system of social organization that puts a small number of owners and shareholders on top and everywhere else puts as the servants and wage slaves of these owners.
Perhaps another way to say it: at the core of the issue today is, ultimately, a degeneration of a long philosophical tradition into a world where the central goal is to accumulate wealth and resources. And now we face almost certain destruction at the hands of climate change, thanks in part to the greed and shortsightedness of the fossil fuel capitalists. Yet we go on as the world crumbles around us.
Maybe only a god can save us in the end after all.
This is an interesting distinction. Bound idealities are context differentiated meanings and which persists as long as the context persists?
Last few pages of the section 16 of the 1925/26 lectures contain interesting thoughts about "p u r e presencing". (Rational, axiomatic, mathematical, theoretical) logic is based on the care about pure presencing? It is based on a (non psychological) act of temporizing. It tries to preserve or maintain ( = is cared about) a certain ("rational") order in which the temporizing act of presencing (making present, Gegenwärtigen) dominates.
Presencing is necessary in order to have something as encountered or discovered but logical activity transforms this presencing into a pure presencing. It locates itself into a pure present where "units" are fully present as themselves. Other temporal ecstasies, hasbeen and futurity, are completely subordinated to the present.
Nothing, if willing isn’t possible ontologically. What does it even mean for the ontological possibility for willing anyway?
Where’s the profit in classifying that which is merely a metaphysically determinable doing, under the auspices of a discipline concerning itself with that which is a being? If it is true humans will, the necessity of its means are given immediately, the matter of it being quite irrelevant.
Or.....how to make a mess of it, by overburdening what we do, which is determinable, with that which we do it with, which isn’t.
This is highly doubtful. Before and after require the application of a 'now', and the 'now' divides the time so that it is not a continuity. Therefore the assumption of before and after actually negates the possibility of continuity. This is described at 219a, 26. The before is segment A, and the after is segment B. That A is different from B implies that there is a third thing intermediate between them. That third thing necessarily breaks the continuity between A and B. The conclusion then is that time is bounded by the 'now'.
And since there appears to be no such thing as time without before and after, the whole idea that time is continuous is cast into doubt. Then 'now' appears to be ambiguous, having two meanings, one accounting for time as continuous, without before and after if there is such a thing, and the other accounting for time as divided, (therefore not continuous), in relation to before and after.
Quoting Joshs
The thing which moves is said to be real, the motion is not 219b, 30. So Aristotle assumes a separation here between magnitude and motion, and that is why motion is a property of magnitude. So what is presupposed as "objectively present" is the magnitude, not any sense of "time" itself. But the magnitude itself is a contingent thing with generation, corruption, and changes, it cannot be represented as a continuous line.
Quoting Xtrix
The issue is that there are two senses of "time", one as a tool for counting, and the other as the thing counted. The 'now', in proper use, is a part of the former, but not a part of the latter. When we try to make the 'now' into a part of the thing which is counted, (as in 'the now is a continuous present moment'), then we have the problem of incompatibility.
Quoting Mww
It means the condition of possibility of willing.
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
The ontological structure Heidegger offers can also be thought of as a psychological structure. Think of him as critiquing older models of will.
Heidegger speaks of the intentional structure of motivated attending to as a letting oneself be affected, being-ahead-of-oneself (the moment of awareness as foreign and familiar at the same time). “One cannot construct being-in-the-world from willing, wishing, urge, and propensity as psychical acts.”(Zollikon).The desire for this conversation is determined by the task I have before me. This is the motive, the "for the sake of which" [ Weswegen]. The determining factor is not an urge or a drive, driving and urging me from behind, but something standing before me, a task I am involved in, something I am charged with. This, in turn—this relation to something I am charged with—is possible only if I am "ahead" [vorweg] of myself.” (Zollikon)
It doesn’t have to be a continuous line. It can be a series of lines. Magnitude , as the basis of continuity, is a more complex notion than a simple plurality or multiplicity. To construe a multiplicity as a magnitude requires that we assume numeric iteration, the ‘how much’, quantity. Numeric iteration implies identical repetition, the identical ‘again and again’ of number. Magnitude also implies the earlier and later, the less and the more.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The quantitative ‘same again and again’, that the continuity of magnitude assumes implies discrete units. Otherwise , we couldnt equate magnitude with quantity.
In this way the two notions of time both depend on countable presences positioning themselves ‘in’ time as appearing and passing away, earlier and later.
Yes, I get that. “Intentional structure of motivated attending to” represents “to will”; “letting oneself be affected” presupposes an autonomous causality contained in that self that wills.
Quoting Joshs
Conversation? Where or what are the conversants? Is letting oneself be affected a conversation?
Quoting Joshs
Yes, it’s been called a moral constitution.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, it’s been called a moral obligation.
Quoting Joshs
Ehhhh....I cannot be ahead of myself if I and my self are identical. Nevertheless, any relation to something I am charged with, some moral obligation, is possible only if I am imbued with something that is not an obligation, otherwise there isn’t a relation. It would seem the relation, having already incorporated something I am charged with, needs to incorporate that by which I am charged, “for the sake of which” the relation itself is possible.
Your guy is alright; he’s just plowing up a field that already has a good crop on it. Progress, I suppose, but not necessarily an improvement.
Not for Heidegger, who follows Nietzsche here. The self is not autonomous for either of them.
“Philosophers tend to talk about the will as if it were the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, Schopenhauer would have us believe that the will is the only thing that is really familiar, familiar through and through, familiar without pluses or minuses. But I have always thought that, here too, Schopenhauer was only doing what philosophers always tend to do: adopting and exaggerating a popular prejudice. Willing strikes me as, above all, something complicated, something unified only in a word – and this single word contains the popular prejudice that has overruled whatever minimal precautions philosophers might take. “
“As far as the superstitions of the logicians are concerned: I will not stop emphasizing a tiny little fact that these superstitious men are loath to admit: that a thought comes when “it” wants, and not when “I” want. It is, therefore, a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks: but to say the “it” is just that famous old “I” – well that is just an assumption or opinion, to put it mildly, and by no means an “immediate certainty.” In fact, there is already too much packed into the “it thinks”: even the “it” contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself.”( Nietzsche)
Quoting Mww
They are not identical. The self is an action, a relation , a transition.
Quoting Mww
It depends on whether one thinks getting rid of the word ‘moral’ when talking about the psychological or philosophical structures of motivation, willand desire is an improvement. I agree with Nietzsche and Heidegger that it is. Why do you think the word ‘moral’ is necessary here?
No, the self is not autonomous; it being susceptible to a plethora of inclinations. Still, “an autonomous causality contained by the self” does not make the self autonomous.
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Quoting Joshs
That is only from a second-party speculation. The first-person subject acts without thinking himself an actor, relates without being the relation. Even if qualitatively or quantitatively transitioned to a modified self over time, the self as a whole retains its own identity.
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Quoting Joshs
The word “moral”, or some representation synonymous with it, is necessary in order to talk about the intrinsic duality of human nature. It cannot be an improvement, to negate that which represents an absolute necessity. To do so would require logical conclusions given by a theory in which humans are not intrinsically moral agents. And if that were the case, the fact that humans both think and feel would be refuted, or, be shown to be the same thing. The former being impossible, the latter being absurd, I should say.
The question is, is the self changed each moment of
time by its exposure to a world , or even to its own reflections? Is it always a slightly different self that comes back to itself moment to moment? ( See Galen Strawson on this) .If so, then we could say that the self retains its identity in a relative way over time, continuing to be itself differently, like an ongoing theme or style that never reproduces itself identically.
Quoting Mww
It is a hallmark of radically temporal models like that of Heidegger that thinking and feelings are shown to be inseparable aspects of the same process. This is the case with enactive and embodied cognitive approaches also. For them the idea of thinking divorced from feeling is incoherent. Feeling is the cradle within which cognition rests, and is what allows thought to ‘make sense’.
“ “...affect binds us to things, making them relevant and ‘lighting up' aspects of the world in such a way as to call forth actions and thoughts. Without the world-structuring orientation that they provide, we are disoriented, cut off from the world, which no longer solicits thoughts and actions and is consequently devoid of value. In effect, [William] James is saying that our very sense of reality is constituted by world-orienting feelings that bind us to things .” (Ratcliffe 2005)
This inseparability of feeling and thought reflects the overall fuctional unity of a self-organizing system, which lends it a valuative normativity in which it relates to and interprets it’s world via an anticipatory posture based on the relevance to its goals and aims. If you want to call this a ‘moral stance , it is a morality of pragmatic goal oriented sense making.
I don't know how one might split a now into a smaller now. Can you think of a way to split a point into a smaller point?
Quoting Joshs
I really don't understand what you're saying Joshs. If it's a series of lines rather than a continuous line then we are not talking about a continuity anymore. That's the point which Aristotle made. If before is distinct from after, as A is distinct from B, then there is necessarily a third thing which separates the two. That there is something else distinct from A and B which is intermediary between A and B, negates the possibility that A and B are a continuity.
Quoting Joshs
But that is not a continuity. In the case of a series of lines, each segment is different and distinct. So you cannot describe it as "same" again and again, each is different. A continuity composed of discrete units is incoherent as self-contradictory.
Quoting Joshs
We cannot equate magnitude with quantity, this should be obvious to you. Magnitude is what is measured, quantity is the measurement.
i agree, i cannot split now further is one whole thing
if you are one guy whole life, is now always the same ? you grow, go slimmer, fatter, change some personalities,.. you changed but still the same guy, is now always the same ? what do you think.
Aspects of the same process, perhaps, dunno. Depends on what the process is. I doubt the process is reason, however. But nonetheless, they are separable, insofar as one cannot cognize a feeling, and one cannot feel pain or pleasure over a mere thought. A feeling is a condition of the self, a thought is a condition of the content of the self. Feelings may or may not have objects that define the condition of the self, thinking always has objects given to it, or constructed by it, that define the content of self.
And the kicker....feelings do not permit, allow, facilitate, or make account of, knowledge. Thinking alone is responsible for all our knowledge.
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Quoting Joshs
How does a self come back to itself? Where did it go, how did it separate, such that coming back is intelligible?
That I realize I have different content in consciousness now than before doesn’t mean I am not myself because of it. The self necessarily changes pursuant to experience, but all experiences belong to a single self. It is never a consideration which “I” thinks or feels this and which other “I” thinks or feels that. And by the same token, it is never a consideration that one “I” thinks this yet another “I” feels this.
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Quoting Joshs
What affect is implied here? I grant an affect that binds us to things, but I suspect of a different nature.
Tell me how you would define or explain what a magnitude is to somebody who was unfamiliar with the concept. How does one make it comprehensible without invoking a multiplicity of a certain type , a continuous succession that differs from a randomly changing flow in a specific way.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What I am trying to get at here is that whether we are talking about a continuity or your example of a non-continuous succession in the form of something that separates the before from the after, in each case we have examples of a unified totality. A continuity is a unified totality, a succession of change that, like in the example of physical movement of an object, is a variation of a particular sort. If I move a marble from here to there and describe the path in terms of a continuous linear trajectory , notice how this flow of change is different from my me telling you to now imagine a rock, then a movie you saw, then tell you to look at your finger. There is constant change here but no continuity , no enduring identity like in the example of continuous motion. Also notice that even through the continuity is. it itself divided up , it is in the nature of this continuity that it less itself to measurement.
Now let’s look at before, after and the third thing that separates them. Can we talk about this structure in terms of an enduring pattern that stretches indefinitely , or infinitely long? However long we define the duration of this pattern of repeated before, during and after, notice that the pattern as a whole is a unity, a self-identical object, even though it is composed of a non-continuous sequence of events. Furthermore , the events which make up this non-continuous series are countable, allowing us to say that such and such a process took a certain number of minutes. So in both examples , the behavior is explained in terms of an identical totality , an objectively present whole.
For Heidegger, time cannot be counted or measured because it is not an objectively present series of before after and during. And it is not a continuity akin to the behavior of a moving object.
I can't grasp the comparison because a now is like a point, while a person is a thing. There;s a categorical difference here.
Quoting Joshs
A magnitude is anything measurable, it is size. As such, a magnitude is one single thing to be measured. But the measurement of the thing is expressed as a quantity of units of measure, and this invokes a multiplicity. So a magnitude is one, but a measurement of that magnitude is a multiplicity. If we say that a unit of measure is itself a magnitude, this is one unit of measure, not a multiplicity.
Quoting Joshs
The point I was making is that there is no "unified totality" in this portrayal. If before is separated from after, in the way described, then it is impossible that these two are unified. That which is divided is not unified. Note that the portrayal is not of the potential for division, or divisibility, it is of an actual division between before and after. So if it is a succession, it is a succession of distinct things, and nothing to make them unified except that they are understood under the precepts of "one order". The order, being potentially infinite, is not necessarily a totality.
Quoting Joshs
The two examples are clearly distinct, but this is the incompatibility I referred to. If you represent the "continuous linear trajectory" of the marble, as being at point A at time 1, and point B at time 2, and so on, then you have the same problem of change without continuity. What happens to the marble between A and B? We say it "moves". But to have the continuity, we need to account for the movement. If we posit a point halfway between A and B, and half the time, we still don't account for the movement, because we might still ask how the marble gets from A to this point, and the answer is that it moves. So we might divide infinitely, and we still would have the movement actually occurring between the points, and the actual movement would never be accounted for, despite invoking an infinity of points to plot the trajectory.
This is the same issue as the incompatibility between the point and the line. Any line segment might be represented as an infinity of points. But an infinity of points does not produce a continuous line. The line is always what occurs between the points. So despite the assumption of an infinite number of points in a finite line segment, the line itself, which is what lies between the points, is never accounted for..
Quoting Joshs
Like I explained above, the only thing which allows us to say that these separate entities are unified, or are a unity, is that they are of one order. But then the unity is in the order, and if the order is allowed to be infinite, or "stretches indefinitely", there is no whole. So there is no self-identical object, just an order. If it were "an object", the order would be constrained within the defined boundaries of that object.
Quoting Joshs
In other words, Heidegger describes time as absolutely unintelligible, i.e., outside the limits of intelligibility. What point is there to that?
Have you read any Damasio? He has had a major impact on models of affectivity and their relation to thinking and reasoning.
“Damasio claims that science, like philosophy, has historically paid too little attention to emotion, regarding it as something distinct from and additional to the structures and processes that comprise human cognition.In contrast to this picture, Damasio argues that the machinery of intelligence and reasoning is not only built upon the machinery of emotion but also from within it. The psychological correlate of this neurological organisation is that emotions constitute a kind of cradle within which cognition rests. Any neurological damage to the working of emotions therefore has a profound effect on human reasoning, which essentially takes place relative to a background of moods and emotions.”
“… there are cases where emotional impairment is reliably coupled with a catastrophic failure of practical reasoning. Neurological studies of the damage suggest that this coupling is no coincidence. A complex of intimately connected structures are involved, as opposed to distinct brain systems involved in distinct tasks that are coincidentally damaged together. On the basis of such studies, Damasio proposes that emotions play a central role in the cognitive processes that guide choices and ensure that we choose effectively.”
Quoting Mww
Every word you wrote above was chosen for a purpose , for its relevance in the context of the argument you are trying to advance. So each word is two things at once. It conveys a conceptual content , a ‘what’, and it conveys a relevance, a significance , the ‘how’ of the way it matters to you in the context of the larger argument. This mattering and relevance is the affective or ‘feeling’ aspect of thought. Things are meaningful to us because of how we care about them. We always have some attitude toward the objects of our experience. Things are important, boring , engaging, frightening, enraging. So we do ‘cognize’ feeling, in that built into a cognition is why it matters to us just now. If I say
I see a train’ there is always some affective subtext to the sentence. The meaning of the sentence could
include excitement over who is on the train, or disappointment , or trepidation. It is never devoid of some affective attitude or comportment. And this comportment isn’t peripheral to or separable from the supposedly pure definition of the words in the sentence. It belongs intrinsically to what they are trying to say.
I’m talking about what is included in our concept when we use a word like magnitude. It may refer to one unit of measure, but when it does, built into its meaning is a multiplicity. If it didnt imply a relation to multiplicity , then there would be no point in saying ‘this is a magnitude’, rather than ‘this is a something’. Even saying ‘this is one unit’ implies multiplicity , because the concept of unit is incoherent without implicit reference to measure. It is one unit OF measure.
I understand the distinction you’re making between a quantity of units and magnitude as one unit , but both of those concepts fuse multiplicity and singularity ( in different ways) when we invoke either of them. The first concept involves a multiplicity OF singularities , the second a unit abstracted off from a multiplicity. But if we think ONLY the single something we are not thinking the concept of magnitude.
And of course I didn’t mention that it is not just multiplicity that belongs to the concept of magnitude whenever we think it , it is NUMERIC multiplicity. If numeric multiplicity isnt part of the concept of magnitude as we invoke it , then we are not thinking of a magnitude but a part.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is this order I’m referring to with the name totality. What I mean here is that an order is a category of meaning. Motion, for example , is a category of sense. The behavior of motion can be potentially infinite , but the concept of motion , as a category , is bounded by its definition. It is a totality , or better yet, the category is a finite entity, as are all categories of meaning.
If we substitute the order of time for the order of motion, we have the same situation. Within the category of time, we can talk about an infinity, but the category of time itself is finite , it is a single concept.
This might all seem obvious as well as irrelevant to the issue we began with concerning Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle, but if time for Aristotle is built on the model of either motion or magnitude , then numeric multiplicity is intrinsic to the invocation of the concept of time , just as we saw with the concept of magnitude.
Imagine an infinitely long freight train passing by your window. Each car is loaded with something different. From your window you can only see a single
car. So from your window of ‘now’ it appears as
though there is only ever the same car but with always changing contents. If you choose to you can count these changing items, and you can count changes in the rate of change if you like.
So if I understand correctly, Aristotle has two concepts of time , time as continuity and time as discrete measurable changes. Each concept of time by itself is necessary but not sufficient. Both are needed.
If I have this right , then what Heidegger is objecting to is time as measurable succession. His notion of authentic temporality is not an order that allows for potential measurement of a ‘how much’ or ‘how long’ or ‘how fast’.
That doesn’t mean he denies we makes these measurements , only that such ways of treating time are modifications of a more fundamental experience of it.
Do you think of Kant and Heidegger as psychologists?
What I tried to explain, is that I really don't agree with your way of conflating singularity and multiplicty within both, the thing measured, and the measurement. There is no multiplicity implied by, or "built into" the meaning of "magnitude'. The magnitude is always one, as the thing which is measured, and the multiplicity is of the units of measure. So the thing measured might be measured by a countless number of different types of units of measurement, such that the measurement of the thing might be numerous different multiplicities, but that is strictly a property of the measurement. The magnitude itself cannot be more than one, or else the thing being measured would be distinct magnitudes, and this is contradictory.
It is clear to me that when you refer to "NUMERIC multiplicity", you are referring to the measurement of the magnitude, not the magnitude itself. Magnitude is a property of a thing, which a thing has regardless of whether or not it has been measured, while the numeric multiplicity is a property of the measurement. Since the magnitude is a property of the thing, it is one, as the thing is one., despite the fact that the magnitude might be measured in many different ways. The "many different ways" is proper to the measuring, not to the magnitude.
Quoting Joshs
This looks mistaken to me as well. We can define something as unbounded, "infinite", like the natural numbers. So defining does not necessitate "bounded". Likewise, a defined thing is not necessarily "a totality", because a thing might be defined as incomplete. What this indicates is that your definition of "definition" is somewhat faulty. A definition does not necessarily create something bounded, nor does it necessarily produce a totality. This is important because it is the only way that we can have concepts of things like "infinite", and "incomplete". In order to have real concepts of these, we need to allow that the definitions actually produce something (a concept) unbounded, or incomplete. so for example, if we are to conceive of motion as "potentially infinite", we must provide something within the definition of "motion", which will allow that motion has some freedom from being bounded, and this is a feature of the definition. So as much as boundaries may be created by definitions, a lack of boundaries is also created by definitions. A deprivation in terms of boundary is often seen as an imperfection, or incompleteness in a concept. But it is sometimes intentional to a concept, depending on what is seen as useful for the intended application.
Quoting Joshs
So I don't see how this could be the case. If the category of "time" is defined as an infinite category, then the category of time is not finite. Whether the category is finite or infinite depends on the definition.
Quoting Joshs
I completely disagree. I think it is wrong to think that multiplicity is intrinsic to magnitude. I think it is very clear that "one" is intrinsic to magnitude. A magnitude is necessarily one, otherwise we'd have to say that there is a multiplicity of "magnitudes". And it would be contradictory to say that both one and many are intrinsic to a magnitude. The numeric multiplicity you refer to is produced by the act of measuring, and is a property of the measurement not of the magnitude.
And this is exactly what Aristotle explains concerning our conception of time. We need to distinguish "time" as a tool of measurement, in which case it is a multiplicity of units of measure, from "time" as the thing (analogous to magnitude) which is measured, in which case it is one undivided continuum, therefore not a multiplicity.
Quoting Joshs
This analogy doesn't work. Either you see separate cars going by, with the boundaries between them, or if the train were fast enough, you would see a blur, not seeing any cars. Never would it appear like the train is just one car. And if you could see the contents of the cars, the same thing would be the case, either separate cars with distinct content, or a blur.
To count "changing items" is no different from counting distinct cars. You need to be able to distinguish between them. And if it's a blur, you cannot do that. You'd be just throwing numbers at the train with no justification for your supposed "count".
Quoting Joshs
You do not seem, yet, to be distinguishing between the count, and the thing counted. This distinction is the one Aristotle based his two senses of "time" on. Each is a very distinct conception of "time" Here's an example which might clarify. Suppose that from the point in time that the sun rises, until that point again, constitutes "one day". We can employ "one day" as a unit of measurement, and compare how many days it takes for an occurring event. Notice that "time" in this sense, as a tool of measurement, must consist of points of reference (sunrise in this example), or else it cannot be employed for measurement. So whenever we use time to measure with, hours, days, seconds, or whatever, we employ points of reference, that's what a clock does, counts cycles or whatever. Now consider that the passing of time is an actual thing which we want to measure. Time seems to go by continuously without any inherent points of reference by which we might measure it. All those points of reference which we employ when using time to measure. are really derived from the motions of things, not from the passing of time itself. So "time" in the sense of something that is measured has no real points of reference, and the points which we use to measure time are referenced from recurring motions.
No doubt. See it in the ‘papers all the time, in one form or another. At the community level, guy beats the crap out of his wife because he thought she was being a naughty girl. At the individual level, seller raises the price of something, not because its value increased, but merely because the buyer looks rich.
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Quoting Joshs
Yes, these have been called aesthetic judgements. But in such case, the judgement presupposes the thought, hence is not as much an aspect of it as a consequence. Otherwise, judgements with respect to conceptual relevance, are either called discursive.
Looking out the window, you see a car go by.....the car, in its passing alone, incites no emotion in you. Seen one car go by, seen ‘em all. No big deal. Only when some particular cognition about some particular car, or in some extraordinary happenstance involving that particular range of perceptions in general, does emotion arise. Can’t get all excited about a Ferrari Testorosa, without there first being one, right? Even the emotion of hoping to see one presupposes you’ve already cognized which object to hope for.
Quoting Joshs
Two things at once, I think not. Any word conveys a conceptual content, insofar as words are nothing but representations of concepts, to begin with. It follows that my understanding of the context of the argument should determine the words I chose in response to it, such that the one maintains consistency with the other. So yes, I choose words for a purpose.....dialectical consistency given from understanding.....but the “how” of the way it matters, is already explicit in the choice. Without the consistencies, there are logical fallacies, which are exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself.
The argument herein, concerns itself with the separability of, not the integral compatibility between, feelings and thoughts.
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I’m familiar with Damasio, but he’s not dead, so I haven’t studied him. He is certainly highly credentialed, gotta credit him for that, but he’s also a psychologist, so....take points away for that. And.......“Neural Correlates in Gratitude”? Really? When was the last time you consulted your neurons? For anything?
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Quoting Joshs
Late-modern models, perhaps. Some early-modern philosophical models disregard psychology as a discipline, and deny it altogether as a science**. It’s easy to look back and say a philosopher had psychological underpinnings even if he didn’t know it. But that’s like saying Newton might have developed Special Relativity if only he had access to faster transportation than the horse.
** “....There does not then exist any rational psychology as a doctrine furnishing any addition to our knowledge of ourselves. (...) From all this it is evident that rational psychology has its origin in a mere misunderstanding....”
(CPR B421, 422)
Anyway....couple cents for the collection plate.
At even the simplest level of perceptual recognition , affectivity plays a central role. What allows us to notice, to pay attention to a stimulus in the first place is the way that it stands out for us against a background of other events or activities we are involved in. We notice what draws our interest, which is an affective phenomenon, and is dependent on my expectations and goals based on my prior experiences. If I am completely engaged in a conversation I may be looking right at the car and not even ‘notice’ it.
Something about it must draw me away from what I am involved in. When I do look at the car , my eyes will
be drawn to what is most interesting to me about the image I am seeing, such as the color or style. My eyes roam over the object already searching for aspects that matter to me. The very fact that I see a concatenation of disparate bits of stimulation as a single
object like a ‘car’ is due to my having constructed the object as a singularity, my intending the unity, and this intending is an interest in having my expectations of unity confirmed.I am motivated to construe a multiplicity of changing perceptions as a single ‘thing’ . This fundamental motivating principle is the desire for predictive validation. We are patten seekers, motivated by sense making.
Every object I see either fulfills or fails to confirm my prior expectations in some measure. This validation or invalidation is felt, and the feeling doesn’t follow the perception , it is simultaneous with it. Interacting with our world isnt simply a subject staring at objects. It is a constructive activity in which we anticipate forward into the world and objects reveal themselves
to us as responses to the way we reach out to them via our expectations. This is as true of experiences of things we have never seen before as it is of familiar things. We consider our everyday engagement with objects to be devoid of affect in themselves because the sorts of fulfillments and lack of fulfillment of expectations that
moment to moment recognition of objects involved
is so subtle as to go unnoticed as anything we could
calll affective. We must seem to encounter affectively neutral things , and from time to time an emotion. comes welling up after the fact as a judgement about our attitude toward things or people or situations. But the affects are the mortar that builds the very things we take as affect-less.
Quoting Mww
Words don’t just represent content , they enact it. What you are missing here is that words dont just throw out what we have already learned. The are a bridge between our past usage of the word and the current context. When we use a word we reinvent its sense in some small
measure. But this si t something we control , any
ore than we control how our expectations and something we perceive , like a car, combine or price a fulfillment of that expectation or a surprise or something in between.
We dont simply choose what we think or say. What occurs to us to say is already shaped and conditioned by the context. It is ‘affected’
by the always fresh way in which it is used. We are always slightly surprised by what we thought we had simply ‘chosen’ to say.
This is a fair sample of your approach, I think.
The question is whether "fulfills" is fully describable in conceptual terms such as @Mww would use, sans affect.
You expect something, for reasons describable in affective terms -- even for Hume -- something about goals and preferences maybe, what *matters* to you. Then action and new data.
That the feeling of success or failure is "simultaneous", that's a tough sell, but suppose it's true: does that mean you have a double response to new input? One conceptual and one affective? Or is it two aspects of a single response?
It still looks like @Mww can grant whatever you want on the affective side, since goals and preferences get updated too, but he can also stick with the conceptual side and it alone being cognitive.
So long as affect is just something that accompanies or directs cognition, even if it always does so, @Mww can ignore it for his analysis of cognition. You have to destroy the presumed conceptual apparatus, or make affect constitutive of it, to make what you're saying more than psychological obiter dicta.
There are two ways of doing this. We can take the phenomenological route , and make affect and cognition two aspects of a single act. Heidegger and a few other do this , by making the content of a perceived or cognized meaning secondary to the organizational dynamics relating it to the cognizing subject. The meaningfulness of objects of experience is much more a function of how intricately it is assimilated to our pre-existing ways of anticipating events than its ‘intrinsic’ content.
Or we can make them entangled so tightly in a reciprocally causal manner that neither can be observed to act alone. Embodied cognitive approaches do the latter
“...emotions play a role in constraining and structuring the realm of explicit deliberation, restricting deliberation to a small number of options and structuring patterns of reasoning, so that we remain focused and relevant in our activities, able to act towards goals without becoming distracted by trivia. Thus emotions and feelings serve to constrain and focus our attention, so that we only consider from a pre-structured set of options. Damasio's (1995, 1996) more specific hypothesis is that emotions are cognitively mediated body states. He christens this theory the “somatic marker hypothesis”. The idea is that somatic (body) signals are associated with perceptual stimuli, either as a result of innate or learned neural connections, and thus “mark” those stimuli. Different perceptions can be associated with various kinds of body states, which may serve as alarm signals or, alternatively, as enticing invitations. According to Damasio, a complex of such signals focuses and structures our cognitive interactions with the world. Once we incorporate complex learned associations between perceptions and body states, a vast web of somatic markers can develop. These signals serve to eliminate certain possibilities, which feel bad, from a choice set and focus deliberation upon other feel good signals. Thus cognition is constrained, enabled and structured by a background of emotion-perception correlations, that manifest themselves as a changing background of implicit representations of body states.”(Ratcliffe 2002)
But Kant, for instance, isn't telling a causal story about cognition.
Quoting Joshs
And that story isn't open to experimental disconfirmation. If Damasio's theory doesn't hold up in the lab, you have to change your tune, but Kant can ignore the whole process.
Kant’s metaphysics is telling a causal
story. It s simply grounding that causality in a certain idealistic structure. I would say that the embodied account of affect also relies on a set of deep conceptual assumptions that ground its version of reciprocal
causality. You could say it’s Kant infused with Husserl.
Huh.
From here it looks like there is, for you, no real distinction between philosophy and psychology, or you take philosophy to be a sort of ‘theoretical psychology’, as we talk about ‘theoretical physics’, meaning ‘not quite ready for the lab’.
Odd place for this thread to end up...
Every object I perceive, not just see. Prior expectation is a euphemism for intuition. Fulfills exceptions implies understanding, in which case intuition conforms to the object; fails to fulfill expectations implies either a misunderstanding, in which case the intuition does not conform to the object, or no understanding at all, in which case there wasn’t any intuition to which the object could conform.
Quoting Joshs
This validation is understood, and it is not simultaneous. It takes time for information to get rom sensory apparatus to dedicated areas of the brain responsible or interpreting it. It seems simultaneous to the conscious system, merely because the transit time is not part of that human consciousness/cognitive system, just as neural connections are not.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, and from one perspective, bears the post-Enlightenment name, the “Copernicus Revolution”, given from an Enlightenment philosophy that never used the name. Although, not by extending our expectations, but enforcing our constructive activity as a system, onto those objects in the world we perceive empirically, or possibly perceive a priori.
Quoting Joshs
Absolutely. The system works the same with either the familiar for the unfamiliar.
Quoting Joshs
Agreed, but there is no irreducible reason why we should implicate emotion as that affect. If affect is the purely physical impression on physical sensory apparatus, there are no affect-less things, but there are things to which we pay little conscious attention. If the same system is in play for the familiar as the unfamiliar, wouldn’t the more pertinent question be....how is it that we are permitted to not pay attention to the familiar, then how it is that we are affected by them both? The value in that question, is that it eliminates the affect itself, because it is always given empirically (there are no affect-less things), in favor of a more descriptive theory on the method by which we pay attention.
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Quoting Joshs
Ok fine. A word represents a conceptual content, and strings of words logically assembled also represents the relation of conceptual contents to each other. “Tree” is a word for a conceptual content relating to a manifold of objects of a certain kind; “A tree with broad leaves and funny lookin’ seeds” as a string of logically assembled representations, relates particular conceptions to each other in order, first, to conceive a particular object of that kind (an unfamiliar experience), or second, to judge a extant conception as non-contradictory (a familiar experience). The first manifests as, “Ahhh, so that’s an oak tree, huh?”. The second manifests as, “That tree is an oak, not an elm”.
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Quoting Joshs
Shaped and conditioned by experience empirically, or by logic a priori.
(To-may-toe/to-mah-toe; speculative metaphysics/ordinary language)
Quoting Joshs
Which presupposes there is always a fresh way to use a word. But some words, the representation of some conceptions, have a single use, re: any number, or the representation of any mathematical operator. The categories. I grant there is a shaped context for “twelve”, but I reject the premise that we don’t simply choose “twelve”, when in fact we must, “twelve” being the only conception we could choose, that doesn’t lead to contradictions for any of its contexts.
Quoting Joshs
Simply chosen to say. You mean, simply chosen without a reason? Dunno how we can choose anything without a reason. If we have to have a reason for choosing, we don’t simply choose. Yeah, I suppose we would be surprised to find we didn’t simply choose after all.
I don’t object to your thesis in general. It is a well-thought modernization, predicated on scientific stuff subject to empirical verification.
Quoting Joshs
If the human cognitive system is inherently logical, then it follows that the pre-structured set of options abide by logical predicates, our attention being necessarily constrained by them. While emotions do indeed serve a purpose, it isn’t in service to our conscious attention. Emotions serve our aesthetic judgements, having to do only with the condition of the thinking subject, whether a thing feels right/wrong or feels good/bad, whether or not it is right or good or not, but not that to which the subject attends, the thing that must be either right/wrong or good/bad.
Feelings/cognitions are nothing but another inescapable duality intrinsic to the human condition. Even if humans operate under the influence of both, that is not to say they are inseparable from each other.
:lol:
Damn man, you're firing on all cylinders today. Reread Allais' interpretation of Kant - the best one there is currently. It's very interesting.
As for 'being', either we're employing a very general word with rather vague conceptions, or we use it in a technical sense meaning something particular. To say that everything has being is a bit like saying everything is. OK.
I now suspect an ontology only arises within the context of one's studies and can't be generalized to everything, without losing consistency in some other sub-system.
Anyway, interesting exchange with Joshs.
Bullseye!!!
Feelings about an object are possible without the affect on the senses of it; cognition of an object is possible without the affect on the senses of it. Experience of an object is possible without the affect of it on emotions, but is impossible without its affect on the senses.
Feelings and cognitions are irrefutably separable, not because of affects they have, but that upon which the affects are directed.
I’m honestly thinking of changing teams though. The preferences & expectations (our old friends, passions and reason) model has run its course for me. Anyway, I’m in the mood to try something else.
I also think that to think the something else is a kind of psychology misses the point entirely!
I don’t have a position to defend, though, so I can learn more by listening.
“...a miserable tautology...”; “....a lame appeal to logical argument....”; “.....recourse to pitiful sophisms....”.
Back in the day, intellectuals chastised each other for reaching too far, as exemplified by the quotes above, and the common folk didn’t even know about it. These days, scientists glorify themselves in reaching as far as they can, but this time, the common folk don’t care. Either way, it boils down to the common man, which is fitting in that there are a hellava lot more of us then them, so it just seems the greater theoretical speculations ought to center on us than anything else.
A cruel circumstance indeed, methinks, that the very thing which ought to be the center of investigation, is the very thing Nature has made virtually impossible for science to arrive at empirical proofs for them.
So we end up in a situation where science is stymied empirically, which leaves us asking stupid questions of each other, like.....is Mt. Mordor a thing that is? Does Popeye exist? Where does “red” come from? Answered by.....yep, you guessed it.....miserable tautology, lame appeals, and pitiful sophisms, aaannnnndddddd.....we’re right back where we started.
(Dismounts transcendental soapbox, exists stage right)
Philosopher: I’ll tell you how I think, do with it as you will.
Psychologist: I’ll tell you how you think, do with it as you should.
Stereotypical opinionated mischaracterization, perhaps, but exemplifies the point I think is missed.
Frank Ramsey’s version (I think he was talking about aesthetics, but it’s tempting to apply it, shall we say, more broadly):
But there’s a serious question here: what does it mean for a philosophical point to depend on a matter of fact?
One answer, and I have some sympathy with this answer, as I think we all should, is that you must be doing science not philosophy because philosophy is a priori. Some of us may not really want to say the last part out loud, but it’s there nonetheless. That way of putting it distinguishes philosophy positively, but in our time I think it is mainly understood negatively: whatever the methodology of philosophy is or could be, it’s clearly not the same as whatever scientists do — whether we’re happy to call that particular ‘not the same’ a priori or not.
Another answer is that we don’t have the option of starting from nothing. Something is given to us as we begin doing philosophy, whether that’s a conceptual scheme, or a language, or something else. We can think of ourselves as studying that, or we can think of it as where the hermeneutic process just happens to begin. Austin, for example, is explicit about this, when he says that ordinary language may not be the last word but it must be the first. Philosophy has to begin not at the beginning but in the middle.
But there’s one more answer, and that’s to note that we already know what’s in the second answer. We know that we will begin from something given to us, whatever that is, and we can spend a little time thinking not just about that — not focused only on our categories, our concepts, or our language, say — but also about this given-ness, and this process by which we take an initial understanding and transform it into another, something we are evidently unable to avoid. If you notice that this very process is itself given, then you close the loop and have found something really worth thinking about. Above all what’s given, as we begin doing philosophy, is that we will start somewhere and go on from there.
That has something of the flavor of an a priori investigation about it; it doesn’t sound like empirical science. But on the other hand, everything I’ve said points at what we could reasonably think of as facts: that something is given, that we start somewhere, that we know we do, and so on. That’s a curious thing, then, that in one sense this approach is as dependent as could be on fact but not dependent in the way empirical science is.
That’s my pitch for what I understand to be Heidegger’s pitch for phenomenological ontology. Sounds to me like it’s worth a shot.
Yeah. Even in questions which we could make some progress or elucidate the topics, it will only appeal to very few people. I have in mind something like Schopenhauer's will or Descartes dualism. One can give arguments for or against these things, but not many people care.
I suppose some do like the basics of physics, atoms, black holes and the like. But much else is just not very relevant to the common man.
No matter how you slice it, this here is a minority game. Yep, nature loves to be a big tease. I don't know why, not like she cares.
But we do, and not just philosophers. People do care about and want to understand their own lives and their world. Philosophy can be understood not as an obscure academic enterprise, but as one way of doing that. Art is another. Trying to be a good person or a good neighbor or a good citizen, those are others.
Not for nothing, but Heidegger specifically notes that understanding is something we chase, that nature seems to be teasing us, that it’s as if ‘the answer’ is hiding from us, and he makes that a central component of the analysis.
Ramsey again:
[hide="The rest, just because."][/hide]
Philosophy must be drawn in perspective. Kant and Heidegger each in their own way are exploring that this is so and why and what it means for the doing of philosophy as a way of caring about and trying to understand yourself and your world.
I had in mind ontology and metaphysics, not so much general worldly affairs. In that respect, who we are, what's going to happen, what should I do and so on, well yes, a lot of people are interested in that.
When we speak about the foundations of knowledge or of objects, then the topic becomes one of reduced interest: "pointless questions", "naval gazing", etc.
People do have a general curiosity yes, but I think that, given the capacities we have to understand the universe to some extent, it is not appreciated nearly enough. Then again, we are all different and I get that.
I agree with the answer, with the caveat that even the a priori has no business conflicting with, or leading to conflicts with, Mother Nature Herself. It is the case that the scientific method, and most decent philosophical theories, are all grounded in observations of the world, which guides us in determining how She wishes to be known.
With respect to the question, simply put, philosophical points depend on matters of fact for their empirical proofs, but not in the least does philosophy depend on facts for its constructions. Such constructed points depend on logic grounded in rules, not facts, those coming into play in the proofs themselves, re: whether or not the constructions contradict observation.
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Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think it’s there, too, despite the attempts to prove there’s no such thing.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Absolutely. Philosophy seeks the unconditioned, the irreducible, the beginning, so it cannot start there.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, empirically, we are given objects in the world. Rationally, we are given the capacity to think....
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
....just like that.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Hmmm....is it correct to say, then, that Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology is a priori?
Good stuff, overall.
What to you say about the adage that not everybody does philosophy, but everybody has one?
We have two meanings of the word "philosophy", perhaps unfortunately. There's the traditional meaning going back to the Greeks, which many people here are concerned about.
Then there's this whole "philosophy" meaning "what you think about the world" as when a person asks another "what's your philosophy on this situation? or "At Johnnie Walker our philosophy is that..."
Everyone has the latter one, much fewer the traditional meaning. So the adage is true, with the said qualification.
Suits me.
Does this separation between emotion and cognition mean that one can imagine a person in whom emotions are absent, who is still able to function cognitively, still able to reason? Would this person be like Mr Spock or Data? Would they make rational , non-emotional judgements? Would they be motivated purely by reason?
You say that to which the subject attends is separate from emotion. Let’s remove emotion from the equation for a moment , since it’s connotation as florid and intense response is not what I want to focus on. Rather , I want to focus on feeling as not just simple sensation but as intrinsic to the aesthetic judgments you described above. So you are arguing that we can extract the meaning of a word concept that is independent of all feelings that may accompany our experience of that word.
Wittgenstein says that we only ever actually experience a word in its contextual use. That means it is always a different sense of the meaning of that word which we experience in any given situation. What this means is that the use of the word isnt something additional to its
own intrinsic meaning.He means ther is no intrinsic meaning to a word apart from its sense ( usage). So how and why it matters to us is the very essence of its meaning. If you are claiming that this pragmatic mattering and relevance is the province of feeling, and feeling can be separated from cognition, then you would seem to be disagreed with Wittgenstein about the relation between mattering-use and the intrinsic meaning of word concepts.
Sure. I can imagine a person void of emotion but still able to reason, make rational judgements. I wouldn’t expect a hearty “Howdy, neighbor!” from him, though.
But being void of emotion has no bearing on having both emotion and reason, yet limiting each to a particular use.
Yes, he would be motivated by reason generally, but being void of emotion, he would have no use for pure practical reason. In effect, it could be said he was void of pure practical reason and that’s why he had no emotions. There was nothing to inform him of what his emotions should be. Or it could just as well be that he had no emotion so there was nothing on which practical reason could exert itself. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Further indication of the separability of reason, or more properly, rationality, and emotion, in that they are governed by different kinds of reason.
Hellava rabbit hole we got goin’ here. Ain’t it fun??? Interesting?
This edit may not have come through before you wrote your last reply.
Quoting Joshs
Keeping my additional comments from the edit in mind , let’s analyze this hypothetical ‘person without feelings’.
How does a reason motivate if that reason is not a value, and how can it be a value if it is not based on an affectively felt sense? What motivates an ought, a desire, a goal of reason? What makes reason reasonable? What makes one care about being reasonable? I saw affectivity and feeling in every moment of Mr Spock’s behavior, his intricate adjustment of orientation to constantly changing contexts of meaning indicating not a single pre-programmed frame of logical norms but an ever shifting basis for logical rules. This is the affective dimension, the unpre-determined re-framing of logical frames as a function of contextual change.
It’s at least partly correct:
But what do we mean by ‘a priori’? What did Kant mean? What does Heidegger mean here?
The way we got into this was the question of the relationship between philosophy and psychology. It’s a question I have been puzzled about for a very long time. Part of what Heidegger means here is that philosophy is not a kind of anthropology or psychology. What does that mean?
Science, as I understand it, sees the world as a result. An explanation of why people behave as they do, or why trees grow and die as they do, or why there are galaxies with stars and planets, provides a framework that, given some input (cosmology is a bit different), predicts that we will observe what we observe. That’s one sort of understanding, what we might call ‘genetic’, how the world comes to be as it is. Insofar as you do this sort of thing in philosophy, you are doing proto-science.
The other possibility could be summed up by a phrase from Wittgenstein’s great burst of a priori thinking: “The world as I found it.” Eventually he will say, in so many words, that philosophy must strive for pure description and nothing theoretical. Phenomenology pursued a sort of pure description. In working through his troubled relationship with Kant, Strawson hit upon the phrase “descriptive metaphysics” to summarize his own project of keeping the ‘good bits’ of Kant. What all such descriptive projects have in common is the idea that we may theorize the world as a result, as science does, but we do not find the world as a result.
It’s mildly paradoxical that pure description lands in the not-empirical-science bucket where we find a priori theorizing, since description must be description, you know, of something, and that means of something already encountered or experienced or cognized. But insofar as you describe not this or that encounter of something in the world, but the nature of all such encounters, then I guess that’s what we take ourselves to mean by ‘a priori’. And that’s very much what Heidegger is up to: before you can do the sort of ontology he attributes to Kant, as a way of grounding the natural sciences, you need to write “The world I find myself in”.
Technically, I’m arguing from a point where words are irrelevant. To feel and to think is not to speak. To speak is to convey, or report, feeling and thinking. That said, I can dissect your comment this way:
1.).....I experience a word you say when I hear it: cyclotron;
.........Assuming no distinguishing mannerisms, no uncharacteristic inflection or intentional mispronunciation, I immediately assign no feeling to that word, and I immediately have no understanding of any feeling you may or may not have, not conjoined with the saying of the word;
.........I immediately intuit an object. I intuit a certain object if I already know what the word I heard represents, or I do not intuit a certain object, but merely a something of which I have no experience;
.........I have now extracted the meaning of the word iff I already know the object to which it relates, or, I have not extracted the meaning of the word if I don’t. All and either without the invocation of any feeling whatsoever.
2.) .....I experience a word you say when I hear it: HALLELOO-YAHHH!!!!!
..........Given a distinguishing mannerism, I immediately understand you have invoked a feeling antecedent to the saying of it, but I have no understanding of what that feeling is from the mere experience of the word;
..........I do not intuit an object for this word, insofar as there are no objects known to me that I represent to myself with that word;
..........I do not extract any meaning of the word, because it doesn’t relate to the intuition of an object, but I do understand it represents some feeling in general of yours not given in me by the word itself.
All rather moot, in that I seldom experience a single word, but if I do, that’s how it works in me.
3.)....I experience words you say when I hear it contained in a sentence: Cyclotrons are found in the root wad of aspen trees;
........I immediately intuit a plurality of objects all in relation to each other, either I know one, another, several, all or none;
........If I know all the objects, I immediately intuit a necessary contradiction, insofar as my knowledge of these objects never has conjoined them to each other; if I only know any single one of the objects I immediately intuit a possible contradiction. If I know none of the objects I intuit nothing but a manifold of objects with no cognizable relation to each other at all, even with a full experience of the sentence I heard you say;
.........I now may or may not have extracted a meaning for the words representing my intuition of a group of objects represented by the words I heard in the sentence, but only to the degree by which they conform to my knowledge of each of them AND my understanding of the possible relations between them.
If I ever invoke a feeling of any kind with respect to these examples, it is only and always a non-fallacious post hoc ergo proper hoc sequential possibility. There is no innate necessity for invoking feelings onto that which I may or may not understand or of which I may or may not have knowledge.
So.....the argument follows that because it is sometimes evident that people do assign feelings to words, even if under some specific technicality they can’t, then people usually assign feelings to words and are merely not aware they are doing it. Of course, this major premise only holds water if there is a specific technical authority that affirms it with stronger conclusions then the negation.
————-
Quoting Joshs
It should be clear I do not claim the mattering and relevance of words is the province of feeling. It is the province of rationality, cognition, understanding, under the umbrella of reason.
Quoting Joshs
I don’t think so. To “only ever actually experience a word” is to treat it as a mere object, by which we first perceive it, then subject the word to the cognitive process, resulting in the experience of it. Shown above are two examples of the experience of a word that doesn’t even have a contextual use. Better to say understanding of a word is in its contextual use, at least in juxtaposition to experience of it, insofar as experience of a word as mere object doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. Hence.....dictionaries.
99% of the time people understand each other simply because they use words the same way, which makes explicit they have assigned words common to them, to conceptions common to them, which presupposes understandings common to them. From then on, it is experience alone, the end game of reason itself, that tells one guy, when he hears another guy say, “I saw a boat”, that he probably, but not necessarily, means he perceived one and not that he might take a tool to it in order to cut it up. Experience tells the same guy when he hears another guy say, “I saw a log” that he either perceived a log, or, he is actually going to cut it up. In each of these cases, the experience of the word “saw” in its respective statement is exactly the same, which makes explicit use and/or context in conjunction with experience is insufficient for non-contradictory mutual understanding. It cannot be otherwise, for the context from which the word is spoken is not included in the word is it is received by the listener.
At the end of the day, is correct, in that few people care about this stuff. Language has become so prevalent in this smaller-world, technologically advanced human community, in its structure, meaning and use, that the source of it has become neglected.
Quoting Mww
Your view of feeling and cognition as separable entities
rests on your model of thinking in general in classically cognitivist representationalist terms, inspired by the workings of a computer. On this model, what we already know is a stored representation that sits there as what it is , waiting to be accessed for a particular purpose. The semantic content therefore is protected from contextual change implied by situational use.
In enactivist models, by contrast, there are no inner representations of an outer world , but a constantly changing integrated mesh of brain, body and environmental interactions. From their vantage words do not represent meanings which can be extracted from storage intact. What was remembered whenever we use a word has already been altered by the context of its use. So we are not simply playing around with and rearranging the order and relationships between pre-existing semantic items when we think or communicate with others. We are instead altering the mesh. Use is not the applying of an extant meaning, it is a change in the prior sense of meaning of a concept. This is the essence of affectivity. Quoting Mww
For Wittgenstein it doesn’t make sense to say that a semantic meaning of a word is stored and then used. This is the picture theory of language that he critiques. We can’t say that a word first exists and then we understand it. Words do not name things or correspond to objects. Words are not relational at all, whether as names to the named, words to objects, or ‘words' belonging to a ‘type of use.'
“There is no such thing as a word outside of some particular use; but that is a different claim from saying that words belong to a type of use. For a word to be is for a word to be used. Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world.”( Phil Hutchinson)
Yes, but pre-dating computers by a couple centuries. Such system may not hold as much sway as it did, but it is still around, and in its strictest sense, is impossible to refute.
Quoting Joshs
Hmmm. So can we say we first understand the world and then it exists? That seems patently absurd, so what can we say, respecting such if/then propositions?
Quoting Joshs
Yep. If language doesn’t exist externally unless used by us, then it is constructed internally by us. In order to use a word, such that it exists in the world, it must first be invented. After that, it is merely recorded. Inventions are not accidents, they are purposive. Therefore words are purposive. What purpose can there be, for an internal invention, and, if internally invented there must be an internal inventor, so what is the internal inventor?
Quoting Joshs
Green relates to color. Grass relates to a plant. Green grass relates color to a plant.
Quoting Joshs
That’s fine, as long as it covers all the bases the representational system covers, and more besides, otherwise it’s just another theory that might add to our knowledge, but isn’t sufficient falsification of its predecessor.
This is exactly right. The world I find myself in is the world as it is, preemptive of my considerations of it. This is also why Kant doesn’t bother with ontology as a discipline, the simple reason being we don’t care that we find ourselves in a world.....I mean, where else would we be found.....when we really want to know what constitutes the world that we’re in. Besides, if we are found in the world, then everything else we can know about must be found in the same world. But even if we knew everything there was to know about things in the world, we still wouldn’t know the world as it is.
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Quoting Srap Tasmaner
“.....But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in separating it. It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience. But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, "he might know a priori that it would have fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall. But still, a priori, he could not know even this much. For, that bodies are heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their supports are taken away, must have been known to him previously, by means of experience. By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience....”
Nutshell.
Well, this can’t be the first thing you say. It’s a conclusion, right? You have to have some ideas about the world and what’s in it, and yourself, and how you relate to the world. There’s just a lot presumed here. Maybe we say this later, but it can’t be how you start.
Quoting Mww
Basically, yes — at least in the sense that we might recognize a tendency to overlook the fact that we’re in a world, that in everyday life we take it for granted, and in philosophizing ... that’s a long story.
Quoting Mww
But, see, that’s gold! That’s an a priori claim, right? So this is a reasonable starting point, and all Heidegger does is take exactly this and think it through: alright, so what is a world? what does it mean to be in one? why don’t we notice, since, with just a little reflection, you’re inclined to think it is an obvious truth that there’s a world and we’re in it?
Quoting Mww
And then this is the next thing — although Heidegger keeps fiddling with the order in Being and Time, because reasons. Are the things we find in the world “in” it the same way we are? How hard is it to see that the answer has to be “no”?
When Wittgenstein mentions the possibility of writing a book called “The world as I found it,” he intends to make the point that the “I” in the title can’t be in the book. But we just agreed that it’s perfectly obvious we find ourselves in a world, so what gives? The natural thing to say is just that we’re ‘in’ the world in a way that is different from the way things that can go in the book (the proverbial tables and trees, say) are ‘in’ the world.
This is all Heidegger is doing in Division I of Being and Time, working through the consequences of these thoughts.
Quoting Mww
And that means not just considering the things we find there, but also what makes the world we find ourselves in a world. One maneuver here is to, shall we say, ‘situate’ the confrontation between subject and object: he notes, almost in passing, that the sort of paradigm case for philosophers — looking at a table, that kind of thing — is actually a specific behavior, and a little odd, and shouldn’t be assumed to be representative of how we deal with the things we find in the world. He’ll flesh that out by giving his analysis of how we do usually interact with things, at length.
At the very least, there’s the simple point that the universe does not consist of a philosopher and the table he gazes at thinkingly; there’s the whole rest of the world around them and they’re each in it.
Any of this seem sensible to you? My Kant-fu is weak, and I’ve only lately been reading Heidegger again after many, many years, so my Heidegger-fu is similarly limited. I’m explaining as best I can as I go.
The greedy capitalists are NOT inciting you to drive your car, wear clothes, heat your apartment, cool the inside of your fridge. YOU are doing it, and so am I; time to stop blaming THEM, the greedy capitalists. They are not using, per head, or per capita, more energy than you and I use, and blaming them for providing us what we want and demand is HIGHLY HYPOCRITICAL.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
As a way of grounding I take to mean the basis of, or, what comes first. The start. The given. It may not need to be the first thing said; the world I find myself in is so primordial I don’t need to say it.
On the other hand, to complete the phrase to a subject/copula/predicate proposition: the world I find myself in grounds the natural sciences, reduces to world/grounds/science, so “world” is the first thing I say after all. Superfluous to be sure, but still......
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Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Ahhhh, well....that’s a different thinking through. What is a world and what does it mean to be in one presupposes the world I find myself in, and these are the very considerations I first mentioned, that I make upon the world as a consequence of being in it. So yes, this is a reasonable place to start doing the natural sciences, but iff the possibility for them is already established. Those “a priori conditions” mentioned in your B & T quote.
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Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Pretty hard for lil’ ol’ me, I must say. I don’t know how the fiddling works, so maybe there is a way that things are not in the world the same way I am. I’m a thing in the world, that thing wandering around in the night sky is in the world. “In” in the same way must have bearing somehow, apparently.
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Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, but what explains how they all might not all be in it, all in the same way? At the risk of opening my mouth and sticking my foot in it....to say all things are not in the world all in the same way overturns the principle of parsimony. Which I suppose can be done, but I would think only with a parsimony deeper or more fundamental that the existent version.
Good stuff. Thanks for the highlights.
:lol:
They must certainly DO use more fossil fuel, and most certainly DO compel people to use more fossil fuel. They, like tobacco before them, lobby Congress and have deliberately fooled people with misinformation.
You’d have been a great apologist for big tobacco as well, I’m sure. After all, “WE choose to smoke“, etc.
What a joke.
Xtrix: a most typical apologist to hypocritical fools. Fools who seek and found a scapegoat, whereas it's they, we, you, I, who are to blame -- we all are. Naysaying that only feeds the hypocrisy of your "my shit don't smell" attitude. Some people just can't take the blame when it's due. It's a spineless, cowardly attitude to blame others for one's own wrongdoing.
:lol:
Promoting false equivalence for his corporate masters is what? Not cowardly, I suppose— just stupid and gullible?
False consciousness at its best.
“Your wrongdoing.” Yes— the tobacco companies didn’t deliberately add addictive chemicals to keep people hooked. Fossil fuel companies didn’t definitely cover up the affects on climate. This was all “my” doing— because I have driven in a car. Exactly the propaganda spewed by big oil: do your part, use better lightbulbs, recycle, etc. Well documented and clearly effective. Meanwhile they go on polluting with impunity while the planet burns, all for short term profit.
Blame is relative to one’s power. Those in power deserve more blame. But don’t worry your little head about that— keep with the stupid, simplistic “everyone is to blame” slogan.
Those poor capitalists! How unfair of us to criticize them!
Try keeping your mouth shut about things you don’t understand. It works wonders.
I eagerly await your Trump-like response.
Tell me again how stupid I am in your esteem and what lead you to that conclusion.
I know you’ve been told that— probably for decades. Propaganda works wonders.
Quoting god must be atheist
I didn’t say you were stupid— I said you were repeating stupid slogans.
Because I don't think you think of me as smart. I need your guidance. You said "I did not say you were stupid", but you may, just may, still think I am stupid. Not saying something does not equate denial of that something.
In that case I need things explained to me, one being, why a not stupid person would espouse (the in-word these days on this forum) stupid slogans? I depend on you to explain this to me.
You said so yourself: you’ve been told to “laugh at” certain ideas — like the fact that there’s such a thing as power differentials, and that with more power comes more blame.
People go through great lengths to defend capitalism — or any dogma they’ve been brought up to hold dear.
Yes, this is your opinion. But you said it with such vehemence and conviction, that it came through as more than just an opinion, it came through as an attempt to convince others of the truth of your opinion.
This is fair game here. Apparently. What if someone said to you in conversation on these forums, in front of everyone, "Xtrix, you are in my opinion a mysogynist bastard, and you would have made a perfect rapist in a society where it's not punished by law." I am not saying this is my opinion; I am asking you that if hypothetically a person said this, what would your response be? Would you say that the assessment of you was fair, and he had the right to utter such opinion? If not, would you try to deny and refute the opinion's message, and would you try to defend against it?
Maybe people do that. Sure. But what makes you so certain that I am practicing that behaviour? I simply pointed out to you who I think is to blame for an energy-using, consumerist society. You concluded from my opinion that I am repeating stupid slogans. There is a large gap between these two ideas, and I ask you to fill in the gap. After all, you made the conclusion, so you must have the steps envisioned that connects the two ideas. These steps only you are aware of, and therefore I ask you to reveal them to me on this public forum.
You started this conversation, not I. You responded to something I wrote and which wasn’t directed to you. You replied, addressing me specifically, with accusations of “hypocrisy” — in all caps, no less; all the while painting a ludicrous portrait of the argument and stating several falsehoods (e.g., that “they” don’t use more fossil fuels — they do) to boot.
So spare me this disingenuous lecture about manners. Ask anyone here and they’ll tell you: with me, you get what you give. That should be clear enough.
This is an error in your judgment, and severe error. I am not told to laugh off ideas that there are power differentials, and that with more power comes more to blame. I am told to laugh off personal attacks by other members that I feel offensive and are directed against me personally. You had no clue what I had been told, so you arbitrarily and shall I say erroneously substituted an idea that i had not been told, and now you believe that that's the idea I was told to laugh off.
Of course the wording you used, and keep on using, makes your utternances slippery. You did not outright say that that's the idea I was told to laugh off... you said that that's the idea, the LIKES OF WHICH I was told to laugh off.
So I would like to ask you this question: when and where and why did you learn that this type of insinuation is proper in a personal discourse? You are not saying anything, the wording you use has built-in defences, yet the utterances sound arrogantly insulting. You insinuate (but don't state) things that you want to accuse me with, but there is no accusation, only an insinuation of it.
This is not clear to many people. At first it was not clear to me, either, and now that I thought about it, and read and re-read your responses to my posts, it is clear that your utterances don't hold water, because they are not claims, only opinions, expressed in a form of wording that deny the accusations' validity.
Why do you do this? What satisfaction do you get out of this?
No. You claimed that placing blame on “capitalists” was HIGHLY HYPOCRITICAL, placing everyone in the company of the guilty— which is exactly what’s been promoted by those in power for decades. I mentioned one easy example: tobacco companies. That’s exactly right.
The slogans that we are all to blame are exactly that, and are indeed stupid and simpleminded. Maybe everyone, including slaves themselves, were equally responsible for the system of slavery? If that seems reasonable to you, you’re welcome.
Excellent— then you see the stupidity of repeating slogans like “we’re all to blame for climate change.” Sure— in the same way as we’re all to blame for the bombing of Iraq, and the many other war crimes and terrorism of the US (for those who live here, anyway). Does that mean I share equal blame with Rumsfeld?
Similarly, I drive a sedan — I have to to get to work. I can’t afford an electric car yet. Am I as much to blame for carbon emissions as Exxon? Again, these companies would love us to believe that — and have been promoting that nonsense for years. If you’re convinced by it, as you seem to be, then again: you’re welcome to. Just keep that bullshit away from me if you don’t want to have it called out for what it is.
No, I won't spare lecturing you, because what I say is not disingenuous.
I say what I mean, and I stand behind my words and opinions.
You have not convinced me that you don't drive a car, don't use the roads, don't wear clothes and don't use forms of entertainment. You have also not convinced me that you don't eat, or drink, and that you hadn't gone to school ever. You have not convinced me that you do not rent or purchased a dwelling place to live in, to protect you from the elements. You did all these things, which added to the climate change.
So I put to you this: is a person who uses energy as much as the average person in his community, not hypocritical, when he blames the builders to build his home, when he blames the car manufacturers to build his car, when he blames the clothes manufacturers to make his clothes, and the producers of his food, and the transportation companies to deliver this to him or to close to him where the goods are available without much work to him... is a person who uses energy for all these for his own benefit not hypocritical when he blames OTHERS who bring the food, clothing, who build the building he lives in and the roads to get these to him?
I highly resent NOT that you use society's benefits, but I resent that you misplace the blame and put on the persons who make it possible for you to enjoy these benefits. If you were NOT hypocritical then you would simply give up these benefits, and then you could claim moral superiority. But until such time, you simply can't.
I kept using "you", but it applies to all users of society's benefits, not just to you, personally.
Oh you mean something like:
Quoting god must be atheist
Yeah, I agree it’s rather impolite. Odd that the person who sets this tone becomes bewildered when it’s reversed.
Quoting god must be atheist
A good question to ask yourself, since you started this conversation.
Or perhaps you hold no responsibility for it — which, if I recall, is rather “cowardly.”
Each of you have a position to argue. I do not understand why you are both more interested in talking about how appalled you are that the other has taken the position they have.
If you must argue about who’s to blame for climate change, argue about that.
This is a false conclusion. We are not to be blamed for the decisions we do not make. The war against innocent people and devastating their countries is NOT your or my decision. It was a decision made by the leaders elected by US citizens. Therefore I refuse to take blame for the US bombing other innocent countries to rabble. This parallel you drew was obviously illogical and aimed to win a part of the argument on false premises.
The two are separable, and separate. The using of society's benefits IS your decision. You could easily give up all of society's benefits to claim innoncence from the blame of pulluting the atmosphere, killing wildlife and causing climate change. But you don't decide that, you keep using society's benefits. So you are not above blame.
That's exactly the direction I am taking. Read please the early parts... I was defending what I perceived were personal attacks on me. Quoting Xtrix
What would you do, Srap Tsmaner, if somebody said that to you?
And please do observe that I was able to bring the discussion back to the topic you suggested: who is to blame for climate change. My position: every consumer of society. Xtrix's position: only the capitalist pigs. The debate still continues, and please be assured, that it will not let it get out of hand as long as I can help that.
I assure you I am not a capitalist, and I never read any capitalist power agitational propaganda.
I am simply using my head.
If the capitalist pigs, as you call them, forced you to make a decision to use society's benefits, against your will, then I would buy your defense in the argument, that these are capitalists' arguments and propaganda. But society's benefts are not dispensable. You don't use them because the capitalists force you to, you use them because without them you'd perish. Men and women have eaten and kept themselves warm since the advent of mankind. Why do you think it is the capitalist pig's insistence and propaganda that makes us want to eat, drink, live in a place, work for an honest living, transport ourselves, etc? These are parts of modern living, that are parts to make our lives happier, more comfortable, and safer, and most of all, possible. I don't eat because a capitalist pig is poking me to eat. I don't wear clothes because a capitalist pig is brainwashing me to do so. Do you?
That’s like blaming people for buying cars when that’s the only choice they’re given. What they really want — and have got decades — is public transportation. The auto, rubber, and fossil fuel industries haven’t suppressed those options through their lobbying of congress. But it’s the CONSUMERS fault for buying a car to get to work? Find — let that be your focus if you’d like. In that case I’m as much to blame for the Iraq War as Dick Cheney. Whatever floats your boat.
The fact that people look at it this way is an effect of propaganda — nothing else.
Quoting god must be atheist
Yes, I know this is what you think. It’s an old, tired, long refuted, silly slogan used over and over and over again for the last 30 years. You can find it on Twitter and YouTube and Facebook all the time as well. It’s paraded out any time one criticizes any industry— tobacco, sugar, fast food, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, etc., for their crimes, disinformation campaigns, bribes, lobbying, monopolization, sleazy marketing, cover ups, suppression of information, and false advertising.
“Have you ever used fossil fuel products at any time in your life? Ha! Hypocrite! How dare you criticize those who produce the things you use!”
Fossil fuel companies are responsible for climate change. They’re knew about it in the 70s and deliberately suppressed the information and knowingly, consciously promoted falsehoods about climate science. This is now well documented — from internal memos and documents.
But if you prefer false equivalence, go right ahead. In that world, they’re just good companies giving consumers what they want. Wonderful story.
Public transportation is just as much available as ever. Cars are bought and used because people like the convenience of it. The decline of availability and convenience of public transportation happened not due to capitalists closing down railway lines and making city bus service less frequent... it's because people like to get into cars, drive to somewhere, and then drive back again. This does not need to be sold to people by capitalist pigs' propaganda machinery, as you seem to claim has been happening.
Thanks for the opportunity you provided to defend my views.
You should have flagged it.
But consider the post of yours that started this little love-fest:
Quoting god must be atheist
You have wrapped the argument that everyone who enjoys the benefits of living in a modern industrialized society shares some measure of blame for climate change in a claim that for them to say otherwise is hypocritical. That strikes me as kind of an odd way to frame the point. It suggests that you are more interested in whether people are being hypocritical than what they’re being hypocritical about. And okay maybe that’s a sentiment philosophers are prone to, but don’t be surprised if the people you express this view to take it personally.
Oh but we are. We voted for them. If we didn’t, we could have protested more, could have tried convincing more people to do so as well, etc etc.
So any American who criticizes their government is a hypocrite. That’s been argued plenty of times too by apologists of state power. You happen to do so for corporate power.
Quoting god must be atheist
So now fossil fuels are societies “benefits.” Seems to me they’re environment-destroying garbage and a curse for the human species. But call it what you will, I guess. Maybe wiping out the species is a “benefit.”
So those addicted to tobacco and opioids are also hypocrites. Got it. No right to criticize big Pharma for the opioid epidemic. It was their choice to use “societies benefits.”
At least be consistent about it.
Quoting god must be atheist
I haven’t once called them that. Ever. But keep trying.
Quoting god must be atheist
No we wouldn’t. There are plenty of alternatives — called renewables.
The reason we currently would “perish” is not an accident — it’s a choice. And not mine. For the same reason we don’t have proper public transportation. That’s not an accident either. Yet you want to place the blame on those who are forced to buy a car to get to work so they can eat and live? No — like the Iraq war, I place the blame on those in power who have the means to design the modern world and make choices about whether to fund renewable energy, public transit, and EV vehicles, or stick with combustible engines, individual consumption, and fossil fuels.
No, it isn’t. This is factually wrong. I’m talking about the US.
Quoting god must be atheist
You just have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m afraid. There’s actually scholarship on this point— from history to polling. People want efficient public transit — not cars. Compare the US to Japan, for example, and the state of our public transit is a joke. That’s NOT an accident, and it’s NOT because people “love cars” — although many do, in no small part to great advertising.
But believe it’s all the consumers and demand, if you want. A nice myth.
I live in Chicago. There is an El station two blocks away, a bus stop across the street from my building , a regular train line a few miles from me, and rental scooters and bicycles every few blocks.
And yet I pay $180 a month to park my car in my building’s garage, plus license, sticker and maintenance fees. Why? Because having my own car is a bit more convenient that using public transportation. If I were poor it might be a different story. Am I typical? I know Chicagoans who don’t own cars, but they’re in the minority. Most feel the way I do about the convenience of a car even in a city with good public transportation. I’m not saying I’m proud of my choice , just being honest.
What caught my eye regarding the philosophy of Being
Every time Being is analyzed, it takes a distinct form, a linguistic one - necessary language concepts for such examinations/studies being verb, predicate, verbal nouns, pseudo-objects, to name but a few.
What means this?
It's as if Being is tied up with the structure of and ideas in lingua itself. We can't talk about the former without going into the intricacies (those pertinent) of the other.
There would have been no response, was my summary estimation and I had a very tangible reason to expect that. I had just gone through a very similar episode with another member and please spare me from having to repeat the details. I appealed to two moderators; one was unsympathetic and dismissed the severity of the insults I received; the other was more sympathetic and advised the two of us to cut it out, which we both did.
So next time this sort of thing happens, can I appeal to you personally, instead of going into a visceral and bitter fight? and if you do advise to appeal to you, do you personally promise to intervene at such times that it's needed? I ask you this, because you advised me to flag it, so I understand that you'd find it actionable. So I do expect some action from you if I flag a post and you agree at the time that this would be in the realm actionable.
Please respond, I respectfully ask you to. I understand you are a moderator, with executive powers.
You are very astute in noticing this, and you are absolutely right. That was my precise point. It is a two-pronged argument: one is that we are indeed each individually adding to the cumulative effect of global warming. This is what is the basis of the argument, and I believe this is true, otherwise I would not be arguing it. The second part of the argument is based on my judging of what is fair and what is not. It is fair to say that we are all contributing; it is unfair to say that only certain strata of society is responsible for contributing. This is a moral stand, not a mechanical-logical argument. The mechanical-logical argument was wrapped up in the first part. This second part seems odd to you as a frame, because I do believe it is perhaps original as a moral point of view and moral judgment. I believe this is not a false view, and that is why I advocate it. It is a valid view, and people just have not been considering it, because everyone else (other than me) has sheepishly bought into the argument that my debating opponent presents.
Was I harsh in calling people hypocritical? Please consider viewing my moral argument here in the odd but I believe valid moral point of view, and I am quite certain that then you will see that my accusation was not ungrounded in saying that people who exclude themselves and many others from the blame of causing global warming are, indeed, hypocritical.
That we are complicit in capitalism - and of course we are - is yet another mark against it, yet another reason to see the back of it. Not some kind of childish gotchya moment.
Sure.
Quoting TheMadFool
Heidegger agrees with you.
“… are we puzzled now only because we have allowed ourselves to be led astray by language or, more precisely, by the grammatical interpretation of language; staring at an It that is supposed to give, but that itself is precisely not there. When we say "It gives Being," “It gives time," we are speaking sentences.
Grammatically, a sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. The subject of a sentence is not necessarily a subject in the sense of an ego or a person. Grammar and logic, accordingly, construe it-sentences as impersonal, subject-less sentences.”(On Time and Being)
It helps if you know that the common way to say ”There is ...” in German is “Es gibt ...”, which is literally “It gives ...” It’s an impersonal construction like “It’s raining.”
Why does this happen? What's distinct/unique about Being that requires us to be, well, expert linguists with in-depth knowledge of, curiously, not semantics but syntax. :chin: The objective was to go into meaning (of Being) and instead we're neck-deep in grammar.
So, I missed the point then?
You do admit though that compared to other branches of philosophy, ontology requires extensive knowledge of grammar, right?
Of course I don't. I explained an idiom, and its bearing on a quote, that's it.
It’s not just Being. Every significant change in philosophical outlook will be reflected in at least a subtle shift in the use of grammar. Why is this? Because grammar is more than just syntax. It expresses historically ingrained habits of thinking about object and subjects and their relationship. Subject-predicate structure disposes us toward construing is a certain way.
“If I say "the floor is hard," I employ a language system in which the subject-predicate relationship inheres in the subject itself. It is the floor which is hard, and that is its nature, regardless of who says so. The statement stands, not because the speaker said it, but because the floor happened to be what it is. The sentence's validity stems from the floor and not from the speaker.”(George Kelly)
But one needs to be aware that our handed-down grammar biases us toward a certain way of thinking about subjects and objects that Heidegger rightly points out is ‘impersonal’.
In ‘Logic as the Question Concerning The Essence of Language' Heidegger tells us he wants, 'in a confrontation with the tradition', to rethink logic, to "revolutionarily shake up the notion of logic" from the ground up, but that he can only provisionally point to his notion of the primordial ground of language as the basis of this new grounding of logic. Traditionally, language is thought as a tool of thinking, as secondary to thinking, as grounded on grammar, which in turn is grounded on logic. Heidegger says “the first thing we need is a real revolution in our relation to language.”
“Aren't we allowed to be a bit ironic with the subject, as we are with the predicate and object? Shouldn't philosophers rise above the belief in grammar?”(Nietzsche, Will to Power)
Thanks. I appreciate that.
Well, there's a lot to say about language. I wasn't wading into those waters, and I'm still not, but don't let me stop you.
It's (as is obvious) a verb (being) cum noun (Being). Very much like Jogging, a verb (he is jogging) & a noun (he likes Jogging). :grin:
If one stops looking for meaning and instead looks at what we do with language, then this does not seem surprising. The command "Block!" supposes that there are blocks to bring. Language is integrated into the world.
See my answer to your question int he Free Logic thread:
This is may well be the foundation of philosophy in the 20th Century, following the work fo Frege. His logic forms a simple language of predicates, allowing us to see the supposition of attributing predicates to individuals at the base of language.
But unfortunately this insight here fell into the fog of phenomenology, which tries to found existence on sensations rather than on language, and ends up confusing being with time and failing to clarify much of anything.
What Frege lacked was insight into the basis of the subject-predicate structure. Husserl led the way here by founding predication not on sensation but on intentional synthesis. It took Heidegger, and later on Derrida, to arrive at a notion of the origin of both formal language and logic in signification.
But also that's not fair to Frege, since it is his analysis of sense and denotation, and hence of intensional logic, that was pivotal in both accounts: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intensional/#Fre
The intention leads to the intension.
Russell and Frege leave us mired in a Kantian metaphysical thicket, which Wittgenstein realized and rejected in favor of his later phenomenological approach.
I think you’re typical of someone who can afford a car in the city, yes. There’s also many people around Boston who feel the same way— but you have to account for the fact that the T here is CRAP. They’re 50 years being. If you had efficient, high-speed rail — like they do in Japan — there wouldn’t be this issue. In parts of Canada, they have it designed so that buses run constantly and within a mile or so radius of homes.
Advertising plays a big role in all this too. Just like smoking. When it was decided, by tobacco executives, that they were losing money by not targeting women, there was a massive campaign to get women to smoke. And it worked. Car commercials and product placement in the US has created a culture around cars that is unprecedented, starting in the 50s especially.
So yes, of course the consumer shares some of the blame. That’s not the point. In the same sense we share blame for our government’s actions — because we elected decision-makers. But the blame is relative. To attempt to equalize it all, or to shift emphasis to “individual responsibility,” deliberately leaves out an important context in which powers far greater than an average consumer are at play — openly.
Not once did I say that. Next time, at least do me the courtesy of assuming I’m not a complete idiot. Of course we all contribute to global warming. I figured this was so obvious as to not need to explicitly point it out.
But switch the example. Take the opioid crisis here in the states. People addicted to opioids share responsibility too, yes? Does that level of blame equal the blame of doctors and pharmaceutical companies who deliberately over-prescribed and downplayed the addictiveness?
I don’t see how anyone could argue that. I’ll give you the benefit of assuming you don’t think that either. So why make the same mistake with climate change? Are you not aware that this argument is a very common one among climate change deniers and the fossil fuel industry? Are you aware it’s exactly the defense big tobacco offered for decades with regard to the health effects of smoking?
So much of our meanings are culturally dependent. The same is true for being. Being is nearly always interpreted (in the west) in terms of the “world,” whether as material object or as “nature.” It’s hard to imagine an alternative.
It’s also worth remembering why this matters: because we define ourselves in these terms as well. And why is that so important?
Because those serve as the basis for morality, for social organization, for politics, for global decisions. The world is currently operating on the belief that earth is a resource, that the ultimate aim of humans is material wealth accumulation, and that humans are essentially animals with language with needs to satisfy.
That’s the current story. And it’s based in beliefs and interpretations about being, held tacitly and handed down over many centuries — and it’s driving us right into disaster.
So a follow-up question: what do we do about it?
A week later and no thoughts? Perhaps it wasn’t read, or the premises weren’t agreed with, but here are some solutions, in my view:
Education
Not necessarily in the school or academic sense, but in the sense of talking with one another, sharing ideas, identifying problems, comparing strategies, etc. In order for this to happen, however, three further things are necessary:
1) Social issues. We have to somehow put away our tribalism, dehumanization, and general isolation. That means eschewing social media, learning to interact more face to face, overcoming social anxiety and our comfort zones, avoiding media that polarizes us, learning to control our emotions, etc.
2) Break the taboos around discussing certain topics. For example, religion and politics, but also MONEY and class. Beyond merely complaining (“I hate my job,” “I don’t get paid enough,” etc), I don’t see much transparency on the latter issue. It’s considered rude to ask someone how much they make an hour or a year, etc.
3) Learning to ask questions. About one’s individual life, yes — but also how that life is interconnected with everyone and everything. (Not in a New Age bullshit way, but in a very obvious and practical sense — one that can be forgotten.) I think certain beliefs, values, and actions that normally go unquestioned can become talkable, from the current state of our political and economic world to our understanding of what a human being is.
The question of the meaning of being — and of nothing — will possibly play a role in all this, as I think it should.
Action
Educating ourselves and others — through questioning, through breaking the spell of complacency, conversational taboo, individualism, and tribalism — can only go so far and will mean nothing without concrete action. Eventually we all have to put our money (and bodies) where are mouths are.
How?
Through creating and joining groups. Through organization and collective action. Through unionizing our workplaces, building alliances and coalitions.
Of course, these things aren’t completely separate— as if we start with one and then move on to the other in a linear fashion: education, then organization, then action. Much of the time action comes first and people come together to rally around that action — sometimes many people share similar beliefs but don’t realize how many others do as well (I think the Occupy and Bernie Sanders movement showed that).
Still, this is a start.
So while I enjoy discussing being, and Heidegger, and Plato, etc., in the end I don’t see this question as one only for an obscure philosophy forum, or one relegated to the hallowed halls of academia.
Rather, it’s a very practical and relevant question: who or what are we, and what are we doing in the world?
Being and doing, and human nature, have always been inter-related. There may not be an ultimate answer, or an ultimate truth, but we’re living at least one answer.