So is it always better to be clear? — Purple Pond

Yeah, I simply used 'Deep Truth' as a stand-in for that mystical core of Being or whatever that Heidegger consistently tried to 'proximate'. It was more a figure of speech than anything precise. — StreetlightX

He never drew and maintained the crucial distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. In his defense, no one else in philosophy proper has either to my knowledge. Not even to this very day... — creativesoul

His dasein, as I understand it, is akin to an unquestioned original world-view... all of which are virtually entirely adopted. — creativesoul

However, if you are going to be a holist and process thinker, I believe it is unavoidable that you will end up favouring immanence over transcendence. And so the idea of "spirit" is going to lose all its bite by the end.

A big part of that is that monism also has to give way to an irreducible triadicism. And to make Geist or other somesuch the monistic foundation is already to begin with something too developed. It is a dualism willing to give up its material aspect but insisting on some kind of residual mental aspect. — apokrisis

And so I'd reply that Peirce's insight is that reality itself is "scientific". It arises by ... the universal growth of reasonableness. — apokrisis

Exactly. The self at the centre of things is merely the sum of all that is found to be not part of the world. It is a fluid development built on a process of othering. The self is just the other "other" that arises in opposition to "the world" (and thus - against dualism - is wholly dependent on that "world"). — apokrisis

That said, my 'distance' from Heidi actually takes its cue from readings like Sheehan's: as productive as it is to think of the world as a meaningful whole, it's also a very simplified view of things. As I see it, the world is rather full of holes, perforated by ambivalence and opacity, instances of indifference and insignificance — StreetlightX

Basically, I take issue with Heidegger's holism, which always struck me as far too ideational and seamless. One of the more devastating charges against Heidegger's whole project was Levinas's, for whom "Dasein in Heidegger is never hungry". I think this is a nice synecdoche for why Heidegger's project seems so barren to me, at the end of the day. — StreetlightX

The 'essence' of the human being...consists in its having to be constitutionally ahead of itself, as possibility amidst possibilities. Such essential stretched-out-ness is what Heidegger calls 'thrown-ness.' And since being thrown ahead = being pulled open, the stretch into possibilities is thrown-open--ness. But with us, being thrown-open always entails living into meaning-giving possibilities. Existence thus unfolds as --is thrown open as --the open region of possible meaningfulness.

In its most basic sense, openedness as the possibility of intelligibility remains the one and only factum...of all Heidegger's work.

Soon enough, however, it became clear to Heidegger that, more fundamentally, existence is meta-metaphysical. That is, we transcend things not only in already understanding their possible meanings and then returning to the things to give them meaning, but also and above all by being already 'beyond' things-and-their-meanings and in touch with what makes the meaningfulness of things possible at all. We are not just fully intentional --present to both things and their meanings. More basically, we 'transcend' things-and-their-meaningsto --that is to say, we in fact are--the thrown-open clearing that makes possible our 'natural metaphysical' relations to things-in-their-meanings. Existence is not only transcendental but also trans-transcendental or transcendental to the second power.

No matter how much our engagement with intelligibility may be parsed out into its component parts, it is a strict and original unity that cannot be resolved into anything more primal. If we were to ask what we might be prior to our engagement with meaning, such an inquiry would entail that we already have enacted an engagement with meaning by simply asking the question, and hence we would be moving in a vicious circle. Our very existence is such an engagement, and absent that, we would not be human, much less able to ask questions at all. — Sheehan

Have you come across semiotics as a sharper way to make sense of this - being as an Umwelt or sign relation? — apokrisis

And a problem with phenomenology would be this "we" that is doing the being-in-the-world, etc. That makes it sound like consciousness is the primordial stuff or primordial ground. — apokrisis

A pragmatic/semiotic metaphysics instead focuses on the interpretive relation that forms an Umwelt. A world of experience arises which mediates between the "self" that is implicit in the development of habits and dispositions, and the "world" that then represents all the recalcitrant facts that stand in opposition to this pole of intentionality. — apokrisis

So this is quite a psychologically realistic view. All organisms are agents forming their view of the world - experiencing it as an organised system of signs. But it can also be a physically realistic metaphysics as our best understanding of physics already demands that it be "organismic" in having historically developed habits, dispositions and even (thermodynamic) intents.

Modern physics now relies on information theory to account for why reality is atomistically fragmented into "degrees of freedom". A particle is essentially "a sign" of something that could happen. We know it was there because we record the event - the mark it leaves.

So in a sense that semiosis can make precise - which information theory can measure - we do now have a worldview, a metaphysics, which is founded on "meaning making". And it can apply both to psychological science and physical science. — apokrisis

Sure, but real in what sense? — Wayfarer

You see, I think modern culture generally has a sense that the nature of ideas, and, as you say, the ground of meaning, can be understood through the perspective of biology and neurology. — Wayfarer

Of course the ability to think and abstract is inextricably connected with the brain, insofar as it is the advanced hominid forebrain that enables it. But my argument is that the advent of language, reasoning, and myth-making, is precisely where h. Sapiens transcends the (merely) biological. And that is in large part because she is able to intuit that which is *not* simply the product of chance and necessity. — Wayfarer

Regarding Wittgenstein, I think that positivism routinely misinterpreted him. When he ended his masterwork with ‘that of which we cannot speak’, he wasn’t saying, like Carnap and Ayer said, that metaphysics is merely nonsensical or ‘otiose’ (one of Ayer’s favourite words). It’s simply that it concerns subjects which can’t be meaningfully conveyed through discursive thought. But for anyone who has become familiar with Eastern non-dualism, that is hardly a radical idea. (Again, this is the sense in which W. is sometimes compared to Buddhism.) But I think the thrust of the work was to ‘take you to the border’ as it were, so as to sense the vastness beyond. — Wayfarer

The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
...

The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole.

Feeling the world as a limited whole—it is this that is mystical.

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.

The riddle does not exist.

If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

...
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.
...
The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.

Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted?)

There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
— W

Your posts are a model of courtesy. — Wayfarer

What would you give as an example of a shared meaning? — Terrapin Station

What is the difference between a being and a thing? What is the significance of the fact that humans are called ‘beings’? — Wayfarer

Anyone (like Heidegger) who cannot come up with an argument that grants that others exist as well is not worth considering further. — hks

We must in the first instance note explicitly that Kant uses the term 'Dasein' to designate that kind of Being which in the present investigation we have called 'presence-at-hand'. 'Consciousness of my Dasein' means for Kant a consciousness of my Being-present-at-hand in the sense of Descartes. When Kant uses the term `Dasein' he has in mind the Being-present-at-hand of consciousness just as much as the Being-present-at-hand of Things.

The proof for the `Dasein of Things outside of me' is supported by the fact that both change and performance belong, with equal primordiality, to the essence of time. My own Being-present-at-hand — that is, the Being-present-at-hand of a multiplicity of representations, which has been given in the inner sense — is a process of change which is present-at-hand. To have a determinate temporal character [Zeitbestimmtheit], however, presupposes something present-at-hand which is permanent. But this cannot be 'in us', 'for only through what is thus permanent can my Dasein in time be determined'. Thus if changes which are present-at-hand have been posited empirically 'in me', it is necessary that along with these something permanent which is present-at-hand should be posited empirically 'outside of me'. What is thus permanent is the condition which makes it possible for the changes 'in me' to be present-at-hand. The experience of the Being-in-time of representations posits something changing 'in me' and something permanent 'outside of me', and it posits both with equal primordiality.

Of course this proof is not a causal inference and is therefore not encumbered with the disadvantages which that would imply. Kant gives, as it were, an 'ontological proof' in terms of the idea of a temporal entity. It seems at first as if Kant has given up the Cartesian approach of positing a subject one can come across in isolation. But only in semblance. That Kant demands any proof at all for the `Dasein of Things outside of me' shows already that he takes the subject — the 'in me' — as the starting-point for this problematic. Moreover, his proof itself is then carried through by starting with the empirically given changes 'in me'. For only `in me' is 'time' experienced, and time carries the burden of the proof. Time provides the basis for leaping off into what is 'outside of me' in the course of the proof. Furthermore, Kant emphasizes that "The problematical kind [of idealism], which merely alleges our inability to prove by immediate experience that there is a Dasein outside of our own, is reasonable and accords with a sound kind of philosophical thinking: namely, to permit no decisive judgment until an adequate proof has been found." But even if the ontical priority of the isolated subject and inner experience should be given up, Descartes' position would still be retained ontologically. What Kant proves—if we may suppose that his proof is correct and correctly based—is that entities which are changing and entities which are permanent are necessarily present-at-hand together. But when two things which are present-at-hand are thus put on the same level, this does not as yet mean that subject and Object are present-at-hand together. And even if this were proved, what is ontologically decisive would still be covered up—namely, the basic state of the 'subject', Dasein, as Being-in-the-world. The Being-present-at-hand-together of the physical and the psychical is completely different ontically and ontologically from the phenomenon of Being-in-the-world. Kant presupposes both the distinction between the 'in me' and the `outside of me', and also the connection between these; factically he is correct in doing so, but he is incorrect from the standpoint of the tendency of his proof. It has not been demonstrated that the sort of thing which gets established about the Being-present-at-hand-together of the changing and the permanent when one takes time as one's clue, will also apply to the connection between the 'in me' and the 'outside of me'. But if one were to see the whole distinction between the 'inside' and the 'outside' and the whole connection between them which Kant's proof presupposes, and if one were to have an ontological conception of what has been presupposed in this presupposition, then the possibility of holding that a proof of the `Dasein of Things outside of me' is a necessary one which has yet to be given [noch ausstehend], would collapse.

The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. Such expectations, aims, and demands arise from an ontologically inadequate way of starting with of such a character that independently of it and 'outside' of it a 'world' is to be proved as present-at-hand. It is not that the proofs are inadequate, but that the kind of Being of the entity which does the proving and makes requests for proofs has not been made definite enough. This is why a demonstration that two things which are present-at-hand are necessarily present-at-hand together, can give rise to the illusion that something has been proved, or even can be proved, about Dasein as Being-in-the-world. If Dasein is understood correctly, it defies such proofs, because, in its Being, it already is what subsequent proofs deem necessary to demonstrate for it.
— Heidegger

Anyone (like Heidegger) who cannot come up with an argument that grants that others exist as well is not worth considering further. — hks

That part makes sense, at least, but if we're going to say that we are "wearing blinders," we'd need something to support that other than just making the claim that it's the case. — Terrapin Station

But, as any good Hegelian knows, such pithy summaries are more deceptive than informative. The truth is not the naked result but the result along with its becoming. — macrosoft

There are two texts called The Concept of Time? — Terrapin Station

What sort of gobbledygook is that? "History as an object of contemplation for method"?? What in the world is that supposed to be saying? — Terrapin Station

"“If time finds its meaning in eternity, then it must be understood starting from eternity. The point of departure and path of this inquiry are thereby indicated in advance: from eternity to time… If our access to God is faith and if involving oneself with eternity is nothing other than this faith, then philosophy will never have eternity… Philosophy can never be relieved of this perplexity. The theologian, then, is the legitimate expert on time — Terrapin Station

Remember Plato has Socrates say that every philosopher's greatest wish is to die so as to gain a vantage point on life in this world. There is no such vantage point from within it. Existentialism provides no fix for that, but it focuses on that which is (in a sense) most real. — frank

As soon as we begin to speak, we're already in a reflective state, dismantling that which exists united. So as I speak now, I appear to conjure up some world beyond our grasp. As Heidegger mentioned, it's not far away. There's nothing closer. — frank

11
I've spent many years of my life believing that matter (and energy) is the primary and only real substance. Recently I've been wondering if consciousness is the primary substance that the material world gloms onto or adheres to.

What are your thoughts on this and what are the implications for free will? — Noah Te Stroete

I think he's riffing on the eye's inability to see itself. What does it mean to you? — frank

he states that we can only be sure of our own existence. — hks

↪macrosoft For openers (a Poker term), Heidegger is somewhat narrow in his views in that in his book "Being And Time" he states that we can only be sure of our own existence.

This is contrary to Modern British Empiricism in that the existence of others is a given since they can harm you or kill you.

So Heidegger's thinking is flawed. Ergo he is easy to dismiss.

I look for major flaws and then I dismiss the source. It is my method of doing philosophy. — hks

Life is sufficient to Itself, Ekhart already said. — K

I've always had a profound distaste for this kind of 'mysterian' conception of philosophy - if I can call it that - which treats philosophy as though it were just some under-maintained half-way house to Deep Truth or what have you — StreetlightX

At its best, philosophy does always indeed 'point elsewhere', always feels like a matter of 'fore-running', like you've never quite grasped the so-called 'sense of the immediate'. But I think it is a deep and terrible mistake to confuse this feeling with the positivity of philosophy itself which is a self-consciously and actively joyful practice of artifice, of constructing visions that deliberately and wilfully abstract from the real all the better for us to orient ourselves within it. — StreetlightX

It's one of the reasons why Heidegger is so utterly bereft of a sense of humour, and why the whole Heideggarian artifice feels like walking in a blackened, Gothic church, creaking with every step. — StreetlightX

The problem there being he doesn’t tell the resder where he is going and pefers to prance around without meaning - or maybe I’m not giving myself credit enough for seeing something others may find hard to grasp? It is possible, as is the possiblilty I am so dim-witted that I missed the entire point of rambling on in a seemingly meaningless and obtuse manner? — I like sushi

The fact that he uses the term “hermeneutics” means he’s focusing on “words” not thought. — I like sushi

I’ve yet to find anyone who can provide a concise definition of “dasein” given by Heidegger. — I like sushi

In short he ignored the phenomenological experience and became absorbed with language. He tried to speak of the unspeakable - and obviously failed to do anything other than confuse and confound, or fool, people into believing they understood something unreached. — I like sushi

The ant doesn't care about anything apart from it's role as a worker. It is a very Kantian creature and communist in nature or even totalitarian — Posty McPostface

The ant doesn't care. It doesn't give two shits. It simply does. — Posty McPostface

The single ant is a solipsist. — Posty McPostface

Life is sufficient to Itself, Ekhart already said. The trick is to get to this level and stay with it, thereby reaping the harvest of its self-expression. For factic life also gives itself in the deformation of the objectification, which must first be dismantled in order to get to its initial moment of articulation.
..
Such an intuition immersed in the 'immanent historicity of life' must reach back into its motivation and forward into its tendency in order to form those special concepts which are accordingly called recepts (retrospective grips) and precepts (prospective grips), without of course lapsing into old-fashioned objectifying concepts. Heidegger will later improve upon this dualism suggested in the hermeneutic type of concept by having the single term pre-conception imply both retrospection and prospection, which unitively and indifferently stretches itself along the whole of the life stream. In the same vein, a formal indication is sometimes called a 'precursory' indication that 'foreruns' the stream without disruption. Springing from life's own sense of direction, from the indifference of its dynamics in view of its incipient differentiation, the formal indication wishes to point to the phenomenon in extreme generality, indifference, and contentlessness, in order to be able to interpret the phenomenon so indicated without prejudice and standpoints. — K

Heidegger attempted and failed at understanding the role language has in one's world-view. — creativesoul

Since the grasp of concepts intercept life and 'still the stream,' phenomenology must find less intrusive, more natural ways to get a grip on its subject matter, which remain in accord with 'the immanent historicity of life in itself.'
...
It involves a phenomenological modification of traditional formalization in order to efface its proclivity toward diremption. All formally indicative concepts aim, strictly speaking, to express only the pure 'out toward' without any further content or ontic fulfillment.
...
The conceptual pair motive-tendency (later the pair thrownness-project understood as equiprimordial) is not a duality, but rather the 'motivated tendency' or the 'tending motivation' in which the 'outworlding' of life expresses itself. Expression, articulation, differentiation arises out of a core of indifferentiation which is no longer to be understood in terms of subject-object, form-matter, or any other duality.
...
Experienced experience, this streaming return of life back upon itself, is precisely the immanent historicity of life, a certain familiarity or 'understanding' that life already has with itself and that phenomenological intuition must simply 'repeat.' And what is this understanding, whether implicit or methodologically explicit, given to understand? The articulations of life itself, which accrue to the self-experience that occurs in the 'dialectical' return of experiencing life to already experienced life...Once again, life is not mute but meaningful, it 'expresses' itself precisely in and through its self-experience and spontaneous self-understanding.
...
The full historical I finds itself caught up in meaningful contexts so that it oscillates according to the rhythmics of worlding, it properizes itself to the articulations of an experience which is governed by the immanent historicity of life in itself. For the primal It of the life stream is more than the primal I. It is the self experiencing itself experiencing the worldly. The ultimate source of the deep hermeneutics of life is properly an irreducible 'It' that precedes and enables the I. It is the unity and whole of the 'sphere of experience' understood as a self-sufficient domain of meaning that phenomenology seeks to approach, 'understandingly experience,' and bring to appropriate language. — Kiesel interpreting/translating Heidegger in 1919

This conversation between you and Terrapin Station interests me, in that I had to learn how to listen to some music while others felt like I had been expecting it without knowing that I did. I have become leery of a lot of comparisons because my primary goal is the experience without qualification. A desire for immersion.
So, many of the things I value most highly are avoided most of the time because I am not ready for them. I need a grammar lesson for some things but I cut it off if interferes with my exposure to it. — Valentinus