• Heidegger and Language


    Joshs, I am done. If you go back over what I have said I think I have made clear what I think Heidegger means by discourse ... or don't.
  • Heidegger and Language
    It seem to me that you are making a distinction between experiences as they are in themselves and our representations of experiences.Joshs

    I don't know what you mean "in themselves". I am simply saying that what we do and talking about what we do are not the same.

    If this is the case, it would be necessary for me to show how Heidegger's use of such terms as articulation, intelligibility , discourse and language are intended in a radically different way than what is implied by representation.Joshs

    The only way in which representation comes into our discussion here is your misrepresentation of what I have actually said.

    Forgive me for quoting Derrida here, but this is the direction that I (and Derrida) believe Heideger was headed in:Joshs

    I am not interested in discussing what direction you or Derrida believe Heidegger was headed in. But by all means introduce the work of another philosopher so that those who might be interested can argue about the interpretation of not one or two or more philosophers, but I am not going to join in.

    I'll note once again, that you have not been able to provide any evidence from Being and Time that activities such as mowing the lawn or baking a potato are considered by Heidegger to be forms or examples of discourse.
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?
    Trump's elaborated version according to the New York Times:

    Mr. Trump offered a more detailed version of events later in the day, telling NBC’s Chuck Todd, the host of “Meet the Press,” that he had not given a final go-ahead when military officials checked with him a half-hour before the strikes were scheduled to launch.

    "So they came and they said, ‘Sir, we’re ready to go. We’d like a decision.’ I said, ‘I want to know something before you go. How many people will be killed, in this case Iranians?’ ” Mr. Trump told Mr. Todd.

    The president said that the officials said they needed to get back to him, but eventually said that “approximately 150” Iranians might die.

    Mr. Trump challenged reports that planes were already in the air when he called off the strike, adding: “I didn’t think it was proportionate."

    So he would have us believe that up until that point the issue of how many people would be killed had not occurred to anyone involved, not Trump, not the unnamed General, and not the other unidentified military officials who "had to get back to him".

    In addition, what does it say about a president who is poised to strike but does not consider the question of proportionate response until half an hour before they were scheduled to launch?
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?


    I think that is backwards. I think that it is because he is stupid and childish and narcissistic and vindictive that he does what he does. He is completely unprepared and unsuited for statesmanship.

    What people underestimated was his electability. The one thing I will give him credit for his skill as a self-promoting conman. There is ample evidence of his failures as a businessman. Despite his father's bankrolling him with millions of dollars to start and many millions more along the way, he filed for bankruptcy six times. U.S. banks refused to lend him money. Along the way he defrauded the IRS and left many contractors and workers without payment in full. Then and now he has over and over again demonstrated a pathological need to lie. Now as president he has alienated our enemies and courted dictatorial enemies.
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?


    All three scenarios seem plausible. Here is another one, more in line with his schoolboy mentality: show that he is tough by preparing to attack and then that although he is ready and capable of doing this he won't, that he is the bigger man in control of his strength.
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?


    I am sure there are some who do and some who may not but will still defend Trump's indecisiveness on that basis. I doubt that he was only informed at the last minute as to estimated causalities, if in fact that was the estimate and not just something Trump pulled out of his ass to cover up whatever forced his hand.
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?
    So why did Trump decide to call off the attack? Could it be because the evidence that Trump said is "documented scientifically" was after all, just words? In that case the planned attack would be an act of war. So at what point did Trump blink? His story about being informed only minutes before the launch that there would be causalities if true demonstrates his incompetence and inability to control his compulsiveness by his unwillingness to consult with the military ahead of time. If he is lying to cover up his real reasons then he still sends the message the he is incompetent and compulsive.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    So Trump is set to launch an attack on Iran but ten minutes before the attack he claims he was told that it would kill 150 people so he called it off. If it is true that he was not aware of the possibility of casualties before ordering the attack he demonstrates his incompetence and inability to control his compulsiveness by his unwillingness to consult with the military ahead of time. If he is lying to cover up his real reasons then he still sends the message the he is incompetent and compulsive.

    Perhaps what really happened is that he was forced to back down and now wanting to appear weak he did what he is best at, lie.
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?


    Are you auditioning for Sarah Huckabee Sanders' job?
  • Nussbaum
    It's like playing poker with someone who wants an explanation of why the Ace is the highest card.Banno

    Highest? No wonder I always lose.
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?
    This may also explain why Trump is de-escalating his own rhetoric, claiming the drone incident maybe just a mistake by a missile operator, captain, general, what-have-youboethius

    Here we find Trump's habit of dissembling saying two different things at once:

    "They made a bad mistake". "They made a very big mistake" "A general or somebody made a mistake."

    A deliberate act of aggression by Iran ("they") against the United States might be called a mistake, underestimating the response. But "somebody" making a mistake might be based on incorrect information about the locations of the drone or somebody acted without authorization. What the appropriate response might be in the first case is not the same as what the appropriate response might be in the second case, but all Trump will say is "you'll find out". Since Iran acknowledges it shot down the drone the somebody possibility that Trump "imagines" stretches the credibility of somebody who has little or none to begin with. Will the evidence that Trump says is "documented scientifically" be released to the public or to congress or the United Nations?
  • Heidegger and Language
    In dong so, what I am distinguishing are 2 patterns of significations, bound up within a larger totality of significations.Joshs

    This does not explain why you think my statement is incoherent.

    From Dahlstrom's article:

    Implements have meaning, in the broad sense of the term. Discourse supposes and contributes to these meanings. We talk about and specify things in terms of meanings with which we are already acquainted, meanings that have taken shape (laterally, ultimately, or existentially) in the course of our being-in-the-world. Discourse, not to be confused with
    language, contributes to the constitution of this meaningful whole (existential meaning) since discourse is no less basic an existential than understanding or disposedness. xxii
    Meanings narrowly construed, i.e.,the lexical (linguistic) meanings of words, take shape in the meaning-in-use (discursive meaning) that is co-extensive with an interpretative understanding of the meaningful whole.

    ...

    After relating that he regards disposedness and understanding as "equiprimordially
    constitutive manners of being-here," Heidegger adds that these two fundamental
    existentials are "equiprimordially determined by discourse."xxvi This claim underscores the
    central role he accords it in the constitution of our being-here. By identifying it as
    "equiprimordial," he means to call attention to, among other things, the fact that the
    everyday intelligibility of things for us is always already sorted out ("gegliedert"). Just as
    we always already find ourselves in a situation, disposed in various ways to ourselves and
    others (others like and unlike ourselves), and just as we are always already projecting
    ourselves onto some possibility or another, so we are always already speaking with
    ourselves or others, articulating the intelligibility of our dispositions-and-projections.
    Stressing this equiprimordial character, Heidegger adds that discourse, precisely as the
    articulation of that intelligibility, underlies interpretation and assertion.

    So, tell me where you find in this or elsewhere in the article or anywhere in Being and Time the idea that mowing the lawn or baking a potato is discourse.
  • Heidegger and Language
    IF mowing the lawn occurs within that totality it is a signification, and thus it is languageJoshs

    I don't see how it follows from being within a totality of signification that mowing the lawn is language. But we can go back and forth claiming it is and is not. I am open to amending my position but only if you can point to something substantive in Heidegger that identifies such activities as language.

    So mowing the lawn is discourve by virtue the fact that it is a symbolizing.Joshs

    What does it mean to say that mowing the lawn is symbolizing?

    There is no such thing as a doing that is not a symbolizing, to Heidegger. You believe differentlyJoshs

    Point to something substantive in the text. It is not a matter of what I believe but of my trying to understand Heidegger.

    That why you can say
    I am going to end this talk about mowing the lawn, but the lawn will still get mowed, if not by me then by someone else.
    — Fooloso4
    and not treat it as an incoherent statement.
    Joshs

    Do you not understand what I said?

    For Heidegger , it would be incorrent to distinguish an activity or experience from a system of differential signs.Joshs

    Are you not able to distinguish between mowing the lawn and baking a potato? Would it be all the same if you put the lawnmower in the oven?
  • Nussbaum
    We do not have a choice as to whether we are born or not. If someone thinks it is better to not bring children into the world then that is their choice. But it is not everyone's choice. As long as there are people being born and living then how they live is an issue.

    Since this thread is about Nussbaum I am going to leave off on this line of inquiry.
  • Nussbaum


    I don't understand the question. There are a few basic needs that are required for life. One need not live well, and in many cases one does not to a greater or lesser extent, but we each want what is good, although we may have different ideas about what that entails. Nussbaum examines what contributes to a good life not in order to come up with a one size fits all recipe, but to allow for the development of our capacities.
  • Nussbaum
    What happens when life is full and flourishing? Do people get a thumbs up on their gravestone?schopenhauer1

    When life is full and flourishing one is not dead.

    Why does someone need to live a full life in the first place?schopenhauer1

    Would you prefer the opposite? Would you prefer that everyone else live such a life?

    Interesting what hidden just so theories lurk behind most ethical claims.schopenhauer1

    What hidden just so theories lurk behind Nussbaum's enumeration of capacities?
  • Nussbaum
    Two points with regard to capacities:

    First, they are descriptive of the realization of a full human life, of eudemonia or flourishing.

    Second, to impede them without justification is thus unethical.
  • Heidegger and Language
    Discourse doesn’t really come into the picture until the second part of B&T.Possibility

    Good point. It is here we find the call of conscience.
  • Heidegger and Language


    From this there arises the insight that among the modes of Being of entities within-the-world, Reality has no priority, and that Reality is a kind of Being which cannot even characterize anything like the world or Dasein in a way which is ontologically appropriate. 211)

    As we have noted, Being (not entities) is dependent upon the understanding of Being; that is to say, Reality (not the Real) is dependent upon care. (212)

    I think that what Heidegger is getting at is that reality is not an ontological category. It is phenomenal not in the sense of as opposed to the noumenal, but that it is part of rather than independent of the ontological structure of Dasein.

    I
  • Heidegger and Language
    How do you know that someone is mowing the lawn? Describe the ways of knowing that a lawn is being mowed(by someone else or by you), that don't involve taikng about it.Joshs

    Okay, I am going to end this talk about mowing the lawn, but the lawn will still get mowed, if not by me then by someone else.

    Is a totality of relevance discourse?
    — Fooloso4

    The articulation of a totality of relevance is discourse.
    Joshs

    A totality of relevance and the articulation a totality of relevance are not the same. I do not see how it makes sense to say that mowing the lawn is the articulation of a totality of relevance when that articulation is about the totality. Mowing the lawn is something that occurs within that totality, not the articulation of that totality.
  • Heidegger and Language
    i don't know what you mean by reducing mowing the lawn to discourse.Joshs

    The argument put forward by Arne, if I understand him correctly, is that this activity must be understood as standing under state of mind, understanding, or discourse. He puts it under discourse.

    What is it you want mowing the lawn to be besides a signiicant meaning within a totality of relevance?Joshs

    Is a totality of relevance discourse?

    Are you arguing that when we articulate the meaning of mowing the lawn as ready to hand, this interpretation of the activity is a discursive treatment added onto beings which we initially encounter ?Joshs

    Beings which we initially encounter? Encounters of the third kind?

    Talking about mowing the lawn is discourse:

    Its constitutive factor are: what discourse is about (what is discussed), what is said as such, communication, and making known.Fooloso4

    In other words, that an initially objectively present world-stuff were ...Joshs

    You are stuffing straw, man.

    Without discourse, mowing the lawn has no meaning.Joshs

    Once again, it is through discourse that the meaning of mowing the lawn is disclosed. That does not mean that mowing the lawn is discourse.
  • Heidegger and Language
    Is there for you any sense of the meaning of or existence of a lawnmower, grass and cutting apart from how they are interpreted in the context of your actual involvement at a particular point in time in the world ? Are you arguing for an Independence of things from our concepts of them? Is there a reality independent of our relevant circumspective contextual dealing in the world?Joshs

    My point once again is simply that saying that mowing the lawn is discourse is a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what I take Heidegger to mean by discourse. Mowing the lawn can be interpreted within the totality of our involvement with the world but that does not reduce mowing the lawn to discourse.

    As I read him, reality is phenomenal:

    Of course only as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an understanding of Being is ontically possible), 'is there' Being. When Dasein does not exist, 'independence' 'is' not either, nor 'is' the 'in-itself'. In such a case this sort of thing can be neither understood nor not understood. In such a case even entities within-the-world can neither be discovered nor lie hidden. In such a case it cannot be said that entities are, nor can it be said that they are not. But now, as long as there is an understanding of Being and therefore an understanding of presence-at-hand, it can indeed be said that in this case entities will still continue to be. (212)

    The question of what there was prior to or what there is without Dasein is a question that Dasein asks, and so, cannot be asked or thought or known independent of Dasein.
  • Heidegger and Language
    The point Heidegger is trying to make here ...Joshs

    I agree that this is a point that he makes but I think there is more to it. We might say, for example, that a hand is one thing but that the palm and fingers are two things and that each finger is several things. How we divide the world is both determined by and determines what we say.

    It 's interesting that you used the word 'is'.Joshs

    It was Arne who said this:

    ... discourse is what we do and not what we think or say.Arne

    Put differently, what ever sense of .mowing' I experience right now is interpreted, signified, conceptualized, This is a discursive move.Joshs

    This discursive move will not get the grass cut. The lawnmower has to move. I can talk about it, but talking about it, disclosing its significance is not mowing the lawn.

    In an earlier post you wrote " Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse." Does this mean you distinguish Heidegger from writers like Derrida. Does this mean you distinguish Heidegger from writers like Derrida ...Joshs

    I meant to say when every activity is thought to be discourse. I am not prepared to discuss Derrida. Compounding the problem of interpreting by introducing the problem of interpreting Derrida is problematic. What I meant simply is that there is something distinctive about talk or Rede. That is lost if everything we do is said to be talk.
  • Heidegger and Language


    So, instead of providing textual support for the claim that discourse is whatever we do you provide excuses for why you cannot provide it.

    I am willing to leave it there.
  • Is there something like progress in the philosophical debate?


    It is not clear whether you are laughing at my claim or at their presumptuousness. In support of my claim:

    Because analytic philosophy initially saw itself as superseding traditional philosophy, its tendency throughout much of the twentieth century was to disregard the history of philosophy.
    https://www.iep.utm.edu/analytic/#SH5c
  • Heidegger and Language
    There is our State-of Mind, there is our Understanding, and there is what we do.

    Discourse is what we do!
    Arne

    State of mind, understanding, and discourse make possible what we do. They are together the a priori conditions for all that we do.

    I think it evident that I am not going to change your mind about this. While it is possible that you might change my mind, it would only happen as a result of providing textual support. If discourse is what we do then it makes not sense to call it Rede instead of action or behavior or what we do.
  • Heidegger and Language
    According to this reading, all of the equi-primordial dimensions that Heidegger mentions, including discourse, always come into play in every experience.Joshs

    I agree with that, but it does not follow that mowing the lawn is discourse. There may be all kinds of things that come into play with any activity but that does not mean that the activity is those things that come into play.

    The reason that man talks is that man has temporality.Joshs

    I was with you up until this point.

    He says this call, this summons is a mode of discourse.Joshs

    Yes. I made this point in one of my first posts.

    How can that be? Because discourse has to do with the way every experience communicates to us, calls us out of the previous.Joshs

    It is because of:

    ... the basic a priori structure of discourse in general as an existentiale. (165-166)

    But the in-order-to and the for-the-sake-of-which that organizes our heedful involvement with things is a form of talking for Heidegger, but not as a secondary function in relation to passively perceiving the world or being involved in an activity.Joshs

    Discourse as part of the basic a priori structure of Dasein is a condition for the possibility of our being in the world. Heedful involvement with things is not possible without discourse. It is, however, through the expression of discourse in language that this is brought to light.

    Discourse is the articulation of intelligibility (161).

    I take this to mean that the a priori structure of discourse articulates in the sense of things being phenomenally distinct, that is, particular. There can be no intelligibility without things being distinct one from the other. Thus, he says, we do not hear pure noise but a wagon or motorcycle (164).
  • Heidegger and Language
    If all he wanted to do was tell us the meaning of being, he could have stopped after page 26 of the M&R translation of B&T.Arne

    The meaning of being is not something he or anyone else can tell us. What it is to be is not a matter of definition. It is the question that guides Dasein's authentic being. Essential to this is an openness to possibilities for what one is to be. That is something each of us must determine for him or her self.

    the ready to hand and equipment are not synonymousArne

    On that we agree, but:

    The kind of Being which equipment possesses-in which it manifests itself in its own right-we call "readiness to-hand" (69).

    at no point did I suggest that talking about anything is an a prior condition for using anythingArne

    You did not, but:

    If the 'as' is ontically unexpressed, this must not seduce us into overlooking it as a constitutive state for understanding, existential and a priori.

    But if we never perceive equipment that is ready-to-hand without already understanding and interpreting it, and if such perception lets us circumspectively encounter something as something, does this not mean that in the first instance we have experienced something purely present-at-hand, and then taken it as a door, as a house ? This would be a misunderstanding of the specific way in which interpretation functions as disclosure. In interpreting, we do not, so to speak, throw a 'signification' over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation. (149-150)

    The point being is that interpretations (the rendering explicit of understanding) are done for the purpose of acting upon the interpretation. And rendering explicit (interpreting) my understanding of the proper heat at which to bake a potato is done for the purpose of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature. And the act of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature is a non-verbal expression of my interpretation (explicit understanding) of how to bake a potato.Arne

    But your interpretation is not discourse. Discourse is what make interpretation possible:

    The intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there is any appropriative interpretation of it. Discourse is the Articulation of intelligibility. Therefore it underlies both interpretation and assertion. (161)

    The primary issue is not the definition of equiprimordial. Instead, the issue is whether when taken together these primoridials constitute the existential whole of Dasein.Arne

    The issue under discussion is whether acts such as baking a potato are examples of or expressions of non-verbal discourse. Our disagreement has nothing to do with the definition of equiprimordial.

    Please see B&T (M&R) at page 224Arne

    Finally, an actual reference to the text! But it is not a point in contention.

    It would be strange indeed if Heidegger laid out the “existential whole of Dasein” and it accounted for the expressions of interpretations made by Dasein except for the expressions of interpretations at the very heart of Heidegger’s originality, i.e., non-verbal acts expressing our interpretations (explicit understandings) of how to use (not talk about) equipment (such as ovens and lawn mowers). And if you think that is what Heidegger has done, then you are wrong. And I can live with that.Arne

    You have moved away from the claim that discourse (talk) is not about what we say but about what we do. Interpretation is addressed, as I quoted above, in the section on understanding. Discourse is not interpretation or the expression of an interpretation, it is what makes both interpretation and its expression possible.
  • Heidegger and Language
    A person is performing an activity alone. Where does discourse, in your view, come into play here?Joshs

    It may not come in at all. That it does not come into play is not the result of being alone but of performing the activity

    Do other people have to be involved in a communication for discourse to take place, or does the person performing the activity have to undergo a modification , translation, elaboration, articulation of the experience to themselves in a second step?Joshs

    Heidegger says:

    The items constitutive for discourse are : what the discourse is about (what is talked about) ; what is said-in the-talk, as such ; the communication; and the making-known. These are not properties which can just be raked up empirically from language. They are existential characteristics rooted in the state of Dasein's Being, and it is they that first make anything like language ontologically possible. (162-163)

    The activity that Heidegger is calling our attention to is not whatever we do, but the doing of something specific that is, if not unique, essential to Dasein. This is why he goes through the history of logos. He wants to get back behind that development already under way in which Aristotle's claim that man alone of the animals has logos, is understood to as man is the rational animal. Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse.

    If the activity of mowing or baking is not discourse , is it something else?Joshs

    Yes, it is mowing or baking - "stop talking and get back to work".

    Does it have a meaningful existential status or is it a meaningless notion without discourse?Joshs

    Mowing the lawn or baking a potato are not "notions", they are activities. There are a variety of ways in which they may be meaningful - they may serve some purpose or get taken up in discourse and shown to play a role in a totality of significations. The activities are not, however, the articulation of meaning, their meaning must be brought to light in discourse.

    Being taken up in discourse would have to be primary, just as being affected by mood, or taken into understanding .Joshs

    Discourse is primary, what is taken up in discourse is not.

    So if mowing or baking are 'taken into' discourse, this cannot be a second step or development in relation to some supposed prior being of these activities.Joshs

    Again, discourse or talk is always about something. In this case talk about mowing or baking. It is not a second step or development.
  • Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?
    The problem with these threads is that there is always one dominant narrative used:

    "Neocons are trying everything, including false flag operations to get the US to war because the military-industrial complex wants a war."
    ssu

    More important than whatever is said in these threads is what the dominant narrative will be that shapes what happens going forward. It has become standard practice for presidents to declare war without the consent of congress. So it may be that whatever narrative is playing in Trump's head at any given moment could be the determining factor.
  • Heidegger and Language
    Equi-primordiality means that all of them are equally primary ...Joshs

    What I said was:

    Their equiprimordiality means that none of them is primary, that they do not derive one from another.Fooloso4

    The second clause qualifies the first. If they are equally primary it means that no one of them is primary or before the others.

    Thus, discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. These activities are experienced, and as experiences they are signifiications.Joshs

    That is not quite the same as saying baking a potato or mowing the lawn is a mode of discourse. It is not the act of mowing or baking that is a signification:

    In the act of understanding [ Verstehen], which we shall analyse more thoroughly later (Compare Section 3 I), the relations indicated above must have been previously disclosed; the act of understanding holds them in this disclosedness. It holds itself in them with familiarity ; and in so doing, it holds them before itself, for it is in these that its assignment operates. The understanding lets itself make assignments both in these relationships themselves and of them. The relational character which these relationships of assigning possess, we take as one of signifying. In its familiarity with these relationships, Dasein 'signifies' to itself: in a primordial manner it gives itself both its Being and its potentiality-for-Being
    as something which it is to understand with regard to its Being-in-the world. The "for-the-sake-of-which" signifies an "in-order-to" ; this in turn, a "towards-this"; the latter, an "in-which" of letting something be
    involved ; and that in turn, the "with-which" of an involvement. These relationships are bound up with one another as a primordial totality; they are what they are as this signifying [Be-deuten) in which Dasein gives itself beforehand its Being-in-the-world as something to be understood. The relational totality of this signifying we call "significance". (87)

    That which can be Articulated in interpretation, and thus even more primordially in discourse, is what we have called "meaning" [significance, German Bedeutung]. That which gets articulated as such in discursive Articulation, we call the "totality-of-significations" [Bedeutungsganze]. (161)

    The intelligibility of Being-in-the-world-an intelligibility which goes with a state-of-mind -expresses itself as discourse. (161)

    The totality-of-significations of intelligibility is put into words. To significations, words accrue. But word-Things do not get supplied with significations.

    The way in which discourse gets expressed is language. (161)

    Discourse is the articulation of meaning . The meaning of the activity of mowing the lawn or baking a potato is what is articulated in discourse. The activity of mowing or baking is not discourse, but is taken up in discourse as part of the totality of involvement and totality of signification.
  • Is there something like progress in the philosophical debate?


    You said:

    This is the domain of analytic philosophy, philosophy of language and ordinary language philosophy.Janus

    I take it that "this" refers to:

    Philosophy gives us knowledge of how we think and of what the limitations of our thinking are, and it gives us this knowledge through analysis of linguistic practices and also through introspective analysis of our intuitions of meaning and reference.Janus

    But such things are not exclusively the domain of analytic philosophy or modern or contemporary philosophy. It may be that analytic philosophy gives us new ways to think about these things, but certainly thinking about these things is something philosophers did long before analytic philosophy.

    As to whether their way of thinking is a mark of progress remains an open question.
  • Is there something like progress in the philosophical debate?
    Aside: it's worth remembering that not all philosophy is known to all philosophers. So we need to rehash old insights to learn ideas that are new to us, even though, perhaps, others learned the same things in the past. We are not born knowing Cratylus; we have to learn about him.Pattern-chaser

    This is an interesting point because it is often assumed that in philosophy's progress such ideas are relegated to the dust bin of history. But Joseph Margolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Margolis) cogently argues that both though and the world are flux.

    It is worth noting that until recently analytic philosophers all but ignored the history of philosophy, the assumption being that they had progressed to the point where the ancients could have nothing to teach them.
  • Heidegger and Language
    IF a primary purpose (perhaps the primary purpose) of Being and Time is to capture the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-worldArne

    The primary purpose is to once again ask the question of the meaning of being. The everyday mode of existence is the starting point for his explication of Dasein. The everyday is not Dasein's mode of being for in everyday existence our concern is not the question of the meaning of being, that is, what it is for us to be. Dasein is:

    That entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility, and it 'has' this possibility, but not just as a property [eigenschaftlich], as something present-at-hand would. And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, 'choose' itself and win itself; it can also lose itself
    and never win itself; or only 'seem' to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be authentic-that is, something of its own -can it have lost itself and not yet won itself. (42-43)

    IF much (perhaps most) of the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world is comprised of what would be typically described as non-verbal acts (mowing the lawn, driving to the store, baking a potato)Arne

    This is what Heidegger calls involvement with equipment, the 'ready to hand'. We can talk about ovens and baking potatoes, but that does not mean that talking about ovens and baking potatoes and lawn mowers and mowing the lawn are a priori conditions for using ovens and lawn mowers or that the activities are discursive.

    IF State-of-Mind, Understanding, and Discourse are equiprimordial and comprehensively constitutive of being-in-the-world.

    THEN: Discourse must include those acts typically described as non-verbal OR Heidegger fails (MISERABLY) at capturing the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world.
    Arne

    It does not follow from the equiprimordiality of state-of-mind, understanding, and discourse that discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. Their equiprimordiality means that none of them is primary, that they do not derive one from another. Our active involvement in the world is not reducible to discourse.
  • Is there something like progress in the philosophical debate?
    Are you claiming that there are no new ideas in all of analytic philosophy; that there is nothing significant there which cannot be found in Plato and Aristotle?Janus

    No. I made no such claim. What I am claiming is that the things you mentioned can be found there. I should have added that these things are not the exclusive domain of analytic philosophy either. These same issues are addressed in Continental philosophy.

    I am not claiming that nothing has changed or that they saw or thought or conceived of things in the same way as an analytic philosopher does, but then, not all analytic philosophers see things in the same way either.

    The topic question is about progress. While it is true that analytic philosophy has a great deal of technical rigor, it is not at clear what its relevance is outside its argumentative circle. Is that progress?
  • Heidegger and Language


    I am not sure if you are taking issue with the claim that discourse is not about what we do, that it is not, for example, as Arne would have it, turning on the oven to bake a potato. One might, however, say that talking is a kind of doing, but hearing and being silence are not a kind of doing. There is something active in disclosure but also something passive or receptive.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    From the New York Times:

    The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said.

    But Trump is being kept out of the loop:

    Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html?module=inline

    Is it that Trump cannot be trusted because he cannot keep his mouth shut, or because he thinks it is in his interest to trade secrets? One thing that is clear: the nonpartisan adults tasked with protecting the country must protect it from him, and thus treat him as the child he is.
  • Heidegger and Language
    "Discourse" - as opposed to language (assuming I understand what you wrote) - can express, but there is no appreciation of expression except in language via memory. That is, language is exactly front, center, and all around.tim wood

    What Heidegger says is that the intelligibility of our being-in-the-world is expressed in discourse and the way in which discourse gets expressed is language(161).

    So what is the difference between language and discourse? Arne thinks that Heidegger failed to clearly distinguish them. I think the failure is more likely to be on the part of the reader. It is not clear to me whether Arne is explicating or going beyond Heidegger in saying:

    discourse is comprised of anything and everything that we doArne

    What Heidegger says is:

    Its constitutive factors are: what discourse is about (what is discussed), what is said as such, communication, and making known. These are not properties that can be just empirically snatched from language, but are existential characteristics rooted in the constitution of being of Dasein which first make something like language ontologically possible. (162-163)Fooloso4
    [Stambaugh translation]

    The items constitutive for discourse are : what the discourse is about (what is talked about) ; what is said-in the-talk, as such ; the communication; and the making-known. These are not properties which can just be raked up empirically from language. They are existential characteristics rooted in the state of Dasein's Being, and it is they that first make anything like language ontologically possible.
    [Macquarrie and Robinson translation]

    He says nothing here about discourse being about anything other than what is said, what is talked about.

    In their translation Macquarrie and Robinson note:

    'Rede'. As we have pointed out earlier ... we have translated this word either as 'discourse' or 'talk', as the context seems to demand, sometimes compromising with the hendiadys 'discourse or talk'. But in some contexts 'discourse' is too formal while 'talk' is too colloquial ; the reader must remember that there is no good English equivalent for 'Rede'. (p.203)
  • Heidegger and Language
    If you would like to do that, I am fine limiting my discussions with you to only Being and Time.Arne

    It is not a question of limiting the discussion but of identifying whether you are interpreting BT, introducing other works by H., or addressing something that is not in the text.

    And I see no inconsistencies between my comments and examples regarding silence and your subsequent comments.Arne

    The examples you gave are what H. describes in the first paragraph I quoted. He contrasts this with genuine or authentic silence.

    Returning to the example of my father, his own tendencies to silence had the effect of amplifying his words on the occasions when he did choose to speak.Arne

    As I understand it, the effect of amplifying his words is not what genuine silence is about. It is about the hearing, about the disclosure of Dasein.