It seems that beingness should be though of as a noun. — Janus

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.

"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?". — Banno

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.

Few philosophers restrict themselves to one of these questions, after all. — 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.

"Being and thinking." This is the dichotomy within which we're mostly stuck, in our western culture. "Thought," in this case, being viewed as logic and language. The human being is defined as an animal with reason, with language -- and whose essence lies in a knowing-relation to things. Hence we get minds and bodies, the inner and outer world, subjects contemplating objects, consciousness and its contents, etc.

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.

You suggest that clarification is an outgrowth of science. Rather, science is an outgrowth of clarification. — Banno

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?

It was the clear understanding of momentum and force that permitted the development of physics — Banno

If by "clear understanding" you mean mathematically formulated, sure.

the clear understanding of atoms that led to chemistry — Banno

Chemistry existed far before atomic theory.

the clear understanding of speciation and evolution that led to biology — Banno

Biology has existed long before Darwin's theory as well, as you know.

Did Chomsky's "clear understanding of UG" lead to linguistics?

Clarification is not an ontology. — Banno

What do you mean by this emphasis, that clarification is ontology itself?

And analytic philosophy is not the same as philosophy of language. — Banno

I never said it was.

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. — 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.

"Being" is not central to philosophical concerns. — 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.

More commonly it is understood that a degree of clarity is eventually reached that allows a science to bud off from philosophy. — Banno

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.

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. — Banno

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.

But while you seem to think it is somehow to be done prior to philosophising — Banno

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.

Yes, let's reduce philosophy to "clarifying" terms. Amazing how science and academia has influenced how philosophy is thought about these days.

What a pity.

Philosophy is about clarifying concepts — Banno

Says who? Pretty strange to reduce philosophy to this. Try thinking outside the analytic tradition.

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 — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

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. — I like sushi

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.

You’ve tried to define dasein before and failed. Not surprising as Heidegger failed too. That is my point. — I like sushi

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.

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. I am satisfied with knowing Dasein’s kind of being ( the ontological difference , the in-between , happening , occurrence , the ‘as’ structure , projection). — Joshs

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.

We have already intimated that Dasein has a pre-ontological Being as its ontically constitutive state. Dasein is in such a way as to be something which understands something like Being. Keeping this inter­ connection firmly in mind, we shall show that whenever Dasein tacitly understands and interprets something like Being, it does so with time as its standpoint. Time must be brought to light-and genuinely conceived-as the horizon for all understanding of Being and for anyway of interpreting it. In order for us to discern this, time needs to be explicated primordially as the horizon for the understanding of Being, and in terms of temporality as the Being of Dasein, which understands Being.

B&T, p. 39 (18) Macquarrie/Robinson translation -- emphasis is Heidegger's.

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? — I like sushi

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.

With regard to the awkwardness and 'inelegance' of expression in the analyses to come, we may remark that it is one thing to give a report in which we tell about entities, but another to grasp entities in their Being. For the latter task we lack not only most of the words but, above all, the 'grammar'. If we may allude to some earlier researchers on the analysis of Being, incomparable on their own level, we may compare the onto­logical sections of Plato's Parmenides or the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Aristotle's Metaphysics with a narrative section from Thucydides; we can then see the altogether unprecedented character of those formulations which were imposed upon the Greeks by their philosophers. And where our powers are essentially weaker, and where moreover the area of Being to be disclosed is ontologically far more difficult than that which was presented to the Greeks, the harshness of our expression will be enhanced, and so will the minuteness of detail with which our concepts are formed.

-- Heidegger himself, emphasis mine

notice that the account of being given in the tradition of Frege, Russell, Quine and so on does not depend on time.
— Banno

This is like saying it doesn’t depend on human being. But Frege and Russell were indeed human beings. — Xtrix

This is like saying it doesn't depend on German, but both Husserl and Heidegger arranged their arguments in German. — 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.

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. — Janus

Well said. :clap:

I would invoke an analogy to perception at this point, but perhaps that’s not helpful in this context.

But I’m iffy on whether abstractions are things — 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.

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. — 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.”

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? — Janus

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.

notice that the account of being given in the tradition of Frege, Russell, Quine and so on does not depend on time. — Banno

This is like saying it doesn’t depend on human being. But Frege and Russell were indeed human beings.

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. — 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.

As you know , Heidegger has lots to say about the nothing, authentic angst , the uncanny, absence. — Joshs

Indeed. Would be worth getting into.

Yes, being is a happening. — Joshs

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.

So being literally has no properties? — Heiko

Beings have properties. Being is not a being.

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. — Srap Tasmaner

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.

"Harry Potter is a fictional character" on the other hand explicitely expresses the mode of his existence and makes perfect sense. — Heiko

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.

:up:

Existence is a predicate. — Cuthbert

No it isn’t.

Imagine going on and on about an apple that “doesn’t exist.”

Ohh so he was an activist, didn't engage solely in direct action, but he's OK because he didn't "electioneer" and give "campaign contributions." Got it. So not a "suck up to power."

sucking up to power. — StreetlightX

Oh ok, I get it now. Only direct action counts as "activism." Cool. :up:

MLK was a real suck up to power, too.

Petitioning is another abstraction and one of many types of activism, yes.

direct action — StreetlightX

Is an abstraction -- one of many types of activism.

Probably because they don't reduce activism to 'petitioning those in power to act on their behalf' — StreetlightX

Not reducing, no. But that’s exactly what they’re doing.

It's hard not to ask the question of being without getting into Heidegger, but let's see this question has any relevance to our lives, as individuals and also in the society/culture we happen to be living in.

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?

My bad— just stupid activists then.

people actually doing good — StreetlightX

No— stupid activists. Probably voted against Trump to boot.

Stupid kid activists.

A place can't disagree with someone. — Bartricks

:rofl:

For the most part, education, health and wealth are not things you have a right to. — Bartricks

Thankfully most civilized places on earth disagree with you.

The roasting must take place on democratic party approved bounds only. — StreetlightX

No.

Doesn’t Biden deserve to be roasted for this? — Srap Tasmaner

Sure— just as he deserves to be roasted for asking OPEC to increase oil production, which I pointed out weeks ago.

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'. — Wayfarer

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.

:yawn:

unconditional votes — StreetlightX

Not unconditional.

unconditional support. — StreetlightX

Has nothing to do with support.