The emaciated skeletal structure of the subject Dasein is is not a full account of human being; it falls silent on the specifics by design. — fdrake

Can you explain that? I think that is the crux of your critique, but a lot of Heideggerese is lost on me- mainly because more specialized jargon is used to explain his specialized jargon.

Can you explain that? I think that is the crux of your critique, but a lot of Heideggerese is lost on me- mainly because more specialized jargon is used to explain his specialized jargon. — schopenhauer1

Yes I know, it is frustrating. Basically what I'm saying is that Dasein describes the subjectivity of the everyman in a general situation; it's set up that way. Heidegger's analysis is aimed at revealing deeper and deeper 'grounding' structures of the everyman in every day situations.

Some things to note about this everyman; it's bodiless, it doesn't have contextual constraints like 'a person reflecting' or 'a person with chronic pain', it's sexless, genderless, mentally typical...

Levinas: "Dasein in Heidegger is never hungry". That's about as brutal a critique of Heidegger that I know. Another might be: Dasein is limbless. Or: doesn't (can't?) sing a tune while skipping down a street, merrily, with no particular end in mind (Dasein can brood though!).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Question_Concerning_Technology — ghost

I mean the "What are poets for?" essay mentioned by OP.

What is the true experience or description of something? — waarala

Heidegger defines truth as simply the unconcealing of beings (letting beings be), not whether that unconcealing is accurate with respect to some standard of comparison.

After all, Dasein/existence has a physiological body which is often a technical object — waarala

Heidegger would say that Dasein does not 'have' a body in the sense of possessing an object, Dasein 'bodies forth'.
"There is actually no phenomenology of the body because the body is not a corporeal thing . With such a thematic approach, one has already missed the point of the matter. I myself am the relationship to something or to someone with whom I am involved in each case. However, "relationship" is not to be understood here in the modern logical-mathematical sense of relation as a relationship between objects. The existential relationship cannot be objectified. " Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars

The categories, according to IETP, were adapted pretty well wholesale from Aristotle. I am interested in your comment that they can be equated with the forms. — Wayfarer

I just meant that Kant's transcendental categories of perception and understanding (space and time,quantity, quality, relation, and modality) are apriori formal organizing principles. They are , of course, contents also, but contents which cannot be modelled mathematically(mathematics does't describe them because it presupposes these categories. They are the formal conditions of possibility of doing math and logic. One could say Kant is the first modern deconstructer of mathematics and logic

BTW, I am grappling with how to treat Thompson's(and Varela's) attempt at integrating Buddhist-inspired contemplative practices with phenomenology(and cognitive neuroscience). In partrticular , their articulation of the not-present-to-itself ego in terms of bliss, compassion, generosity, etc. How can they justify such positive affective characterizations of primoridal being-with? Notice that Heidegger thinks Dasein via ambiguous and equivocal affectivities like primordial guilt, angst and uncanniness,

Levinas: "Dasein in Heidegger is never hungry". That's about as brutal a critique of Heidegger that I know. — StreetlightX

Here's a more straighttforward critique of Levinas's reading of Heidegger from your favorite writer:

According to Levinas. "the thought of the Being of the existent would have the propositional logic of the truism, placing ethics under the heel of ontology. Being as ontological difference is the concept of an abstract predicate, seeking to cover the totality of existents in its extreme universality." Levinas interprets "the thought of Being as a concept of Being", but Being is not a concept or theory or existent.
"Heidegger is emphatic on this point: the Being which is in question is not the concept to which
the existent (for example, someone) is to be submitted (subsumed). Being is not the concept of a
rather indeterminate and abstract predicate, seeking to cover the totality of existents in its
extreme universality because it is not a predicate, and authorizes all predication.

"By making the origin of language, meaning, and difference the relation to the infinitely other,
Levinas is resigned to betraying his own intentions in his philosophical discourse. But the true
name of this inclination of thought to the Other, of this resigned acceptance of incoherent
incoherence inspired by a truth more profound than the "logic" of philosophical discourse,
transcendental horizons of language, is empiricism. The profundity of the empiricist intention
must be recognized beneath the naivete of certain of its historical expressions. It is the dream of
a purely heterological thought at its source. A pure thought of pure difference. Empiricism
is its philosophical name, its metaphysical pretention or modesty.(Derrida, VM189)"

Some things to note about this everyman; it's bodiless, it doesn't have contextual constraints like 'a person reflecting' or 'a person with chronic pain', it's sexless, genderless, mentally typical... — fdrake

These are good observations. One could add that in the mode of average everydayness of 'Das Man' (which is what I assume you're talking about), social experience is treated as generic, unreflective, consensus, conventional. "The publicness of the they suppresses everything unfamiliar".

Interestingly, average everydayness is not a present to hand mode but related to the ready to hand.
And it should be mentioned that it is not that the experience of Das Man is genuinely generic, conventional and public. It is that one believes it to be so, and doesnt notice the way that one's encounters with others is contextually particularized. We believe we are talking about the same things, understanding our shared words in exactly the same way, even though that is never the case. In the mode of average everydayness we understand this implictly but not explicitly. And because it is not explict, we are not able to make use of what particularizes our experiences and therefore tend toward following the herd.
The way I see it, when Heidegger wrote Being and Time, his culture, his small town community, did believe such things about the veridical nature of the shared meanings of social life. If he were writing today, I wonder if he would find the concept of Das Man useful in a culture where more of us have become accustomed to interpreting each others words and actions in contextual terms,and where convention and conformity are disdained.

BTW, I'd like to hear more about what you mean by ontic feedback loops.

I am grappling with how to treat Thompson's (and Varela's) attempt at integrating Buddhist-inspired contemplative practices with phenomenology (and cognitive neuroscience). In particular , their articulation of the not-present-to-itself ego in terms of bliss, compassion, generosity, etc. How can they justify such positive affective characterizations of primordial being-with? — Joshs

Bliss is an intrinsic attribute of being which is usually ‘obscured by adventitious defilements’. It's just there and at some point in yogic practices it simply arises or manifests. There's a Hindu (not Buddhist) term, sat-chit-ananda, meaning, roughly, 'being-mind-bliss', and the suffix, 'ananda' is often found in Hindu names (e.g. Satyananda, Muktananda, and others like it.) In any case, it's experiential, not a theory, not a consequence of intellection.

(There's an anecdote that Heidegger was once found by a friend reading D. T. Suzuki. He was said to have remarked "If I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings". However he didn't believe it possible or prudent to try and adopt Buddhist ideas or culture, generally, so it never overtly figured as part of his corpus. )

it sounds like you're saying there is a real realm of physical nature and a real realm of human subjective experience, or what we colloquially call 'phenomenological', and that the two are different in their contents and methods of study but equally primordial. — Joshs

No, I'm not making any claims about separate realms or anything like that. I'm just saying that what the various sciences typically deal with as compared to what phenomenology typically deals with are subject matters produced by significantly different kinds of perspectives with their attendant disparate methodologies of inquiry.

The meaning of Husserl's phenomenology, which served as the jumping off point for Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, among others, is quite different from this colloquial understanding of phenomenological. As Dan Zahavi puts it " Husserl is not concerned with finding room for consciousness within an already well established materialistic or naturalistic framework. The attempt to do the latter assumes that consciousness is merely yet another object in the world. — Joshs

I don't know who you think has such a "colloquial" (nice bit of condescension there, btw :up: ) understanding, but as far as I know Husserl's "epoché" or suspension of judgement concerning the question of the existence of an objective or external world is certainly no secret and could even be said to be notorious.

The positive sciences are so absorbed in their investigation of the natural (or social/cultural) world that they do not pause to reflect upon their own presuppositions and conditions of possibility. For Husserl, natural science is (philosophically) naive. Its subject matter, nature, is simply taken for granted. Reality is assumed to be out there, waiting to be discovered and investigated. And the aim of natural science is to acquire a strict and objectively valid knowledge about this given realm. But this attitude must be contrasted with the properly philosophical attitude, which critically questions the very foundation of experience and scientific thought." — Joshs

It's not the job of the sciences to reflect on such things; science's job (broadly speaking) is just to investigate nature as it appears to us. It's not the job of science to make pronouncements as to whether what it deals with is the ding an sich, the world in itself or the world for us. Science does not need to assume that "reality is out there, waiting to be discovered and investigated".

It would really make no difference to her practice of science if the scientist were, for example, to assume, as some Quantum theorists do, that when we discover the fossil remains of plants and animals, carbon-date them, then hypothesize about them and so on, we are "collapsing the wave function" and literally objectivizing or making determinate, where it was previously indeterminate, the story of their evolution.

Science is not philosophy, and it is not phenomenology either, they are all different disciplines with different starting assumptions and methodologies, which was the original and only point I made. Your responses have mostly consisted in putting far too many words in my mouth, and most of them inapt! I recommend writing less and arguing more if you want to engage in fruitful discussion.

I don't disagree with what you say in the rest of your post about mathematics, and none of it is new to me. I'll just point out that what you say only demonstrates further that mathematics is more strictly rule or procedure-based in precisely dealing with determinate abstract objects, than is any 'living' inquiry such as phenomenology or the even the natural or social sciences. As far as I can see what you say there only goes to further support that contention. So I remain convinced that your analogy in this passage:

So my point is that the role that mathematics used to play in philosophy has been taken over by a form of description that reflects the new way that ultimate precision is now understood. In that sense phenomenology, Nietzschean polemics, post structuralism , hermeneutics and pragmatism carry forward the tradition of mathematics as the language of ultimate precision, but via a new type of discourse. — Joshs

is, as it appears at first glance, not a good one because it is unargued; and you have offered no cogent grounds for thinking any such thing, at least as far as I have been able to tell.

The profundity of the empiricist intention must be recognized beneath the naivete of certain of its historical expressions. — Derrida by Joshs

FWIW, I agree. And that's some of my beef with oceans of jargon that would rather obscure this with speculative truths like the body not being a corporeal thing, as if that perspective or frame didn't have as many limitations or as much superstition as the plumber's view it's meant to replace.

Yes I know, it is frustrating. Basically what I'm saying is that Dasein describes the subjectivity of the everyman in a general situation; it's set up that way. Heidegger's analysis is aimed at revealing deeper and deeper 'grounding' structures of the everyman in every day situations. — fdrake

So it describes my annoyance at the maddening creaking and stomping sounds I hear everyday from my inconsiderate upstairs neighbor?

As I mentioned above, Ontology: Hermeneutics of Facticity (lecture notes from 1923) is a great text for those who don't want to drown in Being and Time. It's less than 100 pages and just a genuine pleasure to read. His early stuff wasn't printed when Being and Time came out, so maybe it tends to be overlooked, despite being more likable in many ways.

If anyone out there has also read this text, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I find Heidegger's thrownness, idea sort of useful- the facticity of what is already-there, and what has been shaped historically. Also, the idea that Dasein is sort of a mix of the past, present, and future. Okay, so he brings in the time aspect. But I think my own conception of what essentially comprises and shapes the individual human being is more accurate and to the point. It lacks that obscurantism that so entices people to Heidegger though. My conception is thus:

Each action we take, is a decision we have to make and choose within the motivational constraints of survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment mediated by genetically and environmentally created personality filters, that are themselves carried out and partially informed from a broader linguistically-based, socio-cultural context with a historically-developed set of institutions.

I pretty much agree with your conception, which I'd even say is already in Hobbes. (The first part of Leviathan ('Of Man') would make a great standalone paperback.) Probably Heidegger would too, but he'd stress all the sub-conceptual habits or doings as part of that context. And he'd shine a light on how artificial and contingent some of our ways of talking are.

It lacks that obscurantism that so entices people to Heidegger though — schopenhauer1

Like I said, go back and it's not obscure. I mention the text that I keep opening up again, and that means going from Bacon to Heidegger without becoming dizzy.

Like I said, go back and it's not obscure. I mention the text that I keep opening up again, and that means going from Bacon to Heidegger without becoming dizzy. — ghost

That's fine but I'm also trying to make the point that, with a philosophy like Heidegger, what makes his insights any greater than mine? Is it credentials? Degree? The voluminous amount of writing? Essentially, his philosophy is akin to theology, or one's own insights into the nature of what is the case. Because he thought of some of his own jargon and had some nifty ideas of human relations to the world and language, does he deserve more attention? Other philosophers have their own jargon, and have different conceptions. So it is just hermeneutics.. picking one that agrees more with your sensibilities at that point. What makes one's insights into the human psyche more insightful? It jives well? Those in certain circles just thinks it makes sense? It's usefulness? Many philosophies can be useful if people took them as seriously, but certain philosophers gain traction and others do not.

Often these philosophers are used because of the weight the name carries. Sometimes I'll refer to Schopenhauer, even though I have my own similar idea, simply because people respond to the dead philosopher more than schopenahuer1 idea. So be it, if it is taken more seriously, even though it shouldn't have to be necessary. I also do it as it shows I'm not alone in my thinking- there is some historical precedent. But again, doesn't mean more insightful just means that a species with 5,000 years of writing is likely not to have too much new under the sun into thoughts of the human psyche.

@Janus,@ghostHere is some jargon I made up that I find useful:

1) Minutia mongering- our focus on the particular, especially as it pertains to technological mastery. Some type of people think that by "mining" existence- that is to say, by knowing/mastering all the minutia of life (minutia mongering), that we are somehow fulfilling a higher goal of some sort. Even if they say there is no higher goal to work towards, de facto by being wrapped up in the minutia, by trying to master it, they are regarding the fact that we are able to mine some understanding that can be useful for prediction/functionality from the materials/universe as being something of value. The value comes in the output of more mining. For example, if I show you a really complex and extremely detailed math formula or proof, and then go about solving it, and then applying it to some world event that it maps to, I must be doing something of meaning because of its very complexity and its use in a functional application. I have mined the information and presented it and solved it and used it in a complex tool. That in itself must mean something. The very fact of my understanding and solving the complexity or that I advanced a functionality.

To sum it up, all the information needed to maintain a complex technology, is minutia mongering. Our culture relies on people to be experts in minutia- to monger it, in order for our mode of survival to continue. Because of its use-value in our culture, the minutia and its mongering, are seen as valuable and to have meaning because of its useful functionality. The minutia mongerer is the modern man extraordinaire to those with a scientific bent. The minutia mongerer is an expert about how a piece of technology works- right down to the bits and bytes, or the quarks, and electrons.

2) Survival/comfort-seeking/entertainment Motivations- these are the three main categories for which humans strive. We keep ourselves alive through socio-cultural, historically-developed institutions, avoid discomfort/maintain our environments (e.g. clean our environs because it feels more comfortable/society expects it maybe), and flee boredom (entertain ourselves).

3) Circularity Argument for Non-procreation- Any X reason for a parent thinking a future child should be born becomes a circularity when compared to the fact that no one had to be born to carry out that X reason in the first place. For example, no one needs to overcome challenges, if they weren't born to experience those challenges in the first place.

Addendum: it is wrong to foist unescapable set of challenges for another person when there did not need to be those challenges in the first place.

Etc. Etc. insert more schopenhauer1 jargon here.

That's fine but I'm also trying to make the point that, with a philosophy like Heidegger, what makes his insights any greater than mine? — schopenhauer1

They are more original?

That's fine but I'm also trying to make the point that, with a philosophy like Heidegger, what makes his insights any greater than mine? Is it credentials? Degree? The voluminous amount of writing? — schopenhauer1

I agree with the spirit of this. But I'd frame it in terms of what makes The Rolling Stones a good band? If you don't like them, nothing! If you do, then maybe you'll try to convince someone that they are worth listening too, despite their shitty, latest album. Do you listen to the band Heart? Their old stuff kills. 'Little Queen' is great, and it's never on the radio. That's where I'm coming from.

Essentially, his philosophy is akin to theology, or one's own insights into the nature of what is the case. Because he thought of some of his own jargon and had some nifty ideas of human relations to the world and language, does he deserve more attention? — schopenhauer1

I wouldn't say deserve. Basically some names get famous and a person naturally wonders what the hype is all about. FOMO. And then there is just male vanity. If someone plays the 'ontological' card in an argument, it's nice to be prepared for that. It's perversely glamorous to be versed in this theology. Personally I think we all end up in love with some kind of theology, perhaps negative or anti- but theology all the same (the basic shit we tell ourselves to feel noble or at home in the world.) As I see it, we cobble this together from what's around us, as birds build nests from nearby junk.

The fashion opportunity for us is positioning ourselves publicly by spouting our evaluations of those more famous than us. Is there some phony fame worship involved? I think so. But these creeps and maniacs, the gallery of sages, are also great abbreviations. I know you know this. I'm trying to mostly agree with you and yet add what you are maybe leaving out.

So it is just hermeneutics.. picking one that agrees more with your sensibilities at that point. What makes one's insights into the human psyche more insightful? It jives well? Those in certain circles just thinks it makes sense? It's usefulness? Many philosophies can be useful if people took them as seriously, but certain philosophers gain traction and others do not. — schopenhauer1

Yeah I think we are drawn to those who tell us what we want to hear. But sometimes they simultaneously say some weird stuff that we don't like along with that. 'Jives well' is probably the essence. It seduces us. We build our own faces from pieces of faces we find pretty. Utility? I'd say spiritual utility. It's like conceptual religion. But also like pre-science.

Often these philosophers are used because of the weight the name carries. Sometimes I'll refer to Schopenhauer, even though I have my own similar idea, simply because people respond to the dead philosopher more than schopenahuer1 idea. So be it, if it is taken more seriously, even though it shouldn't have to be necessary. I also do it as it shows I'm not alone in my thinking- there is some historical precedent. But again, doesn't mean more insightful just means that a species with 5,000 years of writing is likely not to have too much new under the sun into thoughts of the human psyche. — schopenhauer1

I agree. But that's part of the fashion opportunity, calling out the fad. I also really like finding that I'm not alone in some of my wilder thinking. Beyond all the public performance of our wit and education, there's a genuine private response to these dead spirits. You are the 'real' Schopenhauer as you read and understand him. And I am Hobbes in the dark joy of his clarity.

I agree that there's not much new under the sun, but the reader-writer in me loves the potent expression. So I take that as another creative opportunity. And as a reader I give quite a few fucks about the translation or the original English prose. Returning to Heidegger, I was disgusted by the first translations I picked up. There are some gross jargon choices in both translations of B&T. Far better I say to prioritize a lovable English and take some risks. That's another reason I point to books that might be downplayed as not the 'official' works that one must project oneself as having oh so thoroughly assimilated (modern scripture) and yet are actually a pleasure. A move in the fashion game but also a sincere move, sincerity or 'authenticity' being an old-school position that keeps on chugging.

They are more original? — Janus

By popularity, this is the consensus, or Janus thinks so only, or is it up to the individual?

They are more original? — Janus

By popularity, this is the consensus, or Janus thinks so only, or is it up to the individual? — schopenhauer1

I'd say it's hard work and luck if one can be original. I'm happy with a fresh metaphor or paraphrase. The great thing about the philosophical passion IMV is that it lifts one up above giving a damn. To me it makes sense that the magic monkey will return again and again to same insights, the same images of virtue. Give me that old time religion, but let me rip open a glossy new way to package it.

I'd pay actual money for a book written by you fleshing out your posts in this forum.

No they just are...

That's how that works.

The great philosophers are considered great philosophers for a reason. What we do here cannot be compared.

Yep.

Thanks Inyenzi. Hmm :chin:

Thus Spoke Janus just doesn't sound as good.

Would you seriously compare yourself to any one of the greats?

They are more original? — Janus

I should also have pointed out that they are more comprehensive and systematic.

Would you seriously compare yourself to any one of the greats? — Janus

Slow your roll there. I'm just suggesting that certain types of philosophy are extremely detailed pictures of that person's interpretation of what is the case, sometimes requiring its own self-contained jargon/neologisms to get the point across. They have some really useful and interesting insights, and in a poetic/aesthetic sense can be very powerful. But it is still someone's interpretation of the world and other people's reaction to that interpretation. What makes it philosophy proper is how it relates itself to previous known philosophers, and how subsequent philosophers reference it for their own work. Similar to how Google works with its heuristics, the more other philosophers reference a previous philosopher, the more weight that philosopher has. However, I don't necessarily think something is of great insight just because a philosopher is referenced more. And what makes a philosopher itself can be quite hard to define, other than, you know, be credentialed from a higher institution with a degree, but c'mon... does that make a PHILOSOPHER? Ha

I don't know who you think has such a "colloquial" (nice bit of condescension there, btw :up: ) understanding, but as far as I know Husserl's "epoché" or suspension of judgement concerning the question of the existence of an objective or external world is certainly no secret and could even be said to be notorious. — Janus

You overestimate the extent to which Husserl has been effectively understood . Zahavi, one of the foremost Husserl scholars, has found the 'colloquial' misreading of Husserlian phenomenology to be widespread.

Science does not need to assume that "reality is out there, waiting to be discovered and investigated". — Janus

Science needs to assume the conditions of possibility that make the notion of objective causality, and therefore calculability, intelligible. This doesnt mean that the quantum physicist mediates on these conditions of possibility, these notions that were established and elaborated over centuries by philosophers and scientists-philosophers like Galileo and Newton. It means that physicists implicitly assume such conditions of possibility. Put differently, a scientist works within a worldview that makes the questions that they ask, the puzzles that they see, the discoveries that they make, coherent to them. And when they innovate within that worldview, their discovery elaborates and subtly transforms that worldview, even if their contribution doesnt explicitly make this apparent . Physicists today don't need to know phenomenology at an explicit or an implicit level, because their worldview hasn't evolved in that direction yet.
But they do need to know the general ideas that Aristotle Descartes, and I would argue, Kant, contributed to the establishment of the modern concept of empirical objectivity, at an implicit level , whether they have actually read the work of these figures or not.
Just as this is the case, eventually physics will move on from its Cartesian framework . My belief is that they will make their way into the worldview that phenomenology has constructed. They will not, of course, find it necessary, or even be able to articulate explicitly,this new worldview, except for a few philosopher -physicists. But they will indeed depend on the new worldview in order to make their 'natural' subject matter intelligible to them implicitly , just as they now depend on a Cartesian-Kantian worldview. This was Thompson's point about the need for a rethinking of the concept of “nature” in a post-physicalist way. It's not that scientists will have to sit down ans talk about how to change their orientation from physicalist to post-physicalist, They will simply continue to devise experiments and create new theoretical models as they have done for centuries, and at some point it will become apparent that they have made the move out of the older worldview into a new one. A few of them, like Lee Smolen, will take it upon themselves to wax explicitly philosophical, as he has done concerning the need to incorporate temporality into physics. His argument is that the current generation of physicists is anparticularly non-philosophical generation unlike that of Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg, and physics has suffered as a result. Their leaving time out of physics as as a central organizing principle has held back their ability to tie together a number of loose ends in cosmological understanding.

what you say only demonstrates further that mathematics is more strictly rule or procedure-based in precisely dealing with determinate abstract objects, than is any 'living' inquiry such as phenomenology or the even the natural or social sciences. As far as I can see what you say there only goes to further support that contention. — Janus

My point was that mathematics gets its precision from its grounding in supposedly determinate self-identical abstract objects . But Husserl, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty , Heidegger, Derrida and others, believe the notion of a determinate self-identical abstract object to be an illusion, a fiction, the imperfect product of intentional activity. It s not simply that they are subjective constructions, but that even understood as mental objects they do not have determinant self-identicality in the way that Enlightenment thought presumed. This is one of the central insights of that 'llving' inquiry called phenomenology.