Putting down Sartre is as popular a sport as always, it seemve you read his two works on 'imagination'? You see, he caught-up Husserl (and he was more a student of Husserl than Heidegger) in the 'intentional act'. In his later work, albeit strewn throughout with the angst of his times, he graphically draws our attention to the infernal isolation of the methods and practices of his time, and ours. You cannot 'deconstruct' a mistake. All we can do is exacerbate it. Viva la 'differance'? How do we break the isolation? At least Existentialism brings our attention to the issue. Sartre offers no solution, he is committed to the stand that it would be dishonest to do so, and we should admire him for that honesty, which we cannot say for Heidegger. But there is a solution. A solution so real that we stumble through it even in the most intensive commitment to deny it. That is, there are changes in the certitude of our presumptions even as we pursue an effort to secure them. Those changes are called emotions. They do not secure anything as true or real, but they do evoke the terms necessary to pretend we can be sure about what we deem true and real. It is as much a mistake to embrace the flow of that evocative change as it is to pretend it is impertinent. But these two mistakes divide and yet encompass philosophy today. The truer and realer dynamic is that, by expressing who each of us is, and by posing real variations to the meaning of the terms we otherwise think we share, the personal character of each one of us becomes the origin of the terms the other employs to deny the reality and pertinence of the changes that come to those terms, through each of us. The isolation is the myth, that we need each other, and need each other free from each other, is what is real. It is the defeat switch to the isolation both science and myth would hang around our necks.

Well, perhaps I seem impertinent. When others bring up authors I become impatient. Why do so many philosophy discussions hinge on the character of authors of texts? In physics, there is lots of interest in who Newton was, but we do not go on endlessly about the guy's psychic makeup in an effort to understand his three laws of motion. Why then do we do so in philosophy? There is a reason. Human character is the central theme and meaning and mystery of philosophy, and yet it is fundamental to the conduct of philosophy, especially in a scholastic or academic setting, to repudiate this. But despite this, careerists harp on personalities as if crucial to ideas. I read the same books others read, and maybe then some, but I see little point in lengthy discussions on the ideas of third parties. I prefer what might be called 'table stakes'. Fine, refer to texts and authors if you will, and certainly give credit where it is due, but discussions should be limited to the actual views of the actual interlocutors. Little is to be gained by bashing heads over what is going on in a third party's mind, though this is precisely what those who have or aspire to a career in the field not only deem a worthwhile activity, but the only activity permissible. I had one instructor who made an assertion to his class that he believed an original idea impossible. “The scariest thing in the world,” he said, “is a blank page!” This attitude derives from the very real circumstance that reason cannot proceed without its antecedent terms. It is from this that Heidegger derives the, false, assertion that “Dasein is always already in a world.” And, presumably because this is internally inexplicable, “Dasein is always in a mood.” I wonder if the term 'Dasein' might not have an alternative origin, not “Da-sein”, but “Das-ein”, that one there. It certainly biases us to regarding person as a quantifier. But time is a value or worth, not a quantity. And its most explicit term is the characterology of a necessary yet untenable presumption and prior, a priori, commitment to understanding time as a quantity. Quantum theory is a reduction. It is the derivative, the summation of mathematically defined and ordered probabilities reduced to presumably uniform quantities. What gets forgotten is that the result of this calculus enforces being unrecognized the real energy of the indefinable differences this process obscures. The enigma arises because one set of valid reductive terms results in a detectable event that represents one reality, while another set of equally valid reductive terms results in a contradictory event. Something is clearly going on that exceeds our confidence in the calculation. But what does this might be our misperception of the need for antecedent terms, or for how real and prior to our finding it we assume the world to be. That is, we take the received terms, rational logical or mathematical antecedence, or world, to be inductive. As if the product of the reduction were a justification or discovery of the inductive term antecedent to it. But the evidence, in quantum, cosmology, even logic sociology and political entities or polities, is that the product of the reduction is proof of the untenable character of the induction, and that, therefore, the intimate result of the reduction, the final reductive term, is the inductive term. That is, the changing character of our presuming induction is antecedent to rational reduction. In the world that difference reveals itself as an enigmatic universe, at the extreme scale, however obvious and profane and face-value may seem the macro. But its most explicit term, and language of presumed induction and rigor of reduction, is the characterology of that presumption. That is, it is the character of changing commitment to that presumption each of us is, and the drama of evincing that difference each of us is, through each other, to that presumption that discourse generates. It really is the most personal and intimate interactions amongst us that generates that language of our perceptions of even the most “objective” and “rigorous” calculative terms. The least term of matter is an unquantifiable probability, or mathematical impossibility. But even this has a real outcome, for chaos is only chaos if nothing in it pertains to the quantifier. However, if there are communities in this chaos that oppose each other in any term of that quantification, such that the untenable presumption of a priori induction becomes recognizable, then something real occurs, something as real as the wholesale re-characterization of antecedence. Hawkings thought we could obviate this by pretending that community, his 'string theory', is quantifiable. But the material effect of that infinitesimal chaos is not yet reductive enough for the full explication of the real. A further reductive term is required. That further reductive term, so far as we yet can know, is the human person, and the discourse of persons intimating the characterology, through each other, of the language of our changing confidence in the precedence of the quantifier. Heidegger is committed to Being as the inductive term a priori to reduction, and is therefore, either in his early or late works, not giving us any perspective of a real world.

Gary's 1st law: The least term of time is all the differing it is.

Please break up your post into paragraphs.

I don't think in bullets points. Mind is holism.

Mind needs to put more effort into post formatting or mind will soon receive mod attention.

The problem with the Turing Test is that it is rigged in favor of the computer. The problem with Heidegger is that he uses “being” as a cryptic operative quantifier. That is, as the 'unity of the one'. That may be what believers need to think their god is, but it not what person is. Person is the qualifier, the contrary term that defeats the count, both the count of divine oneness and the enumerator the machine 'mind' is. Neither is really what person is. Your ad hominem remark seems to say “get with the program”. If it is impossible to find a person in a computer, it is by no means necessary that we find the person in each other. Something programmatic tends to get in the way. But what sweeps these obstacles away is the contrariety we find in each other to them, even as we find contrariety to each other in that same action. That is why we have to be human to be rational. There is no mechanical mind. There is no divine design. Mind is personal. And finding the contrary term in ourselves through each other is how we find how true this is.

Heidegger presents here in a nutshell his philosophy (or meditation) (of the correlation of (temporal) Being and Truth (as the "lighting-up of the concealment")):

"Setzen wir statt "Zeit": Lichtung des Sichverbergens von Anwesen, dann bestimmt sich Sein aus dem Entwurfbereich von Zeit. Dies ergibt sich jedoch nur insofern, als die Lichtung des Sichverbergens ein ihm entsprechendes Denken in seinen brauch nimmt.

Anwesen (Sein) gehört in die Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit). Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit) erbringt Anwesen (Sein)."

Richardson's translation:

"If instead of "Time" we substitute: the lighting-up of the self-concealing [that is proper to] the process of coming-to-presence, then Being is determined by the scope of Time. This comes about, however, only insofar as the lighting-process of self-concealment assumes unto its want a thought that corresponds to it.

[The process of] presenc-ing (Being) is inherent in the lighting-up of self-concealment (Time). [The] lighting-up of self-concealment (Time) brings forth the process of presenc-ing (Being)."

William J. Richardson: Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought. Citation is from Heidegger's preface to this book (1962).

https://books.google.fi/books?id=-NXoCAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Is philosophy a seance? Or, “awaiting upon the lord”? Where does rigorous or critical thinking come into it? Of course, get that little issue out of the way and you can do 'philosophy' by fiat. Which is precisely my buggaboo with all of it, Continental as much as Anglo-American, analytic as much as the inductive aspirations of lexical tradition. Is what 'shows itself by hiding' really there, or there and gone? And, either way, is it somehow unilateral? That is, in whose terms does it come and go, come or go, or come by going? If in our terms, how can it avoid “in-authenticity”? If in its own, what hope have we of anything but a pretended perception of it? Isn't there something fraudulent, here, in Heidegger?

Heideggers untenable, anthropocentric notion of ‚existence‘:
„Existence is the name for […] human ‚Dasein‘. A cat does not exist, but lives, a stone does not exist and does not live, but ‚is there‘ GA 26,159“. This is not from ‚Being and Time‘ but from a lecture given in 1928.

Here is the original:
„Existenz ist der Titel für […] das menschliche Dasein. Eine Katze existiert nicht, sondern lebt, ein Stein existiert nicht und lebt nicht, sondern ist vorhanden (Vorlesung: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (SoSe 1928): GA 26, 159)

So, a stone is there, but doesn’t exist. A cat lives, but doesn’t exist?

Existence in this definition is only biological existence with a complex degree of consciousness. Everything else does not exist.

So much for clarity in Heidegger’s definitions. Btw ‘Vorhandensein’ is the exact German translation of ‘Existenz’.

I think that Heidegger is highly overestimated. He was clearly just grasping for words and defining his own terms in a quest for meaning in (human) existence. He was never concerned with the nature of reality outside of its reflection in the human mind. I wonder what he would write now 100 years later.

What I would say is that all three, human, cat and stone, consist of trapped radiation/energy which we call matter. But we do not know the nature of this radiation/energy, so we do not know what we are and what the universe is. No need to invent new words and no need to write big books about it.

How would a universe without matter ‘look’ like?

He was never concerned with the nature of reality outside of its reflection in the human mind. I wonder what he would write now 100 years later. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Probably the same things that scores of postmodern, pragmatist, hermeneutical ,phenomenological , constructivist and enactivist writers in philosophy , cognitive science and the philosophy of science already write today. Which is that your account of reality is outdated and quaint, assuming an independent reality that our constructions attempt to mirror or represent .

How would a universe without matter ‘look’ like? — TheArchitectOfTheGods

It's not a question of denying a n empirical account of matter and energy, but of showing what underlies the conditions of possibility of models based on objective causality. Heidegger didn't say that matter doesn't 'exist', he says it is the product of a derivative thinking.

It's not a question of denying an empirical account of matter and energy, but of showing what underlies the conditions of possibility of models based on objective causality. — Joshs

I think you may have misunderstood the intention of my question, I should have written:
How would a universe without matter and purely consisting of energy ‘look’ like? Black, white, or something in between? Infinitely big or infinitely small?
If we had a better understanding, we would be close to knowing what this that energy everything consists of is, we knew what the universe is. That is what keeps human philosophy going. Einstein said something indefinitely more meaningful with five symbols than Heidegger did with with all his jumbled grasping at linguistic straws. For scientific and philosophical purposes, it is unnecessary to distinguish between the existence of a stone and existence of a human mind.

Heidegger didn't say that matter doesn't 'exist', he says it is the product of a derivative thinking. — Joshs

Well, he wrote, and that was a literal quote, that the stone does not exist, it is just there (vorhanden). That is what he wrote. And that doesn't make much sense to me, and I hope also not to most others.

The earth existed even when there were no humans living on it. The earth is not the product of a derivative thinking. It is the product of a star explosion, a lump of matter in the universe, whether humans are thinking about it or not.

If a tree has fallen in a forest and only cats were there to hear it, it has still fallen and it is still a tree. A star has exploded and we are his stardust. We are matter. We are the luckiest matter to have lived on planet earth so far, in that we know enough about the fundamental building blocks of nature to understand that we are only thinking matter.

Well, he wrote, and that was a literal quote, that the stone does not exist, it is just there (vorhanden). That is what he wrote. And that doesn't make much sense to me, and I hope also not to most others. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

What Heidegger meant was that it is meaningless to talk about the existence of objects outside of any account of an object.

'Matter' and 'energy' are not just neutral facts about what is out there. They are human constructs. Their modern empirical versions were invented somewhere between Galileo and Newton. Both matter and energy presuppose the idea of a self-identical force or thing. They also presuppose self-persistence over time and certain categorical notions of causality, space and time. These are pragmatic abstractions that are useful in modelling and interacting with the world , but as Kant argued, they require certain categories of thought in order to make sense. Heidegger was trying to reve3al the basis of those categories.
There is no such thing as a specific object like a stone outside of an account of a stone.

If we had a better understanding, we would be close to knowing what this that energy everything consists of is, we knew what the universe is. That is what keeps human philosophy going. Einstein said something indefinitely more meaningful with five symbols than Heidegger did with with all his jumbled grasping at linguistic straws. For scientific and philosophical purposes, it is unnecessary to distinguish between the existence of a stone and existence of a human mind. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

There's a lot I need to clarify in this. First of all, have you read Kant? Einstein certainly had, and admired and identified with his philosophy. This makes sense, given that relativity implies a subjectivism , the recognition that our accounts of nature are relative to the way we frame our theories.
This thinking , in both Einstein and Kant, is consistent with a philosophy of science that Popper delineated in terms of falsificationism, the idea that we can never exhaustively prove a theory, but we can asymptotically approach scientific truth through trial and error, and endless falsification of prior theories. Falisficationism, Kant and Einstein's approaches all imply a correspondence theory of truth, the idea that our theories are intended to mirror or represent an independent reality that we approximate more and more closely with our models.
It wasn't Heidegger, but Hegel and those in Hegel's wake (Kierkegaard, Marx, American pragmatism, analyst philosophers like Quine and Putnam, who first critiqued the correspondence theory of truth and falisficationism. Their patron saint in terms of philosophy of science was Thomas Kuhn, who rejected Popper's falsificationism in favor of the idea that science creates paradigms which are overturned. It is not a linear march of truth but a revolutionary shift from one worldview to another. Science doesn't represent an independent world, it enacts a world. Knowledge is not representation but transformative interaction,and this implies an indissociable interaction between subject and object.

I'm guessing in embracing einstein you're defending Kant against everything that's come after. Heidegger is just a straw man. It's the entire history of philosophy as well as science that critiques Kant from a post-Hegelian stance that you're attacking.

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate your putting my rather 'raw' comments into the perspective of competing theories of knowledge and truth. And yes you are right I adhere to Poppers falsification principle of science and the underlying notion that there is an independent reality which exists outside the concepts that our brains have created. This reality we can get a better, more detailed understanding of by employing the scientific method.

Anything else is, in my opinion, hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo. Let me elaborate on this statement, by giving some very simple example:
We have geological and fossil records that show that earth existed long before Kant, Popper and Kuhn started thinking about it. So therefore this was a reality outside the human mind, which was very real to the pre-human lifeforms that inhabited it. We have proof of this in the form of broken bones, which resulted from e.g. two dinosaurs fighting or an early mammal breaking his bones falling off a cliff. So the stone that it fell against, was real. Yet you say:

There is no such thing as a specific object like a stone outside of an account of a stone — Joshs

What I maintain is that the stone has existed, since a couple of billion years ago, and it impacted an organism some million years ago. And one dinosaur impacted the other, regardless of whether years later a human lifeform evolved that had a high enough degree of consciousness to start deducting the events of the past. Moreover, these 'simple science' examples are so close to absolute truths, that the falsification probability is in the parts per trillion range.

You go on to say:

Knowledge is not representation but transformative interaction — Joshs

In my opinion the more simple approach would be that our human brain has no impact on reality whatsoever, apart from the technology we created, some of which is polluting and transforming the ecosystem of our planet.

This of course leaves specifically open the possibility that a technology had evolved in the past which has created the reality we are living in, including the brains that we are using to analyze it. But then again the knowledge we can come to with our human brains is not a transformative interaction, it is mere attempt at description.

Heideggers untenable, anthropocentric notion of ‚existence‘:
„Existence is the name for […] human ‚Dasein‘. A cat does not exist, but lives, a stone does not exist and does not live, but ‚is there‘ GA 26,159“. This is not from ‚Being and Time‘ but from a lecture given in 1928. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Heidegger is differentiating between various kinds of Beings here: existence-being, living-being and finally non-living, non-having-existence-being. Being means something that differentiates, it doesn't mean something common abstract being-ness.

Stone is being too. It is being/entity within-the-world (innerweltliches Seiende). Some human existence moves in the world among beings and can discover there a being like "stone". There is something on which existence "hits" itself on its way or path (path as a horizon, perspective). This something is first "something" and depending on how existence becomes related to this something it can be disclosed in various ways. It can just be named as a "stone". So, there is some x "out" there as being within-the-world, now existence comes across this x which becomes "something" *. Here this something is on the verge of becoming something "in-the-world" (of some particular existence). When it is named as a "stone" and this "stone" has significance for existence it is "in-the-world". When I forget the name of that stone it is "merely" "something", and when I lose the (concerned) sight of it or interest in it, it is no more there (in the world, in this situation). It "is" presently nothing but can appear anew (in this sense it is still there).

* However, existence can come across this something only if it somehow fits or suits to (has something to do with the) something which existence already was/will be/is concerned with (horizon is laden with interests). It can also "fit" "negatively" i.e. "be in the way", for example: "that something, oh, it is a stone, is in the way so that I can't accomplish this". Here being is in-the-world as something "disturbing", "not actually belonging there". Or being fits positively, is appropriate: "t h a t s t o n e over there fits to this project that I am trying to accomplish". However, afterwards it can be discovered not suitable for the project: "this stone is too heavy, I can't lift it (= it doesn't after all fit to my project)". Here this stone in a way disappears, it is no more "in-the-world", it is "merely" something recognizable as familiar/disposable in some other situation (which so to speak activates this being).

Stone is being too. It is being/entity within-the-world (innerweltliches Seiende). — waarala

the difficulty that arises from this is that if our only access to the being of the stone is through Dasein's being-in-the-world, then what would it even mean to talk about the being of the stone as world-less? It would seem to presuppose what would be incoherent beginning from the being-in-the-world of Dasein. This was Derida's issue with Heidegger's formulation of the being of a stone, as well as the being of the animal as 'poor in world'.

So therefore this was a reality outside the human mind, which was very real to the pre-human lifeforms that inhabited it. — TheArchitectOfTheGods

It's not a question of whether there was reality outside of human understanding and activity, but of what in the earth this means? What is the practical significance of making a claim that rocks existed before there were humans to name them? The question is what we are doing when we name a rock, when we construct a theory about what a rock is. Names of things, and their associated attributes and functions, are only useful and meaningful to us to the extent that the allow us to do things with objects, to manipulate and build things with them, to predict their behavior. That's what a theory is. It exists for us to do things with our world.

To say there was something there in the world before human came along and constructed theories and categories about the things in the world is one thing, but to talk specifically about objects in terms of their attributes and practical features is to refer to how a scientific, technological and social culture of a particular time makes use of those things. The way we understand objects that we theorize about acts as a kind of blueprint, an instruction manual for interacting with that object, for using it in certain ways, Over time our scientific concepts for the objects in our universe change, and with them our blueprints and instruction manuals for manipulating and interacting with those objects.The reason that we can say that the universe is real is because it provides specific opportunities and constraints that allow us to construct more complex models and blueprints of interaction. We can't just invent any old account and have it work for us, and this is what makes the universe 'real', instead of an arbitrary human invention. But the universe is also a continual, unfolding development taking place on the dimension of time. Humans are participants in this unfolding and thus our constructions of the world are in themselves a further development of it, rather than just a 'copy' of a static set of facts.

If we place a man from 30,000 years ago in front of a bus, how will that person's eyes track the vehicle? It depends on many things. Will they see it as a single thing or a collection of parts? And what is the significance of these parts for them? Are they seeing the same bus as we are? What about it is the same? We could say their ability to avoid bumping into it maybe, but that will depend on their assessment of what it is made of and whether it is a mirage. Is a series of lines and curves scrawled in the sand a group of letters that form words or is it random patterns? It depends on many things, including what languages we are familiar with and our vocabulary. What is the 'object' or 'same object' that we all can agree on here? And what would it even mean to ask such a question apart from the intentions , background knowledge an context of each person encountering such a situation?
. An object is the result of a particular active engagement between person and world based on a interrelational framework of intentional directionality, personal history and knowledge, context, culture, for the sake of ongoing purposes. Object means nothing outside of how it relates to our goals.

The problem with associating the real with time-bound human concepts of it is illustrated in this
piece by Nelson Goodman:

"To be objective, one would have to have some set of mind-independent objects to be
designated by language or known by science. But can we find any such objects?
A point in space seems to be perfectly objective. But how are we to define the points of our everyday world? Points can be taken either as primitive elements, as intersecting lines, as certain triples of intersecting planes, or as certain classes of nesting volumes. These definitions are equally adequate, and yet they are incompatible: what a point is will vary with each form of description. For example, only in the first "version," to use Goodman's term, will a point be a primitive element. The objectivist, however, demands, "What are points really?" Goodman's response to this demand is worth quoting at length: If the composition of points out of lines or of lines out of points is conventional rather than factual, points and lines themselves are no less so. ... If we say that our sample space is a combination of points, or of lines, or of regions, or a combination of combinations of points, or lines, or regions, or
a combination of all these together, or is a single lump, then since none is identical with any of the rest, we are giving one among countless alternative conflicting descriptions of what the space is.
And so we may regard the disagreements as not about the facts but as due to differences in the conventions-adopted in organizing or describing the space. What, then, is the neutral fact or thing described in these different terms? Neither the space (a) as an undivided whole nor (b) as a combination of everything involved in the several accounts; for (a) and (b) are but two among the various ways of organizing it. But what is it that is so organized? When we strip off as layers of convention all differences among ways of describing it, what is left? The onion is peeled down to its empty core."

I initially thought that the "inner" (innerweltliches Seiende) means cartesian space but it seems that these beings within-the-world or innerworldly beings (Stambaugh translation) are already in the heideggerian space of worldliness. Innerworldly beings are not real or reified beings which has to be taken from cartesian "in" to heideggerian "in". Innerworldly being is an original way of being for the things. And this being can become a tool-being (zuhandenheit) when brought together with dasein/existence. Or it can become a present-at-hand-being when observed and thought theoretically. Or it can simply remain a innerwordly being? Something not used or observed.

Or it can simply remain a innerwordly being? Something not used or observed. — waarala

Innerworldly being exists for an individual Dasein out of a totality of relevance.
I don't think there can be any innerworldly being that is not part of a totality of relevance of useful things, or itself a present to hand being(which is also a derived mode of relevant taking care of something). Without a relation of heedful circumspective care, no being can disclose itself as a being to Dasein.

"Strictly speaking, there "is" no such thing as a useful thing. There always belongs to the being of a useful thing a totality of useful things in which this useful thing can be what it is. In accordance with their character of being usable material, useful things always are in terms of their belonging to other useful things: writing materials, pen, ink, paper, desk blotter, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. These "things" never show themselves initially by themselves, in order then to fill out a room as a sum of real things. A totality of useful things is always already discovered BEFORE the individual useful thing." Being and Time

I must disagree here i.e. I would interpret this differently because I think that Heideger is here only "reasoning" (through his phenomenological description) against the view which conceives the innerworldly being as the object-thing, that is, he is not reasoning against the possibility of the innerworldly being as such, before there is made a distinction between the tool-being and object-being.

I think that there is already in B&T references to experiences that are neither practical nor theoretical. These experiences presuppose a relation to beings which is not dominated by tool-being or theoretical-presence-being. There are experiences which are not led by practical-relevance-being. For example, historically or traditionally inherited "cultural "objects which simply are there and and are part of some cultural-historical landscape. Their presence is simply or primarily "felt" (in Befindlichkeit) as part of "my world" or the relation to them is "aesthetic" where they are described or expressed in their innerworldly being. The same can be said of the natural landscape: mountains etc. i.e "Nature" has here its worldliness not in the practical or theoretical world. Something can be practically relevant in a negative sense: "I can't do anything with that". I encounter something here as not to be assimilated to this practical nexus. A being shows itself there as u s e l e s s *. It is there as something not to be mastered in the practical world. It stands there as an innerworldly being without practical-technical significance. It persists (at least for the time being) "open" as "something" (without any determinations or involvements). In practical understanding it can remain or can be sustained as something yet to be mastered and used (in some other situation in the future).

* Here belong all the negative significances, for example "hindrance", for the practical concern, and which make room for the positive significances for other kinds of relations: for the generalizing ("hindrance" is a generalization) theoretical relation and for other relations. There has been encountered something that can't be handled practically inside the current relevance-relations and it becomes free for other ways of accessing it.

What is the practical significance of making a claim that rocks existed before there were humans to name them? The question is what we are doing when we name a rock, when we construct a theory about what a rock is. — Joshs

I would say that the practical significance in this is, that regardless of human consciousness and ability to philosophize, reality exists with or without us. We do not know what this reality is on the subatomic level. But we know that matter exists. This might sound trivial but is fundamental to the question of Being. The rock is. The universe is. They exist as concepts in our minds, but they also exist independent of our minds.

Now there can be different categories of being and degrees of interaction and relevancy between the different beings, for all of which Heidegger has coined different terms in an attempt to systematically structure these relations.

But when we take a deep breath and a step back from all the Seiendes, In-der-Welt-Seins and Zuhandenheiten, would we then not be able to divide the totality of all Being into:

I Being that was not created by humans:
1. Sub-atomic of which we know very little and where parallel states/realities seem to be possible to exist.
2. Atomic-> physical and chemical natural states and processes. They can be described well by conventional science and there are laws to be observed here which are seemingly universal
3. Biological. These are complex chemical processes which result in a self-perpetuating system with no fixed end
4. Biological with consciousness. Again we know very little about consciousness, but Heidegger knew even less and was trying to expand on the idea of phenomenology used to describe different states of mind/consciousness using his own categories. The status of current neurological research is that consciousness results out of the neural network that is our brain and can have different grades of complexity corresponding to the complexity of the network. At some degree of comlexity of the network there is a threshold to simple consciousness, then medium and advanced consciousness

II Being that can only result from consciousness:
5. Representational beings (Images). ie describing or conceptualizing about things that exist in the real word, eg our image of a flower or stone, when we talk about it
6. Phantastical beings and concepts like 'Mickey Mouse' or 'Nation' ie beings that are not existing in the real world outside of human brains and conventions
7. Man-made physical objects like houses that come to be part of the real world and some of which will still be there when no more human brains exist. They will then exist in the universe, even though there might be no more complex enough consciousness around to assign meaning and function to them
8. Virtual beings and simulations. They are created by humans, like phantastical beings, but they are able to make own decisions such as simple or complex computer programs, and are able to perpetuate themselves with no fixed end

And now comes the most fun part in all philosophy, whether this last point 8 is the only feasible answer to point 1 where it all could only have started? We do not know (yet).

Lastly let it be said that I like this forum full of intelligent people, and appreciate all answers I have received so far.

he is not reasoning against the possibility of the innerworldly being as such, before there is made a distinction between the tool-being and object-being. — waarala

Before there is made a distinction between the tool-being and object-being, there is the absolutely fundamental and primary structure of Care, which is equiprimordial with temporality, Understanding and Befindlichkeit. One never experiences one of these structures without the other . They all imply each other. Heedfully circumspect Handiness, deriving from Care , is the condition of possibility of having a world, and thus of the experience of innerworldly beings. The reason Heidegger puts nature and reality in scare quotes is because such notions are present to hand concepts derived from handiness.

You seem to be thinking of what you refer to as 'innerworldly being as such', that which you say is not yet 'object-thing', as present-to-hand. Yet you don't seem to realize that's what you are doing. What do you understand the 'present to hand' to mean for Heidegger? In my understanding the present to hand is precisely that which you describe as an innerworldy experience that is , as you say, "not led by practical-relevance-being", "inherited "cultural "objects which simply are there" . You say "their presence is simply or primarily "felt" (in Befindlichkeit) as part of "my world"". As I pointed out, Befindlichkeit is equiprimordial with Care. Thus , any thing which is 'primarily felt' is also at the same time primarily experienced through the Care structure of heedfully circumspective handiness, and relational significance, Your understanding of innerworldly experience supposedly outside of 'practical handiness' jibes perfectly with Heidegger's definition of the present to hand as an experience which exists in and of itself outside of my relating to it in circumspective relevance.

The same can be said of the natural landscape: mountains etc. i.e "Nature" has here its worldliness not in the practical or theoretical world. — waarala

On the contrary, Heideger says 'Nature' is a present to hand concept derived from our heedful relating to the world in handiness.

""Nature" is also discovered in the use of useful things, "nature" in the light of
products of nature. But nature must not be understood here as what is merely objectively present, nor as the power of nature. The forest is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock, the river is water power, the wind is wind "in the sails." As the "surrounding world" is discovered, "nature" thus discovered is encountered along with it. We can abstract from nature's kind of being as handiness; we can discover and define it in its pure objective presence. But in this kind of discovery of nature, nature
as what "stirs and strives," what overcomes us, entrances us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow, the river's "source" ascertained by the geographer is not the "source in the ground." Along with the public world, the surrounding world of nature is discovered and accessible to everyone. In taking care of things, nature is discovered as having some definite direction on paths, streets, bridges, and buildings."

Our absorption in taking care of things in the work world nearest to us has the function of discovering; depending upon the way we are absorbed, innerworldly beings that are brought along together with their constitutive references are discoverable in varying degrees of explicitness and with a varying attentive penetration. The kind of being of these beings is "handiness" (Zuhandenheit) .
But it must not be understood as a mere characteristic of interpretation, as if such "aspects" were discursively forced upon "beings" which we initially encounter, as if an initially objectively present world-stuff were "subjectively colored" in this way. Such an interpretation overlooks the fact that in that case beings would have to be understood beforehand and discovered as purely objectively present, and would thus have priority and take the lead in the order of discovering and appropriating association with the "world." But this already goes against the ontological meaning of the cognition which we showed to be a founded mode of being-in-the-world. To expose what is merely objectively present, cognition must first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of. Handiness is the ontological categorial definition of beings as they are "in themselves. "

historically or traditionally inherited "cultural "objects simply are there and are part of some cultural-historical landscape. — waarala

.

Heidegger discusses cultural artifacts in the context of an an authentically temporal understanding of historiography. Objects in a museum aren't simply 'there' as representatives of a past history. This would not only be taking these objects as present to hand, but understanding them via a vulgar concept of time as itself present to hand. Present to hand thinking of time fails to understand that when we experience something from an earlier point in history, we carry that history forward and transform it by redetermining its meaning via our future-directed interests and involvements. So the cultural object from the past is never simply there for us outside of the care structure of heedful significance.This is the only landscape that gives it meaning and through which it emerges for us as a being.

Something can be practically relevant in a negative sense: "I can't do anything with that". I encounter something here as not to be assimilated to this practical nexus. A being shows itself there as useless *. It is there as something not to be mastered in the practical world. It stands there as an innerworldly being without practical-technical significance. It persists (at least for the time being) "open" as "something" (without any determinations or involvements). In practical understanding it can remain or can be sustained as something yet to be mastered and used (in some other situation in the future). — waarala

That which is not to be asimllated to a practical nexus belongs to that nexus via its unusabilty, Its very meaning as unusable is made possible and framed via that nexus of relevance. The object's uselessness is always in connection to the context of our current dealings. We never measure a thing with respect to "THE practical world" in general(the idea of a world in general is a present to hand concept. The only world that exists primordially for Dasein is a world of relational relevance)). It is always THIS specific context of heedfully relevant dealings. My discovery of the uselessness of something is always in relation to THIS specific context, which specifically defines the meaning of its lack of usefulness for me.

It stands there as an innerworldly being without practical-technical significance. — waarala

No, it stands there conspicuously in its significance for me in relation to my context of activity as something not useful. Handiness isn't the same thing as 'practical' if by practical you mean the narrow sense of the tools I am using right now. Handiness, relevance, Care, heedful circumspection are about a relational totality of meaningfulness in a situation in which I am involved in my world. Things that break, that I cant use in a specific practical context, things that are missing , these are all part of the totality or meaningful relevance of that context, and thus all belong to handiness.

There has been encountered something that can't be handled practically inside the current relevance-relations — waarala

That which can't be handled practically inside the current relevance-relations derives its very meaning and significance via that current totality of relevance. It belongs through and through to the handiness structure of that situation.

Heidegger talks about objects that are 'practically relevant in a negative sense' in the guise of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness and obstinacy.

"Modes of taking care belong to the everydayness of being-in-the-world, modes which let the beings taken care of be encountered in such a way that the worldly quality of innerworldly beings appears. Beings nearest at hand can be met up with in taking care of things as unusable, as improperly adapted for their specific use. Tools tum out to be damaged, their material unsuitable. In any case, a useful thing of some sort is at hand here. But we discover the unusability not by looking and ascertaining properties, but rather by paying attention to the associations in which we use it. When we discover its unusability, the thing becomes conspicuous. This objective presence of what is unusable still does not lack all handiness whatsoever; the useful thing the objectively present is still not a thing which just occurs somewhere. The modes of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy have the function of bringing to the fore the character of objective presence in what is at hand. What is at hand is not thereby observed and stared at simply as something objectively present. The character of objective presence making itself known is still bound to the handiness of useful things Privative expressions such as inconspicuousness, unobtrusiveness, and obstinacy tell of a positive phenomenal character of the being of what is initially at hand. These negative prefixes express the character of keeping to itself of what is at hand."

Thank you for the profound criticism. I can comment it followingly:

I came to this view about the innerworldy being while I was recently reading H's early lectures where he speaks about "something" (Etwas) which is not yet in-the-world. Heidegger stresses that this something should be seen "formally" not "generally". If it is seen generally it is something theoretical, that is, it is an object. It is not clear to me what H. means by this distinction. He refers to Husserl who has made this distinction. So, I saw the innerworldly being as something not yet generalized, that is, it is not present-at-hand. It is actually nothing! I think the innerworldly being or its "conceptual status" is what H. in his early lecturecs called "formal indication" (formal Anzeige). I think that all this has to do with the phenomenological reasoning where one tries to avoid any not-reflected mechanical generalizations and subsumptions. Difficult problems are involved here.

I think you are intermingling too much the (practical) concern (Besorgen) with the more "general", that is, more original care (Sorge). There can be concern only because there is care but it is not necessary that care will "realize" itself primarily as concern (Besorgen). Dasein's being is Sorge, not Besorgen. Also, I think there can be Care ("basic interest") which cares that something is n o t done or used! There can be Care that is concerned to keep something not to be encountered as a tool or device (Zeug) (Could this be possible??). Something encountered as handiness presupposes (or i s) such a understanding (Seinsverständnis) and project (Entwurf) which constitutes such a worldliness where everything has a very specific significance as they are constituting some Work (Werk) to be accomplished. This actually resembles something thoroughly rational and calculated! Everything has its pre-determined place in the teleological system. However, I guess that for Heidegger this functioning system of the worldhood is some specific traditional way of life (possibly stiffen into forms). (Or it is something happening or proceeding immanently here and now and which some "external" telos is not transcending and systematizing) (Or: I am somewhere here confusing ontological and ontical or existential and existentiell.). Heidegger is analysing and describing something which is more like an existence in a culture than a system. Heidegger is aiming at something "organic" and not mechanic. (Heidegger is actually trying to overcome all dualistic oppositions (which has become phrases) which means that in B&T there is presented the sense nexus or ground from which in the first place can arise, which makes possible, the opposition between organic and mechanic. Same applies to opposition practical/theoretical). Heidegger was very close to the "life philosophy" (Lebensphilosphie; Dilthey, Bergson,Simmel) in his early years. This can be seen from his early lectures (which are highly recommended reading. Heidegger's basic motivations and tendencies become much more understandable when one reads these early lectures).

I think you are intermingling too much the (practical) concern (Besorgen) with the more "general", that is, more original care (Sorge). There can be concern only because there is care but it is not necessary that care will "realize" itself primarily as concern (Besorgen). Dasein's being is Sorge, not Besorgen. Also, I think there can be Care ("basic interest") which cares that something is not done or used! There can be Care that is concerned to keep something not to be encountered as a tool or device (Zeug) (Could this be possible??). — waarala

If there is already some thing for Dasein, then there is besorgen. A 'thing' is that which is disclosed for Dasein as a definite possibility, which always takes the form of the handiness of 'taking care' or 'concern'.

I should mention I use the Stambaugh translation of Being and Time: "The trio of words Sorge, Besorgen, and Filrsorge is rendered as "care," "taking care," and "concern," respectively."

It's important to understand first of all that primordial Care for Heidegger, as well as taking care and concern, have nothing to do with ontical sentiments like having a good feeling about someone. One could despise someone and that would still represent for Heidegger a relation of Care and concern for. These terms for Heidegger, like primordial attunement, understanding and temporality, tel us that, as Dasein , each of us are always already in the world of involvement with others. There is no isolated subjectivity for Heidegger that then encounters others. It also seems that you are understanding handiness and 'taking care' in terms of a narrow thinking about praxis, tools , accomplishment and work. It's true Heidegger uses many examples of tool-use and the work environment to illustrate the concept of handiness, but heedfully circumspective concernful involvement for Heidegger is a much broader and more profound dynamic that of workplace mechanics

where everything has a very specific significance as they are constituting some Work (Werk) to be accomplished. This actually resembles something thoroughly rational and calculated! Everything has its pre-determined place in the teleological system — waarala

.

This is very far from what Heidegger has in mind with handiness. There need be no specific work that has to be accomplished, no specific tools being used at all , for handiness and taking care to apply. Handiness is not about the rational, the calculable, the teleological. All of these belong to the theoretical modality of the present to hand, which is a derivative mode of taking care of. Reality, the rational, the calculative, the theoretical lose sight of their origin and basis in heedful circumspective involvement in the world.Heidegger explains rationality and object are based in propositional subject-predicate statements "Like interpretation in general, the statement necessarily has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. But how does the statement become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it?" Heidegger says predication points something out in a way that we sheerly look at it. By transforming the circumspective 'something "as" something' into 'this subject "as" this object', the 'as' is forced back to the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It "dwindles to the structure of just letting what is objectively present be seen by way of determination."When we just stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more." Heidegger recognizes the theoretical as an impoverished, 'cut-off' modification of understanding. Ontologically, it originates from and never departs from heedful circumspective relationality.

The distinction between primordial Sorgen and inauthentic Besorgen for Heidegger is a subtle one, but I think the essence of Care and taking care is not 'doing' as manipulating objects, but meaning, intentionality, experiencing as self-transformative(thinking is also doing), the way the world makes sense to us in new ways from moment to moment. A 'thing' is a way in which I am transformed by the world. For Heidegger there is a 'glue' that binds my present to my having been(my past) and my future as a single, unitary stretching along. It makes all my experience anticipatory and future oriented. It make me ahead of myself in just being myself. In experiencing moment to moment I carry forward and articulate forward my past. But in articulating myself I also transform myself. That is why for Heidegger care is fundamentally uncanniness. You are right that Care is more general than taking care of. Taking care is Care that has been directed toward definite factical possibilities, whereas Care can also imply indefinite possibilities as well. But this doens't make taking care more 'practical', just a more definite mode of relevant being-in-order-to. That which has no relevance for Dasein does not exist for it.

"Since being-in-the-world is essentially care, being-together-with things at hand could be taken in our previous analyses as taking care of them, being with the Mitda-sein of others encountered within the world as concern. Being-together-with is taking care of things, because as a mode of being-in it is determined by its fundamental structure, care. As a primordial structural totality, care lies "before" every factical "attitude" and "position" of Da-sein, that is, it is always already in them as an existential a priori. Thus this phenomenon by no means expresses a priority of "practical" over theoretical behavior. When we determine something objectively present by merely looking at it, this has the character of care just as much as a "political action," or resting and having a good time. "Theory" and "praxis" are possibilities of being for a being whose being must be defined as care."

Care is Being-in-the-World."The multiplicity of these kinds of being-in can be indicated by the following examples: to have to do with something, to produce, order and take care of something, to use something, to give something up and let it get lost, to undertake, to accomplish, to find out, to ask about, to observe, to speak about, to determine . . . . These ways of being-in have the kind of being of taking care of which we shall characterize in greater detail. The deficient modes of omitting, neglecting, renouncing, resting, are also ways of taking care of something, in which the possibilities of taking care are kept to a "bare minimum." We do not choose the term "taking care" because Da-sein is initially economical and "practical" to a large extent, but because the being of Da-sein itself is to be made visible as care.

Again, this expression is to be understood as an ontological structure concept . The expression has nothing to do with "distress," "melancholy," or "the cares of life" which can be found ontically in every Da-sein. These-like their opposites, " carefreeness " and " gaiety"-are ontically possible only because Dasein, ontologically understood, is care. Because being-in-the-world belongs essentially to Da-sein, its being toward the world is essentially taking care. According to what we have said, being-in is not a "quality" which Da-sein sometimes has and sometimes does not have, without which it could be just as well as it could with it. It is not the case that human being "is," and then on top of that has a relation of being to the "world" which it sometimes takes upon itself. Da-sein is never "initially" a sort of a being which is free from being-in, but which at times is in the mood to take up a "relation" to the world. This taking up of relations to the world is possible only because, as being-in-the-world, Da-sein is as it is."

This structure of being of the essential "being concerned about" we formulate as the being-ahead-of-itself of Da-sein. Being ahead-of-itself means being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-in-a-world. As soon as this essentially unitary structure is seen phenomenally, what we worked out earlier in the analysis of worldliness also becomes clearer. There we found that the referential totality of significance (which is constitutive for worldliness) is "anchored" in a for-the-sake-ot-which. The fact that this referential totality, of the manifold relations of the in-order-to, is bound up with that which Da-sein is concerned about, does not signify that an objectively present "world" of objects is welded together with a subject. Rather, it is the phenomenal expression of the fact that the constitution of Da-sein, whose
wholeness is now delineated explicitly as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being- in . . . is primordially a whole. Expressed differently: existing is always factical. In being-ahead-of-oneself-already-being-in-the-world, entangled being-together-with innerworldly things at hand taken care of lies essentially included."

It's important to understand first of all that primordial Care for Heidegger, as well as taking care and concern, have nothing to do with ontical sentiments like having a good feeling about someone. One could despise someone and that would still represent for Heidegger a relation of Care and concern for. These terms for Heidegger, like primordial attunement, understanding and temporality, tel us that, as Dasein , each of us are always already in the world of involvement with others. There is no isolated subjectivity for Heidegger that then encounters others. It also seems that you are understanding handiness and 'taking care' in terms of a narrow thinking about praxis, tools , accomplishment and work. — Joshs

This is very true. There is something "formal" or a formal aspect in these terms which means that they transcend all actual "empirical" facticities. They give the basic sense to these empirical particularities so that they can appear (again: this relates to Heidegger's interpretation of phenomenology.)

It is surprising how little Heidegger actually elaborates these terms (there is an interesting chapter in B&T where H. distinguishes Care from the concepts like will or instinct). You just have to "reconstruct" their meaning from the whole in which they are embedded. You carry the term along in your mind during the reading process and the context fulfils continually its meaning. The term is operative in many places but the whole point is that it can't be abstracted or separated and idealized as an independent concept.

Care (Sorge) could be a reflective dimension "over" the more practical concern (Besorgen). The practical Besorgen is doing concretely this and that in order to attain concretely this and that. Care "thinks" this "in order to" in terms of more far-reaching meaning. I think Care and Concern are different levels of motivations. Extremely simplified: I am reaching for an hammer in order to nail this piece of wood onto that thing (= the level of taking care of). Or: I am reaching for an hammer in order to survive in this life (or: in order to that I'll comply with certain style or way of life which requires me to do so) (= the level of Care). Care thinks (or states) the basic and first "um willen" or "for the sake of which". It can ask: What it ultimately means to me that I am doing this here and now? In what am I actually/truly "absorbed"? Care is the basic "meaning of life", in a certain dynamic sense. The inauthentic life has completely lost sight of this overall view which guides one's life. Which gives the basic sense to all significances.

Heidegger explains rationality and object are based in propositional subject-predicate statements "Like interpretation in general, the statement necessarily has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. But how does the statement become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it?" Heidegger says predication points something out in a way that we sheerly look at it. By transforming the circumspective 'something "as" something' into 'this subject "as" this object', the 'as' is forced back to the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It "dwindles to the structure of just letting what is objectively present be seen by way of determination."When we just stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more." Heidegger recognizes the theoretical as an impoverished, 'cut-off' modification of understanding. Ontologically, it originates from and never departs from heedful circumspective relationality. — Joshs

This is an important point in B&T. The statement isn't any more adequate or appropriate, it doesn't any more correspond to the original situation. It is already the form of the statement which "twists", that is, deforms and distorts the original sense into certain direction. And then arises the problem of truth as a correspondance: how this situation corresponds to this statement?

Care (Sorge) could be a reflective dimension "over" the more practical concern (Besorgen). The practical Besorgen is doing concretely this and that in order to attain concretely this and that. Care "thinks" this "in order to" in terms of more far-reaching meaning. — waarala

Yes, I think Heidegger's distinguishing between an authentic and an inauthentic mode of Dasein made it necessary for him to identify an inauthentic modification of Care, which led him to Besorgen.

The authentic and the authentic have a peculiar relationship. On the one hand, one might be tempted to see the former as 'better', more true, than the latter given the way Heidegger talks about the inauthentic in terms of average everydayness and the normativity of das man. But he reminds us throughout the book that this is not his intention: "The inauthenticity of Dasein does not signify a "lesser" being or a "lower" degree of being. Rather, inauthenticity can determine Da-sein even in its fullest concretion, when it is busy, excited, interested, and capable of pleasure." "Not-being-its-self functions as a positive possibility of beings which are absorbed in a world, essentially taking care of that world. Thus neither must the entanglement of Da-sein be interpreted as a "fall" from a purer and higher "primordial condition." Heidegger also cautions that the authentic is not more 'general' that the inauthentic in the sense of an overview. "Da-sein can fall prey only because it is concerned with understanding, attuned being-in-the-world. On the other hand, authentic existence is nothing which hovers over entangled everydayness, but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness."

I understand the distinction in two ways. First, in falling prey to and losing oneself in everyday inauthentic existence, one forgets the 'mineness' of what it is that Dasein is caught up with in its particular factical engagements with its world. In inauthentic existence one thinks of oneself in general, normative terms. We convince ourselves that we all understand language the same way, that we are experiencing the same world. In this way, Dasein cuts itself off from itself(Itself not being a thing or subjectivity, but a certain ongoing integrity and intimacy of relational self-transformation). That is, what individualizes meaning for each of us is suppressed and distorted in favor of the average. The 'mineness' of Dasein means not only that we belong to ourselves moment to moment, in a radically integral way, but that experience belongs to us and to itself moment to moment in this radically integral way. By contrast, the movement of unauthentic experience is fragmented, trivial, ambiguous since the 'mineness' that ties one experience to the next is forgotten and suppressed.

But that ongoing 'sameness' of authentic mineness is not to be understood as a subject persisting outside of its experiences.
"The sameness of the authentically existing self is separated ontologically by a gap from the identity of the I maintaining itself in the multiplicity of its "experiences ."

Maybe one can think of the distinction this way. In being-in-the world, one can focus on one of two poles. The inauthentic pole would be focusing on the pull of the matters of engagement that grab our attention. We fall prey to them and are held hostage to them.The authentic pole is the way in which whatever we encounter in the world is fore-closed and projected by Dasein. What appears to us never comes at us from nowhere but is framed and has its relevance within the context of our ongoing engagements.
Second, and this goes to your point about the authentic as a more far-reaching meaning, in inauthenticity we orient our motivation around the particular ways in which the world affects us. We frantically chase after new experience. Novelty becomes an addiction. In authenticity, at the same time that we recognize the integrity of unfolding of meaning for Dasein in its being-in-the-world, the individual experiences become insignificant as we become directed toward Dasein's ownmost possibilities of being. One could look at this transition from inauthentically being caught up in beings to authentically being directed toward beings as a whole as a move toward generality or , as you say a more 'far-reaching' horizon.

I see it as Dasein's wresting itself free of setting its future-oriented expectations based on the meaning relevance of the particular something it is caught up in. In wresting itself free, it hasn't abandoned the world, but can now see more clearly each moment of investment of dasein in meaningful relationality is at the same time an investment IN and an investment BEYOND each particular. Authenticity sees this complete 'in' and 'beyond' that each encounter with the world implies. So one could argue that authentic understanding is more practical than inauthentic in a fundamental sense. Heidegger shows how in all sorts of situations, including experiences of fear as well as conversation, authentic understanding doesn't take us away from the task in front of us by generalizing or abstracting from it. On the contrary, it allows us to penetrate beneath the distortions, illusions, fragmentation and closed-offness that falling prey to particulars of the world implies, in order to act more purposefully and understandingly with regard to whatever we are involved in. We see our engagement as stretched along via our temporality. "Only because Da-sein in general IS as I AM-having-been, can it come futurally toward itself in such a way that it comes-back." Thus, "Having been arises from the future".

Yes, I think Heidegger's distinguishing between an authentic and an inauthentic mode of Dasein made it necessary for him to identify an inauthentic modification of Care, which led him to Besorgen.

The authentic and the authentic have a peculiar relationship. On the one hand, one might be tempted to see the former as 'better', more true, than the latter given the way Heidegger talks about the inauthentic in terms of average everydayness and the normativity of das man. But he reminds us throughout the book that this is not his intention: "The inauthenticity of Dasein does not signify a "lesser" being or a "lower" degree of being. Rather, inauthenticity can determine Da-sein even in its fullest concretion, when it is busy, excited, interested, and capable of pleasure." "Not-being-its-self functions as a positive possibility of beings which are absorbed in a world, essentially taking care of that world. Thus neither must the entanglement of Da-sein be interpreted as a "fall" from a purer and higher "primordial condition." Heidegger also cautions that the authentic is not more 'general' that the inauthentic in the sense of an overview. "Da-sein can fall prey only because it is concerned with understanding, attuned being-in-the-world. On the other hand, authentic existence is nothing which hovers over entangled everydayness, but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness." — Joshs

What the "modification" does mean here? I put the "over" inside the scare quotes to allude that "authenticity", what ever it is, is not leaving, it can't leave the immanency of the current (common) world. Authenticity is only alluding to something different with regard to "inauthentic absorption", in which it itself in a sense remains entangled? However, all this should mean that authenticity can't entirely remain an inner experience? Authenticity must somehow realize itself in(to) the world.(Hopefully adverbs are in the right places. I am obviously not a native English speaker.)

Authentic existence could be something which "exists" more originally some motives and tendencies that are operative in the current activity. It tries to renew/restore/refresh something which here and now has become a phrase. Inauthentic living doesn't "see" any more the motives and tendencies which are currently guiding the activity. It "mechanically" repeats itself here and now and seemingly forever. There is no more any constant seeking after truth and its maintenance in dis-closedness. Some (in this context) sense providing "sameness" or selfhood is forgotten and authentic existence tries possibly to demonstrate it anew. Inauthentic lives in phrases and formal rituals (normativities) and authentic existence tries to give these present-at-hand phrases their original meaning or new life. Heidegger seems to mean by authentic existence something similar to that what was Luther's relation to Catholicism? Or that Luther is an excellent example of one's possibly highly radical authenticity. (Authenticity is actually a highly relative concept. (Basically it questions what is here and now the most adequate in this situation from our perspective [in fact, this kind of questioning transcends actual here and now] .) Lutheranism or Christianity in general can be considered from some other, i.e. "outsider's", perspective something completely phony or fake. Which doesn't rule out the possibility that they are right i.e. these are, as currently practised, indeed something fake and inauthentic. However, what Heidegger here has in his mind is Luther's certain attitude (to restore the original relations between beings or Sinnzusammenhang) in certain historical situation than any particular dogmas as such.)

(The fact that Heidegger to some extent identified himself with Luther would explain his few otherwise inexplicable anti-Semitic comments. It is almost as if he regarded himself as the reformator of philosophy.)

What I am confused about is whether, in raising this question, Heidegger is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, or rather (merely) with the reality of the human experience/condition. That is to say, is Heidegger concerned with what reality is like, in the sense that a physicist can be said to be, or is he concerned with what it is like to be a human being, more in the sense that an existentialist can be said to be? — philosophy

The sense of "reality" itself has a long, checkered history which he discusses in Being and Time.

One thing Heidegger wants to get "beyond" is the subject/object divide, which goes back at least to Descartes' division of the world into the res cogitans (thinking substance, mind) and res extensa (extended substance, objects in space) -- the famous mind/body dualism.

It may seem frustrating, but Heidegger doesn't define "being" at all -- rather he discusses how it has been interpreted throughout Westery history from the Greeks onward. The Greeks, he claims, privileged one aspect of time when interpreting being: the present. Furthermore, time itself (which we, as "caring" beings, embody as "temporality") is also interpreted as a kind of present-at-hand being, a sequence of now-points, since Aristotle.

So to answer you question: he sees being "in general" and human being as interconnected, but mainly focuses on the latter: the temporal "there" (dasein) which understands and interprets being. Hence his "analytic of dasein" as being-in-world, care, and temporality.

Hope that helps.

Can you give me the source of this please?

"The theory of relativity in physics does not deal with what time is but deals only with how time, in the sense of a now-sequence, can be measured. [It asks] whether there is an absolute measurement of time, or whether all measurement is necessarily relative, that is, conditioned."

Heidegger is completely wrong abut relativity in general, and space time in particular. Spacetime is a physical reality that is distorted by gravity. This is evident on earth, where two atomic clocks run differently, where one is at sea level, and the other is in plane flying 30,000 feet above. This is called 'time dilation' - and it's a scientifically proven phenomenon. — karl stone

Do you really think Heidegger wasn't aware of time dilation -- that this managed to escape him somehow? Come on. I think it's far more likely you're misunderstanding -- which is in fact the case.

Heidegger never says time dilation isn't a reality. He doesn't make a claim that physics is "wrong" because it assumes a certain conception of time as "now-points." He is simply saying that experiential time (temporality) is different from the time of physics (measured time, based on a conception of "time" as a sequence of now-points). This seems obvious from the quotations above.

Time dilation does, in fact, demonstrate that the measurement of time is conditioned by factors like speed and distance.

I'm not a physicist - I'm a philosopher, — karl stone

You're neither, actually.