There are two texts called The Concept of Time? — Terrapin Station
Stress the word object and method. In short, Heidegger thought the standard approach to history was shallow. One of his big themes is a taken-for-granted method that is doomed from the get-go. Our initial grasp is crucial. — macrosoft
It's that blind first step, what we think is obvious, that blinds us. This is what dismantling the tradition is all about. It's the attempt to take off the blinders we didn't know we were wearing. — macrosoft
That part makes sense, at least, but if we're going to say that we are "wearing blinders," we'd need something to support that other than just making the claim that it's the case. — Terrapin Station
But, as any good Hegelian knows, such pithy summaries are more deceptive than informative. The truth is not the naked result but the result along with its becoming. — macrosoft
Anyone (like Heidegger) who cannot come up with an argument that grants that others exist as well is not worth considering further. — hks
Anyone (like Heidegger) who cannot come up with an argument that grants that others exist as well is not worth considering further. — hks
We must in the first instance note explicitly that Kant uses the term 'Dasein' to designate that kind of Being which in the present investigation we have called 'presence-at-hand'. 'Consciousness of my Dasein' means for Kant a consciousness of my Being-present-at-hand in the sense of Descartes. When Kant uses the term `Dasein' he has in mind the Being-present-at-hand of consciousness just as much as the Being-present-at-hand of Things.
The proof for the `Dasein of Things outside of me' is supported by the fact that both change and performance belong, with equal primordiality, to the essence of time. My own Being-present-at-hand — that is, the Being-present-at-hand of a multiplicity of representations, which has been given in the inner sense — is a process of change which is present-at-hand. To have a determinate temporal character [Zeitbestimmtheit], however, presupposes something present-at-hand which is permanent. But this cannot be 'in us', 'for only through what is thus permanent can my Dasein in time be determined'. Thus if changes which are present-at-hand have been posited empirically 'in me', it is necessary that along with these something permanent which is present-at-hand should be posited empirically 'outside of me'. What is thus permanent is the condition which makes it possible for the changes 'in me' to be present-at-hand. The experience of the Being-in-time of representations posits something changing 'in me' and something permanent 'outside of me', and it posits both with equal primordiality.
Of course this proof is not a causal inference and is therefore not encumbered with the disadvantages which that would imply. Kant gives, as it were, an 'ontological proof' in terms of the idea of a temporal entity. It seems at first as if Kant has given up the Cartesian approach of positing a subject one can come across in isolation. But only in semblance. That Kant demands any proof at all for the `Dasein of Things outside of me' shows already that he takes the subject — the 'in me' — as the starting-point for this problematic. Moreover, his proof itself is then carried through by starting with the empirically given changes 'in me'. For only `in me' is 'time' experienced, and time carries the burden of the proof. Time provides the basis for leaping off into what is 'outside of me' in the course of the proof. Furthermore, Kant emphasizes that "The problematical kind [of idealism], which merely alleges our inability to prove by immediate experience that there is a Dasein outside of our own, is reasonable and accords with a sound kind of philosophical thinking: namely, to permit no decisive judgment until an adequate proof has been found." But even if the ontical priority of the isolated subject and inner experience should be given up, Descartes' position would still be retained ontologically. What Kant proves—if we may suppose that his proof is correct and correctly based—is that entities which are changing and entities which are permanent are necessarily present-at-hand together. But when two things which are present-at-hand are thus put on the same level, this does not as yet mean that subject and Object are present-at-hand together. And even if this were proved, what is ontologically decisive would still be covered up—namely, the basic state of the 'subject', Dasein, as Being-in-the-world. The Being-present-at-hand-together of the physical and the psychical is completely different ontically and ontologically from the phenomenon of Being-in-the-world. Kant presupposes both the distinction between the 'in me' and the `outside of me', and also the connection between these; factically he is correct in doing so, but he is incorrect from the standpoint of the tendency of his proof. It has not been demonstrated that the sort of thing which gets established about the Being-present-at-hand-together of the changing and the permanent when one takes time as one's clue, will also apply to the connection between the 'in me' and the 'outside of me'. But if one were to see the whole distinction between the 'inside' and the 'outside' and the whole connection between them which Kant's proof presupposes, and if one were to have an ontological conception of what has been presupposed in this presupposition, then the possibility of holding that a proof of the `Dasein of Things outside of me' is a necessary one which has yet to be given [noch ausstehend], would collapse.
The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. Such expectations, aims, and demands arise from an ontologically inadequate way of starting with of such a character that independently of it and 'outside' of it a 'world' is to be proved as present-at-hand. It is not that the proofs are inadequate, but that the kind of Being of the entity which does the proving and makes requests for proofs has not been made definite enough. This is why a demonstration that two things which are present-at-hand are necessarily present-at-hand together, can give rise to the illusion that something has been proved, or even can be proved, about Dasein as Being-in-the-world. If Dasein is understood correctly, it defies such proofs, because, in its Being, it already is what subsequent proofs deem necessary to demonstrate for it.
— Heidegger
What is the difference between a being and a thing? What is the significance of the fact that humans are called ‘beings’? — Wayfarer
But we aren't stuff. We are more like the open space for meaning. Nor are we separate from the world. We are being-in-the-world-with-others. We are the world itself being in itself, something like that. We are the future as possibility acting in the present but having a past that grounds all this. — macrosoft
Have you come across semiotics as a sharper way to make sense of this - being as an Umwelt or sign relation? — apokrisis
And a problem with phenomenology would be this "we" that is doing the being-in-the-world, etc. That makes it sound like consciousness is the primordial stuff or primordial ground. — apokrisis
A pragmatic/semiotic metaphysics instead focuses on the interpretive relation that forms an Umwelt. A world of experience arises which mediates between the "self" that is implicit in the development of habits and dispositions, and the "world" that then represents all the recalcitrant facts that stand in opposition to this pole of intentionality. — apokrisis
So this is quite a psychologically realistic view. All organisms are agents forming their view of the world - experiencing it as an organised system of signs. But it can also be a physically realistic metaphysics as our best understanding of physics already demands that it be "organismic" in having historically developed habits, dispositions and even (thermodynamic) intents.
Modern physics now relies on information theory to account for why reality is atomistically fragmented into "degrees of freedom". A particle is essentially "a sign" of something that could happen. We know it was there because we record the event - the mark it leaves.
So in a sense that semiosis can make precise - which information theory can measure - we do now have a worldview, a metaphysics, which is founded on "meaning making". And it can apply both to psychological science and physical science. — apokrisis
This is why Sheehan's book is so appealing. He's worldly and funny, doing his best to cut through all the smoke and music. I'd love to hear what you think of it if you get a chance to check it out. — macrosoft
MV, he is outright rejecting deep/final truth, but clearly some kind of pure lifestream is functioning along those lines. The truth is just the open space that times, self-interpretively. If we are relentlessly pointed back to our own lifestream, however, I think 'truth' is the wrong word. — macrosoft
The 'essence' of the human being...consists in its having to be constitutionally ahead of itself, as possibility amidst possibilities. Such essential stretched-out-ness is what Heidegger calls 'thrown-ness.' And since being thrown ahead = being pulled open, the stretch into possibilities is thrown-open--ness. But with us, being thrown-open always entails living into meaning-giving possibilities. Existence thus unfolds as --is thrown open as --the open region of possible meaningfulness.
In its most basic sense, openedness as the possibility of intelligibility remains the one and only factum...of all Heidegger's work.
Soon enough, however, it became clear to Heidegger that, more fundamentally, existence is meta-metaphysical. That is, we transcend things not only in already understanding their possible meanings and then returning to the things to give them meaning, but also and above all by being already 'beyond' things-and-their-meanings and in touch with what makes the meaningfulness of things possible at all. We are not just fully intentional --present to both things and their meanings. More basically, we 'transcend' things-and-their-meaningsto --that is to say, we in fact are--the thrown-open clearing that makes possible our 'natural metaphysical' relations to things-in-their-meanings. Existence is not only transcendental but also trans-transcendental or transcendental to the second power.
No matter how much our engagement with intelligibility may be parsed out into its component parts, it is a strict and original unity that cannot be resolved into anything more primal. If we were to ask what we might be prior to our engagement with meaning, such an inquiry would entail that we already have enacted an engagement with meaning by simply asking the question, and hence we would be moving in a vicious circle. Our very existence is such an engagement, and absent that, we would not be human, much less able to ask questions at all. — Sheehan
That said, my 'distance' from Heidi actually takes its cue from readings like Sheehan's: as productive as it is to think of the world as a meaningful whole, it's also a very simplified view of things. As I see it, the world is rather full of holes, perforated by ambivalence and opacity, instances of indifference and insignificance — StreetlightX
Basically, I take issue with Heidegger's holism, which always struck me as far too ideational and seamless. One of the more devastating charges against Heidegger's whole project was Levinas's, for whom "Dasein in Heidegger is never hungry". I think this is a nice synecdoche for why Heidegger's project seems so barren to me, at the end of the day. — StreetlightX
The difference might whether one's motivations are primarily scientific or spiritual. — macrosoft
I'd say that Heidegger was ultimately a philosopher concerned with how to live in the world not as a scientist first but as a man. — macrosoft
My hand is mine because I can usually make it do what I want without having to think about it. 'I' am the stuff that doesn't not resist my will. — macrosoft
However, if you are going to be a holist and process thinker, I believe it is unavoidable that you will end up favouring immanence over transcendence. And so the idea of "spirit" is going to lose all its bite by the end.
A big part of that is that monism also has to give way to an irreducible triadicism. And to make Geist or other somesuch the monistic foundation is already to begin with something too developed. It is a dualism willing to give up its material aspect but insisting on some kind of residual mental aspect. — apokrisis
And so I'd reply that Peirce's insight is that reality itself is "scientific". It arises by ... the universal growth of reasonableness. — apokrisis
Exactly. The self at the centre of things is merely the sum of all that is found to be not part of the world. It is a fluid development built on a process of othering. The self is just the other "other" that arises in opposition to "the world" (and thus - against dualism - is wholly dependent on that "world"). — apokrisis
He never drew and maintained the crucial distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. In his defense, no one else in philosophy proper has either to my knowledge. Not even to this very day... — creativesoul
His dasein, as I understand it, is akin to an unquestioned original world-view... all of which are virtually entirely adopted. — creativesoul
Yeah, I simply used 'Deep Truth' as a stand-in for that mystical core of Being or whatever that Heidegger consistently tried to 'proximate'. It was more a figure of speech than anything precise. — StreetlightX
And I find holism pretty inescapable --which is to say a description more than an invitation. — macrosoft
One thing maybe you can answer? Does the sign just exist in your view? Or does it exist for a subject? In a speculative frame of mind, it seems that we just have a flow of signed-sensation, with the subject being a recurrent theme of that flow. Clearly the flow of signs is motivated, directional, even motivated toward self-knowing, though only perhaps indirectly. What do you say? — macrosoft
In a way I do think holism is 'inescapable'; much though, in the same way that the fridge light is inescapable: it not on when you look, its on because you're looking. — StreetlightX
But it's important to attend to the asymmetry of our relationship to the world which, for its own part, is largely indifferent to what one can even call our 'primordial comportment' to it, if you like. — StreetlightX
Moreover - and this is something the French reception to Heidegger understood very well, perhaps because of their interest in Nietzsche - meangfulness can be asphixiating. Heidegger got something of this in his speaking of our 'throwness', but perhaps didn't draw the full concequences from it. To makes one's way in a world loaded with inescapable meaning can be incredibly oppressive, and one of the things we happen to be very good at ignoring much of it and, and it were, playing with reality. The almost fanatical thematics of 'appropriation' in Heidegger - speaking also to his conception of philosophy outlined in the OP - strikes me being insensitive to to precisely the liberatory power of disappropriation, of the anonymous and of Das Man that Heidi consistantly disparages. — StreetlightX
When I see a red light at a crossroads, I see a place where I should stop. There is danger in continuing. The danger is real. But the sign is psychological you would say. And if I see a dark cloud, I know to read that as a feature of the world promising rain. The conceptual essence of there being a cloud for me is this meaning. And then we can quarrel forever about the reality of "a cloud" as some actual object or entity that would deserve being named and taken as a habitual sign of anything in particular.
But if you want to continue on - like Peirce - then everything would only "exist" to the extent it forms a sign or mark that can be read by the world in some sense. So everything that could count as an actual event - something definitely happening, something that is a positive fork in a developing history - would be semiotic. It would be information. A fact. Meaningful in terms of a context that "observes". — apokrisis
He never drew and maintained the crucial distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. In his defense, no one else in philosophy proper has either to my knowledge. Not even to this very day...
— creativesoul
This is a surprising perspective. Philosophy strikes me as being largely itself a thinking and believing about thinking and believing --and a thinking and believing about this same philosophy. It eats itself to the n-th power in limitless self-consciousness. Examine the Sheehan quote. Let me know what you think. — macrosoft
His dasein, as I understand it, is akin to an unquestioned original world-view... all of which are virtually entirely adopted.
— creativesoul
This doesn't square with my experience. — macrosoft
What first grabbed me about Heidegger was his dimantling of certain taken-for-granted approaches the subject and object theme, the idea of the world, etc. He uses the word 'existence' (dasein) in order to avoid all the meanings attached to person, subject, mind. The so-called mind is largely immersed in (is) activity. Existence doesn't drive. Existence is driving. Existence doesn't wash dishes. Existence is the washing of dishes. For him, being-in-the-world is 'primordial.' The idea of proving that other minds or an external world exists indicates a failure to grasp this pre-theoretical phenomenon.
I like to think of philosophers arguing about theories of truth. In terms of what shared theory of truth can they be arguing? And yet they argue! This IMV suggests a pre-theoretical 'primary' sense of 'our reality.' Explicit formulations are secondary to this and only entertained and advanced in the light of this receding phenomenon. — macrosoft
The driving force, if I may use a bit of poetic license, was that they both realized that meaning was attributed in far more ways than had been accounted for. — creativesoul
Witt, as much as I like him for a number of ways, was himself the fly in the bottle when it came to thought/belief. — creativesoul
On my view, and I've argued it many times over, true belief is prior to language... thus, either true belief does not require truth or that which makes belief true is prior to language. Only correspondence theory gets close. Although I reject it in it's details, I have supplanted it with my own version. — creativesoul
This is not in the direct spirit of the thread though, so I'll not expand. — creativesoul
Witt, as much as I like him for a number of ways, was himself the fly in the bottle when it came to thought/belief.
— creativesoul
I've got On Certainty. I haven't reread it for years, but I had the impression that he was more sophisticated than that. — macrosoft
Exactly. The self at the centre of things is merely the sum of all that is found to be not part of the world. It is a fluid development built on a process of othering. The self is just the other "other" that arises in opposition to "the world" (and thus - against dualism - is wholly dependent on that "world"). — apokrisis
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