Calling the ready to hand 'autopilot' or flow implies suggests, even if you dont mean it that way, that objects 'in themselves' are there and we are simply not paying attention to them when we are focusing on a task. But this isn't how Heidegger understands the distinction between ready to hand and present to hand. The present to hand does not stand on equal ontological footing with the ready to hand. It's a derivative and impoverished mode of the ready to hand for Heidegger. . It s not that in pointing out an object we are attending to something extra, something we ignored during our labors. The opposite is the case. In moving from the ready to hand to the present to hand mode, we are ossifying, freezing , flattening and distorting the beings we are involved with. — Joshs
The present to hand does not stand on equal ontological footing with the ready to hand.
Well of course the objects in themselves are there. — fdrake
The transcendental priority of the ready to hand is legitimised through an appeal to everyday Dasein, not to specific modes of comportment. — fdrake
Dasein is a poor description of someone staring at a screen, someone feeling lactic acid in their muscles, someone contemplating the mysteries of life. — fdrake
What is an example of this "not as good" way of thinking he labels "present-at-hand"? Is it literally just Descartes sitting in his room, ruminating about metaphysical matters a priori? Does it have to touch a "real world application" for it to be considered the "good" ready-at-hand? — schopenhauer1
To point to a moment of experience and say 'object' is to do violence to this dynamism at the heart of meaning by attempting to freeze what was mobile, and thus actively significant and relevant, and make it inert , dead, meaningless. — Joshs
Heidegger talks about what it means to see something 'as' something: "In the first and authentic instance, this “as” is not the “as” of predication qua predication but is prior to it in such a way that it makes possible the very structure of predication at all. Predication has the as-structure, but in a derived way, and it has it only because the as-structure is predication within a [wider] experience. But why is it that this as-structure is already present in a direct act of dealing with something? The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act. The non-explicitness of this “as” is precisely what constitutes the act’s so-called directness. Yes, the thing that is understood can be apprehended directly as it is in itself. But this directness regarding the thing apprehended does not inhibit the act from having a developed structure. Moreover, what is structural and necessary in the act of [direct] understanding need not be — Joshs
I repeat: The [primary] as-structure does not belong to something thematically understood. It certainly can be understood, but not directly in the process of focally understanding a table, a chair, or the like.
Acts of directly taking something, having something, dealing with it “as something,” are so
original that trying to understand anything without employing the “as” requires (if it’s possible at
all) a peculiar inversion of the natural order. Understanding something without the “as”—in a
pure sensation, for example—can be carried out only “reductively,” by “pulling back” from an
as-structured experience. — Joshs
This ignores why we evolved to do such a thing in the first place. — ghost
...everything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject as well.
The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly realised and actual (wirklich) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of splitting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reality is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of reflecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.
...
What has been said may also be expressed by saying that reason is purposive activity. — Hegel
Put differently, isnt it possible to to talk philosophically about the way that our moment to moment relation to the world and to our self transforms the nature of both the subjective and objective side of experience, without having to be accused of falling back into the same trap one is trying to critique? — Joshs
I see the the articulations of thinkers like Husserl and Heidegger as the direct continuation of the tradition of mathematical thought. Their formulations ARE a form of mathematics in the most sweeping sense. They are what mathematics had to become. — Joshs
This doesnt make the concept of an object 'false', it makes it a notion that doesn't fully understand the dynamics of its structuration with respect to the phenomenal unfolding of experience. — Joshs
When will we know that we have fully understood such a glorious thing as 'the dynamics of its structuration with respect to the phenomenal unfolding of experience.' Why would we need to know? — ghost
So what is your definition of science that differentiates it from phenomenology? Here's my definition. Science is a name with changing meanings over time. It can be traced genealogically through cultural history in terms of these changing self-understandings which transform themselves in parallel with changes in philosophical worldviews over the past centuries . There is Greek science and philosophy, Scholastic science and philosophy, Enlightenment science and philosophy, Modernist science and philosophy, and post-modern science and philosophy. The difference within any era between the two is nothing that exists outside of that era, not science's understanding of its method, goals, tools, language. All of these are contingent. All that differentiates it from philosophy in any trans-historical sense is that it is more 'pragmatic'. And what does that mean? It uses a vocabulary that is less comprehensively self-examining. In one era that means it has privileged access to 'truth', in another that means it is a social construction which is as much art and politics as it is fact.there are elements of science in phenomenology, but it is ultimately an art. — Janus
mathematics is strictly rule-based and phenomenological inquiry is not. — Janus
Dreyfus claims that the plausibility of the psychological assumption rests on two others: the epistemological and ontological assumptions. The epistemological assumption is that all activity (either by animate or inanimate objects) can be formalised (mathematically) in the form of predictive rules or laws. The ontological assumption is that reality consists entirely of a set of mutually independent, atomic (indivisible) facts. It's because of the epistemological assumption that workers in the field argue that intelligence is the same as formal rule-following, and it's because of the ontological one that they argue that human knowledge consists entirely of internal representations of reality. — Wiki
All that differentiates it from philosophy in any trans-historical sense is that it is more 'pragmatic'. And what does that mean? It uses a vocabulary that is less comprehensively self-examining. — Joshs
In that sense phenomenology, Nietzschean polemics, post structuralism , hermeneutics and pragmatism carry forward the tradition of mathemtics as the language of ultimate precision, but via a new type of discourse. — Joshs
So what is your definition of science that differentiates it from phenomenology? — Joshs
the reason that the rule-based nature of mathematics was so central to the philosophical projects of Aristotle, Descartes and Leibniz was because the metaphysical grounding of logic and math was considered by them to also be 'rule-based'. They believed in a world that was grounded in such a way that it could be described as consisting of precisely defined rules of relationship.
Most philosophers no longer believe that the rules of relationship that ground ontology have fixed content. — Joshs
Plato’s metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly. He even seems to have suffered from a version of the more characteristically Judaeo-Christian conviction that we are all miserable sinners, and to have hoped for some form of redemption from philosophy.
Most philosophers no longer believe that the rules of relationship that ground ontology have fixed content. — Joshs
Can anyone link the essay mentioned by OP? Or a synopsis of it. — Forgottenticket
Science, in its various guises, is concerned with understanding the cosmos, the natural world. Phenomenology is concerned with understanding the nature of human experience as such, with life as it is lived, specifically. — Janus
The practice of mathematics is rule-based; it is the rule-based discipline par excellence. You can't dispense with the rules and still claim to be doing mathematics. — Janus
Since Galileo, the presumption of philosophy has shifted precisely to a 'detached understanding' in the sense of 'objectively absolute' - or as near to it as possible - and the 'reign of quantity'. But what has entirely gone, is the sense of there being a vertical dimension, some axis along which the judgement of what is 'higher', in a qualitative sense, is intelligible. — Wayfarer
Abstraction/generalization broadens (or eventually destroys) the context so that the "fulfillment of the sense" (phenomenological concept) is experienced only with regard to some general properties. — waarala
Mathematics, resting on logic, begins from the thought of a pure, ideal object , devoid of all content but that it exists in itself as object. This would seem to be obvious but the idea of pure object had to be formulated as such by the Greeks. Once the idea of ideal object was established, the possibility of calculation became possible. — Joshs
Unlike classical and scholastic Platonism, Kantianism doesn't believe in an eternal content that mathematics can reveal to us, but it does believe in eternal form — Joshs
Reality is assumed to be out there, waiting to be discovered and investigated. And the aim of natural science is to acquire a strict and objectively valid knowledge about this given realm. But this attitude must be contrasted with the properly philosophical attitude, which critically questions the very foundation of experience and scientific thought." — Joshs
But can generalization ever really destroy context?(I think of Derrida's famous adage 'there is nothing outside context'). Even if a concept is experienced only with regard to some general properties, aren't these so-called general properties made relevant for an individual in relation to their particular contextual situation, without their being explicitly aware of this? In other words, is there any way to ever escape the particularizing effect of context, even when we lose sight of this? — Joshs
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