Or any sort? Of course there is a logic to phenomenological analysis, but it is perhaps not always of the first order variety. There is a logic to metaphor as well as a logic to proposition-making.Different language games?

What? Wouldn't such an theory have to presuppose a logic, a grammar in which it might be set out? — Banno

It could. Or it could try to burrow deeper , and find a way to build self-reflexivity into its terms, so that rather than setting out a formal scheme, it can enact what makes particular schemes and grammars possible without itself being any one of these. Wittgenstein said you could only show. Heidegger tried to tell

Phenomenology? Maybe it just doesn't do it for you. — Janus

To the extent I've warmed to phenomenology, I've been fascinated by various works of (those who come to mind) E. Levinas, M. Merleau-Ponty, J-L. Marion, F. Varela, D. Abrams, D. Dennett ("heterophenomenology") & T. Metzinger ("synthetic phenomenology").

Have you looked at Braver's account of the commonalities between the early Heidegger and the late Wittgenstein?

No, but Groundless Grounds has been on my Amazon "List" for quite a while now. One regret, going back nearly forty years, is that I had read far too much of obscurant H before I studied gnomic W (which, nonetheless, affected me like "cult deprogramming"); had I engaged the latter first I would have been spared reading the former beyond "the introduction" of SuZ (to me H's most "lucid" work). Nonetheless, I still engage his oracular writing/rantings because H's influence is so pervasive and close reading of so many of "The Continentals" requires, for better or worse, some fluency with H's concerns.

In the beginning there is existence. Existence is not a property of anything, it simply is, eternally. It is what is. Existence has properties. — EnPassant

I prefer "being" rather than "existence," although I do use both occasionally. To say being is eternal or has other properties is a mistake, in my view. It's one interpretation, yes, but is confusing being with a being (with an entity).

Shout out to Xtrix for starting this expansive thread. Your detailed consideration of being gives me much to think about in the coming days.

Looks like I'll be paying additional visits to that neologizing esoteric, the ever fearsome Heidegger. — ucarr

A very generous thing to say, considering it was your thread that stimulated it.

As for Heidegger as "fearsome" -- I don't think there's so much need for trepidation, it just takes a little dedication and some time to get familiar with his peculiar language, but once you do it's very interesting indeed. The question itself gets at the heart of philosophy and, arguably, defines philosophy.

Asking "what is being?" is asking "How do we use the word 'being'?";
— Banno

Better yet , from a Heideggerian perspective , asking ‘what is being’ is asking ‘what is the condition of possibility of ‘use’? — Joshs

Right -- the very method of analysis, a linguistic or grammatical analysis, has plenty of assumptions behind it on the nature of language, truth, meaning, usage, etc. etc. The sciences, including linguistics, and the philosophy of language often overlook their own ontological foundations.

In "What is Metaphysics" he says it's what we experience when we contemplate the void. I guess it's a matter of which "Being" we're talking about. — frank

Being is experienced when we "contemplate the void"? You'll have to cite the passages you're thinking about...this looks completely wrong.

I think the title is not very clear: "Being" with a capital raises questioning and ambiguity. E.g. "What does 'being' mean?" would be something more concrete and could be easier discussed. So, I will stick to your first clear-cut (to me) question: — Alkis Piskas

No, it's a good point. I only capitalized "Being" because it's in the title. Notice I don't capitalize it elsewhere. So just ignore that.

I would describe "is-ness" as apparency of existence. It refers to something that apparently exists as true or fact. It persists in time and we agree upon that it exists, i.e. it is real for us. — Alkis Piskas

You describe being as "apparency," as truth and fact, as persisting in time and agreed to be "real." There's a lot there to unpack!

So being is that which is real, true, factual?

Two examples:
1) When I say "My name is Alkis", I state that the name "Alkis" exists and this is how I am called. Usually such a statement is not disputed and we expect that the other person agrees! :smile:
2) If I say "This tree is big", I state that 1) a tree exists somewhere near and that 2) I consider a fact (true) that it is big. However, either of these two premises can be disputed: one may disagree that it is a "tree" (he would call it a "plant") and/or that it is "big" (he may found it "medium-size" or even "small"). — Alkis Piskas

It sounds to me like what you're describing are substances with properties which we may agree upon. But remember, when you say "This tree is big," or "My name is Alkis," what we're asking about is the "is." The is-ness, the being, of the tree, of Alkis, of bigness, of redness, etc. All the beings you can think of, every property and action and process, "are," yes?

That's the question.

Whatever else it may be, you are going to get stuck on the word "is" and try to find some "essence" or a common attribute common to the word which may not (dare I say it?) exist. "Is" can only make sense in relation to something else. So what is "is-ness" cannot be answered unless it's connected with something else. — Manuel

But it has been answered in many ways, throughout history. Remember I'm not looking for an attribute or property. But "what is "is-ness"" I'm saying, "What is being?" All beings, whether trees or rocks or humans, "are." Being is not a being (a particular entity), nor a property of a being (green, large, soft). Historically, the being of beings has been defined as substance (ousia).

What I'm arguing (using Heidegger as a launching point) is that Western philosophy has interpreted being as variations of presence, since the Greeks. Thinking, in the sense of theory and, later, mathematical physics, comes to dominate -- it defines the human being (rational animal, animal with reason/language) as a subject that thinks and the world (nature) as its object.

But you aren't going to find something common to "is" by saying that a table is or a river is. — Manuel

Tables and rivers are beings. In that respect, they do indeed share a commonality: being.

I agree, traditional pragmatism can help for a lot of these issues. — Manuel

To associate Quine with pragmatism and oppose this to Heidegger somehow seems awfully strange to me. Heidegger is far more "pragmatic" than Quine in any sense of the word.

Why the Heideggerian preoccupation with time? — Banno

As I mentioned in the OP, the claim is that being gets interpreted, from the Greeks on, as presence.

Just as the Nothing nothings, Being, being Being, itself beings. — Ciceronianus

:rofl: This was great.

"Being" means "being labeled". — Heiko

So only that which is labeled "is"? Oddly enough that's close to the traditional Western view -- although this would be more like "only that which is thought."

Being doesn't exist - cars, chairs and people exist. — Banno

Being is not a being, yes. Cars, chairs, and people are beings. That doesn't make being a car, or chair, or person.

Where he is original, talking of being as temporal, his ideas become confused. — Banno

I don't recall him once claiming that being "is" temporal. Being gets interpreted in terms of time, yes. That's not the same thing.

If he is saying no more than that things come into existence and cease to exist, then we would all agree, and puzzle over why he phrased something so simple in such a constipated fashion. — Banno

Indeed, which is why you should contemplate the "if."

If the goal of philosophy is conceptual clarification — Banno

Again, if...there's a role for that, of course. To say that's the goal of philosophy is not very interesting, in my view.

Some folk find him enlightening, I find him muddled. — Banno

He's difficult, and again I don't fault anyone for thinking so, or not wanting to spend time getting involved in him. Remember similar things get said about Hegel, Spinoza, Kant, Aquinas, etc. For many people, it gets said about all of them, from Plato to Nietzsche. So this isn't saying much either, really. But since I started this thread, the onus is on me to explain/defend my reading of Heidegger, and I'm willing to do so, provided it's approached in good faith. If you're unwavering in your belief that Heidegger is a charlatan, then there's no sense in continuing and, again, no hard feelings.

I appreciate that his ideas are difficult to grasp, but I think the muddle is in your reading rather than in his ideas.
— Joshs

I'll second that. — Janus

I'll "third" that.

I think it's spectacularly silly to study or treat being as if it is a thing — Ciceronianus

Me too. Which is why I have repeatedly said: being is not a being.

And we can be pretty specific here: what more is there to the analysis of being in Heidegger. than is found in the analysis of existence from Frege on down? — Banno

I haven't read Frege. If Frege asserts that being, since the Greeks, has been interpreted in terms of time -- specifically as presence (and thus the "present"), that time itself has been interpreted as something present (as a sequence of now-points), and that this has lead to both to an interpretation of the human being as the zoon echon logon, the rational animal, the animal with language, the res cogitans (the thinking substance), and the "world" as an object, "nature" as matter in motion -- all of this is the basis for our modern technological/nihilistic understanding of being, then yes, perhaps they're saying the same thing. From the little I've heard, second-hand, this doesn't seem to be Frege's concern. Happy to be corrected.

Right, Heidegger has been, and continues to be, a powerful influence. It sound like you've read more of his later work than I. There are a constellation of early works (mostly compiled from his lectures) and those of which I've read or dipped into: History of the Concept of Time, An Introduction to Metaphysics and Basic Problems of Phenomenology to name a few off the top of the dome, I found, with a little effort, clear enough.

[thinking]...it defines the human being (rational animal, animal with reason/language) as a subject that thinks and the world (nature) as its object. — Xtrix

We have certain capacities to do something with the world. One kind of "thinking", whatever this may be, is to try and find what's the nature of the world, mind independently. The best approach we have for that are theories as postulated by the sciences, as (I believe remembering) you say.

But thinking goes way beyond the sciences. You only need to consider the arts and everything in it, which is an awful lot, and you can see all kinds of approaches.

As it currently stands we need a world for the subject. But not as a matter of principle. If we had enough intelligence to create a vat, we could stimulate the world exactly as we perceive it. That's important, I think.

Tables and rivers are beings. In that respect, they do indeed share a commonality: being. — Xtrix

Do ghosts have being? Does Winston Smith have being? What about that red colour I caught off the able, does that have being?

I'll use exist, for clarity. Tables and rivers exist, we interpret them as such. They do not have the commonality of existing absent people. And them existing, do not show what's common to "existing", for in a sense rivers were here before people, but not tables.

To associate Quine with pragmatism and oppose this to Heidegger somehow seems awfully strange to me. Heidegger is far more "pragmatic" than Quine in any sense of the word. — Xtrix

I'd agree actually. Sometimes Quine is lumped in with the pragmatists, I'm not sure why.

@Xtrix

From What is Metaphysics:

"Conclusion. Granted that the question of being-as-such is the overarching question of metaphysics, the question of the nothing proves to be one that encompasses the whole of metaphysics. The question of the nothing also pervades the whole of metaphysics insofar as it forces us to confront the problem of the origin of negation – that is, to finally decide whether the domination of metaphysics by “logic” is legitimate. Putting the questioner in question. The nothing ‘’gives” being."

The last sentence there, that the nothing gives being is an attempt to answer the question from the inside rather than to talk about being as if we've got some objective vantage point on it.

I took it as a kind of poetry. I guess I'm not keen on explaining Heidegger. I just know I really love that essay.

But it remains very unclear just what is being asserted about being. — Banno

Nothing is being asserted about it. We're questioning what it is -- if anything.

At the least, give us a reason to think it worth our time to read the bloody text. — Banno

Perfectly fair.

The pretence is that somehow being - treated apparently as a thing - is structured by time.

Explain that. — Banno

Being is not treated as a thing. I would also take issue with "structured" by time. Being is interpreted by human beings, and human beings, in Heidegger, are "embodied time" -- what he calls temporality. The claim is that in the West, since the Greeks, being was taken as phusis and, later, ousia -- that which is constantly present.

The "present" in this case is simply an interpretation based on one mode of the human being: what he calls the "present-at-hand." This is the mode we're in, for example, when things break down, the case he uses being a piece of equipment, like a hammer. When the hammer breaks down, or a doorknob sticks, or something goes wrong with our car, we look at these entities differently -- more theoretically, one could say -- than we do when using this equipment (what he calls the "ready-to-hand"); in this latter case, the hammer "withdraws"...or the door, or the car. They go unnoticed, they're absent. I like the example of breathing. It's constantly going on, but how often are we aware of it until something negative happens? Most of the time, breathing is absent -- we're unconscious of it, take it for granted; it withdraws. So in this ready-to-hand mode, these examples are not present-at-hand objects -- they're transparent to us.

We notice the hammer as an object with properties (weighing one pound, being of x length, having this color and shape, etc) usually when it breaks down or we're in a more theoretical (or "scientific") mood. This is the present-at-hand mode of being. It's this mode, Heidegger argues, that is the basis for the West's interpretation of being as "constantly present," as idea, ousia, substance.

This may all be uninteresting or unconvincing, but I hope it at least clears away some misconceptions. Again, being is not an entity/thing, as odd as that sounds -- and Heidegger is not offering an interpretation himself, for example that being = time.

Heidegger does not treat being as a thing; but there is no point trying to explain that to someone who has not read his work.
— Janus

But that is what is done in the OP:
The "is" in this sentence is apparently referring to being, but being is presupposed with when using the "is." So it's almost like asking "What is 'is-ness'?"
— Xtrix
...so at the least you might critique the OP for misrepresenting Heidegger. — Banno

I fail to see how this suggests being is a being. The "is" in the sentence "What is being" is apparently referring to something, "being." But the "is" itself presupposes being. Nowhere am I saying being is *a* being/object. In this case I'm discussing the difficulty of even asking the question.

Hmmm. Indeed. Logic doesn't seem to go with phenomenology of your sort.
— Banno

Haven’t you thought about the origins of logic? — Joshs

An important point.

Wittgenstein said you could only show. Heidegger tried to tell — Joshs

So if Heidegger succeeded in telling, then tell us...

There's that germ of something not unlike Wittgenstein's showing in aletheia - unconcealment. But on top of that is so much apparent bullshit - using the word in it's technical sense - authenticity, angst, death... and anti-semitism.

Others speak with greater clarity, and with less baggage.

One kind of "thinking", whatever this may be, is to try and find what's the nature of the world, mind independently. The best approach we have for that are theories as postulated by the sciences, as (I believe remembering) you say. — Manuel

Certainly.

Tables and rivers are beings. In that respect, they do indeed share a commonality: being.
— Xtrix

Do ghosts have being? Does Winston Smith have being? What about that red colour I caught off the able, does that have being? — Manuel

Yes indeed. How could it be otherwise? Unless, of course, we're taking "being" to mean something more restricted, like "empirically verified" or "physical" or something to that effect. But that's not how I'm using it. Any particular being has being.

Sometimes Quine is lumped in with the pragmatists, I'm not sure why. — Manuel

This is the first I've ever heard that, yeah.

Others speak with greater clarity, and with less baggage. — Banno

I don't get this attitude. I myself have shared this judgment -- for example, with "thinkers" like Zizek. But it's not because I couldn't find much of interest in reading/listening to them, it's because their adherents couldn't begin to explain anything interesting about them either. At that point, I'm left with no other conclusion. So take Heidegger out of the equation and talk to me. If I'm failing to convince you, then that's my fault, and it would help to know where I'm failing. I'm still not sure, though...once the misunderstandings are cleared away, that is.

Remember similar things get said about Hegel, Spinoza, Kant, Aquinas, — Xtrix

No. I've read Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Kripke, Wittgenstein and others; I'm no stranger to difficult texts. But there are authors who rejoice in their obscurity, who do not intend to be understood by their readers, but to balkanise intellectual space for their own benefit. Is Heidegger amongst these? The evidence points that way.

...Zizek... — Xtrix

At least Zizek is funny.

Is Heidegger amongst these? The evidence points that way. — Banno

What evidence? You've already made two claims which are complete misinterpretations. If that's the evidence, I don't blame you for thinking this. But I would hope once that's clarified, you'd perhaps reconsider. Like I said, if you're settled in your opinion of Heidegger, fine -- then deal directly with me. If you're not interested in any of it, why continue here at all?

As I mentioned in the OP, the claim is that being gets interpreted, from the Greeks on, as presence. — Xtrix

So what? That is, what does this mean, if not that things commence, endure and pass? But also the same is true specially - the thing is here, and it is not over there...

Heidegger says it is the structure of temporality. — Joshs

I would also take issue with "structured" by time. — Xtrix

Well... have at it. Sort this out. I'll get the beers in.

What evidence? — Xtrix

Hmmm. His biography. The common wisdom was that the life of a philosopher is of no account in evaluating his ideas. Should that view be continued when the dasein leads to the anti-dasein of the Black Notebooks?

There's that germ of something not unlike Wittgenstein's showing in aletheia - unconcealment. But on top of that is so much apparent bullshit - using the word in it's technical sense - authenticity, angst, death... and anti-semitism. — Banno

Just between you and me, authenticity and death are two foci of analysis in Being and Time that lead to confusion and, as far I’m concerned, can be removed without losing much from the heart of the work. Derrida , whose reading of Heidegger is my favorite, said as much. Angst is kind of an ingenious idea, encapsulating the essence of becoming in terms of its uncanniness.

Nowhere am I saying being is *a* being/object. — Xtrix

The "is" in the sentence "What is being" is apparently referring to something, — Xtrix

...?

Angst is kind of an ingenious idea, encapsulating the essence of becoming in terms of its uncanniness. — Joshs

Ah, we might allow angst. I do appreciate Waiting for Godot.

Yes indeed. How could it be otherwise? Unless, of course, we're taking "being" to mean something more restricted, like "empirically verified" or "physical" or something to that effect. But that's not how I'm using it. Any particular being has being. — Xtrix

It's too broad. I'm far from being a prescriptivist with language use, but if the word is used that amply, its meaning can lead to mistakes.

I think it can obscure the distinction between red as I perceive it in my own experience and the red attributed to the object. The object (so far as we know) has no colour. But it doesn't make much sense to me to say that the object has red being and that in addition to that or separate from that I have red being experience. The apple has no red being, we add that on to the apple.

You could say that what I'm doing is forcing the subject-object distinction on what we should take for granted, the world. But if we are, in addition to analyzing the world, also speak about word use, then this distinction is going to have to rise. Unless you can say why it's a wrong way to think about colour experience.

The "is" in the sentence "What is being" is apparently referring to something,
— Xtrix — Banno

Let’s go over this a little. What does Heidegger say about the propositional form ‘S is P’? He says this is derived from the more general way in which we make sense of anything. Heidegger explains that in taking something to be the case in a propositional judgement (for instance, S is P) , we are taking something as something within a wider context of pragmatic relevance. Making sense of something is an act that always has the ‘as' structure , as Heidegger tells us, but this structure of relevanting is covered over and flattened down in causal models.

“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.” (Heidegger 2010b).

This pragmatic approach should remind you of Wittgenstein. In taking something AS something , we are not simply associating two externally related entities in relation to each other. If a cognition or intention is merely about something , then it functions as external binding, coordinating and relating between two objectively present participants. This is the presumption behind formal
logic , but Heidegger says it misses the larger pragmatic context.

“If the phenomenon of the "as" is covered over and above all veiled in its existential origin from the hermeneutical "as," Aristotle's phenomenological point of departure disintegrates to the analysis of logos in an external "theory of judgment," according to which judgment is a binding or separating of representations and concepts. Thus binding and separating can be further formalized to mean a "relating." Logistically, the judgment is dissolved into a system of "coordinations," it becomes the object of "calculation," but not a theme of ontological interpretation.""If the kind of being of the terms of the relation is understood without differentiation as merely objectively present things, then the relation shows itself as the objectively present conformity of two objectively present things.“

Heidegger (2010) offers:

“What is to be got at phenomenally with the formal structures of "binding" and "separating," more precisely, with the unity of the two, is the phenomenon of "something as something...In accordance with this structure, something is understood with regard to something else, it is taken together with it, so that this confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, at the same time takes apart what has been put together.”

In experiencing something as something, Dasein comes back to its having been from its future, which is to say, it interprets a global context of relevance via the ‘as' structure. In so doing, it “takes apart' the relation between what it encounters and a previous instance of it by coming back to the previous instance from a fresh context of relevance. Seeing something as something makes sense of what is encountered in a new way, on the basis of a newly implied totality of relevance. This taking apart of what has been put together brings us back to the structure of temporality.

“Because my being is such that I am out ahead of myself, I must, in order to understand something I encounter, come back from this being-out-ahead to the thing I encounter. Here we can already see an immanent structure of direct understanding qua as-structured comportment, and on closer analysis it turns out to be time. And this being-ahead-of-myself as a returning is a peculiar kind of movement that time itself constantly makes, if I may put it this way.”(Heidegger 2010b)

Heidegger says it is the structure of temporality.
— Joshs

I would also take issue with "structured" by time.
— Xtrix

Well... have at it. Sort this out. I'll get the beers in. — Banno

I think Josh was referring to "use" there, not being.

As I mentioned in the OP, the claim is that being gets interpreted, from the Greeks on, as presence.
— Xtrix

So what? That is, what does this mean, if not that things commence, endure and pass? — Banno

That's the thing -- being is interpreted as presence, meaning the enduring, the constant. Which is opposed to all "becoming," all passing away, all transigence.

there are authors who rejoice in their obscurity, who do not intend to be understood by their readers, but to balkanise intellectual space for their own benefit. Is Heidegger amongst these? The evidence points that way. — Banno

What evidence?
— Xtrix

Hmmm. His biography. The common wisdom was that the life of a philosopher is of no account in evaluating his ideas. Should that view be continued when the dasein leads to the anti-dasein of the Black Notebooks? — Banno

What does his biography have to do with his alleged "rejoicing in obscurity"?

Nowhere am I saying being is *a* being/object.
— Xtrix

The "is" in the sentence "What is being" is apparently referring to something,
— Xtrix

...? — Banno

"Apparently." Which, in context, should be clear that I'm not making a claim but rather, as I stated:

The "is" in the sentence "What is being" is apparently referring to something, "being." But the "is" itself presupposes being. Nowhere am I saying being is *a* being/object. In this case I'm discussing the difficulty of even asking the question. — Xtrix

What *is* being? seems to indicate that "being" is an object, but it isn't.

It's too broad. I'm far from being a prescriptivist with language use, but if the word is used that amply, its meaning can lead to mistakes. — Manuel

Heidegger anticipates all this:

On the basis of the Greeks' initial contributions towards an Interpretation of Being, a dogma has been developed which not only declares the question about the meaning of Being to be superfluous, but sanctions its complete neglect. It is said that 'Being' is the most universal and the emptiest of concepts. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and hence indefinable concept require any definition, for everyone uses it constantly and already understands what he means by it. In this way, that which the ancient philosophers found continually disturbing as something obscure and hidden has taken on a clarity and self-evidence such that if anyone continues to ask about it he is charged with an error of method.

Being and Time, page 2.

The apple has no red being, we add that on to the apple. — Manuel

"Red" isn't a thing? Of course it is. A thing is a being. Red, concepts, numbers, music, feelings, dirt, justice, words, Proust, and Boston are all beings.

Unless you can say why it's a wrong way to think about colour experience. — Manuel

I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" to separate the property "red" from the apple, but then we're off into secondary and primary qualities. Locke wasn't an idiot -- there's plenty of merit to this view. All I'm saying is that the term "being" certainly applies to all of this.

"Conclusion. Granted that the question of being-as-such is the overarching question of metaphysics, the question of the nothing proves to be one that encompasses the whole of metaphysics. The question of the nothing also pervades the whole of metaphysics insofar as it forces us to confront the problem of the origin of negation – that is, to finally decide whether the domination of metaphysics by “logic” is legitimate. Putting the questioner in question. The nothing ‘’gives” being." — frank

I think I can clarify the role of ‘the nothing’ for Heidegger. In Being and Time he explains that he doesn’t mean it as a complete absence of sense or meaning , but rather as a comportment toward experience in which one no longer is interested in particular beings. So in this mode of relating , one discloses ‘no things’, no beings. Instead, authentic Dasein has bigger fish to fry, Being as a whole.

“In what Angst is about, the "it is nothing and nowhere" becomes manifest. The recalcitrance of the innerworldly nothing and nowhere means phenomenally that what Angst is about is the world as such. The utter insignificance which makes itself known in the nothing and nowhere does not signify the absence of world, but means that inner­worldly beings in themselves are so completely unimportant that, on the basis of this insignificance of what is innerworldly, the world is all that obtrudes itself in its worldliness.”

“ What Angst is anxious for is being-in-the-world itself. In Angst, the things at hand in the surrounding world sink away, and so do innerworldly beings in general. The "world" can offer nothing more, nor can the Mitda-sein of others. Thus Angst takes away from Da­sein the possibility of understanding itself, falling prey, in terms of the "world" and the public way of being interpreted. It throws Da-sein back upon that for which it is anxious, its authentic potentiality-for-being-in-the-world.”

Let’s go over this a little. — Joshs

OK.

The "as" structure is... seeing that x is p is seeing x as p, an intent. That intent is embedded in way of life, it's only understandable as a whole.

That gets me to about your fourth paragraph, and then it turns into mud.

"Red" isn't a thing? Of course it is. A thing is a being. Red, concepts, numbers, music, feelings, dirt, justice, words, Proust, and Boston are all beings. — Xtrix

Is red a thing? I think we can say there are red things, or I can say look at the red object or red landscape, but I'm unclear if red is a thing, if by "thing" we have in mind something in the world. Red is a quality. Is quality a thing? A quality is a quality. You can say a quality is a thing...

But, I don't recall someone saying "I saw a red" or "I saw a yellow", they add "thing" to it usually. Meaning that red, yellow, blue, etc. aren't thought of as things.

I remember that passage of Heidegger's. I think he makes interesting observations in his unique language.

I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" to separate the property "red" from the apple, but then we're off into secondary and primary qualities. Locke wasn't an idiot -- there's plenty of merit to this view. All I'm saying is that the term "being" certainly applies to all of this. — Xtrix

Yeah sure, Locke was no idiot. So essentially everything name-able is a being?

I've perused too much of his pre-1940s writings and thankfully have spent barely any time wallowing in his later stuff.

The "as" structure is... seeing that x is p is seeing x as p, an intent. That intent is embedded in way of life, it's only understandable as a whole.

That gets me to about your fourth paragraph, and then it turns into mud. — Banno

This is where it gets very tricky, and where Heidegger’s definition of temporality is crucial. When we see something as something, we are, as you say, drawing from what we already know about why we care about it , what we are using it for , how it fits into our current goals and concerns. All that background informs what it is for us. But in encountering it right now, in incorporating it into our activities right now , we are also modifying that totality of relevance ( that interconnected web of background concerns and goals). That past is changed by what it functions in. This is the strange approach to time that Heidegger has.

“Temporalizing does not mean a "succession" of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. “Dasein "occurs out of its future"."Da-sein, as existing, always already comes toward itself, that is, is futural in its being in general." Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the future that has-been (or better, is in the process of having-been) releases the present from itself. We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present in the process of having been temporality.”(Heidegger 2010)

Gendlin(1997b) echoes Heidegger's view.

“The future that is present now is not a time-position, not what will be past later. The future that is here now is the implying that is here now. The past is not an earlier position but the now implicitly functioning past.”“......the past functions to "interpret" the present,...the past is changed by so functioning. This needs to be put even more strongly: The past functions not as itself, but as already changed by what it functions in”(p.37 )

So when we encounter something as something, this new item is already familiar to us because we link it to a pre-existing totality of relevance. At the same time , the very encounter with it alters that totality of relevance. So the past is changed by the present that it defines.

Wittgenstein is saying something similar by making use always person and context-centered. Background knowledge of rules, grammar and criteria dont simply remain as themselves when they come into play in a language game. They are freshly determined by contextual interactions( the past is changed by what it functions in).

From an Anthony Kenny book on the history of Western philosophy:

What is being, with a small "b"? In my book, it's, very loosely speaking, properties: An apple is red; the apple, being red, is red.

What is Being, with an uppercase "B"? Being includes, in addition to being (properties) that which posseses said properties. The red apple is Being.

Parmenidean ontology, it seems, posits the existence of "something" that lacks any and all properties for Being and being are different notions. Apophatically then how does he (Parmenides) distinguish this "something" from nothing?

Now what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? — Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World)

This is where it gets very tricky... — Joshs

A bit of recursion - what it is to me for that thing to be a pencil depends not only on my previous experience of pencils but what I do with the pencil now.

That's a bit private-language, isn't it - that there is a what it is like for me for that thing to be a pencil... or some such nonsense.

As if he were to say that the private meaning of "Pencil" changes as the pencil goes blunt with use.

But there isn't a private meaning. There's only your asking to borrow my sharpener.

Further, the primacy of time here seems misplaced What it is to be a pencil changes with position, too - rubber at one end, pointy bit at the other.

And then there is the confusion of what happened in the past with what one believes happened... evident in the Gendlin stuff.

Finally, Wittgenstein did not make use always personal. Quite the opposite. Use is inherently social.

Here's were the account you are providing starts to drift apart. It is based on the presumption of the primacy of a subjective viewpoint, as with almost all phenomenology; hence when it tries to account for our place in a social world, it becomes fuddled.

But thanks for trying. Much appreciated.