Another snippet from Kahn: — Wayfarer

We're not in ancient Greece. :yawn:

And I still think it's remarkable that this has to even be spelled out, let alone that it be a cause of such hostility. — Wayfarer

Wheather or not this is the case is utterly irrelevant because the study of being has never been about this. Listen: why are you fabricating history? Why are you literally lying? Why do you always lie when this topic is brought up?

You know you can just say: "I am of the opinion that 'being' ought to be reserved for sentient creatures, even though historical useage does not accord to my preferred usage (at all)?" Why do you attribute your quirks which nobody shares to history just because you think it ought to be the case?

I apologise for the facetious comment above. In humans alone, the mind reaches the point of being able to consider such issues. That marks humans off from other sentient creatures. And I still think it's remarkable that this has to even be spelled out, let alone that it be a cause of such hostility. — Wayfarer

Still hanging in there with the being thing I see.

The point I would make here is that this is irrelevant to how the word being is used in philosophy. You have a pet usage scheme, perhaps deriving from pop culture--"the being from another world"--and you think this supports the distinction you want to make.

But you can make this distinction without distorting "being" and "existence". Some beings are inanimate, some are sentient, and some are alone in having X.

They are two separate issues.

But you can make this distinction without distorting "being" and "existence" — jamalrob

Has anyone else, or will anyone else, seek to make this distinction? In a discussion of the nature of being, isn't it a legitimate subject for discussion? And what do you think is behind the kind of hostility that is shown when I raise it? Why is it such a hot-button issue?

You have a pet usage scheme, perhaps deriving from pop culture--"the being from another world"- — jamalrob

Can you find one quote from anything I've said that remotely suggests that I believe that?

Why are you literally lying? — StreetlightX

You referred me to that Charles Kahn paper, 'The Greek Verb To Be and the Problem of Being ', and I read it carefully. It supports just the kind of distinction between the Greek use of the verb 'to be', and their conception of the nature of being, how that differs from, and is broader than, the modern definition of 'existence'. So, who is 'lying'?

It supports just the kind of distinction between the Greek use of the verb 'to be', and their conception of the nature of being, how that differs from, and is broader than, the modern definition of 'existence'. — Wayfarer

It does not support the further distinction, made up by you whole-cloth, that being accords to sentient beings and existence to rocks. If anything, being is a broader, not narrower, category than existence. There is a being not only of rocks, but ficticious rocks too.

Ironically it is not a hot button issue because no one would be so brash as to make this stuff up and pretend like it is a contentious issue at all, and the fact that you have done just that is what makes it absurd. So please stop lying, and then shifting the goal posts when you are called out for lying.

What originally prompted you to refer to that paper was my contention that the original definition of the word 'ontology' was derived from the first-person participle of the Greek verb, 'to be', which is, 'I am'. Reference. I used this derivation to differentiate ontology from the natural sciences, and I maintain that this is a meaningful distinction, and so, 'the study of being' is different from 'the study of what exists'.

And you abuse this justified distinction to attribute being to sentience, exclusively. That is the lie.

Love you too. :heart:

It's true, alas, that I'm only a lawyer, though not the sadly stereotypical lawyer you evoke, and so can't aspire to be a real philosopher like yourself. Is stereotyping something philosophers get to do? I'm curious. But perhaps we lawyers are indeed too calculating and hustling to have or understand Dasein, like the Jews according to Heidegger as I'm sure you know. Would I be more acceptable as a philosopher if I was a Nazi, like him?

But let me explain regarding "villain." I tend to think of villains as being seriously evil. I think Heidegger was too craven a person to be a true villain, but acknowledge that villains in literature, for example, need not be seriously evil. So it may well be that he was a villain in a small, mean sense. Like Uriah Heep, for example (Dicken's Heep, not the rock band). You have your wish, then; I think he was a villain, or at least villainous.

I should also explain what I mean by "cult." I don't refer to the Heaven's Gate or Jim Jones kind of cult. I mean a cult of the kind which existed in ancient Greek or Rome (primarily Rome), like that of Isis or Mithras, or the Great Mother. These were "mysteries" because what was taught to or learned by initiates was considered secret. Especially in the case of Mithraism, the secrets were very well kept. Isis was said to chose her initiates, through dreams. Initiates obtained special knowledge which gave them enlightenment and salvation. The knowledge was, naturally enough, expressed through certain words, which had meaning only the initiated could truly understand and interpret. Just as only the initiates of Heidegger can understand or interpret his words.

You seem disappointed that I refer only to well known statements or actions of Heidegger, because they put him in a bad light. Well, perhaps some other stash will be discovered one day and even more about him will come to light. Until then, we know what he did, and said, and wrote. Ecce Homo!

Still waiting for an explanation of the German being and its secret mission.

Yes, but this thread is about ontology, which is using "being" very differently than exclusively for sentient entities.
— Xtrix

I don't think it provides the liberty to re-define the term according to your preference. — Wayfarer

I’m not re-defining the term. This is the historical usage. If you want to restrict the meaning of beings exclusively to human being (or sentient beings), you can — but that’s not how I’m using the term. I’m using it in the context of ontology.

I'd honestly like to understand why the distinction between beings and things is considered controversial, and also why it is not considered. It's an honest question. I'm really not trying to pick a fight — Wayfarer

I don’t consider it controversial, I consider it irrelevant to ontology.

If we define beings as sentient beings and “things”as everything else, there’s nothing left to say — that’s fine — but it’s not ontology. If we define “work” as the job we go to, that’s fine too — but not in a physics class.

Beings here refers to everything— all entities, all phenomena. Not exclusively to sentient beings. I can’t make it clearer.

Isn't there an in-principle difference between the kind of being that numbers represent, and the kind of being that rocks represent? And apes? They are beings of different kinds - not just different kinds of object or thing, but their natures have differences, don't they? — Wayfarer

No one is saying that there aren’t differences between beings. Of course apes are different from rocks. But they’re still entities, beings. To say an ape isn’t a thing or a rock isn’t a being is simply assuming your definition, which as I’ve stated repeatedly is not how the term is being used here.

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

Because he said it himself, in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, and when asked about it over the years, he shrugged a lot. I think he was kind of drawn to the idea because he thought of science as a pragmatic enterprise, so it made sense that philosophy, being continuous with natural science, would be too. I think somewhere he says that, once he read him later, he felt closest to Dewey out of the classic trio, for just that reason.

Well, in that case it makes sense I suppose. It's not as if there's some hard criteria that forbids people from being pragmatists, though Rorty does distort the term a bit, to my eyes.

:fire: :100: :clap:

So please stop lying, and then shifting the goal posts when you are called out for lying. — StreetlightX

:up:

:up:

I don’t see “becoming of time” meaning anything. Time— temporality— is, essentially, us. It’s dasein’s being as ecstatic openness. Things persist and change, sure, but first they’re here, they are.
— Xtrix

This sounds like the view of time Heidegger is critiquing
— Joshs

It's not a view of time. Persistence and becoming both presuppose being. They are also thought of in terms of the present-at-hand, as things that persist or change "in time," as I think you agree, and this itself rests on an interpretation of time which is also present-at-hand. When looked at phenomenologically, this doesn't appear to be dasein's state of being, for the most part. Dasein seems much more engaged with and coping with a world than seeing things as objects that persist or "become." This distinction is an old one, of course, but itself rests on a present-at-hand mode of being -- beginning with Plato's characterization of Parmenides and Heraclitus.

We’ ‘are’ only as being changed.
— Joshs

We are only as being temporal. He's not saying we're embodied change, he's saying we're embodied time/temporality. He is not equating temporality with change. How can we think or "know" change in the first place? We first have to "be" before we can even comprehend change.
— Xtrix

Let me see if I’m understanding what you mean when you say persistence and becoming both presuppose being.

Are you arguing that we need both the concept of persistence and that of becoming in order to understand being?

This is the way I understand persistence and ‘isness’.
If we say that something appears just for a moment and then vanishes, we still have to assume that it occupies that moment of time, and we can assume that this space of occupation has a duration, even if it is only infinitesimal. In theory, then , we can measure this very brief persistence as a certain number of milliseconds of duration. But what is it we are doing when we count a duration? A quantifiable, mathematizable nature presupposes the kind of time which consists of self-presences transitioning from future to present to past in sequential movement (existing ‘in’ time).

What does it imply to make a time measurement, to state that it takes certain amount of time or for some process to unfold? A time calculation counts identical instances of a meaning whose sense is kept fixed during the counting . To count is to count continuously changing instances OF something that holds itself as self-identical through a duration or extension.

I am arguing that Heidegger is deconstructing the idea of self-identical persistence.
It is widely assumed that there can be no notion of change or becoming without this idea of at least a momentary self-presence. Something would seem to have to be there before we can then say that it changes or disappeared. But Heidegger and also Gendlin disagree.
If change is modeled on motion , the notion isn’t really change in the sense of the generation of novelty, because all one really has here is the repetition of a previous scheme, an identical self-infolding.
Heidegger asks, why does change require the notion of something sitting still as itself for a moment? Instead of founding the idea of change on sequences of things that sit still for a moment, (which is really founding change on bits of stasis that we cobble together), why not recognize that there are no things that sit still. Why not found the illusion of stasis on change , rather than the other way around? Why is it not enough to point to a crossing between past and present as the ‘now’? And by ‘now’ I mean a hinge, a crossing , an edge. The now is a complex now , what Husserl
calls stretched or specious, not a simple presence , but a transit, an act , a ‘from this to that’. From this vantage, any ‘presence’ is split within itself , it is internally articulated as a change from this to that. But the prior , ,this’ must also be understood as a hinge, and so on.

What’s the difference between being in general and the totality of being of dasein?
— Joshs

What do you mean by the totality of being of dasein? Remember the title: being and time. If dasein is essentially time, and is the entity that interprets being and questions being, then we begin to understand why in the West being was interpreted as "presence." But Heidegger doesn't himself offer an interpretation of being, only the human being. — Xtrix

Heidegger didn’t consider Dasein as just a human being, which is an empirical concept . He wasn’t anthropomorphizing Dasein. Dasein is priori to the thinking of human beings or living things. In this he was following Husserl.


Im adding a snippet from a paper I’m working on which compares Gendlin’s model of time with Heidegger’s. It deals with your question: how can we understand change and becoming without beginning from objects which are present for a least a moment ? Gendlin’s ‘occurring into implying’ is comparable to Heidegger’s notion of the ‘is’.

“In various writings, Gendlin distinguishes his Heideggerian account of time from phenomenologically-influenced causal interactionist readings such as those of Gallagher , Varela, Fuchs and Sheets-Johnstone (See Gendlin 2008, 2012).

“I propose an expanded model of time. Time does not consist only of nows.” Linear time consists merely of positions on an observer's time line. The positions are supposed to be external and independent of what happens. Linear time is an empty frame.““ The linear unit model of successive self-identical times is generated from the more intricate model of time.”

“If only what appears exists, then what exists is “external,” in front of us, other than us, as if alone from us, over-there from here. To “exist” came to mean to appear to us. The very word for things became (and still is) “phenomena.” This is the old subject-object puzzle: what exists can only be a known-by. The metaphysical puzzle comes here only if we first assume that what
exists must have a self identical shape in space and time. Then there seems to be nothing but formed forms imposed on — nothing“

As Gendlin(1997b) argues,

‘The continuity of time cannot first be made by things next to each other, because sucha continuity is passive; each bit IS alone, and must depend on some other continuity to relate it to what is next to it...”(p.71).

In embodied cognitive models, interaction spreads in a reciprocally causal fashion from point to point, whereas for Gendlin, each point somehow implies each other point; each part of a meaning organization somehow “knows about”, belongs to and depends intrinsically on each other part. And this happens before a part can simply be said to exist in itself(even if just for an instant).
What kind of odd understanding concerning the interface between identity and relation could justify Gendlin's insistence that the inter-affection between parts of a psychological organization precedes the existence of individual entities?

Gendlin(1997b) explains:

In the old model one assumes that there must first be "it" as one unit, separate from how its effects in turn affect it.. In the process we are looking at there is no separate "it," no linear cause-effect sequence with "it" coming before its effects determine what happens. So there is something odd here, about the time sequence. How can "it" be already affected by affecting something, If it did not do the affecting before it is in turn affected?...With the old assumption of fixed units that retain their identity, one assumes a division between it, and its effects on others. (This "it" might be a part, a process, or a difference made.) In the old model it is only later, that the difference made to other units can in turn affect "it." (p.40)

Addressing causally interaffecting organizational models, Gendlin explains:

If one assumes separate events, processes, or systems, one must then add their co-ordinations as one finds them, as if unexpectedly...“Inter-affecting" and"coordination" are words that bring the old
assumption of a simple multiplicity, things that exist as themselves and are only then also related. So we need a phrase that does not make sense in that old way. Let us call the pattern we have been formulating "original inter-affecting". This makes sense only if one grasps that "they" inter-affect each other before they are a they(p.22).

Gendlin digs beneath such causative approaches to locate a more fundamental notion of interaction. “This ‘interaction’ is prior to two separate things that would first meet in order to interact. I call it ‘interaction first’.” ‘Interaction first’ functions as what Gendlin(2008) calls
implying into occurring, and in this way carrying forward a previous change.

“Here we chose to put occurring and implying first in our model, and we will derive perception and objects from these. We put occurring into implying (carrying forward) at the start, and these will inhere in all the other terms. Space, time, and perception are derivative from them. The body and its environment as one interaction is prior in our model. From this we can derive separate
individual things and units.”

“Implying has (makes, brings, is .....) time, but not only the linear merely positional time. Though far from clear (we are only beginning), we want the sequence to define time for us. We did not begin with a clear notion of time. Let us say that the relation between occurring and implying
generates time, rather than saying that life processes go on in time. (The latter statement would involve an already assumed time.)”(Process Model)

Implying is not an occurring that will happen. It is not an occurring-not-yet. It does not occupy a different time-position than the occurring. Rather, one implying encompasses all three linear time positions, and does not occupy an additional linear time position of its own. (See A Process Model, IVB. This is a more intricate model of time. It includes a kind of “future” and a kind of “past” that are not linear positions. This time model can be reduced back to the liner model by considering just
occurring-occurring-occurring as if it were cut off from implying.”

Comparing Gendlin’s model of temporality with Heidegger’s, we see that for Heidegger also , the past,
present and future don’t operate as sequential modes which mark distinct states of objects. They interpenetrate each other so completely that they together form a single unitary event of occurrence.

“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)

The returning from a totality of relevance in the act of understanding something constitutes temporality not as a present object happening IN time but a temporalization.

“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 unification of the components of time.

“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)

This sounds a lot more like Kant than Heidegger (Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind). Understood most primordially, there is no presence of something objective, no — Joshs

"If what the term "idealism" says, amounts to the understanding that Being can never be explained by entities but is already that which is 'transcendental' for every entity, then idealism affords the only correct possibility for a philosophical problematic. If so, Aristotle was no less an idealist than Kant." B&T p. 208

Heidegger doesn't of course mean with transcendental something that makes the scientifical objects possible. It is not anything logical or theoretical but the structures of existence through which the beings manifest themselves as significations in the world (= in the whole of references).

If one reads closely how H. "argues" in B&T it is always through "essential judgements". That is, he describes what kind of Being makes some ontical phenomenon possible. For example, he argues that there is not Dasein as "being-with" because there is many people gathered together but that there is many people gathered together because Dasein is essentially a being-with. There is not made generalizations from the observed data and then theoretically deduced something but instead there are essential characteristics of phenomena which make possible in the first place to access something and observe it and make generalizations. Instead of Kantian categorical, logical functions ordering the natural world there are essential characteristics of the human historical existence and which can differ from case or phenomena to other. They don't make any rigid system (for logical deductions). For Heidegger to intuite essentialities behind facticities or what is empirically given is a genuine philosophical way to address these phenomena, that is, it is his phenomenological method. Essentialities doesn't mean here platonic eternal ideas but something pertaining to "normal" philosophical reflection. Philosophy operates with essentialities not with empirical generalizations.

Philosophy operates with essentialities not with empirical generalizations. — waarala

:up:

I maintain that this is a meaningful distinction, and so, 'the study of being' is different from 'the study of what exists'. — Wayfarer

As an Epicurean-Spinozist, I agree with you, sir, that they are different discourses, but in this way: "the study of what exists" (re: atoms; natura naturata) concerns entities dependent ultimately upon less-dependent, or more fundamental, entities which are (or entity which is) the only concern of "the study of being" (re: void; natura naturans). "Sentient" entities (i.e. subjects) exist ineluctably dependent upon, or grounded by, more fundamental entities and therefore are not synonymous with being. So whatever else your quixotic 'subjectivism' might be, sir, it's conspicuously not (an) ontology as even the earliest philosophers had conceived of it.

Just as only the initiates of Heidegger can understand or interpret his words. — Ciceronianus

I don't think this is fair. It can be said of Kant and Hegel as well. Heidegger is difficult, yes, but open to everyone. If I can make sense of it, anyone can (and I mean that), if one is so inclined to devote some time and energy into it. Ontology is fascinating to me, and I don't think you can be really serious about it unless you hear Heidegger out in good faith.

Regarding Heidegger as Nazi and villain and all that: who knows. That's debated, but frankly I'm in the group who doesn't really care all that much.

If what the term "idealism" says, amounts to the understanding that Being can never be explained by entities but is already that which is 'transcendental' for every entity, then idealism affords the only correct possibility for a philosophical problematic. If so, Aristotle was no less an idealist than Kant." B&T p. 208 — waarala

there are essential characteristics of phenomena which make possible in the first place to access something and observe it and make generalizations. Instead of Kantian categorical, logical functions ordering the natural world there are essential characteristics of the human historical existence and which can differ from case or phenomena to other. They don't make any rigid system (for logical deductions). For Heidegger to intuite essentialities behind facticities or what is empirically given is a genuine philosophical way to address these phenomena — waarala

These essential characteristics of historical
existence are nothing other than the historicality of existence itself. I wouldnt say the essentialities are intuited ‘behind’ facticities. - Rather they are ahead of or beyond themselves. Dasein comes to itself
from out of the world. Essence as being , is temporalizarion , history, existence, becoming.

There is not made generalizations from the observed data and then theoretically deduced something but instead there are essential characteristics of phenomena which make possible in the first place to access something and observe it and make generalizations. — waarala

If essence is becoming , temporalization, then an essential characteristic , as a condition of possibility , means nothing other than an analysis of something in terms of a moving structure of pragmatic relevance. There are not generalizations made from data, but instead there is a totality of relevance being changed by what occurs into it from the world. So the ‘accessing’ and ‘observing’ of the world via its incorporation into a
totality of relevance is already modified and changed by what this prior totality discloses. This is the essence of being as temporality.


“Because the Dasein is constituted by being-in-the-world, it is a being which in its being is out beyond itself. The epekeina belongs to the Dasein's own most peculiar structure of being. This transcending does not only and not primarily mean a self-relating of a subject to an object; rather, transcendence means to understand oneself from a world. The Dasein is as such out beyond itself. Only a being to whose ontological constitution transcendence belongs has the possibility of being anything like a self. Transcendence is even the presupposition for the Dasein's having the character of a self. The selfhood of the Dasein is founded on its transcendence, and the Dasein is not first an ego-self which then oversteps something or other. The “toward-itself” and the “out-from-itself” are implicit in the concept of selfhood. What exists as a self can do so only as a transcendent being. This selfhood, founded on transcendence, the possible toward-itself and out-from-itself, is the presupposition for the way the Dasein factically has various possibilities of being its own and of losing itself….The Dasein does not exist at first in some mysterious way so as then to accomplish the step beyond itself to others or to extant things. Existence, instead, always already means to step beyond or, better, having stepped beyond."(Basic Problems of Phenomenology).

Let me see if I’m understanding what you mean when you say persistence and becoming both presuppose being.

Are you arguing that we need both the concept of persistence and that of becoming in order to understand being? — Joshs

No, I'm saying persistence and becoming, stability and change, are "in" being themselves. There's the being of stasis and the being of change. So being is presupposed.

Remember Heidegger's "restriction of being" chapter in Intro to Metaphysics: being and becoming is the first restriction he analyzes, as being one of the most ancient. He talks about how Parmenides and Heraclitus get incorrectly interpreted as opposing one another, and how in Plato this problem (and the problem of "being and seeming") is solved through the Forms -- the Forms being the enduring prototypes. Thus "being" becomes "constancy" and "permanence," the un-changing, as opposed to all that is transient, perishing, unstable -- becoming.

But later he'll say "Becoming -- is it nothing?" "Seeming -- is it nothing?" His is "No, it's not nothing." So if it's not nothing, it's something -- and so belongs just as much "in" being as anything else does. He'll also go on to explain how these concepts were originally a unity and how they got disjoined.

I hope that's perhaps a bit clearer.

Heidegger asks, why does change require the notion of something sitting still as itself for a moment? Instead of founding the idea of change on sequences of things that sit still for a moment, (which is really founding change on bits of stasis that we cobble together), why not recognize that there are no things that sit still. Why not found the illusion of stasis on change , rather than the other way around? — Joshs

I see what you're arguing but I'm not convinced by it. When you say "sequences of things," the "things" you're referring to he will describe as "now-points." That's why I find the use of "now" to be a problem.

Also, I don't see stasis as being an "illusion" any more than change is. Yes, things change. Things also stay the same. We talk about matter changing forms but never being created or destroyed, so matter itself doesn't change...and all of that jazz. Again, we don't want to get caught in the restriction of "being and becoming," where we associated being with permanence. But we also don't want to say being is becoming.

In any case, if change isn't nothing, then it's part of being. To equate it with being is an interpretation, and not a bad one -- it's claimed that Heraclitus did so, and the Buddhists do so in a sense, etc. -- but it's still just that, an interpretation. An interpretation "grounded" in what? In dasein, who cares about being and interprets being (including itself).

You seem to be saying: in the West, being has been interpreted as "presence," as constancy/stasis, and everything, including change, has been grounded on this basis; let's instead ground stasis on change.

I don't think this is what Heidegger is getting at. He's much more cautious than to give any interpretations or recommendations. He is always emphasizing questioning, opening new lines of analysis -- and frequently talks about how a lot of this is probably off track, that new obstacles will arise, etc. He wants to reawaken the question of being.

If anything, I see his main attack being against the objectification of the world and its implications for the future in terms of nihilism and technology. One way to combat this nihilism, according to him, is precisely to stop "staggering" in history, to reawaken the question -- to wake up from our mesmerization with beings and our forgetfulness of being itself.

Heidegger didn’t consider Dasein as just a human being, which is an empirical concept . He wasn’t anthropomorphizing Dasein. Dasein is priori to the thinking of human beings or living things. In this he was following Husserl. — Joshs

Agreed, but I'm running out of ways to talk about "us." So if I say "human being," don't take me to mean anthropologically -- Heidegger is avoiding that, which is why he uses "dasein" to begin with. Take me to me "us," the entity which we are.

It deals with your question: how can we understand change and becoming without beginning from objects which are present for a least a moment ? — Joshs

But that isn't my question at all.

“I propose an expanded model of time. Time does not consist only of nows.” Linear time consists merely of positions on an observer's time line. The positions are supposed to be external and independent of what happens. Linear time is an empty frame.“ — Joshs

I agree.

, I don't see stasis as being an "illusion" any more than change is. Yes, things change. Things also stay the same. We talk about matter changing forms but never being created or destroyed, so matter itself doesn't change...and all of that jazz. Again, we don't want to get caught in the restriction of "being and becoming," where we associated being with permanence. But we also don't want to say being is becoming — Xtrix

I want to get back to what you said in your OP. You asked the question ‘What is ‘isness’? I don’t know how comfortable you will be with this , but what if , in the aim of finding a point of focus, we agree to discuss being in terms of Heidegger’s analysis of the copula ‘is’?

What I have in mind specifically is his analysis of what he calls the statement in B&T. He refers to this as an extreme
modification of interpretation and of the present to hand.
He derives the ‘is’ from the ‘as’ structure, in which we take something as something. I consider the following analysis to inextricably link the ‘is’ to the ‘as’ , the ‘as’ to temporality, and temporality to being ( the ‘is’).

From my paper:

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)

In taking something AS something , we are not simply associating two externally related entities in relation to each other and with reference to a more encompassing causal framework. If a cognition or intention is merely about something , then it functions as external binding, coordinating and relating between two objectively present participants.

Heidegger(2010b) says:

“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.”

The ‘is' connecting S with P is not a causal copula, but a transformative relevanting altering in one gesture both the S and the P. In Gendlin's terms, the ‘as' enacts a crossing of past and present such that both are already affected and changed by the other in this ‘occurring into implying' ( context of dealing with something). When we take something as something, we have already projected out from a totality of relevance such as to render what is presenting itself to us as familiar and recognizable in some fashion. But in this act of disclosure, we only have this totality of relevance by changing it. This is why Heidegger says that in the process of interpreting what is projectively familiar to us, the ‘as' structure takes apart what it puts together in a kind of crossing.

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)

The returning from a totality of relevance in the act of understanding something constitutes temporality not as a present object happening IN time but as temporalization. The past, present and future don't operate for Heidegger as sequential modes which mark distinct states of objects. They interpenetrate each other so completely that they together form a single unitary event of occurrence.

Haven’t you thought about the origins of logic? Wouldnt a primordial theory of Being have to begin with the conditions of possibility for logic rather than simply presuppose it as a starting point? — Joshs

That sounds like you’re invoking the ‘rule’ against explaining something in terms of itself — not so much a rule as a definition of failure — but you’re not, which is curious. (The ‘rule’ would be violated if you presupposed logic as a starting point in your primordial theory of logic, not Being.) But if logic can only be explained (or grounded, or theorized, or even primordially theorized) in terms of Being, and Being in terms of logic, then we would have circularity.

The word ‘presuppose’ is tricky though: the rule proscribes explaining something in terms of itself, not relying on it in your explanation. Using logic while explaining logic is not circular.

For instance, I cannot fix this hammer using this hammer (our no-circularity rule), but I can fix it using another hammer, or using anything else as a hammer. So far as logic is concerned, we’re talking about predication here. But it looks like there may be room for an analysis of hammers and hammering and things with which you can hammer — roughly, of the usability and intention-answering possibilities of things — which could function as an account of predication, rather than the other way around.

That only clearly gets you to phenomenology. But in Being and Time, this is the first step in an analysis of the being of things, right? Maybe it’s taking that step, from phenomenology to ontology, that most needs clarification.

Of course apes are different from rocks. But they’re still entities, beings. To say an ape isn’t a thing or a rock isn’t a being is simply assuming your definition, — Xtrix

It's not 'my' definition, it's the definition. Objects are not beings, as they are not subject of experience. (This is the origination of the hard problem of consciousness, by the way.)

Beings here refers to everything— all entities, all phenomena. Not exclusively to sentient beings. I can’t make it clearer. — Xtrix

Where do abstract objects fit into this? Numbers, scientific principles, and the like? Because they're *not* phenomena, their nature is noumenal i.e. they're intelligible objects, not sense objects. And your analysis completely misses that distinction. If you label them all as 'existents' or 'phenomena' then you're not accounting for the fundamental distinctions that ontology is concerned with.

"Sentient" entities (i.e. subjects) exist ineluctably dependent upon, or grounded by, more fundamental entities and therefore are not synonymous with being. — 180 Proof

But you say that that because of materialist ontology, which inverts the relationship between mind and matter, making matter fundamental and mind derivative from it. That is of course the universal assumption of philosophical materialism. But what are the putative 'fundamental entities' which you propose are the ground or basis for rational beings? They can hardly be said to be material atoms. Current physics operates in terms of mathematical models, where the most fundamental level are mathematical abstractions, and therefore not the purportedly 'mind-independent' material entities materialism supposes - which is why the the Copenhagen interpretation of physics is directly relevant*. You might argue the 'fundamental entities' are instead fields - but fields are not entities at all, merely distributive patterns of causal relations. Again, whatever such 'entities' are supposed to be, can only be disclosed by rational judgement, which is epistemologically prior to any of those suppositions. 'Cogito ergo sum.'

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* 'the inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of the atom, which had become apparent even in the ancient discussions about smallest particles, have also appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the present century.

This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.

During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?

I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.' ~ Werner Heisenberg, The Debate between Plato and Democritus.

The key phrase in the above passage is whether atoms 'exist in the same way as stones or flowers'. And that is an ontological distinction.

I don't think this is fair. It can be said of Kant and Hegel as well. — Xtrix

I'm happy to grant them cult status as well.

Ontology is fascinating to me, and I don't think you can be really serious about it unless you hear Heidegger out in good faith. — Xtrix

The study of the "nature of being" doesn't fascinate me, I'm afraid. You're welcome to it, however.

regarding Heidegger as Nazi and villain and all that: who knows. That's debated, but frankly I'm in the group who doesn't really care all that much. — Xtrix

I don't think even his most frenzied, fanatic followers dispute the fact he was a Nazi, or if they do have at least stopped doing so openly. As Joshs will tell you, this is common (and so uninteresting) knowledge. But it seems there are good Nazis, or perhaps that a certain Nazi is, shall we say, "beyond good and evil."

whatever else your quixotic 'subjectivism' might be, sir, it's conspicuously not (an) ontology as even the earliest philosophers had conceived of it. — 180 Proof

This interpretation of Spinoza I can go with:

when Spinoza – in his first piece of philosophical writing, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect – speaks of the vanity of mundane existence and his longing for a supreme joy independent of the vicissitudes of daily life, we know he is speaking from the heart: “After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life […], I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good […] whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity.” (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, para.1)

The problem, as Spinoza goes on to diagnose, is that people normally desire “perishable things” which “can be reduced to these three headings: riches, honour, and sensual pleasure” (idem: para.3&9). As these things are “perishable”, they cannot afford lasting happiness; in fact, they worsen our existential situation, since their acquisition more often than not requires compromising behaviour and their consumptions makes us even more dependent on perishable goods. “But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, unmixed with any sadness.” (Idem: para.10) Thus, in his mature masterpiece, the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single “Substance” underlying everything and everyone. The non-dual nature of this vision is clearly announced by Spinoza when he says that “[t]he mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36). Since, for Spinoza, God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you.

That is entirely in keeping with my philosophical stance: that the reason human being is significant, is that it is in this form that the Universe comes to self-awareness. Philosophy is 'anamnesis', un-forgetting or recovering this fundamental reality. And, as discussed earlier in this thread, the term 'substance', derived from 'ouisia', is better interpreted as 'being' or 'subject', which means Spinoza's definition reads as 'God is the eternal, self-causing, unique being (or subject)'. The Amor Dei Intellectualis is then an expression of theosis or union with that subject, similar to that expressed by non-dualist philosophies. Which is why Spinoza was outcaste as a heretic: for disintermediating the priesthood!

But it seems there are good Nazis, or perhaps that a certain Nazi is, shall we say, "beyond good and evil." — Ciceronianus

I think this is the crux of the matter. I believe that all of us, including Heidegger and Hitler, are beyond good and evil. That is to say, following Nietzsche, I interpret others’ actions from a psychological rather than a moralistic perspective. For me, understanding personal behavior in the context of sociological, historical and psychological influences isnt just a question of locating mitigating factors, but constitutes the central explanatory system for dealing with others. I mentioned your legal background because we all tend to choose a profession that reflects our ways of understanding the world. I chose psychology and philosophy as consonant with my belief system. It seems to me that you view personal behavior primarily from the vantage of character and individual responsibility and choice. I’m not saying you don’t take social, historical and psychological
factors into consideration, but I suspect that you see them as only peripheral to what you see as the central consideration, which is that of personal moral choice.
So Heidegger represents for you a morally flawed personality , and any wider sociological analysis is seen by you as excuse making.

Of course apes are different from rocks. But they’re still entities, beings. To say an ape isn’t a thing or a rock isn’t a being is simply assuming your definition,
— Xtrix

It's not 'my' definition, it's the definition. Objects are not beings, as they are not subject of experience. — Wayfarer

It's not the definition in ontology. Objects are beings, like everything else.

Beings here refers to everything— all entities, all phenomena. Not exclusively to sentient beings. I can’t make it clearer.
— Xtrix

Where do abstract objects fit into this? Numbers, scientific principles, and the like? — Wayfarer

They're beings.

their nature is noumenal i.e. they're intelligible objects, not sense objects. — Wayfarer

That's not what "noumenal" means. Numbers are not "noumenal." Numbers are beings, like everything else.

And your analysis completely misses that distinction. If you label them all as 'existents' or 'phenomena' then you're not accounting for the fundamental distinctions that ontology is concerned with. — Wayfarer

As I already said, there are plenty of distinctions among beings. All kinds. They're still beings.

I'm happy to grant them cult status as well. — Ciceronianus

So every philosopher has a cult following?

Objects are beings, like everything else. — Xtrix

Objects are entities.

Objects are beings, like everything else.
— Xtrix

Objects are entities. — Caldwell

And entities are beings.