distinguishing 'beings' from 'things' is an eccentric and idiosyncratic attitude — Wayfarer

But note that distinguishing sentient, conscious, or rational beings from those which are not is certainly not considered eccentric by everyone at TPF.

I would go back and re-write the post that triggered this argument - it doesn't say what I set out to say, I sidetracked myself - but it seems pointless now.

In any case, @Fooloso4 kindly sent me the IEP link on Aristotle's Metaphysics. I noticed this passage, which seems relevant, in light of the mention of Aristotle earlier in the thread:

If the world is a cosmos, then it is one more instance of the kind of being that belongs to every animal and plant in it. And if that is so, there is nothing left to display any other kind of being. Try it: take inventory. What is there? The color red is, only if it is the color of some thing. Color itself is, only if it is some one color, and the color of a thing. The relation “taller than” is, only if it is of two or more things. What has being but is not a thing must depend on some thing for its being. But on the other hand a mere thing, mere matter as we call it, using the word differently than Aristotle ever does, is an impossibility too. Relatively inert, rock-like being is the being of a part of what comes only in wholes–cosmos, plant, or animal. And all man-made things must borrow their material from natural things and their very holding-together from the natural tendencies of the parts of the cosmos. To be is to be alive; all other being is borrowed being. Any comprehensive account of things must come to terms with the special being of animals and plants: for Lucretius, living things are not marvels but a problem which he solves by dissolving them into the vast sea of inert purposelessness. For Aristotle, as for Plato, wonder is not a state to be dissolved but a beckoning to be followed, and for Aristotle the wonderful animals and plants point the way to being itself, to that being qua being which is the source of all being, for we see it in the world in them and only in them.

Thus when Aristotle begins in Book 7 of the Metaphysics to ask what makes a thing a thing, he narrows the question to apply only to living things. All other being is, in one way or another, their effect. — IEP

Which kind of, sort of, also support's Jung's idea.

Not only TPFers but also according to that ontological mfer Martin Heidegger. :victory:

That is interesting.

But I did draw attention to the quote provided earlier by Jamal:

If we look around at beings in general—from particles to planets, ants to apes—it is human beings alone who are able to encounter the question of what it means to be. — Heidegger

So there's regardless an ontological distinction accorded to humanity (acknowledging that his use of the terminology of ontology is very complex).

I think that it's because, for Aristotle, and the ancients generally, the cosmos itself was alive. I don't know if it's really pantheistic, although not far from it - more that there was the sense that man's relationship with the cosmos was 'I-Though' rather than our customary 'I-it' relationship (Martin Buber). But I think it's fair to say that for Aristotle, the Cosmos itself was ensouled, for, as a whole, it displays the attributes of all other living beings. The idea of the cosmos as inert matter governed by physical laws was yet to be arrived at.

It’s on my list of things to look into now. :up:

I think that it's because, for Aristotle, and the ancients generally, the cosmos itself was alive. I don't know if it's really pantheistic, although not far from it - more that there was the sense that man's relationship with the cosmos was 'I-Though' rather than our customary 'I-it' relationship (Martin Buber). But I think it's fair to say that for Aristotle, the Cosmos itself was ensouled, for, as a whole, it displays the attributes of all other living beings. The idea of the cosmos as inert matter governed by physical laws was yet to be arrived at. — Wayfarer

But I’ve been reading that IEP article and can’t see the justification for “To be is to be alive; all other being is borrowed being.” I’m not saying it’s untrue (or true), only that I’m trying to see the reasoning in the article and can’t. Your comment here sheds light on it, but it’s still obscure to me.

All I can refer to is in the passage I quoted:

Thus when Aristotle begins in Book 7 of the Metaphysics to ask what makes a thing a thing, he narrows the question to apply only to living things. All other being is, in one way or another, their effect. — IEP

Reading further into it, 'forms' are obviously central to it. But there is a passage further in the article germane to the differentiation of living and non-living:

A table, a chair, a rock, a painting– each is a this, but a living thing is a this in a special way. It is the author of its own this-ness. It appropriates from its surroundings, by eating and drinking and breathing, what it organizes into and holds together as itself. This work of self-separation from its environment is never finished but must go on without break if the living thing is to be at all. Let us consider as an example of a living this, some one human being. Today his skin is redder than usual, because he has been in the sun; there is a cut healing on his hand because he chopped onions two days ago; he is well educated, because, five years ago, his parents had the money and taste to send him to Harvard. All these details, and innumerably many more, belong to this human being*. But in Aristotle’s way of speaking, the details I have named are incidental to him: he is not sunburned, wounded on the hand, or Harvard-educated because he is a human being. He is each of those things because his nature bumped into that of something else and left him with some mark, more or less intended, more or less temporary, but in any case aside from what he is on his own, self-sufficiently. What he is on his own, as a result of the activity that makes him be at all, is: two-legged, sentient, breathing, and all the other things he is simply as a human being. There is a difference between all the things he happens to be and the things he necessarily is on account of what he is. Aristotle formulates the latter, the kind of being that belongs to a thing not by happenstance but inevitably, as the “what it kept on being in the course of being at all” for a human being, or a duck, or a rosebush. The phrase to en einai is Aristotle’s answer to the Socratic question, ti esti? What is a giraffe? Find some way of articulating all the things that every giraffe always is, and you will have defined the giraffe. What each of them is throughout its life, is the product at any instant for any one of them, of the activity that is causing it to be. That means that the answer to the question “What is a giraffe?”, and the answer to the question “What is this giraffe?” are the same. Stated generally, Aristotle’s claim is that a this, which is in the world on its own, self-sufficiently, has a what-it-always-was-to-be, and is just its what-it-always-was-to-be. This is not a commonplace thought, but it is a comprehensible one; compare it with the translators’ version, “a per-se individual is identical with its essence.”

* Which I think is probably the author. When I first started reading this article I thought it very idiosyncratic, but now I'm starting to warm to it.

:up:

I've acquired a copy of Eric D Perl: Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, to which I was alerted in one of John Vervaeke's lectures. Perl traces the origin of classical metaphysics from its origin with Parmenides, and then follows its development through Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas. (Be aware it's expensive and out of print in hardcopy but there are .pdfs floating around.)

The first of the quoted passages is about the distinction between living and non-living, which was subject of discussion earlier in this thread. Here is a passage on the ontological distinction between beings and things:

This identification of soul as form and 'whatness' in a living thing implies continuity as well as profound difference between living and non-living things. All things, even inanimate ones, must have some form, or they would not be anything at all. But living things have a distinctive and superior kind of form, called ‘soul.’ For a living thing is far more integrated, more one whole, than a non-living thing. The unity, and hence the identity and the being, of a non-living thing is little more than the contiguity of its parts. If a rock, for example, is divided, we simply have two smaller rocks. In a living thing, on the other hand, the members of its body constitute an organic whole, such that each part both conditions and is conditioned by the other parts and the whole. A living thing is thus one being to a far greater extent than a non-living thing. It evinces a higher degree of unity, of integration, of formal identity, and its soul is this very integration of its parts into one whole. As such the soul is the reality of the living thing, that in virtue of which it is what it is and so is a being: “For the reality is the cause of being to all things, and to live, for living things, is to be, and the soul is the cause and principle of these” (De An. Β.4, 415b13–14). Life in living things, then, is not a character superadded to their mere being. Rather, life is their being, the higher, more intense mode of being proper to living things as distinct from others.

The distinction between living and non-living things is therefore not a mere ‘horizontal’ distinction, as if all things are equally beings, of which some are living and others are not. It is rather a ‘vertical’ or hierarchical distinction: a living thing is more a being than a non-living thing, in that it is more integrated, more a whole, more one thing. (p110)

For Aristotle, the hierarchical ordering of the different kinds of beings is based on the extent to which form predominates over matter in each. Non-living things have the lowest degree of form, of unifying selfhood, of activity that proceeds from themselves. Although they have some form, some nature, some behaviors of their own, without which they would be nothing at all, they come closer than all other things to being purely material, purely passive. A living thing, characterized by organic unity and the ability to nourish, maintain, and reproduce itself, is far more one, more active, exhibits a far higher degree of formal identity. A sentient living thing, an animal, exercises not only these life-functions but also consciousness, which, as the capacity to receive forms without matter, is a still higher degree of formality, of immateriality. A human being, in turn, has not only life and sense but the capacity for the wholly immaterial activity of intellection, which has as its content, and thus is one with, purely immaterial ideas. (p117) — Eric D Perl Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition

This 'vertical distinction' is generally absent in modern culture, which was the point I was pressing in making the distinction between beings and things in the first place. That is an ontological distinction which I say is lost to materialism and much of modern culture as a matter of definition. (The question arises whether it is inherently at odds with liberalism.)

In the context of Platonism it was a matter of course that intellect (nous) is higher than matter, which was to become the basis of the scala naturae, the great chain of being. This provides the qualitative or vertical dimension. Matter as such is at the lowest level - in the absence of form or idea, is next to nothing. A material particular can only be said to be insofar as it has a form, and the form is not something material, but is 'impressed' upon matter 'as a seal upon wax' in Aristotle's imagery.

But neither is soul or idea an immaterial thing or the oxymoronic 'immaterial substance' of post-Cartesian philosophy. In the chapter on Plato, Perl articulates the origin of 'eidos' as being 'the look' or 'the what-it-is-ness' of a particular being. The form is emphatically not another kind of thing, it is not an 'inhabitant' of a supposed 'ethereal Platonic realm' which is the way that it is almost universally misinterpreted. I suggest this misapprehension dominates because of the cultural impact of empiricism, that only things exist, things which exist in time and space. Seeing through that requires a different kind of seeing, and that 'seeing' is the subject of metaphysics (again, largely extinct outside of Catholic philosophy in today's culture, as one of the last preserves of metaphysics).

Here Perl demonstrates the falsehood of the usual way of thinking about the forms:

Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating ‘somewhere else’ in ‘another world,’ a ‘Platonic heaven.’ It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought. If, taking any of these examples—say, justice, health, or strength—we ask, “How big is it? What color is it? How much does it weigh?” we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense. They are thus ‘separate’ in that they are not additional members of the world of sensible things, but are known by a different mode of awareness. But this does not mean that they are ‘located elsewhere,’ or that they are not, as Plato says, the very intelligible contents, the truth and reality of sensible things.

It is in this sense, too, that Plato’s references to the forms as ‘patterns’ or ‘paradigms’, of which instances are ‘images,’ must be understood. All too often, ‘paradigm’ is taken to mean ‘model to be copied.’ The following has been offered as an example of this meaning of παράδειγμα (parádeigma) in classical Greek: “[T]he architect of a temple requiring, say, twenty-four Corinthian capitals would have one made to his own specifications, then instruct his masons to produce twenty-three more just like it.” Such a model is itself one of the instances: when we have the original and the twenty-three copies, we have twenty-four capitals of the same kind. It is the interpretation of forms as paradigms in this sense that leads to the ‘third man argument’ by regarding the form as another instance and the remaining instances as ‘copies’ of the form. This interpretation of Plato’s ‘paradigmatism’ reflects a pictorial imagination of the forms as, so to speak, higher-order sensibles located in ‘another world,’ rather than as the very intelligible identities, the whatnesses, of sensible things.

But forms cannot be paradigms in this sense. Just as the intelligible ‘look’ that is common to many things of the same kind, a form, as we have seen, is not an additional thing of that kind. Likewise, it makes no sense to say that a body, a physical, sensible thing, is a copy, in the sense of a replica or duplicate, of an intelligible idea. Indeed, Plato expressly distinguishes between a copy and an image: “Would there be two things, that is, Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, if some God copied not only your color and shape, as painters do, but also … all the things you have—if he set such other things beside you? Would such then be Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, or two Cratyluses?—Two Cratyluses, it seems to me, Socrates.” He then remarks, “Do you not perceive how far images fall short of having the same features [τὰ αὐτὰ, tá aftá] as the things of which they are images?” (Crat. 432b5–c6, d1–3). An image, in Plato’s terms, then, is not another thing of the same kind as the paradigm, having characteristics in common with it. But παράδειγμα/parádeigma need not mean ‘model’ in this sense. It can also mean ‘plan,’ ‘design,’ ‘pattern,’ and it is in this sense that Plato refers to the forms as paradigms. To take the same example, the architect, instead of giving the masons a model capital and instructing them to produce twenty-three more, could give them instead a plan, a diagram, or even simply a set of specifications, and instruct them to produce twenty-four ‘such capitals.’ In this case the paradigm is the pattern, the design, the set of specifications, which is not itself a capital at all. The true paradigm, indeed, is the architect’s idea, of which the written diagram or specifications are merely a symbolic representation. — Eric D Perl Thinking Being, p31 ff

Perl has considerably more to say on the subject, detailing how Plato modifies Parmenides' uncompromising duality between being and non-being to argue that particulars are beings insofar as they have form - otherwise they would be nothing at all. So particulars are 'in between' being and non-being, not truly real, as are forms, but neither simply non-existent. Particulars are real insofar as they 'participlate in' or instantiate forms or ideas:

If we reflect on the notion of ‘appearance,’ it ceases to be obvious that there is no middle road, no intermediate between being and non-being. An appearance of a thing—for example, a reflection, as an appearance of that which is reflected—is not the thing itself, nor is it another thing, additional to the thing itself. When Socrates stands before a mirror, making a reflection, the reflection is neither a second Socrates nor another, additional person: there remains only one Socrates, one man. But neither is the reflection, what is seen in the mirror, simply nothing, and to see it is not to see nothing at all, or to suffer a hallucination. Appearance is not the same as illusion. It is coherent, in accord with ordinary usage, and in a significant sense true, to say, “I see Socrates in the mirror,” while realizing at the same time that I am not looking at Socrates himself at all. To see the reflection is both to see Socrates, as he appears here, and not to see Socrates, ‘himself by himself.’ Thus what is seen in seeing the reflection or appearance, both is and is not the real thing. And this is precisely how Plato characterizes the ‘in between’ status of the sensible, as that which is opined rather than intellectually known: “We said earlier, then, if something should appear [φανείη] such that it at once is and is not, this would be such as to lie in between that which purely is and that which altogether is not, and neither knowledge nor ignorance would be concerned with it, but that which we say is in between ignorance and knowledge” (Rep. 478d5–9). We should note the characteristically Platonic pun: that which appears, or as we might say ‘turns up,’ in between being and non-being, is, precisely, appearance itself. Sensible instances, therefore, as the multiple, differentiated appearances, given to sense, of the unitary forms that are apprehended by intellect, are neither reality ‘itself by itself,’ the intelligible, nor simply nothing, but ‘in between.’ — ibid

Given that, the idea of the 'separateness' of the realm of forms from the material realm is pointing to different levels of understanding, again, not to an 'ethereal Platonic realm':

Knowledge and opinion, then, as distinct modes of awareness, are not directed toward two different sets of ‘objects,’ of which one is completely real and the other, incomprehensibly, less than completely real and yet not nothing. Rather, they are higher and lower ways in which reality may be apprehended. Opinion, the mode of apprehension correlated to appearance as distinct from reality ‘itself by itself,’ thus lies in between knowledge and ignorance. Here again, unlike Parmenides, Plato carefully distinguishes between ignorance, a total failure to apprehend reality at all, and opinion, an apprehension of reality as it appears and hence an imperfect apprehension of reality. The distinction between knowledge and opinion, therefore, unlike that between knowledge and ignorance, is not a simple opposition, but is rather a distinction between the perfect and therefore paradigmatic apprehension of reality, and a less perfect apprehension of reality. Opinion is thus analogous to seeing reality in a mirror, rather than to not seeing it at all, and sensible things, as what is given to this mode of apprehension, are analogous to reflections, neither reality itself nor simply nothing. ....

....If the levels of reality are levels of presentation and apprehension, then the many ‘ascents’ in the dialogues, the images of ‘going to’ the forms or true being, express not a passage from one ‘world,’ one set of objects, to another, but rather, as Plato repeatedly indicates, the ascent of the soul, a psychic, cognitive ascent, from one mode of apprehension to another, and hence not from one reality to a different reality, but from appearance to reality. — ibid

The concept of a vertical distinction between living and non-living things, and among living things themselves, conflicts with contemporary cultural and philosophical perspectives, particularly those grounded in natural science and liberalism. Naturalism, with its emphasis on physical processes as the fundamental reality, will usually reject such metaphysical distinctions. It tends to flatten the Aristotelian hierarchy into a horizontal plane where differences among entities are seen in terms of varying arrangements of matter rather than different degrees or kinds of being. It's also in conflict with liberalism. Liberalism, particularly in its political and social manifestations, emphasizes individual freedom, equality, and the separation of church and state (or the sacred and profane, more generally). This framework generally relegates questions of metaphysics, spirituality, and religion to the private sphere, treating them as matters of personal belief rather than public concern or objective truth. The liberal public square is thus shaped by a commitment to pluralism and secularism, which can obscure or sideline vertical distinctions of being that imply a universal order or hierarchy, especially those rooted in religious or metaphysical philosophy.

Ref: Eric D Perl: Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition

For Aristotle, the hierarchical ordering of the different kinds of beings is based on the extent to which form predominates over matter in each. — Eric D Perl Thinking Being - Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition

Aristotle certainly put the active principle above the elements being acted upon. I am not aware of any passage that expresses a ratio of the sort Perl is putting forth.

You might like Process & Reality NWH posits that consciousness only arises in a prehension of contrast between a nexus of physical fact and negated potential, borne out of the nexus of the 'actualities' that formed the nexus proving the physical fact (i think i have that right!).

Basically, consciousness isn't required for any kind of comprehension, until a 'decision' has to be made ABOUT the valuation of a physical feeling. Weird stuff, but i'm liking it.

So the self ceases to exist when asleep.

Sounds about right. — Banno

Anil Seth has this to say in Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

Measuring conscious level in humans is not the same as deciding whether someone is awake or asleep. Conscious level is not the same thing as physiological arousal. While the two are often highly correlated, consciousness (awareness) and wakefulness (arousal) can come apart in various ways, which is enough to show that they cannot depend on the same underlying biology. When you are dreaming you are by definition asleep, but you are having rich and varied conscious experiences. At the other extreme lie catastrophic conditions like the vegetative state (also now known as “unresponsive wakefulness syndrome”), in which a person still cycles through sleep and wakefulness, but shows no behavioral signs of conscious awareness: the lights are occasionally on, but there’s nobody home. — Anil Seth

So there's regardless an ontological distinction accorded to humanity (acknowledging that his use of the terminology of ontology is very complex). — Wayfarer

Interesting. And the complexity of Heidegger's terminology notwithstanding, I agree.

However and on some level, being ontologically distinct by actually doing ontology strikes me as a no brainer. And there is no prize for being the only known species to do ontology.

'Virtue is it's own reward' ~ Another Aristotelian chestnut :cool:

'Virtue is it's own reward — Wayfarer

As if Heidegger would know. :-)

The back-story to all of this is that I used to mount an argument as follows. It was based on distinguishing ontology from science. My argument was that the word 'ontology' was based on the present participle of the Greek verb 'to be' - which is, of course, 'I am'. I said this implied a distinction of the study of 'being' as distinct from science, which is the analysis of what objectively exists. (There's also a resonance with the religious significance of the 'I AM' in both Biblical and Hindu texts.) Anyway, I got severely criticized by a poster (who was also a mod) over this, saying that this was an 'eccentric' definition of the term 'ontology'. This lead to a long debate, one which I think is important, on the distinction between 'beings' and 'things', which I claim is a distinction that is largely lost in modern philosophy. He eventually sent me an essay by a distinguished classics scholar, The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being, Charles Kahn, which I read very carefully. I think it supports my argument, although he never accepted that, and he's since left the Forum. Kahn argues that the use of the Greek verb 'to be' generally conveys the meaning 'what is truly so', as distinct from 'what exists' (see also this comment.)

That you’re still going on about this is borderline insane.

A being is anything at all. It can also mean exclusively sentient beings. The latter is not what’s used in ontology, whether Aristotle or Heidegger. Trees rocks and ideas are all beings.

A being is anything at all. It can also mean exclusively sentient beings. The latter is not what’s used in ontology, whether Aristotle or Heidegger. Trees rocks and ideas are all beings. — Mikie

:100: Yes, a being (even a nonbeing à la Meinong's "sosein") is whatever is not nothing.

That you’re still going on about this is borderline insane. — Mikie

I've presented arguments and citations in support, and in the face of nothing better than pointless ad hominems and incomprehension. The reason I re-opened the thread is because over February I read the first several chapters of Eric Perl's book Thinking Being, from which the quotes above are taken. And the fact that you don't recognise a distinction that I claim is largely forgotten is not an argument against it.

rocks... are...beings. — Mikie

Am I take to it you're pan-psychist?

Aristotle certainly put the active principle above the elements being acted upon. I am not aware of any passage that expresses a ratio of the sort Perl is putting forth. — Paine

In Aristotle form is prior to matter in everything. The "what-it-is", or "whatness" of a thing constitutes the thing's identity. The layering, or levels, referred to, mark the different types, from the most general to the most specific, right down to the particulars of the unique individual. So for instance, the layering of form in a particular individual such as the one identified as "Socrates" would include living being, animal, mammal, man, snub-nose, and all the various accidentals which make up this individual's unique identity.

What Aristotle argues in his Metaphysics is that the form of the thing (any thing, and every thing) must be prior in time to the material existence of the thing. This is because when a thing comes into being, it must be the thing which it is, and not something else, and that's known as the law of identity. And when it comes into existence, it necessarily has a form, which is an intelligible whatness. If the intelligible whatness, or form, did not predetermine the material existence of the thing, it would not necessarily be the thing which it is, producing a random unintelligible formlessness, or non-thing.

The "soul" provides a very good example of how the intelligible whatness, the form, precedes the material existence of the thing. A living body is a very special type of body with a very special type of organization. When that special type of body comes into being it must be organized in that special way. Therefore the form which determines this special type of organization must be prior to the material body, to ensure that when the material body comes into existence it has that special type of organization. Without the preceding form, "the soul", the special type of organization would not occur, and there would be no living body.

I think it was right to talk about Descartes in this thread, as long as we also see the limits of Descartes's reasoning. The beginning of Heidegger's Being and Time is, by the way, very much inspired by the cogito.
BUT what Hegel shows is that cogito is not only a thought of being, but the being of thought as well. So it is true that consciousness is a precondition of being, but it doesn't mean that there could be a consciouness without any beings to be conscious of. Of course, it's not a subject that can be summed up in a few sentences. (source: Brief Solutions to Philosophical Problems Using a Hegelian Method, Solution 1 and 2)

The issue here is connected with a kind of phrasing of the topic.

One thing is to say there are things which exist, independent of us, thus they are being or "existents." And this should be readily granted, unless one is an extreme version of a Berkeleyan idealist.

I think this becomes thorny when we specifically start to speak of extra-mental terms in mental terms, such as how can a rock exist absent our perception (and conception) of them? I don't think we have a clue. We are using foreign notions here.

It's the latter formulation which causes problems, as we attempt to use our concepts and apply them in a way that doesn't work.

But the topic of their needing to be something that exists in order to sustain consciousness, shouldn't be controversial.

But these topics are part of the bread and butter in philosophy.

"Consciousness emerges as in the mode of presentational immediacy whereby an occasion in feeling the universe feels and recognizes its own feelings." - Alfred North Whitehead


In Whitehead's framework, consciousness emerges as a result of the interplay of various 'prehensions', and is not just a passive observer but an active participant in the creation of experience. This perspective breaks away from dualistic approaches that separate mind and matter, and instead emphasizes the interconnectedness and dynamic nature of the universe.

This seems to imply that 'feelings' or awareness of experience do not make a being conscious (or sentient, for that matter). It seems to imply, as does most of Process and Reality, that consciousness is not just secondary, but essentially unimportant in the development of an 'actual occasion' representing some individual animal body region of the world while being posited as fundamental in the process itself(qua "cosmic epoch" rather than qua an actual occasion(in an animal body - a person, for instance)), ...I can't quite get across this position, but Its interesting and might be cud to chew on for others.

rocks... are...beings — Mikie

Am I take to it you're pan-psychist? — Wayfarer

On the assumption—no matter how unbelievable and insulting—that you are not joking…

You didn’t complain of Heidegger’s panpsychism when you quoted him saying the same thing (“beings in general—from particles to planets, ants to apes”). As you do know, Mikie is using the term in the way that’s conventional in metaphysics, going back thousands of years and still in use: that which is. It says nothing about consciousness, when used in the standard Western philosophical sense.

Whether there is a difference between beings and things is another matter. I think there is.

If you want to use the popular sense—or the one used in some Eastern philosophy—in the context of Western philosophy, say so openly, and make it clear when you’re doing so.

Hold on. Who started saying that that quotation was from Heidegger? Whoever it was, now you’ve got me doing it. It’s a quotation about Heidegger.

Whether there is a difference between beings and things is another matter. I think there is. — Jamal

That's basically the only point that was ever at issue in this argument. Didn't mean to be insulting, but I really don't think it makes sense to declare that anything that exists is 'a being'. Again, the noun term 'being' is customarily used for sentient creatures. Of course rocks exist, I spent many a happy hour as a child throwing them.

The only passage about Heidegger that I quoted in this thread was a snippet I found in a Philosophy Now article, to wit:

The formidable task that Heidegger sets himself in Being and Time is to respond to the question ‘What is Being’? This ‘Question of Being’ has a long heritage in the Western philosophical tradition, but for Heidegger, to merely ask what is Being? is problematic, as that emphasis tends to objectify Being as a ‘thing’ – that is to say, it separates off ‘Being’ (whatever it is) from the questioner of Being. This for Heidegger is making unhelpful assumptions of the nature of Being even before interrogating what Being actually is. Therefore, rather than asking ‘What is Being?’, Heidegger begins with the question ‘Whom is asking the question of Being?’ This question – the whom of Being – includes the possibility that the questioners themselves may actually contribute in some way to the Being under question. Heidegger’s starting point thus asks whom is this Being “that in its Being is concerned about its very Being.” (Being and Time, p.11)

That's basically the only point that was ever at issue in this argument — Wayfarer

No, the point at issue was whether beings are all sentient or conscious. They are not. Only sentient or conscious beings are sentient or conscious. The reason you keep on confusing the issues is that you have not suspended judgement about whether inanimate objects are beings; the difference between beings and things, insofar as there is one (and I think there is) is not about sentience or consciousness.

Didn't mean to be insulting — Wayfarer

Whether you mean to be or not makes no difference. I carefully and politely showed you that you were wrong, and you stuck your fingers in your ears, because of what you want to be true.

but I really don't think it makes sense to declare that anything that exists is 'a being' — Wayfarer

That is how it is used in philosophy, as I showed you, and as anyone with a familiarity with Western metaphysics ought to know.

The only passage about Heidegger that I quoted in this thread was a snippet I found in a Philosophy Now article, to wit: — Wayfarer

I’ve tracked it down. You quoted me in this post and attributed the quotation to Heidegger, which I had clearly not attributed to Heidegger.

the difference between beings and things, insofar as there is one (and I think there is) is not about sentience or consciousness. — Jamal

What is it about, then? And does it amount to an ontological distinction?