As he explicitly states, Descartes removes himself from the world for the purpose of his Meditations.

Have you looked at Braver's Groundless Grounds ? — plaque flag

I haven’t. I’ll look it up.

I enjoyed Braver's book but disagree with his thesis for at least the reason (re: "average everydayness" @Mikie) I mention in this old thread about "the difference between Wittgenstein and Heidegger" ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/509613

Your criticism, which is fair, reminds me of what Dreyfus writes in Being-in-the-world. But I think the tension between owness and falling immersion can be (mis)read as courageous destructive-creative interpretation. Philosophy 'is' the battle of sedimented dead metaphor against itself, for we have no other tools. This helps explain Heidegger's tonal ambiguity when it comes to gossip or chatter. It is us in our everydayness, our generic tribal soul, the deaf repetition of platitudes as a genuinely convenient and valuable substitute for thinking, when it's not appropriate to really think. The (misread?) authentic baste 'philosopher' 'restores force to the elemental words,' heats up the wax of dead metaphors, appropriates or makes explicit the past as interpretedness that leaps ahead as unwitting projection, contingent mistaken for necessity. 'One' is the stillbirth of the Bloom strong poet. The anxiety of influence is that of having never even been born as a poet, of dying as a bot. So he rages against it, like Axl Rose, just a small town Catholic workingclass white boy, doing the right thing (at first) for the wrong reason (reactionary etc). Did he with the Being stuff generalize Kierkegaard into a more glamorously negative cryptotheology ? For me the key stuff is human historicity in language, which Gadamer ran with, along with lifeworld centrality and the unbreakable unit of world-self-language-others that makes philosophy possible. Braver fits it into an ICS framework running from Kant through Hegel through Heidegger. [ICS is impersonal conceptual scheme]

For both Heidegger and Wittgenstein, then, the source of the intelligibility of the world is the average public practices through which alone there can be any understanding at all. What is shared is not a conceptual scheme, i.e., not a belief system that can be made explicit and justified. Not that we share a belief system that is always implicit and arbitrary. That is just the Sartrean version of the same mistake. What we share is simply our average comportment. Once a practice has been explained by appealing to what one does, no more basic explanation is possible. As Wittgenstein puts it in On Certainty: "Giving grounds [must] come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting.
...
This view is entirely antithetical to the philosophical ideal of total clarity and ultimate intelligibility. Philosophers seek an ultimate ground. When they discover there is none, even modern philosophers ... seem to think that they have fallen into an abyss -- that the lack of an ultimate ground has catastrophic consequences for human activity.
...
There is, however, something that average everyday intelligibility obscures, viz., that it is merely average everyday intelligibility. It takes for granted that the everyday for-the-sake-of-whichs and the equipment that serves them are based upon God's goodness, human nature, or at least solid good sense. This is what Heidegger called "the perhaps necessary appearance of foundation." One cannot help thinking that the right (healthy, civilized, rational, natural, etc.) way to sit, for example, is on chairs, at tables, etc., not on the floor. Our way seems to make intrinsic sense -- a sense not captured in saying, "This is what we in the West happen to do." What gets covered up in everyday understanding is not some deep intelligibility as the tradition has always held; it is that the ultimate "ground" of intelligibility is simply shared practices. There is no right interpretation. Average intelligibility is not inferior intelligibility; it simply obscures its own groundlessness. This is the last stage of the hermeneutics of suspicion. The only deep interpretation left is that there is no deep interpretation. — Dreyfus

I think Heidegger's "being-in-the-world" as a unitary mode of being is revolutionary. — Arne

I don't see how the thought of being in something is not dualistic. The thought of simply being is not dualistic, but when it 'in-the-world' is posited it becomes so.

Edit: reading back over the thread, I see I'm repeating myself; but I'll let it stand.

Also, as a matter of definition, where else would we be but in the world? It could be said that to be is necessarily to be in an environment or surroundings, or to be "here" or "there", but that is still a reflective and necessarily dualistic conceptualization. Do we constantly have the sense of being in something or do we, pre-reflectively, simply have a sense of being?

Heidegger's way of purportedly getting beyond the subject/object distinction and positing Dasein as 'being-in-the-world'; or simply 'being there' ultimately fails to transcend dualism I think. The Eastern religious traditions had posited simply being and subject/ object as an illusion for millenia. Heidegger reportedly said upon reading D T Suzuki's exegesis of zen philosophy (paraphrasing because I can't be bothered searching for the exact quote): "if I am reading this right, this is exactly what I have been trying to say".

I think zen and Buddhism would be more likely to say "being the world" than "being in the world" but the conceptual thrust may, to be sure, be interpreted to be the same.

Also bumped into these Dennett quotes which remind me of Heidegger / Dreyfus:

Competence without comprehension is the way of life of the vast majority of living things on the planet and should be the default presumption until we can demonstrate that some individual organisms really do, in one sense or another, understand what they are doing.

Comprehension is not the source of competence or the active ingredient in competence; comprehension is composed of competences.

I'm sure Arne, Mikie or Joshs can respond to this better, but my understanding here was that Heidegger wanted to emphasize that "being in the world" in the sense of a subject confronted with objects, or a mind and body in objective space, was a derivative or secondary mode of thinking about ourselves, and in our everyday dealings with the world, we are always already enmeshed in a constellation of relations such that Da-sein essentially 'is' its "being-in-the-world."

The hyphenations of Da-sein and "being-in-the-world" I took to be an emphasis that they are unitary despite the fact that we cannot help but divide phenomena in order to analyze or interpret them at all. Thinking of oneself as "being in 3 dimensional space" would be a derivative mode or secondary mode of being in that we would not normally think of ourselves in that way unless, say, we misplaced our keys and analyzed the "world" from the standpoint of an analysis of objective presence and retraced our footsteps and actions looking for them.

This is what I take to be another facet of the "phenomenological" aspect of "being-in-the-world," or "what shows itself as it shows itself" for Heidegger.

Wittgenstein has some similarities, especially in terms of “average everydayness,” but I see little similarity with Heidegger’s conception of being-in-the-world. — Mikie

later Wittgenstein does say that the world is everything. I also think Heidegger's and Wittgenstein's notion of "background" and its importance are similar to understanding how one gets around in the "world."

that "being in the world" in the sense of a subject confronted with objects, or a mind and body in objective space, was a derivative or secondary mode of thinking about ourselves — Kevin

Well said. Of all the words you choose, I suspect "derivative" is the most accurate. However, it is important to keep in mind that Heidegger never gives any sort of independent standing "in" the world to beings not having the characteristics of Dasein.

Essentially, only Dasein is "in" the world while all beings not having the characteristics of Dasein are "within" the world that Dasein is in. This puts a significantly different perspective on the Cartesian notions of internal/external and/or subject/object.

This also puts a significantly different perspective on the notion of "transcendence". Instead of transcendence being the process encompassing the interaction of subject with object, it is the process encompassing the interaction of Dasein with the world.

Only Dasein is "in" the world. All other beings are "within" the world that Dasein is "in."

Did he with the Being stuff generalize Kierkegaard into a more glamorously negative cryptotheology ? For me the key stuff is human historicity in language, which Gadamer ran with, along with lifeworld centrality and the unbreakable unit of world-self-language-others that makes philosophy possible. — plaque flag

Exactly. We can thank Dreyfus , and to a certain extent Gadamer, for a god-awful misreading of Heidegger that turns him into a Kierkegaardian existentialist.

Exactly. We can thank Dreyfus , and to a certain extent Gadamer, for a god-awful misreading of Heidegger that turns him into a Kierkegaardian existentialist. — Joshs

It's unfortunate that the deepest stuff gets overshadowed by the lurid stuff. We are the (historical) house of being, not so much timebinding as bound time itself -- or bound time further binding itself. Do you see the modified minimal Hegelianism in this ?

I don't see how the thought of being in something is not dualistic. The thought of simply being is not dualistic, but when it 'in-the-world' is posited it becomes so. — Janus

The history of philosophy has offered a variety of ways to think about subjects, objects and their relation. Traditional approaches posited a unitary a priori subject with self-identically persisting faculties of mind surveying external objects across a divide. More modern perspectives
de-transcendentalize the subject but still retain from older thinking the assumption that the being of a subject or object is the being of an inherence, an in-itself, an identity, even if this is only a temporary identity that is continually modified by its interaction with other things in the world. Things are beings-in-themselves that appear before a subject. The dualism in this way of thinking is that between the inside and the outside, the self- inherence of being vs its becoming, alterity and identity, feeling and intention, state and transition. For Heidegger subjects and objects don’t inhere in themselves, have no internality or subsistence. To ‘be’ is to be a crossing or intersection between past and present. Being is one part memory and one part present. It is between these two as a becoming , a transit , a difference. Dasein, as Being-in-the-World, is a worlding’, not the appearing of things before a subject but an enacting of world in which to be is to be displaced into what discloses itself.

Traditional approaches posited a unitary a priori subject with self-identically persisting faculties of mind surveying external objects across a divide. — Joshs

:up:
We all had the same fixed faculties too.

Things are beings-in-themselves that appear before a subject. — Joshs

To ‘be’ is to be a crossing or intersection between past and present. — Joshs

:up:
Perhaps comment on the future too here ?

To ‘be’ is to be a crossing or intersection between past and present.
— Joshs
:up:
Perhaps comment on the future too here ? — plaque flag

I’ll let Heidegger have at it.

“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.”(Being and Time)

Can you explain this in your own words?

Can you explain this in your own words? — Fooloso4

For Heidegger, 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.
A prior object is already changed (affected) by what it interacts with before it can simply inhere in itself as cause. Whereas for traditional notions of time it is only later, that the difference made to other objects can in turn affect “it"”, the fact of its being already affected in serving as the past of that present object with which it interacts deprives both past and present poles of the interaction a separate identity. Rather than there being first one element followed by its effect on a second element (‘caused' by the first), there is only a single event of crossing simultaneously determining past and present in their interaction. Past and present function as already cross-affected by the other. Each is determined by, and also determines the other.

How is this physically possible?

The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. — Joshs

In what way is what happened 1,000 years ago not prior to what will happen 1,000 years from now?

How close together in time do the ecstasies have to be for the present to influence the past?

In what way is an object that was affected by what now is?

“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. — Joshs

We are always carefully on the way to something. We are always bringing something to fruition, making it present. We come toward our possibilities, what we want to be. What we have been is interpreted in this context, in terms of realizing and further articulating our possibilities. Critique of the past is 'really' critique of the present in the realization of a possible future.

What we have been is also the very language and conceptuality which we 'are' by default and which we must use (there are no other tools) in order to critique this past itself, this past that leaps ahead, governing our self-interpretation today and what is possible for us tomorrow.

I am the history from which I'm trying to awake, the history that twists to free itself of itself, like a snake shaking off dead skin. I am that which would be its own father, having never been thrown. The deepest having-been-thrown is perhaps linguistic. My 'spiritual substance' is sediment I did not choose, and 'I' myself (a normative function of language) am part of this sediment. How does the mound of memes in our beehive change with or rather as the times ?


the who of every say dasein

In Joshs explanation he is talking about objects determining each other.

You say:

What we have been is also the very language and conceptuality which we 'are' by default ... — plaque flag

In what sense is what I have been the language and conceptuality I am? If I was dropped on my head as a baby is what happened language and conceptuality? If was neglected and malnourished and ate lead paint how is that language and conceptuality?

and which we must use (there are no other tools) in order to critique this past itself, — plaque flag

If this was my past then I would not have this tool. My ability to develop language would not have developed. And yet, without being able to critique my past I would still have a past.

this past that leaps ahead, governing our self-interpretation today and what is possible for us tomorrow. — plaque flag

I think this happens to some degree but what was need not determine what we will be. If our past governs our self-interpretation then what is to be gained by trying to educate and improve ourselves?

In what sense is what I have been the language and conceptuality I am? If I was dropped on my head as a baby is what happened language and conceptuality? If was neglected and malnourished and ate lead paint how is that language and conceptuality? — Fooloso4

The issue is what you want to identify with. Are you that body ? A merely occurrent thing ? Are you the legs and not the dance ?

To be clear, I'm not denying that we have bodies. I think language is a movement of the body, not some magic immaterial substance 'contained' in sentences but those 'material' sentences themselves. To wag a tongue, to wave a flag.

We need the hardware to run the software. We need legs to dance.

If this was my past then I would not have this tool. My ability to develop language would not have developed. And yet, without being able to critique my past I would still have a past. — Fooloso4

Just to be clear, Heidegger and my creative misreading are both using temporal terms with different intensities of metaphoricity. Let me try another approach. Look at the shape of a hawk. Think of how much 'experience' (struggle for survival) in encoded in its DNA. In the same way, the latest best bots encoded the entire internet, a history of reading and learning, in a few billion floating point numbers. To be encultured is to 'download' compressed tribal 'experience' which is used to meet the future and also functions as an 'organ of perception.' One absorbs norms by interaction and example. Bots internalize them from examples alone.

How did language evolve to such complexity ? I don't pretend to know the details.

I think this happens to some degree but what was need not determine what we will be. If our past governs our self-interpretation then what is to be gained by trying to educate and improve ourselves? — Fooloso4

We can successfully criticize the past 'as' that same past. We can indeed bring one metaphor to bear on another. We are also 'generative.' We somehow create new metaphors.

Clearly we do become more complex, more articulate. To me this is the genius of Hegel. He saw the towering accumulation of knowing's or freedom's self-consciousness. We are the process which decides and articulates its own nature, with greater and greater power and complexity. Theology itself is a god on the way to its birth. Or is it on the way to its mirror ? A cat trying to catch its tail ?

Unthrown on the throne, but the one must be thrown, cannot escape a residue of passivity.


Hegel denies the intelligibility of the idea of a set of determinate concepts (that is, the ground-level concepts we apply in empirical and practical judgment) that is ultimately adequate in the sense that by correctly applying those concepts one will never be led to commitments that are incompatible according to the contents of those concepts. This claim about the inprinciple instability of determinate concepts, the way in which they must collectively incorporate the forces that demand their alteration and further development, is the radically new form Hegel gives to the idea of the conceptual inexhaustibility of sensuous immediacy. Not only is there no fore-ordained “end of history” as far as ordinary concept-application in our cognitive and practical deliberations is concerned, the very idea that such a thing makes sense is for Hegel a relic of thinking according to metacategories of Verstand rather than of Vernunft.

All that he thinks the system of logical concepts he has uncovered and expounded does for us is let us continue to do out in the open, in the full light of self-conscious explicitness that lets us say what we are doing, what we have been doing all along without being able to say what was implicit in those doings.

Just to be clear, Heidegger and my creative misreading are both using temporal terms with different intensities of metaphoricity. — plaque flag

I don't see how a deliberate misreading can make anything clear. Does he use temporal terms metaphorically?

You are leaving out the autonomy project. — plaque flag

How does this fit with the past governing our self-interpretation?

.

I don't see how a deliberate misreading can make anything clear. Does he use temporal terms metaphorically? — Fooloso4

Haven't you read the guy ? Of course. But successful metaphors become literalized. I'd say it's more like a continuum that runs from hard wax to hot wax. I've already quoted some passages for you about interpretedness.

comment
Lots of people quote Heidegger without risking a paraphrase. Calling my interpretation a creative misreading is to some degree just humility. On the other hand, I'm not a disciple of Heidegger but a rival poet 'forced' to consume an influence too weighty to be circumvented. While I do try to project a cohesive interpretation on the texts, it's not my life's project to get Heidegger right but rather to crank out some good philosophy myself, transforming what's been thrown to me into something that is mine, appropriate to the singularity of my mortal moment. Yet as poetry / philosophy this thing I create is for the tribe. I'm a faithful Hegelbot, working on my little piece of the graveleaping selfreferential blockchain.

Haven't you read the guy ? — plaque flag

I have read some things, but I don't recall reading anything that would make me think he was talking metaphorically.

Dasein is time. What can you make of that ? Is that metaphor or what ?

Dasein is time. — plaque flag

Does he say that? Why not Being and Dasein? I would have to read it in context before saying more.

I agree with you; I was really just pointing out that any analysis is necessarily dualistic. In the East awakening is understood to be a return to a unitary being, which we are understood to have "fallen out of" due to nature of dualistic mind. We really are this unitary or nondual being, but we have becomes distracted.

For Heidegger subjects and objects don’t inhere in themselves, have no internality or subsistence. To ‘be’ is to be a crossing or intersection between past and present. Being is one part memory and one part present. It is between these two as a becoming , a transit , a difference. Dasein, as Being-in-the-World, is a worlding’, not the appearing of things before a subject but an enacting of world in which to be is to be displaced into what discloses itself. — Joshs

That's the way I understand Heidegger too, but again as discourse here there is still no hope of evading dualistic thinking even if the specific framing of 'subject/ object' is eschewed. I think Heidegger came to realize the futility of analysis, and that explains his turn to the later work.

Does he say that? Why not Being and Dasein? I would have to read it in context before saying more. — Fooloso4

Yes, of course. Yes, you would.

I don't recall reading anything that would make me think he was talking metaphorically. — Fooloso4

How does this fit with the past governing our self-interpretation? — Fooloso4

I'll show you this again, from the Dilthey draft. You can find a similar thing in the official version.


Being-there as being-in-the-world is primarily governed by logos…Coming into the world, one grows into a determinate tradition of speaking, seeing, interpreting. Being-in-the-world is an already-having-the-world-thus-and-so. This peculiar fact, that the world into which I enter, in which I awaken, is there for me in a determinate interpretedness, I designate terminologically as fore-having.

Dasein is history.
...
Dasein, whiling away its own time in each case, is at the same time always a generation. So a specific interpretedness precedes every Dasein in the shape of the generation itself. What is preserved in the generation is itself the outcome of earlier views and disputes, earlier interpretations and past concerns.
...
The wellspring of such persistent elements lies in the past, but they continue to have such an impact in the present that their dominance is taken for granted and their development forgotten. Such a forgotten past is inherent in the prevailing interpretedness of being-together-with-one-another. To the extent that Dasein lives from (cares about) this past, it is this past itself.
...
The world with which we are concerned and being-in itself are both interpreted within the parameters of a particular framework of intelligibility.
...
One has a timeworn conceptuality at one's disposal. It provides the fore-concept for the interpretation. The interpretedness of a 'time' is strictly determined by these structural factors and the variable forms of their realization. And it is precisely the unobtrusiveness of these factors --the fact that one is not aware of them -- which gives public interpretedness its taken-for-granted character. However, the 'fore'-character in the structure of interpretedness shows us that it is none other than what has already been that jumps ahead, as it were, of a present time pervaded by interpretedness. Guided by its interpretedness, expectant concern lives its own past.

We are thrown into dead interpretations, the cold wax of literalized metaphors mistaken for the given itself. We take as necessary what proves later to have been contingent.