On the other hand, legitimate participation in this conversation presupposes adequate grounding in the pertinent fundamentals. It now seems apparent my grounding is deficient. — ucarr

That kind of humility is laudable and rare. As I see it, we have to take the risk and talk it out.

they should be at pains to surround the new expression with an explanatory text that clarifies the new meaning. — ucarr

I agree. That's why I suggested googling the phrase, thinking you'd find this:

Being is evidently not a real predicate, that is, a conception of something which is added to the conception of some other thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations in it. ...

A hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars. For, as the latter indicate the conception, and the former the object, on the supposition that the content of the former was greater than that of the latter, my conception would not be an expression of the whole object, and would consequently be an inadequate conception of it. But in reckoning my wealth there may be said to be more in a hundred real dollars than in a hundred possible dollars—that is, in the mere conception of them...

https://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/articles/kantexistence-a.pdf

Note that that's Kant, not Heidegger. We have arrived relatively late to this conversation about existence. In case it's not clear, I don't personally take Kant or Heidegger or anyone as an authority on the matter. I do think Heidegger writes thousands of words to explain himself. Personally I think his early writing on death is unclear, possibly because he wasn't exactly sure just how it connected to his other central ideas.

Sometimes names are used to give weight and authority to arguments that won't stand on their own — Fooloso4

:up:

Also, I think Kojeve is great.

If one wants to discuss ideas, it may not matter whether this is or is not what a particular philosopher means. — Fooloso4

Well said. As you probably know, Kojeve's Hegel was more influential in a certain context than Hegel's Hegel might have been. Often the great names are used as avatars or masks, sometimes for laudable reasons perhaps (modesty?) but sometimes in what might be called a transference. To me some kind of rhetorical battle for status is at the center, but I think there's also something noble and genuine at the center. It's not just ego. In the same way, I think natural scientists sometimes forget themselves in their work, even if they also often enjoy the fantasy of a certain kind of recognition.

Do Heidegger's neo-logismic contortions -- such as this one -- really connect to statements understood to be logical? — ucarr

Heidegger is one of those valuable philosophers who destabilize our complacent sense that we know what we are talking about when we babble on about being and logic and truth quasimechanically. The point is a rethinking of what we take for granted. It therefore makes sense that Heidegger is offensive, just as a psychoanalytic theory is offensive. Offensiveness proves nothing in itself of course. As I see it, people would like to dismiss Heidegger, but some of them can't stop licking the cold sore*. I couldn't. And I finally got 'it' well enough to be glad I didn't flee the cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, maybe Emerson or someone I haven't heard of it just as good. (Emerson is truly great. )

*Turns out that what I had in mind is a "mouth ulcer."

I'm afraid that doesn't quite cut it, because if P is false, (1), (2), and (3) will still be true and hence it will still be true (on your definition) that Sally knows that P. — Ludwig V

Personally, I'm OK with that. I think it's too restrictive (possibly completely paralyzing, so that we couldn't honestly use the word) to require perfect certainty with the use of 'know.'

But let me reiterate that we are cowriting the dictionary of a utopia that will never arrive. The 'real' or 'more real' meaning of 'know' is a tangled mess to be empirically investigated.

It's been argued that existence is not a predicate. I'm not so sure what to make of the meaning of being myself (or of the meaning of meaning.) I think Heidegger found a strange question. That philosophy is fundamental ontology is maybe even tautological, and perhaps it's a good thing that this tautology throws us into the hermeneutic circle. Anyway, he knew that it would sound like nonsense or confusion to many other philosophers. For me, Heidegger has been more valuable for his analysis of human existence (his early stuff, starting well before B&T, as explored in Van Buren, for instance.) The fundamental concept, in my view, is historicity. We are (language is, being is) 'historical' in a certain way.

Consider a beautiful paragraph on 41 of the MR translation which ends:

Dasein has grown up into a traditional way of interpreting itself...by this understanding the possibilities of its being are regulated. Its own past -- and this always means the past of its 'generation' -- is not something that follows along after Dasein, but something which already goes ahead of it.

The past goes ahead of us, constricting our interpretation, mostly without us realizing it. This is why Heidegger has to go back to previous ontological decisions that have calcified into 'common sense' that we mostly cannot question, because we mostly do not see the water we swim in.

I am nobody’s fool because I have chose ... [the] dialectical unity that overcomes lack and negation. — Joshs

But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself....

'Tarrying with the negative' is a necessary 'detour' to an impossible positive ?

An arbitrary foundation. — Joshs

For better or worse, I take Darwinian evolution seriously. I don't see us as blank slates. For me there's an animal foundation. A person might suggest that the fear of death is an evolved piece of irrationality, but there's also an advantage to be had in conquest, which 'justifies' (game theoretically? economically?) a complementary death-risking aggression that might make 'genuine' philosophy possible in the first place. I'm casting genuineness in terms of questioning tribal norms here. The personal courage which helps the tribe when the monsters come has a secondary effect of generating internal monsters.

The big picture is that I embrace something akin perhaps to 'will to power', with God or the gods as an image of what we'd like to be. In Hobbes, kings cannot stop conquering, even when sated, because their satiety must be made secure. The will wills itself, more power and freedom, but for what ? An indestructible orgy of narcissism ? A flight from looming merely animal senescence and death symbolized by shit ? Personally I think Becker is basically right. Culture or spirit is an 'immortal' flame that leaps from melting candle to melting candle. To put it playfully, it's a (necessary) group delusion that we don't shit ourselves and die. 'Truths are lies without which we can't make it.' (Taken without irony, it becomes self-cancelling ?) On the other hand, I maintain that the self is not the body, though it depends on it. It's a differentiated piece of the tribal software, a snowflake experimental version, a candidate update.

Firstly, it entails the existential fact of my existence and, moreover, it entails my acknowledgement of my own existence. — ucarr

True. But what I was getting at (and it's not so easy) is what is meant by saying that something is ?

I mean what is that person trying to say ?

I read the chapters on death in BT as metaphors. Death means ultimate nothingness or the end of the being-in the-world. — waarala

It's blurry, but I read him to mean especially our own experience as mortals of the looming possibility of this nothingness. Each of us has our own death out there somewhere waiting for us. The point seems to be that this individualizes us in a way that nothing else can match. I imagine a man climbing a mountain alone, with death as some transfiguration and yet annihilation at the peak. A soldier before the battle, hoping he'll be brave enough, also comes to mind, along with Julien Sorel hoping to keep his cool as he walks to the guillotine.

What does it mean to say that something exists ? that something is ?

I agree that it's important to go to the original texts. The main thing I'd add to what you've written is that philosophy is (it seems to me) most essentially about the matter itself (reality) and only indirectly about the various approaches to that matter. Since (human) reality is historical, this indirectness or mediation is necessary, but maybe it's fitting to remember the reason for all the talk about talk about talk.

I think we have to make sure that our structure of becoming is truly self-reflexive. — Joshs

I agree, but why ? What drives us this way ? Is it connected to the causi sui project ? the "thus-I-willed-it" project ? the nobody's fool project ? the history-as-a-nightmare-from-which-I'm-trying-to-awake project ?

I've also been reading Bourdieu's Distinction lately, which is basically about taste and hierarchy. Bourdieu discusses the distance that the bourgeoisie can take from a world, made possible by their position in the (material) economy, which thereby becomes spectacle. The lower class person can't afford the requisite aesthetic training, which is something like a sublimated form of Veblen's conspicuous consumption. Anyway, I was immediately interested in Bourdieu's own position in this hierarchy as a sociologist looking down and enjoying (and presenting for my enjoyment) this spectacle of the bourgeoisie looking down and enjoying the world as a spectacle.

But is wealth necessary for this wicked enjoyment ? What if a human being stops trying to survive at all costs ? Or more mildly lives with just one foot in the grave ? What if a heretic abandons wife and child and lives the woods to contemplate the world as spectacle ? What do we make of the early martyrs ? Do you know that speech in Braveheart where the soldiers are encouraged to fight and not face regret on their deathbed for the missed opportunity for a genuine appropriation of their time ? If one questions to the very end, it's not clear that longevity even ought to be the goal. 'He who seeks to keep his life shall lose it.' How does Heidegger's interest in death connect to all of this ? I'm also interested in a Hamlet/Socrates connection. Why do we fear death? "Since no man knows aught of all he leaves behind, what is it to leave betimes?" Does the kindly schoolmaster have an answer that isn't just what one says in 'the impostume of peace' ? When philosophy questions the rationality or legitimacy of the fear of death, it becomes an undecidable poison/cure. 'Take up your cross hemlock and walk with me."

I think you are misunderstanding me ? I love Derrida.

One cannot appeal, as dialectics does, to a criterion of coherence that transcends and grounds all contingent historical contexts. — Joshs

OK. Here is where maybe we clash. Your quote above seems to speak about something fundamental, towards something which 'transcends and grounds' everything else. You say that one cannot, I mean, hinting at some eternal-dominating structure. In my view, philosophy can't help doing something like this. There 'must' be some limiting of play, some center. The game is often enough seeing just how little we need in that center. What's the minimum we can get away with ? But if we claim to destroy the center or the universal vantage point (or whatever plays the Role), then we've sacrificed exactly the leverage that such a claim needs in order to be taken seriously.

I'm not antipomo, but I do think that pomo sometimes crosses a line into self-cancellation , without always noticing this crossing.

Thank you!

Also, @Joshs, you might like this.

Here's a very Heideggerian moment in Hegel's famous preface, which I postulate was influential.

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not.

Analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, did in fact consist in nothing else than doing away with its character of familiarity. To break up an idea into its ultimate elements means returning upon its moments, which at least do not have the form of the given idea when found, but are the immediate property of the self. Doubtless this analysis only arrives at thoughts which are themselves familiar elements, fixed inert determinations.

These 'inert determinations' are what I'd call inherited sediment. They are decisions made in the past which can only be questioned once a certain kind of deconstructive digging recovers them for awareness. What we took for necessary is revealed to be contingent, so that we are freer than before.

Thank you for the clarification. I still think you ought to just come out with concrete objections. Respectfully, it's hard to see how you are not just hinting at your own superior wisdom. As I see it, if you know better than me on this or that topic, make a case. I am willing to be corrected.

these realist models become incoherent. It no longer makes sense to build structures that progressively unify themselves — Joshs

I just want to point out that you are criticizing my theory that theory is directed toward greater and greater coherence in terms of its supposed incoherence. You also invoke strong thinkers with which my own theory 'ought' to cohere. (I'd define a strong thinker in terms of that norm, or as one whose work deserves being woven into the story the storyteller tells about itself.)

These substitutes for god simply reinstantiate theology in a different form. — Joshs

Perhaps, but maybe philosophy is the generalization or update of theology. Atheism makes a god of humanity. I guess I'm a structuralist of some variety, so I'd say look behind the signifiers at the role they play in the system. To what do we aspire and appeal?

the past arrives already changed by the present that occurs into it , these realist models become incoherent. — Joshs

The changing of the past is part of what the self-updating philosophy software does. What happened is a function of what ought to happen. (To be sure, there's an important sub-game that tries to think what is most invariant in the past, perhaps in terms of physical science.). Philosophy is the Inner Party, but in this version they are the good guys or at least antiheroes.

I'm suspicious of your deep suspicion, at least in its abstract form. We figure out how well we understand philosophers in the first place by discussing them. Life is terribly finite. It will not do to wait for a perfect clarity that may never come before one embraces the risk of an experiment. You seem to suggest that philosophy not be done -- or only done elsewhere in order to be shown off as a completed product here.

You can always hold onto a Kierkegaardian interpretation of Heidegger by sticking with Dreyfus , Sheehan or any of the other theologically oriented readers of him. But many have rejected those readings. — Joshs

This is where Heidegger's thinking of death becomes applicable to itself. Folks do of course have all kinds of biases and preferences. We all enter the game through a different entrance and hold more or less tightly to this or that contingent assimilation of the other as self. We might talk of transference as choosing some hero as an avatar.

I'm an atheist, so I like Heidegger's atheistical transformation of Kierkegaard. In fact, my own work (more novel than paper) is focused on philosophy itself (not just writing) as pharmakon (poison/cure). The 'toxic masculinity' in Heidegger and Hamlet is more explicit than that in Jesus and Socrates, who walk into their deaths. Of course Heidegger 'walked into his death' (only) virtually. What I'm getting at in my blurry way is the risk and glory of standing alone. If we do as strong philosophers do and not as they say, then we interpret them violently, with an eye toward an unborn future and not toward the past with the sleepy eye of a historian who is satisfied with mere correctness (like Nietzsche's men of science as smooth mirrors unable to create.)

What do you think is preserved of the Hegelian dialectic in Heidegger ( or Nietzsche, for that matter)? — Joshs

Big picture, we can understand the sequence of philosophers as spirit/'software' becoming more and more aware of itself, making its nature more explicit, thereby increasing its distance from itself and its 'turning radius.' This might be described as communal self-knowledge.

For context, I claim (with some irony) that there is only one philosopher. This philosopher is a computation on the 'cloud' of linguistically-and-otherwise networked human brains. This 'philosopher' is generative and adversarial, arguing with itself like Hamlet, sedimenting a larger and larger model which can only be relevant, given the finite hardware, if sufficiently compressed. In this connectionist tale, it's therefore the task to find the best connections between the dots and not simply as many dots as possible. Is this why it's almost silly to pretend to start from scratch and do philosophy without allusion to those who came before ? That'd be the waste of immense inherited wealth, and suggest a low level of insight about the historicity of spirit.

Whichever way we look, it is always from the the archway of this moment, and we never stray from it. — unenlightened

This might be one way to interpret 'existence is time.'

When we see the cyclic nature of time, we have stationed ourselves in eternity. — frank

:up:

Perhaps philosophy is essentially a leap out of the circle in order to gaze on it from above -- to see it as the gods see it.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away. (Homer)

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. (Ecclesiastes)

Well, I am neither wicked nor anguished. I guess I'm just opinionated and stubborn. — T Clark

Oh, but I include 'opinionated and stubborn' under 'wicked.' (My point is that sometimes we just like to play with thoughts, while at other times it's no longer play but all too serious.)

Thanks for the welcome!

How can "beings" as signifier have meaning if it doesn't signify common attributes of things, thereby gathering these things together into a set? — ucarr

You might want to google 'existence is not a predicate' for the argument toward that conclusion. I do not mean to imply that the story stops there or anywhere.

I'm not sure we should trust Heidegger when it comes to Kierkegaard. I'm reading K's journals at the moment and the strong influence is clear. As I mentioned above, Heidegger himself seems influenced by Hegel, even if he rips out this or that module, for which he indeed deserves credit.

Thanks ! I haven't got around to reading Dilthey himself.

Life not merely as biological concept but rather as a human life i.e. as something spiritual (geistig) i.e. cultural-historical. And this human environment is at its base a language-like, differentiated-articulated whole. With his phenomenological approach Heidegger's aim is to treat this "life context", as ontology of "Dasein", more systematically and strictly than Dilthey . — waarala

This sounds correct. As far as I can tell, this is also a description of zeitgeist or 'the spirit of the times.' Or, to quote Shakespeare's Edmund, 'men as as the times are.' Do you find Heidegger plausible as a modification of Hegel ? It's as if there are a stream of German thinkers who take cultural-historical 'spirit' (software) seriously, giving the social a kind of priority to the personal. As you stress, Heidegger adds the radically subjective moment, which is a bit tricky to connect with the rest (which is not to say impossible.) Anyway, what do you think about Hegel influencing Heidegger ? And what do you make of the significance of death in Heidegger ?

It passes on information with an endorsement and a source, so there is some reason to trust it. — Ludwig V

Right. Amplifying: I say that Sally knows P if

(1) Sally believes P
(2) Sally can justify her belief in P (according to current norms)
(3) I also believe P

I think we agree that this is an idealized definition. In other words, real life is messy and inconsistent. People use 'know' without much precision. So philosophers write a dictionary for the Utopia which will never arrive, which is probably good for their own thinking even in this world.

Good points ! We are like wicked children, who question what they are told, because it feels good. But we are also anguished adults, truly troubled about whether X is right and whether Y could be true.

there has to be a point when justifications come to an end and "it's just what we do" kicks in. — Ludwig V

:up:

This makes sense, because it costs to doubt. Smooth operation is paused. I have to stop and make sure, 'waste time' questioning this or that, when I could be steaming ahead. Then there's the cost of feeding a complex nervous system, of calculating a massive model when a cheap model might be the better deal, all things considered.

So what is the perfect definition of knowledge? — Cidat

Is knowledge playing the role of an abstract hero here ? I think (?) you are looking into what kind of claims should be respected and trusted. As you say, we can't limit ourselves to infallible claims. In my view, it might be better to discuss the ideal philosopher or the truly rational person. I apologize if I'm way off on what you are ultimately getting at.

Do you want it to reflect current use in ordinary language? That is what dictionary definitions do, so the obvious thing would be to consult a good English dictionary — SophistiCat

:up:

Idle talk doesn’t illustrate the sedimented nature of language, as if we directly introject verbal meanings from the culture. — Joshs

Thanks for the detailed reply. Having the quotes on idle talk around is useful. Now I respond (all can be prefaced with the tedious 'in my view.') Quotes are from The Concept of Time again.

Introjection is your word, though, not mine. My metaphor would be joining a dance already in progress. Heidegger's work is itself a focal point, something we both find already available in our creations of ourselves. Idle talk about Heidegger would be the place where every One is forced to start. It's what one knows of course, that he was a nazi, that he was an existentialist, that he was a mystic or a charlatan (if one came up in a community where that was the default to accept or rebel against), that he was a secret king of thought, that he climbed on top of Hannah.

What is talked about is understood only approximately and superficially.. Note that this is not the absence of sense but just a diminished form of it, 'chugging along in language.' One, [the Anyone], is a lazy chatbot, barfing up the gossip of a curiosity which is never serious. "Idle talk becomes...the mode of being of the Anyone", which is to say the who of everyday Dasein. Our human default is falling immersion that does not pause to appropriate originally. Note also that "Language itself has Dasein's kind of being," and that "every language is historical in its very being." This is why phenomenology had to become interpretative. "Language is an organ of perception" (can't remember the source.) And interpretative means historical, given the character of language. The beginning lies before us on our way to the future.

Discourse... has the possibility of becoming idle talk, and as such of not really keeping being-in-the-world open in an articulated understanding, but of closing it off and covering over inner worldly beings.

This is what is meant by the metaphor of sedimentation. We start in invisible-to-us prejudice and unnoticed ambiguity and do what we can to improve the situation, running around that familiar racetrack, the hermeneutic circle, never getting final clarity.

Idle talkers "pass along what they have read and heard about the matter without any sensitivity for the distinction of whether or not that opinion or their own is actually relevant to the matter. Their care in discovering does not apply to the matter but to the discourse." To me this hints at both curiosity in the negative sense and the grasping of the phenomenon with help from merely formal indications. Also I trust we can both agree that point of talking about Heidegger is to talk about reality, which includes talking about Heidegger because reality is fundamentally social and historical (and includes a way of looking at it that methodically ignores this or that aspect as much as possible.)

Language isnt the sedimented past, it is the transformation of this past in the disclosure of the world. — Joshs

I'd say it's both sediment and transformative disclosure. See page 270, for instance, of the lecture version of The Concept of Time, which can be summarized as "the Anyone has in idle talk its true form of being." And "what one [the Anyone] says is really what controls the various possibilities of the being of Dasein." And sure enough here we are talking about Heidegger, working from within the conceivable and genuine possibilities he helped install, himself enable by Kierkegaard and Luther and ...

What I'm gesturing toward is our culture (centered here on language, but applicable to physical technology also) as a Neurathian vessel which can only be modified at sea.

In case it helps, I reject solipsism as self-dissolving. It's crucial, in my view, to understand thrown-ness as essentially social-shared, even if each child does get a customized version of the software.

Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. — Joshs

Is it not also plausible that philosophy seeks rhetorical leverage ? In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined. (Szasz)

What unites all these attempts as metaphysical is their defining of this ultimate ground as some sort of abiding presence. — Joshs

Is it plausible that abiding presence is a metaphor for immortality?

“… all metaphysics leaves something essential unthought: its own ground and foundation. — Joshs

If we are thrown into a language with a history and a baked-in interpretation of life that can only be questioned within that unchosen language, then perhaps we 'are' metaphysics. Philosophy dreams of escaping itself, catching its own tail, being its own father. Becker, in The Denial of Death, stresses the project of becoming self-caused, becoming god, becoming unthrown...and even reinterprets the Oedipus complex as this Sartrean project.

What crystal castles we construct, when first we see that we are fucked.

It is overlooked that ontology arises out of a already functional world which already has its understanding of being. There is a basic substrate within which all thinking already operates, which it always presumes and which can't be ignored or abstracted. — waarala

Perhaps Heidegger was influenced by Kierkegaard in this. In his journal (I paraphrase), he criticizes the fantasy of presuppositionless philosophy by emphasizing that the medium, language, is already there, as a kind of inescapable presupposition. This is one of my favorite themes in Heidegger. This inherited medium is the sediment of the living thought of previous generations. We are thrown into ways of thinking, a cage of concepts that can only be question from within, using those very concepts.*

*This sounds more gloomy than I meant it to be. The tone is supposed to be neutral.

I think that's what someone might mean by it. But I don't think dualism stands up very well to criticism.

My own concern is along these lines:
The hard problem of consciousness 'should' be the hard problems [plural] of consciousnesses [plural].
The confusion is right there in the framing, assuming a contradiction...that something is fundamentally private and yet certainly iterated. The successful public use of signs is not the result of such internal synchronization but throws up the logical illusion in the first place (a certain informal proto-dualism is ethically convenient, because 'intentions' matter, presumably as tendencies.)