Hi Jud, you wrote:
>I'm afraid that your expectations of me writing a rigorous detailed history
>of such philosophical developments and the diachronic differences and
>nuances
>of meaning are not going to be satisfied Jan, for I have not got the time to
>do that, nor do I have the inclination. The reason I am disinclined? I am
>more interested in using the comparatively short time I have left to explore
>the cutting-edge of ontology [in my small way] rather than reviewing the
>historical aspects of materialism as opposed to full-blown nominalism
>over time.
I understand and recognize your lack of time, it's the same with me,
and the rest of us i guess, we never know how much time is left for
us here below. But in philosophy, i think, historical awareness is and
will always remain of importance, because the basic philosophical
questions, f.i. what is being, what is matter, what is time, who/what
is man, what is knowledge, what is living well ? etc., never get old
and outdated. What earlier philosophers thought and said shape the
context of our current views, point to further directions or show us
their mistakes and gaps, and also the possible 'hidden' questions.
With regard to the 'hard' sciences, i agree, historical aspects are less
urgent, because development in science is of an eliminative nature,
today nobody will still adher to Aristotle's cosmology, or Descartes'
optica, or the theory of phlogiston.
>The main modern difference, as I attempted to signal [in shorthand form]
>above, is that materialist ontology has not totally shed the beliefs in the
>existence of some abstractions, and claims that everything that exists is
>either
>a material thing (a thing having spatial characteristics) or as a function,
>quality, or property of a physical thing. This belief that functions,
>qualities
> and properties exist is THE great divide between the two - although in many
>cases this separation is a blurred one.
The fact that materialists use or postulate abstractions in their thinking
and experimentations is very much a necessity of their whole endeavor.
To make their discoveries they formulate hypotheses containing some
expected abstact quality or property of certain (un)known phenomena,
to test them in experimental settings. Highly abstract concepts as mass,
gravity, energy, light etc. have guided and informed scientific practices
throughout the ages; they were first rationally guessed and postulated
and later empirically confirmed to exist. A materialist ontology can
never do without abstractions, because they are the life blood of their
ungoing conjectures and investigations. The abstract concepts of today
may lead to the newly discovered phenomena of tomorrow.
>Materialism is not doctrinal in the
>same way as transcendentalism tends to be, nor does it have the special
>language of Heideggerianism for example.
Jud, there are doctrinal transcendentalists as there are doctrinal
materialists, as there are non-doctrinal transcendentalists etc., but
these doctrinal and dogmatic aspects or tendencies lie in the closure
and fixedness of their respective theories. Marx, in a certain sense,
was a true dogmatist, for instance in his denial of the right of private
property or because he believed his theory of historical materialism
predicted the only possible way of the development of the capitalist
society. Heidegger certainly is not a dogmatic transcendentalist imo,
because his transcendentalism (i.e. his transcendental questioning)
never comes to a concluding finish, he keeps going on searching,
repeating the old questions in a new light, never satisfied with his
provisional answers, always on the way, trying and reaching for the
hidden and the forgotten. Look at SuZ for instance, at first site it
seems a grand composition aimed at answering the question of Being,
in the being of being-man. Yet he never finished it, could not finish it,
because he discovered that no definite doctrines or fixed dogmata
could shed light on the hidden essence of man as Dasein. [cf. Das
Da-sein als die Wesung der Lichtung des Sichverbergens gehoert zu
diesem Sichverbergen selbst, das als das Er-eignis west. BzP:297]
You keep coming back on the fact that Heidegger's language and
neologisms is such an outrage, but look at Plato's and Aristotle's
most unheard and 'brutal' use of the greek language [cf. SuZ:39]
and also look at the language of our modern physicists, they talk
about quarks, baryons, neutrinos, axions, fotinos, and anti-quarks,
anti-baryons etc. Why not grant our philosophers the same freedom,
especially when they claim to enter new ontological territories ?
>I am, of necessity, generalising of course, but whereas normally a
>materialist explains every apparent instance of a mental phenomenon as a
>feature of
>some physical object, my type of nominalist would say that the word
>*feature*
>is a cop-out, and that neither the mental nor the phenomenal exist, but only
>the human holism exists.
But do you mean to say here that "the human holism" is an entity that
exists, but without any mental capacities and unable to percieve any
phenomena ? What then is the human holism made of ?
>I have many materialist friends who would say for
>example that: *process* actually exists, whilst I would claim that only the
>entities which exist in what we humans would describe as: *being situated in
>certain spatial and contiguous relationships* exist.
In what sense does a (spatial and contiguous) relationship exist ?
>It is a lot easier to type the six-letter word * Matter* rather than the
>longer:
>*That which has mass and occupies space * or *the actually entitic, * or
>*that which exists in the manner of a force field, * , etc.
Imho you are only substituting the abstaction "matter" with other
abstractions as "mass", "space", "force", "field"; it's a gain, i agree,
but not one in favour of supporting your *eliminative* nominalism,
which here seems more like going in the direction of an accumulative
nominalism ? Of course there is nothing wrong with using abstract
shortcuts and conventions in our conversations, we all do, whether
we are nominalists, materialists or transcendentalists. The question
however is: why do we use them ? It is because language is inherently
an imperfect medium, or because we as human beings are imperfect
language users, or is it that the world (the reality, the phenomena) we
try to grasp and communicate to each other, is of such a nature that
we necessary need abstractions, because the whole reality where we
live in contains existing abstractions too ? I believe and have argued
many times before, that what exists in the world is not ultimately
exhausted by nor can be reduced to material or energetic entities only.
Matter and energy are only a part of the world; non-material beings as
time, (empty) space, ideas, words, concepts, emotions, creativity, birth
and death etc. are equally existential and constitutive elements of our
world, because without the existence of these non-material beings we
could not sufficiently explain and understand phenomena as change,
difference, becoming, appearance, illusion etc. One of the weaknesses
of nomimalism and 'crude' materialism is that when they are asked to
explain the possibilty of 'change, difference and novelty' without the
use of non-material beings, they resort to transcendental phenomena
[see f.i. Ockham's omnipotent God; or your transcendental tautology
that "X exists as X"].
>I know that *matter* is a verbal/textual shortcut in the same way that I
>know that the word *via* is a verbal/textual shortcut for the longer: *by
>way
>of. * So I DO know what the word means, it betokens:
>*That which has mass and occupies space, * and my pen is not made of: *that
>which has mass and occupies space, * it is made of wood and graphite.
I agree, your pen is made of wood and graphite, but wood and graphite
are still nomimalistic materialist abstactions, because wood is made up
of molecules, atoms, particles etc.; there is no rockbottom of material
ultimata to which the 'nomos' of the nominalist could un-ambigiously
refer to in any concrete and definite sense. There are no 'atomistic' words
or propositions that perfectly refer, point to or picture a factual state of
the (material) world. As Wittgenstein argued, in his critique on logical
atomism and nominalism, language has no logical depth-stucture, which
in a *one to one* way would picture or mirror the (logical) structure of
the material world. Words and names refer to, and derive their meaning
from other words and names, language-use is more like playing a game
with various (local, provisional, non logical) rules; words and sentences
relate to eachother more like members of a certain family, to understand
the meaning of a word is to see it played out and placed in a whole of
family resemblances [cf. PU: §64-77].
Wittgenstein's argument is in fact quite simple. Language he claims has
no logical ground-structure, because words and concepts (i.e. the basic
ingredients of language) can not uniquely be defined in a finit description
of necessary and sufficient conditions. Let's look at some examples: if
f.i. we take the concept "atom" physicists will agree at some provisional
definition of this object, but it is not a fixed definition because it depends
on the current (fallible) state of our theories of physics and on ongoing
discoveries we continually do in our laboratories. If we take a look at
the word "mind" we see the same problem. How do we use this word
in our everyday conversations ? There seem to be infinit ways to use it
in a meaningful sense, f.i. when i say "i am of two minds", or "he has a
very good mind", or "something slipped my mind" everytime i used the
word "mind" in a different meaning. Or take the concept "game", what
is a "game" ? Can we construct a definition that conveys all possible
games ? There are board-games, outdoor games, collective games,
solitary games, games with no winner etc. etc. And also for something
as simple as a chair; can we formulate a conclusive definition of what
a "chair" is ? A table can be a chair, a box can be a chair, a rock can be
a chair, a pile of books can be a chair, a cow can be a chair (yes, i have
seen farmers who were sitting on a cow when she layed resting in the
stable) etc. Anyway Wittgenstein's whole point is that words do not in
any sense uniquely refer to things or objects in the outside world. If we
want to understand how languages function, we must appreciate that
language-use is very much intertwined with our concrete and practical
ways of living and that words receive their meaning in a dense web of
expression. Therefore, according to Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word
lies in not in a fixed reference to an given object, but in its use in a
certain
life-form. [Lebensform]
>I am not THEY Jan. We are not discussing materialist ontology any more than
>I would claim to be discussing Heideggerian philosophy but using all the
>concepts and principles of Husserlian philosophy or phenomenology.
Okay, but as i said above, if we want have a meaningful discussion
about materialism, nominalism, Marx, Heidegger or whomever, we
must have some sensibility of the history of philosophy and be able
to demarcate and defend our own position as clear as possible vis a
vis the traditional context wherein we are thinking. When you claim
you are a materialistic nominalist, you can expect we are going to
question you about the merits of this position, as much as you are
invited to question the 'principles' of Heideggerian philosophy. And
thus philosophical questioning here is an ongoing quest, necessary
knowing and learning from old territories, Apollonian harmonizing
of Athens, as well as conquering and marking out new territories,
Dionysian uprising of Persephone.
>Jan again:
>Jud, imho these are the only valid lines of argumantation in which
>materialist use the verbal phrasings of "is", "are", "exist as". They
>will never say
>or claim something like "an entity exists in the way it exists" or feel
>satisfied with such as some necessary truism.
>
>Jud:
>Why? I have [with certain important ontological reservations] just agreed
>with them?
Okay, it's good that you have agreed with them, but why then do you
need your extra, i.e. your tautologies ? Modern day materialists and
nominalists don't need tautologies in their respective ontologies, my
question was simply: why do you need them ? Why do you take refuge
to such an ancient and deeply transcendental way of expression and
reasoning if you at the same time keep rejecting and abhorring those
transcendentalisms ?
>Because I do not accept the doctrine that all items in the world are
>composed of matter.
Ahh, but this means that you have changed your mind, because not
so long ago you fiercely defended that there only existed matter/energy
in the cosmos and nothing else. You are slowly becoming a modern
phenomenologist i see, glad to have you on board Jud ;-)
>I see this as a progression of coarse
>materialism towards the more cogent and refined philosophy of nominalism
>as the final,
>ultimate and unique philosophy of actuality and anti-transcendentalism.
Watch out, by claiming that your line of thought will bring the "final,
ultimate and unique philosophy" you're becoming quite close to a very
dogmatist position.
>Heidegger from BT: opening chapters]
>
>"Being" is the most "universal" concept: To on esti malista katholou panton,
>Iiiud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione ets cuius intellectus includitur in
>omnibus, quaecumque quis aprehendit.
>"An understanding of Being is always already contained in everything we
>apprehend in
>beings. But the "universality" of "Being" is not that of genus. "Being"
>does not delimit the
>highest region of beings so far as they are conceptually articulated
>according to genus and
>species: oute to on genos ["Being is not a genus"]. The "universality" of
>Being "surpasses." of genus.
>
>This is no questioning of the universal concept of Being - this is a
>statement of unquesting acceptance of it.
No Jud, you have completely misunderstood what Heidegger is trying
to say here in the opening chapters of SuZ. Our initial point of debate
was your claim that Heidegger takes Being [Sein] as an "a priori". But
he clearly states:" ..., dass in jedem Verhalten und Sein zu Seiendem als
Seiendem a priori ein Raetsel liegt."[SuZ:4], by which he means to say
that the "a priori" in our understanding and relationship to Being is that
it's a "mystery". The above passage you quoted is the first of the three
types of traditional prejudices [Vorurteile] regarding the concept of
Being that Heidegger found in the history of western philosophy; the
other two are that this concept is indefinable [undefinierbar] and self-
evident [selbstverstaendlich]. So far as the tradition has thought in and
accepted these prejudices, Heidegger is very unsatisfied with its answers
because the question of the Being of beings is, according to him, never
posed in its proper sense, namely as the the question of the Being of man.
Traditional philosophers have always thought that Being could first and
most notably be found in the Being of things (i.e. natural artefacts), but
for Heidegger this is the wrong point of departure. He wants to approach
Being from within so to say, from being-human itself, because human
beings are the most close to Being, for they are the ones that pose and
contemplate on this question in the first place. Questioning itself is a
mode-of-Being-a-human-being. Where tradition thought to find the
Being of beings in the essences of nature [phusis], Heidegger hopes to
find it in the existence of human beings. The second difference with
the traditional approach to Being is Heidegger's methodology. He does
not want to study Being of human being with the traditional scientific
apparatus of analytical and positivist techniques aimed at observing and
describing the ontical aspects of human being, from a certain scientific
ontology. Heidegger's method is a phenomenological hermeneutics that
tries to get in view the most original pre-ontical and pre-ontological
domains of human existence. His approach is directed at a pre-scientific
experience, which is the utmost concrete, and a direct self-understanding
and self-finding of our Being as human beings. To give descriptions of
this newly opened and manyfold territory of one's understanding of this
Being a human being [Seinsverstaendnis] Heidegger invents a whole
new set of concepts, namely his terminology of the *existentialia* [Da-
sein; In-der-Welt-sein; Mit-sein; In-sein etc.]. One of, or maybe the most
important ground-trait and horizon of the human existentialia is their
temporatilty [Zeitlichkeit]. The sense of being human means first of all
being-in-time, as concrete humans we are in an original sense 'time-
travellers', we understand our sense of self-being as self-time (don't we
often say of ourself that we: have time, will make time, lost time, gain
time, spoil time, give time, do something or nothing with our time etc.).
[Als der Sinn des Seins des Seiendes, das wir Dasein nennen, wird die
Zeitlichkeit aufgewiesen. SuZ:17]. Our perception of time however is
very unique and personal and most times (sic.) unconscious, as also
with our perception of being. Being and time, according to Heidegger
are therefore the most universal [allgemeinste], indefinable and empty
characteristics of being human, but also -at the same time- the most
concrete, personally unique and singularly near [jemeinig] experience
of being-there-and-here-in-the-world [Die frage nach dem Sinn des
Seins ist die universalste und leerste; in ihr liegt aber zugleich die
Moeglichkeit ihrer eigenen schaerfsten Vereinzelung auf das jeweilige
Dasein. SuZ:39]. Reading SuZ is reading a very personal and unique
account of what Heidegger thought and sensed about the question of
Being, and specifically in the Being of human being. SuZ must never
be understood as a dogmatic treatise on the nature of man, or some
final declaration on the essence fundamental ontology. Personally i
read SuZ more like a novel about the human condition. The truth of
SuZ is Heidegger's personal evocation, written in the context of and
in co-respondence with the important issues of western philosophy,
both a harmonizing with and a breaking away from the tradition.
Some say he utterly failed, others say the opposite. I think it is up
to the individual reader to decide this for him- or herself.
Jud, i know you have often said that you find Heidegger's language
and thinking quite childish, simplistic and naive. And in a certain
sense i very much agree with you on this; Heidegger's thinking and
language (esp. in SuZ if you read behind/beneath the philosophical
jargon) is very pure, innocent and direct; it is an refreshing approach
which is free and un-contaminated of the scientific concepture of
2000 years of western dogmata and Academia, it tries to find and
speak the thought of the pre-socrates, molded in a child-like and
unexpected spontanious language. As a father you must remember
the fascinating phrasing children use when see something new; or
as Jesus once said, it's better to be like the children thence heavenly
grace will surely await you. [Mt.18:1-5]
>Then Being is *granted to us in a bastard format for it is perceived by us
>through the imperfect instrumentality of our senses as transacted by the
>*consciousness* as per the infamous theory of *object givenness.*
>[although why a
>toilet-pan would want to *give itself* to a human being nobody knows]
The fact that a toilet-pan is given [both as vorhanden and zuhanden]
means that it is there, recognizable for you in a meaningful shape and
context, f.i. in your bedroom; if not, you would shit on the floor. A
Hottentot on the other hand might perceive your toilet-pan as something
quite different f.i. a cooking pot. For the Hottentot your toilet-pan is
also 'vorhanden', but it is not 'zuhanden' given for him as a toilet-pan.
>Any confused version of perceived freedom and openness is not worth the
>activity of the neurones that transact them, for the result is falsity and
>an
>imagined freedom. Nor are the results of *object givenness* and the
>psuedo-version of *Being* it generates worth the paper it is written on.
>One man's
>perceived freedom is another's perceived non-self-determination - one
>women's
>perceived openness is another women's perceived sly unreceptivity.
>I am still waiting patiently for your explanation as how the truth of Being
>can be accessed from the multitudinous throng of individually transacted
>versions of it, and how on earth it can be accessed via the non-existent
>[and
>thereby non-conscious - non-instantiating] Dasein with a spurious universal
>version of the truth of Being that immediately nullifies, invalidates
>negates
>and renders useless the individual with his or her differing versions?
>Please answer this profound criticism.
For Heidegger being-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-sein] means that human
beings are originally and primordially directed to, present at and thrown
in the world. This primordial being-there comes always before any form
of perception of this world. Perceptions in seeing, hearing, touching etc.
are, so to speak, second order acts. It's the same with consciousness, to
be conscious of something in the world, you must first already be in the
world; consciousness, thinking, remembering, judging etc. too are second
order acts. Merleau-Ponty once said: perception means already believing,
having faith, in a world [PP:288]. Thus our being in the world is in first
instance a pre-personal, pre-conscious and pre-perceptional affair, and
the 'givenness' of the objects of our perception or in our consciousness
receive their essential sense from this preconditioned domain of being.
Heidegger's existentialia try to give a description of the (pre-)ontological
structures in which the being of human being is primordially immersed;
take f.i. the notion of care [Sorge], a mother's care for her child is not
an object of her perception, neither is it a product of her consciousness,
a mother does not suddenly think 'hey, let me take care of my kid now'.
Her mood (feeling, urge etc) of caring is always already there, in-care
she becomes conscious of herself and her child, in-care she directs her
perception and behaviour. Yet care [Sorge] is not some limiting faculty
or curtailment of human behaviour, it's the opposite, care is originally
a form of creativity, a possibility of freedom; look at the way mothers
are inventive and creative when it comes to caring for their children.
Freedom and openness are not products of our consciousness or our
perceptions, no, they are originally given and receive there possibility
from Being, as our primordial being-human in-the-world. I believe you
have ignored this Heideggerian argument completely.
yours,
Jan
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>I'm afraid that your expectations of me writing a rigorous detailed history
>of such philosophical developments and the diachronic differences and
>nuances
>of meaning are not going to be satisfied Jan, for I have not got the time to
>do that, nor do I have the inclination. The reason I am disinclined? I am
>more interested in using the comparatively short time I have left to explore
>the cutting-edge of ontology [in my small way] rather than reviewing the
>historical aspects of materialism as opposed to full-blown nominalism
>over time.
I understand and recognize your lack of time, it's the same with me,
and the rest of us i guess, we never know how much time is left for
us here below. But in philosophy, i think, historical awareness is and
will always remain of importance, because the basic philosophical
questions, f.i. what is being, what is matter, what is time, who/what
is man, what is knowledge, what is living well ? etc., never get old
and outdated. What earlier philosophers thought and said shape the
context of our current views, point to further directions or show us
their mistakes and gaps, and also the possible 'hidden' questions.
With regard to the 'hard' sciences, i agree, historical aspects are less
urgent, because development in science is of an eliminative nature,
today nobody will still adher to Aristotle's cosmology, or Descartes'
optica, or the theory of phlogiston.
>The main modern difference, as I attempted to signal [in shorthand form]
>above, is that materialist ontology has not totally shed the beliefs in the
>existence of some abstractions, and claims that everything that exists is
>either
>a material thing (a thing having spatial characteristics) or as a function,
>quality, or property of a physical thing. This belief that functions,
>qualities
> and properties exist is THE great divide between the two - although in many
>cases this separation is a blurred one.
The fact that materialists use or postulate abstractions in their thinking
and experimentations is very much a necessity of their whole endeavor.
To make their discoveries they formulate hypotheses containing some
expected abstact quality or property of certain (un)known phenomena,
to test them in experimental settings. Highly abstract concepts as mass,
gravity, energy, light etc. have guided and informed scientific practices
throughout the ages; they were first rationally guessed and postulated
and later empirically confirmed to exist. A materialist ontology can
never do without abstractions, because they are the life blood of their
ungoing conjectures and investigations. The abstract concepts of today
may lead to the newly discovered phenomena of tomorrow.
>Materialism is not doctrinal in the
>same way as transcendentalism tends to be, nor does it have the special
>language of Heideggerianism for example.
Jud, there are doctrinal transcendentalists as there are doctrinal
materialists, as there are non-doctrinal transcendentalists etc., but
these doctrinal and dogmatic aspects or tendencies lie in the closure
and fixedness of their respective theories. Marx, in a certain sense,
was a true dogmatist, for instance in his denial of the right of private
property or because he believed his theory of historical materialism
predicted the only possible way of the development of the capitalist
society. Heidegger certainly is not a dogmatic transcendentalist imo,
because his transcendentalism (i.e. his transcendental questioning)
never comes to a concluding finish, he keeps going on searching,
repeating the old questions in a new light, never satisfied with his
provisional answers, always on the way, trying and reaching for the
hidden and the forgotten. Look at SuZ for instance, at first site it
seems a grand composition aimed at answering the question of Being,
in the being of being-man. Yet he never finished it, could not finish it,
because he discovered that no definite doctrines or fixed dogmata
could shed light on the hidden essence of man as Dasein. [cf. Das
Da-sein als die Wesung der Lichtung des Sichverbergens gehoert zu
diesem Sichverbergen selbst, das als das Er-eignis west. BzP:297]
You keep coming back on the fact that Heidegger's language and
neologisms is such an outrage, but look at Plato's and Aristotle's
most unheard and 'brutal' use of the greek language [cf. SuZ:39]
and also look at the language of our modern physicists, they talk
about quarks, baryons, neutrinos, axions, fotinos, and anti-quarks,
anti-baryons etc. Why not grant our philosophers the same freedom,
especially when they claim to enter new ontological territories ?
>I am, of necessity, generalising of course, but whereas normally a
>materialist explains every apparent instance of a mental phenomenon as a
>feature of
>some physical object, my type of nominalist would say that the word
>*feature*
>is a cop-out, and that neither the mental nor the phenomenal exist, but only
>the human holism exists.
But do you mean to say here that "the human holism" is an entity that
exists, but without any mental capacities and unable to percieve any
phenomena ? What then is the human holism made of ?
>I have many materialist friends who would say for
>example that: *process* actually exists, whilst I would claim that only the
>entities which exist in what we humans would describe as: *being situated in
>certain spatial and contiguous relationships* exist.
In what sense does a (spatial and contiguous) relationship exist ?
>It is a lot easier to type the six-letter word * Matter* rather than the
>longer:
>*That which has mass and occupies space * or *the actually entitic, * or
>*that which exists in the manner of a force field, * , etc.
Imho you are only substituting the abstaction "matter" with other
abstractions as "mass", "space", "force", "field"; it's a gain, i agree,
but not one in favour of supporting your *eliminative* nominalism,
which here seems more like going in the direction of an accumulative
nominalism ? Of course there is nothing wrong with using abstract
shortcuts and conventions in our conversations, we all do, whether
we are nominalists, materialists or transcendentalists. The question
however is: why do we use them ? It is because language is inherently
an imperfect medium, or because we as human beings are imperfect
language users, or is it that the world (the reality, the phenomena) we
try to grasp and communicate to each other, is of such a nature that
we necessary need abstractions, because the whole reality where we
live in contains existing abstractions too ? I believe and have argued
many times before, that what exists in the world is not ultimately
exhausted by nor can be reduced to material or energetic entities only.
Matter and energy are only a part of the world; non-material beings as
time, (empty) space, ideas, words, concepts, emotions, creativity, birth
and death etc. are equally existential and constitutive elements of our
world, because without the existence of these non-material beings we
could not sufficiently explain and understand phenomena as change,
difference, becoming, appearance, illusion etc. One of the weaknesses
of nomimalism and 'crude' materialism is that when they are asked to
explain the possibilty of 'change, difference and novelty' without the
use of non-material beings, they resort to transcendental phenomena
[see f.i. Ockham's omnipotent God; or your transcendental tautology
that "X exists as X"].
>I know that *matter* is a verbal/textual shortcut in the same way that I
>know that the word *via* is a verbal/textual shortcut for the longer: *by
>way
>of. * So I DO know what the word means, it betokens:
>*That which has mass and occupies space, * and my pen is not made of: *that
>which has mass and occupies space, * it is made of wood and graphite.
I agree, your pen is made of wood and graphite, but wood and graphite
are still nomimalistic materialist abstactions, because wood is made up
of molecules, atoms, particles etc.; there is no rockbottom of material
ultimata to which the 'nomos' of the nominalist could un-ambigiously
refer to in any concrete and definite sense. There are no 'atomistic' words
or propositions that perfectly refer, point to or picture a factual state of
the (material) world. As Wittgenstein argued, in his critique on logical
atomism and nominalism, language has no logical depth-stucture, which
in a *one to one* way would picture or mirror the (logical) structure of
the material world. Words and names refer to, and derive their meaning
from other words and names, language-use is more like playing a game
with various (local, provisional, non logical) rules; words and sentences
relate to eachother more like members of a certain family, to understand
the meaning of a word is to see it played out and placed in a whole of
family resemblances [cf. PU: §64-77].
Wittgenstein's argument is in fact quite simple. Language he claims has
no logical ground-structure, because words and concepts (i.e. the basic
ingredients of language) can not uniquely be defined in a finit description
of necessary and sufficient conditions. Let's look at some examples: if
f.i. we take the concept "atom" physicists will agree at some provisional
definition of this object, but it is not a fixed definition because it depends
on the current (fallible) state of our theories of physics and on ongoing
discoveries we continually do in our laboratories. If we take a look at
the word "mind" we see the same problem. How do we use this word
in our everyday conversations ? There seem to be infinit ways to use it
in a meaningful sense, f.i. when i say "i am of two minds", or "he has a
very good mind", or "something slipped my mind" everytime i used the
word "mind" in a different meaning. Or take the concept "game", what
is a "game" ? Can we construct a definition that conveys all possible
games ? There are board-games, outdoor games, collective games,
solitary games, games with no winner etc. etc. And also for something
as simple as a chair; can we formulate a conclusive definition of what
a "chair" is ? A table can be a chair, a box can be a chair, a rock can be
a chair, a pile of books can be a chair, a cow can be a chair (yes, i have
seen farmers who were sitting on a cow when she layed resting in the
stable) etc. Anyway Wittgenstein's whole point is that words do not in
any sense uniquely refer to things or objects in the outside world. If we
want to understand how languages function, we must appreciate that
language-use is very much intertwined with our concrete and practical
ways of living and that words receive their meaning in a dense web of
expression. Therefore, according to Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word
lies in not in a fixed reference to an given object, but in its use in a
certain
life-form. [Lebensform]
>I am not THEY Jan. We are not discussing materialist ontology any more than
>I would claim to be discussing Heideggerian philosophy but using all the
>concepts and principles of Husserlian philosophy or phenomenology.
Okay, but as i said above, if we want have a meaningful discussion
about materialism, nominalism, Marx, Heidegger or whomever, we
must have some sensibility of the history of philosophy and be able
to demarcate and defend our own position as clear as possible vis a
vis the traditional context wherein we are thinking. When you claim
you are a materialistic nominalist, you can expect we are going to
question you about the merits of this position, as much as you are
invited to question the 'principles' of Heideggerian philosophy. And
thus philosophical questioning here is an ongoing quest, necessary
knowing and learning from old territories, Apollonian harmonizing
of Athens, as well as conquering and marking out new territories,
Dionysian uprising of Persephone.
>Jan again:
>Jud, imho these are the only valid lines of argumantation in which
>materialist use the verbal phrasings of "is", "are", "exist as". They
>will never say
>or claim something like "an entity exists in the way it exists" or feel
>satisfied with such as some necessary truism.
>
>Jud:
>Why? I have [with certain important ontological reservations] just agreed
>with them?
Okay, it's good that you have agreed with them, but why then do you
need your extra, i.e. your tautologies ? Modern day materialists and
nominalists don't need tautologies in their respective ontologies, my
question was simply: why do you need them ? Why do you take refuge
to such an ancient and deeply transcendental way of expression and
reasoning if you at the same time keep rejecting and abhorring those
transcendentalisms ?
>Because I do not accept the doctrine that all items in the world are
>composed of matter.
Ahh, but this means that you have changed your mind, because not
so long ago you fiercely defended that there only existed matter/energy
in the cosmos and nothing else. You are slowly becoming a modern
phenomenologist i see, glad to have you on board Jud ;-)
>I see this as a progression of coarse
>materialism towards the more cogent and refined philosophy of nominalism
>as the final,
>ultimate and unique philosophy of actuality and anti-transcendentalism.
Watch out, by claiming that your line of thought will bring the "final,
ultimate and unique philosophy" you're becoming quite close to a very
dogmatist position.
>Heidegger from BT: opening chapters]
>
>"Being" is the most "universal" concept: To on esti malista katholou panton,
>Iiiud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione ets cuius intellectus includitur in
>omnibus, quaecumque quis aprehendit.
>"An understanding of Being is always already contained in everything we
>apprehend in
>beings. But the "universality" of "Being" is not that of genus. "Being"
>does not delimit the
>highest region of beings so far as they are conceptually articulated
>according to genus and
>species: oute to on genos ["Being is not a genus"]. The "universality" of
>Being "surpasses." of genus.
>
>This is no questioning of the universal concept of Being - this is a
>statement of unquesting acceptance of it.
No Jud, you have completely misunderstood what Heidegger is trying
to say here in the opening chapters of SuZ. Our initial point of debate
was your claim that Heidegger takes Being [Sein] as an "a priori". But
he clearly states:" ..., dass in jedem Verhalten und Sein zu Seiendem als
Seiendem a priori ein Raetsel liegt."[SuZ:4], by which he means to say
that the "a priori" in our understanding and relationship to Being is that
it's a "mystery". The above passage you quoted is the first of the three
types of traditional prejudices [Vorurteile] regarding the concept of
Being that Heidegger found in the history of western philosophy; the
other two are that this concept is indefinable [undefinierbar] and self-
evident [selbstverstaendlich]. So far as the tradition has thought in and
accepted these prejudices, Heidegger is very unsatisfied with its answers
because the question of the Being of beings is, according to him, never
posed in its proper sense, namely as the the question of the Being of man.
Traditional philosophers have always thought that Being could first and
most notably be found in the Being of things (i.e. natural artefacts), but
for Heidegger this is the wrong point of departure. He wants to approach
Being from within so to say, from being-human itself, because human
beings are the most close to Being, for they are the ones that pose and
contemplate on this question in the first place. Questioning itself is a
mode-of-Being-a-human-being. Where tradition thought to find the
Being of beings in the essences of nature [phusis], Heidegger hopes to
find it in the existence of human beings. The second difference with
the traditional approach to Being is Heidegger's methodology. He does
not want to study Being of human being with the traditional scientific
apparatus of analytical and positivist techniques aimed at observing and
describing the ontical aspects of human being, from a certain scientific
ontology. Heidegger's method is a phenomenological hermeneutics that
tries to get in view the most original pre-ontical and pre-ontological
domains of human existence. His approach is directed at a pre-scientific
experience, which is the utmost concrete, and a direct self-understanding
and self-finding of our Being as human beings. To give descriptions of
this newly opened and manyfold territory of one's understanding of this
Being a human being [Seinsverstaendnis] Heidegger invents a whole
new set of concepts, namely his terminology of the *existentialia* [Da-
sein; In-der-Welt-sein; Mit-sein; In-sein etc.]. One of, or maybe the most
important ground-trait and horizon of the human existentialia is their
temporatilty [Zeitlichkeit]. The sense of being human means first of all
being-in-time, as concrete humans we are in an original sense 'time-
travellers', we understand our sense of self-being as self-time (don't we
often say of ourself that we: have time, will make time, lost time, gain
time, spoil time, give time, do something or nothing with our time etc.).
[Als der Sinn des Seins des Seiendes, das wir Dasein nennen, wird die
Zeitlichkeit aufgewiesen. SuZ:17]. Our perception of time however is
very unique and personal and most times (sic.) unconscious, as also
with our perception of being. Being and time, according to Heidegger
are therefore the most universal [allgemeinste], indefinable and empty
characteristics of being human, but also -at the same time- the most
concrete, personally unique and singularly near [jemeinig] experience
of being-there-and-here-in-the-world [Die frage nach dem Sinn des
Seins ist die universalste und leerste; in ihr liegt aber zugleich die
Moeglichkeit ihrer eigenen schaerfsten Vereinzelung auf das jeweilige
Dasein. SuZ:39]. Reading SuZ is reading a very personal and unique
account of what Heidegger thought and sensed about the question of
Being, and specifically in the Being of human being. SuZ must never
be understood as a dogmatic treatise on the nature of man, or some
final declaration on the essence fundamental ontology. Personally i
read SuZ more like a novel about the human condition. The truth of
SuZ is Heidegger's personal evocation, written in the context of and
in co-respondence with the important issues of western philosophy,
both a harmonizing with and a breaking away from the tradition.
Some say he utterly failed, others say the opposite. I think it is up
to the individual reader to decide this for him- or herself.
Jud, i know you have often said that you find Heidegger's language
and thinking quite childish, simplistic and naive. And in a certain
sense i very much agree with you on this; Heidegger's thinking and
language (esp. in SuZ if you read behind/beneath the philosophical
jargon) is very pure, innocent and direct; it is an refreshing approach
which is free and un-contaminated of the scientific concepture of
2000 years of western dogmata and Academia, it tries to find and
speak the thought of the pre-socrates, molded in a child-like and
unexpected spontanious language. As a father you must remember
the fascinating phrasing children use when see something new; or
as Jesus once said, it's better to be like the children thence heavenly
grace will surely await you. [Mt.18:1-5]
>Then Being is *granted to us in a bastard format for it is perceived by us
>through the imperfect instrumentality of our senses as transacted by the
>*consciousness* as per the infamous theory of *object givenness.*
>[although why a
>toilet-pan would want to *give itself* to a human being nobody knows]
The fact that a toilet-pan is given [both as vorhanden and zuhanden]
means that it is there, recognizable for you in a meaningful shape and
context, f.i. in your bedroom; if not, you would shit on the floor. A
Hottentot on the other hand might perceive your toilet-pan as something
quite different f.i. a cooking pot. For the Hottentot your toilet-pan is
also 'vorhanden', but it is not 'zuhanden' given for him as a toilet-pan.
>Any confused version of perceived freedom and openness is not worth the
>activity of the neurones that transact them, for the result is falsity and
>an
>imagined freedom. Nor are the results of *object givenness* and the
>psuedo-version of *Being* it generates worth the paper it is written on.
>One man's
>perceived freedom is another's perceived non-self-determination - one
>women's
>perceived openness is another women's perceived sly unreceptivity.
>I am still waiting patiently for your explanation as how the truth of Being
>can be accessed from the multitudinous throng of individually transacted
>versions of it, and how on earth it can be accessed via the non-existent
>[and
>thereby non-conscious - non-instantiating] Dasein with a spurious universal
>version of the truth of Being that immediately nullifies, invalidates
>negates
>and renders useless the individual with his or her differing versions?
>Please answer this profound criticism.
For Heidegger being-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-sein] means that human
beings are originally and primordially directed to, present at and thrown
in the world. This primordial being-there comes always before any form
of perception of this world. Perceptions in seeing, hearing, touching etc.
are, so to speak, second order acts. It's the same with consciousness, to
be conscious of something in the world, you must first already be in the
world; consciousness, thinking, remembering, judging etc. too are second
order acts. Merleau-Ponty once said: perception means already believing,
having faith, in a world [PP:288]. Thus our being in the world is in first
instance a pre-personal, pre-conscious and pre-perceptional affair, and
the 'givenness' of the objects of our perception or in our consciousness
receive their essential sense from this preconditioned domain of being.
Heidegger's existentialia try to give a description of the (pre-)ontological
structures in which the being of human being is primordially immersed;
take f.i. the notion of care [Sorge], a mother's care for her child is not
an object of her perception, neither is it a product of her consciousness,
a mother does not suddenly think 'hey, let me take care of my kid now'.
Her mood (feeling, urge etc) of caring is always already there, in-care
she becomes conscious of herself and her child, in-care she directs her
perception and behaviour. Yet care [Sorge] is not some limiting faculty
or curtailment of human behaviour, it's the opposite, care is originally
a form of creativity, a possibility of freedom; look at the way mothers
are inventive and creative when it comes to caring for their children.
Freedom and openness are not products of our consciousness or our
perceptions, no, they are originally given and receive there possibility
from Being, as our primordial being-human in-the-world. I believe you
have ignored this Heideggerian argument completely.
yours,
Jan
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---