On Tue, 18 Jul 1995, David Blacker wrote:
> I hardly know where to start, there are so many interesting things being
> 1) Lois: I think your remarks on disclosure are on target, but I would
> make sure to put a certain spin on it. I think it's not just "truth as
> disclosure" but more "truth as disclos-ING." (I predict you're going to
> agree with this.)
> It makes a difference if you really want to get away from
> realism-idealism; truth is something we experience.
I found your note difficult, David, and I am afraid this one is more a
description of my difficulty than anything very constructive. Maybe if
you could answer my questions, I could find a more productive way to
conect our thoughts on these matters.
But on reflection, I think I prefer to use the metaphor of disclosure
differently (and yes, to take it as a metaphor) and to say that 'truth
discloses an aspect of what is there. What we experience is the there,
the real. I tend to want to use the word 'truth' as the language which
reveals and illuminates the real. What do the rest of you feel about
this? In my reading of Heidegger, this is more consistent with his
intent. Do others disagree?
...That experience is "true," maybe
> vulgarly pragmatic, but nonetheless the hand we are dealt. Technology in
> the deep sense has its truth and can't be argued with (like using a
> costs-benefits analysis to argue against daming the Rhine, using modus
> ponens to argue against formal logic).
I'm not sure what calling the referent the 'truth' has to do with this
thought. It seems to me that it might erase Rorty's possibility of
redescription? No? That is says what is 'true' is beyond redescription?
That truth dictates the language we must use to reflect it? If so, then
we are back to a correspondence theory through the backdoor. How does
language 'disclose'?
And you say:
> This does seem to me to be
> non-idealistic, in the sense that something "outside" us is setting the
> understanding's parameters.
Yes, that's my reading of your reading. Something out there is
determining what language is correct. Right?
> What I have trouble getting (among so many
> things!) is, for lack of a better way to put it, the question of agency in
> all of this: here we are truth-ing (disclosing, that is, always at the same
> time concealing and revealing, right?), sort of "on for the ride," as it
> were. Sorry for the simple question, but who/what is taking me on the ride?
> Language? Rede (discourse)?
I think your question is framed by your seeing truth as the referent, not
language. If I read you correctly, 'truth-reality' dictates language,
but then you say that maybe language is dictating? I'm confused here.
How can language be dictated and dictating in your frame?
> the Gestell? Being? In asking this, I feel
> that I've gone astray somehow and am back into a kind of thinking not
> available for H. Where am I erring, then, when I raise that question? Why
> precisely should I not be looking for an "agent"?
I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying, too. Do my
questions above lead us in useful places for better questions?
But the agency of DASEIN does seem lost in your system.
..Lois Shawver
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