Let's say, I need to drink water from the waterhole, I like eating grass, and I am afraid of meeting lions. Who cares if I have established my identity of an antelope? I may not acknowledge that I am me (which obviously strips me of some advanced reflective mental faculties), but my agency still creates a subject's point of reference. My thought process needs to be coherent in order to induce a subject, because we mean something sustained by this concept. If I liked eating grass, but spontaneously decided to mate with a tiger I saw at the waterhole (I hate myself for this example), then my identity would be too distorted to induce a meaningful subject's point of reference. There would be no subject per se, just a collection of random ideas occurring without any rhyme and reason.

In a sense, I see the subject as the property of a collection of thoughts, of being organized to manifest some consistent agency.

So because most of the time, in everyday usage, we use the word "things" instead of "beings" for inanimate objects (as a matter of fact, for any object whatsoever), this is an example of the "forgetfulness of being" of modernity? Is that really what you're arguing? — Xtrix

What I’m arguing is that to place 'beings' on the same plane as 'objects', is to overlook their fundamental nature as beings. But if you ask what it is that is being overlooked, it’s impossible to answer, because ‘being’ is not something about which we can make objective statements. Being is always implicit, it’s not an objective reality.

Consider this paragraph from David Chalmer's original paper, Facing up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974, 'What is it like to be a Bat?') has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

From Thomas Nagel's NY Times summary of his 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos:

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe [i.e. the universe described by the natural sciences], composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained.

So I am arguing is that the very element or aspect of reality which both these passages are referring to as 'what it is like' or 'the point of view of the subject' is actually 'being', and that attribute is why living creatures are called 'beings'. In the broadest sense, 'being' is the capacity for experience, which is found in the simplest of organisms, but which reaches the plateau of self-aware, rational being in human beings.

Nagel and Chalmer's natural antagonist is Daniel Dennett. And what is Dennett's attitude to 'the hard problem of consciousness'? His attitude is that it doesn't exist. His presupposition is that the only things that exist are the elements of matter, and that through the process of evolution, which he describes in terms of an algorithm, these generate the illusions of mind and being through what he calls 'unconscious competence', the activities of billions of cells executing their genetic routines in service of the selfish gene. So in his schema, there is no subject or really any beings as such:

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe. — Daniel Dennett, Evolution and the Meanings of Life, p202-203

Hence your remark:

True, no one has pinned down what consciousness means yet as a technical notion. Hence the use of quotation marks. — Xtrix

Consciousness or mind or rationality is that which discloses meaning, which makes it possible to define, consider, or analyse anything in the first place. Yet we don't actually know what it is, just as Nagel remarks in his OP.

Ok.

So I am arguing is that the very element or aspect of reality which both these passages are referring to as 'what it is like' or 'the point of view of the subject' is actually 'being', and that attribute is why living creatures are called 'beings'. — Wayfarer

What you are arguing is irrelevant because no one but you uses the term in this way. Stop pretending that anyone does. This is terrible, bad philosophy. Stop being a bad philosopher and stop lying about things.

So I am arguing is that the very element or aspect of reality which both these passages are referring to as 'what it is like' or 'the point of view of the subject' is actually 'being', and that attribute is why living creatures are called 'beings'. In the broadest sense, 'being' is the capacity for experience, which is found in the simplest of organisms, but which reaches the plateau of self-aware, rational being in human beings. — Wayfarer

So consciousness (of any kind) is "being," which is why (as you claim) we only refer to sentient beings as "beings." But this (1) completely ignores the field of ontology and the Greek sense of being and (2) is simply subjectivizing the word.

"Beings" are everywhere, conscious or not. Even in English. I'm sorry you don't like that, but it's true. If you want to reserve the word "being" for conscious beings, fine -- then everything else let's call "things" or "entities." Makes no difference.

You're well within the ontological distinction of "being and thinking," which has a long tradition.

Your argument, once the smoke is cleared, is not very interesting. Citing an English dictionary does not an argument make.

So consciousness (of any kind) is "being," which is why (as you claim) we only refer to sentient beings as "beings." But this (1) completely ignores the field of ontology and the Greek sense of being and (2) is simply subjectivizing the word. — Xtrix

Don't you think that the issue of the 'hard problem of consciousness' and Chalmer's and Nagel's arguments as to why the natural sciences can't sufficiently describe the nature of experience in principle is basically an argument about ontology? (i.e. 'the nature of being').

Your well within the ontological distinction of "being and thinking," which has a long tradition. — Xtrix

For example?

Consciousness or mind or rationality is that which discloses meaning, which makes it possible to define, consider, or analyse anything in the first place. Yet we don't actually know what it is, just as Nagel remarks in his OP. — Wayfarer

If we don't know what it is, then it isn't simply "that which discloses meaning." No one is interested in defining something out in space. It's armchair philosophy. I can choose to define consciousness as the light of Zorthar. Who cares?

Don't you think that the issue of the 'hard problem of consciousness' and Chalmer's argument as to why the natural sciences can't sufficiently describe the nature of experience is basically an argument about ontology? — Wayfarer

Since you ask me what I think, I think it's a complete waste of time, and one would do well to skip Nagel and Dennett (who I like personally) and Chalmers altogether. And no, it's not ontology. They're discussing consciousness, not being.

one would do well to skip Nagel and Dennett (who I like personally) and Chalmers altogether. — Xtrix

Oh, I'm sorry, then. I thought this was a philosophical discussion. I will, however, be edified in my newfound knowledge that buildings are beings. So long.

Oh, I'm sorry, then. I thought this was a philosophical discussion. I will, however, be edified in my newfound knowledge that buildings are beings. So long. — Wayfarer

The fact that you find so strange the idea of a building as a being, or a chair, or a rock, or literally anything at all, is puzzling. Unless you've managed to ignore ontology (and metaphysics) altogether.

And yes, it is a philosophical discussion - not a venue to talk nonsense, which is what you're doing.

For example? — Wayfarer

See Heidegger, "Introduction to Metaphysics," p. 88 (in German) or p.122 (English). It's available online for free.

The very idea of a conscious entity (a conscious, "rational" being) as sui generis and the "problem of consciousness" itself are, at bottom, taking up the tradition of substance ontology and, I would argue, presuppose the subject/object distinction.

I never claimed this. I have said 'being' in the noun form refers to living creatures. — Wayfarer

The noun form - as in ‘a being’ - is not used in relation to insentient objects, artefacts, tools, minerals, and so on; such things are never referred to as 'beings'. — Wayfarer

It's true that people most often use the term " a being" as an abbreviated form of "a living being" or "a human being", but this is just an idiomatic (and perhaps in respect of its cognates in other languages, a predominately English usage) which does not rule out using the term to refer to any thing whatsoever in accordance with the primary common definition of 'being', as referring to anything that is.

The very idea of a conscious entity (a conscious, "rational" being) as sui generis and the "problem of consciousness" itself are, at bottom, taking up the tradition of substance ontology and, I would argue, presuppose the subject/object distinction. — Xtrix

Wouldn't disagree. But I am hoping nevertheless to probe that construction, rather than simply assume it. I am interested in the role of the observing intelligence in the constitution of being. I maintain that it is natural for us to believe that objects have intrinsic or substantial existence.

The fact that you find so strange the idea of a building as a being, or a chair, or a rock, or literally anything at all, is puzzling. Unless you've managed to ignore ontology (and metaphysics) altogether. — Xtrix

Buildings and office furniture are not 'beings'. If a building burns down - unfortunately this has happened more than a thousand times in my part of the world in the last few weeks - we don't say that the building and its contents 'died. But if it contains living beings - animals or people - then we say 'they died'. Is it strange to say that? Does saying that amount to 'ignoring ontology'? How is this 'ignoring metaphysics'?

What do you make of this gloss of Heidegger's work:

Heidegger's talk of Being may sound obscure, but at least in his most famous work, Being and Time (1927), what he means by it is fairly straightforward. The Being of entities is “that on the basis of which they are already understood” by us, however implicitly and inchoately. In other words, the Being of an entity is the condition under which we can recognize it as an entity of a certain kind. For example, as we’ll soon see, it is only on the basis of forms of human practice that entities like hammers can be recognized and understood. To “forget” Being is, therefore, to ignore the conditions – forms of practice, for instance – that make it possible for us to experience things, for anything to “show up” for us. This failure of attention, Heidegger argues, is endemic in Western philosophical tradition, most strikingly in the Cartesian picture that, he maintains, nearly all philosophers since Descartes have broadly endorsed.

With its strict division between selves and the world, subjects and objects, or mind and nature, this picture sets us against the world, in effect treating it as alien to us. And it is a bad picture, since in reality, Heidegger argues, we and the world cannot, even notionally, exist without one another: “self and world” are not “two beings”, but mutually dependent. The Cartesian picture results from viewing us in an over-intellectual way – as, essentially, “thinking things” who observe objects and mentally represent them. Phenomenological attention, undistorted by theory, to “things themselves” yields a very different picture of how we relate to the world, however. We do so, not as “spectators” or “thinkers”, but “primordially” as agents, for whom things are revealed as “equipment”, as things – like hammers – that we use and which owe their identity to their place in purposive human activities, such as carpentry. The world is intelligible to us, in the first instance, as a “relational totality” of “ready-to-hand equipment”, in which each thing has significance for us through its location in this “sign-like” whole. The hammer is implicated in a whole form of life – of working, building, bringing up a family and so on. ...

This account of our being-in-the-world, Heidegger recognizes, does not do justice to the unique character of human existence: after all, animals also cope with, and to a degree understand, their environments. What is missing is the appreciation that creatures with our kind of Being (Dasein) are not only “absorbed” in everyday practices, but are able to regard their lives as an “issue” for them – to take stock of these lives and make them “their own”, by giving them sense and direction. Only when we choose to do this are our lives “authentic”, and no longer the “inauthentic” ones we lead when we allow, as we do for the most part, our practices, tastes and interests to be dictated by “Them” (Das Man), the faceless “public” that dominates in the “average everydayness” of human life. The capacity for authentically seizing hold of one’s life is intimated by Angst – an “uncanny” mood in which “everyday familiarity collapses”, so that previously entrenched convictions lose their hold. Precisely because Angst is a disturbing mood, however, people are more than ready to suppress or “flee from” it, back into the reassuring arms of “Them”.

Note, 'our kind of Being', capitalised. What do you make of that?

I think the paragraph on the 'division of selves and world' is suggested by the quote I gave in my earlier post about 'the Cartesian anxiety'.

If you look at the encyclopedia reference which StreetlightX posted in about the distinction of 'being and existence' there is a centuries-old discussion of the distinction. It says that most modern analytical philosophy now doesn't recognize the distinction - which is the point I'm making! I'm saying, there's a real distinction which is now not recognized, and as it's not recognized, it's extraordinarily difficult to say what it is. So most people will simply shrug and say they can't understand the difference - like you are doing. Fair enough, but I'm trying to explain what I see as the issue.

Anway, I've been told I'm 'peddling nonsense' a number of times in this thread already, which I think is completely untrue, but I will go and do some more reading and contemplation and will take a time out for a while. Bye.

But not all objects are subjects it would seem, unless you attribute to rocks conscious awareness, which I doubt anyone would. — Xtrix

That’s just panpsychism, and contemporary versions of it are a lot more innocuous than it might seem, being basically what is left over after you have ruled out all the even more absurd options (like we are all p-zombies, or there’s some metaphysical magic that goes on in humans but not rocks).

It says that most modern analytical philosophy now doesn't recognize the distinction - which is the point I'm making! — Wayfarer

It also says that ancient Greek philosophy didn’t even have separate words with which to make the distinction, which makes the whole thing seem like an oddity of theistic medieval philosophy.

Buildings and office furniture are not 'beings'. If a building burns down - unfortunately this has happened more than a thousand times in my part of the world in the last few weeks - we don't say that the building and its contents 'died. But if it contains living beings - animals or people - then we say 'they died'. Is it strange to say that? Does saying that amount to 'ignoring ontology'? How is this 'ignoring metaphysics'? — Wayfarer

Buildings and office furniture are certainly beings. No one is saying they're sentient beings. How is this hard for you to understand? Possibly because you not only ignore ontology, but you ignore me and everyone else on this thread who continually try to tell you that "being" as "conscious being" is your peculiar terminology.

You don't have to go far back in the history of ontology -- just look at Heidegger, who you quote.

Maybe someone should have been around to tell him that in English, "being" is usually used, in common interaction, to refer to "sentient things," hmm? What a profound realization he would have had.

What do you make of this gloss of Heidegger's work: — Wayfarer

A very decent summary from someone who's clearly read Heidegger. Something I can't say about you.

Note, 'our kind of Being', capitalised. What do you make of that? — Wayfarer

What do I make of what? The capitalization? In Being and Time, and in other translations, "being" is usually capitalized -- and it's unfortunate, in my view. It implies some kind of "God"-like "special" entity or something. In German, all nouns are capitalized, so it's misleading to reserve "being" for special importance.

Anway, I've been told I'm 'peddling nonsense' a number of times in this thread already, which I think is completely untrue, but I will go and do some more reading and contemplation and will take a time out for a while. Bye. — Wayfarer

You're peddling nonsense in the case of reserving the word "being" for "conscious being," citing the English dictionary as support, and then basically saying this in turn lends proof to your belief that consciousness and being are the same thing. You've got to do better sir. This would fail as a dissertation, a master's thesis, an honors thesis, and probably as a Presidential tweet (alright, maybe not THAT bad).

Buildings and office furniture are certainly beings. — Xtrix

Well, that’s just not so. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker? Buildings and furniture are structures and artefacts. The point is that beings are not things or objects, but are subjects of experience, which is demonstrably not the case for inanimate objects (although apparently panpsychists don’t agree.)

I didn’t say ‘consciousness’ and ‘being’ are the same - what I said was that the capacity for experience is the fundamental attribute of being, which I illustrated with reference to the ‘hard problem’. (Perhaps you’re not familiar with ‘the hard problem of consciousness’?)

I never claim any expertise of Heidegger, although I did do a Master’s thesis (on the Buddhist doctrine of Anatta.) However to be told that I have no understanding of ontology and metaphysics, because I argue for the ontological distinction of beings and objects is, at least, ironic.

It also says that ancient Greek philosophy didn’t even have separate words with which to make the distinction, which makes the whole thing seem like an oddity of theistic medieval philosophy. — Pfhorrest

The relevant passage is this:

Eventually, however, the concept of "existentia" ("existence") was established amongst Medieval Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas as a technical term contrasted with "essentia" ("essence"), an abstract form of the presumed present participle of "esse" ("to be"). While essence apparently meant "what a thing is," existence meant "that a thing exists." According to Charles H. Khan, this development of the modern sense of existence occurred under the influence of Islamic philosophy, which distinguished existence (wujud) from essence (mahiat) in its radical revision of Greek ontology in light of a biblical metaphysics of creation within Islam which distinguished the created world (contingency) from God (necessity).

There seems to be an understanding in Greek philosophy, that particulars or individuals are not (here is where words are difficult) ‘fully real’. They are a composite of real and unreal elements. In fact this is the case for all of the objects of the phenomenal domain; they, and the sensory domain, is real in some respects, and unreal in other respects (which is subject of traditional metaphysics) which became adapted (some would say appropriated) by the monotheistic faiths as indicated in that passage, so as to distinguish the ‘essential’ from the ‘contingent’. And I think this still contains an essential truth (whilst fully acknowledging that hardly anyone will agree with that.)

This is why I point to intelligible objects such as logical laws and natural numbers as examples of ‘objects’ which only exist in and for a rational mind. So, they don’t exist in the sense that stones and flowers do, but they’re nevertheless real, in that they’re the same for all who think; 7 is 7 for you, me, Aquinas, and Dr. Spock. The point is that they belong to a different domain to the phenomenal realm - perhaps ‘the noumenal realm’, where ‘noumenal’ means ‘objects of mind’. Not that such a domain actually exists - but it’s real, in the same sense that the ‘domain of natural numbers’ is real. Which is the point!

It also says that ancient Greek philosophy didn’t even have separate words with which to make the distinction, which makes the whole thing seem like an oddity of theistic medieval philosophy. — Pfhorrest

Islamic philosophy, which distinguished existence (wujud) from essence (mahiat) in its radical revision of Greek ontology in light of a biblical metaphysics of creation

Yup.

I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes. — Xtrix

We have our own experience of the world as individuals and human beings, and then we have scientific explanations of the world which are divorced from that, because how the world appears to us is not always how the world is.

This has been known since our ancestors starting making note of the difference between appearance and reality. We can use whatever terms make the most sense in modern language to describe that distinction, but yes, it's a reality of our human existence, and probably the impetus that got philosophy started.

Well, that’s just not so. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker? — Wayfarer

Maybe you're utterly ignorant about anything to do with philosophy because no one but you equates being with the living, and is nothing but the idiosyncratic fabrication of a hack and a fraud?

Starting at about 3:38 in the video above, Phillip Ball, an editor at the Journal of Nature, is discussing popular notions of quantum mechanics. Here he talks about how people think that because measurement impacts the result:

So the human observer can't be extracted from the theory. It becomes unavoidably subjective. — Phillip Ball

He's just laying out a popular conception, not arguing for it. The point about the quote is the idea that science tries to extract the human from the observation. Right here we have a subjective/objective distinction, where it seems to be a problem that one result of QM might not allow that, at least on a popular understanding, or according to one interpretation.

But the key idea is that science tries to extract our human experience from what's being studied.

We recognize subject only in relation to object. A world of verbs and adjectives, so to speak. This is why we have no memories of early development. Our sense of self 'became' due to the action of verbs and the recognition via adjectives. Nominalism reduced our adult approach to the world down to dismissing the importance of the verb and adjective. Even your question has a 'slash' (slice) between subject and object.

I enjoy life due to actions and recognitions.

But the key idea is that science tries to extract our human experience from what's being studied. — Marchesk

:up:

I have to say that I would have initially agreed with @Wayfarer in this discussion - I always thought when talking about a ‘being’ that we’re commonly assuming some level of consciousness or at least life, but I also understand that, ontologically speaking, a ‘being’ refers specifically to temporal existence.

I think we reserve the term ‘being’ for the living in order to distinguish it from ‘object’, which we understand to be lifeless, and therefore static. I’ll admit that referring to a building, for instance, as a ‘being’ seems strange to me, even as I recognise it as an instance of being. But I no longer think it’s useful to make this distinction, especially if, with Rovelli, we recognise that the universe more accurately consists of interrelated ‘events’ rather than ‘objects’.

So I acknowledge that buildings and office furniture ARE beings after all - and that to distinguish them, ontologically speaking, as ‘objects’ instead fails to recognise their relative temporal existence in the universe.

Plus, I think if we’re aiming to plausibly explain the origin of life at some point in our philosophy, then it’s important to dispense with this being-object distinction that implies ‘life’ as something added to matter.

Beware the dark side, Luke ;-)

This is a favorite video on my educational playlist ('My Freedom from Nominalism Worldview'). ... Rocco Gangle does an EXCELLENT job of explaining Spinoza, language, and relational identity. ... https://youtu.be/osySxRALhSo

So I acknowledge that buildings and office furniture ARE beings after all - and that to distinguish them, ontologically speaking, as ‘objects’ instead fails to recognise their relative temporal existence in the universe. — Possibility

One of the reasons that thinking in terms of 'subjects' and 'objects' is so warped is that it is an utterly anachronistic way of speaking: almost no one before Kant spoke of being in terms of either objects or subjects; this was a later distinction that came nearly 1700 years after philosophers had spoke of 'being' for multiple centuries in entirely other terms, only after which it was grafted on, like a badly transplanted organ, onto talk about being by those who knew no better and had no understanding of history. You won't find it in Parmenides, you won't find it in Aristotle, you won't find it in Aquinas, you won't find it in Spinoza. At all. The essential distinctions at work in talk of being were far more likely to be between the One and the Multiple, the Accidental and the Essential, or Form and Matter, than there would be anything to do with 'subject and object'. No one pre-Kant speaks of being in terms of a subject/object distinction. Not a single soul.

(So to those who say that it's hard or impossible to think in terms other than subject and object, well, we did it for millennia, and we can not do it quite easily once again).

The debate isn't whether or not being is really 'objective' or 'subjective'. That's not even the right question; it's like asking if colourless green sheep snore or not. But because Wayfarer, who is a hack, knows nothing other, he can only try to secure the rights of the 'subjective' over the 'objective' by falsifying history and making basic, intentional mistakes that any undergraduate would be embarrassed to submit to scrutiny. Anyone who thinks that questions of being turn upon subjects or objects ought to go back to philosophy 101 or simply give up on pretending to know anything whatsoever on the subject.

Well, that’s just not so. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker? Buildings and furniture are structures and artefacts. The point is that beings are not things or objects, but are subjects of experience, which is demonstrably not the case for inanimate objects — Wayfarer

Yes, it is so I'm afraid. Except in your world, where you reserve "being" for sentience, and cite the English dictionary.

The entirety of that quote:

Buildings and office furniture are certainly beings. No one is saying they're sentient beings. How is this hard for you to understand? Possibly because you not only ignore ontology,but you ignore me and everyone else on this thread who continually try to tell you that "being" as "conscious being" is your peculiar terminology. — Xtrix

(Bold mine)

The fact that you only quoted the first sentence already proves my point. You're a joke.

Next up: let's go to a physics forum and explain that the way we use the term "energy" in English just doesn't line up with how physicists use it. Then cite the dictionary. Bam!

I’m not talking about grammar or world languages. I’m talking ontology. It’s discouraging that this has to be explained, repeatedly, in a philosophy forum. — Xtrix

Linguistic turn? Perhaps I misunderstood. Sorry.

In my view it would mean that we’re not engaged with the world in a particular way (in this case, as “abstract thinking”). Heidegger would say something similar, only as a “present-at-hand” mode of being.

Once you’re in this mode, then a subject contemplating objects as a fundamental distinction can commence. But this is a “privative” mode- what human beings do for the most part does not involve subjects and objects at all. — Xtrix

Well reminds me of driving. When traffic is flowing smoothly we're completely unconscious of the act - the car and the driver are one. The instant something unexpected happens the driver becomes aware of driving the car. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, taking into account your other thread on the problems the world is facing, it seems that the scientific bent of the human mind, albeit only expressed in a minority but widely claimed by all, which is the quintessence of the subject-object distinction, is actually an indication that the world has broken and is now present-at-hand. It makes sense since morality, something that has been on our minds for over 2000 years, is about oughts, as if to say the world is busted and needs repair.

Well reminds me of driving. When traffic is flowing smoothly we're completely unconscious of the act - the car and the driver are one. The instant something unexpected happens the driver becomes aware of driving the car. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, taking into account your other thread on the problems the world is facing, it seems that the scientific bent of the human mind, albeit only expressed in a minority but widely claimed by all, which is the quintessence of the subject-object distinction, is actually an indication that the world has broken and is now present-at-hand. It makes sense since morality, something that has been on our minds for over 2000 years, is about oughts, as if to say the world is busted and needs repair. — TheMadFool

Fair enough. I don't feel the use of "present-at-hand" makes much sense in this context, but I get your meaning.