• Banno
    24.9k
    But that says nothing. And shows less.
  • Heiko
    519
    This is why existence is not treated as a predicate in logic. That is, there is no simple way to parse. "Xtrix exists".Banno

    Correct. "Being" means "being labeled".
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    But that says nothing. And shows less.Banno

    Well, when has that mattered? Being need merely be; it need not say or show anything. Like ontology, it merely is.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Being need merely be;Ciceronianus

    Being doesn't exist - cars, chairs and people exist. "There is an x such that x is a car" tells us something about x. "There is an x such that x is a being" says nothing about x that is not in "there is an x"; that is, it does nothing.

    This by way of objecting to treating being as the name of something.
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    Do you think Heidegger uses being in a more useful way?
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    You would populate the world with non-existent apples.Banno

    Hence the question: What is NOT Being?
  • Banno
    24.9k
    From what I've seen his role is obfuscation rather than clarification. So where he talks of being as a sort of standing forth, as putting the pieces on the table, he is saying no more than Frege and others Where he is original, talking of being as temporal, his ideas become confused. If he is saying no more than that things come into existence and cease to exist, then we would all agree, and puzzle over why he phrased something so simple in such a constipated fashion.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Hence the question: What is NOT Being?Olivier5

    In saying that such questions are ill-formed, I'm pointing out that they do not ask anything; or at least if it does mean something, the answer will be a list of things.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    Nice play on "reel"! Strangely, I wrote a poem a few years ago called The Reel with a similar play in mind.

    The Reel

    For the duration of a bounded eternity
    They had only been dreaming
    Dreaming of thinking, dreaming of endless presuppositions
    And propositions of the standing imagination
    overarching the bristling forests of sense
    from the unencompassed watershed mountains
    from the quiet inceptions to the teeming outcomes
    soon lost, all lost to the unstoppable flood of dreams

    and it wasn’t reckoned, not by them
    nor how ancient the dripping frond, emerging lung
    and the perapatetic neurons, and what lay hidden
    inside the cave, what arachnid net of confusion
    carefully and skillfully woven, notwithstanding flaws
    and although it seemed the fatal dreams must bend
    or end as they had before many, many times
    yet in the end they wouldn’t, they couldn’t in the end

    and nothing, nothing remained undreamed
    in all the deserts of impossibility the oases
    or hovering mirages of possibility drew the feet
    drew the swelling tongues and ignited infernos
    in the instructed rawness, in structured throats
    in all the vessels, large and small that flood
    the roar of blood, and float like pimples
    across the encompassing stream

    yet nothing weighed so, in the unified organ
    as was quickly and repeatedly remembered
    and forgotten, where the bolt that shot
    from heart to head tortured the once idle
    hands, nails then tore at the skein of mortality
    and overturned the bed of world-weariness
    now they are all flipped-out and never tired
    calling for the impossible to be served

    all the while the neurons are constellated like armies
    mounting a series of campaigns against
    an invincible foe for the imagined benefit
    of loyalty to preposterous benefactors
    and the matrix is disheveled, sliding into ruin
    other previously neglected bits of the dream
    pop up here, there and everywhere and not
    unfortuitously, given the gloaming

    when the missions were ranged all along
    the rivers, and the sedition of the dreams
    were simply overwhelmed they had to remember
    to forget the lure of the ancestral
    they thought it didn’t really matter then, as nothing
    really does now, for the moving pictures displaying
    against billions of darkened backdrops
    were the sum of revelations on the available reel.
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    Thanks. I find H unreadable so I'll never know...
  • Banno
    24.9k
    I find H unreadableTom Storm

    If the goal of philosophy is conceptual clarification, then he's not high on my list of philosophers. Some folk find him enlightening, I find him muddled.
  • Joshs
    5.7k




    his role is obfuscation rather than clarificationBanno


    I appreciate that his ideas are difficult to grasp, but I think the muddle is in your reading rather than in his ideas.
    where he talks of being as a sort of standing forth, as putting the pieces on the
    table, he is saying no more than Frege and others
    Banno

    He is saying something very different from Frege.

    If he is saying no more than that things come into existence and cease to exist, then we would all agree, and puzzle over why he phrased something so simple in such a constipated fashion.Banno

    If you look over my previous quotes on this OP, you’ll see that that is precisely the notion of time that Heidegger is critiquing.
  • Manuel
    4.1k


    Dreyfus' Being-in-the-World is quite good. He is pretty clear.

    Another thing is if you find the whole account convincing. I used to be a huge fan, but less so now. Like Banno said, a lot of it is complicating simple things.

    However, in fairness, I do think that on certain occasions his way of speaking about things is unique and special, in a sense that I can't explain if pressed.

    In general the pragmatists do a better job, I think, though Joshs will very much disagree.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    He is saying something very different from Frege.Joshs

    Ok - what?
  • Banno
    24.9k
    ...the pragmatists...Manuel

    Who - Dewy and company? Or their more recent renderings? What is it that they say?
  • Janus
    16.2k
    I appreciate that his ideas are difficult to grasp, but I think the muddle is in your reading rather than in his ideas.Joshs

    I'll second that.
  • Manuel
    4.1k


    The classical ones. Probably more Peirce and Dewey than James.

    I have in mind C.I. Lewis and am currently re-reading his Mind and the World Order. Instead of being, he speaks of the "given". It's a lot to say now and am currently working my way through it.

    The point being that yes, he often complicates things without needing to do so.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Ok - what?Banno
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Thanks. "Pragmatism" seems to be becoming an all-encompassing term, hence the need for specificity.
  • Tom Storm
    9.1k
    However, in fairness, I do think that on certain occasions his way of speaking about things is unique and special, in a sense that I can't explain if pressed.

    In general the pragmatists do a better job, I think, though Joshs will very much disagree.
    Manuel

    Thanks, my view of Heidegger is entirely personal and no reflection on the work (whatever it is). What is it you go to these thinkers for?
  • Janus
    16.2k
    In past discussions of rigid designation and reference, conceptual schemes and the PLA, I've asked you for simple explanations of just what you think Kripke, Davidson and Wittgenstein are claiming; and your response has always been "Read the bloody text": so...
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    The point being that yes, he often complicates things without needing to do so.Manuel

    There are plenty of philosophers I think this is true of , but not the Heidegger of Being and Time( I feel differently about his later work). I look for clarify, systematization and unity in a philosophy and I find them in Being and Time. You will not find them there to the extent that traditional preconceptions turn it into a muddle.
  • Manuel
    4.1k
    As I interpret the topic, it's to try to give an account of lived "reality", in such a manner that what is taken for granted can be seen as a stupendous achievement of human beings capacity to order and structure this world.

    What we take to be a simple rock depends on many factors, including language, social convention, perception, categorization, recurrence of experience on the same object and so on. We can, for instance, isolate as aspect of the rock, say it's grey colour (qualia) and somehow conclude that the colour is not fundamental to the existence of a rock.

    Likewise, we predict this never before seen object, a rock, based on previous examples found in similar situations in which, based on our experience with such objects, we are able to conclude that this other object is a rock too. What's included? A certain texture, a consistency of the object, its location in our environment (it would be strange, but not impossible, to find a rock on top of a flower, for instance) as well as our use of it.

    Do we use rocks as decorations, weapons and so on. If we have no conceivable use for an object, we probably could not categorize it as anything.

    This can be thought of in the framework of "disclosure of being", or analyzing what's in "the given of experience" or consider that it is a construction of several categories, such as Peirce thinks it is. And so on, depending on which author you tend to think is on the right track.

    That's the rough idea.
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    In general the pragmatists do a better job, I think, though Joshs will very much disagree.Manuel

    If one were to label Wittgenstein a pragmatist , I think he is a different kind of pragmatist than Peirce, James or Dewey( for one thing, he moved away from
    empiricism and they haven’t).
    I believe that understanding the later Wittgenstein brings one fairly close to what Heidegger was aiming at.
  • Manuel
    4.1k


    That's fair. And I also agree that B&T (and some of his lectures) is quite better than his Contributions and latter work, which I don't even get the point of.



    You mean the Wittgenstein of the Investigations? Sure, pragmatism can be used for him too, and in some respects he could be one. Then again, that's stretching pragmatism a bit much.

    They called Rorty a Pragmatist as well as Quine. I don't think Peirce or Dewey would've agreed with that. Not sure about James in this case.
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    This by way of objecting to treating being as the name of something.Banno

    I quite agree. I think it's spectacularly silly to study or treat being as if it is a thing, and so am silly in doing so.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    That seems unfair, since I've answered very, very many questions concerning these folk, from you and from others. After all, even those who claim to understand Heidegger point to the difficulty of the task - in their case with apparent glee.

    And we can be pretty specific here: what more is there to the analysis of being in Heidegger. than is found in the analysis of existence from Frege on down?
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    They called Rorty a Pragmatist as well as Quine. I don't think Peirce or Dewey would've agreed with that. Not sure about James in this case.Manuel

    Don't know enough about Quine, but would agree with Susan Haack and others that Rorty and other "neo-pragmatists" do pragmatism a disservice.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    I agree; Being and Time is not so difficult. His work after the "die Kehre" I have thus far found impenetrable.
  • Manuel
    4.1k


    Yeah, she's right about Rorty.

    I don't know Quine well either, but his focus seem to me to be more narrow than the traditional figures. Might be wrong about that though.
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