But that says nothing. And shows less.

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".

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.

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.

Do you think Heidegger uses being in a more useful way?

You would populate the world with non-existent apples. — Banno

Hence the question: What is NOT Being?

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.

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.

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.

Thanks. I find H unreadable so I'll never know...

I find H unreadable — Tom 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.

his role is obfuscation rather than clarification — Banno

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.

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.

He is saying something very different from Frege. — Joshs

Ok - what?

...the pragmatists... — Manuel

Who - Dewy and company? Or their more recent renderings? What is it that they say?

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.

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.

Ok - what? — Banno

Thanks. "Pragmatism" seems to be becoming an all-encompassing term, hence the need for specificity.

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

I agree; Being and Time is not so difficult. His work after the "die Kehre" I have thus far found impenetrable.

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.