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Idea Transcript


DASEIN AND SCIENCES: A REPLY TO HAUGELAND’S READING OF BEING AND TIME

As 3C, JtolC TMIL

A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts In Philosophy

by Michelle Ann Mogannam San Francisco, California 2015

Copyright by Michelle Ann Mogannam 2015

CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Dasein and Sciences: a Reply to Haugeland’s Reading of Being and Time by Michelle Ann Mogannam, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in Philosophy at San Francisco State University.

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lA-^ )

Mohammad Azadpur, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy

David Landy, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Philosophy

DASEIN AND SCIENCES: A REPLY TO HAUGELAND’S READING OF BEING AND TIME

Michelle Ann Mogannam San Francisco, California 2015

In the following paper, I will be arguing against a position held by John Haugeland that puts forth the claim that the sciences are cases of dasein. I draw on Martin Heidegger’s philosophical work, Being and Time, to address this issue and in doing so I demonstrate that the modem sciences cannot be cases of dasein. By adjudicating the views of HansGeorg Gadamer and John McDowell, I am able to make the relevant distinction between the two. The mode of being-in that Heidegger identifies as tarrying alongside is what does the necessary work for my argument to go through. The realization that only human beings gain phenomenological access to things as they are in themselves situates my findings into a larger picture that puts emphasis on the distinctiveness of dasein, and Heidegger’s overarching phenomenological goals.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Mohammad Azadpur and Dr. David Landy for putting their time and efforts into my thesis process. I would like to especially thank Dr. Mohammad Azadpur for helping me direct my thoughts accordingly. I also want to thank my fellow classmates in the program who have made these years nothing less than inspiring and special. Lastly, I dedicate this thesis to my father, Richard Mogannam, who has never failed in pointing me towards the eternal truth.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. John Haugeland’s Reading of Heidegger.......................................................... 1 2. Heidegger’s Method in Being and Time............................................................6 3. Dasein’s Disclosedness.....................................................................................8 4. Tarrying Alongside Entities............................................................................ 12 5. Gadamer on Theoretical Knowledge and the Thing in Itself......................... 16 6. McDowell: The Limits of Science Are Not the Limits of the World..............22 7. Conclusion.......................................................................................................29 8. Works Cited.....................................................................................................31

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“Freedom is engagement in the disclosure o f beings as such. Disclosedness itself is conserved in ek-sistent engagement, through which the openness o f the open region, i.e., the ‘there ’ [ ‘Da ’], is what it is. ” —Martin Heidegger “Scientific existence is possible only if in advance it holds itself out into the nothing”— Martin Heidegger “By a primal oneness the four—earth and sky. divinities and mortals—belong together in one... Mortals are in the fourfold by dwelling. ’—Martin Heidegger

John Haugeland’s Reading of Heidegger In a 2007 essay on Martin Heidegger titled “Death and Dasein,” Haugeland states that dasein is (a term Heidegger has coined): “(i) a distinctively human way of living that (ii) embodies an understanding of being and for which (iii) individual people (“cases of dasein”) can take responsibility” (182). He concocted a list of what any science necessarily includes: “scientists, a rich repertoire of skills, practices, and equipment.” He proceeds to assert, “Since existence is the way of being peculiar to dasein this implies that sciences are daseins—which implies that the aforementioned three points characterize them as well. And I myself take that implication at face value: I think it is what Heidegger means; moreover; I think he is right” (182). What led Haugeland to make such a bold claim stems from a passage in the introduction of Being and Time where Heidegger writes, “As ways in which man behaves, sciences have the manner of Being which this entity—man himself—possesses. This entity we denote by the term ‘Dasein Scientific research is not the only manner of Being which this entity can have, nor is it

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the one that lies closest” (32/H12). In the latter passage, Heidegger is directing our attention to the ways in which dasein engages in scientific research, and this is precisely one way that dasein can behave in a scientific manner as a way of “being-in-the-world.” As he expresses shortly after that passage, “Sciences are ways of Being in which Dasein comports itself towards entities which it need not be itself’ (33/H13). That dasein is an entity with the ability to behave in various manners in comporting itself towards the world in different ways, is something distinctive to dasein. Now the basic state of dasein is “being-in-the-world” and this term ‘in’ does not express something like “being inside” another “thing” as a shoe is ‘in’ a closet. So dasein is not ‘in’ the world like things are ‘in’ space. As Hubert Dreyfus points out in his commentary on Heidegger, “The primordial sense of ‘in’ was, rather, ‘to reside’, ‘to dwell’” (42). Dasein is in the world in the active sense of residing or dwelling for it is involved in the world and has a primordial familiarity with it (80-1/H54-5). Furthermore, the word is hyphenated indicating that this is a ‘unitary’ phenomenon in the case that dasein cannot exist without a world (Welt), so they must be taken together as a ‘whole.’ Dasein is always ‘being-in’ a state which Heidegger identifies as an existentiale or an essential state of dasein’s being (79/H54). In my thesis, I will argue that the modem sciences cannot be cases of dasein because they essentially obfuscate the things in the way they look by subduing them into the realm of law. I will come to confirm that it is only human beings who can tarry alongside and let things show themselves as themselves. This is to be what differentiates the sciences from dasein. In engaging things scientifically, scientists look at things in the

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world in a theoretical manner by taking a theoretical attitude/stance towards them. The sciences have theoretical knowledge and so, the sciences are not daseins but a mode of being-in. In order for the discussion to get underway, I must take a look at Haugeland’s earlier papers, “Heidegger on Being a Person” and “Dasein’s Disclosedness,” to get a clear picture of what he means when he says that we are “cases of dasein.” He concludes that “a person is a case of Dasein” and in order to make this intelligible, how Haugeland interprets Heidegger’s notion of “understanding” or, this “projecting in terms of possibilities” will be important to unpack. Seeing that for Haugeland, these possibilities are “the new options and alternatives opened up by norms: roles that things can play and ways that they can play them” (36). As a case of dasein, a person can cast themselves into a role and take on the relevant norms “ both in the sense of undertaking to abide by them and in the sense of accepting responsibility for failings.” In this way, a scientist can understand himself as a “responsible role player” within this common institutional framework and these roles that a case of dasein plays do not seek to establish what it is but who it is. Yet other things in the world such as equipment also exercise role-playing. For example, think of a chess piece as being part of a game in which its role depends on rules that are given and which determine its possibilities. One can say the same thing of a hammer. A hammer’s role is defined by its designated use as something that drives in nails. The difference is that various kinds of equipment are not to be held accountable for how they perform and a case of dasein is. In being the people we are, there is a certain

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way of life that distinguishes people like us from other entities in the known universe. Given this, a term like ‘responsible’ is supposed to capture the distinctiveness of dasein in the sense that we ourselves are dasein, qua people. Another way of thinking about this is that, “we each live dasein” and this is akin to saying “we are what we do,” while each and every one of us has their own personal way of living (“Dasein’s Disclosedeness” 309). When a person is thought of as a case of dasein he navigates the world, as one of its many possibilities, with a practical “know-how” or “skillful behavior.” Haugeland is sure to make a distinction between the functional roles of organic and mechanical subsystems with roles of equipment. The latter are essentially instituted in a way that is in “conjunction with norms of use,” and this just means that a case of dasein is held accountable for how it uses equipment—a case of dasein can behave appropriately or inappropriately—within this normative institutional framework. We can now point out his claim that tells us that a case o f dasein is literally an institution when he says, “you and I are institutions like General Motors, marriage, and the common law, except that we are ‘primordial.’”

With this in mind, he calls “accountable institutions” to be

“primordial” and would configure “people” as “primordial institutions” because they can be held responsible for their behavior. I believe what Haugeland is getting at is the idea that dasein is the “grand pattern”—the primordial institution—for all the other “subpatterns” of dasein which are just mere institutions. For example, “the science of chemistry is a coherent subpattem: Chemistry is Dasein—and so are philately, Christmas,

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and Cincinnati” (“Heidegger on Being a Person” 9-11). So a case of dasein (now as a primordial institution) can make sense of other entities in the world in “being-amidst,” by casting entities into these “publicly articulated roles.” This is how equipmental roles become instituted in the first place, as well as how a case of dasein deals with things in the world in an everyday manner. It is in virtue of this behavior that things even have roles (“Dasein’s Disclosedeness” 30-9). Yet Heidegger makes it known that when it comes to the being of dasein, “In Being with and towards Others, there is thus a relationship of Being [Seinsverhaltnis] from Dasein to Dasein” (162/H124). Here dasein is surrounded by those entities that have the kind of being of its own. In other words, the world dasein is always “being-in” is the same world of dasein “being-with”; so this world is a “with-world’’ where dasein is always “being-with-others.” Thereby, being-with is also an existentiale and this communal feature is an aspect of being-in-the-world (154-5/HI 18). A case of dasein can make sense of another case of dasein within this public community as something that conforms to norms. As Dreyfus says, “Norms tell us right and wrong but do not require any justification” (152). A case of dasein can live amongst other cases of dasein (what Haugeland identifies as “co-dasein” (Mitdasein)) and make sense of them as being normfollowers like itself. A case of dasein can either satisfy public norms or fail to satisfy them. Now Haugeland says that sciences exist, but fails to offer us a fleshed out account of how the sciences are exactly to be instituted. Regardless, he draws a similarity between the way that the sciences exist and the way that cases of dasein exist. This similarity

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consists in the idea that the sciences get instituted in the same way that dasein gets instituted (within this normative institutional framework), making it known that we are cases of dasein like a science is a case of dasein.

Heidegger’s Method in Being and Time In order for my contention with Haugeland’s view to succeed, I must discuss the preliminary background of how dasein became tightly bound up with Heidegger’s major philosophical work in the first place. Heidegger embarks on a phenomenological interpretation o f dasein in Being and Time. In order to parse out what exactly is to be accounted for in this interpretation, he first elucidates his use of the expressions “phenomenology” and “phenomenon.” The latter term signifies “that which shows itself in itself’ (51/H28). ‘Phenomenology’, taken as a ‘logos of phenomena,’ means “to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself’ (58/H34). This can be summed up and formulated into a maxim by Edmund Husserl, “To the things themselves!” (50/H28). In this formal conception of phenomenology, Heidegger seeks to deformalize an unspoken distinction within phenomenology when he asks the question, “What is it that phenomenology is to ‘let us see’?” He concludes that what does not show itself at all, what remains hidden, is connected to that which for the most part does show itself, and in a significant way. Moreover, that which lies hidden constitutes the ground, even the possibility, for what does show itself (59/H35). His aim is one of “fundamental ontology” which takes as its theme dasein because this entity is

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the phenomenon that hides and lets itself be seen by others. So “To say that [Dasein is] ‘illuminated’ [erleuchtet] means that as Being-in-the-world it is cleared [gelichtet] in itself, not through any other entity, but in such as way that it is itself the clearing” (171/H132-3). Dasein is “the clearing” in such a way that dasein is what provides the sight for other things to show themselves as themselves. Dasein always brings its “there” along with it by the very nature of its being as that entity who has the determinate character of existence (Existenz) (34/H13-4). The phenomenology of dasein, as a hermeneutic (interpretation), attempts to unveil the experiences that dasein undergoes in its everyday existence. Dasein cannot get outside of itself in order to deliberate about its own existence but only through existing can dasein gain access to itself. Thus, dasein must understand itself from inside this existing and this can only be worked out interpretatively (dasein is the hermeneutical being or that being who always uses its interpretive propensities to make sense of the world and the being that it is). As Heidegger

says,

“Our

investigation

itself will

show that

the

meaning

of

phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation” (61/H37). For the reasons discussed above, the Dasein Analytic is hermeneutic and not apophantic when apophantic is correspondence or agreement between a subject and predicate (56/H33). Dasein is to be distinguished from Heidegger’s other two categories of being, readiness-to-hand (Zuhandensein) and presence-at-hand (Vorhandensein). Because dasein understands itself in the midst of its existence, it is a being for whom its own being is an issue. This is part of what makes this entity unlike any other since it can have an

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encounter with its own being for it has a relationship towards that being (32/H12). In “being-free” for its ownmost possibilities to be itself or not itself, authenticity and inauthenticity come to the forefront as possible ways in which dasein can exist. These are “grounded in the fact that any dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness.” This mineness that belongs to any dasein makes it possible for it to either own up to itself and the potentiality-for-being that it essentially is, or it can lose itself and never win itself (68/H42-3). When dasein orients itself back onto its own self, and the possibilities that it clings to, it can be aware of its capabilities as an existent entity. This would be engaging in a self-understanding (existentiell understanding) where dasein can comport itself understandably towards its being (184/H145). When dasein is absorbed in the “everyday multiplicity” of “the they” and the “rapid succession” of routine preoccupations, dasein forgets itself. This would be dasein living inauthentically. However, when dasein takes hold of itself, maintains itself in its possibilities, and does not renounce its own choices, dasein is in the self-mode.

Dasein’s Disclosedness My goal in this section is to expound on those everyday structures of dasein that will be crucial for my overall task. In uncovering “the worldhood of the world” phenomenally, the world that lies closest to dasein, namely its environment, must be brought out into the light (94/H66). In order to do this, one must choose a way of access as well as a certain kind of interpretation so that this entity can show itself in itself and

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from itself. This means that dasein must be shown in its average everydayness (378/H16-17). I have already made it known that being-in-the-world belongs essentially to dasein and it is specific to this entity that it’s “Being towards the world [Sein zur Welt] is essentially concern” (84/H57). Now those things that this entity encounters in concern are “equipment” and there is no such thing as an equipment existing in utter isolation. This is because equipment is always oriented towards an equipmental nexus, an equipmental whole, for which there exist a plethora of relations. In this way, “Equipment is essentially ‘something in-order-to’ [and]...Equipment—in accordance with its equipmentality— always is in terms o f [aus] its belonging to other equipment.” In the structure of the ‘inorder-to’ “there lies an assignment or reference of something to something.” For example, one can find equipment like: “ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room” as situated within the context of a study room in a house. This equipment can be thought of as tools that get used in everyday human activities; an item of equipment is comprised of having a certain significance that lies in its appropriateness for various practical roles and purposes and its inappropriateness for others. Hence, equipment is not merely a collection of entities with intrinsic properties. An item of equipment is always “something as something” and here this ‘as’ is the existential-hermeneutical ‘as’ of interpretation. Equipment possesses the kind of being which Heidegger calls “readiness-to-hand'’ (98/H69) and that which is “ready-to-hand” always has a sort of involvement in the world and is constituted by it (115/H84). These assignments and relations that make up the structure of “worldhood of the

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world” must be brought out into the light if we are to get to an understanding of equipmentality: The “for-the-sake-of-which” signifies an “in-order-to”; this in turn a “towardsthis”; the latter, an “in-which” of letting something be involved; and that in turn the “with-which”. These relationships are bound up in one another as a primordial totality; they are what they are as signifying...The relational totality of this signifying we call “significance”. This is what makes up the structure of the world—the structure of that wherein Dasein as such already is (120/H87). Dasein lets entities within the world be involved— a priori—and frees them for a totality of involvements. When dasein comports itself towards the world, what gets understood is the entity that has the kind of being that is ready-to-hand. Dasein already exists with a certain primordial familiarity with the world and it is only because of this pre-theoretical familiarity that it can have concern for anything in the first place. So these relations that constitute the structure of the world dasein is not necessarily required to know theoretically. Now the “The primary ‘towards-which’ is a ‘for-the-sake-of-which’. But the ‘for-the-sake-of always pertains to the Being of Dasein, for which, in its Being, that very Being is essentially a issue’’' (119-20/H86-7). So a series of ‘towards-which’ significations are grounded in a ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ that is in every case dasein itself. Because of this situation that it finds itself in, dasein has always existed by way of creating relationships towards things making up the world and involving itself in these worldly affairs. The world is where dasein feels “at-home.” Dasein assigns itself “goals,” “roles,” “projects,” and “interests” that purport to give its existence a trajectory to follow (dasein is always projecting into the future). But these goals and roles are not ones that dasein explicitly picks out and identifies. Rather, these terms refer us to possible ends that

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we always are already comporting ourselves too seeing that dasein is already alongside a world that has been discovered. Because of this, dasein takes its possibilities in accordance with the way “the they” has interpreted things. This interpretation has always circumscribed the possible options of choice to whatever is in the bounds of “the familiar,” “the attainable,” and “the respectable” (that which is “fitting” and “proper”) (239/H194-5). As dasein experiences the world of “wearers and users,” the norms, social conventions, rules and regulations of various social practices allow certain actions (like stopping at a red light) and not others (101/H71). When dasein performs the “right” actions, not only does it show that dasein understands how to do something, but that this entity has a sort of care for its own being as well as the being of others (116-7/H84-5). That being said, we adhere to societal expectations and “We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking” (164/H126). Notice this insinuates that who we are, for the most part, is a public self or what Heidegger recognizes as the “they-self ’ (which is to be distinguished from the authentic self) that goes in accordance with these public norms. Dasein does not exist as individuated but dasein is everyone else and everyone is this other and that other. In the “publicness” (the kind of being that belongs to “the they” (178/H138)) of average everyday ness, “everything gets obscured... and what has been covered up gets passed along as something familiar and accessible by everyone.” Dasein

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is living in the world where those already publicly-interpreted meanings and values are distorted through communication (165/H127). Now ‘the for-the-sake-of-which’ gets framed by these various normative institutions that are established by our “co-dasein.” However, “the they” is not something that should be taken as entirely negative given that “the they” is what first initiates dasein into this normative/linguistic behavior that opens its being up to the possibility of authenticity. The “structure of involvement leads to Dasein’s very Being as the sole authentic ‘for-the-sake-of-which’” and authenticity is appropriating ‘the-for-the-sake-of-which’ authentically. One can think about this in the sense that authenticity is seeing the constitutive relation holding between dasein, “the they,” and the world (where dasein does not just absorb itself in what it does and succumb itself to “the they,” but is aware of its possibilities and maintains itself in them) (167/H129).

Tarrying Alongside Entities Dasein is able to direct its understanding towards the world since “knowing is a mode of Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world” and one that belongs to this entity of whom we speak, as well as a kind of being that belongs to being-in-the-world. As an entity ‘being-in,’ dasein is unrestricted in its ability to access the world and has the possibility to switch between two modes of concern; one being its average everyday mode of comportment (inauthentic mode) and the other being the mode of “tarrying alongside” (88/H61). In the former mode of comportment, circumspection is precisely

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“the sight”1 that dasein has submitted itself to in understanding these practical engagements with equipment (98/H69). With this thoroughgoing fascination with the world of its concern, dasein absorbs itself in its projects and interests, involving itself with its everyday dealings where constant utilizations and manipulations are going on. This is to be distinguished from “the mode o f just tarrying alongside ” because, in these moments, dasein holds itself back from any kind of producing, manipulating, and putting things to use. A critical passage in Being and Time reads as follows: If knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature of the present-athand, then there must first be a deficiency in our having-to-do with the world concemfully. When concern holds back from any kind of producing, manipulating, and the like, it puts itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of Being-in, the mode of just tarrying alongside... This kind of Being towards the world is one which lets us encounter entities within-the-world purely in the way they look (eidos), just that; on the basis of this kind of Being, and as a mode of it, looking explicitly at what we encounter is possible....Such looking-at enters the mode of dwelling autonomously alongside entities within-the-world. In this kind of ‘dwelling’ as a holding-oneself-back from any manipulation or utilization, the perception of the present-at-hand is consummated. Perception is consummated when one addresses oneself to something as something and discusses it as such. This amounts to interpretation in the broadest sense; and on the basis of such interpretation, perception becomes an act of making determinate (88-9/H61-2). In having to do with the world concemfully, there is the touching, placing and moving of entities in order to bring them in closer. For when dasein is involved in its various utilizations, it engages with entities-in-the-world in this manner. Since dasein encounters them in such a way that it remains alongside them, existing outside of them. In view of this, Heidegger claims “if knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature of the present-at-hand by observing it, then there must first be a deficiency in our having-to1 Heidegger formalizes “sight” and “seeing” as “a universal term for characterizing any access to entities or to being, as access in general” and sight is always going to be grounded in understanding (187/H147).

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do with the world concemfully” (88/H61). In using the term ‘deficiency,’ he is signaling that there is something missing from dasein’s inauthentic—average everyday—mode of being-in. For Heidegger, dasein is the kind of being that can “uncover entities and free them” for “all truth is relative to Dasein’s Being” (270/H227). Making assertions certainly play a role in ‘truth’ (‘ontical' truth) because one can uncover or make entities manifest and this helps to see them as they are. True assertions bring a certain event out of its concealment so that one can focus on it, drawing attention to those designated entities dasein wants to know more about. These assertions can help one talk about things in the world; bearing in mind that being-with is equiprimordial with being-in as an existentiale constituent of being-in-the-world. Dasein, in its average everydayness, takes part in this discursive activity where one discusses something with another that is also “there” with dasein (this is how the publicly-interpreted meanings and values get distorted; i.e, through communication) (195-201/H I54-159). However, what is truly important is that dasein is the kind of entity that can know, as something belonging to its mode of being-in-the-world, and due to this, dasein can gain phenomenological access to “things as they are in themselves.” This is absolutely momentous to Heidegger’s phenomenological undertaking in Being and Time.2 This “perception is consummated” in the moment “when one addresses oneself to something as something and discusses it as such” and it is by doing this that perception can become an “act of making determinate ” (89/H62). Here one can see that there is still

2

Refer back to the section titled “Heidegger’s Method in Being and Time” for further reassurance.

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concern that would permeate in these moments of distance and holding-oneself-back. This is because one is still engaged in the perception of the object in view since one is interpreting it as something; however, in a sort of contemplative or reflective way when trying to perceive it for what it is and as it is. All the while, not all moods are left behind simply for the reason that “even when we look theoretically at what is just present-athand, it does not show itself as it looks unless this [theory] lets it come towards us in a tranquil tarrying alongside” (177/H138). Now if dasein is the kind of entity that can understand at all, then this understanding must always be accompanied by a “state-ofmind.” It is dasein’s mood that brings its being “face to face with the throwness of its ‘that it is there’” (310/H265-6). When dasein is encountering entities purely in the way they look, it is taking up a view-point, an orientation, letting these entities show themselves in an unconcealed way. This mode of being-in is paramount because it is setting dasein up so that it can make a determinate assertion. In spite of the fact that in interpretation this entity is already taking something as something and so this form (the “as” structure) is what allows it to make assertions, even if dasein is not actually doing that in the moments when this entity just dwells. This practical attitude/stance dasein takes towards the ready-to-hand has a sort of priority over the theoretical. Heidegger does not want to say that in this mode we are isolating any particular object enough so we can get down to its features or properties. Rather, when dasein holds itself back from its fascinated concern by distancing itself from its various utilizations and manipulations, dasein can dwell with entities and remain in this mode of tarrying alongside. This mode

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of being-in can illuminate “the thing in itself’ which is a form of presence-at-hand; for again, it is the perception of the present-at-hand that is consummated in tarrying alongside (89/H62).

Gadamer on Theoretical Knowledge and the Thing in Itself Hans-Georg Gadamer, who studied with Heidegger in Germany, can help direct my discussion to some groundbreaking insights regarding the endeavors of the sciences. In Truth and Method, he articulates, “Language is not just one of man’s possessions in the world; rather, on it depends the fact that man has a world at all. What is key is his idea that “To have a language is to have an orientation ( Verhalten) toward it. To have an orientation toward the world, however, means to keep oneself so free from what one encounters of the world that one can present it to oneself as it is” (443). According to Gadamer, as well as for Heidegger, humans “cope with experience” in the way that language can serve as a mediator between humans and the world by putting experiences of the world into languages that we can understand (or at least are trying to). In doing so, Gadamer shows us how the world does not become an object of language and it is not involved in “objectivizing our experience and using it for whatever purposes it likes.” This is how the sciences go about this distance and in such a way that, “Once a scientist has discovered the law o f a natural process, he has it in his power” (453). As Heidegger says, “By looking at the world theoretically, we have already dimmed it down to the uniformity of what is purely present-at-hand, though admittedly this uniformity

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comprises a new abundance of things which can be discovered by simply characterizing them” (177/H138). In taking this theoretical attitude/stance, one can say that scientists dim down what dasein encounters in the world that is readily available to him (these relations of significance—ordinary and everyday concepts—that dasein already understands) in fitting entities under certain scientific descriptions; those descriptions that are a constitutive part of the scientific enterprise the scientists are working within (this depends on the subject matter that a science takes up). Yet Gadamer grants “That something can foreground itself as a genuine matter of fact and become the content of an assertion that others can understand depends on this distance” (445). The distance that Gadamer is referring to, the distance involved in tarrying alongside, is not the same as the distance that the sciences take. This point becomes more robust in the way that “theoretical knowledge is itself conceived in terms of the will to dominate what exists; it is a means and not an end.” In taking a closer look at theoretical knowledge, he shows how “Modem theory is a tool of construction by means of which we gather experiences together in a unified way and make it possible to dominate them” (454). Now when we look at the world in a theoretical manner, we discover entities within-the-world as purely present-at-hand and there resides a certain uniformity that we get from that. One can imagine that once bringing about this uniformity, things become easier to manipulate. More directly, “Within this discovering of the presence-at-hand, which is at the same time a covering-up of readiness-to-hand, something present-at-hand which we encounter if given a definite character in its Being-

18

present-at-hand-in-such-and-such-a-manner”

(200/H158).

What

the

sciences

do,

considering they are largely apophantical, is take what is present-at-hand as “objects” of propositionally structured assertions that can be useful for a scientific inquiry. Scientists can predicate the particular “natural” or “inherent” features/properties of entities by objectifying them (“The Familiar and the Strange” 72). This is what gives the scientists grounds from which they can then construct their theories in a skillful way. By taking entities as purely present-at-hand, the sciences can make use of these descriptions by fitting them into strict scientific laws to create a sort of generality (with this generality, one can argue that you lose sight of the things one encounters in everyday concern). Here it becomes evident that the modem sciences essentially obfuscate the things in the way they look. That is, by subduing them into the realm of law. We can see these ideas with the existence of modem science today; for it does not take into account the values that we give to things based on our making sense of them in an everyday manner. The scientist’s job, with hopes of standing on strong footing, is to remain objective and neutral. The idea of a scientific method, with which one can dictate the trajectory of a given scientific research project; can be seen as a methodological way of gathering facts and formulating theories. This goes forward without any recourse to subjective undertakings on the part of the practitioners who ask questions like, “what is the mass of this black hole?” In order for a science to be what it is, it must do away with all common sense familiarity with the world (these publicly-interpreted meanings and values that constitute dasein’s average everydayness), and insert sound logic and

19

established truths; in its place. The world in which humans have interjected their own commonplace understandings/interpretations about objects, things, events, and people is to be made anew even if that means demolishing our pre-theoretical world-views. As already famously pointed out, the sun of scientific inquiry is no longer the sun that rises in the east and sets in the west. The natural sciences seek to discover the physical universe in terms of isolated particles like electrons, invisible light waves and properties of things that are causally efficacious. The whole point of the sciences is to do away with these pre-theoretical interpretations that we have towards things so that they can establish laws that tell us how things really are; and give a causal story for how things are the way that they are. Here we see that the objectivity that the modem sciences accomplish in doing away with the individual’s own meanings and values taken towards things, is completely distinct from the distance involved in an interpretive relationship towards things in the world. To bring my point’s home, Gadamer draws attention to Heidegger’s project in Being and Time: When he showed that the concept of presence-at-hand is a deficient mode of being and viewed it as the background of classical metaphysics and its continuance in the modem concept of subjectivity, he was pursuing a correct connection between Greek theoria and modem science...classical metaphysics as a whole is the ontology of the present-at-hand, and modem science is, unbeknownst its heir. But in Greek theoria there was undoubtedly another element as well. Theoria grasps not so much the present-at-hand as the thing itself, which still has the dignity of a “thing” (455). What is important is that man experience not what is “calculated and measured,” but what man recognizes as “existent” and “significant.” What Heidegger is trying to do is

20

keep these everyday concepts that dasein understands, and the “thing in itself’ that dasein discovers in tarrying alongside, free from the objectivity we find in something like modem science today. Again, dasein can gain phenomenological access to entities in the world and this is what is essential (456). Now there resides a similarity with the way that science wants to clear away these publicly-interpreted meanings and values with the way that dasein, in getting lost in the public and the significances/relations that are constitutive of it, is striving to find its individuated self amidst the world that it is thrown into and fascinated by. One can say that dasein is able to engage in what Gadamer calls a “free distanced orientation” (what we achieve in tarrying alongside) towards the world, which allows dasein to cope with its own experience of it. One can think about this in the sense of how dasein, as an entity that is always already existing in the world, is trying to make a space for the possibilities of its being to unfold. One can imagine that dasein is doing a sort of “tidying up” of the house that provides its being shelter as if this entity were to make the bed it slept in, wash the dish it ate from and vacuum the floors it walked on. Since in order to have this kind of orientation, dasein needs to remain in a position where it can be free from the distorted public interpretations of everydayness that simply tell dasein how things are (this includes information communicated by the sciences). These distorted public interpretations blind dasein from using its own interpretive propensities that this entity always has because of the kind of being that it is. This idea can be seen clearly in this mode of being-in where dasein can tarry alongside entities without trying to use or manipulate them.

21

In holding-oneself-back, dasein can present the world to itself, as it is, by distancing itself from the world enough that it is free from it. In this moment, the referential totality of significance comes into view. In other words, by dasein having the unity of ordinary, everyday concepts in front of it by stepping back from its normal concern with the world, the “thing in itself’ can be revealed for dasein to know it. In this sort of space, dasein can have room to reflect and dwell with things. More clearly, “dwelling itself is always a staying with things,” or a “keeping” of things. One is simply there with them. Dasein needs to let things be as they are in their essence* and this is akin to saying that one must let things be things (“Building, Dwelling, Thinking” 149-50). Heidegger explores the idea that humans can learn to live in harmony with their practical world without reducing everything down to uniformity where things become more readily available to them. One can think about this in terms of the objects of technology that we constantly adjust to in our modem world that make our lives easier and more comfortable. The entities once under scientific scrutiny have now become a resource for humans own using and choosing (once these properties are discovered, they can be exploited). Now if dasein lets itself simply dwell with things, in this way, dasein can know entities by looking at them

3 “Truth happens in Van Gogh’s painting [of a peasant’s shoes]. This does not mean that something at hand is correctly portrayed but rather that in the revelation of the equipmental being of the shoes, beings as a whole— world and earth and their counterplay—attain to unconcealment...The picture that shows the peasant shoes...do[es] not simply make manifest what these isolated beings as such are...rather, they make unconcelament as such happen in regard to beings as a whole. The more simply and essentially the shoes are engrossed in their essence, the more directly and engagingly do all beings attain a greater degree of being along with them. That is how self-concealing being is cleared.” (‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ 180-181). In this passage, Heidegger says that in perceiving the painting, the peasants shoes are not just isolated (we get this ‘revelation of the equipmental being of the shoes’) though they are brought into this unity where beings as a whole get unconcealed; and it is only because of this that one is able to see a certain state-of-affairs for what it is.

22

and encountering them as such. It is in these moments the “perception of the present-athand is consummated” (89/H62). With this idea, dasein can perceive entities and know the “thing in itself’ thus, gaining phenomenological access to things in the world. Now the kind of knowing of the sciences is different than the knowing found in tarrying alongside. When scientists look at the world in a theoretical manner, they take a theoretical attitude/stance towards things. The sciences have theoretical knowledge and one can claim that the sciences are a mode of being-in. Moreover, I have shown that the modem sciences essentially obfuscate the things in the way they look by subduing them into the realm of law. Objects are taken to be items in a causal nexus subject to regular laws. The sciences have theoretical knowledge whose metaphysical aspirations are not those of uncovering and discovering phenomena in a phenomenological manner.

McDowell: The Limits of Science Are Not the Limits of The World John McDowell has a treatment of the problem that coincides with Heidegger’s phenomenological goals in working out the Dasein Analytic. He pushes off from Wilfrid Sellars’ starting point who coins a view labeled Psychological Nominalism, the idea that there is no awareness of anything without language, or more directly, “the denial that there is any sort of awareness of logical space prior to or independent of the acquisition o f language ” (Empiricism and the Philosophy o f Mind 63-6).4 For Sellars, as well as 4

McDowell’s overall project is one that differs from others for he is working in the midst of three philosophical positions that he thinks are absolutely untenable. That is, in trying to avoid falling into Bald Naturalism, The Myth of the Given, and Coherentism. He claims that Bald Naturalism “aims to

23

McDowell, concepts do not come “piecemeal” but holistically connected. Upon initiation into a language, one gets a “battery” of concepts. This is enough to point one back to Heidegger and his referential totality of significance where dasein copes with everyday objects in its daily life in taking them as something, and to which is part of this equipmental nexus. To reiterate, this “as” structure (form) is what allows dasein to go on to make assertions. This should also make one recall ‘the for-the-sake-of-which’ that gets framed by the social/linguistic/normative context established by our “co-dasein.” It is helpful to keep this in mind when I engage McDowell. Now McDowell (taking on a Kantian framework), in his book Mind and World, defines conceptuality in terms of the spontaneity of thinking and then stretches spontaneity of thinking into the sphere of perceptual receptivity (69). This makes it such that perceptual experiences are conceptually articulated, allowing them to stand in rational relations to perceptual judgments instead of causal relations (“Perception and Rational Constraint in McDowell’s Mind and World’ 253). What is crucial is that “the world itself must exert a rational constraint on our thinking” precisely in the very experience. However, this external constraint still does not come outside of thinkable content (Mind and World 28). It so happens that through this autonomous rational activity humans get from

domesticate conceptual capacities within nature conceived as the realm of law”, thereby conceiving reason in naturalistic terms. Now the Myth of the Given is “the idea that one can coherently talk of experience both as not itself having a conceptual content and yet also as exercising the appropriate sort of rational constraint on empirical judgment.” Lastly, Coherentism depicts “our empirical thinking as engaged with no rational constraint, but only causal influence, from outside”...Experience is taken not to justify belief, but only to cause it, because as Davison has it “nothing can count as reason for holding a belief except another belief.” Without getting into how McDowell avoids all of these unsatisfactory conclusions, he does do a nice job of alleviating the anxieties that come about were one to find oneself philosophically lost thinking about the puzzling relation between the mind and the world (Mind and World).

24

“spontaneity,” there resides a freedom that they have in reasoning, judging, inferring, and deciding. With this freedom one can creatively act on things, manipulate things, and build things in the world', and this is the kind of world we inhabit (114-5). He states that, “part of the point of the idea that the understanding is a faculty of spontaneity... [we get] conceptual capacities whose exercise is in the domain of responsible freedom...” (12). Moreover, the logical space of reasons is the realm of freedom (5) and it is not a freedom that we are left alone with because other humans can take a position in the logical space of reasons themselves thus solidifying the social aspect of conceptualization. By experiencing, our whole conceptual framework is already passively drawn into operation (30). In other words, when these conceptual capacities come into play in experience, the experiencing subject lets the world show itself as it is. We simply see things and take them as they are. For the most part, in our normal, everyday concern with the world, we concern ourselves with this experience circumspectively. The world announces itself to the one passively experiencing and we implicitly cope with objects— we manipulate them and put them to use—in an everyday manner. Now such an understanding involves a practical grasp of entities and their involvements (how to successfully deal with them) instead of an articulated description. Although, when we tarry alongside, we are holistically there with the totality of concepts in accomplishing this distance from entities without utilizing or manipulating them. In this mode of beingin, we let things show themselves as themselves and we begin “carving concepts” so as to articulate what we experience purely in the way it looks. But these advances are quite

25

different than engaging things scientifically. By looking at things in a theoretical manner, we predicate the particular “natural” or “inherent” features/properties of things by objectifying them, and the entities are taken as purely-present-at-hand or “objects” of propositionally structured assertions. This creates a sort of uniformity and generality among things. The modem sciences achieve theoretical knowledge and they take this knowledge as a means to dominate their unified experience of the world (Truth and Method 454). With that said, the sciences can make use of these descriptions by fitting them into strict scientific laws, and taking objects as items in a causal nexus subject to regular laws. With these moves, we lose sight of the things that we encounter in our everyday experience that lie closest to us. The modem sciences describe entities in such a way that strips the entities of ordinary human significance. Given that the modem sciences essentially obfuscate the things in the way they look by subduing them into the realm of law, one can rightfully see that the modem sciences are not cases of dasein. It is we who can encounter entities within-the-world purely in the way they look and due to this, we can know the “thing in itself’ by looking at it. The salient and remarkable point is that we can gain phenomenological access to things in the world. That being said, only human beings can tarry alongside, letting things show themselves as themselves. “Bald Naturalism” is a view that tries to solve philosophical problems and alleviate philosophical “anxieties” naturalistically and scientifically. These problems are ones that Heidegger strives to do away with hermeneutically. Now if one were what McDowell would identify as a “bald naturalist,” one who “aims to domesticate conceptual capacities

26

within nature conceived as the realm of law,” it would mean that they take dasein’s ability to know the world to be reducible to and thus governed by the same natural laws that govern the natural world. So bald naturalists take their unified experience of the world further by also treating dasein as objects in the causal realm of law. This would be putting dasein into a naturalistic framework, characteristic of the prevailing scientific world-view, that would construe its being as something present-at-hand, something that dasein is not. McDowell, in trying to save these conceptual capacities that belong to a faculty of spontaneity “that empowers us to take charge of our lives,” wants a naturalism that “makes room for meaning”; and makes it explicit that this reductive account is not the kind of naturalism we would want. Considering this spontaneity (space of concepts) is sui generis, he argues that it cannot be reduced to mere causal processes. That is, since this sphere is in the domain of freedom, it is something that only humans (not animals because they do not have a language according to Gadamer) take pride in. However, in “refusing to naturalize the requirements of reason” (78-9), McDowell must find a way to keep some sort of naturalistic account or his view risks falling prey to “supematuralism of rampant Platonism,” in insisting that this spontaneity is of its own kind. He quite elegantly gets himself out of this. Humans do not have to subject their freedom to the realm of law for we are beings who, through a process of Bildung (up-bringing) and selfcultivation, what he identifies as our “second-nature” (85), not only can exercise our conceptual capacities in forming beliefs and making judgments/assertions, but we can make decisions and act on those decisions by having a body that is situated in a world

27

(rather than a mere environment like animals) that we are open to; a world that is made conceptually available to us through experience (111-60). For McDowell, these concepts are normative concepts and they are already there in the experience: humans are brought up to respond to various sorts of conceptual norms. Yet while an agent can choose to do what he or she is going to do, what he or she should do is made conceptually available to them (the world tells us what we should do, and we can act on that if we take the experience at “face value”). When one is initiated into a language and goes through this up-bringing and self-cultivated living, one is enmeshed in a world with meaning (95). Heidegger too would not want to take on this sort of reductive account that McDowell identifies, for then it would fail to capture this mode of being-in where dasein can gain phenomenological access to entities in tarrying alongside them. Here McDowell’s account offers us a nice way to save the being that dasein essentially is from the hands of the natural sciences, where dasein’s freedom is a stake. This freedom is what allows dasein to bring entities out of their concealment and free them. Now the world is only that which it is for dasein because it is a world o f meaning, or rather, a world that means something to dasein (the meaning of dasein is care); i.e., the referential totality of significance that dasein is involved and rooted in. For meaning takes its ground from the world as ready-to-hand, that which is constituted by involvement, instead of that which is purely present-at-hand. In view of this, in being-free to take hold of its own possibilities (namely authenticity and inauthenticity) dasein can go through this self-maturing and self-cultivating process where it can reflect back onto its own existence. Without this

28

freedom, dasein could not be at all what it is. As Heidegger notes, “The common sense of the one knows only the satisfying of...public norms and the failure to satisfy them” (334/H288), and while dasein is “brought up” this way (using McDowell’s terminology), in being absorbed in “the they,” still dasein must find itself in order to bring itself back to an authentic existence where it can exist as individualized. Correspondingly, one must remember that dasein is undeniably that entity that hides itself and lets itself be seen by others. This is the whole point of fundamental ontology, to uncover dasein and bring the being it essentially is out into the light. If dasein is to bring itself back from “the they,” a phenomenon Heidegger identifies as “the call of conscience,” needs to be brought into our picture. Now it is precisely “The call [that] reaches Dasein in this understanding of itself which it always has, and which is concemful in an everyday, average manner. The call reaches the they-self of concemful Being with others. And to what is one called when one is thus appealed to? To one’s own Self, an entity which in each case I myself am” (317/H272-3). This “call of conscience” is a call that comes from “afar unto afar” and reaches “him who wants to be brought back” (316/H272). This kind of “calling,” as a mode of discourse, is what can bring dasein back to itself authentically and it “discourses in the uncanny mode of keeping silent” (322/H277). Without going much further into this strange but familiar phenomenon, we cannot deny that it is only because dasein is free for its possibilities of its being, that it can take hold of itself in this way. Given that dasein is taken up as the theme of fundamental ontology, “it is essential to dasein that along with the disclosedness of its world it has been disclosed to itself, so that it always understands

29

itself’ (96/H67). This would be engaging in a self-understanding where this entity is able to see its own possibilities of its being, and this is something indispensable to Heidegger’s project in Being and Time.

Conclusion The objectivity that the modem sciences attain in relinquishing the individual’s own meanings and values taken towards things, is to be distinguished from the distance involved in an interpretive relationship towards things in the world. With their scientific inquiries, the modem sciences can make use of their descriptions of things in the world by fitting them into strict scientific laws (the sciences are largely apophantical). However, what dasein discovers in tarrying alongside is not what the sciences discover, and so the kind of knowing involved is different. In dasein’s average everydayness, this entity is always manipulating, producing, and putting things to use with utmost concern (168/H130). But when dasein steps back and puts itself in this mode of tarrying alongside, where it dwells with things without using or manipulating them, dasein does not take objects to be in a causal nexus subject to regular laws. Rather, by having the referential totality of significance (this equipmental nexus)—or this unity of everyday, ordinary concepts—in view, dasein can present the world to itself as it is by keeping itself at a distance from the world enough that it is free from it. We have found that dasein can let things be things without reducing everything down to uniformity where they become easier to manipulate. Dasein can simply dwell with things, letting them be as they are in

30

their essence. Here this distinctive entity can discover the “thing in itself.” In this space, dasein can have room to contemplate and reflect on its experiences for when it tarries, it begins “carving concepts” so as to articulate what it experiences purely in the way it looks. This “free distanced orientation” that dasein brings about in this mode of being-in allows it to remain in a position where it can be free from the distorted public-meanings and values of everydayness that simply tell dasein how things are. This orientation enables dasein to use its own interpretive propensities, as the hermeneutical being that it is. I have argued the idea that only human beings can tarry alongside and let things show themselves as themselves (gaining phenomenological access to things in the world). Despite Haugeland’s claim that the sciences are cases of dasein, the modem sciences cannot be cases of dasein because the modem sciences essentially obfuscate the things in the way they look by subduing them into the realm of law. Instead, I have demonstrated that the sciences are a mode of being-in since the sciences have theoretical knowledge. By adjudicating the view of McDowell, I came to agree that we could not concede to a reductive scientific world-view like bald naturalism because dasein’s freedom is a stake. What dasein enjoys, as it pertains to human existence, is a world of meaning that dasein builds for itself; and to which gets its ground from that which is constituted by involvement. In being-free for dasein’s ownmost possibilities as the distinctive entity it is, dasein can be receptive to “the call of conscience” as something that seeks to bring those who want back from “the they.” By going through this self-cultivating process by

31

way of a self-understanding, dasein can realize those possibilities that it in every case its being can be and grapple with the choice to either lead an authentic existence or an inauthentic one. Dasein can either become that being to which it is destined to be (“Dasein is ‘spiritual’” (419/H368)), or it can shrink back to “the they” where its life is comfortable and spoken for. As an entity that is free to dwell with things, the world of meaning digs itself deep and envelops dasein, leaving no one and nothing behind.

Sources

Brandom, Robert. “Heidegger’s Categories in Being and Time.” Heidegger: A Critical Reader. Ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall. Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, USA : Blackwell. (1992). 65-80. Print. Brandom, Robert B. “Perception and Rational Constraint: McDowell’s Mind and World.” Philosophical Issues. (1995). 253. Print Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Divisin I. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. (1991). Print. Fell, Joseph P. "The Familiar and the Strange: On the Limits of Praxis in the Early Heidegger." Heidegger: A Critical Reader. Ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. (1992). Print. Gadamer, Hans. Truth and Method. Trans, by Joel Weinsheimer. 2nd, rev. ed. London: Continuum (2004). Print. Haugeland, John. “Dasein’s Disclosedness.” Dasein Disclosed. Ed. Joseph Rouse. Harvard University Press. (2013). 17-39. Print. Haugeland, John.“Death and Dasein." Dasein Disclosed. Ed. Joseph Rouse. Harvard

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University Press.( 2013). 179-186. Print. Haugland, John. “Heidegger on Being a Person.” Dasein Disclosed. Ed. Joseph Rouse. Harvard University Press. (2013). 3-16. Print Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. San Francisco: Harper (1962). Print. Heidegger, Martin. “Building, Dwelling, Thinking.” Poetry, Language, Thought (1971). 149-50 Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Basic Writings, rev. ed., various translators, ed. David Krell (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1993). 170-181. Print McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press: Cambridge (1996). Print. Sellars,Wilfrid and Rorty, R. Empiricism and the Philosophy o f Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. (1997). 63-66. Print.

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