a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

Death of the Author and the web identity crisis
Zachary Colbert spins a story of power and deceit brought to you via your computer.

Talk about a godawful “intellectual contraption”!

No, seriously, in regard to your “truth”, “identity” and “power”, how would you translate that into a description of your own interactions with others?

And wouldn’t it still come down to challenges from others? They don’t accept or respect your definition of those things so how do you go about demonstrating to them that as rational people they are obligated to? The part about being online just makes it more difficult because here by and large we are only exchanging words. Or, occasionally, videos or links that are better able to get our point across.

Yes, but, “in reality” what still counts is our capacity to translate our world of words knowledge into actual rules of behavior able to be enforced legally and politically. Thus, you may subscribe to a particular assessment of your “identity”, but the knowledge you convey about it to others may or may not be accepted by them. And, here, even to the extent you are able to demonstrate that this knowledge does in fact comport with the objective truth, you still need to be able to act it out without others preventing it. “I” here is no less embedded out in a particular world where the powerful prevail, no matter the truth.

Yes, power as an action word rather than as a thing is an important distinction. But either way the components of my own moral philosophy don’t go away. The existential ramifications of dasein are no less marbled throughout the actual rules of behavior that are able to be enforced.

Yes, if the “public” is ignorant and naive and gullible enough to be duped by all of this, it generally means that they have allowed others to create and then to sustain a “sense of self” able to be deceived and hoodwinked and used for the benefit of the others.

At the same time though, are those able to lure many – millions sometimes – into accepting one or another objectivist account of the world around us. Theological, philosophical and/or political in nature. Some can be particularly sophisticated. And persuasive. And, in fact, dots are able to be connected between the words and the world.

We see that here time and time again.

Really, what would possess someone to post banalities like this over and over and over and over again?

Let’s ask him. :laughing:

Death of the Author and the web identity crisis
Zachary Colbert spins a story of power and deceit brought to you via your computer.

No, the “internet” doesn’t do these things. Only particular individuals using the internet to communicate points of view able either to be or not to be established as in fact true. Or, in regard to conflicting goods, true given one set of assumptions only. Communication breakdowns occur precisely my understanding of this or that “sign” is not in alignment with yours. I merely suggest that with some “signs” it can come down to “your right from your side and I’m right from mine”.

Rooted in dasein.

What signs, in reference to what situation? Communicating what information and delivering what meaning? Yet assessments like this can go on paragraph after paragraph and not bring this into the “analysis” at all.

Yes, someone imparting information and meaning in Japanese is not going to be very successful in communicating to someone who does not speak Japanese.

But when the context configures into information and meaning relating to interactions between daseins attempting to communicate conflicting value judgments, those who all speak the same language can go to the dictionary to look up the meaning of words in order to communicate their points. But, time and time again, sharing the same language doesn’t make the disputes go away. Instead, the arguments I make seem more reasonable in explaining that.

LOL? Non verbal codes? All of the above may be technically true when differentiating communication between on and offline exchanges. But there is still the reality of any given situation and the extent to which how any of us construe our identity matters when it comes down to the nitty gritty reality of those who have the actual power to reward or punish this or that behavior.

Yes, it is easier to trick and to con others online. Our “identity” becomes anything we are able to convince someone that it is. But even if, when we leave virtual reality, we lived in a world where it was not possible to disguise our true identity, what would our true identity be in regard to our moral and political value judgments? Would the true identity of liberals be more authentic than the true identities of conservatives in regard to, say, the role of government?

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

Me too. I kept a diary/journal for nearly 15 years. But: those years encompassed a time in my life when one way or another I was a hardcore objectivist. I honestly believed that if I kept track of my life carefully enough I would finally be able to finally pin myself down. Until, instead, it finally dawned on me that, like human existence itself, my own “personal life” was essentially meaningless and absurd. And that one day I too would be dead and gone. Obliterated for all time to come.

So, I took dozens of duotang folders that contained hundreds of pages and walked out behind the apartment complex where I was living at the time [only a couple of miles from where I live now] and just threw them all into the dumpster. And not on an impulse. I thought it through, recognized the futility of my own particular world of words, and did what I did. And I never regretted it.

So, this has never been an option for me:

This is basically gibberish to me. It clearly means something to the author, but my own thinking had changed so radically it would never occur to me ever again to “capture” myself in that way. The good me? The bad me? The important things? The unimportant things? That all became [and still is] largely hogwash to me. Now this fractured and fragmented personality is down for the final count, waiting for godot, and diving into and out of the distractions that mark my day to day existence.

On the other hand, here I am still in pursuit of any possible antidotes that might be found in what’s left of this particular philosophy forum. Go figure in other words.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

What makes this nothing less than profoundly problematic are all of the variables in our lives that we don’t even come close to having either a complete understanding of or control over. In particular, in regard to how, for years, others shaped and molded our understanding of ourselves in order to replicate themselves through us.

Yeah, some of us will own up to that and acknowledge just how wide the gap is between who we think we are and how that was shaped by forces beyond our control. Some will accept in turn that much of their moral and political “self” is derived adventitiously from when they are born historically, or where they were brought up culturally.

But that still does not stop them from just shrugging these crucial factors off and insisting that they really and truly do know who they are. Anyway.

Just ask those who stormed the Capitol Building. None of what I note here has any real bearing at all on the behaviors they choose. They simply think themselves into believing that what they did they did because they were obligated to in order to be true to themselves.

Really, just ask some of the hardcore fulminating fanatics here.

The biological imperatives. The problem here though is that we all share the same biological scaffolding while interacting in a world in which the same physical, chemical, neurological etc., laws result in human interactions in which there are endless disputes over that which is said to constitute the most rational and ethical behaviors. Then come those who in embracing one or another alleged ontological and teleological font insist that even our value judgments can be oriented to an objective truth which binds together all, say, civilized human beings.

Memories are just another manifestation of this. We all have the innate capacity to form memories. We all have the innate capacity to communicate to others what those memories are of and what they mean to us. But then come the inevitable conflicts regarding our reactions to them when those reactions precipitate moral and political agendas at odds.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

The soul. On the other hand, what is the point of connecting the dots between “I” and a “soul” if there does not appear to be a way [philosophically or otherwise] in which to pin down what a soul/the soul/my soul is?

It’s just another configuration of God, for all practical purposes. As for the conscious self going back to the cradle and forward to the grave, my own arguments still seem entirely reasonable to me. Some things we become conscious of are there for all rational people to become conscious of in turn. While other conscious assessments never seem able to get much further than personal opinions. And Locke’s personal identity here would seem no less problematic than yours or mine.

Yes, technically. But if different “souls” can’t agree on what either does or does not constitute, say, social and political justice, how do they manage to configure their individual memories into one frame of mind in which those disagreement dissipate and then fortuitously are subsumed in the best of all possible worlds?

Again the part that most “serious philosophers” authoring articles like this, almost never seem interested in exploring.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

Obviously: how we think about ourselves changes over time as new experiences and new relationships create new memories. For example, we might do things today that might have been thought inconceivable or thought to be atrocious ten years ago. The biological self changes in accordance with the human body that all of us come into the world with. But the moral and political self is considerably more problematic. Memories as chemical and neurological interactions in my brain are the same as in your brain. But the memories themselves are wholly dependent on lives that might be very, very different. You remember what you do and as a result of that you choose one behavior…while my own memories prompt me to choose a conflicting behavior.

Then what? What can we come to agree about regarding this memory induced dissension? Whose memories are the most rational?

Though that’s not the direction the author goes:

Wrong about what?

Sure, as we get older, memories fade. Some get obliterated altogether. But the facts here don’t change. You either received a bike for Christmas when you were ten or you did not. That you have forgotten this doesn’t change the fact of it. Someone might have taken photographs of you on the bike on that Christmas morning. This may or may not jog your memory.

But: The rules of logic? How does that – as a “technical” issue? – really pertain to the facts here? I’m missing an important point obviously.

Instead, what I always focus on are the memories that, over time, prompt us to embrace one set of moral and political values rather than another.

For instance suppose a ten year old is indoctrinated by her parents to embrace a liberal/left wing understanding of the world around her. She remembers that clearly. Then at thirty her experiences and her thinking have convinced her to embrace a conservative/right wing understanding. Though she still remembers her liberal childhood views. Then at eighty she is still very much a conservative but she has completely forgotten being indoctrinated by her parent to think as a liberal thinks.

Again, the facts here are what they are. Someone can have an extremely faulty memory in regard to them while another remembers everything exactly as it unfolded from childhood on.

But the memories themselves linked to the creation of a Self linked to either liberal or a conservative worldview doesn’t enable us to establish whether or not one frame of mind rather than another is the more reasonable.

Or, rather, so it seems to me. Particular memories are just another manifestation of dasein in my view.

Shaping The Self
Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

Ask me about the most vivid “false memory” that I had.

But to the extent that a memory is either true or false in regard to one’s sense of identity, the implications for dasein are no less embedded [for me] in the extent to which what you remember is able to be confirmed as in fact true. Whereas your memories of experiences involving moral and political value judgments can be unequivocally true or false…but that doesn’t make what you remember anymore convincing as a value judgment said to be either demonstrably right or demonstrably wrong.

Come on, how can Locke’s “criterion of identity” here not be just the sort of “technical” argument that has little or nothing at all to do with someone other than Lady Gaga being Lady Gaga.

Here we would have to invoke multiple universes or sim worlds or Matrixes in which, reality wise, practically anything goes.

Let’s not forget though that memories unfold “in our head”. And to the extent that either philosophers or doctors or neuroscientists do not fully understand what that entails, it’s all going to be basically a “technical” examination of reality/“reality”. Ending [for some] in the belief that even the technical discussions themselves are only as they ever could be in a wholly determined universe.

The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

No, what really counts as a person? What is the most important factor to take into consideration when pinning down the philosophical parameters of “Know Thyself”?

Well, we all know where I draw the line here: between those things we describe about our self that are able to be confirmed as in fact true objectively, and those things about us that start with, “In my own opinion…”

After all, when push comes to shove, out in the world of actual human interactions, what else “for all practical purposes” is there?

Well, that’s good. Ethics is now my own primary motivation for pursuing philosophy: “how ought one to live?”

And rationality in “special roles” can only be explored substantively given particular contexts.

And I am certainly fully disposed to state my own beliefs and feelings. Not to mention deconstruct yours. :wink:

The I am on your side guy says:

Construction is easy( err) deconstruction waaaay hard(err)

The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

This becomes particular important for those who insist that morality and rationality are interchangeable. Ayn Rand and her objectivists ilk in particular. Here ethics becomes nothing less than a metaphysical certainty. That way the world can be divided the rational few and the irrational many.

Of course when the focus is on the “concept of self” then all one need do is to think up the one and the only conceptual dimension of ethics to go along with it. Your own for example. Indeed, that there are have been hundreds of them championed down through the ages is “proof” of just how crucial it is grasp this relationship philosophically. The irony here being completely lost on the objectivists.

Concepts. Beliefs. Feelings. Stated or not in my view, what really counts must be the extent to which we can anchor them in descriptions of human interactions able to be defended beyond the concepts, beliefs and feelings themselves.

How about this then, I suggest: a particular context in which to explore them.

Instead [of course] this particular context must first give way to philosophical assessments of this sort. We must pin down what it means for “an entity that pursues its own coherent projects as a single entity, with one set of thoughts” to become a part of a group of such individuals such that the task then becomes making a distinction between “I” and “we” and “them”.

What the individuals may disagree about or come together as one and embrace must not become the main focus of “personhood” in examining the “ethical dimension”. At least not “in the beginning”.

Yes, these distinctions are not unimportant. And they are all over the map historically, culturally and experientially. But, in regard to an actual situation in which ethics becomes a major concern, what are the limits of any particular philosophical quest.

That’s precisely why, in my view, we need to include contexts in the quest. From the beginning.

The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

What could possibly be more, well, categorical and imperative?

The biological brain has to be the point of departure. We only have an identity able to explore the “ethical criterion of personhood” either by way of philosophical pursuits or “natural intuitions” because the evolution of biological life on Earth has [thus far] culminated in the human mind.

So, the crucial juncture has to be in exploring the relationship between genes and memes. And while we all come into this world with pretty much the same biological hard drive the part that revolves around the nurturing we get from others and the nurturing we pass on to the next generation seems to be the source of any number of far more problematic…contexts.

And for all practical purposes in the either/or world that’s about it, right? We go about the day doing any number of things, either alone or with others, and it never occurs to us to ask, “who am I?”

Okay, “perceptions, not a self”. But that takes us all the way out to the really big questions. The part where the interactions of object and subject need to be explained given the existence of existence itself. The part where, once again, in the either/or world none of that actually seems to matter.

The Self and Self-Knowledge
Richard Baron inspects different ideas of the self.
A book review of an anthology on the self and self-knowledge.

Needless to say the exploration into self-knowledge here gets bogged down in the “technical” minutia of how as biological entities we come to connect the dots between “I” and the world around us. The self here is presumed to exist in a world where we have "beliefs, desires and sensations " relating to either/or relationships such as state capitols, reactions to chocolate or having or not having a headache.

In other words, excluding hardcore solipsism or sim worlds of demonic dream world or levels of Matrix realities.

The part where I may or may not have the capacity to grasp and communicate knowledge about the Self in a technically correct manner myself but a world in which this is within the grasp of those sophisticated enough to grapple with such things as logic and epistemology more rigorously.

Think for example any number of posts here from those like Faust or Only_Humean.

Then just more of the same:

Here there is what you think is the right answer and the extent to which there is a right answer able to be demonstrated as in fact the right answer for all rational men and women.

Of course as with the volcano there may be a right answer – it either will or will not never erupt again – but even the “experts” are unable to determine that beyond all doubt.

As for what we want or desire, here things become problematic in the is/ought world. We may want something that others insist rational men and women ought not want. Or we may want the same things but come to squabble over the means chosen to get them.

Dasein And The Arts
So how do you apply philosophical principles to think about art? An example can be derived from an unlikely source. Reneh Karamians uses Heidegger’s philosophy as an illustration of how to understand aesthetic experience.

On the other hand, come on, philosophers can “describe” or “define” humanity in any number of ways if their conclusions ultimately come down to the descriptions articulated in a world of words.

Bottom line [one of them]: that, to this day, we still have no definitive, demonstrable argument that clearly separates mind from matter. Including the assumption that mind is but more matter wholly in sync with a determined universe.

And, again, being in what particular world? For example, when Heidegger’s Dasein contends with my own dasein in the pitched battles that flare up over conflicting moral and political value judgments.

Or, sure, stay up in the clouds:

And isn’t this just a hop, a step and a jump to one or another religious dogma. Or to one or another ideological dogma. Like fascism.

Or even a combination of both: sciencechannel.com/tv-shows … azi-occult

The Science Channel documentary: FORBIDDEN HISTORY The Nazi Occult

Needless to say, in regard to my own rendition of dasein in the is/ought world, I’m for going in the opposite direction.

Which is why the objectivists here among us are so intent on either excoriating me or “foeing” me. Their whole “philosophy of life” revolves around the psychology of objectivism which revolves around the belief that there must be an “essential nature of humanity”. Why? Because, well, damn if they haven’t discovered it themselves!

Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.

From my own frame of mind, however, an appreciation of Heidegger’s thought revolves around the extent to which someone is able to bring his conclusions down out of the philosophical clouds and make them come alive in descriptions of actual human interactions. Which particular being out in which particular world doing which particular things “right-side-up”?

I merely narrow the focus all the more given the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein [existentially] in the OP that begins this thread.

And, if Heidegger were still around, I’d note for him the manner in which dasein as I know it makes most others particularly uncomfortable. We could compare reasons why. I could make my distinction between I in the either/or world and “I” in the is/ought world. We could discuss this distinction in regard to, say, fascism in America today.

Of course, from my own vantage point “here and now”, it is the moral and political objectivists who have “institutionalized” their own “interpretation of life and the world” such that those who do not or will not share their own value judgments are deemed to be inauthentic by continuing to be alienated from the one true path.

Like for example, right here, obsrvr524’s “Coalition of Truth”.

Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Hmm, this ought to be interesting. An actual context [however ambiguous] in an actual world [however Williams imagined it].

First, however, this part:

Here a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens. And an individual who is has much invested in it.

Somewhat problematic? The gap between wheelbarrows, chickens and human beings with minds able to write poetry examined by philosophers would seem to be, among other things, nothing short of astounding. Minds that are even able to speculate that the gap may well just be an inherent manifestation of a wholly determined world in which wheelbarrows chickens and human beings are actually just different kinds of dominoes that nature set into motion going back to an explanation for nature itself. What if the human brain is just another kind of thing in the world. The dasein thing.

And, if not?

Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Exactly!

That’s my point. So much depends upon the context in which these words have meaning for the poet. So much depends upon his frame of mind at the time he wrote them. So much depends upon whatever might be the “larger meaning” of them. He wrote the words from one vantage point, we read them from another. So, in that regard how might we make a distinction between Heidegger’s Dasein in Being and Time and the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in my signature threads.

And all I can do is to note this as my own interest and to invite others to comment on it given that which prompts them to react to the poem as they do.

Personally, the poem evokes almost nothing in me. And I certainly don’t respond to it as “a microcosm of ‘the world’”. And no doubt in part because I am not at all familiar with the work of William Carlos Williams. An existential component of dasein given my own life.

Now, suppose Williams had created these lines and the wheelbarrow, the chickens and the rainwater had existed in a German concentration camp. Heidegger reads the poem. How would he distinguish his Dasein from my dasein then? That’s the sort of discussion that appeals to me.

As opposed to, say, this one…

Really, what on earth is the point of an assessment like this? An Entity and a No Entity world?

A “relation”?

Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Exactly. Isn’t this the first thing that has to pop up in our head? My first reaction is to think of anything that comes close to me which might relate to depending on “a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens”.

Nope not much comes up at all. So I can only try to imagine what might have prompted Williams to pen the poem. As in “so much depended” on him writing. Which can only then revolve around someone having asked him why he did write it?

What else is there “for all practical purposes”?

So, is anyone here aware of Williams having explained what he meant by the poem?

In other words:

My point of course is that if the poem does refer to an actual existing man or woman we could them why so much depends on these things. And there are things we can know about him or her that we can all agree are true: is he short or tall or somewhere in between? Is he young or old or somewhere in between? There are any number of things that can be determined about him or her that we can all agree on with respect to the either/or world. But the reason so much depends on “a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens”?

Well, here the reason might refer back to something that we can all understand objectively…or not. It could refer back to something in the either/or world or to something in the is/ought world.

But, whatever it is, what on earth are we to make of Heidegger’s distinction between the person not being in the poem, but rather the poem being “in” the person?

Given a particular context in which so much does defend on “a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens”.

Heidegger, Metaphysics & Wheelbarrows
Richard Oxenberg gives a poetic introduction to Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Once again I can only challenge those here who think that they do grasp the significance of this point, to take it out into the world that they live in, and, in regard to their interactions with others, note how it is relevant given a context in which we can differentiate the manner in which Heidegger construes Dasein in Being and Time and the manner in which I have come to understand it given the OP on this thread and the OP here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=194382

And he knows this…how? Is he privy to the intention and the motivation of the poet? What if it is in reference to a particular man making reference to a particular set of circumstances in which much did depend on “a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens”? Does this make the poem more or less interesting, intriguing, insightful? And how is the answer to this not more dependent on my understanding of dasein than on Heidegger’s?

I’m sorry, but this is nothing short of unintelligible to me. How it is to be as a human being oneself?

I ask anyone here defend their own understanding of that. And, sure, in a context of their own choosing.