Heidegger on Truth and Finitude, part 1, an essay by the late John Haugeland (1945-2010)

A reading of Haugeland's "Truth and Finitude: Heidegger's Transcendental Existentialism" published in a collection of essays entitled:
"Heidegger, authenticity, and modernity: essays in honor of Hubert Dreyfus" (2000) ed. by Dreyfus, Wrathall, and Malpas

Category:

Education

Tags:

• heidegger
• dreyfus
• haugeland
• disclosedness
• being
• entities
• philosophy
• phenomenology
• truth
• ontology
• dasein
• comportment
• mind

[Israe5l]

The reason why I am so stuck about dead matter and life form is that those two categories have nothing in common. One might say, they both share space. Not so, life form maybe a different mode of existence. Life Form may simply be the core of free will. We don't think of living things the way we think of dead matter. Its dead.

So Being ties together the two different "beings". Science has biology. But we don't relate "live beings" with biology.

[emblemOFbeing]

@Israe5l I didn't intend to call you a 'faker', sorry if I made it seem that way. You've said a lot since my last comment. I suppose I'm not disagreeing, but at this point at least, I'm just not sure about how to 'frame' you matter/life division. Of course 'dead matter' (Dead? of life-less?) and 'life form' have SOMETHING in common, ie as 'different modes of existence', they are at least both modes of existing. But, more to the point: what is this nature of this ontological distinction?

[emblemOFbeing]

@Israe5l I agree, there are different ways of comportment- encountering, understanding, interacting with- 'things' and 'living entities'. (There is also 'my' lived-body; not only 'life form', but subjectivity, 1st person givenness, ownmost being-in-the-world). But this distinction has its primary 'meaning' in phenomenological givenness. Taken 'purely' conceptually--say, w/o taking phenomena into account--what essential diff. could we pin down between these two (and still not turning to biology)

[emblemOFbeing]

@Israe5l I'm asking: aside from the way a living entity is grasped vs the way things are grasped (in all the possible phenomenological modes of givenness), taking 'grasped' in widest sense, what else is there to differentiate 'life form' and 'things' for ontology? You said we 'think of them' differently, but even if we 'just think' of these two, this must be related to the manifold of experiences we, in each case, have had--intersubjective (discourse, tradition, etc), first person, etc, right?

[emblemOFbeing]

so the question is, again, what is the nature of this life/matter distinction?

if you don't have phenomena, what do you have 'to go on'?

[Israe5l]

Yes, you are handicapped. While I take on different voices. You are defending Heidegger.

[emblemOFbeing]

@Israe5l Indeed. Still, after reading eg Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, & others, I'm frustrated by approaches to philosophical questions/issues which (may or may not) have the appearance of being rigorous, but are in fact, and at the same time, blatantly intellectualist, abstract, objectivist, mentalistic, etc In general I'm somewhat bothered by those who want to propose solutions to problems which demand phenomenological considerations, without any mention of subjectivity or experience.

[Israe5l]

I still think dead matter(science) and life form(philosophy) divide is a good one. A very blunt one for sure. But I do still hold that the divide is a complete one. Nothing is common. (I take back "different mode of experience".) And together we relate to Being.

I think this helps not only the divide itself but phenomenology (science) and philosophy (ontology). Where the demarcation is weak.

I also got to think of categories: humans, technology, and magic.

[Israe5l]

@emblemOFbeing OK I will take back the comment of "faker".

In any event, I have a dim view of science in certain instance. "Subjectivity" reminds me of phenomenology (undoubtly a science), and "experience" (empirical science). Sciences are dead matter thinking. Ontology is lifeform thinking. The ontological divide of deadmatter/lifeform is before all scientific(therefore mathematical and logical) divide. Everything comes under the word of Being and Thought.

Now you can call me a name.

[Israe5l]

So, you are calling me a faker.

"subjectivity or experience". Those two words I don't care much. What [is] is? To me is right in the middle of subjectivity/objectivity. Yes, in some ways I am objectivitist. Only because I argue for the ontology of deadmatter/lifeform. But as I have admit, this ontological skeem is incomplete. And also as I have admit it is not the only way to divide up Being. Being is not One. There is fundamentally different ways of doing ontology.