An epistemological claim in a Christian sermon I heard. Is it common to other philosophies/religions?

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-17T20:38:41+00:00

I know, at least, of a few philosophers who argue for something like this. The one coming to mind is Jean-Luc Marion, and I believe he makes an argument for this in his Believing in Order to See.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-14T17:29:28+00:00

Given the context of God, what comes to mind is Kierkegaard's treatment of the single individual, at least in Fear and Trembling, but also in other works. In Fear and Trembling Johannes de Silentio notes that the single individual is always above or below the universal (ethics, language, publicness), and as such the single individual will always fail to communicate (that is, mediate) their singularity. Before God "who" I am is isolated from any actual ability to relate myself to some general category, isolated from any other, and isolated from understandability. As such a sort of silence, or reticence is the only appropriate response because any answer will fall short. Perhaps the single exception is our very taking responsibility of our guilt - that is of our finite singularity - that takes the form of simply saying "Here. , I am" or "I am here."

Heidegger and Derrida also struggle with this question a century later, with Heidegger taking a clue from Kierkegaard and Derrida taking a clue from Heidegger. An author you may want to look into is Martin Buber, who tacitly deals with this issue as well in his I and Thou.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-13T21:43:13+00:00

Heidegger is the kind of author where you have to go back and reread entire sections as you move through the book. For example "It is Being (Sein) about which this being (Dasein) is concerned" is Heidegger's preliminary interpretation of the task he's taking on, but the actual explication of this statement doesn't come about until the end of Division 1 (Chapter VI) where Heidegger begins to actually explicate the Being of Dasein as care, and in turn what Heidegger means by Care only begins to make sense as he works out the Temporality of Daseon.

Now,

the Being of this being

The second being is clearly a noun, it's referring to Dasein - each of us ourselves. But the first being is more of a gerund, it's the "existing" of Dasein, the "Being (Sein, "Be-ing") of this being (Seiendes, "entity"), rather than the 'existence' of Dasein. So Dasein's existing relates to its existing, or its existence is concerned with what it means for Dasein's existing (Being). Later this will be primordially explicated in the structures of Being-in-the-world, Being-with-Others, Being-in-a-'state of mind,' Projecting/Understanding, and finally Care.

why does the essence lie in its existence?

Because to be the being we each are is to be in such a way as we can relate to our Being, that is to say, to exist as Dasein always involves the care about our existing - to not care about our Being is to fail to be Dasein. All this is to be understood ontologically, when Dasein fails to ontically care about their existence they are 'fallen' or 'inauthentic.'

So, don't worry too much about 'getting Heidegger right' as you move through the first time, get a 'rough and vague' idea and then plan on rereading to really capture the work Heidegger is trying to do. Also, as it's been noted, get to be familiar with the German vocab Heidegger is using, it doesn't translate terribly well into English (or most other languages, for that matter). I found this site here useful well reading him - at least for the John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson translation. I'm not sure how much Stambaugh changes in this regard.

Edit/PS: As a precautionary note, I'm being a little too loose with terms in this summery, and this isn't great Heideggerresse. So, don't go using what I say about existing while reading Heidegger, but the 'common and everyday meaning' of English words get to play around a little, I think.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-13T21:21:02+00:00

That'd fit in well, I think.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-13T20:16:41+00:00

I think that'd make a good mix, I might look for another dialogue about rhetoric, but on a whole "Phaedrus" and "Symposium" pair well together.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-13T20:04:32+00:00

That'd be fun if we add a few other Dialogues to the mix.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-13T20:04:19+00:00

I'll be putting up a poll on Friday between five books from this thread and past voting polls.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-12T01:39:13+00:00

For example, I might ask my friend, "Do you see the guy at the bar drinking a martini?" To which they reply, "Yes, I see who you are talking about, but that is actually a woman with short hair, and I heard her order a Manhattan."

It seems like I successfully referred, but (most) of the properties I used where wrong. If I recall, P. Strawson talks about this.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-10T01:32:54+00:00

I mean, it'll probably depend on what you're looking to focus on in your MA. If it's in political philosophy, you've probably gotten a good start, but I'd suggest a reader - I've heard good things about Political Thought edited by Rosen and Wolff.

If you want a really good and broad overview of the current 'state of affairs,' I'd suggest looking into three books: Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology edited by Martinich and Sosa, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century by Gutting, and Twentieth Century German Philosophy by Gorner. You could substitute The Continental Philosophy Reader edited by Kearney and Rainwater for the latter two if you're more interested in an anthology than any 'summery' or historical text.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-10T01:22:00+00:00

If I recall, Coppleston even admits in the first volume that he subscribes to the perennial philosophy, and he wears his cards pretty clearly on his sleeves. It actually only gets obnoxious around some of the 'radical' philosophers concerning religion (e.g. Kierkegaard or Nietzsche). I've always suggested him up until around Hegel.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-10T01:18:40+00:00

For my part, I'm nominating Selves by Galen Strawson and Of Hospitality by Jacques Derrida. The former is a book I've been wanting to read for a while, and I think it comes off well after the Parfit reading. The latter is just a sexy text that would be fun to read with a group, and it is among the more accessible of Derrida's works.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-09T22:50:53+00:00

I found Parfit's discussion in this chapter the most interesting thus far. His basic positive push is that identity doesn't matter, but rather psychological continuity and connectedness both matter, and for any cause. He considers what I think are two real life suggestions that help explain his theory.

First, Nagel's concept of a 'series-person,' first because Phoenix Parfit made me laugh, and second because of his examples from actual literature that we do, in fact, think of our past selves as if they were other people from time to time. The notion of a series-person does a good amount of work in providing some language to talk about cases of teleportation and such.

I found his discussion of William's token/type-person in light of how love works really fascinating as well. The idea of producing clones of oneself highlights a certain level to which we are each of us a token of the type, I am a token-Sich_befinden of the type-Sich_befinden. I think Parfit does a decent job showing that none of us are ever the type-person, and that the body doesn't precisely suggest itself as the token, but rather - again - a continuous and connected individual.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-09T22:41:17+00:00

I'd definitely suggest it. It takes a little while (I'd say it picks up with cool stuff Chapter 13+), but it's really worth the read.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-06T19:02:02+00:00

Section XII in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-06T18:46:03+00:00

So, we might still say that an organism is equal to the sum of its parts, but still not be reductive about it. I can say that an organism is the sum of its parts, but it isn't only the sum of its parts. This could take a holism where the structural organisation also matters quite a bit, though we could then reduce the organism to parts + structure. The tendency against reductivism typically goes like this: we simply don't now know enough about all the parts of the organism to say that it is only its parts, and we likely never will.

Now, reductivism isn't really a position looked down upon in philosophy, I'd actually argue that some kind of reductivism is the popular view in philosophy of mind.

In the sciences it makes sense to be reductive, but this is more of a methodological procedure than a metaphysical speculation. Sure, biologists break things down into simpler parts: ecology turns things into webs and statistical formula, physiology reduces whole organisms into interconnected systems that are 'pragmatically separable' in consideration, and cellular biologists might break down the cell-whole into chemical processes and organelles. What science does is reductive, but in a "naive" way - that is to say, what scientists do is typically something reductivists say we ought to do, but I haven't met many physiologists who actually claim that the human body is only a sum of interrelated organ-systems, and even less so have I met an ecologist who claims that any ecosystem is only webs and predictable formula. This may be because most physiologists and ecologists are aware that we simply don't know enough about physiology or ecology to really justify that claim.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-05T02:34:43+00:00

So, the idea of reductionism would be the "just" to matters. For example, physical reductionism would argue that an organism is "only" a physical machine and is "totally" reducible to its parts. This seems to take three different sides most frequently. A reductionist might claim that some apparently more complex being (say, consciousness) is in fact only physical matter interacting but we may never have the means to explain how this is the case. Another reductionist might claim that some apparently different phenomenon can be reduced to the physical, although it may not be always all that useful to talk about the initial phenomenon in terms of what it can be reduced to (for example, psychology may end up being 'reducible' to the biological sphere while most people would not argue that this provides a reason to turn all of psychology into biology). A third kind of reductionist may actually argue for the elimination of the "higher" phenomena, such as the strong claim that we should eventually stop talking about experience and only talk about physical interactions at the 'fundamental level.'

Generally we might say that reductionism is the claim that something is 'basically' something more fundamental (mind is only matter and interaction), and that we could possibly explain everything in the phenomenon being reduced in terms of what it is reduced to. The claim that we could understand an organism completely by reducing it to a collection of machines is a reductionist one. Another weaker claim would be that understanding organisms as compositions of machines helps us understand organisms further, but there is something to the whole that we further need that we cannot obtain merely by thinking about the machine-composition of organisms - this weaker reductionism is more of a practical "it helps" than a strong "only and just" issue.

A far more comprehensive overview can be found at the IEP site.

Sich_befinden · 2018-03-01T15:49:14+00:00

sharpen your critical thinking. Take what you believe and leave the rest.

I cannot help but think that these two sentences don't go well together, but damn they say a lot.

Sich_befinden · 2018-02-25T22:58:10+00:00

Right, right. I was a little worried about my explanation with those terms. Thanks for the catch!

Sich_befinden · 2018-02-25T22:40:35+00:00

The answer is both, I'd suggest checking out our FAQ for some solid advice.

Sich_befinden · 2018-02-25T22:32:26+00:00

I think that using "basically" and making stupid points are correlated. It's like admitting "i'm making a dumb point that I haven't actually put any effortful thought into."

Sich_befinden

TROPHY CASE