What is Dasein?

Funny thing. I don’t recall a single time when you understood something that I wrote. Did that ever happen? :-k

I’m growing weary of iambiguous and his problem.

If free will doesn’t exist, then it matters not to such a person, whether you discuss it or not. (Logical conclusion) when something doesn’t matter, people don’t discuss it.

The act of iambiguous discussing this, shows blatantly that he agrees freewill exists.

We will clearly have to agree to disagree about this then. There are decisions made by doctors who perform abortions that are predicated on the objective knowledge they must accumulate relating to human biology – knowledge pertaining to sex and pregnancy. Then knowledge pertaining to a particular set of learned skills that successfully brings an unwanted pregnancy to an end.

And the doctor performing it can be either a Communist or a fascist, a man or a woman, gay or straight, black or white, liberal or conservative, atheist or religious, American or Russian, short or tall, fat or thin.

I’m merely pointing out the obvious: that there is no equivalent of this once we shift gears from abortion as a medical procedure to abortion embedded morally/politically in conflicting goods.

The experience, knowledge and certainty that a doctor can acquire in order to in fact abort a pregnancy is there for all to see.

What experience, knowledge and certainty must an ethicist acquire in order to establish abortion as in fact either moral or immoral?

Does or does not the game of chess revolve around long-established rules regarding how the pieces either can or cannot to moved? Are these rules not applicable to all players? Are not some players able to move these pieces such that they either win or lose the game?

And yet in the film Searching For Bobby Fischerviewtopic.php?f=24&t=179469&p=2465377&hilit=Searching+for+Bobby+Fischer#p2465377 – the narrative focuses in turn on issues that revolve instead around the is/ought world. Ought the father have driven his son to focus so much of his time on the game? Ought the father have pushed the son into approaching the game as one in which winning and losing took precedence over love of the game itself?

Was the son’s decent, caring, compassionaite personality [defended fiercely by his mother] an obstacle that had to be yanked out of him in order to ruthlessly crush the competition. As, for example, Jonathan Poe had been taught?

Let’s focus the beam there.

That’s your distinction. Mine revolves more around the skills required to calculate choices in playing a game like poker and the skills required to calculate whether it is moral or immoral to gamble on a poker game.

The past, present and future are all involved in these calculations. But the success rate is there to be seen among the players. But what of the ethicists? How do we calculate their success rate?

Well, from my frame of mind, your frame of mind seems intent on convincing us that, when push comes to shove, there really is no difference between accumulating knowledge to play the game and accumulating knowledge to assess any moral conflicts that might arise as a result of playing the game.

It’s really as simple as that, right?

Just for the record…

To the best of my recollection, I recall instances on other threads when you rather handily explained my own point of view to others. In fact, I recall pointing that out to them.

You do seem to grasp more than others my own basic understanding of dasein out in the is/ought world. You’re just hell bent on reminding me again and again and again that never, ever, [b]ever[/b], will “I” as an existential contraption there be applicable to YOU. :wink:

Come on, how hard can that be?

Here I keep going back to dreams. I don’t know about the dreams of others, but in mine I am absolutely convinced “in the dream” that I am freely calling the shots. However preposterous the twists and turns, it’s all my own doing.

Now, sure, I wake up in the morning. And then I know for sure that I am really calling the shots. At least given the extent to which I can ever really understand the world around me; and in turn am willing to acknowledge that my options are often limited. Quite beyond my control at times.

But if mind is matter and matter immutably interacts per the laws of nature, how do I go about ascertaining for certain that “I” is not so much an existential contraption, as an existential mechanism?

Sure, some here will blatantly insist they grasp this going all the way back to how and why Existence itself came to be.

I’m just a bit more uncertain here myself.

Edit.

Or take the plot unfolding in the 4th episode of the second season of Westworld – “The Riddle Of the Sphinx” : www.ign.com/articles/2018/05/14/westwor … the-sphinx

Here there is an absorbing exploration of/examination into the matter of identity as, technologically, we get closer and closer to an increasingly more sophisticated AI world. One in which mind as matter and matter as mind become increasingly more blurred.

In particular the sequence revolving around James Delos.

You tell me what to make of it?

See. I didn’t write that. I wrote …

  • all thinking consists of contraptions.

  • I would call them tools rather than contraptions.

  • I have control over which ‘tools’ I use.

  • I try out ‘tools’ which appear to be effective.

  • I drop ‘tools’ which don’t work for me.

  • it doesn’t matter if ‘I’ is merely an existential contraption. I don’t dwell on that.

Iambiguous, I believe you DO NOT understand what ‘dasein’ proper is prior to inventing your own definition and version of ‘what is dasein’. Todate I have spent more than 2 months full time on Being and Time [still ongoing and need to spend more time], so I have a reasonable grasp of it.

In addition I don’t believe you understand what is ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ as well.

It is due to your ignorance of the above terms that you interpret them in your own version and thus ended in a mess down the inauthentic path and more so with an evil intent [subconsciously] to trap others into your hole.

Btw, can you give an idea of what is your understanding of what is dasein-proper as in Being and Time, plus the terms authentic and inauthentic. In addition, explain what is the difference between your own version of dasein and the original version in BT.

Why is killing even an ethical issue? Because people don’t want to be killed and they don’t want those that they care about to be killed. If it wasn’t upsetting then it wouldn’t even be part of morality.

But you don’t accept that as part of the knowledge and experience that an ethicist must have … knowledge of human nature and human needs which are fundamentally based in biology.

There are the rules and there are the psychological factors that players bring to the game … the human factors.
Just as in ethics, there is the physical/material context and the physiological.

How can we focus it there when we don’t even agree about how to approach and how to evaluate the situation?

I think there ways to approach it. But no matter what I say, you’re going to respond that it’s in my head, or I’m insisting that everyone think as I do, or someone thinks differently so that means that all approaches are equivalent, etc.

You deny that there is any measure of success.

People dying, people living. Tortured, not tortured. Suffering, not suffering. You don’t seem to consider these things as measures of a successful ethical society. Right?

Okay, you said it. There is really nothing more to discuss.

I expressed my point of view (over the span of many years). You’re not convinced. That would seem to end it.

If all outcomes are equivalent, then there is no basis for morality and ethics. Some outcomes must be considered better than others. Biological needs have to be the first level of that evaluation.

Sure, a contraption in the broadest sense. A contraption involving nature and nurture, genes and memes, words and worlds, logic, culture, personal experiences, childhood indoctrination, sense perception, cognition etc. etc.

But there is still the way in which each of us as individuals put all of those components together subjectively/subjunctively to experience particular thoughts relating to particular contexts.

Why, with respect to the objective world of math, science and empirical facts, does our thinking overlap so much more readily than our thinking relating to identity, value judgments and political prejudices?

And where are the conflicts far more likely to be prevalent?

Of course you don’t dwell on that!

Once you start in on speculating about your sense of self in the manner in which I do, well, there it is, the hole!

Therefore I think that you think yourself into believing that your understanding of and control over these “tools” is just enough to keep you out of it. Indeed, it kept me out of it for many, many years.

I merely suggest that this narrative is more a psychological component of the ego – a defense mechanism – allowing those able to sustain it to suckle on the comfort and consolation of having one or another font in which to reconfigure “I” into [b][u]I[/b][/u].

Still, I’ve never been able to quite grasp how you intertwine religion and philosophy into a frame of mind such that when you use these “tools” in engaging others in behaviors involving conflicting goods, you manage to convince yourself that you use them more reasonably than they do.

Other than in insisting that your “tools” have allowed you to grasp things like Communism such that those who fail to grasp it as you do are not using their own set of “tools” as effectively.

Really, what other way is there to interpret it?

[b]Prismatic,

This is more or less where we left off above:[/b]

Why on earth would I imagine that Barrett would construe the practical implications of “rival goods” in the same manner that I do?

And my intent [re dasein] is to grapple with the is/ought world given the assumption [mine] that we live in a No God world. How on earth do mere mortals arrive at the most or the only rational moral and political narrative/agenda when confronted with these rival goods?

How do you do it? Provide for us an existential trajectory that intertwines the experiences you had in your life and the knowledge/information/ideas you had access to such that you are not in the hole I’m in. In regard to a value judgment all your own.

How would Buddha – “the one who is awake” – have reacted to a context in his days in which different people embraced conflicting value judgments that precipitated conflicting behaviors.

What does being “awake” mean when confronted with any one of hundreds of moral and political conflagrations that have cleaved the human species over the centuries? Bring the knowledge/information/ideas provide here – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_ethics – to bear regarding a particular set of conflicting goods.

In other words, out in the world where behaviors are actually judged by others…where very really consequences can be meted out to those who behave in the “wrong” way.

BTW, I have responed to this point any number of times above. I keep waiting for you to bring your own understanding of Heidegger’s understanding of Dasein out into the world of actual conflicted behaviors derived from actual conflicted goods.

How about the points I raised above regarding the workman using a hammer on a nail and a Nazi soldier using a bullet on a Jew?

That aspect of Dasein. Differentiate the ontic from the ontological here.

Instead it’s just more of the same intellectual contraptions:

I challenge you [or anyone else] to bring this particular “world of words” out into the actual flesh and blood world of human interactions in conflict over conflicting goods.

Note to others:

Wouldn’t you deem this to be basically an “intellectual contraption” as it relates to your own conflicted behaviors with others?

If not, please explain why.
[/quote]

Then this:

Then this:

Try again to actually respond to the points that I raised in the post above.

Then we can [perhaps] resume our exchange. You know, substantively.

Maybe I don’t “use them more reasonably than they do”. I use what I got. I keep my eyes and ears open.

Of course, we don’t even agree on the meaning of “reasonable” … so this exchange can’t be anything more than babble. :laughing:

Iambiguous, I refer you to this post:

viewtopic.php?p=2701133#p2701133

I am not going to waste my time getting into the details with your “intellectual contraption” when you are not equipped with the foundations.

Here is one rival ‘good’ from Being and Time;

In BT as above there are two perspectives to what is Dasein.
Thus your clinging to one perspective of eternal torture of being-in-a-HOLE is definitely inauthentic [you need to understand this term precisely].

As I had mentioned you need to understand [not necessary agree] fully re ‘What is Dasein?’ and what is authentic/inauthentic in relation to this particular hole-issue of yours.

You quote the above re Buddhist Ethics without understanding the full picture which I am sure you will NEVER ever bother to read and understand.

If you understand the full perspectives [the details of the 4NTs and 8FPs - I have posted very often previously] of what you quoted above you would be able to get an effective head start to your dilemma.

Notice the narrative. How it places him and other people in a hierarchy. How this could make the hole comfortable.

Because there are people who believe there are no objective values who move on from there, even thrive, have goals. There are a couple here.

If one makes oneself the brave victim and stay at the realization one does not believe in objective morals, refuse, then, to act in the world, grapple at others and feel superior when they neither 1) drop into the hole or 2) move forward without considering it a hole, the only pleasure left is to posit oneself as superior. Which is a lot easier than trying to do or make something one values, even if one does not consider it objectively good.

And lots of people get off on their holes. Puns accepted if not intended.

People don’t want to be killed by tornadoes or earthquakes or volcanic eruptions or tidal waves either. But who accuses these “natural disasters” of being immoral?

Unless, of course, some come to argue that God ought not to have created a planet where these calamitous events happen all the time.

It can be said that God or Nature created human biology, precipitating any number of contexts in which the death or the birth of the unborn takes place. And while both are clearly predicated on the objective facts embedded in the evolution of life on planet earth, they precipitate in turn very, very different reactions.

Why then don’t our reactions here revolve around the sort of knowledge and experience an ethicist can glean from his or her own understanding of human biology?

Doctors can be praised by some for being skilled at aborting embryos and fetuses, while being condemned by others for acting immorally in doing precisely that.

Okay, Mr. Ethicist, using your knowledge and experience, tell us the moral obligation of all rational men and women here.

All I ever do is to make the distinction between those who insist their way to approach social, political and economic confrontations that involve conflicting goods is the right way, versus those who argue that given conflicting sets of assumptions, conflicting goods can be defended.

So you are either telling us that how you view Communism is the way in which all reasonable people ought to, or you are acknowledging – re “you’re right from your side and I’m right from mine” – that there are those able to reasonably defend Communism given a different set of assumptions about human interactions: “we” more than “me”, “cooperation” more than “competition”, the “collective” more than “individualism”.

I’m merely noting that over the years I have come to abandon objectivism here. That, instead, here and now, I have come to grapple with human morality based on how I have come to construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

No, I argue that assessments of success and failure are largely existential contraptions rooted in dasein historically and culturally. Whereas the objectivists insist that the only rational measure of either one is their own.

This always revolves around the behaviors either prescribed or proscribed in any particular community in order to achieve the so-called “ideal” society.

Do aborted babies suffer? Are they tortured? Are they dying? What should a successful, ethical soiety prescribe and proscribe here?

You have come back to this particular frame of mind a number of times. Of course, from my frame of mind, I imagine that being convinced can only happen when a particular moral narrative/political agenda is accepted by both sides. One side convinces the other.

That this is an option for folks like you is, in my view, precisely that which sustains the comfort and the consolation embodied in a life that revolves around the “real me” in sync with an optimal set of moral guidelines.

Again, as I see it, that is basically the whole point of objectivism.

But that just brings us [okay, me] back to the actual political contraption that any particular community employs in any particular historical and cultural context.

1] Might makes right. Those in power are able to enforce a set of behaviors such that the outcomes that they favor prevail. Either because they are convinced these outcomes reflect “the right thing to do”, or because these outcomes sustain their own selfish interests.

2] right makes might. Folks in the community come to agree on a particular outcome as the embodiment of an enlightened human morality.

3] Democracy and the rule of law. Folks have conflicted assessments of the optimal outcomes but through moderation, negotiation and compromise different sets of political prejudices rise and fall depending on who is able to convince the citizens to vote them into power. The idea being that they are then willing to step aside [peacefully] should the populace come to view them with disfavor.

My argument here is basically that the outcomes that individuals prefer given a particular frame of mind in any particular context, is rooted historically and culturally in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

And that the manner in which I have come to understand the existential interactions of these components out in a particular world have precipitated my dilemma above.

How, then, I ask the objectivists, has it not precipitated the same dilemma regarding their own conflicted behaviors with others.

And that would surely be a problem if we lived in a world where folks couldn’t agree [or be shown] what it means to be reasonable regarding their interactions with others as they are understood by, say, epistemologists, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, plumbers, meteorologists or dentists.

In fact, regarding the overwhelming preponderance of our interactions with others in the either/or world, we can clearly agree on what either is or is not reasonable.

It’s only when we bump into conflicts that revolve around conflicting value judgments that what appears to be reasonable to some may well be construed as babble to others.

Is it or is it not reasonable to argue that this exchange is unfolding on this particular thread on this particular board in this particular internet philosophy community? Is it or is it not reasonable to argue that we don’t agree regarding the components of our respective narratives? Is it or is it not reasonable to note all of the facts that can be demonstrated to others regarding our own individual lives on this particular day?

On the other hand, is or is it not reasonable to argue that my points are more objectively true than yours?

Again, you don’t say what “reasonable” means. You simply repeat the word as though we have a common understanding of it. Which would seem to be an understanding which transcends personal dasein.

How could we have this common understanding?