What is Dasein?

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?

Why limit yourself to historical and cultural roots? Any preference that any individual pulls out of his ass has to be just a valid. Crazy, logical, illogical, stupid, clever, reasonable, unreasonable … it’s all the same … an individual’s particular frame of mind based purely on personal likes, wants, preferences.

You can’t say that one individual’s preferences are better than some other individual’s. Right? (Expect your own of course. :smiley: )

So you have a world with billions of preferred outcomes which are equivalent. Or a society with hundreds, thousands or millions of equivalent outcomes.

So you decide morality and ethics by a democratic vote.

But I bet that you prefer that vote over other systems of deciding it because you expect the “normal” people to outvote the bat-shit crazies. When you you get down to it, you are placing your faith in some kind of ‘human nature’ which transcends the historical, cultural and personal “quirkiness”. IOW, the existence of a transcending set of preferences.

Completely irrelevant to the point raised.

Tell me how I can tell you anything without it being dismissed as being only in my head?

So the mass killings of the USSR, the Nazis or the Khmer Rouge were just the “community standard”?

Or maybe the noble efforts of the leadership trying to build an ideal society?

What can one say about it?

Again and again and again: take what you construe to be the “foundations” of Heidegger’s Dasein out into the world of conflicting goods [precipitating conflicting behaviors] and juxtapose it with the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Instead, it’s straight back up into the clouds of abstraction:

What “on earth” does this means with respect to an experience that you have had in which a value judgment of your own was challenged by another?

All I can do here is make an attempt to grasp how and why you are not down in that hole.

In other words, for all practical purposes.

And then when I try to bring Buddha down to earth here…

…I get this:

Note to others:

What crucial point about the Buddha here do I keep missing?

From my frame of mind, Prismatic’s take on Heidegger and Buddha and 4NTs and 8FPs, is analogous to Phyllo’s take on Communism. If I truly understood them the way that he does then I would share his assessment/argument about them.

And then – presto! – I would be up out of the hole.

Well, sure, if you wish to convince yourself that I am “comfortable” being down in a hole that revolves around a moral narrative that revolves around a belief that human interactions in the is/ought world revolve around an essentially absurd and meaningless world that ends for all of eternity in oblivion for “I”, then, well, okay, I doubt I will ever convince you otherwise.

But that still doesn’t apprise me of how you are not down in it yourself when your own value judgments come into conflict with others.

Either regarding the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, the meaning of conflicting goods or the meaning of political economy. Out in a particular context that we might all be familiar with.

You yourself either are able to sustain some level of comfort and consolation embodying the “real me” in sync with one or another moral narrative/political agenda or you’re not.

Instead, we get something stuffed down into the murky middle:

Okay, then describe an actual context for us and note how for all practicl purposes this actually works. Give us some examples of how you moved on. Sure, folks can take a “leap of faith” to one or another “political prejudice” and think themselves into believing this need be as far as they go.

But how is this not also embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

And what happens when you come upon those who reject your own leap of faith in favor of one of their own? Or when they do embrace one or another objective morality? How are you not confronted with either might makes right or moderation, negotiation and compromised behaviors.

Again, illustrate your text here. Show us how your frame of mind allows you to “thrive” in the midst of a world where moral conflagrations are still everywhere.

Instead [as always] it’s back up into the realm of the “general description”.

What on earth am I to make of this?

Note to others:

If this makes sense to you please cite some examples relating to your own life or the lives of others that you know. Examples which clearly note how one can “thrive” socially, politically and economically while escaping the hole I’m in and the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein insofar as you acquire your value judgments.

In other words, inside an existential contraption as opposed to being derived from a philosophical examination of conflicting goods.