Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 13:41:28 -0500
From: Daniel McGrady <dMcGrady-AT-Compuserve.Com>
Subject: Re:  _I am_ in ME's new article (2)


Michael Eldred egrapse:

>This scenario in which God makes something (which is pure invention) is an

>example of the =91logical possibilities=92 you call on at various points in
your 
>discourse. But does thinking in terms of logical possibility have anything
to do 
>with phenomenological thinking, i.e. bringing the phenomena themselves to 
>language as modes of being? 

Yes, I would say everything to do with phenomenology.   Language does not
merely attach itself to the phenomena, but is the very form of it.  But as
I say in a preceding post, we mustn't allow logic to be wrested from us by
the logicians.   We must reclaim it.   Assumptions understood logically
have their grounds exposed when assumptions are understood ontologically.  
Now this does not mean altering the terms, but discovering through the
terms what it _is_ to assume.   And the clue is not only in the language
but so is the mode of being.    Don't get carried away with the god
suggestion.   It is another way of saying that as a starting point it will
not do.  For me it is just obvious that talking to oneself is an everyday
capacity, but as an intrinsic aspect of the constitution of Dasein?   -This
is not the same as dialogue with oneself.-   To say that this is a logical
possibility means we can quite understand how it would work.  What I was
asking was if there could be a universe with only one Da-sein such that all
the modalities were available for this individual, such that they could
carry out speech acts, language games, etc., without sharing with ontical
others.   Just to say that this problem arises too late because it is a
fact that Da-sein is already in a world with others, fails to grasp the
point of the question.   The point of suggesting such a logical possibility
was for you to show why it was not a logical possibility.   And this would
show the meaning of 'sharing' without which Dasein could not be Dasein. 
Presented purposely in this way so that the answer would not be a
repetition that 'sharing'  was presupposed.

>My previous reference to =93mind game=94 was not meant in any pejorative or 
>polemical sense but as a translation of =93Gedankenspiel=94, which itself is a
kind 
>of _vorstellendes Denken_, i.e. the subject brings beings forth in its
mind=92s 
>eye, i.e. consciousness, presents beings to itself by intending them in 
>consciousness. The place where beings presence in the metaphysics of 
>subjectivity is the consciousness of the subject. Because the subject is
the 
>starting point and the point of return of this bringing forth, it masters
the 
>objects and can know them. But because the place where beings presence is
the 
>consciousness of the subject, the problem of knowledge arises: what do the

>representations in consciousness have to do with the world. Your
experiments 
>with logical possibility have precisely this structure. 

I like terms like 'mind's eye' but would not cash it out in terms like
'consciousness'.   To 'consciousness'  there is too much of the present at
hand.   But 'mind' as I said once to Henry, who thought I had looped the
loop, is a way of being that calls for practice.   'Mind the shop' contains
the sense of 'Wahrheit' that is lost when converted into the present at
hand 'consciousness' that is examined by cognitive science and mainstream
philosophy of mind.  The term 'mind' has become so present at hand that it
is treated synonymously with 'consciousness.'   Meine Gedankenspielen are
not like this.   For I think they should be practised so as to make
ourselves available to receive that which is already given in a spirit of
grace and thankfulness.   They way it is given is present in language which
provides both the gift and the means of retrieval.

>But Dasein is always already in the world, and there is no opportunity at
all 
>for Dasein to imagine logical possibilities. Dasein is being-in-the-world,
which 
>includes essentially being-in-the-world-with-others. All the terms in this

>composite term still have to be unfolded phenomenologically, (i.e. they
are all 
>questions) but it is a bogus problem to ask whether there could be a world
with 
>only one individual. The problem arises too late, because Dasein is
already in 
>the world with others. It can only be a problem for the consciousness of a

>subject, because this consciousness is cut off from the world and only 
>re-presents the world to itself in its imaginings, i.e. in its
bringing-forth of 
>representations in consciousness. 

Michael, don't stand by while theoreticians and metaphysicians alike hijack
terms like 'subject'.   And I mean by lining them up with terms like
'consciousness'.   Instead we think them through.  Be patient and try and
see what I am getting at, when I de-encrust it from the theoretical jargon
and look again at how the Latin is embedded in our Anglo-Saxon.

>To reiterate: the problematic of logical possibilities is a problematic of

>knowledge, not that of the phenomenological thinking of being.

No, I don't think so in the sense in which I am using 'logical
possibility'..

>It is not possible to proceed this way, by imagining.
>Your use of the language of subjectivity (here: =93self-consciousness=94)
buries the 
>insight you have into being as modality. This insight cannot be said in
the 
>language of the metaphysics of subjectivity. Heidegger was wont to say:
=93Recht 
>gedacht, recht gesagt, und recht gesagt, recht gedacht.=94 (=93Thought
rightly, said 
>rightly, and said rightly, thought rightly.=94) 

The term 'self-consciousness' is used in its everyday sense as Anscombe
does a kind of history of the use of the term.   She is really trying to
show that the varying uses of it are bogus.   The modern sense of being
'self-conscious' in the sense of feeling over exposed, has no use at all in
uncovering the phenomenon of 'I'.   Much of the use has been made even more
bogus by the encroachment of psychoanalytical terms becoming part of the
everyday.  Now, I agree wholeheartedly with that Heidegger 'sentiment' you
quote.   But I see it in the sense of to think rightly is to be guided by
language and thought is a gift of language.  To follow the dictates of
language is not to follow our opinions, ideas, definitions or theories.  
But to say it as language gives it.   Again I say, the difference between
Moore and Wittgenstein.

>By insisting on the language of subject, object, consciousness, etc. the
Da of 
>Dasein, which is the clearing in which the being of beings opens itself to

>Dasein, is eliminated from view. The Da is the clearing of modality, the 
>clearing for the modalities of being. Being and Dasein belong to each
other 
>precisely in these modalities in which being opens up to Dasein and grants
it 
>possibilities of its own existence.

Precisely what I am not insisting upon.  Describing the 'da' as the
clearing of modality says very little.   That is why I stick my neck out
and present an aspect of it as the range of modalities that have provided
access to the others that make up our world and through which those others
have been disclosed.   But as this is sound-bite stuff this gives the
impression that that is all I mean by 'Clearing'.   The standard account of
the modal under which a being is disclosed does not say enough, because,
for one thing, that modal coming from Dasein encounters the modal coming
from the other.   The otherness of each modal is interesting, and this is
what I feel leads the way to the later Heidegger.   Whereas what I read
from the commentary is that there is one modal according to which the thing
is disclosed.   And what you repeated to me seems to say the same thing.

>Onto-logy is not, and can never be, a matter of the logic of being, but of
the 
>saying of being in its modal happening. There can only be a logic of being
in 
>metaphysics, and Hegel is the great example here. The self can indeed be
thought 
>as a mode of Dasein; it is not _eo ipso_ held ransom to metaphysical
thinking. 
>If there is to be any distinction between =91I=92 and =91self=92, as you have been

>insisting, it has to be thought as a difference in modality of being. 

Da-sein expresses itself in the 'to-be'.   You could hardly say that this
was not linguistic.   Well, I think Hegel is another file begging to be
re-opened.   I don't think the self can be thought of as a mode of
anything.   Except to say that to say that in any  'I'- assertion there is
always a mode of reflexivity.   A kind of self-transparency.  To say 'I', I
know what I intend.   It suddenly becomes opaque when I question what I did
intend, for it immediately slips away.  And that is when I start groping
for easier terms like 'self'.   'I' has to be thought in the modality of
the being we intend when we mean it.   This is not a mode of being that we
give ourselves but which is given to us, which we share with others, but
only in the sense that we each constitute ourselves identically through it.
  But be careful, for constitution is only part of the story.

>This is not only cryptic but muddy, since the subject can never be open to
its 
>own being, i.e. the subject and Dasein have to be kept clearly and
distinctly 
>apart. 

This depends upon what you mean by 'own being'.   But again I think you are
using 'subject' in a way that both of us would be glad to see the back of=2E 
 But ontology is only possible because the analytic thinker follows the
traces of what has already shown itself.   These modalities have shown
themselves as well as their roots.  And when we do trace them there must be
something that tells us that we are on the right track.   This seems to me
to be language, when we mean it in a non-theoretical way.   Language grants
these modes of being.   How do we know that we are _thinking_ if language
does not tell us so and how do we know we are _saying_ if language does not
tell us so?   If we said e.g. that 'thinking' was something else than what
we mean by 'thinking' then what gives us the right to say so, and would we 
be talking non-sense?

Empathically yours,

Daniel


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