Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 21:13:23 +0100
Subject: Clarity


Daniel writes:
" Jim writes,

>To be perfectly frank, I don't understand many of these comments. Take
>just one example:

>i say that a "thing" is very rigidly "defined."
>i can bring about evidence to support it.
>i can validate it.
>it is self-consistent.
>it is calculated.

Point taken Jim.  But ...

>C'mon, man. Take a "medium-sized dry good," like a chair. Is it rigidly
>defined? What's it mean: that you can bring evidence to support a chair,
>that you can validate a chair, that a chair is self-consistent, that a
>chair is calculated? Is this meant as some kind of endorsement of what
>another participant called "foundationalist" thinking?

Surely this is just a case of confusing facts for things.   I thought your
reference to 'medium-sized dry good' was a reference to Austin.   And
thus Austin's distinction between facts and objects, in that while you can
tripover carpets, and spill coffee on tables, you cannot trip over facts or
spill your coffee on them.   Is this because facts are propositions?
And that would be why it is nonsense to talk about validating chairs or
confirming them or looking for things to be self-consistent, or rigidly
defining things.     For these are only things you do with language.   They
are inappropriately applied, but have nothing to do or say about
metaphysical thought, or foundationalist thinking.  I am taking your word
for it that that is what some people said."


Actually, Daniel, I borrowed the expression from Quine's W&O. In any
case, it was not to Austin's point that I was referring. My point was
simply that many of the participants in this conversation are submitting
formulations of a Heideggerian veneer, but which are under their
surface, formulations of views which H himself denied, and from which
H was trying to ween contemporary philosophical apprentices.

For example, the QUOTES I used above (so you may take my word
for it) -- from whom I took them I had no idea at the time, but I DO
now -- suggested the following view, that is, once I broke through all
the concealment, namely:
the proper characterization of our everyday encounter with so-called
'things' (even with codasein!), qua 'encounters with', is that although
they are, zunachst und zumeist, epistemologically problematic, their
'existence' (not in H's sense, of course) can be proven, validated, what
have you; and our epistemological practices of proof, validation, what
have you, confer upon them an 'existence' which is 'separate' from
Dasein.

This is a view which H criticized in numerous places. However, the
usage of language on which the view was predicated gave it a
Heideggerian gloss, albeit obscure.

This kind of language usage, namely, vague formulations which
seemingly communicate one position, but actually communicate an
endorsement of the position's denial,  is, I feel, EXTREMELY
dangerous and morally blameworthy! I needn't cite what factions of
current -- and past -- societies deploy such language usage.

H's views in SuZ are formulated in what some might consider 'wildly
poetic terms', many born from what seem to be H's translations of
Aristotelian terms. Be that as it may, they are not as vague as some of
the formulations here.

Perhaps, my problem is that I see with an unaided eye. But if the
Emperor has no clothes, he has no clothes.
Cheers
jim


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