Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 09:40:52 +0100
From: jim <jmd-AT-dasein.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re-post Mine-ness


Does Mine-ness afford us any kind of epistemological privileges with
respect to what we think and feel?
Does Aristotle have any such notion? It seems present in Aquinas
(Disputations on Truth, questions about knowledge, in which he seems
to come extremely close to a SuZ Heidegger view).
 
Eg: A man mistakenly buys a gold-plate, iron ring for a female lover.
She discovers that the ring is iron, not gold. She asks: "How could you
have bought me such a thing? It really hurts me that you did. Are you
toying with my feelings? I'm hurt ...." He responds: "Look, I'm really
very sorry and embarrassed, but at the time I bought it, I thought it was
made of  gold .... Look, I know what I thought when I bought it. I'm not
toying with your feelings. I would never do that. I was deceived. The
shop-keeper lied to me .... But you can't be hurt, can you? I was
tricked." She tells him: "Don't tell me I can't be hurt! YOU hurt me. I
know I'm hurt"!!

And so forth and so on.

Does the Mineness of Dasein (in SuZ), allow us to say that these lovers
"know" what they think and feel?? Would H allow that the man cannot
be mistaken about what he thought; that the woman cannot be mistaken
about how she feels???
Needless to say, Descartes allows it as an essential trait of mental
substances. What about Aristotle? Does Aquinas also allow it. If Aq
does, but A doesn't then, historically, changes have occured in the
conception of perception/experience etc. around the 12th century.
What about Augustine?  

Given the Mineness of Dasein, H can allow that they cannot be
mistaken about WHO it is that thinks and feels what, respectively, they
think and feel. The man thought it was gold, and he cannot be mistaken
that it is HE that thought so. The woman is hurt; she canot be mistaken
about who is is that is hurt. Or so it seems .... (like Augustine? Aquinas?
Descartes? like Aristotle?)

Is it correct to say: just as the disruption/obstruction relating to H's
hammer explains why the carpenter starts "talking about/referring to" the
hammer (from Zuhanden- to Vorhandensein), does this
"disruption/obstruction" in the lovers' lives explain IN THE SAME
WAY why the lovers start "talking about" their thoughts and feelings(not
moods)????? Or is the Zu-Vor distinction not properly applied to the
case of our thoughts and feelings?? What should we say about
Psychology, which develops from our everyday talk about thoughts and
feelings? 

If it is a case of the Zu-Vor distinction, what is the nature of their "talk
about/reference to" their thoughts and feelings? Is it, eg, like tears, just
different "expressions of" the thoughts and feelings?? Does the talk
"replace" or "substitute" the thoughts and feelings, just like Wittgenstein
suggested "ouch" did for (bodily) pain?? Like a "vorhanden-surrogate"
for "zuhanden-had" thoughts and feelings (we aren't talking about
moods; it isn't a 'being' question, so to speak)??? 

Would it be correct to claim -- like Wittgenstein again -- that the
Mitsein existentiale is the ontological a priori which ground the
possibility for lovers not only to have thoughts and feelings, but to
"really, literally, share" thoughts and feelings??? (contra Descartes.
What about Aristotle?).

Any comments or references on these, please? 
Grateful in advance,
Regards,
jim


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