Subject: Re: Nature in Being and Time
Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 18:00:15 +0000


malcolm riddoch wrote:

> >> How might Heidegger's phenomenology be a philosophical basis for
> >> non-classical physics?
> >
> > In precisely the same way that it is a philosophical basis for classical
> > physics.
>
>But that's precisely what's in question here isn't it? In what sense is
>Heidegger's phenomenology a philosophical basis for physics in general?
>There's the critique of the subject/object dualism, but that's a critique
>and not a basis. And along with that there's a critical dismantling of
>mathematical realism, but this is also implied in quantum mechanics.

More importantly, there’s a critique of the philosophy of presence in 
general - the interpretation of beings in terms of properties which appear 
to us, at the expense of their equipmentality. That is no less true of 
quantum mechanics than of Newtonian mechanics. Quantum mechanics has nothing 
to do with how the beings it studies are "good for this" or "good for that," 
but only with observable properties. The blurring of these properties by 
quantum indeterminacy does not change that fundamental approach. So it is 
true that quantum mechanics questions the most basic concepts of Newtonian 
mechanics, but the point is that it questions basic CONCEPTS - in other 
words, both still essentially operate on the conceptual level of the mode of 
knowing.

>As you say, this QM emphasis on presence is shared by classical physics, at
>least in a general sense.  However as far as I can see, the problematic of
>the ready to hand merely demonstrates that the ontological basis of
>scientific objectivity, founded in the simple presence of objects, is not a
>fundamental ontology. It's derived from our implicit everyday understanding
>of the world. All this means is that the seemingly self-evident notions of
>'objectivity' and 'presence', 'space' and 'time' are open to question, and
>this also seems to be more and more the case in the new physics today.

Yes, but in an essentially different way. Take time, for example. It might 
seem at first that the more relativistic modern notion of time is closer to 
Heidegger’s initial analysis of time (eg., the "same time" can "seem" longer 
or shorter depending on what we are doing). But the modern scientific notion 
of time is still *essentially* the same, since it still in terms of rigid 
numbering, even if that number changes depending on the reference frame.

>I don't see why science, and QM in particular, can't still critically
>concern itself with presence and materiality cos that is what it's for, 
>it's
>not philosophy and doesn't need a theory for 'ready to handedness'. What it
>does perhaps need is a clarification of its basic concepts, which might 
>mean
>a clarification of the phenomenal structure of nature in the sense of the
>manifest present at hand. And this is more or less what Husserl's and
>Heidegger's phenomenological analyses set out to provide in terms of the
>relation between presence and time.

The problem is that without Heidegger’s step of subordinating presence to 
readiness, we would end up precisely where Husserl did - transcendental 
idealism. The step that allows Heidegger to avoid this dead end is his 
subordination of the mode of presence to a mode in which we are ALREADY in 
the world. That is why Heidegger never performs the Husserlian 
phenomenological reduction - we are ALREADY in the world prior to 
questioning it, not merely as naively absorbed in the prejudice of world 
existence (as Husserl thought), but as closer to "entities as they are in 
themselves." (SuZ 71)

Anthony Crifasi

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