Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 14:41:44 +0800
Subject: Re: Nature in Being and Time


Hi Anthony,

> More importantly, theres 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.

Yes, but so what? As I said science is not philosophy, I don't think it
needs a concept for the 'ready to hand' or practical understanding. QM is,
however, looking for new ways to approach the problem of nature which for us
means something like the manifest presence at hand of natural or empirical
phenomena, but not exactly in a classical sense.

> 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.

By basic concepts I mean ontological concepts like presence or space and
time and so on. As good Heideggereans we have our own basic concepts such as
Dasein, being, presencing and originary temporality which belong to
Heidegger's fundamental ontology. At one level this is all 'conceptual' cos
that's how we talk about it and philosophise, even if the object of our
philosophising is not itself merely theoretical understanding.

And yes, science works with the present at hand material universe, so in a
sense it concentrates on things abstracted from everyday practical
understanding, so you can say that both classical and quantum physics 'still
essentially operate on the conceptual level of the mode of knowing', but so
what? It's science, what else would you have them do?

> Take time, for example. It might
> seem at first that the more relativistic modern notion of time is closer to
> Heideggers 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.

Well I'm not sure how various approaches to QM understand time yet but yes,
generally speaking, time still seems to be understood as a linear,
calculable resource. However, one whacko paper I couldn't quite understand
suggested that time was irrelevant to one possible general theory, so the
problem here isn't as clear as you might think, and certainly much more
problematic than any classical notion of absolute clockwork time.

More to the point, the concept of time itself is questionable, which at
least is a start and certainly marks a difference from the classical notion
of time. My question here would be in what sense do you think the "modern
scientific notion of time is still *essentially* the same" as classical
time? An interesting question, and one that will require a fair amount of
research I think. 

In fact the major difference between classical and new physics is probably
that the classical system was a complete theory, albeit eventually
insufficient to explain electromagnetic and then quantum phenomena. QM, on
the other hand, isn't a complete or general theory, it's bits and pieces are
ad hoc approximations of what scientists are observing with todays
technology. And these theories are all questionable, even down to the basic
concepts of what space is or what time is...

> The problem is that without Heideggers 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

Well now I'm not going to argue the Husserl point with you here but there is
a growing appreciation of his phenomenology that doesn't follow the
traditional line of thinking you outline above (largely instigated by
Heidegger). For me it's Husserl's notion of time that critically underpins
Heidegger's entire early phenomenology, and there are alternative
interpretations of the reduction or epoche that place Husserl's thought
squarely alongside Heidegger's as far as the 'environing life world' goes.
I'm not saying your interpretation is wrong, it's just that I don't agree
with it.

Apart from that, I don't think science particularly cares about notions of
transcendental idealism or fundamental ontologies, it's not philosophy, it
deals with empirical phenomena and ad hoc hypotheses about the structure of
that phenomena. So yes it's still all about 'presence at hand' and
objectivity, but this 'objectness' has become rather difficult to explain,
especially when you get effects like the two slit experiment where a single
'particle' goes through two slits simultaneously without dividing... there's
still no explanation for it, just two separate wave and particle theories
with no way of linking them up.

Cheers,

Malcolm










     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---