Dasein/dasein

[Immanuel Can]

But what are our assurances that it's the same as iam's?

Well, my thought about this is that we do not really so much need a 'specific and academic definition'. Surely this can help (and I am not saying it is not necessary)

No, I think at this point it's necessary.

It's necessary because it's the key concept upon which iam seems to hang his whole theory of things. So if we rush past it, pretending we know what he's saying, we will be fools. We don't know. He hasn't said. He's only insisted it isn't anybody else's defintion. And I think we shouldn't agree with somebody when the truth is we actually have no idea what he's implying.

I am curious: What do you think of this view?

I think I don't know what iam means. And only when we know that will we know whether or not we agree with what he says.

[Immanuel Can]

No sense in us wasting each other's time.

Well, that's for sure. If you have no definition of "dasein," I guess we're done on that.

I would hope so. I don't believe the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above can be reduced down to a definition.

That means that even you do not know what you mean. Apparently, you don't know how wooly your own thinking is, at the moment. And that's dangerous for you, because it means that the first person you're going to fool is, as Orwell noted, yourself.

[iambiguous]

Well, that's for sure. If you have no definition of "dasein," I guess we're done on that.

I would hope so. I don't believe the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above can be reduced down to a definition.

That means that even you do not know what you mean. Apparently, you don't know how wooly your own thinking is, at the moment. And that's dangerous for you, because it means that the first person you're going to fool is, as Orwell noted, yourself.

I've explained in some detail what I mean by the word dasein. What I'm waiting for in some detail is for you to define "to be there" given a particular context in which two or more people "in being there" take very different paths in regard to their moral and political value judgments pertaining to a set of circumstances that I am more than willing to allow you to propose.

Instead, you are only really able to take "dueling definitions" up into the intellectual clouds. And the only time you are willing to bring them down to Earth is in order to insist that if another's moral and political value judgments are not wholly in sync with your own "private and personal" Christian God that, to the best of my knowledge, exists only in your head, they are necessarily wrong. They must be because you are necessarily right.

About everything, right?

Unless, of course, you can persuade God to join us here in order to truly humiliate me.

[Immanuel Can]

I've explained in some detail what I mean by the word dasein.

Cirumlocution does not count.

Define it. Here and now.

If you can't, you don't understand it. It's that simple.

[iambiguous]

I've explained in some detail what I mean by the word dasein.

Cirumlocution does not count.

Define it. Here and now.

If you can't, you don't understand it. It's that simple.

Again, I am more than willing to allow others here to make up their own minds regarding which of us is intent [consciously or otherwise] on avoiding a substantive discussion of the existential parameters of human identity with respect to conflicting moral, political and spiritual value judgments.

Given a particular context.

Me and the arguments I make regarding dasein above and elsewhere given the assumption that we are in possession of at least some measure of autonomy in a No God world, and you and your seeming absolute certainty that we are in possession of autonomy and [to me] your considerably fiercer assumptions regarding the existence of a Christian God.

[Immanuel Can]

I've explained in some detail what I mean by the word dasein.

Cirumlocution does not count.

Define it. Here and now.

If you can't, you don't understand it. It's that simple.

Again, I am more than willing to allow others here to make up their own minds regarding which of us is intent [consciously or otherwise] on avoiding a substantive discussion...

As am I.

The one who cannot define his most important term is clearly either self-deceived or dissembling. That's obvious.

[Belinda]

Immanuel, maybe it would help you with the notion of Dasein if think of how you are placed vis a vis your future life according to how God, nature, or random fortune (take your pick) has dealt your cards. No Dasein is the same as any other Dasein: each Dasein is unique.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel, maybe it would help you with the notion of Dasein...

No, you don't know what iam means, anymore than I do. You're making it up.

He's the only one who can define his terms. And apparently, he cannot, or will not.

[iambiguous]

Cirumlocution does not count.

Define it. Here and now.

If you can't, you don't understand it. It's that simple.

Again, I am more than willing to allow others here to make up their own minds regarding which of us is intent [consciously or otherwise] on avoiding a substantive discussion...

As am I.

The one who cannot define his most important term is clearly either self-deceived or dissembling. That's obvious.

Note to others:

It's now in your own more or less capable hands.



On the other hand, I do have to admit this:

If my own understanding of dasein in the No God is/ought world is correct then...

1] our individual lives are essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] "I" is a fractured and fragmented fabrication in regard to our moral and political value judgments and
3] eventually, one by one, we all tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Whereas if you give your life over to IC's very own private and personal Christian God you can sustain the comfort and the consolation that he now wallows in all the way to the grave.

And, if I'm right and he's wrong, what does it matter then? You're dead either way, right?

Trust me: I get why his approach to philosophy up in the intellectual clouds is preferable to mine. Up there you can make it all about definitions and deductions. The didactic squabbles that persist never have to actually come into contact with the staggering complexities of actual flesh and blood human interactions at all. In a world of words all that ever really counts is defining and defending yet more words still.

Right?

[Immanuel Can]

Note to others:
Iam's skating like fury to try to get away from having to define his own key term. You should ask yourself why he's afraid to define something upon which he rests all his arguments...indeed, the very title he has, himself, given to this thread.

Why should he fear the term he posted so bravely above?

[Alexis Jacobi]

If my own understanding of dasein in the No God is/ought world is correct then...

1] our individual lives are essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] "I" is a fractured and fragmented fabrication in regard to our moral and political value judgments and
3] eventually, one by one, we all tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Whereas if you give your life over to IC's very own private and personal Christian God you can sustain the comfort and the consolation that he now wallows in all the way to the grave.

And, if I'm right and he's wrong, what does it matter then? You're dead either way, right?

You spoke of IC's sense of the factual and real existence of God as a sort of 'figment of his imagination'. But in point of fact it is your ideas -- the one you fleshed out here -- that could be described in this way. It is a very very new set of assertions. The way you present it is as if it is a very old and established idea.

There is a way to look at what you assert and to say that if that is your stopping point, or the final point of your investigations (which you say began long ago and under the influence of some influential persons) I could assert to you that you've stopped in a tragic and rather desolate place.

You are defining, essentially, a position that produces nothing more than nihilism. Surely that cannot be the end of the road and the desired object?

Many many people, inside and outside the Christian tradition, gain knowledge and understanding that deflates and in a sense blows away (as a wind blows something away) the deathly assertions you are making.

What interests me in these assertions is the degree to which they are choices. Yet you will say they are *inevitable logical and necessary conclusions*. What I notice is how possible it is, and how easy it is, to construct a perceptual edifice that iterates itself. And the rigid perceptual stance locks one out of other possibilities.

What I also notice is many many people who seem self-stuck and then represent their position as if it is reality.

[iambiguous]

Note to others:
Iam's skating like fury to try to get away from having to define his own key term. You should ask yourself why he's afraid to define something upon which he rests all his arguments...indeed, the very title he has, himself, given to this thread.

Why should he fear the term he posted so bravely above?

No more so than IC skating furiously to avoid bringing his definition of, say, the Christian God out into a world where the discussions revolve around, say, these factors:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of the Christian God
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why the Christian God?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in the Christian God
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and the Christian God

Given particular sets of circumstances, contexts, situations etc., of his own choosing.

IC, in my view, is just a run-of-the-mill objectivist. I've encountered hundreds of them online and offline over the years. His own "transcending font" just happens to be the Christian God.

But what is most crucial about this mentality, in my opinion, is that the True Believer is able to anchor his Real Me -- Soul? -- in something -- anything -- that allows him or her to think themselves into believing that they are not at all just an infinitesimal and insignificant speck of existence in the staggering vastness of "all there is" here: https://www.sciencechannel.com/show/how ... ks-science

The whole point of nestling deep down psychologically into the Christian God is to feel connected to something teleologically.

And the more someone like me becomes a threat to that the more it is necessary to make me the issue. That way he won't actually have to deal substantively with the points I raise by taking them out into the world of actual human interactions. Interactions that are ever and ever coming into conflict precisely over opposing Gods or ideologies or philosophical contraptions anchored to the clouds that constitute those precious "worlds of words".

[Immanuel Can]

Note to others:
Iam's skating like fury to try to get away from having to define his own key term. You should ask yourself why he's afraid to define something upon which he rests all his arguments...indeed, the very title he has, himself, given to this thread.

Why should he fear the term he posted so bravely above?

No more so than IC skating furiously to avoid bringing his definition of, say, the Christian God out into a world where the discussions revolve around.

Red herring.

He can't define his terms, so it's....look over there! A shiny object!

But the topic remains the topic: and unfortunately for him, he made the contested term the headline of this thread. So people are not too likely to forget that.

Meanwhile, anybody who wants to talk about Christianity can join me on the relevant thread...that already exists.

[iambiguous]

Note to others:
Iam's skating like fury to try to get away from having to define his own key term. You should ask yourself why he's afraid to define something upon which he rests all his arguments...indeed, the very title he has, himself, given to this thread.

Why should he fear the term he posted so bravely above?

No more so than IC skating furiously to avoid bringing his definition of, say, the Christian God out into a world where the discussions revolve around.

Red herring.

He can't define his terms, so it's....look over there! A shiny object!

But the topic remains the topic: and unfortunately for him, he made the contested term the headline of this thread. So people are not too likely to forget that.

Meanwhile, anybody who wants to talk about Christianity can join me on the relevant thread...that already exists.

Few here are more adept at wiggling out of a substantive discussion of human identity in the is/ought world than IC.

Let's decide:

Is it more an art or a science?

[Immanuel Can]

No more so than IC skating furiously to avoid bringing his definition of, say, the Christian God out into a world where the discussions revolve around.

Red herring.

He can't define his terms, so it's....look over there! A shiny object!

But the topic remains the topic: and unfortunately for him, he made the contested term the headline of this thread. So people are not too likely to forget that.

Meanwhile, anybody who wants to talk about Christianity can join me on the relevant thread...that already exists.

Few here are more adept at wiggling out of a substantive discussion of human identity in the is/ought world than IC.

Heh.

You've got me beaten...well, except for the fact that I don't forget what you owe us...a definition of "dasein." Which you seem unable to give.