Dasein/dasein

[Alexis Jacobi]

Note to All Humanity:

I come as if a White Horse, joyfully galloping

May a trumpet fanfare be sounded!

And let halvah be served!

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.

Well, I am (to further extend your metaphor) a run-of-the-mill subjectivist.

I have answers to all these issues.

If you want them, I will provide them.

I've honestly got it worked out.

[iambiguous]

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.

What I owe you. Like you have calculated this scientifically and/or logically and/or epistemologically. And in so doing have proven that all the rest of us are categorically and imperatively obligated to accept that the manner in which I situate what dasein means to me out in the world that we live in above pales in comparison to providing the definition of it.

Even though it is my belief that dasein is not a thing to be defined but a profoundly ambiguous and uncertain frame of mind that revolves around the complex relationships between hundreds of existential variables that come to embody "I" out in the world of ever shifting and evolving conflicting goods.

Something like that?

[Dubious]

Why, on a concept like Dasein, ask for a single definition as definitive when it offers a range of definitions since it operates as a variable of existence in all of it existential formats...its qualia, so to speak, internal and external.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Even though it is my belief that dasein is not a thing to be defined but a profoundly ambiguous and uncertain frame of mind that revolves around the complex relationships between hundreds of existential variables that come to embody "I" out in the world of ever shifting and evolving conflicting goods.

Right. So dasein is a ‘frame of mind’?

You are describing confusion it seems to me. But it is not that I do not understand you. You make yourself very clear.

[Alexis Jacobi]

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

It seems we have to get clear about quite a number of things. It is not easy but we can, if we set our minds to it, manage the task.

One

You will never ever receive the *proof* that you seek that the Christian God *exists*. What I have to say on the matter is that God exists in a plane that is non-physical and can be understood if one grasps Idea and guiding idea. That is the meaning behind the term 'intellectus'. What Christianity is, is the intrusion of Idea or of metaphysical truth (or possibility) which enters the world as an imposition on the world. Obviously, this means it enters through *the human world*. So, metaphysical ideas and really the ideas that arise in man's psyche are not *part-and-parcel* of the natural world. There are no other beings (that I am aware of) who carry these ideas. The Christian ideal enters the world only and exclusively through man. So the field that is relevant to look into is exclusively man's field. It is, as they say, all within.

It is not possible, it seems to me, to gather or assemble 'evidence' of the Christian God from the natural world. Absent man, that God is not present. So what God is comes along with man. I guess this is the stumbling block for so many and logically so. But the 'works' of God become very present indeed when men devote themselves to the notion, very real indeed on inner planes, of God's 'real being'. It is not found in the surrounding world, it is found within.

So everything that the so-called atheists say about God's absence in the physical, manifest world, is I think largely true. Because if there is a god that rules and determines that natural world it is simply a god of material relationships. Our sciences know that world and they define that world. If 'God' is there, God is only there as some sort of *originator*. This idea seems very coherent to me: in whatever form the universe was said to be before it did become manifest, it stands to reason that all things were inherent in it. And in that sense, as Creator-of-all, God is a necessity. Yet the manifest world operates -- and quite well -- without the sort of intervention which underpins the Christian idea of God's intervention in the world. And really that is what it was and is: an intervention, an imposition.

But on what basis? Only and strictly on the basis of what comes in and through man's psyche. I think this is why so many people say "It is all made up!" That is, invented, concocted, and in that sense false. But in no sense is it false. It is more real than many manifest things. It is simply of a very very different order of being.

Thus the things that come through man (to use this metaphor) are in no sense unreal. They are of a different order of being. And every aspect of man's world (think it through) is a world of metaphysical imposition. It actually seems to me rather simple when it is clarified.

Two

This is very true. But it has to do with what is conceived or how *it* is conceived. It also has to do with purity of idea (that is one way to state it) and also clarity of idea. But the person who says "So many gods have been conceived! so therefore the idea of guiding ideas or principles is therefore false or made-up", commits an error. It is a question of further analysis and profound questioning, isn't it?

The real issue is that what is conceived and what is visualized cannot be confused with what is. Because the picture is not the thing referred to. It is just a picture. Is Christianity more true than some other conceptual system? If I had to answer that question myself I would say Yes, in many ways, and no in other ways.

Three

Well, since your own definition of Dasein is simply 'confusion' within the realm of ideas and perhaps your own indecisiveness, I am uncertain how useful the definition you offered is.

I see Christianity as a set of choices. If it isn't that I am not sure how I would conceive it. I guess one either aligns with its message or one does not. But it has to be an agreement that one enters into. But it does seem to be an agreement with another level of being and other possibilities of being. They are not part-and-parcel of the world. And that is why (in my conception) it can be said that the world is the plaything and the field of another sort of force. The term is 'the demonic'. But what is that? It seems to me that it is 'Naure' itself or 'the way the world is'. I cannot get away from this definition, it seems a good one. But it is also something in man which cannot bear the *imposition* which I have outlined. Which comes into our world from an invisible, non-material source. What is that? It is not easy to put one's finger on it. Trouble is invited, however, when the imposition proposes, or insists, that man must come under its influence. From that arises what we understand as 'rebellion'.

Four

Well, the natural world is a totally cruel, unconscious, vicious and determined world, is it not? It is in fact everything that you-plural say about it. God -- in the sense of an imposition through man that impinges into and on the world, and as I say a whole series of choices -- has entered into that existent world. Those that find the *cruelty of life* as a stumbling block to accepting what is offered by God entering man's world through invisible and non-material means, also make a mistake. The world is really that way. It murders children; it creates tsunamis that kill thousands; it explodes volcanos; the shark and the tse-tse are its agents, allies and emissaries. It is blind, determined and 'cruel' but without meaning to be so. It intends nothing. It is a vast machine that operates according to its own merciless laws.

But another world comes to bear upon that world through man's being.

It seems to me that this clarifies a great deal. I suppose it will not satisfy some and will disturb others. But I find it very helpful. And trust me this has all been extremely confusing for me personally. It has to do with notions of 'what is real' and certainly the surrounding world is utterly real. But that is not 'the Christian world'. The Christian world is something that arises in and flows out of man.

I am a man of my word:

[attofishpi]

The Christian ideal enters the world only and exclusively through man. So the field that is relevant to look into is exclusively man's field. It is, as they say, all within.

Christianity is not based exclusively on the life of Christ. What religion(s) do not enter by the ideals of man?

It is not possible, it seems to me, to gather or assemble 'evidence' of the Christian God from the natural world.

I think otherwise as per Simulation or Divine Reality? - evidence of God\'God' viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33214

[Belinda]

Alexix Jacobi wrote:

It is not possible, it seems to me, to gather or assemble 'evidence' of the Christian God from the natural world.

But evidence is what Trinitarianism precisely does do. JC is an aspect of the Trinity from the natural world (JC's mother) and JC is also God.

[Immanuel Can]

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.

What I owe you.

You owe it to everyone, not just me. When you create a whole discussion thread, and write a title you don't understand, and cannot even define your key term, what is to be said about that?

Even though it is my belief that dasein is not a thing to be defined but a profoundly ambiguous and uncertain frame of mind that revolves around the complex relationships between hundreds of existential variables that come to embody "I" out in the world of ever shifting and evolving conflicting goods. (emphasis IC's)

There you go! For something you've been claiming a long time was impossible to define, you just made a definition in one sentence! Why were you so reticent, then? Why insist that definition is impossible, when, as the above shows, it was so darn easy all along.

So let's consider that definition.

You say dasein, for you, is "ambiguous and uncertain," meaning you don't know what it really is, and are "double-minded" or "double-meaninged" (the implication of "ambiguous") about what it really is: it may be more than one thing. You say it "revolves around" a "complex relationship," which suggests it's just approximate not exact, and has something to do with a relationship to involved to be understood easily -- yet again. Then you say it revolves around a hundred different things -- presumably not a cluster of the same things, or you could summarize it more precisely -- and these things are "existential variables," which means "things people feel they experience" (existential) and things that keep changing (i.e. are "variable"). Then somehow these form a "body," or, as you put it, "come to embody," a personal pronoun "I", but not internally or "existentially," but rather "out in the world." But this world is "ever shifting" and "evolving," and involves "conflicting goods."

What we can see from this is that you know almost nothing for certain about what you are talking about: not because I think so, but because your definition declares it to be so. What you say you know is "ambiguous," "uncertain," "complex," approximate, "variable," "merely experiential," "shifting," "evolving" and "conflicting." That's what you tell us about it.

All that's helpful that you can tell us is that it has something to do with "I" and something to do with "out in the world." But more than this, you can't really say, because the rest is all about that morphing pool of adjectives I've listed above.

Is that it? Is that a fair summary of all that you are saying "dasein" means?

[iambiguous]

What is Dasein?
by John C. Brady
Epoché Philosophy Monthly

The Ego

Heidegger criticises Descartes for not thinking the sum of the Cogito ergo sum. We can think of the concept of Dasein as aiming at this Sum that creates the context such that there can be “I”s and “thinking” in the first place. Taking the thinking ego as the seat or exemplar of existence (being) makes a methodological mistake.

Anyone here every aimed at the Sum...and hit it? Anyone here ever hit it in regard to that which I think most about: How ought one to live on this side of the grave in order to attain the optimal fate for "I" on the other side?

If so, let's hear it.

As for "methodological mistakes", note one of those too while you are at it.

I think, therefore I am. But even here Descartes has to assume that his is not in a sim world or a dream world or a reality as construed by the folks who brought us the Matrix.

“According to Heidegger, Descartes’ point of departure is not derived from the human mode of being in the world but rather from a metaphysical worldview which partakes in the way he — as a human being — is relating to the world” (Pearl, 2013, p.20).

Whatever, given a particular context, that means?

This is to say that Descartes begins from an already established metaphysical position in order to study the beings that we are, but he doesn’t question that this metaphysical position is a product of the beings that we are (taking it instead as some prior or fundamental feature), and, what’s more, only a narrow mode of this being.

Of course, establishing metaphysical positions up in the intellectual clouds is one thing, intertwining them in the lives that we live down here another thing altogether. Up there the "beings that we are" may as well be what the Christians among us here say that God is. You "study" God by reading the Bible. So, does someone who embrace Heidegger's conclusions about Dasein "study" us by reading Being and Time?

How wide or narrow will the conclusions be given, say, a particular newspaper headline.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

[iambiguous]

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.

Well, I am (to further extend your metaphor) a run-of-the-mill subjectivist.

I have answers to all these issues.

If you want them, I will provide them.

I've honestly got it worked out.

On the other hand, what does it mean for a subjectivist [run-of-the-mill or exceptional] to "work out" reactions to issues of this nature?

From the perspective of Heidegger's Dasein or from my own more truly existential vantage point.

After all, a subjective frame of mind here, given my own assumptions is but an existential fabrication rooted in the points I raise in these threads:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 5&t=185296


Now all we need is a context.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, I am (to further extend your metaphor) a run-of-the-mill subjectivist.

I have answers to all these issues.

If you want them, I will provide them.

I've honestly got it worked out.

On the other hand, what does it mean for a subjectivist [run-of-the-mill or exceptional] to "work out" reactions to issues of this nature?

If I were cynical, Alexis, what I would think he meant is that you're not allowed to "work out" anything in this regard, because he hasn't.

But he has a point: which is that if one is a subjectivist, then by defintion, one can only "work out" something subjectively, meaning to your personal satisfaction. But you'll end up having to stop short of saying it's true for anybody else, or that your answer should be satisfying to anyone else, because it will have to fall somewhat short of being objective.

That's an inherent problem with subjectivism. There's no easy remedy for it that I know.

[iambiguous]

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

One

You will never ever receive the *proof* that you seek that the Christian God *exists*.

Okay, but with so much at stake for mere mortals on both sides of the grave what does that tell us about a God that refuses to provide it?

One

What I have to say on the matter is that God exists in a plane that is non-physical and can be understood if one grasps Idea and guiding idea. That is the meaning behind the term 'intellectus'. What Christianity is, is the intrusion of Idea or of metaphysical truth (or possibility) which enters the world as an imposition on the world. Obviously, this means it enters through *the human world*. So, metaphysical ideas and really the ideas that arise in man's psyche are not *part-and-parcel* of the natural world. There are no other beings (that I am aware of) who carry these ideas. The Christian ideal enters the world only and exclusively through man. So the field that is relevant to look into is exclusively man's field. It is, as they say, all within.

It is not possible, it seems to me, to gather or assemble 'evidence' of the Christian God from the natural world. Absent man, that God is not present. So what God is comes along with man. I guess this is the stumbling block for so many and logically so. But the 'works' of God become very present indeed when men devote themselves to the notion, very real indeed on inner planes, of God's 'real being'. It is not found in the surrounding world, it is found within.

So everything that the so-called atheists say about God's absence in the physical, manifest world, is I think largely true. Because if there is a god that rules and determines that natural world it is simply a god of material relationships. Our sciences know that world and they define that world. If 'God' is there, God is only there as some sort of *originator*. This idea seems very coherent to me: in whatever form the universe was said to be before it did become manifest, it stands to reason that all things were inherent in it. And in that sense, as Creator-of-all, God is a necessity. Yet the manifest world operates -- and quite well -- without the sort of intervention which underpins the Christian idea of God's intervention in the world. And really that is what it was and is: an intervention, an imposition.

But on what basis? Only and strictly on the basis of what comes in and through man's psyche. I think this is why so many people say "It is all made up!" That is, invented, concocted, and in that sense false. But in no sense is it false. It is more real than many manifest things. It is simply of a very very different order of being.

Thus the things that come through man (to use this metaphor) are in no sense unreal. They are of a different order of being. And every aspect of man's world (think it through) is a world of metaphysical imposition. It actually seems to me rather simple when it is clarified.

How is this not but another entirely abstract intellectual contraption that tells us nothing but that this is what you think about God given the definition and the meaning you impart to these words placed in this order.

The "clarification" being but more words still? Though, for all practical purposes, of course, God is not in the least "unreal" in the world around us. After all, if someone believes in God and lives their life as though this belief is all that is needed to "demonstrate" His existence, they will behave accordingly. And it is our behaviors that precipitate consequences.

Two

This is very true. But it has to do with what is conceived or how *it* is conceived. It also has to do with purity of idea (that is one way to state it) and also clarity of idea. But the person who says "So many gods have been conceived! so therefore the idea of guiding ideas or principles is therefore false or made-up", commits an error. It is a question of further analysis and profound questioning, isn't it?

The real issue is that what is conceived and what is visualized cannot be confused with what is. Because the picture is not the thing referred to. It is just a picture. Is Christianity more true than some other conceptual system? If I had to answer that question myself I would say Yes, in many ways, and no in other ways.

Then, of course, the Christian objectivists among us who insist that if your answer is not the same as their answer, you will burn in Hell for all of eternity.

No, in my view, the real issue is still the point I raise here: Why your God and not one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

Three

Well, since your own definition of Dasein is simply 'confusion' within the realm of ideas and perhaps your own indecisiveness, I am uncertain how useful the definition you offered is.

As IC will contemptuously insist, I don't define dasein. I situate my own existential understanding of it out in the the world of actual human interactions given particular contexts.

My understanding of it revolves basically around this assumption:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Then, in my view, another "general description intellectual contraption"...

I see Christianity as a set of choices. If it isn't that I am not sure how I would conceive it. I guess one either aligns with its message or one does not. But it has to be an agreement that one enters into. But it does seem to be an agreement with another level of being and other possibilities of being. They are not part-and-parcel of the world. And that is why (in my conception) it can be said that the world is the plaything and the field of another sort of force. The term is 'the demonic'. But what is that? It seems to me that it is 'Naure' itself or 'the way the world is'. I cannot get away from this definition, it seems a good one. But it is also something in man which cannot bear the *imposition* which I have outlined. Which comes into our world from an invisible, non-material source. What is that? It is not easy to put one's finger on it. Trouble is invited, however, when the imposition proposes, or insists, that man must come under its influence. From that arises what we understand as 'rebellion'.

What does any of this really have to do with my point regarding how people become Christians existentially? They are thrown adventitiously at birth out into a particular world historically, culturally and experientially...in terms of the particular interactions they will have. They are indoctrinated as children to think what others believe about God and religion. Then they will encounter their own unique set of experiences, relationship, access to information and knowledge etc., about God that predispose them towards Christianity, or some other God or no God at all.

Four

Well, the natural world is a totally cruel, unconscious, vicious and determined world, is it not? It is in fact everything that you-plural say about it. God -- in the sense of an imposition through man that impinges into and on the world, and as I say a whole series of choices -- has entered into that existent world. Those that find the *cruelty of life* as a stumbling block to accepting what is offered by God entering man's world through invisible and non-material means, also make a mistake. The world is really that way. It murders children; it creates tsunamis that kill thousands; it explodes volcanos; the shark and the tse-tse are its agents, allies and emissaries. It is blind, determined and 'cruel' but without meaning to be so. It intends nothing. It is a vast machine that operates according to its own merciless laws.

Yeah, but its own merciless laws came into existence at the behest of the Christian's alleged "loving, just and merciful" God. Would there be all the terrible pain and suffering endured by millions around the globe as a result of the Covid pandemic if the Christian God had not brought the virus itself into existence?

And how does this...

But another world comes to bear upon that world through man's being.

It seems to me that this clarifies a great deal. I suppose it will not satisfy some and will disturb others. But I find it very helpful. And trust me this has all been extremely confusing for me personally. It has to do with notions of 'what is real' and certainly the surrounding world is utterly real. But that is not 'the Christian world'. The Christian world is something that arises in and flows out of man.

...make that any different?

I am a man of my word

Well, Vladimir Putin might insist that he is a man of his word as well.

But why the words he chooses, you choose, I choose?

How are they encompassed in the manner in which Heidegger understood Dasein in Being and Time as opposed to how I understand dasein here?

Given a particular context.

[Alexis Jacobi]

On the other hand, what does it mean for a subjectivist [run-of-the-mill or exceptional] to "work out" reactions to issues of this nature?

I simply contrasted your term for IC as ‘objectivist’ with the general nature of what I intended to propose: a subjective and internal means to grasp what God is and more especially how God is understood and revealed. So let me state what should be obvious: we are creatures who live in and operate out of a subjective, perceptual and interpretive awareness. We really are metaphysical creatures. We are instruments, if you prefer a mechanical metaphor, that perceive and interpret. On one level, in relation to the world around us, we describe what we perceive as ‘facts’. Things, events. Stuff. But there is, so obviously, entire realms which I conveniently referred to as subjective, which have to do with what we perceive — ideas, concepts — and this stuff, for want of a better word, is actually more significant. It is the psyche of man that builds the human world.

And I suggest that it is only the ‘psyche’ of man that can perceive God. And the only place where that happens, where it can happen, is within man and in relation to man’s psyche. Would yo describe this as ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’ territory? I go with subjective.

I am trying to build a bridge between the *world* you describe — which can only be one of physical and biological mechanics (the natural world and the world of ‘reality’ in which we all live) — and the world in which those who are *believers* (and understanders) of God’s reality. And to make this case I must reveal to you that what believers perceive, and what they live in relation to, and feel and understand, is real but of a different level of reality. But then so too, and within this level of reality I am defining, exists also meaning. I ask you to think about what meaning is and how things can mean things. I also ask you to consider what the higher levels of meaning refer to and also what sort of person perceives them. So I refer to Shakespeare who for me has special relevance but I could also refer to many poets — those who deal in ‘meaning’ and, to a far lesser degree, in what I have termed mere ‘facts’. Meaning is interpretive and also (my view) metaphysical.

So I move from this general territory (of knowing) and I propose that God manifests to men subjectively, not objectively. The things that pass before our eyes (clouds, a car, the forest before us) these are objective and ‘real’ in the terms that you seem to emphasize. My assertion is that you seem deliberately to fail to consider a whole other realm of reality. And I just tried to describe this, above.

So this is why I say No evidence of God will be found when one’s contemplation is limited to *the world of facts* (measurement, observation of form, ‘science-method’). Though I do say, and perhaps repeat boringly, that before everything became manifest the logic of it all, all the laws that determined what happened and how it all unfolded, had necessarily to be present in latent form. And those of theological bent tend to see that it is ‘in that’ that evidence of God or ‘intelligence’ exists. But in the day to day world it is ‘the laws of nature’ that go on, day after day, and just as you might say there is no evidence, or direct evidence, of God in all of that. That is where you exist, perpetually.

I also say that you construct your *world of perception* through acts of will. You make all efforts to defeat anyone who proposes alternatives.

So then where is God discovered? I answer that question, which is really a problem, in the way that I did. It is, therefore, a ‘conceptual pathway’ through which God can be understood. And I can definitely attest to the fact that those who have *experience of God* experience God through inner subjectivity.

If I were cynical, Alexis, what I would think he meant is that you're not allowed to "work out" anything in this regard, because he hasn't.

But he has a point: which is that if one is a subjectivist, then by defintion, one can only "work out" something subjectively, meaning to your personal satisfaction. But you'll end up having to stop short of saying it's true for anybody else, or that your answer should be satisfying to anyone else, because it will have to fall somewhat short of being objective.

That's an inherent problem with subjectivism. There's no easy remedy for it that I know.

Yes, I suppose that is true.

But I think that when and if it is asserted convincingly that all that we are, and certainly when we deal on high intellectual topics (intellectual in the sense of intellectus) that at the very least this does point to something real and considerable: the nature of our instrument and the nature of what that instrument perceives (and my reference is to things metaphysical).

[iambiguous]

What I owe you.

You owe it to everyone, not just me. When you create a whole discussion thread, and write a title you don't understand, and cannot even define your key term, what is to be said about that?

And around and around and around we go: your accusation, my explanation.

Note to others:

Again, which of us is determined to avoid a substantive assessment of human identity given conflicting moral and political value judgments out in the world that we actually live and interact in?

Even though it is my belief that dasein is not a thing to be defined but a profoundly ambiguous and uncertain frame of mind that revolves around the complex relationships between hundreds of existential variables that come to embody "I" out in the world of ever shifting and evolving conflicting goods. (emphasis IC's)

There you go! For something you've been claiming a long time was impossible to define, you just made a definition in one sentence! Why were you so reticent, then? Why insist that definition is impossible, when, as the above shows, it was so darn easy all along.

Fine. I see it as a description of what the word means to me out in the world of human interactions. You insist it's really a definition.

So let's consider that definition.

But, again, even given that, you are only capable of discussing it up in the intellectual/analytical clouds...

You say dasein, for you, is "ambiguous and uncertain," meaning you don't know what it really is, and are "double-minded" or "double-meaninged" (the implication of "ambiguous") about what it really is: it may be more than one thing. You say it "revolves around" a "complex relationship," which suggests it's just approximate not exact, and has something to do with a relationship to involved to be understood easily -- yet again. Then you say it revolves around a hundred different things -- presumably not a cluster of the same things, or you could summarize it more precisely -- and these things are "existential variables," which means "things people feel they experience" (existential) and things that keep changing (i.e. are "variable"). Then somehow these form a "body," or, as you put it, "come to embody," a personal pronoun "I", but not internally or "existentially," but rather "out in the world." But this world is "ever shifting" and "evolving," and involves "conflicting goods."

What we can see from this is that you know almost nothing for certain about what you are talking about: not because I think so, but because your definition declares it to be so. What you say you know is "ambiguous," "uncertain," "complex," approximate, "variable," "merely experiential," "shifting," "evolving" and "conflicting." That's what you tell us about it.


All that's helpful that you can tell us is that it has something to do with "I" and something to do with "out in the world." But more than this, you can't really say, because the rest is all about that morphing pool of adjectives I've listed above.

Is that it? Is that a fair summary of all that you are saying "dasein" means?

No, I encompass its existential meaning given the manner in which "I" approach human identity out in the is/ought world here:

If there is one thing I am clearly preoccupied with it is the relationship between moral and political value judgments and the existential trajectory of the lives that we live.

And, in almost every thread in which I post about this relationship, I eventually get around to this:

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my "tour of duty" in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman's right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary's choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett's Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding "rival goods".
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed, I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

This because in it are embedded two experiences that were of fundamental importance in shaping and then reconfiguring my own moral and political narratives.

Over the years, I have gone from an objectivist frame of mind [right vs. wrong, good vs. evil] to a way of thinking about morality in human interactions that basically revolves around moral nihilism.

And, then, in turn, this resulted in my tumbling down into a philosophical "hole" such that for all practical purposes, "I" became increasingly more fragmented.

This hole:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

In other words, I am no longer able to think of myself as being in sync with the "real me" in sync with "the right thing to do".

So, I decided to create this thread in order for others to at least make the attempt to describe their own value judgments existentially. Values as they became intertwined over the course of their lives in "experiences, relationships and information, knowledge and ideas."

The part where theory is tested in practice out in particular contexts out in particular worlds.

Now, given your own intellectual assessment of human identity derived from your own intellectual assessment of the Christian God, note for us the manner in which your own views on morality was shaped and molded existentially over the years.

You don't dare go there, in my view, because it means confronting head on the points I raise regarding your own profoundly problematic sense of identity.

You will almost certainly take your comforting and consoling Christian God with you all the way to the grave. Blinded by the light as it were.

[Immanuel Can]

If I were cynical, Alexis, what I would think he meant is that you're not allowed to "work out" anything in this regard, because he hasn't.

But he has a point: which is that if one is a subjectivist, then by defintion, one can only "work out" something subjectively, meaning to your personal satisfaction. But you'll end up having to stop short of saying it's true for anybody else, or that your answer should be satisfying to anyone else, because it will have to fall somewhat short of being objective.

That's an inherent problem with subjectivism. There's no easy remedy for it that I know.

Yes, I suppose that is true.

But I think that when and if it is asserted convincingly that all that we are, and certainly when we deal on high intellectual topics (intellectual in the sense of intellectus) that at the very least this does point to something real and considerable: the nature of our instrument and the nature of what that instrument perceives (and my reference is to things metaphysical).

But that "something real" you mention would, of course, have to be objectively real. If it were just another subjective feeling and no more, then we've added nothing to the situation.

But I think our subjective perceptions often DO point to the real and objective existence of things. For example, it may be true that may impression of a computer being in front of me is "subjective," but I also think it's an objectively accurate subjective perception -- there really IS a computer in front of me. Moreover, it's a subjective perception that will be echoed by your subjective impressions as you write back: and so it seems that two people hare having the same "subjective" conclusion for some reason -- namely, that you and I are having a conversation by computer.

But to recognize that is to go beyond mere subjectivism, and well into the realm of accepting the objective.