Philosophy 24/1/13

As followed are the notes taken from yesterday's Philosophy lecture. These are simply copied notes, so in the next week I will write up my own notes of the lecture. 


Existentialism

“Existence precedes essence” (Jean Paul Sartre, Being and nothingness)

The rejection of Descartes “I think therefore I am” 
becomes “I am therefore I think” 
which reduces to “I think” 
which reduces to “there are thoughts” .. but that is it.

This journey begins with Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) - “existence is not a predicate [result or conclusion or end or purpose] of consciousness (as descartes and plato thought)
Existence is a necessary precondition.
But consciousness is not a proof that existence anyway (against Descartes). Consciousness “just is” it is not the result of anything or the cause of anything in particular. 

See everybody as a composite. Illusion - Wittgenstein (The see of language).
Isolation tanks would make you go insane - Verification principle

How does consciousness arise? That’s a stupid question (i.e a religion, metaphysical or poetical).
How could there not be consciousness? What is the opposite of consciousness?  - unconsciousness, a mind without properties. The opposite of nothing is not something; just as the opposite of cat is not dog; the opposite of cat is not-cat.
They don’t see the past as a guide to the future

All you can do is examine the ‘texture’ of consciousness, which when viewed as a subject and not an object because its fascinating. 

Furthermore consciousness is not individual. There is no “I” as in “I think therefore I am’ - the transcendent cartesian ego. Freud tried to find ego but failed. When you think you’ve found the core of someones personality, it transforms into something else. 
The sense  of being is in one sense an illusion; but at the same time it is the only reality any actual living being has. In cartesian terms it could be that all experienced life is actually a ‘dream’ (though this is a category error, because a dream is a sub-category of consciousness, it is just superstitious to see the various levels of consciousness in sleep (or different brain states during consciousness) as particularly privileged. Sleep is part of existence as part of waking. When we wake, we are in recent neurology (science of the brain), many different levels of consciousness. 

Alpha state - brain wakes up. When you’ve had a dream but your not yet sure if your awake or not. It is another state of consciousness. Similar to twilight zone, when your watching TV or something similar. 

All consciousness is of the same character, dreams are simply a different mode of consciousness. A different state of awareness.


Husserl
Jewish. 
His book  “Psychology from an empirical (examining objects etc) standpoint” is the foundation text of modern phenomenology and it is an attempt to de-mystify psychology, which had its origins in Hegelian psudeo-science such as phrenology.
The essence of Hus’s phenomenology is the study of immediate “data (items) of consciousness” each one in isolation without reference to context.

Have to exist before you have essence.

He attempted to reverse this by trying to examine phenomena as they are presented to consciousness. Trying to see objects just as they are without any reference to the essence of the person.

It is an attempt to ‘experience‘ each moment as it really is, rather than what it ‘means‘ in relation to a broader system of belief.

For Hus there it makes no difference whether the ideas I am having represent the ‘real world’; or whether they are fiction or hallucinations. It makes no difference to my actual life whether or not the table in front of me is really there‘ or is an hallucination; and when I lean on it whether it is ‘really‘ supporting my weight; or whether this is another congruent hallucination as part of a Cartesian dream-world.

Hiedegger

The text itself, Being and Time, 1927 - Sein und Zeit
Obsessed with Kant- they see as someone who starts the process of destroying metaphysics in the COPR (Critique of Pure Reason)
He liked Hitler, but believed he didn’t go far enough. Hitler conquered Paris, but he should of destroyed it.

Heidegger proclaims in this book as so many were doing in this period of high modernism, end of the metaphysical age, from Plato to Husserl, though the change began in the 1790’s with Kant and the french revolution. The Logical Positivists in Vienna and Cambridge at the same time were saying the same thing. Everything was great in Greece until Socrates, with all these questions and the process of analytic (asking questions) gets you no where.
Before Husserl, people thought that objects were really there and they found the nature of an object.

In the metaphysical age objects exist independently of mind, they ‘subsist’ and the role of the mind is to understand the structure of reality as a kind of mirror. The ‘mission’ of philosophy (and poetry, music, science, theology) was to 

1. Establish the ‘reality’ of the existence of the ego as an object within an external world (Descartes Cogito)
2. To describe the nature of this reality (Science)

The primary idea therefore in the metaphysical age is to make thoughts correspond with an underlaying or hidden substrata of independently subsisting reality (such as Descartes ‘God’ or Schopenhauer ‘Will’ (universe as a thing in itself, like God, unknowable) or even Wittgensteins Facticity). Thoughts with correspond with reality are ‘truth statements’ - even subjective aesthetic intuitions (eg Keats, Beethoven, Schopenhauer, Romanticism etc). There is correspondence theory of truth whereby truth is a matter of matching the mind with independent reality.

“The truth is out there” --> Corny quote from Fox TV show the X-Files. Superstition and paranoia generally posits a hidden world waiting to be discovered (Science, positivism) or unknowable (Kant, romantic art, religion)

Truth is the agreement of knowledge with objects. Objects are eternal and prior to mind (Aristotle) or can be mind dependent (Kant) but they exist either way according to the metaphysicians. Even Kant. Kant’s project was not the rejection of metaphysics, but it’s re-foundation on the basis of active mind by the use of the noumena and phenomena. Husserl and Heidegger dispense with the noumena and keep the phenomena, hence “phenomenology”. I suppose you might call religion and art “noumenology” - using Kantian terms. Kant is refuted, and thus Schopenhauer is thus also refuted. There is no ‘Will’ (noumena of the universe as a thing in itself) there is only representation’ - i.e the subjective appearance of things, the ‘data of consciousness’. - If you take the Will out of the universe there is only representation.  

After Heidegger there is no absolute or highest truth. There are only subjective ‘weak truths’ and ‘practical truths’ or ‘convenient truths’ which are necessary to being, and being is always concrete and specific for Heidegger, always ‘being in the world’ or ‘being there’.
Dasein - being there (German - it’s an every day world. ‘It’s my thing that I’m into’ but also means ‘way of being’) Relative of the point of view of the perceiver. (See below points). Where is it? It’s in your mood. Mood has a big importance to Heidegger, previous to this mood was seen as trivial. For Heidegger, your mood is you. Whatever mood your in is you. 

 And these are always relative to the point of view of the perceiver and either entirely underground (e.g. second hand reports of phenomena given by others) or grounded in subjectivity, even in ‘mood’ or ‘emotion’ (contrary to logical positivism, where truth is grounded in verifiable facts)
*Ontology - being as a thing in itself. *

Truth is thus no longer a matter of matching thought to reality, but of making reality which is seen as true post-hoc. There is no idea of a ‘correct truth’ to which one teacher or one culture has access. There are many truths, specific to the desires and moods of each individual. Limited by the superego or cultural traditions and norms. Mood (emotional state) Is not trivial matter for Heidegger, but the contrete aspect of being.
*See 2nd paragraph above*
Santra - theory of the emotions

Heidegger’s project:

To clear away all philosophical terminology and throw away all philosophical concepts and systems since Socrates. To liberate himself from constraints of ‘objectification’ and metaphiscs (he did not much care what others did). Thus to live ‘an authentic life’ (no bullshit) - in practical terms to live a simple life in the forest. As a Nazi, he has a rousseau-esque loathing of industrial civilization, of cities and sought a life of isolation in the countryside. The whole Nazi ‘good life’ bag of tricks German romanticism, mountain-worship, Neitzsche, Wagner, fertile women, Lederhosen, Eurythmics, Strength through Joy, physical strength, real ale, ‘YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT’ - Heidegger comment. Organic food, new age-ism, astrology, vegetarianism etc. 

Hates everything modern.

Like Neitzsche, Heidegger believes Socrates corrupted western civilization Socrates-Plato-Aristotle is all a detour, a corruption and the invention of philosophical systems founded on the basic error of postulating a-priori an eternal world of objects existing in abstract extended Cartesian space-time. 

To do this he revives interest in the pre-socratic philosophers, especially Heraclitus. Part of the attraction in that these writers did not describe themselves as philosophers (Plato’s term), and wrote in plain, non-technical language. The project, seeing thought as a circumscribed epiphenomena of the intentional use of language, is reminiscent of George Orwell and also the later Wittgenstein.
Heidegger hated any philosophical words.

Heidegger invented an original set of terms in order to speculate about the exterior world.

Dasein

• Being there. Like Husserl, Heidegger is not interested in ‘consciousness’ which presupposes a-priori the existence of some ‘thing’ or thing from which consciousness arises in the process or the contemplation of those things. Instead Heidegger is interested in ‘being’, in ontology, not psychology. The ‘problem of being’ is his subject.
  
  Being is not abstract for H, but always concrete. ‘Being’ at a particular time and palce, and being engaged in a particular task (even just a task of thinking. We always are in the middle of some job or another. Freedom and authenticity for Heidegger is complete absorption in a task, such absorption does not mitigate existential pain (the function of music for Schopenhauer) but actually makes existence go away. When you are fully engaged in a task, you no longer exist.

 ‘Throwness’ - thrown in to something. 

Existence boredom. Boredom is ‘the problem of being’. The opposite of boredom is Dasein. Lack of boredom (engagement in Dasein) is non-existence.

Existence (Boredom) requires time. Without time there would be no boredom. With infinite time there would be infinite boredom. The perception of ‘lack of time’ creates a sense of unrgency, and forces a choice of Dasein.

Dasein is non-reflective, unthinking, instinctive - for example on a roller-coaster ride - it is all sensation and engagement in the moment. Reflection would create vertigo and paralysis; too much ‘thinking about the world’ instead of ‘being in the world or being there’.

Dasein is not thinking, but ‘caring. 

A vocabulary for intellectual activity - anti thinking, about doing and being, not analysis.

Judgements, choices, decisions, and formulation of concepts, are ways are ‘caring’ and ‘copying’.

From the start of life we are already engaged in an activity; this is throwness, against facticity or randomness - random assemblage of facts, as examined by phenomenology.

PART ONE OF THE BOOK (being and time)- DASEIN

“time is the boundary for the problem of being” Time is an element of being; time is like ‘the boundary of being’. It is not a thing in intself. Kant discovered the problem of non-linear time and Einstein condified the mutability of time as ‘space-time’. So space-time is the horizon/boundary of being.

The prepatory analysis of Dasein (being there0. Chapter one of Being and Time.

We find Dasein in ‘caring’ which means work. The example of the carpenter and the hammer ‘transparent being’. The ‘ready to hand’. The difference between the hammer and the carpenter is that the hammer has ‘being for’. It is not free. Humans who act as ‘being for’ (something or somebody else) are unfree, alienated and live in ‘bad faith’. 

More on time and the subjective experience of time. There are three aspects to time, this Heidegger shares from Kant and the mutability of time obviously references Einstein's relativity, and modernity generally.

Kant believed there was 12 types of time.  - typical metaphysics

1. ‘Attunement’ - expressed as ‘mood’. Reflection on the past produces ‘mood’. Outside of Dasein the normal mode of attunement (mood) is a vague ‘angst’ and the mood of guilt. 

1. ‘Being for itself’ or ‘Being there’ - caring about the task in hand (you are doing your thing). This is the present mode of Dasein. 

1. ‘Directedness’ - this reflection on the future. This produces the ‘mood’ of ‘dread’. Fear of the future.
   
   Basically PAST --> PRESENT --> FUTURE

BIOG - Rector of Freidberg University in 1930’s, was a dedicated member of the Nazi party - sanctioned book burning, and the removal of all Jews from the university including Husserl, who had been this teacher.

Post war never recanted his Nazi’sim and was banned from teaching. Thus he was not read until the 1960’s when he was popularized by his `french follower Jean Paul Sartre.

Satre - “Being and Nothingness’ - attempts to remove the boundary of space-time from being. Takes the same structure as Heidegger.

Past = GUILT
Present = BOREDOM (unless obliterated by Dasein)
Future = FEAR

Existentia (subjective, being for/by yourself) 
VS 
Existense (Objective, objectified, being for others)