Dasein/dasein

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iambiguous
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

Identity and Postmodernism
From UKEssays
Any theory that aims at totalising society should only be seen as one constructed from a particular perspective (e.g. one that still remains in the logic of modernity), rather than a totalising theory as such.
And lest we forget, there is, in my view, the significant -- gigantic? -- gap between "totalizing society" in one or another theoretical construct and being able to demonstrate out in a particular community of actual flesh and blood human beings how that society can reflect/encompass the least dysfunctional interactions. Your "rules of behavior" or mine?
Whilst postmodernism can be viewed as liberating and opening up seemingly limitless opportunities for re-theorizing society, it does at the same time impose new problems. Firstly, there seems to be an inconsistency in the postmodernist stance, as it could be argued that the theory of the dissolution of meta-narratives is a type of meta-narrative itself.
Cue, among others, Wittgenstein? And forget about "re-theorizing society", how about the act of actually choosing behaviors itself without a "meta-narrative". Without God or ideology or deontology or Satyrean assumptions about nature.

But, sure, there's always the argument that post-modernism itself is just another meta-narrative. Which is why I always insist that discussions of it be taken down out of the theoretical clouds and introduced to, say, the real world? The one where we interact in social, political and economic contexts that precipitate conflicting assessments of right and wrong, good and evil, true and false.

And then the part where in "opening up" your options you become "fractured and fragmented" as I am.
This criticism can also be applied to the postmodernist take on identity, for in arguing that identity is ultimately unstable and fluid postmodernists inadvertently provide a certain rigid structure in which identity operates (i.e. that all identity must be unstable).
Which is why a distinction must be made between one's identity in the either/or world and one's identity in the is/ought world. Given a specific set of circumstances. I believe "here and now" that in the absence of one or another "transcending font" the "self" will become unstable. You are who you think you are now. Then in a world inundated with contingency, chance and change, new experiences cause you to question that.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Fri May 27, 2022 4:35 pm Identity and Postmodernism
From UKEssays
Any theory that aims at totalising society should only be seen as one constructed from a particular perspective (e.g. one that still remains in the logic of modernity), rather than a totalising theory as such.
And lest we forget, there is, in my view, the significant -- gigantic? -- gap between "totalizing society" in one or another theoretical construct and being able to demonstrate out in a particular community of actual flesh and blood human beings how that society can reflect/encompass the least dysfunctional interactions. Your "rules of behavior" or mine?
Whilst postmodernism can be viewed as liberating and opening up seemingly limitless opportunities for re-theorizing society, it does at the same time impose new problems. Firstly, there seems to be an inconsistency in the postmodernist stance, as it could be argued that the theory of the dissolution of meta-narratives is a type of meta-narrative itself.
Cue, among others, Wittgenstein? And forget about "re-theorizing society", how about the act of actually choosing behaviors itself without a "meta-narrative". Without God or ideology or deontology or Satyrean assumptions about nature.

But, sure, there's always the argument that post-modernism itself is just another meta-narrative. Which is why I always insist that discussions of it be taken down out of the theoretical clouds and introduced to, say, the real world? The one where we interact in social, political and economic contexts that precipitate conflicting assessments of right and wrong, good and evil, true and false.

And then the part where in "opening up" your options you become "fractured and fragmented" as I am.
This criticism can also be applied to the postmodernist take on identity, for in arguing that identity is ultimately unstable and fluid postmodernists inadvertently provide a certain rigid structure in which identity operates (i.e. that all identity must be unstable).
Which is why a distinction must be made between one's identity in the either/or world and one's identity in the is/ought world. Given a specific set of circumstances. I believe "here and now" that in the absence of one or another "transcending font" the "self" will become unstable. You are who you think you are now. Then in a world inundated with contingency, chance and change, new experiences cause you to question that.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Culture is part of Daseins. If we know how our culture evolved and what is largely is now then we can partly align Daseins with morality.
When and if we want to depart from established traditions, as Americans wish to reform dangerous excesses of capitalism such as private gun ownership, then again we need to know what the established traditions are so we can change them.

At the present time the post- Christian moral tradition is working well against fascists, mafia, and other totalitarians.
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iambiguous
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by iambiguous »

Identity and Postmodernism
From UKEssays
...whilst postmodernism is liberating on the one hand, on the other it sets limits to the very possibility of any meaningful social theory or practice. This is exemplified in the disparity between postmodern theorists, some of which view postmodernism as opening up huge opportunities for getting rid of authoritarian grand theories, others view it as essentially debilitating as the only thing that can prevail in postmodern societies is a sense of meaningless flux.
I fit in here somewhere but, again, only in making that crucial distinction between either/or world human interactions and interactions that revolve more around conflicting moral and political value judgments.

In other words, in regard to conflicting goods, in seeing myself "fractured and fragmented" as that pertains to my own hopelessly drawn and quartered sense of moral and political ambiguity and ambivalence, "I" am considerably closer to the debilitating end of the spectrum. Yes, moral nihilism as I construe it, provides me with many more options. And that's because unlike the objectivists, I am not anchored to "pick one", the right or the wrong thing to do. But what good is this freedom when I can never feel securely anchored to any sense of objective reality at all. At least not in regard to value judgments.
Within this disagreement the postmodern analysis of identity remains reasonably intact, both sides of the argument largely accept that identity is fluid and unstable. By analysing this disagreement we can therefore obtain a better understanding of the various aspects of fluid identity.
And yet like you and others, the fluidity of my identity in the either/or world is considerably less problematic. Here stability can revolve around the circumstances in our lives hardly changing at all from day to day, from week to week, from month to month. And, for some, year to year and decade to decade.
Jean Baudrillard, for example, argues that the dissolution of identity is a process that started in the nineteenth century and was exacerbated in the twentieth.
Pertaining to, among other things, "the death of God" and full-blown capitalism. In particular, the Industrial Revolution. Thus...
In the postmodern era, historical processes have undermined the stability of identity, so that it becomes impossible to meaningfully theorise about social identity. Rigid identity and meaning are destroyed due to the rise of global capitalism and the demise of the referents from modernity (truth, purpose, meaning and so on). ‘Gone are the referentials of production, signification, affect, substance, history, and the whole equation of “real” contents’. Identity now becomes a radically fluid and empty vessel, which becomes temporarily filled with content that has no foundation or ultimate meaning.
Basically what I am arguing myself. Though, surely, one antidote is objectivism. Either God or No God. We come into the world hard-wired to find meaning...and so we find it. First derived from others as children, and then [given autonomy] new experiences bring us into contact with other possibilities. And there is never a shortage of "isms", right? I myself subscribe to moral nihilism. I just have no illusions that it is not but one more manifestation of dasein.
Whilst for Baudrillard this cannot be thought of as a particularly positive or negative phenomenon, as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ no longer have any real meaning in postmodernity, it does render theoretical and political action largely impotent. This is why in postmodernism we are presented with numerous texts heralding the end of theory, history, meaning and so on. The dissolution of identity means for many postmodernists that theory and meaningful political action are no longer possible.
Of course that doesn't explain the fact that millions upon millions of men and women around the globe are still firmly anchored to one or another, at times, dogmatic, doctrinaire, domineering objectivist credo. Sacred or secular.

And these folks are hardly impotent. On the contrary, here in America, they are thriving. The cult of Trump for example. Hell-bent on bringing America back to the 1950s.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

Iambiguous:
Value judgements are condemned by relativity to be free. If there were a deity who prescribed being, then freedom of the being , freedom based on the being's ignorance, would be the only sort of being that was not a mere thing incapable of change. Whatever you decide is right because it's necessary that you decided as you did. However within that rightness there is relative rightness and freedom which is based not only on the solitary sailor on an uncharted ocean but also on your reasoning about your environment which contains the amenities within your boat, readable weather, readable visible horizon, and stellar regularities . Change itself is the basic fact. A fact that stems from the fact of change is some beings have conatus and others don't.


Your freedom includes the responsibility and advantage to your survival to decide who you are. Dasein and Daseins are okay. Unless there were a lot of Daseins there would be no participators in change/no learning.(After Georg Gadamer).

To be firmly moored is not to set sail. The stones on the harbour never move. The fact, as you know from experience, is you are not a stone.

Trump is reactionary for at least two reasons. He wants to increase only his own power and prosperity, and he needs popular support to do so. He selects aspects of Americanism that are enduringly popular.
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iambiguous
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Re: Dasein/dasein

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Where Does Identity Come From?
A fascinating new neuroscience experiment probes an ancient philosophical question—and hints that you might want to get out more
By Jason Castro at the Scientific American website
Imagine we rewound the tape of your life. Your diplomas are pulled off of walls, unframed, and returned. Your children grow smaller, and then vanish. Soon, you too become smaller. Your adult teeth retract, your baby teeth return, and your traits and foibles start to slip away. Once language goes, you are not so much you as potential you. We keep rewinding still, until we’re halving and halving a colony of cells, finally arriving at that amazing singularity: the cell that will become you.
You and Benjamin Button.

Only when I imagine a life being rewound, the focus is more on the variables that shaped and molded our value judgments. The biological variables after all are applicable to each of us. We all began as a single cell in the womb. We all share the same biological components. The genetic codes that are generally beyond our control. Like the time and the place where we are born. Like the social, political and economic parameters of our first years.

It's not that language goes but how the words that shaped and molded our sense of reality itself go with them.
The question, of course, is what happens when we press “play” again. Are your talents, traits, and insecurities so deeply embedded in your genes that they’re basically inevitable? Or could things go rather differently with just a few tiny nudges? In other words, how much of your fate do you allot to your genes, versus your surroundings, versus chance? This is navel gazing that matters.
Who presses "play"? God? Nature with its immutable laws? Lady Luck? If your biological/genetic components remain exactly the same and all of the environmental factors do in turn it would be something analogous to Nietzsche's eternal return. But if nature is the same but nurture is different those accumulating "tiny nudges" can result in some truly dramatic changes in your life. Re Ben Button here: https://youtu.be/6Zp7dq6b2PI

Then the part where our reaction to this is rooted subjectively, existentially in dasein. Reactions no less derived from those tiny nudges I suspect.

Though, for some of us, from far more dramatic experiences.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 4:23 pm Where Does Identity Come From?
A fascinating new neuroscience experiment probes an ancient philosophical question—and hints that you might want to get out more
By Jason Castro at the Scientific American website
Imagine we rewound the tape of your life. Your diplomas are pulled off of walls, unframed, and returned. Your children grow smaller, and then vanish. Soon, you too become smaller. Your adult teeth retract, your baby teeth return, and your traits and foibles start to slip away. Once language goes, you are not so much you as potential you. We keep rewinding still, until we’re halving and halving a colony of cells, finally arriving at that amazing singularity: the cell that will become you.
You and Benjamin Button.

Only when I imagine a life being rewound, the focus is more on the variables that shaped and molded our value judgments. The biological variables after all are applicable to each of us. We all began as a single cell in the womb. We all share the same biological components. The genetic codes that are generally beyond our control. Like the time and the place where we are born. Like the social, political and economic parameters of our first years.

It's not that language goes but how the words that shaped and molded our sense of reality itself go with them.
The question, of course, is what happens when we press “play” again. Are your talents, traits, and insecurities so deeply embedded in your genes that they’re basically inevitable? Or could things go rather differently with just a few tiny nudges? In other words, how much of your fate do you allot to your genes, versus your surroundings, versus chance? This is navel gazing that matters.
Who presses "play"? God? Nature with its immutable laws? Lady Luck? If your biological/genetic components remain exactly the same and all of the environmental factors do in turn it would be something analogous to Nietzsche's eternal return. But if nature is the same but nurture is different those accumulating "tiny nudges" can result in some truly dramatic changes in your life. Re Ben Button here: https://youtu.be/6Zp7dq6b2PI

Then the part where our reaction to this is rooted subjectively, existentially in dasein. Reactions no less derived from those tiny nudges I suspect.

Though, for some of us, from far more dramatic experiences.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
Cognitively I am a strong determinist. Where circumstances of nature-nurture threw me is where I went. If I were conatively a strong determinist, which I am not, I'd forgive myself for all my failures. This is why reason (cognition) matters in the process of apportioning blame: the more reason the less blame.

Fortune threw me into the path of a liberal church and liberal parents. If fortune had endowed me with hellfire parents and church I'd have been a different Dasein.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Iwannaplato »

There is a presumption of randomness in most discussions of nature vs. nuture. IOW you have this set of genes and then you have this set of experiences and they really have little to do with each other (except to the degree that certain genes tend to be more present in certain regions and societies, etc.) At the individual level, the genes then experience a contingent life. Of course if you have built-in tendencies, your genes will (to some degree) affect what you experience. That's not too controversial, and it does move away from contingency to a degree that will not find consensus. But then...is the presumption of randomness, contingency correct?
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

Iwannaplato wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 10:52 am There is a presumption of randomness in most discussions of nature vs. nuture. IOW you have this set of genes and then you have this set of experiences and they really have little to do with each other (except to the degree that certain genes tend to be more present in certain regions and societies, etc.) At the individual level, the genes then experience a contingent life. Of course if you have built-in tendencies, your genes will (to some degree) affect what you experience. That's not too controversial, and it does move away from contingency to a degree that will not find consensus. But then...is the presumption of randomness, contingency correct?
When you say "random" do you mean random as in unpredictable by even the very best computers, or do you mean random as in ontologically chaotic?
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Iwannaplato »

Belinda wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 12:49 pm
Iwannaplato wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 10:52 am There is a presumption of randomness in most discussions of nature vs. nuture. IOW you have this set of genes and then you have this set of experiences and they really have little to do with each other (except to the degree that certain genes tend to be more present in certain regions and societies, etc.) At the individual level, the genes then experience a contingent life. Of course if you have built-in tendencies, your genes will (to some degree) affect what you experience. That's not too controversial, and it does move away from contingency to a degree that will not find consensus. But then...is the presumption of randomness, contingency correct?
When you say "random" do you mean random as in unpredictable by even the very best computers, or do you mean random as in ontologically chaotic?
The latter. IOW not an epistemological problem. I might use the term ontological disconnection.
A counterexample might be helpful: Karma.
Karma connects the events of one's life to qualities/habits in one's nature. So, it's not like a batch of genes in a body goes out an encounters events that have nothing to do with that person's particular nature. They will encounter events that (in some way) are connected to who and what they are.

A sort of mundane not particularly controversial example could be that many people are attracted to people who will treat them in certain specific ways. Treat them not well. IOW in the room of ten men, woman x will be drawn to men who are more likely to be abusive. Or man Y will be drawn to women who are distant and cold and treat him in a Z fashion. So who he is affects strongly his future experiences. Rahter than he can simply thrown up his arms and think random bad things happen to him romantically. (and note I am not in any way condoning blaming the victim type versions of Karma, and in fact I don't like traditional views of Karma. I think Karma is a kind of ontological cocnept that many people are familiar with and so it can serve as something ontologically opposed to nature and nurture as being seen as merely contingent.
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 1:15 pm
Belinda wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 12:49 pm
Iwannaplato wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 10:52 am There is a presumption of randomness in most discussions of nature vs. nuture. IOW you have this set of genes and then you have this set of experiences and they really have little to do with each other (except to the degree that certain genes tend to be more present in certain regions and societies, etc.) At the individual level, the genes then experience a contingent life. Of course if you have built-in tendencies, your genes will (to some degree) affect what you experience. That's not too controversial, and it does move away from contingency to a degree that will not find consensus. But then...is the presumption of randomness, contingency correct?
When you say "random" do you mean random as in unpredictable by even the very best computers, or do you mean random as in ontologically chaotic?
The latter. IOW not an epistemological problem. I might use the term ontological disconnection.
A counterexample might be helpful: Karma.
Karma connects the events of one's life to qualities/habits in one's nature. So, it's not like a batch of genes in a body goes out an encounters events that have nothing to do with that person's particular nature. They will encounter events that (in some way) are connected to who and what they are.

A sort of mundane not particularly controversial example could be that many people are attracted to people who will treat them in certain specific ways. Treat them not well. IOW in the room of ten men, woman x will be drawn to men who are more likely to be abusive. Or man Y will be drawn to women who are distant and cold and treat him in a Z fashion. So who he is affects strongly his future experiences. Rahter than he can simply thrown up his arms and think random bad things happen to him romantically. (and note I am not in any way condoning blaming the victim type versions of Karma, and in fact I don't like traditional views of Karma. I think Karma is a kind of ontological cocnept that many people are familiar with and so it can serve as something ontologically opposed to nature and nurture as being seen as merely contingent.
Your explanation of Karma is either synchronicity, or a mild learning disability .The way you describe how sane people are often attracted to scratchy others is caused by a deficit in learning how to preserve their psychological and sometimes physical safety.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Iwannaplato »

Belinda wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:15 pm Your explanation of Karma is either synchronicity, or a mild learning disability .
Synchronicity is another non-randomness, theory, generally. Sometimes people talk about synchronicity and mean something like coincidence. But those following Jung would be talking about connections between seemingly contingent events or lives.

I don't think my non-controversial example entails that people have a learning disability, If you think about how many mistakes one makes on the way to learning how to play an instrument or write a well-crafted essay it shouldn't be surprising that people make the same mistakes with emotional matters. And since this may be a way to actually process older traumas it need not be a bad thing, unless you get battered to death or you bring kids into it.

But that was a bridging example. IOW I think we can all admit that our character can lead to certain types of experiences and not others. If our nature is impulsive, the problems we face will likely be different from those who overthink. Character is destiny and twin studies go quite strongly against tabula rasa theories of the self.

The idea of Karma goes beyond this to argue that pretty much everything that happens is not contingent.

My general point being that we often talk about nature as this stuff over here and then the nurture (the experiences that come) over there. Contingent in relation to each other. I think we can safely say that is an oversimplification, and those who believe in non-randomness ideas like Karma or Jung's version of synchronicity go even farther.

Now some will thing those ideas are out there. But perhaps the assumption of contingency is out there. Ontology is not obvious.
Belinda
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 8:53 pm
Belinda wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:15 pm Your explanation of Karma is either synchronicity, or a mild learning disability .
Synchronicity is another non-randomness, theory, generally. Sometimes people talk about synchronicity and mean something like coincidence. But those following Jung would be talking about connections between seemingly contingent events or lives.

I don't think my non-controversial example entails that people have a learning disability, If you think about how many mistakes one makes on the way to learning how to play an instrument or write a well-crafted essay it shouldn't be surprising that people make the same mistakes with emotional matters. And since this may be a way to actually process older traumas it need not be a bad thing, unless you get battered to death or you bring kids into it.

But that was a bridging example. IOW I think we can all admit that our character can lead to certain types of experiences and not others. If our nature is impulsive, the problems we face will likely be different from those who overthink. Character is destiny and twin studies go quite strongly against tabula rasa theories of the self.

The idea of Karma goes beyond this to argue that pretty much everything that happens is not contingent.

My general point being that we often talk about nature as this stuff over here and then the nurture (the experiences that come) over there. Contingent in relation to each other. I think we can safely say that is an oversimplification, and those who believe in non-randomness ideas like Karma or Jung's version of synchronicity go even farther.

Now some will thing those ideas are out there. But perhaps the assumption of contingency is out there. Ontology is not obvious.
I think of synchronicity as an effect of the special sort of intelligence that connects disparate events, not as causes of an effect, but as signs of an event, like divination.

When I wrote "learning disability" I was not being judgmental. Every human being has relative 'learning disability'.I agree with you.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Iwannaplato »

Belinda wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 11:01 am I think of synchronicity as an effect of the special sort of intelligence that connects disparate events, not as causes of an effect, but as signs of an event, like divination.
Hard to know here if you are questioning the dominant ontologies or not. An intelligence that is clever enough to see connections could simply be a creative mind. Divination generally means a process that to current science includes 'reading' random stuff (tarot cards, the entrails of a bull, tea leaves, the flight of birds....) but for most practitioners there is a kind of fate/diving connecting going on and those entrails, cards, etc. are not randomly formed, times, shaped....
When I wrote "learning disability" I was not being judgmental. Every human being has relative 'learning disability'.I agree with you.
:D
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Belinda »

I don't believe there is any woowoo means to predict future events. By divination I mean like your first description of divination--- a creative activity. True, it's usually associated with reading tea leaves and stuff, but such are just methods the purpose of which is to unfocus one's attention from immediate worries and other demanding feelings to get the desired effect of playful imagination. A mood not a system of knowledge.

What has divination to do with Dasein?
Dasein is not like personality which tends last for a long time ----even a lifetime. Dasein is the entire situation ---a dynamic Gestalt as viewed via one unique but dynamic perspective . Creativity by means of divination or some other method enlarges a changing perspective.
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Re: Dasein/dasein

Post by Iwannaplato »

Belinda wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 9:47 am I don't believe there is any woowoo means to predict future events. By divination I mean like your first description of divination--- a creative activity. True, it's usually associated with reading tea leaves and stuff, but such are just methods the purpose of which is to unfocus one's attention from immediate worries and other demanding feelings to get the desired effect of playful imagination. A mood not a system of knowledge.
divination might not be the right word choice then...
divination
noun
noun: divination; plural noun: divinations

the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means.
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