1st person or 3rd person or
May 18th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: First Person vs Third Person :: New Book ‘Social Ontology’ :: Modes of Being :: Words Have Changing Referents
Dreyfus BITW p60
The mode of argument will have to change along with the
questions. Heidegger does not expect to prove his theses and
thereby overcome the traditional subject/object distinction, or its
more recent variations such as the internalist/externalist debate
concerning meaning. “An analytic does not do any proving at all by
the rules of the ‘logic of consistency”‘ (363) [315] . But he does not
think his inability to provide proofs results in a standoff, such as, for
example, John Searle and Donald Davidson confronting each
other over whether to do philosophy from a first-person, subjective
or a third-person, objective perspective. Heidegger proposes to get
out of this traditional Cartesian confrontation by focusing on the
more basic way of being that he calls existence. He will seek to show
that the traditional picture is prima facie implausible and will
sketch out an alternative, viz. that subjects and objects can be
understood only in terms of being-in-the-world. This alternative is
to be “concretely demonstrated” (359) [311] .
Heidegger proposes to demonstrate that the situated use of
equipment is in some sense prior to just looking at things and that
what is revealed by use is ontologically more fundamental than the
substances with determinate, context-free properties revealed by
detached contemplation. (This is the subject of this chapter.) But
to see why the traditional model of self-sufficient subjects related to
self-sufficient objects by means of mental content is never appropriate
we need to look more deeply. Thus, Heidegger seeks to
supplant the tradition by showing that the ways of being of equipment
and substances, and of actors and contemplators, presuppose
a background understanding of being-originary transcendence
or being-in-the-world. (See chapter 5.)
To begin with, we need to recall that the stand Dasein takes on
itself, its existence, is not some inner thought or experience; it is the
way Dasein acts. (What makes a Japanese baby a Japanese baby is first
and foremost what it does and how things show up for it, and only
derivatively its thoughts, assuming it has any.) Dasein takes a stand
on itself through its involvement with things and people.
In everyday terms, we understand ourselves and our existence by way of
the activities we pursue and the things we take care of. (BP, 159) To exist
then means, among other things, relating to oneself by being with beings.
(BP,
157)
