Heidegger

Heidegger vs Descartes: The Experientio

jimstuart51 wrote:

jPolanik wrote:

>>Descartes would claim that the ‘therefore’ in ‘I experience;
>>therefore, I am’ is justified by a thought process other than the
>>hypothetical syllogism. Heidegger assumes there is no other such
>>thought process.

>>which thought process? you ask.

>>I would call the step Descartes actually takes a ‘forensic
>>inference’, a primitive form of what Kant would develop into the
>>transcendental deduction. it is based on a very simple principle:
>>from a fact one may infer that all of the logically necessary
>>preconditions of that fact have been instantiated. (a simple example:
>>you see a child. you infer that it had a mother.)

>So Descartes’ ‘therefore’ is a ‘forensic inference’ and not
>a ‘hypothetical syllogism’.

>You try your best on Descartes’ behalf, but I don’t think it is good
>enough.

good enough … for what? to defend the presence of ‘therefore’ in ‘I
experience; therefore, I am’? there’s no need. suppose Heidegger shows
that there is, in fact, a syllogistic step in between ‘I experience’ and
‘I am’. what then? Heidegger has just justified the use of ‘therefore’
— the opposite of what he wants.

>Descartes was in a tricky position in Meditation Two where he tries
>to justify his ‘cogito ergo sum’. The trouble for him is that he has
>doubted God out of existence, and without God he cannot rely on
>logical reasoning, as an evil demon might convince him that something
>is a ‘forensic inference’ when in fact it is a forensic fallacy.

Descartes doesn’t actually say ‘cogito ergo sum’ anywhere in the
meditations. he is dramatizing its use and discovery.

>So Descartes has to try to defend the view that the ‘ergo’ doesn’t
>involve a logical inference of any sort.

for his own purposes (finding a starting point for philosophical
inquiry), Descartes only has to defend the certainty of that starting
point.

>Apart from being over-generous to Descartes, you seem to me to be
>being over-critical of Heidegger.

>I think Heidegger undermines Descartes’ dualism indirectly by putting
>forward an alternative way of conceiving of human beings (as beings
>in the world who find themselves interacting with the things around
>them, and for whom the purely passive contemplation of philosophy and
>present-at-hand objects comes only after they find themselves
>engaging in the world with ready-to-hand objects.

>Perhaps you should re-read Being and Time sections 12 and 13 for his
>introduction of this way of conceiving of ourselves, and how it forms
>the background for his undermining of the Cartesian picture.

I doubt that Descartes would object to a description of human social
life as a process of interacting with other humans and with
ready-to-hand objects. Descartes is, however, asking another question
— one that Heidegger declines to ask: ‘what am I?’ or ‘what is a human
individual’ or ‘what is the structure of a human individual?’.

there is nothing in Heideggerian philosophy that prohibits a person from
asking such questions; and, many do not; but, Heidegger also admits that
“With regard to Descartes’ ontology … The considerations which follow
will not have been grounded in full detail until the ‘cogito sum’ has
been phenomenologically destroyed. (See Part 2, Division 2)”. [BaT.
Macquarrie and Robinson translation, p. 123]

as we all know BaT, Part 2, Division 2 never appeared. so we are left
with the task of assembling Heidegger’s case for him from his other
works.

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

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Posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
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