Hello James,
Here is a take on your comments. Let me know what you
think.
--- james lomax <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> <<Its
> an ontology first project --loaded concepts like
> consciousness must come later, if at all --and must
> first
> be stripped of any metaphysical presumptions >>
>
> OK....getting away from these complex convolutions for
> just a second - they have their own trajectory, which
> is not necessarily fully comprehensive:
>
> I suggest that consciousness comes first
in terms of
> simple phenomenology, and any analytic method.
Simple phenomenolgy is exactly what Heidegger is doing in
an attempt to get at what you call consciousness, but he
would not, and does not, like to use the term consciousness
--its hard to tell what we mean by it. Simple
phenomenology is Heidegger's analytic method, and it does
come first. Through phenomenology Heidegger will arrive at
"thinking." In a manner of speaking, I think you are using
the term "consciousness" synonomously with the way
Heidegger objects to our reflex use of the term "being." He
is trying to establish, at bottom, what expressions like
consciousness (being) amount to. He wants a better idea of
exactly what kind of phenomena is behind these expressions.
The idea of being that first inspires Heidegger to do his
Dasein analytic (as distingished from the more concrete
idea of "being" in the analytic itself (i.e. Dasein's way
of making things intelligible) is very simple actually,
although very obscure. He is just asking in a simple,
everyday, almost pre-philosophical way, what does it mean
for me and other entities to exist? Its really almost a
boyish question. (And I think he would ask the same thing
of consciousness: what does it mean for me to be
conscious?) But he is astounded by 2000 years of philosophy
that seems to think it has answered the question, when in
fact, it has simply forgotten all about it. I am beginning
to see Heidegger as simply insisting that we should start
philosophy all over again, only on the second time around,
lets not make the mistake of trying to explain phenomena by
a reduction to things. This was really Socrates complaint
in the Phaedo when he says imagine trying to explain why I
am in jail in terms of the objects that make it
mechanically possible for me to be in jail. He wants to
remake philosophy as phenomenology.
Joe
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