Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies:
"The Continental Origins of Postmodernism"

Week 2: September 20-26

YOUNG COMMENT ON REGISTER ON HEIDEGGER

Sent: Friday, September 24, 1999 4:43 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Comment on BR Heidegger Review - MY

[from Michael Young]

COMMENT ON "GETTTING A GRIP ON NOTHING"

METHODOLOGY AND GENERAL APPROACH

Bryan's general strategy in approaching Heidegger seems to be that of
putting himself in Heidegger's shoes and pushing through with
Heidegger's points and arguments as best he can, so as to get a better
understanding of Heidegger and of what valuable questions and/or
answers he might be posing for us. His primary aim does not seem to be
criticism of Heidegger. Such charitable strategies or interpretation or
criticism can be invaluable in helping to really understand a thinker
who is worth understanding. But they can also be dangerous. Unless you
thoroughly root out the stolen concepts, bad inferences, hazy metaphors,
etc. after you argue convincingly on a thinker's behalf (in good Millean
fashion), you run the risk of poisoning your own psychoepistemology --
especially if you are not offering much in the way of criticism. In
Bryan's case, because of the lack of outright criticism of Heidegger, I
got the impression of genuine sympathy for Heidegger's views.

The tone of Bryan's discussion, though fairly informal at points, is
unmistakably academic. What I mean by this is that the tone is that of
searching for truth in a fairly disinterested way -- truth for truth's
sake. This is a good thing! Though ultimately ideas matter practically
(in living one's life), if this is one's *immediate* psychological focus
in evaluating the truth of an idea, one will not do as well at it as one
might otherwise. One's immediate psychological focus needs to be on
justification and truth, period. This may mean being tentative,
speculative, "trying on" candidate ideas for size, etc. Especially when
one is dealing with an issue which, in one's eyes, has not been
definitively settled. And what is it for an idea to be definitively
settled? Even axioms and axiomatic concepts are open to new evidence
and interpretation, after all. I think we should respect and admire
Bryan's academic tone and be alert to the the openness to evidence of
even the most basic tenets of Objectivism as well as the dangers of
taking Objectivism to be a "fighting creed."

HEIDEGGER'S ARGUMENT FOR THE NOTHING

I do think Heidegger is employing something like the stolen concept
argument. He is arguing just as Objectivists argue against
dream-skepticism. Moreover, he does seem to be arguing that concepts in
general need to have contrast objects. That is the specific logical
relation which is being violated when the concept "existence" is stolen
(to put his argument in Objectivist terminology). So Bryan is right
that Heidegger's discussion raises an important logical issue in
concept-formation: do all concepts have contrast-objects? In
particular: does "existence" have a contrast-object? (This is Bryan's
Question #1.)

Heidegger does not argue that, in forming the concept "existence," we
contrast existence or existing things with other things in a field of
awareness -- at least not in a straight-forward way. Rather, he asks,
since there is the correlative concept "nonexistence," must there not be
nonexistence? Unsuccessfully, he argues that
the appearance of contradiction in even asking this question is only
illusory. And he is well aware that nothing might be something created
by the mental act of negating things or imagining them away ("This apple
is red. But what if it were not? What if the red of the apple were
*nonexistent* and the apple were instead green?") rather than some
first-order object of awareness of the world. He concedes that there is
such a concept of nothing, but insists that this is not what we contrast
existence with. This insistence is prior to his treatment of our
experience of nothing, but it is unclear to me that he has given any
argument for his claim. Indeed, my reading of Heidegger is that he is
aware of this and aware that he needs to show how the nothing appears in
experience if he is to show that the nothing "exists."

(Why not call Heidegger on his contradition and then stop reading?
There are two related reasons. First, because he has raised interesting
issues which lead him to think that the nothing "exists" in some sense.
Second, these issues are what matters evidentially. To catch someone in
a contradiction is to say: p is absurd, so you must have gone wrong
somewhere in your reasoning. But we still need to find out just where
the error is!)

In any case, what is most important in the order of evidence is
Heidegger's claim that we experience the nothing. Heidegger is not
defending the nothing as a theoretical posit, but as a metaphysical
presupposition or axiom. And it is at this crucial point that his
argument is weak. He takes anxiety as an awareness of the nothing. As
far as I can tell, he thinks anxiety makes us aware of the nothing for
either or both of two reasons: a) because anxiety, as a mood, appears to
have not particular intentional object and b) because, as a valuer, one
is isolated from all of existence when one experiences anxiety (or
dread). Both of these reasons are no good. Even if anxiety had no
intentional object (contra both Brentano and Rand's primacy of
existence), why wouldn't it simply be nonawareness rather than an
awareness of the nothing? And though perhaps there is a unity of
consciousness such that one responds emotionally and as a valuer and
goal-seeker to objects in general (so that one experiences the world as
teleological, the-world-as-viewed-through-my-purposes), this does not
mean that emotions reveal objects. After all, the "receding" of things
which Heidegger describes is not a perceived physical motion away from
oneself, but rather a reaction to those objects in light of one's
values. There appears to be ample evidence that cognition is a grasp of
objects, while emotion is a response to them based on one's values.

IS IDENTITY DEPENDENT ON CONSCIOUSNESS?

Bryan's Question #3 is troubling. "What is the relation of ontological
dependence between consciousness and the identities of objects?" In
making Heidegger's case, Bryan equivocates on the use of the term
"property" (or "feature"). If he means particular, determine[d] properties
("tropes"), then it is unclear why these would exist only in relation to
consciousness. If he means groupings of particular, similar properties,
ditto. If he means the mental process or product of abstraction, then
he is right in thinking Heidegger's suggestion to have merit.
Generally, the particular properties of a similarity-grouping are *not*
qualitatively identical -- this is something we bring to cognition and
which we should not attribute to the world. In the case of the
perceptual discrimination of objects, it seems even more clear that we
are talking about an act of discovery, not an act of creation.

As I understand it, Heidegger is an epistemological realist in the
following minimal sense: he embraces the identity of consciousness but
holds that we are in direct relation to things-in-themselves, even if we
have no idea what the things-in-themselves are. The problem with this
position is that it is hard to see how the relation is cognitive. It
still seems like we end up knowing only about appearances -- about
things we create in our interaction with things-in-themselves -- not
about the mind-independent world.

[Michael Young]

Sent: Friday, October 01, 1999 3:13 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Re: Comment on BR Heidegger Review - MY

[From: Bryan Register ]

Thanks to Michael Young for his kind comments on my interpretive approach,
which he assesses correctly. Let me say a word or two on this.

Mike says:

>In Bryan's case, because of the lack of outright criticism of Heidegger, I
>got the impression of genuine sympathy for Heidegger's views.

This is correct, but 'sympathy' should not be asked to bear too much weight.
My sense for interpretation is as follows. If, when reading or discussing an
issue, you never have even the slightest desire to agree with him, you never
sympathize with his view, then you have not understood him. The great
thinkers - even the ones who are wrong - are all terrifically intelligent
and creative persons. They took their position for a reason. If you never
have the feel that their position might be right (even for a moment) then
you have not ascertained that reason. (All other things being equal - having
rejected Marx, we need not sympathize with Lenin, and some archaic views are
so bizarre to us as to belong outside this rule.)

>Heidegger does not argue that, in forming the concept "existence," we
>contrast existence or existing things with other things in a field of
>awareness -- at least not in a straight-forward way. Rather, he asks,
>since there is the correlative concept "nonexistence," must there not be
>nonexistence?

Well, if this is how we wish to take him, then he wins in two ways.
1) You can't have a concept 'non-existence' with non-existences to be its
units.
2) You can't have a concept 'existence' without *objects*, not just a
concept for those objects, serving as contrasts.

Of course, each of these may be wrong. For #1: What about the concept
'unicorn'? And for #2, of course, are the familiar points about 'existence'
being a very special concept which is formed in a way radically different
from the ordinary way we form concepts.

>Unsuccessfully, he argues that the appearance of contradiction in even
>asking this question is only illusory. And he is well aware that nothing
>might be something created by the mental act of negating things or
imagining >them away... rather than some first-order object of awareness of
the world. >He concedes that there is such a concept of nothing, but insists
that this >is not what we contrast existence with.

Mike goes on to say that this seems to be an unwarranted assertion on
Heidegger's part, but I'm not so sure. As I saw it, Heidegger's argument was
that, since you (I mean, you the positivist or at least sceptical reader)
don't believe in nothing, you certainly won't believe in two nothings. But
we can get a certain concept of the nothing by negating 'being.' Now, if we
can have this concept of the nothing, then we can't help but have any other
concept of the nothing that Heidegger plausibly suggests we have *because
two nothings are indistinguishable*. He suggests a different, more original
sense of 'the nothing' which Roger describes very aptly in his essay.
Moreover, since we have to have a nothing to serve as contrast for 'being'
in order to form the concept 'being,' we can't rest on the concept 'being'
to get the concept 'nothing.' It would be to steal the concept 'nothing' to
suggest that it is preceded by what it must be a contrast for.

Bryan



*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************