Critiquing Davidson

Posted on May 28, 2008
Filed Under Davidson, Philosophy |

DuckRabbit has had a series of posts on Davidson that have been quite interesting. One I’d linked to on the sideblog was Davidson and Dummett. I’d suggested there that perhaps Dummett’s criticism of Davidson was similar to Derrida’s critique of Gadamer (which I’d discussed at the old blog about four years ago) Unfortunately it’s just been so long that I did a rather poor job explaining myself. There were several different approaches to the issue so partially as a way of getting caught back up my Derrida and Davidson I thought I’d discuss them.

I don’t want to take just one route but consider a few places where the differences can be seen. Perhaps in some I’m just mis-seeing things. So I consider this more me working through the issues than necessarily stating a view I’m comfortable with.

To start let me turn back to Heidegger rather than Derrida.

Heidegger, in a break from Husserl, does not see intentionality as fundamental. In the attempt to break from the subject/object divide (or put an other way mind/world divide) Heidegger switches to talking of verhalten which is often translated as comportment. Really it’s intentionally cast in a different way from the more Cartesian subject/object divide. Heidegger sees something closer to the traditional view as deliberate action where we experience of your intent causing your action. However most actions, to Heidegger, don’t fit this category. Instead regular coping with the things around us involves no awareness of intents. To give an example when driving we often lose awareness of what we are doing and just do it. Athletes often talk about “being in the zone” as opposed to having to think about everything you are doing. Heidegger’s point is that this comporting is nonintentionalistic (in the traditional sense) and involves no references to the self in awareness.

The criticism of the more traditional view is that it ends up being a kind of theoretical stance where it is as if we are standing outside of our context looking at it. We aren’t fully involved in the context and activities within that context. It is a spectator like view rather than a participatory action. Thus one can quickly see how all of this arises from Heidegger’s focus on a phenomenology tied to Dasein’s Being-in-the-World. We always find ourselves already involved with the world around us.

Heidegger SuitHeidegger goes further and see the more traditional stance arising more from when things break down. Thus to return to my example when typically driving I don’t notice the car, don’t even notice many of my actions. They are invisible to me. However as soon as something goes wrong I notice them. (Say my accelerator stops working right) The car then becomes present for me and I start to think about what I am doing in a way I didn’t. Comportment becomes something closer to normal intentionality.

I bring this up to show how in Heidegger in Being and Time we can see that intentionality vs. comportment becomes an issue of failures. It is at the time of these failures that I start to represent the entities around me rather than merely engage with them via comportment.

Now let me return to Derrida because while Derrida’s work is quite different from the middle period of Heidegger characteristic of Being and Time there clearly is an echo there. (Derrida typically is seen as closer to Heidegger in his later phase - but I come from the school of thought that sees more harmony between the two phases.)

Derrida relative to Gadamer (who obviously isn’t the same as Davidson) critiques Gadamer by seeing his universal hermeneutics as a “good will to understanding.” That is we have a representational goal of understanding the other. For Gadamer this is a continuous merging of horizons until we have a shared world and communication is totally complete. This is the goal. I see Davidson, despite some differences, as doing something similar. We have a respresentational and intentional goal and our actions of interpretation are made in terms of those goals. What counts aren’t mistakes but successes. (And for all my problems communicating in DuckRabbit’s thread it seemed like all my interlocutors agrees that Davidson just doesn’t care about mistakes - to me that was half the battle right there)

The Derridean form of hermeneutics (he’s obviously not against hermeneutics - just a particular formulation of it) instead of seeing hermeneutics grounded in intentions, representations, and the goal of common understanding sees it instead based upon miscommunication. It is in these failures that we are able to really see hermeneutics just as it is only in terms of my failure of comportment that the entities I encounter become manifest to me.

This means that rather than metaphors of triangulation, convergence or continue growth we have metaphors of eruption, of breaks, and of abysses. It is when we have moments of miscommunication and we recognize that we don’t understand the person we’re discussing with that we are able to better understand what it is we are attempting to share. Up to that point they are hidden or distorted. This leads one to a hermeneutics of suspicion precisely because it is in distrust of understanding that I can become aware of failures and it is in the spaces opened up by failure of communication that real communication can happen.

Now let me give some examples of this. Mormons and Evangelicals share a lot of language. One can also argue that the entities in question (spiritual experiences, the Bible, various historical events in Palestine etc.) Yet I’ve been in enough discussions to recognize that sometimes one can be talking for days using the same terms and, in a behavioralistic perspective, appearing to communicate. Yet it is at the moment of failure when we realize we’re using all the same words but meaning something different that communication happens. Likewise I come to understand my wife best often when I realize I’ve misunderstood her. It is at those moments of communication breakdown that the entities related to in our conversations become manifest more clearly.

Comments

7 Responses to “Critiquing Davidson”

This sort of hermeneutics seems weirdly focused on areas where understanding is hard — interreligious dialogue is notorious for being intractable. I don’t see why this isn’t just a parochialism; why should we think that “communication happening” only after widespread miscommunication is the norm? Indeed, if it was not uncommon, then I doubt interreligious dialogue would have the stigmas it does.

I also don’t think that you’re getting Heidegger quite right here; your Heidegger sounds like Dreydegger. (I can’t recall whether or not you’re a fan of Dreyfus, but he looms large enough that I feel safe blaming him for this sort of take on Heidegger wherever it crops up.) Ready-to-handedness is not “nonrepresentational”; to think this is to hold an erroneously “mentalistic” conception of what representing involves. I’ve read some very interesting criticisms of Dreyfus recently along these lines; Carleton Christen has written a few pieces devoted to attacking Dreyfus’s “antirepresentationalist” Heidegger. As a quick criticism, vorhandenheit is a way in which entities show up vor Dasein, in front of Dasein; but the “absorbed coping” picture has the absorbed agent simply moving “automatically” alongside other entities, not circumspectly grasping them in their presence-as-for-this-or-that. Dreyfus actually sounds like an eliminativist about the mental in some of the things he says about “absorbed coping”; nothing “minded” seems to be going on in “motor intentionality”. “Motor intentionality” is something that insects could have; surely this is a bad picture for how I drive when I’m driving well.

So, I think it’s not right to say that Heidegger denied that intentionality was fundamental; what he denied was that Husserl’s version of intentionality was fundamental. Sorge is the being of Dasein, and Sorge is very much “intentional”; I am always concerned with something — concern is always a concerned-with-X-in-way-Y. Even a “theoretical stance” towards an object, a “disinterested view”, is an instance of this Sorge manifesting itself. So the “traditional picture” of intentionality, with the subject and the object set over against one another as two objects, is not merely limited in scope, it’s not true of anything. It’s flatly wrong about how intentionality works. Zuhandenheit is not the “traditional picture” of intentionality, but a way in which Dasein is concerned with entities; Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger doesn’t make him out to be as radical a thinker as he is.

More the point of the post, I don’t think that the fact that entities show up in their zuhandenheit when they cease to disclose themselves in their vorhandenheit means that we become aware of tools only once they break down (as Dreyfus likes to put it). The presence of a tool as readiness-to-hand, vorhandenheit, is already an awareness of the tool on the part of Dasein. The presence of the tool as presence-to-hand, zuhandenheit, is another kind of awareness not awareness simpliciter. “Absorbed coping” is not mindless, but a form of mindedness; phronesis involves a certain type of seeing, of seeing-what-to-do. In absorbed coping, I’m not “missing” that the entities I am concerned with are entities. In a “breakdown” I don’t suddenly “become aware”, but the way in which I am aware simply changes. Dreyfus (and Sartre, whom Dreyfus likes to quote on the matter) are still too Cartesian about the “I”.

So, to continue the analogous progression from your post: The sort of knowledge that comes about when you notice that you’ve been “seeing things all wrong” is not “the” “true” type of knowledge. It’s one among others. Certainly you can often learn a lot about something by looking for “breaks”, you can find out a lot about what a thing can do by figuring out what it can’t do, etc. But this isn’t the only way to learn about things. It’s just one strategy for inquiry among others. Surely you understand your wife when you realize you’ve misunderstood her, but surely you also understand your wife without misunderstanding her — for instance, once you’ve realized that a prior conception was a misconception.

And the idea that there’s an interesting story to tell about misunderstanding in general, parallel to hermeneutical/radical-interpretation stories about understanding in general, still strikes me as wacky as all-get-out. You can give an account of X; you can’t give an account of everything-that-isn’t-X. It just won’t make for a good narrative.

#@!$@!#

I consistently got zuhandenheit and vorhandenheit backwards throughout that comment. That’s embarrassing. I think I’ve been up for too long today.

So, switch the two wherever they occur. And replace the bit about vor with a bit about zu. In zuhandenheit entities are present to Dasein. That still works like I want it to.

Man, that’s embarrassing.

Daniel, I don’t think this breakdown is the norm. Rather I think this breakdown is the foundation for the norm. A subtly different but important point. But I think that’s Derrida’s position also. The eruption or breakdown is when reality injects itself to our awareness. It changes our perspective. But it makes a significant difference in how we consider causal perspectivism.

Yes, I read Heidegger in a pragmatic way that is similar (although not identical) to Dreyfus, Carman, and others. Ditto for how I read Derrida. To me as I read Derrida I see a lot of rediscovery of points made by Peirce although often with a very, very different focus.

Regarding Heidegger and intentionality I think the point you made was made explicitly by me. He rejects Husserl’s intentionality (and as Dreyfus and others have argued this entails Searle’s, Davidson’s and others intentionality) in preference to a broader intentionality of comportment.

I’ve not read Christen’s attacks on Dreyfus. Are they available on JSTOR? If so I’ll look them up.

I should add that I’m less interested in Heidegger for exegesical correctness but in reading his phenomenology to see what is right. More akin to how Heidegger appropriates other philosophers. So even if Dreyfus’ reading isn’t correct fully to the text of Heidegger at some period I’m not sure that renders his arguments false.

Hopefully I’ll have time for more detailed comments later.

By the way. If you click on your comments within an hour of writing them you can edit any mistakes.

OK, with regards to “Dreydegger” while I understand the critique of him as eliminatist or adopting an overly “mentalistic” critique I think if we are talking about awareness it is clear that many things that I am doing while drive the car I am not aware of. That just seems clear from the experience as I experience it. Now one could argue, as some cognitive scientists do, that underneath my awareness there is a form of representation going on. Perhaps, although I confess I’m not convinced there either. However even given that I think it unarguable that at the level of awareness there is not a representation being presented to me.

Now the more complex part arises out of how to take this in terms of a general semiotic. And I want to get to that in a more Peircean take on these Heideggarian/Derriderian issues. Simply because I find Peirce is a tad more clear here. But I’ll hold off there.

The basic critique though isn’t against intentionality but, as you say, a particular way of taking intents. Certainly it is a critique against Husserl but I think it applies to many major figures in American philosophy as well. As does Dreyfus obviously given his discussion with Searle - although that discussion to me is about as good an example of the phenomena I’m describing as any. Indeed I often use it as an example of it. Searle and Dreyfus over years appear to be communicating with each other when it turns out they really aren’t at all. Searle is doing logical analysis while Dreyfus is doing phenomenology and a major miscommunication is taking place. Once this error is noticed then reference proper becomes possible.

The point you make about ready-at-handedness and present-at-handedness is of course correct. But I don’t think I deny that. Rather the issue is the kind of relation with the objects I have. To be representational I have to move from ready-at-handedness to present-at-handedness. But I fully agree both are modes of my relation with the objects and both are a kind of mindfulness. That’s why I was careful to note that comportment is really just a kind of intentionality but one broader than how many take it.

I try to avoid the word “mind” not because of any particular prejudice but precisely because it is an example of the phenomena I’m getting at. It’s a term where we all think we are referencing the same thing and have (to use Gadamer’s term) a shared context. However we really don’t and typically the kind of miscommunication I’ve mentioned is going on. We are so busy using our words (ready-at-handedness) that the objects as present-at-hand are missed and we think we’re talking of the same present-at-hand objects when we aren’t. (Or more accurately the objects unveiling themselves to us as a particular kind of present-at-hand object since objects can be present-at-hand in different ways just as they can be ready-at-hand in different ways)

But the ultimate critique of Davidson I’m making is that his causal relations in his externalism depend upon present-at-handedness. Thus one has to ask how things become present-at-hand.

The will issue ends up being a broader issue but I think one has to start here at the beginning with comportment.

5 Rich Knapton on May 29th, 2008 11:55 am

With regards to Heidegger, driving, and absence, Demassio (Descartes’ Error) asserts in actuality there is no absence at all. We are fully cognizant of what we are doing at all times while we are driving (under normal conditions). What seems to be absent is recall or memory. Personally significant events must be tagged with an affective tag or somatic marker as he calls it if retention is going to occur. So in driving we lose neither intent nor awareness. What we lose is the ability to recall it.

Rich

“The eruption or breakdown is when reality injects itself to our awareness.”

What were we aware of before the “eruption” or “breakdown”? Our representations? Subjective fancies? Private objects?

I don’t think there is anything that we can be aware of, if we are not aware of the world, of reality. Which is not to say that we’re infallible; but when we are wrong, we are not aware of a falsity, but simply not aware of the truth. And being wrong about anything requires being right about a lot of other things, like Davidson argues. So I don’t think failure can be a “foundation” for non-failure. I think that an “eruption” is when reality shows up along other realities, so to speak. It displaces some confused notions, some false beliefs, but it also stands on all fours with the mass of true beliefs I, as a rational being, necessarily had in the background.

“I think if we are talking about awareness it is clear that many things that I am doing while drive the car I am not aware of.”

Well, there are many descriptions of things you are doing which you would not recognize as accurately describing what you’re doing. So in that sense, it’s certainly correct that you do many things you aren’t aware of. But I don’t think it’s right (as a phenomenological matter) to say that when I’m “absorbedly” driving I’m not aware of my speed, of the texture of the road, of the cars around me, of the weather, etc. etc. If I wasn’t aware of all these things, I wouldn’t be able to drive.

Now, I’m not “aware” of them in the sense that I’m not narrating my driving: “Hark, the sun! Hark, a bump! Hark, a blue car!” Nor am I narrating it in “inner speech”. But I don’t think that this sort of “awareness” matters for much, if anything. I don’t think any way of getting-around-in-the-world actually functions in this explicitly “aware” form; and this is not to say that we really get around “unaware”, “unconsciously”, “unthinkingly”. Mindedness just does not work like Dreyfus’s picture lays it out; the sort of Cartesian “awareness” that Dreyfus denies is present in “absorbed coping” is trivially unimportant — I’m tempted to say, epiphenomenal. True mindedness is more a more natural, embodied, social affair than the “traditional picture” lays out. (I hasten to add that the “traditional picture” is of relatively recent vintage; Aristotle certainly knew nothing of it.)

To put it strongly: “However even given that I think it unarguable that at the level of awareness there is not a representation being presented to me.” — I want to say, I am never given a representation, in this sense. Or if I ever am, it doesn’t matter for anything; my life could go on more or less as it does without a few scattered imaginary mind-pictures.

“Searle and Dreyfus over years appear to be communicating with each other when it turns out they really aren’t at all. Searle is doing logical analysis while Dreyfus is doing phenomenology and a major miscommunication is taking place. Once this error is noticed then reference proper becomes possible.”

I think there’s a simpler explanation: Searle is covering his ass. He doesn’t know how to respond to Dreyfus’s criticisms, so he throws up a smokescreen called “logical analysis”. He really was making a lot of claims that get hit by Dreyfus’s criticisms; the appearance that Dreyfus was doing a number on Searle was veridical. Searle just refuses to acknowledge that he’s losing the argument, and so declares that it never existed: He was never “doing phenomenology” and so Dreyfus can go sit&spin. And note that after Searle pulls this cheap trick, the conversation doesn’t improve; it just dies an ignoble death. Breakdown didn’t lead to revelation; it just meant that things didn’t work anymore.

“To be representational I have to move from ready-at-handedness to present-at-handedness. But I fully agree both are modes of my relation with the objects and both are a kind of mindfulness.”

This is exactly what I want to deny, that “representationality” is a special kind of mindedness, a special kind of being related to objects. The criticized picture of “representationalism” is not true of anything; it’s a false picture. It gets the “theoretical stance” wrong, just as it gets other forms of intentionality wrong.

“But the ultimate critique of Davidson I’m making is that his causal relations in his externalism depend upon present-at-handedness. Thus one has to ask how things become present-at-hand.”

I don’t think this can possibly be right. Davidson’s externalism doesn’t rely on experience; it doesn’t allow for experience to play a role at all. How then can it rely on a particular kind of experience, that of objects being present-to-hand?

(I think McDowell’s “minimal empiricism” is also immune to this charge, but of course the defense there must proceed differently. And I don’t recall that you’ve read McDowell, so I’m happy to stick to Davidson.)

Also, I apologize for that first comment. Like I said, I had been up all night; I’m just kinda ranting at nobody there. And I didn’t notice that I’d swapped the two German terms until the hour had passed.

I didn’t find Christensen on JStor; I had to use Alibris or something to find him. (I’d gotten his name from a talk he’d posted online, “What Are the Categories in Sein und Zeit?”) I’d e-mail you some of his papers, but I don’t think I have your address. “Getting Heidegger Off the West Coast” and “Heidegger’s Representationalism” are both great.

I’d be interested. My email is clark@libertypages.com

I’ll comment on your other points either tonight or this weekend.

I will say I’m not sure I agree with that characterization of the Searle/Dreyfus debate. But then it’s been quite a few years since I last glanced at them. So one more thing to look at once more.

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