Philosophical Focus

Posted on February 25, 2010
Filed Under Heidegger, Philosophy | 2 Comments

I notice one other interesting thing at the materialism post at Larval Subjects. Levi says the following:

And moreover, as Graham likes to say, if you only ever find yourself talking about the human-world relation then you’re a correlationist. If your philosophy has nothing significant to say about the relation between a rock and soil, you’re a correlationist. At any rate, it seems to me that we’ve begun to use these terms very loosely.

I wonder, though, if this is fair. Of course much of this hinges on the notoriously enigmatic statement by Heidegger that things only “are” if there is Dasein. However I think the above also gets an other issue that bothers me somewhat. The difference between having a position and having a focus.

Many philosophers have one major focus and never leave that focus. Just because they don’t focus on some other question doesn’t mean we can just assume something about their position on that question. I recognize that Harmon isn’t quite doing this. He is marshaling arguments for Heidegger’s position.

But that said I think that broadening the scope beyond Harman that many of the arguments I have seen tend at best to establish questions of focus rather than position. Just because Heidegger doesn’t say much about object to object relations independent of Dasein doesn’t imply that he believes we can’t say anything about such. (Indeed, I see his notion of de-worlded entities as very much entailing object to object relations)

While this criticism of mine might not apply to many arguments, I think it is a pretty important issue to keep in mind. Beware the argument from silence…

Related posts:

  1. Peirce & OOP
  2. Object Oriented Philosophy
  3. OOP
  4. Levinas, Heidegger & Objects
  5. Derridean OOP
  6. Davidson and Mental Objects

Comments

2 Responses to “Philosophical Focus”

Clark, I’ve been reading your recent posts, scratching my head, trying to latch on to anything that would give me the faintest idea of what you do as a philosopher. I admit to complete failure.

Until tonight. I think I understand “Beware the argument from silence.” In my historian’s world, I think that must be similar to the warning not to let the absence of evidence become the evidence.

But that is just about the only phrase I can understand! (Now you’re gonna tell me I’m wrong. I just know it.)

Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of more narrow topics on Heidegger of late. I have one more to go and then back to a few religious topics.

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