Just to set the stage for my discussion of Peirce and Derrida for when I get back from vacation I thought I'd write a few comments about Heidegger. One big thing for Heidegger is what we can call the ontological difference. The best way to see this difference is to think of Plato. For Plato we had the realm of Being which were independent ideas that existed in a supersensory realm. Then there was the world of regular objects or beings. Now according to Heidegger and actually most philosophers the big error of Plato was in treating ideas as things. The traditional way of describing this is to say that Plato made the error or reifying ideas. Since not everyone reading is a philosopher, that's basically just the same thing only in Latin. (grin) The big question though is the relationship between Being (ideas) and beings (sensible things).
For Heidegger the nature of this distinct goes back to Greek grammar which in turn (in Heidegger's mind) rests on Plato himself. He argues that in our discussion of being we have a fundamental ambiguity between Beings and beings. Basically there is a grammatical ambiguity. You can see this in how we talk. When I talk about a dog do I just mean the unique entity before me or do I mean it as a dog. Clearly I almost always entail both senses in an ambiguous fashion. For the old grammarians this is called a participium. That is the word, dog in our case, participates in both senses. The one is a noun while the other is more a verb or a verbal adjective. When considered ontologically, especially in Plato's metaphysics, we have two places (khora) for the two senses. That is the world around us and the supersensory world. Heidegger sees that what makes these two worlds and what enables them to work together is the participium. That is, it is a difference between the two worlds. As it is what makes these two worlds possible, it can be seen as more fundamental.
When Heidegger often talks about how Being is forgotten really what is he talking about is how this difference between the two senses of being is forgotten. The difference between Being and beings. Because people forgot about the difference metaphysics was born. With metaphysics basically treating Being as an entities. The reification that we talked about earlier.
Of course that's the simplified discussion. In practice things get a little more complex. And I'll get to those when we start discussing Heidegger's sense of difference and Derrida's closely related sense. What I wish to point out though is that the type and token discussion of the other day fully fits into Heidegger's discussion of difference. That is, what is the difference between types and tokens? What makes the difference possible? Can you have a type alone or a token alone or do we need to consider them as a pair? What is typically left out of the discussion?
Sadly, the ontological difference isnt the difference between ideas and things, you are misunderstanding what Heidegger is speaking about when he uses the word "Being" in distinction to "being". You are correct in saying that "being" means any sort of "thing" in the roughest sense - a color, a chair, an animal, a lake, a dream, an idea - basically anything. Anything which you could say "it is" or "it is not". "Being" on the other hand, is sort of the over arching fact that thingness (the presence of existing beings) is here in the first place. Being, strictly speaking, is not a thing which either is or is not. The only distinction we can make from Being, is the situation of pure Nothingness - what it would be like if nothing ever existed at all.
When philosophers, from Thales, through Hegel, and up to Heidegger speak of "being" you need to be clear on this exact metaphysical distinction to know what is at discussion
Well, I think that was actually a pretty good explanation of the ontological difference. It should be noted, however, that Heideggerian scholars tend to disagree concerning the formulation of the ontological difference. Still, what was stated above follows William Richardson's explication very closely. (For those that don't know, Richardson wrote THE book on Heidegger's turn, and even had Heidegger write the preface for it).
Perhaps the following could be added:
The difference between the sensible and supra-sensible in Plato is the result of the ambivalence of the word 'on' (the Greek participle for being -- literally translated as being). What Heidegger is interested in is not so much the difference between Plato's two realms, but the ambivalence of the world 'on' that gives rise to those two realms to begin with. For Heidegger, that ambivalence is the result of a process that he calls Sein. Thus, he is interested in the coming to pass, or the process of this distinction between Being and beings.
Yeah, I was largely following Richardson, although I tended to read Heidegger that way prior to reading Richardson. (Confession time - I'm only now reading Richardson. Thus the post as that was what I was reading just prior to leaving on vacation along with Carman's book) I suspect I follow that reading because of my exposure to Derrida who follows somewhat a similar view. (Or perhaps a similar set of arguments - arising initially from a close reading of Husserl)
I should also add that I tend to also read Heidegger largely in neoPlatonic ways as well. Especially since reading Sikka's book on the topic a few years ago. I try to carefully distrust such readings precisely because of the danger of bias. But there are some very interesting parallels, especially with regard to Matter as Other in Plotinus. (Which I'd discussed last year relative to Derrida)
CJS, I think that one can see Heidegger at various times as using being (the vague sense) in three ways. One for entities or beings as such. One for beings as what they are. Thus what a platonist might call the ideas but which in other schemes might be tokens, concepts or other such "entities," depending upon the philosopher in question. Finally there is Being which is roughly akin to the One of the neoPlatonists. Exactly how roughly is of course a matter of debate - but even if the discourse differs, I think the idea is what makes our ability to see beings as beings.
It is confusing though and I probably should have clarified it somewhat in the above. But I was taking for granted that people had a rough idea about Heidegger's discussion of Being with a capital B.
Oh, regarding the preface to Richardson's book. What is most interesting is that from what I can tell, Heidegger never actually read the book but was just responding to two questions Richardson posed. One of Heidegger's responses ended up being a critique of Richardson's title which Richardson then changed to its current form. (Through Phenomenology to Thought)
to me the ontolgoical difference could be understood somewhat by contrasting it with hegel's take on being (being seen as an empty concept). could anyone elaborate on this and show how it relates to being as activity.
You might wish to look at Heidegger's Off the Beaten Track which is a translation of Holzwege. It includes the essay "Hegel's Concept of Experience" which discusses this. I've not read that particular essay although Richardson discusses it fairly extensively in Through Phenomenology to Though.
About the great topic, the ontological difference! So glad you asked...
Capital B, Being is not a small case being: Capital B, Being is
what each soul knows, its Dasein, as it temporalizes birth to
death: as such my Capital B, Being: my Dasein where I have the right to say, 'I:.' Here in 'I' is the horizon where no other than me can see, imagine, or experience or ever will experience. Recognition to my Dasein is reserved to only 'I' AND what is the Grand Default, which is no other. (since I am by definition, binary).
Now: my Dasein, where I am, what I think, who is 'I-caffeineaddict' is distinct from all other humans, and all other things, here "small case being" - dasein in general. My "is" [I: "caffeineaddict,"] is partitioned from all other realities extant in time per se - mere being.
Note: here all Beings (me, my Dasein and other human beings, dasein in general) as well as what in toto constitutes reality per se, what "is", "necessarily" is "in time." This includes
all so called a priori logic, mathematics, physics, natural law and the like.
Only my soul "caffeineaddict" knows what my soul constitutes,and is forever by definition, my fingerprint-DNA- to which Aristotle
calls "tode ti," first am I, par excellence: my Dasein, my Being distinct and separate from every other possible thing or human I might ever know, first-hand in time.
But what is out of time, is out of bounds, and beyond my scope;
where the circle begins...and ends...
Justification of this follows from the proposition:
"The universe (my Being, my Dasein) begins and ends with me -
me, my soul, my Dasein. The lower case [being], well, let's just say that covers everything else but the Grand Default.
Descartes I think would heartily agree to this since his Cartesian notion of dualism, mind and body being separate entities; mind=soul in this context.
In his "Meditations on First Philosophy," he presents his soul as his thoughts with eyes closed. Then he makes the Grand Leap into nothing - the world becomes hypothetically non-extant except for his soul=mind=thought.
Then comes the kicker of all time, the absolute proof of God's existence, arriving after the world he himself annihilates...
It becomes his task to re-construct the world from scratch; he is left to his own devices-
This, of course, is the rankest of all impossiblilities as he does not have a clue on how to even begin to construct the world
once he has part and parcel done away with it.
He concludes that reconstruction by himself is a non-sequitur; some One else is responsible that set him at( 0,0,0,0,) - origin - to (x,y,z,imaginary time with his eyes closed) - which constitutes his narrative present time [that which remains frozen for our well-considered examination and consideration...]
With the earth, stars and horizon dark and void, lacking every thing to make what is: this is nothing less than death.
I maintain the entire point of "Meditations on First Philosophy"
is dress rehearsal for moldering in the grave, when is all is said and done, you've been embalmed, and mourned over. You hear hopefully wails of mourning as the pallbearers gently lay you back to earth, or if you're of sterner stuff and very unlucky, you've heard nothing but the ignition of the pilot flame of the crematorium.
--and in that... very conceivable - moment, Descartes devises a masterful thought experiment for those willing to come along
to the opening of the trapdoor to oblivion--
Who can restore everything what is? That which is beyond reckoning, who is beyond yeses and nos?
It is God of course, by default; the Grand Default the only answer, One to everything, of every thing possible.
Which brings up a very sore subject with me, which Heidegger
addresses: it comes from those who moan "Why did God let this
[whatever happen ... deformed children, war, pestilence, and all matters of the worst of human existence] if he is a good God?
Heidegger responds to this question which follows disaster which makes many doubt of God's existence by quoting another theologian, and supreme mathematician to this day, Leibniz who without which we could not have the means to evaluate limits of infinity with The Calculus:
"We must distinguish between the things which God can do and those which he wills to do; he can do all things, but he wills the best. - Actual things are nothing but the best of possibles, all things considered. - Possible things are those which do not imply a contradiction." Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, [118-119]. But Leibnitz did not have the time to
consider the consequences of "quantum foam," in that kind of
bubblebath, ten after three o'clock in the afternoon has about as much meaning as your dog wagging his tail.
God is the Grand Default beyond death, outside time, that which is 1, the primary logic, "logos." There exists no other primary meaning and definition besides 1=1.
Humans are binary creatures: everything extant is a series of yeses and nos, our computers mimic us: Being- each Dasein, each human being is "Twenty Questions" to many powers of ten for each moment of living in finite partitions of now.
And, what precedes before and follows after now for all time and outside of time, of infinite yeses and nos?
The Grand Default is 1: disinterested in time as time is a human construct, as is mathematics and physics with its probabilities, conceivable co-ordinate systems Riemannian and Cartesian, and relativities both general and special.
Einstein, gladly gives me an out of all these ramblings all about the ontological difference: and that is this:
Reality beyond capital B, Being does not exist for "The They," and for what "the They" count on. Each Dasein marks its own sweet time which is the ontological difference; the inanimate remains inanimate for all time so in turn "The They" in time; who is the timekeeper counts with a soul's cadence, alive and alone who counts 3, 2, 1 --- with every fleeting gasp - then, gone - (0,0,0,0) - out of time, out of space: out of breath, to origin.
And so, by negative inference, I join Descartes, Heidegger, and Leibniz who were, you should always keep in mind first of all, theologians. And, I'm content to be in that camp. Well content, I'd say...to win Pascal's wager with interest.
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