Journal Article•
Heidegger’s Representationalism
TL;DR: In this paper, Dreyfus argues that Heidegger is not at all out to reject the traditional idea that subjects or self relate to the world via representations, at least not when these notions are correctly understood.
Abstract: For at least the last twenty years, Anglo-American philosophers have displayed two interrelated tendencies in their efforts to make sense of Martin Heidegger. First, they have frequently mapped Heidegger onto debates and problems within contemporary cognitive science and North American philosophy of psychology. Second, they have often attempted to discern deep identities and affinities with more familiar philosophers and traditions, in particular, with Wittgenstein and American pragmatism. That these twin strategies of interpretation are so popular is in large part due to the work of Hubert L. Dreyfus. Dreyfus has pursued both lines of hermeneutic attack with a vengeance, and in so doing has devised an interpretation of Heidegger which makes him appear as a theoretical philosopher whom even hard-nosed cognitive scientists and analytical philosophers of mind can take seriously. As Dreyfus reads him, Heidegger's central achievement lies in his anticipating contemporary antirepresentationalist critiques of representational theories of mind. According to Dreyfus, Heidegger's prime innovation and novelty is to challenge the subject/object model of mind which has dominated philosophy and psychology from Descartes through Husserl to the present. The subject/object model construes the knowing and acting "self" as a "subject" which is always related intentionally to the world via "representations" of "objects." Heidegger, according to Dreyfus, rejects this: "Heidegger accepts intentional directedness as essential to human activity, but he denies that [all] intentionality is mental, that it is, as Husserl (following Brentano) claimed, the distinguishing characteristic of mental states."(1) In other words, while Heidegger concedes that intentionality is essential to being a "subject" or "self," he rejects the traditional idea that intentionality is always and only a feature of the standard folk-psychological states and experiences. It is not always and only what Dreyfus calls representational intentionality, that is, a matter of being in, or having, the standard folk-psychological intentional states and experiences.(2) While "we sometimes experience ourselves as conscious subjects relating to objects by way of intentional states such as desires, beliefs, perceptions, intentions, etc ....,"(3) Dreyfus's Heidegger also insists that our actually relating to objects by way of such standard folk-psychological states and experiences is "a derivative and intermittent condition."(4) Only when our normal, everyday dealings with familiar things become problematic, or even break down completely, do psychological states and experiences with any kind of mental or representational content arise.(5) In general, claims Dreyfus, Heidegger maintains that "all relations of mental states to their objects presuppose a more basic form of being-with-things which does not involve mental activity."(6) Elsewhere I have shown that Dreyfus really has no basis at all in Heidegger's texts for attributing to Heidegger the thesis that representational intentionality is an intermittent condition founded in such nonrepresentational "absorbed coping" with familiar things.(7) In this same paper, I also suggest that this purely negative demonstration must be complemented by a more positive account of what Heidegger is really getting at, an account which clearly entails the falsity of attributing this thesis to Heidegger. Sketching at least the broad outlines of, the Entwurf or Vorgriff for, just such an account is the task of the current paper. Specifically, I shall outline an account of what Heidegger means by Dasein, more precisely and specifically, by Dasein's self-comportment toward innerworldly entities, from which it clearly follows that Heidegger is not at all out to reject the traditional idea that subjects or selves relate to the world via representations, at least not when these notions are correctly understood.(8) Indeed, the account to be outlined here not merely does not entail Dreyfus's central thesis, it positively contradicts it. …
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Book•
01 Mar 2000
TL;DR: For more than a quarter of a century, Hubert L. Dreyfus has been the leading voice in American philosophy for the continuing relevance of phenomenology, particularly as developed by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Abstract: From the Publisher:
For more than a quarter of a century, Hubert L. Dreyfus has been the leading voice in American philosophy for the continuing relevance of phenomenology, particularly as developed by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Dreyfus has influenced a generation of students and a wide range of colleagues, and these volumes are an excellent representation of the extent and depth of that influence.
In keeping with Dreyfus's openness to others' ideas, many of the essays in this volume take the form of arguments with various of his positions. The essays focus on the dialogue with the continental philosophical tradition, in particular the work of Heidegger, that has played a foundational role in Dreyfus's thinking. The sections are Philosophy and Authenticity; Modernity, Self, and the World; and Heideggerian Encounters. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays.
Contributors: William D. Blattner, Taylor Carman, David R. Cerbone, Dagfinn Follesdal, Charles Guignon, Michel Haar, Beatrice Han, Alastair Hannay, John Haugeland, Randall Havas, Jeff Malpas, Mark Okrent, Richard Rorty, Julian Young, Michael E. Zimmerman.
39 citations
TL;DR: The work of Hubert Dreyfus interweaves productively ideas from, among others, Heidegger and Wittgenstein this paper, and it has been argued that recognizing the background forms part of an attempt to 'dissolve' those problems. But if what is right in his proposals is to become clear, and if he is to be spared some obvious objections that those proposals may elicit, we need to be clear about just what kind of contribution those proposals are meant to make.
Abstract: The work of Hubert Dreyfus interweaves productively ideas from, among others, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. A central element in Dreyfus' hugely influential interpretation of the former is the proposal that, if we are to—in some sense—'make sense' of intentionality, then we must recognize what Dreyfus calls the 'background'. Though Dreyfus has, over the years, put the notion of the 'background' to a variety of philosophical uses,1 considerations familiar from the literature inspired by Wittgenstein's reflections on rule-following have played an important role in motivating the case for believing that we need to recognize the 'background' and thus also in identifying precisely what it is about the intentional that supposedly needs to be 'made sense of'. Dreyfus argues that what he calls 'representationalism' will land us with an unstoppable 'regress of rules'. In this paper, I first argue that there are actually two different arguments that Dreyfus invokes; I then go on to evaluate quite how, in the light of the problems that those arguments reveal, our position might be thought to be improved by our recognizing the 'background'. Given that various philosophical positions designed to deal with these problems have emerged within the Wittgensteinian literature, an obvious question to ask is whether the position that Dreyfus would have us adopt is essentially one of those positions. If it isn't, then how does it differ? There is surely a variety of ways in which such a comparison might be carried out and what I offer is only one. I argue that if, through a recognition of the 'background', we are thought to have acquired solutions to those problems, then it's not at all clear that the supposed solutions that emerge work. So I explore instead the possibility that that recognition forms part of an attempt to 'dissolve' those problems. In order to bring some clarity to that possibility I consider a number of different ways in which Dreyfus' proposals might be interpreted by drawing on ideas set out by John McDowell (and I suggest that his view of one of the 'regress' arguments is anticipated by Heidegger himself). I then identify and assess some of the consequences of adopting such McDowellian readings. My sense is that Dreyfus is on the side of the angels, so to speak. But if what is right in his proposals is to become clear, and if he is to be spared some obvious objections that those proposals may elicit, we need to be clear about just what kind of contribution those proposals are meant to make. In pursuing that clarity, I am attempting to follow through on the comparison of Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian ideas that Dreyfus and his supporters have initiated: what has yet to be clarified is how and why recognizing the 'background' will allow us to 'cope better' with the puzzles in the rule-following literature that they have cited in making a case for the need to recognize the 'background'. Ultimately, I will argue that assessing this matter may require a yet broader comparison of Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian themes, one which raises questions about what we take 'doing ontology' and 'doing phenomenology' to be.
31 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, Tombras presents the basic tenets of Martin Heidegger's philosophy of being, including temporality, signs and equipment, language, authenticity, event of appropriation and death.
Abstract: In this chapter, Tombras presents the basic tenets of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of being. A pupil of Husserl, Heidegger took the promise of phenomenology seriously and set out to work the question of being concretely, by rejecting the Cartesian subject–object dichotomy and describing Dasein—the human being—as a “being-in-the-world”. The chapter introduces and discusses crucial Heideggerian concepts such as temporality, signs and equipment, language, authenticity, event of appropriation and death. Special attention is given to Heidegger’s conceptualisation of truth in terms of a disclosure and unconcealment. As Tombras explains, it is this conceptualisation that allows Heidegger to discern the historical character of being and leads him to abandon metaphysics and his original attempt at a fundamental ontology.
17 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how Heidegger's claim that being minded is tied to being in the world links up with externalism and a social theory of intentionality, and how the intentional vocabulary in which we describe ourselves is indispensable and in principle irreducible to a naturalistic vocabulary.
Abstract: Heidegger's Being and Time sets out a view of ourselves that shows in positive terms how a reification of ourselves as minded beings can be avoided. Heidegger thereby provides a view of ourselves that fits into one of the main strands of today's philosophy of mind: the intentional vocabulary in which we describe ourselves is indispensable and in principle irreducible to a naturalistic vocabulary. However, as far as ontology is concerned, there is no commitment to the position that being minded is something beyond the physical. In particular, this paper shows how Heidegger's claim that being minded is tied to being‐in‐the‐world links up with (a) externalism and (b) a social theory of intentionality.
11 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the relationship between Heidegger's critique of educational comportment and his analysis of space in Being and Time, and propose a phenomenological approach to education that reorganizes how changes are anticipated by comported expectations.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between Heidegger’s critique of educational comportment and his analysis of space in Being and Time. It posits that providing an educational corrective to the practice of tacit rational, described as ‘circumspection’ in Being and Time, would provide an opportunity to reorient Dasein toward clearer awareness of the spatial context. A phenomenological approach to education might be framed as a process that reorganizes how changes are anticipated by comported expectations. Addressing conditions of spatial comportment in education reveals that while models of learning illusorily claim to provide infinite opportunities, contingent upon mastery of delimited knowledge, a phenomenological approach to education begins by first delimiting illusions of possibility.
9 citations