Minds and Brains

Being and Time era Heidegger is often accused of holding to some kind of subjectivism because of his “being idealism” wherein the being of entities is interdependent with the event of perceptual disclosure. But since early Heidegger also clearly states in several places that entities are not dependent on Dasein for their material existence, we are left with a contradiction between being idealism and entity realism. Now, there are many ways to try and get out of this contradiction. People like William Blattner differentiate between an empirical and a transcendental level of analysis where on the empirical level it makes sense to talk about independent entities but it does not make sense to do so on the transcendental level. Others like Dreyfus and Carman take a different route and simply define being idealism in such a way as to be compatible with entity realism. This is the route I take.

The best way to make entity realism consistent with being idealism is through what I call “ecological realism”. This version of realism must be decisively distinguished from classic or “philosophical realism”. Understanding the difference between these two styles of realism will help bolster my case that Heidegger understood himself to be a realist but denied the validity of “classical” realism. The key difference between ecological and classical realism is that whereas both believe that the Earth exists independently of the mind, ecological realism takes this as the starting point and philosophical realism takes it as something to be proved.

Along with Dasein as being-in-the-world, entities within-the-world have in each case already been disclosed. This existential-ontological assertion seems to accord with the thesis of realism that the external world is really present-at-hand. In so far as this existential assertion does not deny that entities within-the-world are present-at-hand, it agrees – doxographically, as it were – with the thesis of realism in its result. But it differs in principle from every kind of realism; for realism holds that the Reality of the ‘world’ not only needs to be proved but also is capable of proof. (BT 251)

Philosophical realism starts with the assumption of a consciousness or subjectivity isolated from the external world by means of an internal subjective sphere. The question is then “How does the inside of the sphere correspond to the outside?” Here we can see how classic realism runs dangerously close to being a form of idealism because it seems possible that our subjective experience could be totally different from the actual physical world. Indeed, it seems impossible to put the subjective and subjective worlds back together once cleaved. This is nothing other than the classic subject-object model that has caused so many problems in philosophy. Heidegger rejects this position not because he disagrees that the Earth exists independently of us, but rather, because he rejects the starting point of a consciousness isolated from it.

Instead, it is assumed that the mind relates to reality by means of already “dwelling outside”. For Heidegger, there is never a problem of how the inside corresponds to the outside because the mind is always already “outside”. But this doesn’t mean that the mind is somehow floating outside the skull. It simply means that insofar as the mind is characterized by intentionality (directedness towards), the mind is always already directed towards the outside world. Accordingly, subjectivity is understood in terms of being a process of encountering or attending to what’s already there before you: the environment. Perception then becomes a matter of regulating our reaction to the environment rather than constructing a model of the environment. We move from models of representation as mirroring to models of representation as control. The mind becomes a way of regulating our internal behaviors and homeostasis. This regulation forms a “background” upon which higher-order thoughts and theoretical reflections can occur. And built into this background is a feeling of existential being-in-the-world. This is because we spend our whole lives inhabiting the environment. To start from the presupposition that our primordial consciousness is separated from the environment is merely Cartesian dogma. Our primary consciousness is always already “outside” of our heads, in-the-world. This primary consciousness is better seen as a kind of low-level perceptual reactivity than any kind of theoretical cognition operating on the basis of symbolization.

The statement that the comportments of the Dasein are intentional means that the mode of being of our own self, the Dasein, is essentially such that this being, so far as it is, is always already dwelling with the extant. The idea of a subject which has intentional experiences merely inside its own sphere and is not yet outside it but encapsulated within itself is an absurdity which misconstrues the basic ontological structure of the being that we ourselves are. (BP 64).

So that’s more or less entity realism in a nutshell. What about being idealism? We have already set out a realist ontology based on the assumption of a direct realist account of intentionality. But we must infuse ecological realism with an “affordance ontology” in order to avoid a naive realism. It would be naive to suppose that animals directly attend to reality itself as understood by the physical sciences. But any direct realism worth its salt will never claim that animals directly perceive the actual structure of reality. This would be putting the cart before the horse. Instead, direct realism claims that animals do not first learn to perceive the present-at-hand structure of the Earth, but rather, they learn to perceive affordances. Affordances are objective properties of the given environment that are related to what an animal can do (with passive observation being a derivative kind of activity). For example, a chair affords the possibility of sitting for those with the appropriate bodies and capacities. But the affordance property of the chair is completely objective and independent of the perceiver. Whether the chair is capable of supporting someone is based on the material dynamics of the chair itself independent of my mind. As Gibson says, “The affordance points both ways [subjective and objective]. What a thing is and what it means are not separate, the former being physical and the latter mental, as we are accustomed to believe”.

It is here we can develop an account of being idealism that does not contradict entity realism. Take the chair again. The chair as it materially exists is independent of my perception of it. But my perception of the chair as as something-for-sitting is dependent on me the subject. So we can say that whereas the chair independently exists on the ontic level, its ontological being is dependent on how I take it to be. And since I can take the chair in many different ways depending on the context of my interaction, its ontological mode of being is essentially “free” or “open” to an infinite number of involvements (chair can be used as a stool or as kindling, etc.). Accordingly, Big B Being becomes defined as the meaning or significance of entities in relation to prior interests. We can therefore have an idealism of meaning (being) without collapsing into a subjectivism because the affordance property of the entity is not something subjectively determined. The chair will support me whether or not I am around to actually sit on it.  In order to perceive the chair as a chair then, I need not construct a mental representation or subjectively “put a value” on a meaningless input. Rather, I need only to differentiate the affordance property from the given stimulus. In other words, I need only respond to the meaning of the stimulus, not its physical profile (wavelengths, etc.). Learning this capacity involves learning how to attend to the ecological level of reality, the level of the Umwelt.

There is a concept in phenomenology that is critical for understanding the nature of animal minds: prereflective experience. This level of experience is synonymous with automaticity, subpersonal cognition, behavioral reactivity, effortless action, mindless flow, selfless absorption, subliminal perception, depersonalization, being-in-the-moment, wu wei, natural action, etc. In a word, animal minds are characterized by “action without action”, that is, deeds without doers. Heidegger called prereflective experience the realm of the they-self, fallenness, thrownness, lostness. And given the brute processing power of automatic neural reactivity, it would be a mistake to consider a completely prereflective creature “unintelligent”. As anyone who has ever woken up with a brand new perspective on a difficult problem can attest, the subconscious mind is capable of great powers of synthetic decision making. Bad phenomenology drives us to overlook the reality of prereflective experience. This is why it requires a keen phenomenological sense to develop an awareness of how limited our reflective consciousness is in comparison with the vast cognitive unconscious. In this post, I want to create a list of concrete examples of “action without action”. This will necessarily be an incomplete list, but I hope it demonstrates the phenomenological point many people are unwilling to accept: we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of, and hence are deluded about the extensiveness of consciousness in our overall mental economy.

It is also very important to note that just because most of the following activities are usually prereflective does not mean that they cannot also be done in a conscious, reflective manner. This is the essence of mindfulness training: turning preflective habits into deliberate intentional actions. It is also important to note that just because the execution of these habits is subconscious, that does not mean a conscious thought or intention did not set off the action. We are not complete zombies. In fact, we are able to send conscious “instructions” or “structions” (as Jaynes called them) to the subconscious for automatic execution such as when we send a struction to “open our hand” despite not knowing exactly how this is performed.

Deeds Without Doers

1. Precisely shaping your grip when reaching out to pick up a coffee mug
2. Controlling each individual finger muscle when typing quickly or playing the piano
3. Buttoning a shirt
4. Getting dressed
5. Brushing your teeth
6. Coordinating your leg and  foot muscles when walking or running
7. Breathing (this action is easily controlled consciously though)
8. Moving your lips and tongue when talking and speaking in general
9. Genuine laughter
10. Maintaining posture, muscle tone, and balance
11. Saccadic eye motion
12. Focusing our eyes on an object
13. Dodging a thrown object
14. Reading text
15. Expert automobile driving
16. Coordinating your muscles to throw a ball
17. Locating a sound
18. Judging a distance
19. Flash of insight
20. Fidgeting
21. Nail biting
22. Riding a bicycle after automatization
23. Working on an assembly line after many hours of practice
24. Hypnosis
25. Speaking in tongues
26. Opening the door-handle to your bedroom
27. Controlling your legs to run up or down stairs
28. Mastery of a difficult videogame control schema/ expert videogame performance
29. Visual illusions
30. Sleepwalking
31. Getting scared when you see a shadow move in a dark alley at night in a bad neighborhood
32. Feeling intense emotions when something bad happens to your children or loved ones
33. Gripping your hand to catch a frisbee
34. Tapping your feet to music
35. Using a hammer
36. Hitting a tennis ball
37. Zen archery
38. Chewing/swallowing food
39. Beating your heart
40. Washing your body/hair
41. Putting on shoes
42. Lighting a cigarette
43. Using a food utensil
44. Hitting a baseball
45. Walking around the house when talking on the phone
46. Walking into the kitchen if you are hungry
47. Holding a pen

I am very happy to announce that my paper ‘What Is It Like to Be Nonconscious? A Defense of Julian Jaynes‘ was accepted for publication (upon the condition of minor revision) by one of my favorite journals: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. I will finally be able to put something in the publication section for my CV! This has been a long time coming, and it’s not from lack of trying. Since starting my philosophical studies at UCF in 2006, I have submitted three different manuscripts to three different journals. All of them were rejected, with only the last one receiving serious comments from reviewers. But in all honesty, I am glad none of those papers were accepted. They were immature and lacking rigor and originality. But I learned a lot about what it takes to be published in a professional academic journal. As one reviewer said, I needed to learn how to “present  a much clearer and more compelling case for what it is that you are offering that is both useful and novel.” Well, with this current paper, I am hoping to have done exactly that. Here’s the abstract:

I respond to Ned Block’s claim that it is “ridiculous” to suppose that consciousness is a cultural construction based on language, and learnt in childhood. Block is wrong to dismiss social constructivist theories of consciousness on account of it being “ludicrous” that conscious experience is anything but a biological feature of our animal heritage, characterized by sensory experience, evolved over millions of years. By defending social constructivism in terms of both Julian Jaynes’ behaviorism and J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, I draw a distinction between the experience or “what-it-is-like” of nonhuman animals engaging with the environment and the “secret theater of speechless monologue” that is familiar to a linguistically competent human adult. This distinction grounds the argument that consciousness proper should be seen as learned rather than innate and shared with nonhuman animals. Upon establishing this claim, I defend the Jaynesian definition of consciousness as a social-linguistic construct learnt in childhood, structured in terms of lexical metaphors and narrative practice. Finally, I employ the Jaynesian distinction between cognition and consciousness to bridge the explanatory gap and deflate the supposed “Hard” problem of consciousness.

My two anonymous reviewers thought that I succeeded in showing Block’s rejection of social constructivism is too rash. I take this to be a novel step forward in defense of Dennett-style social-constructivism, which has been hit hard by critics. My aim was to show that Julian Jaynes was largely written off by academics with vested interests in their own terminology and assumptions about the nature of mind and consciousness. Moreover, I was really ambitious with this paper. I wanted to reset the terms of debate in philosophy of mind circles.

On my view, we have been so caught up with talking about the conceptual possibility of zombies, we never even stopped to consider the extent to which humans and other animals actually are zombies. But cognitive science is all about zombie perception, they just don’t know it. I tried to show that it is only dogma to suppose that there is nothing it is like to be a zombie (i.e. nonconscious). Hence the question: What is it like to be nonconscious? I argued that there is indeed something-it-is-like to be nonconscious: organic behavioral reactivity, flow, automaticity, habit, etc. As Jaynes says,

Consciousnes is a much smaller part of out mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of…It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around to something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not.

By closely examining the assumptions of Block, I try to reframe the consciousness debate in terms of its opposite: the subconscious. Contrastive phenomenology indicates a deep difference between prereflective cognition and reflective consciousness. By distinguishing these two different levels of phenomenology, I attempt to deflate both the explanatory gap (why experience goes with behavior)  and the Hard problem (is there a function of consciousness?).

Check it out!

I should add, one of the reasons why I am excited about this publication is that now I can use a published paper as my writing sample for when I apply to PhD programs this Dec/Jan. A Master’s thesis under my belt, 4.0 gpa, good GRE, published writing sample, good letters, and good fit all give me confidence about my chances this season. My last time applying to PhD programs was disastrous because (1) my writing sample and SOP were immature (2) I only applied to three (top) schools which I didn’t really fit in at (3) I was naive about the level of competition for top philosophy programs. This time around, I have a much better idea of where I want to study, what I want to do, a much more  research oriented statement of purpose, deeper background knowledge, and stronger writing. Feeling good!

In his reply to Justin Fisher’s critical review of Ken Aizawa and Fred Adams’ book The Bounds of Cognition, Aizawa has this to say:

A familiar claim in the extended cognition literature is that much of the history of psychology has been marked by prejudice.  This is the prejudice—a remnant of Descartes’ enduring legacy—that cognitive processes occur only in the brain.  Cognitive psychologists simply assume that the mind is realized by the brain.  We find one or another version of this charge in Clark and  Chalmers (1998), Haugeland (1998), Rowlands (1999, 2003), and elsewhere.  Rather than supposing that cognitive processes occur only within the brain, the advocates of extended cognition propose that there are good grounds for thinking that cognitive processes span the brain, body, and environment.  The extended cognition movement should, therefore, be seen as a liberating revolution.

In this post, I want to clear up some misconceptions about what is being claimed by extended cognition (EC) theorists. Ultimately, I can only speak for myself but I want to offer my own explanation of EC’s internal theoretical commitments. Aizawa seems to imply that by denying “the mind is realized by the brain”, EC theorists are committed to the claim that cognitive processes literally occur somewhere else than in the brain. Thus, when EC theorists claim that cognitive processes “span the brain, body, and environment”, Aizawa takes this to mean that EC theorists are literally saying that there are cognitive processes going on over here (in the brain) and also over there (in the world), and not just in the brain.

Frankly, I think that there has been a great confusion on what exactly 4EA ontology is committed to in regards to the “location” of cognition, largely due to the EC theorists not making their underlying ontology and epistemological assumptions fully explicit. What has been missing in these discussions of the mind “spanning” or “extending into” the environment is the epistemological theory of direct realism. Direct realism is a counter-theory to the Cartesian idea that the primordial mind is ontological split from the objective world by means of a subject-object model, the Lockean idea that primordial cognition is the manipulation of mental Ideas which re-present sense-data to a spectorial consciousness, and the Kantian idea that the mind is always directed to “mere phenomenal appearances” rather than the objective in-itself.

Descartes simply assumed that the primordial mind is ontological separate from the objective world. Locke took up this assumption and “naturalized it” by turning the Mind Substance into the Mind Process (operating over re-presentations). Berkeley simply assumed that the stimulus available for perception was poor and inadequate for specifying the world. Kant borrowed from all these assumptions and supposed that consciousness was never directed to the in-self, but rather, to the mere phenomenal appearances or representations of the world. Gibson undercuts all these assumptions with one fell swoop by redefining the nature of perception. Indeed, he says:

Perceiving is an achievement of the individual, not an appearance in the theater of his consciousness. It is a keeping-in-touch with the world, an experiencing of things rather than having of experiences. It involves awareness-of instead of just awareness. It may be awareness of something in the environment or something in the observer or both at once, but there is no content of awareness independent of that of which one is aware.

It is in this paragraph that we can find the meaning of the EC thesis that cognition “aint just about the brain (alone)”. On my reading, EC theory isn’t committed to the claim that brain cognition literally leaks into the world. Leaking, spanning, extending, spreading, etc. are all just metaphors for the thesis of Gibsonian direct realism, which is a general theory of intentionality, that is, a theory about how the mind relates to reality. So when Alva Noe claims that “Consciousness is not something that happens inside us…it is something we achieve”, we should understand this exactly in terms of Gibson’s claim that “perception is an achievement of the individual, not an appearance in the theater of his consciousness.” This is no radical claim. What is radical is to continue buying into the same worn-out assumptions of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant! As Noe says,

Human experience is a dance that unfolds in the world and with others. You are not your brain. We are not locked up in a prison of our own ideas and sensations. The phenomenon of consciousness, like that of life itself, is a world-involving dynamic process. We are already at home in the environment. We are out of our heads.

Perceiving how things are is a mode of exploring how things appear. How they appear is, however, an aspect of how they are. To explore appearance is thus to explore the environment, the world. To discover how things are, from how they appear, is to discover an order or pattern in their appearance. The process of perceiving, of finding out how things are, is a process of meeting the world; it is an activity of skillful exploration.

~Alva Noë, Action in Perception, p. 164

Whenever we experience an itch, a mild pain or a tightening of the chest, we already have a background sense of being in a world, regardless of whether the foreground feelings are perceptions of the body or of something else. This background also consists of feeling. The body, in so far as it sets up the world in which we find ourselves, is neither a medium or perception within an experienced world nor an object of perception within that world. It constitutes an aspect of experience that is presupposed by both.
The world-constituting role of the body is recognized by Merleau-Ponty, who contrasts the lived body with the body as an object of experience and thought. The lived body is what I have referred to as the “feeling body”. It is never experienced in its entirety as an object of experience, even though it can undergo differing degrees and kinds of objectification. This is because it is the possibility of experiencing anything at all and therefore something that always remains, at least in part, in the background:

In so far as it sees or touches the world, my body can [...] be neither seen nor touched. What prevents its ever being an object, ever being ‘completely constituted’ is that it is that by which there are objects. It is neither tangible nor visible in so far as it is that which sees and touches. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 92)

For Merleau-Ponty, the lived body is not only directed towards things in the world. It also opens up the world as a space of purposive, practical possibilities, and thus shapes all our experiences, activities and thoughts. Hence an aspect of bodily experience and a sense of belonging to the world are one and the same.

~Matthew Ratcliffe, feelings of being: phenomenology, psychiatry, and the sense of reality p. 107

When people mention Heidegger’s name, the last thing on their mind is that he ever had anything to say about consciousness. Albeit controversial, I want to claim that Heidegger does try to describe the operation of consciousness through the method of formal indication. What term points to or indicates consciousness? Authentic resoluteness. I’ve had this thought for a long time now, but this is the first time I have tried to put it into words. I know it is an interpretive stretch, but bear with me as I work through this reading.

In order to see that an authentic moment of vision is synonymous with a moment of consciousness, we must first understand that I am using the term consciousness in a nontraditional fashion. Following Julian Jaynes, I reserve the term consciousness to exclusively refer to the operation of introspection wherein meanings and thoughts are manipulated in an temporarily constructed and easily dissoluble “mind-space” or “workspace”. I am not suggesting that we revert to Cartesian theater models of the mind, but rather, I am suggesting that the Cartesian theater which introspects is itself an analogical model virtually constructed on-the-fly which exists only in the functional sense. What is it that does the introspection? Julian Jaynes calls it the “analog I”. Heidegger calls it the authentic Self. Cognitive scientists have called it the “narrative Self” or “interpretive Self”.  These concepts are a counterpart to what can be called the “minimal Self”, “they-self”, or “cognitive unconscious” i.e. that Self which is always operative at the subpersonal level and which grounds higher-order cognitive states.

Moreover, this conception of consciousness differs from the tradition insofar as the analog I or authentic Self is a modification of the more primordial they-self. Instead of being constantly present-at-hand in experience so as to ground and constitute it in its subjectivity, the analog I is but a temporary construction which comes into being and than fades away as we are reabsorbed into the familiarity of the world. Indeed, “Authentic being-one’s-Self takes the definite form of an existentiell modification of the ‘they’” (SZ 267). When Heidegger uses the term “existentiell” he is referring to ontic properties. This is a formal indication for material processes e.g. bodily/neural systems in operation.

Furthermore, consciousness is not just some free-floating spectator, but serves a purpose insofar as it is an operation rather than a thing or passive repository. What is the function? A shortcut to behavior through resolute decision making experienced in terms of a “moment of vision”. Normally, our choices are not really choices, but rather, can be likened to a rock rolling down a hill. We simply get carried away by the environment insofar as we are “fallen”. Indeed,

The “they” has always kept Daein from taking hold of these possibilities of being. They “they” even hides the manner in which it has tacitly relieved Dasein of the burden of explicitly choosing these possibilities. It remains indefinite who has “really” done the choosing. So Dasein makes no choices, gets carried along by the nobody, and thus ensares itself in inauthenticity. This process can be reversed only if Dasein specifically brings itself back to itself from its lostness in the “they”….When Dasein thus brings itself back from the “they”, the they-self is modified in an existentiell manner so that it becomes authentic Being-one’s-Self. (SZ 268)

It is important to note however that falling, thrownness, and lostness must not be interpreted pejoratively.

We would…misunderstand the ontologico-existential structure of falling if we were to ascribe to it the sense of a bad and deplorable ontical property of which, perhaps, more advanced stages of human culture might be able to rid themselves. (SZ 176)

But because Dasein is lost in the they, it must find itself explicitly in order to be authentic. This finding oneself explicitly is the process of authentic resoluteness. It provides the opportunity for synthesizing factical experience into meaningful whole so as to provide a shortcut to behavior. For Heidegger, this takes the form of what he calls a “resolution”. It is actualized in terms of a “moment of vision” or “clarion call”. Indeed,

When resolute, Dasein has brought itself back from falling, and has done so precisely in order to be more authentically ‘there’ in the ‘moment of vision’ as regards the situation which has been disclosed. (SZ 328)

I read this action of authentic resolution structured in terms of a moment of vision as an essentially metacognitive act i.e. an act of the self which takes the self and its experiences as the object of attention. But this is no mere proprioception or internal self-perception, but rather, an act of introspection which grabs hold of the self from a particular perspective mediated by linguistic-cultural projections.

This distinctive and authentic disclosedness, which is attested in Dasein itself by its conscience – this reticent self-projection upon one’s ownmost being-guilty, in which one is ready for anxiety – we call “resoluteness“. (SZ 296)

Dasein’s being-guilty is a formal indication for how Dasein is for-the-most part thrown into the facticity of the they-self and the self-other interpretations of public everydayness. That we have no choice but to be fallen indicates that there is a “guilt” to which we are thrown into, a guilt which is amoral. When our consciousness is operative, a self-projection works so as to bring factical possibilities of behavior to our attention, the most extreme being our own death. Indeed, “The resolution is precisely the disclosive projection and determination of what is factically possible at the time” (SZ 298). Moreover, this resoluteness “does not detach Dasein from its world, nor does it isolate it so that it becomes a free-floating ‘I’” (SZ 298). The authentic Self or analog I is not free-floating precisely because the object of the analog is the real, factical self which has been thrown in a history of structural coupling with the real entities of the Earth. This is the ontically near “mineness” which provides the experiential landscape through which the analog I can construct a temporary introspective landscape wherein our whole being-in-the-world becomes an object of attention. And insofar as the facticity of Dasein becomes an object of attention, new possibilities of behavior are afforded which would not be available if we could not authentically introspect upon factical possibilities. Moreover, it is important to note that this level of analysis is purely formal. In reality, the forms of self-disclosure and self-projection change radically over time and space in accordance with cultural evolution. How you see and introspect upon yourself will depend on the particular structure of your culture and historicity.

Now, I freely admit that this whole story I have been telling is quite precarious on the interpretive level. There is no Rosetta Stone for translating descriptions of authentic resoluteness into descriptions of consciousness. But nevertheless I think I am on to something. For both Heidegger and Jaynes, authenticity/consciousness is something which is temporary and derivative. It is something which is a modification of subpersonal “thrownness” (which Jaynes’ called behavioral reactivity). It is essentially a form of self-disclosure or self-interpretation. It brings forth factical possibilities and acts as a shortcut for behavior. It operates by “temporalizing” or “spatializing” experienced time through a spatial metaphor (past-present-future i.e. autobiographical or “episodic” time). It is flexible and dependent on culture and language. It is an operation rather than a thing or repository. It helps constitutes who we are as a species and separates us from our animal cousins. It individualizes us as separate from everyone else in the unfolding of its operation. It operationalizes when our familiarity and habit-structures breakdown in the face of uncanniness. It can be described in terms of visual metaphors (“moment of vision”, “the mind’s eye”).

It is well known that Heidegger’s concept of truth differs radically from the traditional correspondence theory. Some people take this to mean that Heidegger was in some way undercutting the possibility of propositional or predicative truth wherein our assertions are lined up and compared with reality as it exists in itself. Accordingly, this radical notion of truth is usually understood in terms of some kind of idealism or subjectivism. This line of interpretation is driven by passages where Heidegger says that “Being (not entities) is something which “there is” only in so far as truth is. And truth is only in so far and as long as Dasein is” (SZ 230).

However, I want to decisively argue against an idealist or subjectivist interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of truth. On my reading (which I am still developing), Heidegger’s notion of truth is entirely compatible with there being a mind-independent world that we more or less have direct access to by means of encountering it. This requires that we read Heidegger’s notion of truth in phenomenological terms. What needs explaining is how “the proposition that ‘Dasein is in the truth’ states equiprimordially that ‘Dasein is in untruth’” (SZ 222). What does this mean? How can we live in both truth and untruth?

The answer to this question lies in the notion of structural coupling. Structural coupling occurs whenever there is a history of recurrent interaction between two systems. More specifically, in virtue of its autopoietic (i.e. self-organizing) unity, an organism is structurally coupled with the environment insofar as it maintains its unity it respect to the environment. Accordingly, cognition can be defined as “A history of structural coupling that brings forth a world.” This definition of cognition is in stark contrast to the traditional conception of cognition as the manipulation of explicit symbol tokens by a central processing unit.

What does this have to do with Heidegger’s notion of truth? I propose that for Heidegger, Dasein is “in the truth” insofar as it is structurally coupled to a real environment. Dasein isn’t coupled to itself, nor its ideas, representations, or thoughts; it is coupled to the Umwelt, which is composed of real entities that have a structural determination independent of whether we are there to disclose it. Indeed, look at this passage:

Because the kind of being that is essential to truth is of the character of Dasein, all truth is relative to Dasein’s being. Does this relatively signify that all truth is ‘subjective’? If one interprets ‘subjective’ as ‘left to the subject’s discretion’, then it certainly does not. For uncovering, in the sense which is most its own, takes asserting out of the province of the ‘subjective discretion, and brings the uncovering Dasein face to face with the entities themselves. (SZ 227)

I have elaborated on this notion of encountering before (more recently here). Basically, the idea is that our cognition is directed towards the things themselves rather than any putative re-presentation of the things inside a mental theater. As I put it earlier,

perception is a matter of encountering or attending to what is already presenting itself to us. As long as we are alive, we have no choice but to encounter the Earth. Understood this way, sensations are irrelevant for the achievement of perception. All that matters for the act of perception is the performance of the act. And it is only dogmatism which supposes that the act of perception involves re-presenting the phenomena in terms of sense-data. For this, there is no need. We only need to respond or react to that which is there in such a way as to maintain the unity of our bodily singularity.

This direct response to what is “really there” in the environment grounds Heidegger’s notion of truth. This notion is taken from his definition of phenomena as that the totality of what shows itself. I contend that this notion of showing and encountering can be explained in terms of J.J. Gibson’s theory of direct realism. I don’t know of any other Heideggerian theorist who has proposed a concrete theory of how phenomena can show themselves and how we are receptive to this showing. I propose that the notion of structural coupling in addition to Gibson’s notion of affordance perception provides the necessary theoretical background for making sense of how Dasein can encounter the phenomenon as it shows itself from itself.

So now we have explained what Heidegger means when he says that Dasein lives in the truth. But as we saw above, Dasein also lives in the untruth. What does this mean? It means that our encounter with the environment is always an interpretive encounter. But this doesn’t mean that Dasien is synthesizing brute intuitions through a transcendental manifold, nor is Dasein generating internal “percepts” through sense-data. Heidegger’s notion of thrown projection is postKantian in the sense that for Heidegger, nothing is added to the phenomenon. In the act of perception, we simply perform the act. Accordingly, the significance of the world is generated by means of structural coupling rather than any putative “subjective coloring” of a static reality. As Varella and Maturana put it,

Inasmuch as the changes of state of an organism (with or without a nervous system) depend on its history of structural coupling [with the environment], changes of state of the organism in its environment will necessarily be suitable and familiar to it, independently of the behavior or environment we are describing.

In other words, the significance of entities (their meaning in relation to Dasein) is dependent on both the context of the situation and the internal historicity of the perceiver, but not on the generation of subjective percepts. In this way, Dasein is always attending to a partial selection of reality and never the entire Earth at once. Indeed, to say that Dasein is in the truth “does not purport to say that ontically Dasein is introduced ‘to all the truth’ either always or just in every case, but rather, the disclosedness of its ownmost being belongs to its existential consitution” (SZ 220). Encounter is always interpretive and thus disclosure is always partial and selective.

[In disclosure] entities have not been completely hidden; they are precisely the sort of thing that has been uncovered, but at the same time they have been disguised. They show themselves, but in the mode of semblance. Likewise what has formerly been uncovered sinks back again, hidden and disguised. Because Dasein is essentially falling, its state of being is such that it is in ‘untruth’. (SZ 222)

Now we can see that Heidegger’s notion of truth is phenomenological insofar as it describes the history of structural coupling of Dasein with the environment. As we have seen, claiming that truth is dependent on Dasein does not mean that propositional truth somehow is no longer valid or that Heidegger ascribed to some kind of subjectivist relativism. Instead, we can understand the claim that Dasein is both in the truth and the untruth to mean that Dasein is always operating within a real environment by means of structural coupling but at the same time, we only attend to that level of reality which is salient in respect to our interests and internal history. Indeed,

The existential-ontological condition for the fact that being-in-the-world is characterized by ‘truth’ and ‘untruth’, lies in the state of Dasein’s being which we have designated as thrown projection. This is something that is constitutive for the structure of care. (SZ 223)

So far I am pleased with how my thesis is shaping up and the scholarly direction I am taking. I wanted first and foremost for this thesis to focus on explaining Heidegger rather than simply explaining why everyone else is wrong. I struggled for awhile with trying to choose which scholars I wanted to attack when I was first drafting the outline. But then I was reading some secondary literature and I realized that I hate it when Heideggerian scholars bicker back and forth about some trivial issue rather than dealing with Heidegger himself.  I often get the feeling that these scholars are more interested in preserving their academic reputation than attending to the “things themselves”. But now I am following a different strategy. Instead of devoting whole sections to showing how other interpretations miss the mark, I am simply going to briefly mark in a footnote what the position of other scholars is, but not really explain why they are wrong explicitly. I will simply mark their position and move back to my own interpretation.

I realized recently that I want my thesis to be 90% original interpretation. Reading through the secondary literature, I have become conscious that my interpretation of Heidegger is unique and that I have a lot to offer to the Heideggerian community. While I agree doxographically about certain issues with many people, there is no one I know of who reads Heidegger exactly like I do. I feel like I have a unique grasp on what Heidegger was really saying, particularly in respect to circumspective concern, Dasein, Existenz, intentionality, being/beings, Befindlichkeit, the question of the meaning of being, language as the house of being, phenomenological-ontology, the fourfold, and  authenticity.

Thomas Sheehan, Taylor Carman, Hubert Dreyfus, and Michael Wheeler come closest to my interpretation, but I find that each author suffers from theoretical hangups when it comes to paraphrasing Heideggerian concepts into concrete examples. For me, concrete examples are the highest standard of clarity in Heideggerian scholarship. If you can’t give a concrete example or description of the phenomenon that Heidegger is discussing, then in my mind you do not understand Heidegger’s meaning. If you haven’t experienced an authentic moment of vision and don’t know how to describe that experience, then you do not understand the concept of authenticity in phenomenology. You might be able to string Heideggerian jargon together in a way consistent with Heidegger’s own use of the term, but if you are unclear on the phenomenon in question, then you will never really “get” Heidegger, nor phenomenology.

Because so many scholars fail to live up to the rigorous introspective demands of phenomenological methodology, they end up merely parroting what Heidegger said rather than explaining what he was talking about. This is why I want my thesis to be less about showing why everyone else is wrong, and more of why my interpretation can unify Heidegger’s corpus into an internally consistent philosophical system, make sense of confusing “puzzle passages”, and clarify Heidegger’s position in respect to important issues such as the realism/idealism controversy, the problem of the external world, mind/body dualism, postKantian critical philosophy, etc.

Here are some of the things I will be demonstrating in my thesis:

• Following Sheehan (and Carman to some extent), I will argue that the question of the meaning of being is really about the question of the meaning of the meaningfulness of entities in relation to teleological interests. In other words, the being of an entity is always its meaning or significance for-the-sake-of a perceiver who is both concerned and familiar with the Earthly entities. But “being” (meaning) only “is” when there are perceivers. But entities nevertheless live a rich life of their own independent of perceivers. Accordingly,  we can explain how entities could exist independently of perceivers, but nevertheless their being (i.e. their meaning) depends on Dasein. We can thus have a entity realism and a being idealism without falling into a subjectivism. Moreover, this is a nontrivial philosophical position.
• In order to avoid a subjectivism wherein the given is “subjectively colored” or “synthesized” by the mental apparatus of the perceiver, we must develop a theory of perception wherein nothing is contributed in the act of perception. Instead of “synthesizing” the given into a percept, Heideggerian perception is described in terms of an entity encountering what is already there. In psychological terms, this can be described as an attentional theory of perception. Instead of enriching the stimulus through mental gymnastics, the entity is simply attentive to the meaning already specified within the ordered structure of the given. Because the meaning is already there in the environment, we can understand perception in terms of a perceiver taking the Earth as meaningful. Accordingly, there is nothing contributed to the stimulus in the act of perception as with Kantian psychology; the act if simply performed.
• Taking-as must be described in prepredicative terms because the meaning of the Earth is determined by the internal historicity of the perceiving entity as a living body. Because the historicity of biological organisms is structured by immediate teleological principles of homeostatic regulation, the internal balance of the system coconstitutes the manner of how we take the Earth to be. Moreover, the taking act is a worlding act. If you have a teleological instinct for self-preservation through the continual maintenance of structural unity, then there is an immediate mood or “affectivity” (Befindlichkeit) which governs your manner of interaction with the Earth. If you have a mood, then you have a world in virtue of being “attuned” or familiar with entities. This is what separates animate from inanimate entities. And because the teleological demands of the system are determined by a structural coupling with the environment, we can say that the Earth is immediately significant for the organism in virtue of the history of structural coupling of the organism with the Earth. This is why the Care-structure is temporalized. The teleology of the organism is always such that we are future-directed (so as to maintain our internal balance), but the history of structural coupling guarantees that our realtime interactions are coconstituted by our entire historicity as an embodied organism. The organism thus provides the model of temporality for Heidegger.
• Accordingly, I will argue that it is not affectivity, care, understanding, or temporality which separates Dasein from other animals. We share all these features with other animals insofar as they too are structured by teleological principles of organization. But these animals are still “world poor”. Why? Because they lack a complex syntactical language. It is language which gives birth to the thing through the power of naming and high-order attentional modulation. Language also allows us to engage in joint-attention. I can point something out and refer to it by name in order to control the attention of both myself and other people. Language allows us to point out and attend to higher levels of organization. For example,  the linguistic concept of person greatly changes how we perceive and interpret the world. We see others not as automatons or animated beings but as persons. Moreover, we understand ourselves to be persons. My account of language will thus account for Heidegger’s discussion of the word and thing, as well as the famous statement that language is the house of being. I will also be bringing contemporary developments in cognitive linguistics to bear on the question of language in Heidegger’s thought, showing that his account of language is now being confirmed by theoretical developments in the mind sciences.

Heideggeroids are known for their word play and inability to generate concrete expressions. This is especially true of scholarship on division II of Being and Time and later Heidegger. I’m sometimes suspicious that the scholar I’m reading has no idea what he or she is talking about. Accordingly, Heideggeroids usually substitute bad neologisms and jargon for a clear understanding of the phenomenon.

A Heideggeroid might respond by saying they are only following the Master’s lead. But Heidegger can be excused for his cryptic writing style because he understood the phenomenon to be described. Because he had such an intuitive understanding of the subject matter, he also realized the difficulty of capturing the rich manifold of human experience in the web of language and concepts. And not just any web, but one deeply embedded with metaphysical presuppositions that had long since oozed into the vernacular understanding by means of leaky philosophical systems. All his life then, Heidegger struggled with the same problem that has faced Zen for centuries: how do you think about thoughtless experience?

Rigorous phenomenology reveals that reflective, thinking consciousness sits on the surface of our total cognitive system. The idea of a vast, subpersonal ocean of mental activity is well-accepted by theorists today. Moreover, meditaters have understood since its original development that the thinking mind is part of a greater whole.This idea was also “in the air” during Heidegger’s time (through psychology and psychoanalysis). Indeed, one could say that the “they-self” is Heidegger’s attempt at describing unconscious processes in nonpsychologistic terminology. However, if we admit that the nonconscious mind is a legitimate form of human mental experience, albeit not filtered through language and socially constructed concepts, how do we include it into our phenomenology?

Close study of the mind reveals that it is the unconscious libidinal energy that grounds the rational, self-reflexive ego. Without the emotional undercurrent of the unconscious, the thoughts that float on top would lose their connection to the ongoing stream of bodily experience. You can see then the dilemma that phenomenology faces when confronted with the fundamental reality of the they-self.

It is my opinion that Heidegger, inspired by contact with the Eastern world and his own experience with nature, was a deep meditater. Indeed, I think any phenomenologist will miss the boat entirely unless they are thoroughly trained in meditation. Meditation allows you to fall into the thoughtless they-self without forgetting about the experience. This is the difference between a trained phenomenologist and a layman. Both are equally prone to falling into the they-self, but the phenomenologist expects it and is ready for it. The layman does not “wake up” or “return” to consciousness and then ponder about the time lost. The layman will not exercise the metacognition necessary for noting his return from the they-self, he will simply think a thought and then return to his absorption in the world. The phenomenologist however will not just return from his fall, but realize that he has “found himself”. The layman is never aware of his lostness in the way the phenomenologist is.

I suspect Heideggeroids are in the same position of ignorance. They read Heidegger’s words and learn how to string his neologisms into semi-coherent sentences but they fail to grasp the original, wordless experience of absorption. Because they do not understand the full target of phenomenology, they wind up sounding strange and esoteric in their speech and writings. But it’s time to wake up from this lostness into jargon. Heidegger already did the heavy phenomenological lifting for us. If we are to continue the task of phenomenology then, I think Heideggerians would profit more from heavy meditation rather than reading the Master. After all, a return to the “things themselves” does not mean a return to dusty German texts; it means a return to the primordial phenomenological datum: lived experience in all its manifold richness.