Tim Van Gelder's Non-Representational Governor & Cognitive Systems

What are Symbols & Representations?

It can be said that symbols are a kind of representation; even though some symbols (or 'symbols' in inverted commas) can function - as in a computer - without having any representational content (i.e., they rely on syntax alone). Of course not all representations are model-like and they're certainly not image-like. What matters is that they represent and that representation (or symbolisation) can take many forms. (Models and images clearly don't work that way.)

Just as symbols can be connected to representations, so both are intimately connected to computational models (or theories) of mind. However, Tim van Gelder believes that the centrifugal governor isn't representational. According to van Gelder, that also means that “it cannot be computational”. (Or at the least it can't be seen as computational if computations are seen as “rule-governed manipulation[s] of symbolic representations”.) Yet “manipulable representations lie at the heart of the computational picture”. More broadly, according to the “[c]ontemporary orthodoxy”, cognition is computation. Moreover, “the mind is [seen] as a special kind of computer” in which “cognitive processes are [seen as] the rule-governed manipulation[s] of internal symbolic representations”.

One basic point you can subtract from van Gelder is that his model and the models he favours are simply more scientific – or biological – than their rivals.

For example, when he talks about his own preferred governor, its ostensible superiority arises from the fact that

“the states through which it evolves are not configurations of symbols but rather numerically measurable arm angles and rates of change of arm angle”.

Of course one will immediately need to clarify why this is more scientific or biological.

For a start, symbols are created by persons: they aren't biological. In that basic sense, the idea of there being symbols in the brain is unscientific. (This isn't to say that the nature of human symbols can't be treated scientifically.) Of course all this partly depends on how literally the word 'symbol' is taken by philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists. To some, it's taken literally and to others it's taken metaphorically or analogically. However, the argument may be that even when the use of the word 'symbol' is taken metaphorically or analogically, it's still controversial from a strictly scientific (or biological) point of view.

The Representational Governor

Firstly van Gelder offers us a governor that can indeed be seen in representational or symbolic terms. All in all, this representational governor is mechanically no different to the non-representational governor. The difference is in how we theorise about it.

Indeed take the case of the centrifugal governor's engine which elsewhere van Gelder says shouldn't be taken representationally. This governor (at least on the surface) is taken representationally.

Van Gelder firstly goes into detail as to what this representational governor actually does. He writes:

“The very first thing it does is measure its environment (the engine) to obtain a symbolic representation of current engine speed.”

These representations, however, are simply means to a mechanical end. Van Gelder continues:

“It then performs a series of operations on this and other representations, resulting in an output representation, a symbolic specification of the alteration to be made in the throttle valve...”

The basic point is that all this could be done without having representations. More relevantly, it could all happen without us (on the outside) seeing things in terms of representations. However, if we do see things in representational terms, then we must also see them in computational terms. That is, we will think that the “computational” governor “literally computes the desired change in throttle value by manipulating symbols according to a schedule of rules”. After all that we'll have an “output”, which, in this case, is the governor “acting on its environment”.

What's happening here is that we're seeing the governor as some kind of analog of both a computer and a mind. We see what van Gelder calls the “computational governor” as a “device capable of carrying out some set of basic operations (measuring, subtractings, etc.)”.

To repeat, we can still say that there's no need for all this (mild) anthropomorphism (or symbol-fixation) because everything that happens is thoroughly causal and mechanical and could happen just as it does happen without representations or symbols. (This isn't to say that things with symbols or representations can't involve causal processes.)

The Centrifugal Governor & Cognitive Systems

So far I've only talked about van Gelder's representational/symbolic governor. However, all this is but a prelude to talking about human minds or “cognitive systems”.

Here it's not about “devices that transform symbolic inputs into symbolic outputs”: it's about “complexes of continuous, simultaneous, and mutually determining change”. In other words, it's about the causal relations between the outside and the inside (which, in this governor's case, can be numerically measured).

I've just mentioned that this governor-talk is but a prelude to mind-talk. In van Gelder's case, I should actually say mind-body-and-environment talk. What we're talking about here is “the nervous system, body, and environment”. That nervous system, body and environment “are all constantly changing and simultaneously influencing each other”. As a consequence of that, van Gelder says that “the true cognitive system is a single unified system embracing all three”.

The “symbolic mind”, on the other hand, “interact[s] with the body and the external world by means of the occasional static symbolic inputs and outputs”. Here the representation or symbolisation of the world - rather than the dynamical causal contact with it - is paramount. When it comes to symbolic cognitive systems, the direction seems to be all one way: from mind to world. With dynamical systems, on the other hand, the causal arrow goes in both directions: from world to mind and from mind to world.

Causation

Van Gelder's model (or governor) simply doesn't rely on symbols or even on representations. Instead what is emphasised are causal interactions between the governor and its environment or between parts of the governor and its other parts.

More technically, in one passage there's talk of “numerically measurable arm angles” and “rates of change of arm angle”. All this can be seen within a strictly causal and non-symbolic (or non-representational) framework. That is, the causal forces on the governor's arms and the rates of changes of its arm-angles can both be measured numerically.

All that's being done here is the measurement of differences which have been brought about by causal forces on the governor (or on parts of the governor) by its other parts.

It's true that it can now be said that numbers (or numerical measurements) have taken the place of symbols or representations (at least in a certain respect); though the numerical calculations don't symbolise or represent what it is they measure – they simply, well, measure it. What's being measured is literally the world's causal impact on the governor and the causal impact of parts of the governor on its other parts. In that respect, what's happening here is simply applied physics. Nothing is being represented, symbolised or even modelled.

Van Gelder goes into more detail about his centrifugal governor and again stresses its lack of reliance on symbols. More clearly, instead of a system which utilises “configurations of tokens of symbol types”, van Gelder's governor is a

“concrete dynamical system made up of quantities changing in a way that corresponds to the numerical sequences specified by the rule of evolution”.

Here again things are numerically measured rather than symbolised or represented. Thus there should be nothing that's manifestly problematic to a biologist or a physicist. (It will need to be specified how to take van Gelder's reference to “the rule of evolution”.)

Numerical Measurements

I've used the phrase “numerical measurements” a few times so far. Van Gelder borrowed this idea from what's called “dynamical modelling”. Van Gelder says that this is a

“branch of applied mathematics which attempts to describe change in real-world systems by describing the states of the system numerically and then writing equations that capture how these numerical states change over time” .

To put more meat on this bone, van Gelder says that

“Maxwell's original dynamical analysis, and contemporary mathematical treatments, all describe the arm angle and its role in the operation of the governor in nonrepresentational terms".

Why is that? The answer is simple: “the governor contains no representations.” Again, the mathematics (or the numbers/equations) neither symbolise nor represent – they simply measure.

Despite saying that, van Gelder concedes that the arm angle (in the centrifugal governor's case) can be seen as a representation of the engine's speed. That is, there is indeed “some kind of correlation between arm angle and engine speed”. However, just as it's often said that “correlation doesn't equal causation”, so here it can also be said that correlation doesn't equal representation. Simply because there is a causal correlation between the angle (or swing) of the arm and the engine's speed, that doesn't mean that it represents the engine's speed. (Indeed couldn't this be inverted by saying that the engine's speed represents the angle of the arm even if the engine is, as it were, the “first mover”?) However, surely it can be said here that it can be taken as a representation if one wants to take it that way. A question would still remain: What purpose would taking such things in representational terms serve?

Conclusion

The question is whether or not what van Gelder says about the mechanical centrifugal governor can truly pass over to minds or to cognitive systems. After all, it's clearly the case that machines like this aren't representational. I suppose that van Gelder would say that's the point in that even though the centrifugal governor isn't representational it can still be taken that way. And it's that representational factor which passes over to the mind or cognitive systems. In other words, that's how many philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists take cognitive systems and therefore how they could take the centrifugal governor.

Again, does it pass over? For a start, the centrifugal governor is far more simple than the mind and of course it doesn't depend on a biological brain. Nonetheless, none of that may matter for the point that van Gelder is trying to establish. In other words, simply because the cognitive mind depends on the biological brain (as well as being far more complex than centrifugal governor), it doesn't automatically follow from this that the brain-mind system is more likely to contain and work upon symbols/representations than a mechanical device. In fact complexity and biology (or lack thereof) may be irrelevant to van Gelder's argument.

Reference

Van Gelder, Tim, 'What Might Cognition Be If Not Computation?', The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 92, No. 7 (July 1995).

Pierre Boulez on the Mystical Heaven of Eastern Music

Pierre Boulez once said that far too many Westerners believe that all is golden sunsets and mystical heaven in “the East”. (Perhaps, in many cases, to compensate for the history of colonialism.) Boulez wrote:

“I find that many people form a too sentimental and emotional idea of Oriental music. They now dive into it like tourists setting off to visit a landscape that is about to vanish.” 

Westerners often glorify cultures other than their own in a way that cultures other than their own glorify theirs. Since the days of Debussy and even Mozart, the Orient has often been seen through rose-tined spectacles. (Ironically, often the opposite is argued too.) The music, culture, religion and even the politics of other cultures have often been seen uncritically. 

Boulez wrote:

“There is a great foolishness in the Westerner who goes to India, and I detest the idea of a ‘lost paradise’. It is the most odious forms of affectation.”

This romantic view of the East has been apparent since Mozart’s ‘Rondo al la Turk’ and before. Even the oriental influences on Debussy are propagating the myth of an “Eastern Paradise”.

Boulez said that Indian music, for example, reached a state of perfection very many years ago. Most ethnic musics are now dead because the economic and sociological situations which created them are becoming less and less prevalent. Either that, or these musics have remained static. 

Boulez himself had carefully studied Indian, Peruvian and various musics from African countries. However, he wrote:

“I have found in them an ethics of existence rather than an aesthetic of enjoyment. [] The influence is on my spirit and not on my work.”

In other words, the value of these ethnic musics is ‘spiritual’, but not musical (formal and/or technical?). This may be the reason why many people have believed Western music to be “soulless” and “overly intellectual”. That Western society has become too “technological” and “mechanized”, and thus that we have become victims of our own creations.

Boulez specifically dislikes the superficial way in which Eastern musical forms and ideas have been used in Western music. 

Was he talking about Olivier Messiaen or the Beatles? 

The Beatles were accused of going on a joy-ride on the back of Eastern mysticism and music and of accepting only its “surface” elements: e.g., kaftans, sitars, yoga and mind-altering drugs. Could these criticisms also be aimed at Cage, Messiaen and Stockhausen? All of these composers have used and adopted ideas from Eastern music and philosophy without also accepting the whole show.

Boulez finishes his essay with a rather absolutist statement on the relationship between Western and Eastern music:

“The musical systems of the East and West cannot have any bearing on one another and this will be quickly realised by experienced composers of character.”

Brian Ferneyhough

 

Brian Ferneyhough is a scary composer for many people. Or at least his music is deemed to be scary. By 'scary' I mean highly complex. And yet I find much of his music very direct and even Beethovenian in manner. It's Beethovenian in that it often has a strong sense of forward direction; which much post-serial and experimental music doesn't have. (This is despite the fact that I'm sure I can recall Ferneyhough speaking out against what I think he called the “fixation with linearity” in Western music.)

This is a classic case of the disjunction between music being complex in terms of its form and composition and it being direct when it comes to actually listening to the music. After all, many baroque fugues and Renaissance polyphonic masses are very complex; though often easy to listen to (though not too easy, of course).

It must be said that when you hear Ferneyhough speak, he does strike you of being a bit pretentious. Though perhaps that's simply because I'm stupid or very cynical.

Ferneyhough as Instrumentalist

Ferneyhough is a great instrumentalist. That is, he is a great writer for all manner of instruments – from the low brass to the piccolo. This isn't always the case with accomplished composers. I would say that Alfred Schnittke, Webern, Ligeti, etc. are great writers for various instruments; though many post-1945 composers haven't been. Indeed even some classical masters weren't really that accomplished when writing for certain instruments. I personally think this is true of Beethoven, save for the piano and perhaps strings. I also find Brahms symphonies badly scored in that they sound much too dense. (Incidentally, I find this true of Beethoven too.)

Many of Ferneyhough's works features solo instrumental writing even within ensemble pieces. Thus in one of his string quartets it begins with one violin, then two, etc. In one part of the Carceri d'invenzione we have a marvellous trombone and piccolo due which opens that work. This pairing down of ensemble pieces (as well as pieces for string quartet and orchestra) frequently occurs in Ferneyhough's oeuvre. In that sense, it's a little like Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.

Ferneyhough has also written many pieces for solo instruments. These include pieces for piano, violin, flute, piccolo, bass clarinet, guitar and so on. These are surely in the tradition of Berio's Sequenza.

 

Dennett & Chalmers on the “Easy Problems” of Consciousness

 

The American philosopher Daniel Dennett argued that once all the “easy” (or functional) problems of consciousness have been solved, then that’s all we’d need to know about consciousness. Or to use Dennett’s own words: “Once all the Easy Problems are solved, consciousness is explained.”

So what are these easy problems?

According to the Australian philosopher David Chalmers (whom Dennett was partly responding to), they include the following: “perceptual discrimination, categorisation, internal access, verbal report”.

Of course Chalmers offers a riposte to Dennett by adding that

“there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?”

Is it that Dennett simply ignores this question or problem? Surely not. Does he see it as a “pseudo-problem”? Possibly. He certainly sees qualia as pseudo-entities, so perhaps this “problem of consciousness” is a pseudo-problem.

Chalmers himself comments on Dennett’s position (or on those who hold a similar position). He says that people like Dennett “deny the phenomenon”. Chalmers continues:

“[O]nce we have explained the functions such as accessibility, reportability, and the like, there is no further phenomenon called ‘experience’ to explain. Some explicitly deny the phenomenon, holding, for example that what is not externally verifiable cannot be real. Others achieve the same effect by allowing that experience exists, but only if we equate ‘experience’ with something like the capacity to discriminate and report.”

The obvious point to make here is that if

accessibility, reportability, discrimination, etc. = experience (or consciousness)

then why use the word “experience” or “consciousness” at all? The problem here is that these eliminativists may well agree with that question. In other words, why bother talking about “experience” or “consciousness” at all? Instead, let’s just stick to more scientific terms such as “accessibility”, “reportability”, “discrimination”, etc.

This verificationist position seems both obviously false and absurd. Yes; there may well be a problem — indeed a scientific problem — with verifiability when it comes to experience and the mind generally. Though having a scientific and/or philosophical problem with any given x doesn’t automatically mean that this x “can’t be real” or doesn’t exist.

Chalmers’ basic point is that “perceptual discrimination, categorisation, internal access, verbal report” could all occur without consciousness or experience. So is that the case? (That’s question for Chalmers rather than for Dennett.) And even if they could occur — in principle — without consciousness, perhaps they may still always come along with consciousness… at least when it comes to human beings.

One argument would be that all these functional “abilities” happen within a computer. A computer can perceptually discriminate, categorise, have internal access to its own states or information and even verbally report things. However, computers aren’t conscious — they don’t experience anything when they carry out these functions. Despite that, wouldn’t a functionalist, Dennett or a believer in AI say that if a computer carries out these functions then, by definition, it is conscious? (They would certainly say that a computer is intelligent or displays intelligence.)

Or is the argument that if these functions are carried out without consciousness in computers, then that could also be the case with human beings? Indeed is the argument stronger than that? Is it that if they occur without consciousness in computers, then they must also occur without consciousness in humans? But that seems obviously false.

It can also be said that consciousness (or experience) itself is functional. Or, at the very least, it has a “functional role”. That’s exactly the possibility which Chalmers brings up. He writes:

“This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role.”

I would say that experience (or consciousness) obviously has a “cognitive role”. Indeed why does Chalmers see it as a mere possibility rather than an actuality? There are of course brain functions which occur which human beings aren’t conscious of. Yet there are also functions which human beings are conscious of. Indeed there are some functions which at certain points human beings are not conscious of and which the same beings then become conscious of.

References

Chalmers, David, ‘Facing up to the problem of consciousness’, from the Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (1995).

Dennett, Daniel, Consciousness Explained (1991)

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Heidegger on the Problems of Knowledge & Being

i) Introduction: The Problem of Knowledge/Being

ii) The Hammer and the Intellectual

iii) On Thought and Action

Martin Heidegger made a distinction between “the problem of knowledge” and the “problem of Being”. In a sense his (or these) distinctions are precisely the distinctions which distinguished Anglo-American analytic philosophy from many of its Continental counterparts. Of course to say that is also to generalise; though it does contain a lot of truth.

The problem of being may also be called the problem of the self or the problem of continuing self-identity.

The other distinction is the supposed separation of fact from value; which is characterised by strands in the tradition of analytic philosophy. Such a distinction is rarely made on the Continent. This partly explains why even ontology (as well as metaphysics generally) has had an ethical dimension on the Continent.

For example, to Emmanuel Levinas, ethics was First Philosophy. And in Heidegger’s ontology and Jacques Derrida’s philosophy generally, ethics - and by derivation politics - play an important part (despite the obfuscations and animadversions to the contrary). Heidegger or Derrida might have said that every part of philosophy (even logic) is interspersed with some politico-ethical element. For both Derrida and Heidegger ethics was also First Philosophy.

It is strange, prima facie, that Heidegger should claim that traditional empiricism also claimed to be “ontology-free”. It's hard to make sense of this claim at first. However, the claims that Heidegger makes about empiricism are substantiated by the view that empiricism supposedly made a firm and distinct separation between objects and subjects. Though since Kant (if not before), many have accepted that subjects themselves partly determine the nature of all known or perceived objects. That's why empiricism could never be genuinely “ontology-free”. Both minds and our epistemological tools determine objects (one of the prime subjects of ontology).

It's a rather general statement to assert that empiricists believed that the world is divided into subjects (whose prime task is to “perceive objects”) and that objects exist (as it were) "simply to be perceived". Of course that Heideggerian way of putting things is very colourful. However, the truth contained in his view is very powerful; despite the “rhetorical flourishes”.

Heidegger gets to work on the main problems that the various ontological dualisms threw up.

For a start, the world must be divided into two "substances" – mind and matter. Of course if these two substances are truly distinguishable, then how is there any interaction between the two dissimilar worlds? This is the Cartesian problem written on a larger scale. Cartesian dualism failed to convincingly explain the relation between mind and body. According to Heidegger, the problem which faced empiricist epistemologists is the relation between subjects and objects generally. How do subjects (qua substances) interact with objects (qua substances)? In terms of epistemology (or the Theory of Knowledge), how can subjects know anything at all about the world of objects and events? How do these two seemingly incompatible domains interact? How can one substance know a different kind of substance?

According to Kant, it was “the scandal of philosophy” that the external world hadn't be truly proved to exist. One can see that this seemingly epistemological task was one of Kant’s prime motivations (after proving the objectivity and rationality of his own system of ethics). But if these two substances are truly unlike, then a proof of the external world, according to Heidegger, will never be forthcoming if one embraces such an empiricist view of the matter. That separation of mind and world made such a proof impossible – almost logically impossible. Heidegger’s response was to get rid of all such dualisms – mind/body, internal/external, subject/object, knower/known and so on. In a sense, Heidegger was therefore a monist in that he didn't accept or recognise mind and objects as two distinct substances. More specifically, it's because empiricism - and, indeed, Cartesianism - stressed these dualisms that such ontologies would by their very nature create “the problem of the external world”. If there aren’t two fundamental substances, then this problem simply evaporates because all these dualisms effectively become monisms in his philosophical system.

Heidegger needed to formulate his ontology in order to solve the so-called problem of the external world or to make it effectively a non-problem. However, he also reacted to ontology simpliciter.

Heidegger relied on his notion of human beings as “being-in-the-world”. In terms of the problem of the external world, if subjects (or beings) are already beings-in-the-world, then there can be no true distinction between the external and the internal (or between subjects and objects). The argument seems to be that if minds and world are one, then the question of knowledge of the world won't (or shouldn't) even arise. In a sense, Heidegger provided us with the most thoroughgoing naturalisation of the mind and subject imaginable. It's no wonder that this aspect of his work even filtered through to a few analytic philosophers (e.g., Gilbert Ryle, Robert Brandom, Tyler Burge, etc.).

It's not just the case that beings are beings-in-the-world; but also that beings are never truly separated from other beings or subjects. And what is true of the everyday world is also true of the world of the epistemologist and ontologist.

This point also has a very Wittgensteinian tinge to it.

The very idea of a Cartesian (or Husserlian!) subject completely alone in his own private philosophical world - untouched by the presuppositions and biases of the everyday man - is either simply nonsensical or at least untrue. Every single thought the epistemologist or ontologist has is in some way filtered through intersubjective conventions and ways of speaking (therefore of thinking). Thus, as C.S. Peirce said, the Cartesian reduction, for example, is basically an elaborate contrick. Neither Descartes nor Husserl could have truly “bracketed” the entire world or brought about “pure consciousness”. If they had done so, then they wouldn't have even been able to think, let alone speak.

It's because of this Cartesian or empiricist isolationism that we have the problem of the external world in the first place. Naturalise the mind (as others have also attempted to do) and the problem will simply disappear. If we're part of nature (or part of the world), then nature or the world will cease to be so ontologically and epistemically problematic.

The Hammer and the Intellectual

Prima facie, Heidegger’s highly-intellectual anti-intellectualism seems very strange, if not bizarre. It's perhaps not surprising that this anti-intellectual intellectual (like that of Joseph Goebbels) had strong sympathies with German National Socialist forms of anti-intellectualism. In a sense, because Heidegger attempted to dismantle the empiricist version of epistemology and ontology (as he saw it), he went out of his way to emphasise the very non-intellectual relations we have with the many and varied parts of the world.

Take Heidegger's well-known hammer example.

His point was that generally (in everyday life) we don’t have intellectual knowledge of the hammer we use to bang in nails. Instead, we have some kind of intuitive (for want of a better word) relation to it. That is, we don’t really know that the hammer is too heavy: it “reveals itself as being too heavy”. That must mean that we only have a physical reaction and relation to the hammer, not a knowledge-based one. In fact when we use the hammer (Heidegger seems to claim) we don't think at all. We simply feel that it's too heavy. We don't know or even think that it's too heavy.

This resembles Donald Davidson when he stressed the pointlessness of the “tertiary intermediaries” (Davidson, 1989) between the external world and ourselves. The “third entity” in Heidegger's case is the linguistic entity “too-heaviness” to which the hammer somehow corresponds. Heidegger thinks that we simply needn't postulate an extra entity to account for a relation to a hammer. There is a hammer. And that hammer is heavy. There's no entity expressed by the linguistic, “This hammer is too heavy.” There isn't even a non-linguistic entity somewhere in the mind that somehow relates to the hammer. Instead we simply feel, intuitively, that the hammer is too heavy.

It's strange, therefore, that a philosopher who could be classed as “the ontologist of the social” (see Robert Brandom) seems to de-stress the importance language has on our experiences. Heidegger seems to claim that our relation to a hammer (at least in certain cases) is entirely non-linguistic. Indeed it's also non-mental. It's entirely physical. This effectively means that we "know" that the hammer is too heavy, without ever having formulated any such sentence about that "fact". Not only does language (in any form) play no part in this relation with a hammer: perhaps no thoughts (or any form of mentality - even non-cognitive mentality) enter the picture. What we have, instead, is some kind of primitive or intuitive relation to a hammer.

All this goes squarely against, for example, Hans-Georg Gadamer's  assertion that “all adult human experience is linguistic in nature”. According to Heidegger, on the other hand, we can simply hammer away with the hammer without indulging in language (or even anything mental) at all.

It seems to me that Heidegger’s antipathy towards empiricist ontology and epistemology coloured his philosophical position on things which don’t at first seem remotely philosophical. His ontology even tried to make sense of something as basic as using a hammer. Heidegger believed that empiricist epistemologists made the mistake of viewing philosophers as some kind of passive “spectators” (or “lookers-on”) of the external world. They simply sat back (as it were) and let the external world make its impact on their minds. Indeed, on the Cartesian model, the mind shouldn't only sit back and take it all in: it must also evacuate itself of all biases and presuppositions before it does so.

However, according to Heidegger’s ontological monism (if that's what it is), we're at one with the so-called “external world”. It must therefore follow that we can't (or shouldn't) see ourselves as mere spectators (or lookers-on). We can't spectate on something we ourselves are part of.

This ontological monism isn't just applied to empiricist or Cartesian philosophy: it's also applied to our everyday non-philosophical relations with the world around us.

In terms of a hammer again: we aren't spectators (or looker-ons) of hammers either. We are at one with hammers (at least when we are actually using them).

To recap on Heidegger's position.

According to the empiricist or Cartesian epistemologist, we must have the sentence or thought “This hammer is too heavy” somewhere in the mind. However, in reality we only feel the hammer’s heaviness. We don't need a linguistic expression (or even an abstract thought) that somehow corresponds to the hammer’s heaviness. This is a needless intellectualisation of our relations to hammers. On Heidegger’s view, our relation to hammers - and other aspects of the world - is often simply a “practical relation”. The things around us are more like “tools” (even when not actually literal tools), rather than objects of cognition. Heidegger himself calls these “ready-to-hand” things “equipment”. That means that we use the things around us. We don’t exclusively think or cognise about the various things around us.

The term “ready-to-hand” is counterpoised with the term “present-at-hand”. It is Heidegger’s view that things that are ready-to-hand are things that we use or actively engage with. The present-at-hand idea suggests to us that such things that belong to that category are primarily objects of thought and cognition. Something can, therefore, be present-at-hand without necessarily be used or engaged with. It is, instead, a pure object of cognition and thought. (It’s being “is to be perceived”, to use Bishop Berkeley's phrase.) Of course words like ‘tools’ and ‘equipment’ must be taken in their broadest possible senses. Something can be a tool or equipment even if it's not, strictly speaking, either a tool or a piece of equipment.

On Thought and Action

If there is any direct connection to be found between Heidegger and Nazism, it's that of anti-intellectualism. Heidegger’s anti-intellectualism is very intellectual and esoteric in form because it seems to have been partly derived from other cultures. More specifically, it took the form of non-dualism – the rejection of categories and the glorification of experience (or action).

Ever since Descartes - and before - the human subject (or philosopher!) has allowed itself the privilege of starting out from outside the world (or outside nature) looking on at its processes as some kind of spectator. But man is part of nature and part of the world. Thus this separation is either an illusion or a product of our arrogance (or both). However, we do have one quality that distinguishes us from nature and the world: self-consciousness. However, how does self-consciousness alone separates us from the world and nature? For one, it allows us to transcend our basic instincts. Indeed it allows us to contemplate our basic instincts and therefore adapt, change or try to get rid of them entirely. Very few, if any, other animals can do this. (Indeed it would probably prove counter-productive for them to do so.)

The philosopher detaches himself from the world. The animal only knows of the present and the near. (This probably even applied to primitive man.) Thinkers, on the other hand, view the past, the future and others as if they were programmes on a TV screen. The thinker is no longer part of the world. Thought takes the place of experience and action. Life is lived within the head - even though the contents one finds within the head are of the world (the world by proxy – of books or "texts"). Words and concepts recreate the world and are mistaken for the world. Word is from then on measured against word and concept against concept. Everything becomes “inter-textual” and inter-conceptual. The flesh and blood world of experience is lost and we live within the illusory world of our words, categories and concepts.

Can there be Heideggerian “involvement” or action without at least some degree of knowledge? Surely involvement or action must be the result of a degree of knowledge. It can't, one assumes, run free of all knowledge. Action or involvement must be the consequent of at least a modicum of knowledge. How can action run free of knowledge of some kind?

There's also a sense in which Heidegger’s position is essentially pragmatist in intent. He believed that knowledge must be firmly connected (in some way) to action. Or, in his word, it must be connected with our “concern” for the world in which our knowledge acquisition and knowledge-claims take place. More specifically, Heidegger is surely right to say that knowledge “is secondary to involvement in the world”. We wouldn't even care about knowledge if it weren't for the fact that we're somehow already involved with the world. Without some kind of involvement, the desire for knowledge wouldn't even arise.

Though if involvement comes first, then we must ask ourselves if this involvement is somehow shaping our pursuit of knowledge; or if it's determining the subject areas of our knowledge.

Is Heidegger saying that it's wrong to completely “detach ourselves from the world”. Or is his saying that - in actual fact (contra the Cartesian) - we can't do so even if we wanted to? In essence, Heidegger seems to be argue both these positions.

References

Burge, T. (1979) ‘Individualism and the Mental’, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4.
Davidson, D. (1989) ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’, in Truth and Interpretation.
Derrida, J. (1967/1978) Writing and Difference, edited by Alan Bass.
Heidegger, M. (1992) Basic Writings, ed. David Krell
 - Being and Time, translated by John MacQuarrie (1927/1962).
Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind