The Seeking of the Fundament of Meaning

By

Parker Emmerson

Phenomenology with William Edelglass

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 Parker Emmerson 2

December 2008

Phenomenology Taught by William Edelglass

620+4760

The Seeking of the Fundament of Meaning

I. Introduction

In order to critique Heidegger's perspective on temporality, we may

start from the position of critiquing Heidegger's account of Being-in as

Such as well as his account of modality as it applies to Being as a

whole. Heideggers interpretation of temporality fundamentally rests

on his interpretation and understanding in Being-in as Such. Edmund

Husserl says meaning has objective presence while also not already

existing out in the world. In Heidegger's Being-in as such, we are only

provided a framework for meaning whose overarching structures

pertain to Psychologism, a perspective which does not account for the

objectively present meaning of Being but one in which Being depends

instead on expression and interpretation of Being.

In this paper, we will use the prejudices of Psychologism outlined by

Husserl in his Critique of Psychologism to critique Heidegger's

interpretation of meaning. I will also explain how Phenomenological

unity and the whole of Da-sein" are not deducible purely from the

sense. Temporality, therefore will be defined as a way of objectively

 Parker Emmerson 3

referencing the experience of time while the coincidence among

Intimation performs an Act of Meaning. From that which individuates

consciousness from the world, and the world from consciousness, the

ontological metaphor is that of nature to the individual.

II. The fore-structures, Interpretation and Understanding

The underlying, fundamental structures of interpretation and

understanding are what enable Da-seins projection of its being upon

possibilities1 (Heidegger 139). The development of understanding is

interpretation, and interpretation is the, development of possibilities

projected in understanding (Heidegger 139). For Da-sein, its very

world and meaning within that world is dependent upon Da-sein.

Heideggers Account of the fore-structures of Da-sein describe fore-

having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. In Being and Time, there is a

purely subjective account of meaning in which meaning is found in the

being as it discloses itself in our subjective relation to Truth, whereas,

for Husserl, meanings have objective presence. As fore-conception, we

must realize that concepts exist in their communication from one being

to another, and that the interpretation of these concepts presented is

subject to interpretation. The way in which a certain concept resonates

1
Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1996. p139. All future references to this book will be made
parenthetically in the text.
 Parker Emmerson 4

in the consciousness of one being may not be the same for all other

beings. Yet, there is a meaning inherent within that concept which is an

ideal unity between consciousness as understanding.

For Heidegger a fundamental structure of meaning is fore-having.

Heidegger discusses fore-having as being the whole context of

something. Yet, within a system of a totality of relevance, there is no

possible total coherent understanding, which is taken as granted

already and consistent. Things at hand are always already understood

in terms of a totality of relevance. This totality need not be explicitly

grasped by a thematic interpretation. Even if it has undergone such an

interpretation, it recedes again into an undifferentiated understanding

(Heidegger 140). This is the fore-having and is the mode in which the

totality of all relevance has already been understood as that which

creates the foundation for interpretation. The sky has meaning to me

before I know that it is made of more than air. The air I breathe is part

of the sky. However, there is a very differentiated understanding in

meaning of sky and air as they are relevant to each other, the ever-

changing universe, and myself, which expands into chaos. As the

appropriation of understanding in being that understands, the

interpretation operates in being toward a totality of relevance which

has already been understood (Heidegger 140). The totality of

relevance of the sky, the air, the earth, and space is something not yet
 Parker Emmerson 5

totally understood, for through time, consciousness is still expanding

within the consequence and causality of this relation.

Understanding is the being of such a potentiality of being which is never still

outstanding as something not yet objectively present, but as something essentially never

objectively present, is together with the being of Da-sein in the sense of existence

(Heidegger 135). If Heidegger is looking for the meaning of being through the sense of

being by the practice of Phenomenology, he will never find a coherent description of

being as a consistent whole. But strictly speaking, what is understood is not meaning,

but beings, or being (Heidegger 142). His discussion will be limited to the

understanding of the sense of being, not the being as he actually claims. He will only be

able to give a consistent account of his own sense of being. Thus, in Heideggers

perspective, there are no necessitated ideal unities that we here call meanings

(Husserl 46), because not only is sense an individuated quality from non-being and being,

but also, potentiality of being either, automatically implies times unfolding in mutual

dependence upon the existence of that being, or fails to discuss the way in which being

changes as meanings differ. The former is no longer a potential, and the latter is as

unrecognizing of the ideal fabric of meanings2 (Husserl 47).

The ideal fabric of meanings is constituted by, the whole indefinitely complex

web of meanings that we call the theoretical unity of science, (which) falls under the very

category that covers all its elements: it is itself a unity of meaning (Husserl 47). I would

also add that it is of being with others that meaning is first established for the being

here/there in a temporal sense, and the first encounter is the longest relative to the time-

2
Edmund Husserl. The Essential Husserl. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 1999. All future references to this source will be made parenthetically in the text.
 Parker Emmerson 6

wise experience of life. When we collect the three meanings of statement analyzed

here in a unitary view of the complete phenomenon (Heidegger 146). As the complete

phenomenon is experiential, it is not taken as logical. We may have consistent

descriptions of something and so come to infer or intimate meaning from it. However, to

make a clear phenomenological reduction, we must stay clear of considering the

phenomenon complete if we are to formulate a consistent description.

Heidegger might respond, But fundamentally it remains undetermined and

unasked what is then really to be understood; nor has it been understood that

understanding itself is a potentiality for being which must become free solely in ones

ownmost Da-sein. I would then argue that to become free happens through either,

personality of the imaginative communion with the divine, or an outside, scientifically

derived disentanglement of or from the a priori as causality of transformation to the

subjective experience in a world with a different context.

Foresight is described as the object circumscribed within the fore-having, The

interpretation is grounded in a foresight that approaches what has been taken in fore-

having with a definite interpretation in view (Heidegger 141). Is the meaning of

foresight then actually grounded in objective meaning?

Understanding is the existential being of the ownmost potentiality of being of

Da-sein in such a way that this being discloses in itself what its very being is about

(Heidegger 134). Da-sein as understanding breaks down, because Being here requires a

differentiation of the self as a thinker and the emptiness, which gives orientation and form

to space. All of potentiality is, in essence, stored within the absolute, for even within the

absolute, there is an intrinsic connection that can be realized through the expansion of
 Parker Emmerson 7

consciousnesss horizon from a single moment. An objective unity of meaning, i.e., one

adequate to the objectivity which is self-evidently given thereby corresponds to his

subjective thought connections: this is whatever it is, whether anyone realizes this in

thought or not (Husserl, 47). Does meaning transcend thinking and being? We shall try

to get to this by looking at interpretation:

The interpretation can draw the conceptuality belonging to the

beings to be interpreted from these themselves or else force them

into concepts to which beings are opposed in accordance with

their kind of being. The interpretation has always already

decided, finally or provisionally, upon definite conceptuality; it

is grounded in a fore-conception. (Heidegger 143).

Interpretation is that which conceptualizes and it is already decided upon a

specific concept. For Heidegger the origin of a concept is actually predetermined in the

fore-conception. Many concepts arise from relating multiple concepts, mixing them and

relating them by generating new realms of possibility whose potentials are discovered

only by conscious progress. If we take Heideggers account of interpretation as it applies

to meaning, and compare it to Husserls discussion of meaning and concept as, The

concepts Meaning and Concept (in the sense of Species) do not coincide, (Husserl 50)

we find that there is an assured disagreement between these two thinkers. How are we to

determine which has more accuracy and grounding in truth?

It really gets down to, The universality that we think of does not therefore

resolve itself into the universality of meanings in which we think of it (Husserl 51).
 Parker Emmerson 8

Heidegger connects the interpretation and meaning by stating, Meaning, structured by

fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, is the upon which of the project in terms of

which something becomes intelligible as something (Heidegger 142). It is not that we

come to concepts as prior to their creation in the mind. For Husserl, meaning is connected

with an action, and being is more concerned with the thinking. For Heidegger being is

more concerned with preexistent structures of meaning in which something becomes

intelligible.

However, in this becoming of intelligibility, Heideggers logic breaks down once

again, for, If, e.g., we make a statement, we judge about the thing it concerns, and not

about the statements meaning, about the judgment in the logical sense (Husserl 51). The

action of a being as fore-having, only judges the structure of meaning, as having, not

necessarily the meaning of being, This proposition, that S is P, which is the pervasive

theme of discussion, is plainly not the fleeting moment of meaning in the thought-act in

which the notion first occurred to us (Husserl 51). Heideggers structures of meaning

are, as interpretation of understanding, clinging to a concept, which is not grounded in a

fore-conception, but endowed with significance by an action of meaning, To mean is not

a particular way of being a sign in the sense of indicating something (Husserl 26). Signs

do not have meaning in a way, or mode of being, but rather they have a more direct

relation within expressions that are understood by consciousness and resonate throughout

the experience. Also, the idea of concept must be allowed variability and change. It ought

not be thought of as being already granted, for then we would be damage the ground by

over abstraction.
 Parker Emmerson 9

We can have access to nature in an immediate and meaningful

way through consciousness that is an act of creating without

depending upon fore-structures, because the creation is changing in a

chaotic, progressive, and unstructured way. We do not lose grounding

in this, because there is a positive return to the exact meaning of an

experience from discovery of the worlds relation to the subject in the

present Being in generative and multiple interactions.

Finally, in relation to the fore-conception, Husserl has said of concept,

meaning, and understanding, the meaning which forms its logical content and which, in

contexts of pure logic, is called either an idea or concept, or a judgment or proposition- is

nothing which could, in a real sense, count as part of our act of understanding (Husserl

48).

III. The Critique of Psychologism with Respect to Heideggers Fore-structures of

Meaning

In this section, we will look at how intimation and the act of

meaning can be used to elucidate the way in which Heideggers

description of Understanding and Interpretation may be resting on

cognizance, as well as analyzing Heideggers Understanding and

Interpretation with Husserls Critique of Psychologism. Thus, a

metaphorical and actual critique may be derived from the First

Prejudice of Psychologism, that cognition must rest on the psychology

 Parker Emmerson 10

of cognition (Husserl 13). When Heidegger states, The interpretation

is grounded in a foresight that approaches what has been taken in

fore-having with a definite interpretation in view, (Heidegger 141) he

is making a judgment whose meaning rests only in that judgment, and

not the inner experiences in question (Husserl 40) about which the

judgment is made.

What is encountered in the world is always already in a

relevance which is disclosed in the understanding of world, a relevance

which is made explicit by interpretation (Heidegger 140). Heidegger

suggests that the judgment of relevance is one in which the description

of size and motion defer to interpretive experience. Husserl has

critiqued that the, laws of pure logic totally lose their basic sense if

one tries to interpret them as psychological (Heidegger 15). Also, he

has said that, the concepts which constitute these and similar laws

have no empirical range (Husserl 15). If there is an explicit, empirical

understanding as disclosed in the understanding of the world, the pure

laws of thought and sense would not apply.

In The Temporality of Disclosedness in General, Heidegger

remarks, With the term understanding, we mean a fundamental

existential; neither a definite kind of cognition, as distinct from

explaining and conceiving, nor a cognition in general in the sense of

grasping something thematically (Heidegger 309). However, if it is not

a cognizance of thematic grasping, or a cognizance relating to a kind of

 Parker Emmerson 11

logical judgment, of what then is understanding a recognition? Husserl

has critiqued Psychologism by saying, One must clearly grasp what

the ideal is, both intrinsically and in its relation to the real, how this

ideal stands to the real, how it can be immanent in it and so come to

knowledge (Husserl 20). In laying out these two complimentary

insights, we can see that Heidegger is using a kind of empiricism of

Being derived from sense. His understanding is actually a pre-

configured mis-understanding of the relation between the ideal and the

real. This, likewise, misunderstands the relation between truth and

inner evidence (Husserl 21).

How do we come to see beings existence in truth? In the

projectedness of its being upon the for-the-sake-of-which together with

that upon significance (world) lies the disclosedness of being in

general (Heidegger 138). The environment is always us, yet we are

not always our environments. If this were to be the case, it would be

beyond the limit of change as it occurs within our existence as the

being exploring the world instead of the world exploring its own being.

In many ways, its like the ontologically derived metaphor as a

metaphor for itself as metaphor of meaning. In a species of

environmental transformative potential of logical statements,

transference is the essence which interacts through the metaphor of

understanding to the meaning as usefulness for its own understanding.

Because of this, Heideggers project to discover meaning is only

 Parker Emmerson 12

applicable to his own subjective understanding, or possibly an

understanding preconceived in the fore-structures of meaningful

reality. Can we be sure that the fore-structures are ideally unified

meanings simply in their own-most context, or are they real?

The fore-strucutres pertain to the quality of inner evidence, and

this is especially detrimental to the progressive logical validity of

Heideggers account. Husserl has said that, Inward evidence is here a

psychological impossible, yet, ideally speaking, it undoubtedly

represents a possible state of mind (Husserl 19). I would propose that

fore-conception, is a purely conceptual law, (which) permits

application to a generally conceived realm of empirical cases (Husserl

18). Heideggers perspective that, understanding is the potentiality

for being of Da-sein itself, only looks at the experience of its own

truth. Husserl has acknowledged, The inwardly evident judgment is,

however, an experience of primal giveness (Husserl 21). Heideggers

account posits the emotion or conscious experience of Da-sein as a

primordial, existential possibility, but he does so with the subjective

parties as self-referencing in disclosure of the world, when, The pure

laws of logic say absolutely nothing about inner evidence or its

conditions (Husserl 18). So, although there may be logical fallacies in

Heideggers argument, it will be true that his experience of truth has

an actual relation to the truth of his experience of being. Heidegger

says of truth, (truth) in its turn becomes an objectively present

 Parker Emmerson 13

relation between objectively present things (Heidegger 206), and

that, There is truth only insofar as Da-sein is and as long as it is

(Heidegger 208). In what way is meaning disclosed? Are meanings

elucidated by being who did not exist prior to the reaching out of the

other with compassion?

When we speak of the fore-structures, Heidegger presents them

somewhat as if they are, natural conditions of our experience

(Husserl 20). For Heidegger the very being of these structures are grounded in

meaning as disclosed by Being here, when in reality, the meaning of the being of the

structures themselves is torn between their ground, being, and the significance at which

they aim, It is not, therefore, our doctrine that an act-character which stays the same in

all cases is itself our meaning (Husserl 49). There cannot be ideal unity, within

Heideggers indoctrinated structures of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception as

objective meaning:

In relation to inner evidence, psychology has therefore merely

the task of tracking down the natural conditions of the

experiences which fall under this rubric; of investigating the real

contexts in which, as experience shows, inward evidence arises

and perishes (Husserl 20).

Thus, his project as he has directed it, leaves the category of Philosophy and goes

into a description of sense without real unity for, Only if we view Heideggers entire

account of being historically with relation to the Mythos of care does it potentially come
 Parker Emmerson 14

back into the realm of Philosophy. The psychologism rests in the categorical statement on

which Heidegger bases his differentiation of the objective world of subjective meaning,

when Husserl has critiqued, the psychologistic party appeals to the actual content of

logic (Husserl 13). Heidegger places a schema underneath the categorical statement in

the fore-having as structure and presupposes his argument. This is illogical.

Is not the reality of knowing and judging sundered

into two kinds of being, two levels that can never

be pieced together so as to get at the kind of being

of knowing? Is not psychologism correct in rejecting

this separation even if it neither clarifies

ontologically the kind of being that belongs to the

thinking of what is thought, nor is even familiar

with it as a problem (Heidegger 200)?

Just as being in the absolute contains the intrinsic relations of existence, being in

abstraction is intrinsically connected to one's sense of being. Although our description of

being comes from the sense of being, we use our sense of being to create a coherent

understanding of being. However, when we use our sense of being to form a "whole" or

complete description of being, the complete sense of being that can be understood as

Heidegger would, is inconsistent. We understand, accordingly, why the

feeling of inner evidence has no other essential precondition but the

truth of the judged content in question (Husserl 22). For, in reality, a

complete description of being is unattainable if one uses a sense of being, because one
 Parker Emmerson 15

would be describing the sense and not the being. If we look at, The interaction of the

interpretation is (as) grounded in a foresight that aproaches what has been taken in fore-

having with a definite interpretaion in view (Heidegger 141), is not the very ground on

which foresight rests approaching, like our understanding of sky, the torn direction of the

disclosedness of the air as sky by the encompassing chaos of space?

But according to the most elementary rules of logic, the circle is a circulus

vitiosus (Heidegger 143). The circle is not a vicious circle, and logic is primarily

concerned, while pertaining to the pure laws, with the development of ideas from itself

and describing the way that circles interlock. Also, the way that existence shows itself in

expressions of pure thought. We certainly say that mathematical proofs existed before

people discovered them. Logical phenomenology looks into the world for an explanation

of meaning as a description of fundamental sense experience within the world. Thus, we

may derive meaning directly as logic has prescribed its understanding through

expressions which point to meanings both inconceivable and conceivable, pre-conceptual

and revealingly generatively conceptual.

For instance, if we look at the Rubiks Cube, it has a currently unknown number of

possible permutations. However, conceivably, it has a preconfigured decisive number of

positions. However, to present this as knowable would still remain to be seen, and only

conceivably true as conceivable. As Heidegger describes it, Da-sein does not logically

show that we have total understanding of the very world in which we live or that being

can be consistently grasped as a purely meaningful whole, especially in the modalities he

has outlined.
 Parker Emmerson 16

Therefore, even as Da-sein is its world, it cannot be fore-conceived as its world, or

as knowably conceivable as a whole without inconsistencies in its very species of

logical validity because, validity or objectivity, and their opposites, do not pertain to

an assertion as a particular temporal experience, but to the assertion in speci, to the pure,

self identical assertion (Husserl 22).

Heideggers position that, The actual temporal constitution of these phenomena

always leads back to that one temporality that holds within itself the possible structural

unity of understanding, attunement, (etc.) (Heidegger309) fails to realize that the truth of

understanding is not based only in the truth of a judgment in relation to the sense of

being. The truth of the judgment of the fore-conceived is a temporally based unity in his

perspective. Temporality is actually the present determination of the length of the act of

throughness in our field of time. The through aspect of time is beyond the only project of

examination and analogous to the aesthetic aspect of biology.

Throughness describes the way that potential for existence in the world is

encompassed within the pre-existent qualities of truth arising and maturing based on

ones actions or inactions (probably as an ethical decision). The meaning-conferring act is

an act of disclosure of objectivity from consciousness. Therefore, being is comes from

the individuated action, not as a modality. From that which individuates consciousness

from the world, and the world from consciousness, the ontological metaphor is that of

nature to the individual, Naturally the methodology of scientific research and proof must

take full cognizance of the nature of the mental states in which research and proof take

their course (Husserl 15).

 Parker Emmerson 17

The term, throughness, is an intimation of a meaning act happening in the world

during a consistent subjective perception. Throughness in action is the simpliciter of

causality as a fundamental place holder for time in temporality, and understanding

develops within a time-frame that can only be referenced differently by other subjective

beings, The ideal conception of the act which confers meaning yields us the Idea of the

intending meaning, just as the ideal conception of the correlative essence of the act which

fulfills meaning, yields the fulfilling meaning, likewise qua Idea (Husserl 37).

Individuation carries us through the meaning act, and is primarily characterized by the

knowledge that smoothed marble, tactilely and visually much different, resists

disintegration as being always against the tide and eventually subjectivity loses ability to

sense this. Levinas has mentioned a similar idea, Is not the force of this resistance of

the unrelfected to reflection the Will itself, prior and posterior to, alpha and omega of,

every Representation3 (Levinas 56)? Heidegger says, the nature of body does not

consist in hardness (Heidegger 403). I surmise that it is one of throughness.

IV. Time and Temporality: the Intimation of Conclusion

This discussion will begin by looking at time and critique Heideggers

understanding of temporality. This time is what is counted, showing itself in following,

making present, and counting the moving pointer in such a way that making present

temporalizes itself in ecstatic unity with retaining and awating horizonally open

according to earlier and later (Heidegger 386). Time is a perceptually relative idea. It is
3
Emmanuel Levinas. Basic Philosophical Writings. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 1996.
 Parker Emmerson 18

relative to motion, but it is also relative to duration of time experience. It is relative to

itself and meaning action of spatial intimation of meaning by music or structure.

Temporality allows us to objectively reference time from an outside perspective.

It is one in which we understand through a cyclic rapidly processing consciousness on the

potentiality for being connected through time, and we could think of the progression of

interpreted information as that which builds upon time as a foundation for the increasing

rapidness of consciousness as able to have awareness of an expanding connectedness of

information in the very last stages of approaching death.

In our subjective experience of time, there is a mathematically consistent view of

temporality. As we are born, we experience the first second of life as a brilliantly new

beginning, one that shines forth breathtakingly from the prior world that we knew. It is

shocking, but also relieving. If we are searching for the a priori where from we may

begin our examination of being and temporality, there is no better place to start than the

imagination of a baby in the womb. We would examine what it is like to be in the womb

as time progressing, but this discussion will be limited to the temporality of being-in-the

world as beginning from the moment of actual breath. There is a sincere difference

between the experience of consciousness without much knowledge of the physical world,

and with access to present at hand objects. Time and space have been shown to be

perceptually relative.

As a theoretical mode of delineating time and temporality, we might think that our

first second is half as long as our next second. Our second year, relatively half as long as

our first year, for there is that much time already experienced by the consciousness, and

by the time we are 80, five years goes by like only a fraction of our first. If there is a
 Parker Emmerson 19

worldly, bodily entanglement of the a priori experience, we must therefore have a

science, which acts through the physical world of the a priori condition and disentangles

this bodily entanglement of consciousness and time in order for freedom and

understanding in the next world to be given, In the case, e.g., of physics we distinguish

between the pattern of connection of mental states of the physical thinker from that of the

physical nature that he knows, and both from the ideal pattern of connection of the truths

in the physical theory (Husserl 16). From this, we have delineated both, the worldly

sciences, and the science of consciousness in relation to the very being who is

experiencing being. The action of worldly sciences disentangles the subjectivity of the

other from the a priori world, and the science of consciousness intimates consciousnesss

relation to time through temporality from the origin of creation. If we limit intimation in

the narrower sense to experiences which carry an expressions meaning, the contents of

intimation and naming remain as distinct here as they are generally (Husserl 40). To

digress, what if we were to expand it, would this turn into the realm of cybernetics from a

physics of consciousness?

This is a definite meaning act in relation to the subject. We reference the world

around us through the connection between meaning and objective reference (Husserl

36). In this objective reference, there is unity of identity (Husserl 56). In temporality,

the coincidences of ones experience through intimation may occur directly with the

natural world in experiencing beauty.

In conclusion, Heideggers fore-structures of understanding are not logically

consistent if they are going to be described as pertaining in relation to ideal unity and the

whole of Da-sein in a consistent set of modalities. Husserls critique of Psychologism

 Parker Emmerson 20

looks promising as a possible way to destabilize the overly determinate structures of

being presented by Heidegger. Also, many elements of Heideggers fundamental

structures on which his argument rest pertain to psychologistic arguments which are

logically based in their own judgments as pertaining to the character of the already

granted instead of the consciously progressive.