Traditional Problems of Ontology and Epistemology and the Heideggerean Sense of Understanding

My aim here is to offer a look at how Heidegger's non-metaphysical philosophy fares with respect to traditional problems of ontology and epistemology. Specifically, I want to look at how Heidegger's notion of understanding (as it appears in Being and Time) dispels the traditional conceptions of ontology and epistemology in such a way as to avoid the problematic issue of self-reference. The problem generally takes the following form: a is in virtue of b, but the conditions under which a is said to exist as a cannot apply to the thing which a is in virtue of, namely b. Heidegger is novel in that he can deal with both the ontological and the epistemological versions of this problem. We'll see how that plays out shortly. But first it is important to articulate the general form of the kind of philosophical problem I mean. Then we can see various iterations of that problem and how exactly Heidegger stakes up, or rather doesn't need to. In the end, certain philosophical morals can be drawn from Heidegger's triumph.

In one form or another, the self-referential problem has plagued the various philosophical movements since Plato; to say that Heidegger somehow avoided this trap, one that has been represented systematically, is to acknowledge the novelty and insight of his motives, and the importance and delivery of his presentation. Needless to say, it is difficult to distinguish how exactly Heidegger avoids this problem. In fact, this difficulty speaks, I think, of the restriction of our thought within a system of thought that is, to some extent, incompatible with the Heideggerean way of thinking, whatever that may be. Heidegger's way of thinking, especially in Being and Time, is relational more than it is systematic and formal. However, this difficulty aside, it is important to note at the onset that Heidegger's developments lead one away from the self-referential, and thus from the infamous distinction of scheme versus content. This distinction has gone by other names: structure versus content, grammar versus content, transcendental (in the Kantian sense) versus empirical, et cetera. What is essentially identical in all of these distinctions is the following:

One term stands for the things which require that they be related but themselves cannot relate (content, empirical, the manifestations of the Platonic Forms, the class of particulars which are related under a given scientific hypothesis or generality); the other term stands for the things which do the relating (scheme, structure, grammar, the transcendental), but which themselves cannot be related.

The general character of these distinctions, provided above, is a consequence of the self-referential problem. Let's assume Bertrand Russell's logical objects to further clarify what's at stake: if the logical objects function to relate the entities which are logical, then (a) either the logical forms themselves must be presumed, since they fail to meet the conditions necessary for an entity to be related as logical, or (b) one must posit a meta-level, over and above the logical objects, which functions to relate the logical objects according to some other classification. Of course, 'b' is undesirable since it leads to infinite regress, and 'a' is undesirable because, in the spirit of phenomenology, philosophy would like to explain things without this kind of presumption. This philosophical pickle can be restated in another way: if one posits that what the logical forms denote are what counts as knowledge, then either the logical forms themselves do not count as knowledge (failing to satisfy their own conditions) or there are infinite levels of knowledge, with each level functioning to 'make knowable' the level under it. The problem is that the things which function to denote, classify, and categorize cannot, by their own criteria, classify themselves. This is what is meant by the self-referential problem, and it is a consequence of the kind of distinctions articulated above.

As I have said, Heideggerean philosophy gets away from the kind of presuppositions which lead to the splitting of reality in this way. The arguments in part of I of Being and Time discuss being without the presupposition that knowledge, in the strict sense of the word, is somehow above, better than, and more desirable than mere understanding. In fact, Heidegger reverses this order, positing that before we can have knowledge, we must have (already) had understanding. For Heidegger, it is understanding which makes knowledge in the strict sense of 'an uncovering' possible. Understanding is usually taken in the sense of the capability to be competent for this or that, but conventional attributions do not exhaust what Heidegger means, as it shall be presented shortly. Heidegger makes this as clear as he can when he states:

"In understanding, as an existentiale, that which we have such competence over is not a what, but Being as existing. The kind of Being which Dasein has, as potentiality-for-Being, lies existentially in understanding. Dasein is not something present-at-hand which possesses its competence for something by way of an extra; it is primarily Being-possible." (Heidegger, 183)

Heidegger's rejection of traditional philosophy instantiates a more general concern to abandon the possibility that what is knowable can be known in advance. It is not the case that Heidegger's philosophy is in some sense a rejection the 'truth' of the philosophical doctrines which follow the scheme versus content distinction. Indeed, the traditional concept of truth as a proposition which corresponds to the reality it denotes presupposes the possibility that truth can be known a priori. Rather, what is 'before experience' is the ability to understand, to be potentially relatable to entities 'as such and such,' where 'such and such' means what is uncovered in the act of relating, however that act is realized.

An example of inherent difficulties in the application of a priori knowledge, difficulties Heidegger was acutely aware of, should help to manifest Heidegger's contributions further: consider two competing paradigms, A and B. Now, under the strict formalization of Frege and Russell, one must say that, because A denotes different entities from B, then A and B are not only incompatible, but reflect different states of affairs, and thus, so to speak, exist in separate worlds (if A and/or B are taken to be true). Moreover, if we take Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, then A and B, in that they denote different entities, point out different things in the world, and thus what it is in the world which support A and not B, and vice versa, means that the scientific community which adheres to A and not B lives in a different world from the scientific community which adheres to B and not A! What has occurred is the following: the application of an a priori system of concepts has led to, depending on how one looks at it, an extreme form of relativism!

However, in the practical scheme of things, it is clear that a scientist who supports Newtonian physics and not Relativity does not actually inhabit a different world from his friend who happens to support Relativity. In fact, the two scientists can have arguments with one another; they can invoke discussion with one another. Even within the perspective of the scientist who supports Relativity (let's say also he is a firm believer in Fregean semantics), it is not the case that he is cognitivelyrestricted to the belief that he inhabits a different world, even if it is the case that the conceptual system he invokes in the discussion is theoretically distinct from the one his friend invokes. The fact that there is a potential for discourse between the two suggests that both have an understanding for the way in which their respective theories make beings present. And this possibility is not merely the result of sharing the same language, for one scientist could be a native speak of Japanese, but schooled to proficiency in English, whereas the other scientist may only speak English.

The aforementioned example though does not instantiate the traditional definitions of 'to understand' which means 'to be competent for'. Conceptually two competing paradigms may be incommensurable in Kuhn's sense of the word, but the activity present in argumentation, whether or not it is rationale in any sense, is significant because it indicates that prior to what the matter at hand is taken to be, there is a potentiality for the matter being understood as such and such, even if the two ways in which things are taken are incommensurable. This kind of understanding, which is always also transparent to itself, presupposes all modes of discourse, and thus all knowledge. The conventional attribution that knowledge is prior to understanding is reversed as Heidegger posits,

"Dasein is such that in every case it has understood (or alternatively, not understood) that it is to be thus or thus. As such understanding it 'knows' what it is capable of-that is, what its potentiality-for-Being is capable of. This 'knowing' does not first arise from an immanent self-perception, but belongs to the Being of the "there", which is essentially understanding. And only because Dasein, in understanding, is its "there", can it go astray and fail to recognize itself." (Heidegger, 184)

Having provided some sketch of Heidegger's notion of understanding, a few morals can be drawn. There are two 'epistemic' benefits to the characterizations above: first, it avoids the infamous third-man argument; second, the problematic question of how one can know that one doesn't know is not an issue here. Roughly, the third-man argument provides that if it is the case that one must consult some independent principle in order to explain the grouping of individuals under a category, then one must so do ad infinitum, because at any level of predication, there is always the possibility that one may group yet another 'sufficiently similar' entity under the new category. Heidegger's qualification that it is the ability to understand, not the ability to know, which yields the possibility for knowledge, avoids the third man argument because at any level of predication, despite the fact that one may group infinitely larger categories of entities, one must always have the potential to take entities as such and such. Understanding is not merely another mode of cognition; it is the potentiality for any mode of cognition, belief, desire, judgment, et cetera. Finally, with respect to the problematic notion of how one can know that he does not know (assuming consistent knowledge-conditions), a similar remark can be made: despite the inconsistencies in predicating knowledge-conditions upon instances in which the thing one knows is that which he does not know, there must be the potential to take the unknown entities as known, that is, as being knownthat they are unknown. Understanding is thus the source of knowledge and further of confusion: understanding can be 'an accurate interpretation' or it can be a 'misinterpretation' in which the potentiality of its predication yields the failure to apprehend itself. In the terminology of epistemology, this construal of understanding yields fallibility: that not all which we claim to know is in fact known; we make mistakes, but it is in understanding, not in meta-levels of knowing, which account for this.

However, what's really important about Heidegger's way of doing philosophy is not that it solves these problems better than the other ways; philosophy is not, contrary to Wittgenstein's conception, a language game which is motivated to cyclically solve and dissolve its own problems. What's really at stake in Heidegger is the novelty of his train of thought, his non-metaphysical conception of being, which lends itself to what should be respected and, in some sense, sought after when we do philosophy. I think a very Heideggerean way to put it is this: philosophy doesn't exist to solve and dissolve its own problems, but rather to actualize the possibility that we can think about what is fundamentally an issue for us in a novel and insightful way, a way that doesn't parallel nicely with convention, but refines what we previously thought inappropriate or impossible.

Works Cited

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1962.