Dissertation Construction 06

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Interconstituent Ecological Lifeworlds

06

Posthuman Ecology

I have once again rearranged my title by dropping wilderness in the predicate and inserting 'ecological' where it was. I have 'wilderness' in the subject so why say it twice. Also, I think I will move from tagging myself as a sociocultural ecologist to a posthuman ecologist. What in the world is that? Well, I suppose another option is Posthuman Dimensions of Natural Resourcismist, but let's not go there. I make the posthuman move in recognition that to be dasein is not only to be be human. To be somebody is to be anybody -- any body of matter. This relates to Heidegger's "in-order-to" and "for-the-sake-of" structures in "worldhood". It comes from Harman's (2002) takeaway in Tool-Being. And, What is Posthumanism we ask, well, luckily Carey Wolfe (2010) has given us a work entitled just that. 

Tool ecology

First, the 'towards-which' and 'for-the-sake-of-which'. These are both relational aspects of what we may call 'the equipmentality of equipment' or to use Harman's (2002, p. 25) term, "referentiality". It is significance (Bedeutung) and meaning (Sinn) that constitute referentiality. (Note: my investigation will be into the worldhood of wilderness (wildhood as the existential ontological structure of the wild) and to get at that worldhood requires an ontography of the significant entitities and the meaning erupting about them. This means an investigation into the ontological structure of the gear (Zeug as a rhetorical concept and literally in the German, ) that yokes together the constituent lifeworlds (niches) and at a greater scale, their worlds.) There are two senses of 'reference' and these may be mapped onto Heidegger's most foundational insight, the ontological difference. The two senses are of the 1) ontic (existence) and the 2) ontological (existential) and they are analogous to the two aspects of referentiality: in-order-to (Um-zu) and for-the-sake-of (Um-willen) which also map directly to significance and meaning.

"The tool's 'meaning' [significance] is nothing other than the visible termination of its underground action. Just as the meaning of a signal-arrow is the region to which it alerts us by point, just as a word evokes its meaning by deflecting attention away from itself,"....the "second, concealed [ontological] kind of 'meaning' is analogous to what I have called the tool-being of the entity, an act of primal effectiveness that eludes every possible view" (Harman, 2002, p. 26). 

Gear plays a role in the referential totality of the environment of somebody. That is, gear are signs with flickering significance pointing at the "in-order-to" structure of somebody's being. That is, gear are ontic references toward the ontological environment (Um-zu bracing the embrace of the Umwelt). The gear (Zeug) works to turn toward other gear that supports the lifeworld of somebody. The lifeworld is not the same as the world at large. Again the ontic-ontological relations come into play. Map the lifeworld to the ontic and the world to the ontological and we have another iridescent relationship of beings and being. 

Harman makes the posthuman move by insisting that dasein is not only a human capacity. All beings are dasein. It is not just the case that everybody is somebody. It is also the case that every body is somebody. To use Heideggarian language. Everything is somebody. Instead of fleshing out Harman's posthumanism, let's move to Wolfe's (2010) understanding.

Posthumanism

Wolfe first gives us what posthumanism is not. It is not the notion "that 'the human' is achieved by escaping or repressing not just its animal origins in nature, the biological, and the evolutionary, but more generally by transcending the bonds of materiality and embodiment altogether" (p. xv). That would be more of a transhumanism. He offers it with reference to Lyotard's regard for the postmodern. Posthumanism "comes both before and after humanism: before in the sense that it names the embodiment and embeddedness of the human being in not just its biological but also its technological world, the prothetic coevolution of the human animal with the technicity of tools and external archival mechanisms....it comes after in the sense that posthumanism names a historical moment in which the decentering of the human by its imbrication in technical, medical, informatic, and economic networks is increasingly impossible to ignore, a historical" (p. xv).

Wolfe's work, (like that of other systems thinkers that (overtly or by insinuation) embrace a semiotic perspective, Luhmann, Maturana & Varela, and Brier) "enables us to describe the human and its characteristic modes of communication, interaction, meaning, social significance, and affective intruments with greater specificity once we have removed meaning from the ontologically closed domain of consciousness, reason, reflection, and so on.

As cryptic as it reads, posthuman ecology does what was done in the timelessness of the ancients, it couples the mother(board) Gaia with the blacksmith, Hephaestus. 

Dissertation Construction 05

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Interconstituent Wilderness Lifeworlds

05

Lifeworld (Umwelt)

The notion of umwelt goes back to Jakob von Uexkull (2010) and his pioneering work in animal ethology. The 1933 introduction to his work, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans (where umwelt is translated as environment), keenly connects the Heideggerian notion of tools to Uexkull's project. He is critiquing a purely mechanistic theory of animality that in an oversight, "has stitched together the sensory and motor organs like machine parts (without taking into account their perceptive and effective functions" (p. 42). This mechanistic view omits "the machine operator who is built into the organs just as we are into our body" (p. 42). This view gives rise to a notion of creatures "whose essential activities consist in perception and production of effects"...."for everything a subject perceives belongs to its perception world [Merkwelt], and everything it produces, to its effect world [Wirkwelt]. These two worlds, of perception and production of effects, form one closed unit, the environment" [umwelt] (p. 42).

Dasein, umwelt, involvement, and significance 

What Dasein is already familiar with is not particular entities but rather a united lifeworld (umwelt). In the activity of dealing with gear Dasein "frees" the gear to stand out from the unity as the thing that it is in its relation to the referential totality of the lifeworld. The ontological structure of readiness-to-hand "has in itself the character of having been assigned or referred [Verwiesenheit]. An entity is discovered when it has been assigned or referred to something, and referred as that entity which it is. With any such entity there is an involvement which it has in something. The character of being which belongs to the ready-to-hand is just such an involvement. If something has an involvement, this implies letting it be involved in something. The relationship of the 'with...in...' shall be indicated by the term 'assignment' or 'reference' (Heidegger, 1962, p. 115).  This and what follows in Being and Time are crucial passages for my argument.

The assignment or referential character is the character of entities involved with Dasein in its lifeworld. The assignment character is the semiotic character of being-in-the-world. The "having been assigned" is the moment of withdrawl that is the 'turning towards' whatever it is assigned to or turns to; i.e., the being of the gear goes from being to having been turned (like a sign). This turning is related to what Harman has taken to be the tension between sensual objects (entities prior to withdrawl) and their real qualities. He relates it to eidos and the work of Husserl "in which the sensual object differs not from its shifting accidental facades (sensual qualities), but from the plurality of qualities that it truly needs to remain what it is from moment to moment" (2010, p. 98).

The worldhood of the lifeworld is much deeper than today's work will show. Next week, we go further into this through involvement and significance.

Dissertation Construction 04

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Interconstituent Wilderness Lifeworlds

04

Understanding

My aim is understanding interconstituent wilderness lifeworlds. What is understanding? What does interconstituent signify? What are lifeworlds?

Understanding is an existentiale. That is, understanding is a fundamental ontological characteristic of existence. Understanding is rooted in standing in the sense of standing forth (verstehen) and it relates to being constant and holding status. To understand something in the sense of the act of understanding is to let it stand forth. Ver-stehen is "forth-standing". To understand is to let a thing be as it is taking its stand. When we understand something it is clarified in the sense of being clear to us. Again, it is to let it stand forth, to give it status, to grant it clearance. It is "a clear grasp of a thing as a whole, but no necessary reference to any preceding process of thought" (Inwood, 1999, p. 234, quoting a Dictionary of German Synonyms, 1977). Inwood goes on (in his VERY helpful Heidegger Dictionary) to interrelate comprehension and understanding. Understanding is more primordial than comprehension; "one can understand being without comprehending it, but one cannot comprehend it without understanding it" (p. 234). 

I don't have the text to support it at this very moment, but I seem to recall that understanding is related to what Aristotle called phronesis, practical wisdom. This is related directly to what I gave (from Bogost and from Harman via Lingis) as a kind of "carpentry". Borgmann (1984, p. 44) has been onto this for a long time. He gave a specific carpenterial example by calling upon the work of Sturt (The Wheelwright's Shop). The wheelwright (wagon craftsman) understands his lifeworld and the role that wood plays (its status) in that world. The wheelwright has "knack" for working with wood and as such he is attuned to it in such a way that it is not a cognitive knowledge but more as an embodied or somatic "grasp of a thing as a whole". Going Greek, he is phronetically involved with the physis as phusis directly at hand. Okay, back up a bit before we get too far down that rabbit hole.

Let's get after interconstituency. A constituent is: a component (American Heritage Dictionary). For public lands, constituents are the human element that compose those people that hold a stake in a place (stakeholders). Constituents serve as part of a whole. The whole is not just the social aspect of public lands. The whole in this sense is the lifeworld of people, places and things as it is shared across all those spheres. To get semiotic, it is the semiosphere (Lotman) and this coincides with what Heidegger called the Verweissungsganzheit or the referential totality. Borgmann (1984) has it as a "web of relations".

Note how the wheelwright acts as the phronemos with his knack for understanding the referential totality of his world in this extended passage from Borgmann (1984, p. 44) quoting Sturt:

"As people adjust to the land, the land discloses itself to the people. There is 'a close relationship between the tree-clad country-side and the English who dwelt there.'... What takes the wheelwright into 'sunny woodland solitudes,' 'into winter woods or along leafless hedgerows,' and 'across wet water-meadows in February' is the search for timber. But 'timber was far from being a prey, a helpless victim, to a machine,' Sturt says, and continues: 'Rather it would lend its subtle virtues to the man who knew how to humor it: with him, as with an understanding friend, it would co-operate.'"

Dissertation Construction 03

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Interconstituent Wilderness Lifeworlds

03

I am due for an explication of the tool analysis, however, in keeping with this being more of a journal for my dissertation construction, I want to focus on what's shining most brightly for me today -- that is, attunement.

Attunement

In German, it is Befindlichheit. He calls it die Stimmung, das Gestimmtsein. We must catch the musical metaphor here and realize that Stimmung often denotes "mood", but it also means the tuning of a musical instrument. The M&R translation of BT uses "state-of-mind" for Befindlicheit and it is literally "the state in which one may be found". To me, this self founding is akin to one's standing. And as is the often refrain, "Dasein is the being that takes a stand on its own being." What might it mean to take a stand? To me, this means to stand for something. Herein is my connection to semiotics, the doctrine of signs. How? A sign is a thing that stands for something else.

Dasein is the being that takes a stand on its own being. Recall that Dasein is literally "there being" or, as I have it, Dasein is somebody. Heidegger connects Befindlichheit (the state in which one may be found) with Daseing in the assertion, "[i]n this 'how one is', having a mood brings being to its "there"". (BT p. 173). 

This has to do with being in a lifeworld. Heidegger offers three essential characteristics of Befindlicheit. First, the disclosing of thrownness is one and the disclosing of being-in-the-world as a whole is the second. For thrownnness we get that it signifies "the sense of finding itself [Dasein] in the mood that it has" (p. 174). "The way in which the mood discloses is not one in which we look at thrownness, but one in which we turn towards or turn away" (p. 174). 

Signs

Eureka! Turning towards and turning away are the sign character of Dasein. Let's return to Heidegger's brief interlude on signs and reference. Heidegger seems to hold signs as literally pieces of equipment and he offers a turn signal on an automobile as his example of a sign. I'm going to freestyle my way through Section 17 of BT as it begins on page 107 of the Macquarrie and Robinson translation, so bear with me...

H is approaching the heart of his disclosure of worldhood. This is his third chapter of Division I and he has given us the tool analysis shed some light on the ontological nature of readiness-to-hand. He begins 17 by stating that the interpretation of ready-to-hand as it relates to "the phenomenon of reference or assignment became visible; but we merely gave an indication of it" (p. 107). H wants to really lay out what is going on with the phenomenon of reference or assignment. 

Alright, Heidegger and signs, here we go. "The word 'sign' designates many kinds of things: not only may it stand for different kinds of signs, but being-a-sign-for can itself be formalized as a universal kind of relation, so that the sign-structure itself provides an ontological clue for 'characterizing' any entity whatsoever" (pp. 107-108, italics his, bold is mine).

The next five paragraphs are crucial and challenging for me to comprehend. H seems to move back and forth between the structure of signs and the structure reference with pivots about indication and servicability. There is a difference between signs working in reference of servicability and in reference of indication. H then lays out what it may mean to have a sign as an indication before clearly giving his definition of 'sign'.

"A sign is not a Thing which stands to another Thing in the relationship of indicating; it is rather an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality of equipment into our circumspection so that together with it the worldly character of the ready-to-hand announces itself" (p. 110). Signs can indicate, but the relationship, the character of passing the meaning from one to another (like passing the baton in a relay race), is not as indication. What do signs indicate? "Signs always indicate primarily 'wherein' one lives, where one's concern dwells, what sort of involvement there is with something" (p. 111).

That last sentence is the linchpin. However, the translation and connotation of Bewandtnis as involvement doesn't make it entirely clear. Remember, our launch point for signs was from Befindlicheit (let's come out with it, for me Befindlicheit means embodiment--Dasein is somebody taking a stand as they stand out (exist) and Befindlicheit is how one is found. Where somebody is found is how they stand. It is there standing). Okay so that is our launch point. But what of Bewandtnis? We need the translators footnote on p. 115 "The terms 'Bewenden' and 'Bewandtnis' .... [t]heir root meaning has to do with the way something is already 'turning' when one lets it 'go its own way', 'run its course', follow it 'bent' or 'tendency', or finish 'what it is about', or 'what it is up to' or 'what it is involved in'....(The reader must bear in mind that the kiind of 'involvement' with which we are here concerned is always an involvement of equipment in 'what it is up to' or what it is 'doing', not a person's involvement in circumstances in which he is 'caught' or 'entangled.'" Therefore, signs indicate "what sort of involvement there is with something" (p. 111). They indicate the turn that one is taking. So how does this relate to attunement (Befindlicheit as embodiment). The way in which embodiment as mood opens up a world is "one in which we turn towards or away". If we are turning towards or away, we as Dasein are also signs among the referential totality of equipmental signs as well.

Without going to much further, it suffices to offer Heidegger's last definition of sign given in Section 17. "A sign is something ontically ready-to-hand, which functions both as this definite equipment and as something indicative of the ontological structure of readiness-to-hand, of referential totalities, and of worldhood" (p. 114).

Dissertation Construction 02

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Inter-constituent Wilderness Worlds

02

World

Heidegger gives four definitions for world. The one most applicable for this investigation is:

that 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'. "World" has here a pre-ontological existentiell signification. Here again there are different possibilities: "world" may stand for the 'public' we-world, or one's 'own' closest (domestic) environment. (BT p. 93)

Umwelt

His word for environment in this case is umwelt. Umwelt—“domain that a species is capable of modeling (the external world of experience to which a species has access” (Sebeok, 2001, p. 157); “the tacit, taken-for-granted context, tenor, and pace of daily life to which normally people give no reflective attention” (Seamon & Sowers, 2009, p. XXX).

I am interested in doing what Heidegger called "an ontological Interpretation of those entities within-the-environment [umwelt] which we encounter as closest to us" (BT p. 94). Harman (2011) considers this to be ontography.

Ontography

"Rather than a geography dealing with stock natural characters such as forests and lakes, ontography maps the basic landmarks and fault lines in the universe of objects" (Harman, 2011, p. 125). Dasein has dealings in an umwwelt with these objects [Heideggerian "things"]. Dealing involves a skillful coping (Sean Kelly on BT) and we term Dasein (somebody) doing the skillful coping to be involved in a kind of carpentry. Not only is somebody-in-the-world doing carpentry in their skillful coping, but carpentry is also another term for ontography. Bogost (2012) cites Harman (Guerrilla Metaphysics, pp. 2, 72, 166) who borrowed the notion from Lingis (Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, p. 41). Harman and Lingis relate carpentry in reference "to how things fashion one another and the world at large" (Bogost, 2012, p. 93). Bogost (p. 93) goes further to quote Thomson (Heidegger on Ontotheology, p. 164) and circles back to Heideggerian investigations noting that by way of them "we come to understand and experience entities as being richer in meaning than we are capable of doing justice to conceptually."

Gear

With what entities does somebody involve themselves with? I intend to make the case that just as carpenters involve themselves with tools, wilderness constituents involve themselves with gear. Gear or as in Being and Time, equipment, is "that which one has to do with in one's concernful dealings (praxis)" (pp. 96-97). This brings us to Heidegger's tool analysis, a fundamental concept for my investigation of interconstituent wilderness worlds. 

Dissertation Construction 01

Every morning I'm taking at least 60 minutes to write in order to construct a dissertation in partial fulfillment toward earning my PhD in Forestry and Conservation Sciences. It will be drafted roughly and often without proper scholarly citation in order to be most productive (while noting where follow-up is due).

Wild Eco-embodiment: Understanding Inter-constituent Wilderness Worlds

01

I lean hard on Heidegger. In Being and Time (19xx) he works out definitions of  significance and meaning.

Significance

I investigate the human-wilderness Bedeutsamkeit, that is, significance: the enmeshed involvements of Dasein (somebody) with wild places. "We conceive the relational character of these relations of referring [Verweisens] as signifying [be-deuten]. In its familiarity with these relations Dasein 'signifies' ['bedeutet', i.e. interprets] to itself, it primordially gives itself to understand its being and ability-to-be with regard to its being-in-the-world. The For-the-sake-of-which [Das Worumwillen] signifies [bedeuted, i.e. points out] an In-order-to [ein Um-zu]; this in turn [ein Wobei] of letting-be-involved; the In-which signifies a With-which [ein Womit] of involvement. [...] The relational whole of this signifying [Bedeutens] we call Beduetsamkeit" (BT, 87; cf. 359f., 364).

Meaning

Meaning (Sinn or Sens) is the totality of significance that exists for somebody in their everyday involvement within a world (Umwelt, i.e. surrounding environment). For Morris (2004, p. 24) “Sens…is neither a meaning in the head nor is it interior to subjectivity; it is a meaning within a movement that crosses body and world.” To be released towards the world is be oriented toward the gathering of meaning; “the meaning [Sinn] which reigns in everything that is” (Heidegger, 2001, p. 46, as quoted with emphasis and annotation added in James, 2012, p. 37). Morris’s sens and Heidegger’s Sinn are both linked to meaning as an interpretant of lived experience. This relates the experientially embodied aspect of gathering wilderness meaning.