Monday, September 23, 2013

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.

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