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.

The real object is signified by a spade in Harman's Quadruple Object and it may be considering in light of Heidegger's "Thing" so that in this post we wonder, like MH, What is a Thing? "We shall not reach the thing in itself until our thinking has first reached the thing as a thing" (p. 165). We can't reach the thing in itself in a blog post because we cannot represent the thing. The thing matters in a formal sort of way and in an informal sort of way since "thingness does not lie at all in material of which it consists, but in the void that holds" (p. 167). Science is for objects while things are "to be the standard for what is real" (p. 168).
Minding the void and the claim that it holds, "[t]he void holds in a twofold manner: taking and keeping" (p. 169). That will suffice for now. Check out this spade:

Harman, G. (2011). The Quadruple Object. Washington, DC: Zero.

Heidegger, M. (1971). The thing. in A. Hofstadter (Trans.), pp. 161-180. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

The Blue River Declaration

November 2011
The Blue River Quorum

Meeting in the ancient forests of the Blue River watershed in Oregon, the Blue River Quorum includes J. Baird Callicott, Madeline Cantwell, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Kristie Dotson, Charles Goodrich, Patricia Hasbach, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Mark Hixon, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Katie McShane, Kathleen Dean Moore, Nalini Nadkarni, Michael P. Nelson, Harmony Paulsen, Devon G. Pena, Libby Roderick, Kim Stanley Robinson, Fred Swanson, Bron Taylor, Allen Thompson, Kyle Powys Whyte, Priscilla Solis Ybarra, Gretel Van Wieren, and Jan Zwicky. The Quorum was convened by the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word (http://springcreek.oregonstate.edu) with funding from the Shotpouch Foundation, the Oregon Council for the Humanities, and the USDA Forest Service.


The Blue River Declaration: An Ethic of the Earth

A truly adaptive civilization will align its ethics with the ways of the Earth. A civilization that ignores the deep constraints of its world will find itself in exactly the situation we face now, on the threshold of making the planet inhospitable to humankind and other species. The questions of our time are thus: What is our best current understanding of the nature of the world? What does that understanding tell us about how we might create a concordance between ecological and moral principles, and thus imagine an ethic that is of, rather than against, the Earth?

What is the world?

In our time, science, religious traditions, Earth’s many cultures, and artistic insights are all converging on a shared understanding of the nature of the world: The Earth is our home. It will always be our only source of shelter, sustenance, and inspiration. There is no other place for us to go.
The Earth is part of the creative unfolding of the universe. From the raw materials of the stars, life sprang forth and radiated into species after species, including human beings. The human species is richly varied, with a multitude of persons, cultures, and histories. We humans are kin to one another and to all the other beings on the planet; we share common ancestors and common substance, and we will share a common fate. Like humans, other beings are not merely commodities or service-providers, but have their own intelligence, agency, and urging toward life.

We live in a world of nested systems. Living things are created and shaped by their relationships to others and to the environment. No one is merely an isolated ego in a bag of skin, but something more resembling a note in a multidimensional symphony.

The world is dynamic at every scale. By processes that are probabilistic and often unpredictable, the world unfolds into emergent states of being. Our time of song and suffering is one such point in time. The life systems of the world can be resilient, having the ability to endure through change. But changes create cascades of new events. When small changes build up and cross thresholds, sudden large transformations can occur. Thus the world in its present form -- the world we love and inhabit -- is contingent. It may be, or it may cease to be. If the Earth changes in ways that undermine our lives, there is nothing we can do to change it back.

The Earth is finite in its resources and capacities. All its inhabitants live within its limitations and by its rules. And although life on Earth is resilient and robust, rapid irreversible changes and mass extinction events have occurred in the past. As a result of ignoring the Earth’s boundaries, we are on the brink of causing a transformation of the Earth and the sixth great mass extinction.

Our knowledge of the Earth will always be incomplete. But we know that the world is beautiful. Its life forms, unique in the universe, are wonderful in their grandeur and detail. It follows that the world is worthy of reverence, awe, and care.

Who are we humans?

We humans have become who we are through a long process of biological and cultural evolution. As do many other social species, we possess a complex and sometimes contradictory set of possibilities. We are competitive and cooperative, callous and empathetic, destructive and healing, intuitive and rational. Moreover, we are creatures of consciousness, emotion, and imagination, beings through whom the universe has evolved the capacity to celebrate its own beauty and explore its own meaning in the languages of science and story.

We are dependent on the sun and the Earth for everything. Without warmth, air, water, and fellow beings, we would quickly die. At the same time, we are co-creators of the Earth as we know it, shaping with our decisions the future of the places we inhabit, even as our relation to those places shapes us. In this way, we are members of a community of interdependent parts.

Humans are beings who search for meaning. Our beliefs about the origins of the cosmos influence the way we relate to each other, to other living things, and to the habitats we both depend upon and constitute.
Sometimes, we experience wonder and awe at the mysteries of the universe, and fall silent in reverence. Yet, as we strive to comprehend the world, we often divide it into hierarchies of value ― pure/impure, spiritual/material, human/subhuman. Although we often exclude and exploit those we judge less valuable than ourselves, we yearn for belonging.

We are born to care. From the first moments of our lives, we seek connection. We deeply value loving and being loved. We find comfort in close connection to other people, other species, and to the wild world itself.

We are adaptable and resilient. Our imagination gives us the ability to envision alternative futures and to adapt our behaviors toward their achievement. When we are at our best, we develop cultural systems in which we, other living beings, and ecosystems can flourish.

We are moral beings. We have the capacity to reason about what is better and worse, just and unjust, worthy and demeaning, and we have the capacity to act in ways that are better, more just, more worthy, more beautiful.

Because we are these things, we can change. Because we are these things, change will be difficult.

How, then, shall we live?

Humanity is called to imagine an ethic that not only acknowledges, but emulates, the ways by which life thrives on Earth. How do we act, when we truly understand that we live in complete dependence on an Earth that is interconnected, interdependent, finite, and resilient?

Given that life on Earth is interconnected, we are called to affirm that all flourishing is mutual, and that damage to the part entails damage to the whole. Accordingly, our virtues are cooperation, respect, prudence, foresight, and justice. We have the responsibility to honor our obligations to future generations of all beings, and take their interests into account when we reflect on the consequences of our actions. To discount the future, to take all we need for our own well-being and leave nothing for others, is unthinkable. We should take only what the Earth offers, and leave as much and as good as we take. To live by a principle of reciprocity, giving as we receive, re-creates the richness of life, even as we partake of it. Then, our harvests are respectful and thoughtful. We learn to listen, which means that we learn to value congeniality, patience, fairness, and moral courage, which creates the possibility of heroism in the face of disagreement and discord. Moreover, the new ethic calls us to remedy destructive distributions of wealth and power. It is wrong when some are made to bear the risks of the recklessness of others, or assume the burden of others’ privilege, or pay with their health and hopes the real costs of destructive practices.

Given that humanity is inescapably dependent on the Earth for gifts both material and spiritual, we are called to be grateful and humble. To be grateful is to express joy for the fertility of the Earth, to be attentive to its gifts, to celebrate its bounty, and to accept responsibility for its care. Humility is based on an understanding of our own roots in the soil; we recognize the danger we face and the damage we do when we get that wrong. So we are well-advised to be humble about our claims to knowledge; and with art and heart and science, to strive for continuous learning that is open to evidence from all ways of knowing and from the Earth itself. The generosity of the Earth models generosity in our relations with others, and calls for collective outrage when we fail in that duty. A new ethic calls us to defend and nurture the regenerative potential of the Earth, to return Earth’s generosity with our own healing gifts of mind, body, emotion, and spirit. We can find joy and justice in sustaining lives that sustain our own.

Given that the Earth’s resources and resilience are finite, human flourishing depends on embracing a new ethic of self-restraint to replace a destructive ethos of excess. Greed is not a virtue; rather, the endless and pointless accumulation of wealth is a social pathology and a terrible mistake, with destructive social, spiritual, and ecological consequences. Limitless economic growth as a measure of human well-being is inconsistent with the continuity of life on Earth. It should be replaced by an economics of regeneration. Simple life styles that include thriftiness, beauty, community, and sharing are pathways to happiness. Celebrated virtues are generosity and resourcefulness.

Given that life on Earth is resilient, humanity can take courage in Earth’s power to heal. We can find guidance in the richness of diverse cultures and ecosystems, if we honor and protect difference. Equality and justice are necessary conditions for civilizations that endure, and truth-telling has strong regenerative power. Virtues we can embody are human courage, creative imagination, and perseverance in the face of long odds. The effect of humans on the land can be healing; our obligation is to imagine into existence new ways to live that create resilient and robust habitats. If we can undo some of the damage we have done, this is the best work available to us. On the other hand, damaging the natural sources of resilience ― degrading oceans, atmosphere, soil, biodiversity ― is both foolhardy and an offense against the future, not worthy of us as rational and moral beings. If hope fails us, the moral
abdication of despair is not an alternative. Beyond hope we can inhabit the wide moral ground of personal integrity, matching our actions to our moral convictions. Through conscientious decisions, we can refuse to be made into instruments of destruction. We can make our lives and our communities into works of art that express our deepest values.

The necessity of achieving a concordance between ecological and moral principles, and the new ethic born of this necessity, calls into question far more than we might think. It calls us to question our current capitalist economic systems, our educational systems, our food production systems, our systems of land use and ownership. It calls us to re-examine what it means to be happy, and what it means to be smart. This will not be easy. But new futures are continuously being imagined and tested, resulting in new social and ecological possibilities. This questioning will release the power and beauty of the human imagination to create more collaborative economies, more mindful ways of living, more deeply felt arts, and more inclusive processes that acknowledge the ways of life of all beings. In this sheltering home, we can begin to restore both the natural world and the human spirit.