Video on Heidegger's structure of being-in-the-world

http://vdownload.eu/watch/4569330-heidegger-39-s-being-and-time-lawrence-cahoone.html

(Lawrence Cahoone) Dasein is a being that is thrown into and open to the world. The structure of existence is being-in-the-world. Dasein is in the world by definition. Heidegger calls this the worldhood which we constantly project as we move through our experience. The core phenomenon of being-in-the-world, apart from worldhood, is being-in. Only Dasein is in the world having experiences (being open to it and disclosing it). A person, as Dasein, is like a clearing in the woods. We have capacity to experience, in other words, things get revealed. As we move around, things get revealed around us. Heidegger is reinterpreting notions of experience and consciousness through this notion of clearing, or lichtung.

Human beings always understand things - that's how we experience the world. We carry around with us and project around us a network of meanings in which the objects of experience are revealed. For example, we can understand a chair in terms of what can be done with it. Possibilities have to do with the future. Understanding is oriented to the context of possiblities that point towards possible actions.

Facticity: we are thrown into the world, open and vulnerable to it. Dasein is always already characterised by a state of mind or mood. We are in some state or another at every moment. We carry that mood (from the past) into the next moment of experience.

Falling: the inauthentic identification of Dasein with things within the world. Dasein typically understands itself through present objects and people in the world. In falling, we submerge ourselves into what Heidegger called 'das Man', translated as the 'they self'. In everyday existence, we are overwhelmed by what 'they' think, whatever the newspapers say, and the objects of desire (money, for instance).  Most of us live according to the they, rather than our own authentic phenomena of existence. Dasein flees into the they-self, with absorption in entities.

Dasein wants to avoid angst or anxiety. Angst is the proper response to the finite open-ended nature of human existence. It's only when we feel it that we begin to recognise the truth of human existence.

Sorge (care): the fundamental truth about everyday human being is that we are 'care'. Dasein existentially cares - it cannot not care. To care is to be anxious. In care, Dasein is 'ahead-of-itself, in always being-already-in-the-world, as being-alongside entities.'

For authentic Dasein, facticity and understanding are reconceived as follows.
Future (understanding): Dasein is the only being that knows it is going to die. Recognition that my being is always moving towards a finite end.
Past (facticity): Dasein has the potential to be guilty, or 'recognising what I am not'. This is an awareness of a kind of existential guilt. It is not just about feeling guilty about acts you've done, but also that I am full of 'nots' or absences - what I haven't been and won't be. This can lead to 'anticipatory resoluteness', an acceptance of my guilt in the anticipation of my death. In hearing the call of authentic existence, Dasein is no longer falling.

Temporality unifies the whole structure of being. Time is the authentic self coming towards itself as always already having been there. One recognises it has always been there in the act of making entities present.

Fragments and hope

I'm currently re-working my two findings chapters on the themes 'working with fragments and having a sense of the whole' and 'having hope for the nursing profession'. Whereas the theme of being aware of high stakes was analysed according to 'being-already-in',the fragments theme is focusing on 'being-amidst' and the hope theme is focusing on 'being-towards'. At a distance, it has a very logical feel, but when digging into the data and vocative texts with these analytical filters it becomes a very hard task. Discussing narrative accounts of concrete events and more general dispositions towards mentoring relies on the use of data that is already spoken and representative of the experience. It is already removed from the actual experience. so, I have to consider whether a description of an event or of practice is really showing Dasein's falling, as in being-amidst or whether it is something else.

If working with fragments indicates being absorbed in coping, which is what I am hoping to demonstrate, then I need to find clues in the data that point towards a state of transparent, taken-for-granted practice, getting the work done. It also points towards inauthenticity in terms of Heidegger's Dasein. There is little room for the authentic self when being absorbed in coping.

Staring at a blank page

I'm all fired up about re-working my findings chapters, so why am I sitting here staring at a blank page? I'm starting with a theme called "Being aware of high stakes". This seems to relate to Dasein in the temporal dimension of the past.In other words, it represents the fact that mentors are already-in a world of high stakes. An alternative way of expressing it is that they are 'thrown' into this world. It is already given to them in this way, colouring their moods, and their moods also colour the way they experience the high stakes. Mood seems to be the pivot around which the lifeworlds of mentors, as a particular Dasein, are thrown.

This picture seems to represent the idea of diversely different stakeholders, vibrant use of colour that can represent mood and the tensions arising when the stakes really matter.  If mentoring can be compared to a game of cards, then everyone knows the rules, but perhaps they don't all always play by the rules, and perhaps some people feel more vulnerable than others.  At any particular time, the stakes might matter more to some than others.  One might be dealt a poor hand or a good hand. So it can be in the mentor lifeworld

Being deep in thought

why should we need to know the answer of the Life, Universe, and Everything. The giant supercomputer "Deep Thought" has already spent six and half million years to get the answer for us. But nobody understands what the answer means. http://benchu.com/blog/?cat=9
Based on FluidityTheme Redesigned by Kaushal Sheth

My first run through my three Findings chapters was literally just that - or at least a brisk jog to gather together the data and developing understandings under the main themes. It was a way of 'getting it all together' as simultaneously as possible in order to be able to grasp the whole. The 'whole' was not just my interpretations of the mentor experience, but also the underlying philosophy that underpinned the research. It was a mad dash to have the 'whole' in my hands before being freed up to consider the parts again. I felt subject to considerable momentum, always wishing I was writing the next chapter.

Now that I'm writing about what I actually did, and am still immersed in doing, I'm suddenly paralysed and thrown into a state of deep thought. I read about the experiences of other phenomenological researchers and how the very act of putting 'what you did' into words becomes paradoxical because of the very unmethodical nature of coming to grasp the essence of experiences. I revisit my findings and themes - how did I get to that point? No amount of accounting for ways of working with the data can quite represent my mental processes and the experience of intutively feeling one's way through.

Heidegger: out of the fog

Reading Heidegger does't plunge me into fog in quite the same way as it used to. There must be some understanding of phenomenology percolating its way into me. I'm thinking of using these two extracts to head up my chapter on using phenomenology in my research:

The question of the meaning of Being is the most universal and the emptiest of questions, but at the same time it is possible to individualize it very precisely for any particular Dasein. If we are to arrive at the basic concept of ‘Being’, and to outline the ontological conceptions which it requires and the variations which it necessarily undergoes, we need a clue which is concrete. (Heidegger, 1962: 63)


Thus, to give a phenomenological description of the ‘world’ will mean to exhibit the Being of those entities which are present-at-hand within the world, and to fix it in concepts which are categorical. (Heidegger, 1962: 91)

From vagueness to distinctness

I'm glad I read Robert Sokolowski's book "Introduction to Phenomenology".  I can feel myself moving from a position of vagueness to a position of distinctness, although I am still on that journey - I haven't arrived yet.   Vagueness can be characterised by half-formed thoughts that are inchoate - somewhere between ignorance and error.  "Contradiction deals with the form of judgements, incoherence deals with their content, and both can occur in the fog of vagueness" (p107). The good thing about this is that it is normal to move from a position of vagueness on the way to distinctness. As one continues to grapple with a domain of knowledge, the contradictions and incoherences are flushed out and one's thinking and reasoning becomes distinct.

Different data types telling different stories

As I was preparing a presentation talking about my use of "rich pictures" in my PhD research, it occurred to me that I had a good example of an event that was represented in quite different ways by the different methods of data collection.  My participant had described what happened in writing in her event diary. She had also drawn a picture of the event, in which she had drawn herself and the other parties along with some of the details of what the event was about.  I also had interview data in which she re-told the story of what happened as well as explaining the contents of the rich picture.    Putting extracts of all three data sources side-by side gave quite an astonishing contrast between them. The event diary entry was quite factual and matter-of-fact in the way the event was described.  The interview revealed a few hesitancies over whether or not a colleague could be fully trusted to carry out a certain delgated responsibilty.  It made the situation as originally described not quite so clear cut.  The picture presented the event from quite a different perspective.  It revealed even more misgivings about the situation. 

The other thing I've noticed when looking at the rich pictures is that the participants drew themselves in the picture.  This wasn't at all a surprise, as they were all clearly part of these events, but it does offer unexpected opportunities to consider what this might tell me about their personal and professional identities, and also that of their colleagues sometimes.  It also brings the body into focus.  the body is often overlooked when people talk about their practice, but it is clearly visible in the pictures I've been given.