In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger's work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present-at-hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger's further (...) claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger's position and then develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a hermeneutic version of ontological pluralism, addressing the question of the discursive articulation of ways of being. The first section presents the notion of a pluralism of ways of being as a restriction of an ontological monism. The second section puts forward a criticism of Kris McDaniel’s proposal of understanding ways of being as kinds of quantifiers. The third section analyses the notion of way of being as a modal concept, explaining ways of being as (...) internal possibilities endowed with a normative force regarding the identity-conditions of entities. The fourth one is a statement about the need of developing a pluralist account of the propositional reference to entities based on ontological pluralism. The fifth section deals with the issue of the discursive articulation of ways of being. The two last sections present a hypothesis concerning a semantic condition for an adequate articulation of ways of being. I argue for a kind of finitude-sensitivity in the semantics of the discursive articulation of internal possibilities, which implies the requirement of developing a hermeneutic notion of silence that may properly work in the discursive articulation of ways of being. (shrink)

RESUMO No Curso de Inverno de 1928/29, Heidegger afirmou que a matematização irrestrita no conhecimento dos seres vivos resultaria numa falha no propósito de elaborar a ontologia da vida orgânica. No presente artigo, examino as razões que justificam essa concepção. Com base em interpretações das investigações de biólogos como Hans Driesch J. v. Uexküll e Hans Spemann, o argumento de Heidegger integra quatro passos: 1) uma abordagem mereológica do corpo orgânico, concebido como uma unidade funcional de aptidões e intrinsecamente relacionado (...) a um ambiente; 2) uma análise formal da constituição dinâmica das aptidões, cuja estrutura pulsional consiste no atravessamento regulatório de uma dimensão; 3) uma interpretação do princípio de unificação das aptidões em termos da aptidão para comportar-se com algo em um ambiente. Esta argumentação leva a duas conclusões gerais: a matematização irrestrita implica uma descrição mecânica que supõe a desconsideração da determinação modal dos organismos; a estrutura dimensional, regulatória e protointencional das aptidões orgânicas é o fator limitante da matematização da vida.ABSTRACT In the Winter Course of 1928/29, Heidegger declared that an unrestricted mathematical determination in the knowledge of living beings would imply a failure in the purpose of developing the ontology for organic life. In this paper, I examine the reasons that justify this idea. Based on interpretations of biological researches carried by Hans Driesch, J. v. Uexküll and Hans Spemann, Heidegger’s argument has three steps 1) a mereological account of the organic body, which is conceived both as a functional unity of capabilities and as intrinsically related to an environment; 2) a formal analysis of the dynamic constitution of capabilities, which instinctually driven structure is a regulatory traversing of a dimension; 3) an interpretation of the unification principle of capabilities, which is conceived as a capability of behaving towards something within an environment. This argument entails two general conclusions: first, the unrestricted mathematical determination implies a mechanical description that presupposes the neglect of the modal structure of organisms; second, the dimensional, regulatory and proto-intentional structure of the organic capabilities is the limiting factor of the mathematical determination of living organisms. (shrink)