More Dreyfus - On the ready-to-hand and equipment

Dreyfus draws a crucial distinction between:

(a) Entities ready-to-hand (designation about the mode of being of the entity, ontological characterization, existentiale)
(b) Equipment (designation about social entities, in relation to other equipment, ontic determination)

Following his interpretation, he deduces that equipment is limited to the sort of entities which are man made, products of culture such as hammers or flags. Such socially constituted entities are, in Dreyfus’ view, unlike merely ready-to-hand entities, in that the former must of necessity be related to other pieces of equipment within a framework of remissive references (what he calls a ‘holistic web’) and never on their own. The hammer as understood in being used can only perform as a hammer within a framework of other equipment, like nails and doors; it can never function in isolation from other man-made equipment. The fallen tree used as a bridge, on the other hand, may be used by us in our crossing, but it needn’t be understood in relation to anything else; it lays there not by human decision but by natural chance.

The crucial misunderstanding here is to be spotted in the last sentence. For it is not clear at all how exactly we are to distinguish between the holistic web operative in cases of mere readiness-to-hand and those in cases of equipment. Presumably, the latter have the obscure quality of only being understood in relation to other equipment, within a referential whole in a manner not proper to mere entities ready-to-hand. To the answer that related pieces of man-made equipment are what distinguishes equipment from merely ready-to-hand entities we must ask: how are merely ready-to-hand entities to be understood, if not in a holistic web of man-made references? Clearly, they cannot be understood as particular, self-sufficient or isolated substances, i.e. the fallen tree used as a bridge is anything but a mere object in speculative reflection. The other alternative is to say that all entities ready-to-hand are understood within a web of references, whether they are equipment or not.

Here the problem becomes transparent: we may trivially respond that the merely ready-to-hand takes part within a holistic web of non man-made references, but this seems to leave the distinction unexplained existentially. How this distinction is to be explained as an existential phenomenon seems quite hard; indeed it seems that we must start talking about how different particular pieces of equipment are related to other pieces of equipment as if we were taling about relations between particular substances. These divisions may be, at best, categorial and thus ontic, since the crucial lesson to be understood is that in readiness-to-hand one never experiences something like relations between particulars, but an integrated whole. The distinction between social and non-social entities seems to relapse into the view that in readiness-to-hand the understanding differentiates entities in terms of their relations qua particulars.

But this is decidedly inconsistent with the idea that no such relations are involved in readiness-to-hand: the integrated whole Heidegger speaks about is ontologically prior to any ontic determination in which such relations or differentiations could be made. It doesn't help to say distinctions are implicit rather than reflective, since that would seem a relapse into Husserlian intentional analysis, i.e. giving an account of how noematic content is determined in peculiar intentional comportments. Upon closer look, it seems the peculiarity attributed to equipment, namely their relational character to other equipment, does very little to help Dreyfus' case once compared to paradigm examples of what would be merely ready-to-hand entities. To show this, let us consider a simple example. It is clear that all entities ready-to-hand must take place within the framework of a referential whole. The fallen tree log can only be used as a bridge if I am engaged purposively in order to cross it; it acquires its readiness-to-hand in the circumspective dealing in purposive acting. In order for the fallen tree to be understood as useful-for-crossing it must obviously be understood in relation to the two extremes conjoined by the tree, to the water and space between the log and the river, and so on.

This understanding clearly does not see the 'bundle' of the tree and the two sides connecting the river as a relation between different entities; the ready-to-hand is always given as a whole and never as a heap of particulars or relations among them, unlike substance talk in theory. Rather, circumspection integrates both the subject and his environment in the act of crossing in such a way that they are a unity, integrated within the horizon of a towards-which, an end which guides the acting Dasein in absorbed coping. Likewise, the tree that provides a shade on a sunny day can only be understood as shelter if it is circumspectively connected to the sun as burning, for the sake of sheltering. This connection, it must be said, can only be provisionally named, since strictly both the sun and the tree are integrated and understood in relation to a proximate task: sheltering.Case in point, the sun is just the 'unpleasant burning' and the tree is understood as the 'sheltering body'.

In sum, entities ready-to-hand are understood always within a peculiar horizon of understanding, in terms of a distinctive possibility to which Dasein has been more of less delivered and which acquires its peculiar character from the previous familiarity of the world common to Dasein. In this case, the burning sensation and the refuge of shadowy areas articulate the situation in which the Dasein moves and goes about his world. In this engaged, absorbed, pre-ontological understanding of the world, we always project ourselves futurally with respect to available possibilities. And this applies to entities ready-to-hand whether they are man-made or not.Having said this; it becomes much harder to see what peculiar quality the ready-to-hand gains as equipment. That it belongs to a region of entities produced by man seems a plainly ontic determination just like the one between objects with intrinsic properties and those relational properties.

But as said above, it remains absolutely unclear how this distinction can be made at the existential level: both trees and hammers seem to operate within articulate wholes for specific purposes; the referential holism is in no interesting way peculiar in man-made objects or conventions. That the hammer is necessitated by the nail is no different from saying the log used to crossed over may only be understood in relation with the two extremes of the river. Clearly, in both examples there is no explicit reflection on hammers or nails, just as little as there is about logs and rivers. The situation merely presents itself in terms of possibilities open for a particular purpose, in an integrated manner. It would therefore appear as if the distinction between entities ready-to-hand and equipment was either trivial (ontic determination) or inconsistent (by claiming ontologically subject does after all experience entities as related particulars, albeit implicitly).

I think Heidegger would therefore simply not make the distinction as Dreyfus does: readiness-to-hand designates the mode of being of the kind of entities which are put to use in circumspection and thus function as an equipmental whole, an integrated unity into which the subject belongs and which is guided without reflection for the sake of something. In this sense all entities ready-to-hand are entities which are used within such an integrated nexus for specific purposes. Tools such as hammers are just as imbedded with nails as fallen logs are with rivers in circumspection. The end of the task, the 'for the sake of which' articulating the horizon of a proximate task, determines the know-how that takes opens a region of entities and a sphere of referential relations. In other words, for Heidegger equipment designates just how the equipmental-wholes which are constitute our commerce with entities ready-to-hand are used for the sake of some purpose; never as a parts attached as prostheses to a subject in acting, but as an equipmental-whole.

This misreading is peculiar in Dreyfus' self-labeled 'Wittgensteinean' interpretation of Being and Time all throughout his lectures and text. This is already recurrent on his book, as in for example the following passage, announcing the interpretation to follow about Heidegger's conception of 'the One' (or 'the they' in Macquarrie-Robinson):

"Heidegger's basic point is that the background familiarity that underlies all coping and all intentional states is not a plurality of subjective belief systems including mutual beliefs about each others' beliefs, but rather an agreement in ways of acting and judging into which human beings, by the time they have Dasein in them, are"always already" socialized. Such agreement is not conscious thematic agreement but is prior to and presupposed by the intentionalistic sort of agreement arrived at between subjects." [Pg. 88]

The line of thought pursued by Dreyfus here is clear: the unveiling of entities ready-to-hand and of the nexus of significance is always socially constituted, and never articulated in isolation from public, shared practices. This seems, however, to provoke certain questions relevant to the question of the ready-to-hand and equipment. Namely, if the background familiarity which articulates all coping and intentional states is social, then are we to assume that it is equipment that which is first and foremost disclosed for Dasein's coping? For it is far from clear that using the tree log as a bridge is 'social' in the sense which Drefyus here seems to want to imply. Perhaps one might grant to Dreyfus that most of our conventional ways of coping with the world (indeed, through language, social norms, and so on) are socially determined. This seems a harmless hypothesis, and almost trivially true. But it is far from clear that our dealing with entities acquire their familiarity primarily in this way.

In fact, Dreyfus goes all the way in his reading, claiming that"Society is the ontological source of the familiarity and readiness that makes the ontical discovering of entities, of others, and even of myself possible." [Ibid]Again, this begs questions about the relationship of equipment with the ready-to-hand, and thus between the entities proper to our everyday involvements and the mode of being in which they are disclosed. For if we want to say tree logs used as bridges as non-societal and yet still ready-to-hand, then it plainly follows that either the disclosure of entities cannot always be social, or that all ready-to-hand entities must be disclosed by social influence. But this latter hypothesis renders Dreyfus' story inconsistent, since the presumed distinction between the ready-to-hand and equipment consisted in the latter's being social as opposed to the former. If we make all entities necessarily social, then we seem to relapse into the view that all ready-to-hand entities are equipment, or else devolve into making a plainly ontic distinction between man-made objects and natural objects. If socially determined entities are thus the 'ontological source' of all further commerce with entities, it seems we would have to posit equipment as preceding ontologically the purely ready-to-hand; a thesis which remains altogether outside of Heidegger's own.

On the other hand, if we resist the distinction drawn by Dreyfus, we might still sort out a relevant story of how the uncoverdness of entities is never world-independent. The tree used as a bridge is not man-made or intended as such, and yet it still remains true that for it to be used as a bridge it must take place within purposive action; indeed the sort of action which can only take place within a familiar world where roles and acts are already constituted and hoped in some way or other. This amounts to saying that the 'for-the-sake-of-whiches' relating Dasein to any entity's appropriation as available must in some way already respond to a familiar world- and it is perhaps in this sense that we should understand Heidegger.

The "for-the-sake-of-which" signifies an "in-order-to"; this in turn, a "towards-this." . . . These relationships are bound up with one another as a primordial whole; they are what they are as this signifying in which Dasein gives itself beforehand its being-in-the-world as something to be understood. (120) [87]

If a man expects to cross the river, as part of the act guided by the hope of reaching the vegetable plains, then we see the extent of Heidegger's radical denouncement of subjectivist tendencies. Even if the log is not man made, the equipmental-whole conformed in such circumspection must operate in relation to an end which is determined by my relationship to others- i.e. to some sphere of familiar roles and potential uses, expectations, hopes, all of which presuppose the world as its background. However, in this sense Heidegger does not intend an average notion of the social as being equivalent to his notion of world: 'the others' in question are those which I identify myself as being equal to, and which conjointly articulate the entire nexus of entities and purposes which guide activity (i.e. the vegetables, the buyers, the family to be fed, the morning sun which announces the time for harvest, etc):

By "others" we do not mean everyone else but me--those over against whom the "I" stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself--those among whom one is too. This being-there-too with them does not have the ontological character of a being-occurrent-along-"with" them . . . This "with" is something of the character of Dasein; the "too" means a sameness of being as circumspectively concernful being-in-the-world. "With" and "too" are to be understood existentially, not categorially. By reason of this with-like being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with others. The world of Dasein is a with-world. Being-in is being-with others. (154 155) [118]"

[Dasein] finds itself primarily and usually in things because, tending them, distressed by them, it always in some way or other rests in things. Each one of us is what he pursues and cares for. In everyday terms, we understand ourselves and our existence by way of the activities we pursue and the things we take care of." (BP, 159.)

Since the way in which entities are disclosed within the world and thus understood is never in isolation to some specific purpose and thus some familiar background, one never acquires the neutrality needed to engage in the sort of intentional analysis proper to Husserlian phenomenology. Of course, the relevant question to follow is how exactly this background gets in place. But we should resist the conclusion that all of our commerce with entities depends on the presence of other human beings of necessity; since one might easily imagine hypothetical scenarios in which entities are still dealt with in isolation of humans. (Tarzan, alien abductions, virtual reality simulators and so on). In any case, the crucial point is that Dasein cannot dispose of its familiarity within a world articulated by different projects and expectations. That these expectations include the realm of the social, of language and culture in general is just the necessary consequence of being already in an environing world, which is interpreted in various ways and varying degrees. Heidegger's notion of being-with should thus be approached with caution here:

In clarifying being-in-the-world we have shown that a bare subject without a world never"is" firstly, nor is it ever given. And so in the end an isolated "I" without others is just asfar from being firstly given. (152) [116]

This passage suggests that the public world of Dasein needs the other in the form of society, of explicitly occurent individuals which coexist with Dasein to articulate a shared world. But this seems to all too easily lend itself to silly objections about virtual-reality-sort of examples whereby a single human being might nonetheless develop all of its functions in isolation of others. Likewise, we may think of other embarrassing examples of socially alienated human beings raised by animals, abducted by aliens, or whatnot. I take it Heidegger's point here is not to say Dasein needs of other existing human beings as essential to being-in-the-world; but that even in the lack of the other, an understanding of the world is only possible if there has been a public world accessible in some way.

Thus, the virtual reality simulator might indeed produce a perfectly capable human being, since it is not sufficient to say others do not exist to render being-the-world impossible, but that for any interpretation of the world we must presuppose some background or other and as such an interpretation. In this case, whatever is programmed into the simulator would need to already have arisen from Dasein qua public being. In order to use language, to engage in purposive activity, one must already lend itself to interpretation of the world and to other entities within some framework; and this constitutes Dasein's activity whether it dwells amidst other humans or not:

"The phenomenological assertion that "Dasein is essentially being-with" has an existential ontological meaning. It does not seek to establish ontically that factically I am not occurrent alone, and that others of my kind occur. . . . Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein even when factically no other is occurrent or perceived. (156) [120]"

Although Dreyfus acknowledges this feature of of being-with, it's implications on his own reading are left unquestioned. For if Dasein's purposive action presupposes the structure of being-in, and this structure remains even in the absence of others, then it seems hard to see how equipment as social ready-to-hand entities are in any way different ontologically from non-equipmental ready-to-hand entities. Once again, it seems clear that the interpretation of all entities operates on the background of a publicly shared world, a world that may broadly be called social. But it is far from clear that from this determination the man-made equipment is social in any more than the rest of entities.

"Whether there is any particular other there or not, when I perceive or use tools or speak, I'm always already involved in a shared world. According to Heidegger, "being-with" is a basic structure of Dasein's being, more basic than relating to particular others. Even when I am not encountering others nor using equipment, others are there for me. I have a readiness for dealing with them along with my readiness for dealing with equipment. Being-with would still be a structure of my Daseining even if all other Daseins had been wiped out." [Df, Pg. 100]

But this 'readiness to cope with equipment' cannot be the readiness to cope with others, since clearly being-with is an essential structure of Dasein, whether it deals with hammers, or logs, or whether it rests underneath the shade of the tree in speculative reflection. How, then, are we to sort out Dreyfus' notion of the ontological priority of the social with Heidegger's idea that that being-with is an existential feature of Dasein? Provisionally, it appears that if we want to call Dasein social it is in the broad sense of being-with; in the sense in which the background practices into which Dasein is embedded always functions in correlation to an other which is undistinguished from oneself (whether this be in language, or in the implicit act of harvesting for the merchant). That significance is always conformed in direct correlation to others, even in their absence, explains why even in cases of isolated coping we do not act as self-enclosed minds or substances. But in this sense, being-with just refers to Dasein's projection of determinate possibilities into which it has been put; it does not mean that Dasein must first learn 'social conventions' or learn language before it can start coping in its proper human way. Dreyfus seems to conflate these two levels of Dasein's understanding in the following passage:

"Of course the human organism must at some time begin to take a stand on itself by pressing into human possibilities. It cannot do this just by reflex action or even by animal directedness. Before it can humanly cope, the baby must be socialized into shared, ongoing activities by imitating people and accumulating the necessary experiences until it begins to do what one does for-the-sake-of whatever it is one is." [Pg. 133]

But here Dreyfus once again mistakes Dasein's projection onto determinate possibilities as something Dasein can only do from aculturation, from being embedded into social roles through interaction with other human beings, language and so on. What happens, then, with the allegedly disavowed reflex acts the baby experiences early in life? What mode of being do entities acquire when Dasein does deal with its environment before it has learned to deal with it appropiately? Clearly, this cannot be pure presence-at-hand, since according to Heidegger this only occur derivatively from readiness-to-hand. But if entities dealt with in this manner have the mode of readiness-to-hand, then the role aculturation plays becomes harder to grasp ontologically. It seems trivially true to say Dasein learns to cope with the world by becoming familiarized within a social world. But this clearly can't be the whole story, for we still need to account for those sort of dealing with entities which occur before we are imbedded into social roles. In fact, if projecting is unreflective and yet opening distinctive possibilities, then why are reflex actions, and natural instincts exluded from such projection? Heidegger is completely unambiguous in this respect:

"Grasping [that upon which it projects] would take away from what is projected its very character as a possibility, and would reduce it to the given contents which we have in mind; whereas projection, in throwing, throws before itself the possibility as possibility, and lets it be as such." (185) [145]

The way out of this shortcoming is to realize that readiness-to-hand is already proper to Dasein's dealings in the world, even before social aculturation takes place. That is, reflex activity, as well as instinctual drives (hunger, thirst, and so on) can be situated as part of affectedness- dispositional states into which we are thrown and which always already open up a sphere of possibilities for dealing with entities in such-and-such way. As to the specific mode of being of entities in these dealings (say, in a baby's dealing with the mother's breast) Heidegger's reply would be that it would be as readiness-to-hand; the horizon opened by the affectedness of hunger, in conjunction with the mother's nursing, operates as the horizon of understanding for the act of feeding. This leads us into two immediatly evident problems: (1) If so, then are we to say animals too deal with entities in the mode of readiness-to-hand? And (2) Why isn't the mother's nursing already an act of aculturation (as indeed Lacanians would be fond of pointing out as the moment of 'symbolic castration').

For the purposes of this post, we cannot extensively deal with the first question. Although Heidegger's account of animal behavior suggests that they lack a world and therefore the character of Dasein. This he deals with explicitly in his 1929/30 Lecture course 'The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics'. However, even there Heidegger does not draw an explicit distinction between the allegedly purely instinctual behaviour of animals and the sort of dealing which babies have before aculturation takes place, or as a matter of reflex. A provisional response might be that although animals do deal with entities in the mode of readiness-to-hand, they lack the possibility of discourse, language and thus of being capable of dealing with entities present-at-hand. This, in turn, might compromise the priority of circumspection as Dasein's most characteristic quality. Alternatively, that social conventions may indeed become imbedded into Dasein's circumspective activity might grant the peculiarity of this mode of being to Dasein. Even so, it remains quite unclear how this should function in any way differently from the behaviour which animals exhibit in becoming familiar into certain practices and into a certain environment. In his account, Heidegger limits himself to discussing less blurry examples, such as insects. Still, this is a broad topic which we cannot deal with effectively here.

The second question, however, pertains to the core of our argument with Dreyfus. For how are we to distinguish between animalistic, non-reflective coping with entities and socio/cultural non-reflective coping with entities? Is readiness-to-hand proper to both? And if, according to Dreyfus, equipment is only proper to the second, then what kinds of dealings comprise non-equipmental ready-to-hand entities, if not on the basis social or instinctual/reflexive dispositions? It seems we arrive here at a crux: for if Dreyfus wants to say equipment is only proper to social entities but that readiness-to-hand is nonetheless a broader category which applies to other things, it is once again unclear as to how these other non-equipmental ready-to-hand entities are any different than socially determined ones. More crucially, it appears now that socially imbedded projection is the condition of possibility for the distinctiveness of human being, this would imply equipmental ready-to-hand entities must precede all other commerce with entities, including merely ready-to-hand entities. But this is clearly absurd, since babies already engage with entities in various ways as a result of instinct and of reflex, before they are imbedded in social conventions. What then, are we to say about the baby in such a state? If my previous suggestion is right, then readiness-to-hand applies analogously to both socially determined practices and uses, as well as entities used as a result of reflexive/instinctual activity. That is, although both cases may clearly differ in their respective kind of affectedness, and thus obviously in the kind of entities and understanding involved in disclosure, there is from the moment of birth Dasein insofar as there is a projection of possibilities which disclose entities as ready-to-hand, viz. as entities incorporated in circumspection for the fulfillment of a given purpose. This applies to the baby's drinking milk from the mother's breast, as well as to his later manipulation of toys and use of language. Heidegger's account is indeed simple and yet broad enough to cover for both of these cases:

"With equal primordiality, the understanding projects Dasein's being both upon its "for-thesake-of-which" and upon significance, as the worldliness of its current world. . . . Projection is the existential being make-up by which [Dasein's] factical ability to be gets its room for maneuver." (185, my italics) [145]

More to come later...

What is the mode of being of the hammer when it is withdrawn?

Dreyfus finds Heidegger to be very confused about the status of entities which are not being put into use or being theorized about. The problem seems to be that Dreyfus reads Heidegger as saying that entities have a mode of being independently from their modes of apprehension. Entities which are ready-at-hand in use, are in some way, expected to be tracked outside of the particular mode of comportment in which they take place. Case in point, he takes hammers to be something one could ask about outside actual cases of hammering (mode of readiness-to-hand) or thinking/speaking about hammers (mode of presence-at-hand). He thinks we would need to posit that the hammer falls somewhere between the deficient modes of (un) availability which occur upon a breakdown of a piece of equipment.

But I think Dreyfus is completely on the wrong track here: insofar as we are asking about the hammer as a particular entity we are dealing with it as something present-at-hand. In readiness to hand, Heidegger tells us, we deal not with particular entities- but with a holistic web of references in relation to the towards-whiches of our comporting, in which there is only an equipmental-whole. This is tantamount to saying that entities ready-to-hand can never be understood in isolation or outside of the role they play in the respective referential-whole and so that they couldn't have the character of particulars- there are no hammers in the mode of readiness-to-hand. Paradigmatic cases of engaged agency are those in which one is actively dealing within a context of equipment for particular purposes, in which no objects stand-against us whatsoever. Entities ready-to-hand are imbued with the subject in the act's directedness; entities ready-to-hand are entities not with respect to the subject as objects, but as the active Dasein relates to entities with respect to their appropriateness or inapropriateness inside a holistic web of references and for foresighted purposes. In no way is absorbed coping a dealing with a mere heap of entities through relational attributes. In this sense, we may not speak of particular entities as belonging to the mode of ready-to-hand, strictu sensu, even if for didactic purposes it is necessary to refer to 'the hammer' or 'the doorknob'. Let us keep in mind this clarification for the rest of our exposition.

Dreyfus' confusion arises from a methodological mistake. He interrogates about the mode of being of the hammer qua hammer, that is as an entity present-at-hand since in questioning entities must appear in such way. But he asks about the mode of being of the hammer present-at-hand when it is not being thought of or dealt with at all. To note why this question is not reasonable for Heidegger one must remember that the two kinds of entities Heidegger distinguishes here are always and of necessity determined in relation to different ways of comporting towards entities. To ask what is the status of hammers when we are not thinking about hammers or using hammers, is still to be making a question about hammers - about some definite object with definite qualities. This means that as soon as we posit a question about an entity as an object it is already determined in advance as having the mode of being of presence-at-hand; even if this object is the sort of object which is normally incorporated within an equipmental-whole in the mode of readiness-to-hand, or if it is merely passed over in indifference. This is not to confuse, of course, all assertion as understanding as dealing with mere presence-at-hand; clearly, when we express ourselves in language we do not for the most part do so in abstraction from our involvements, but we do so to 'point out' something, deal with what appears as unavailable, and so on. The shift from engaged agency with the ready-to-hand to interpretative assertion does not yet abstract the entity from its involvement relations, but merely turns an original involvement with the entity within the whole, to making an interpretation about the entity.

"
The being which is held in our fore-having--for instance, the hammer-is primarily available as equipment. If this being becomes the "object" of an assertion . . . there is already a changeover in the fore-having. Something available with which we have to do or perform something, turns into something "about which" the assertion that points it out is made. Our fore-sight is aimed at something occurrent in what is available. (200)[157-158]

But the question about hammers interrogates explicitly about the hammer as an entity as it stands in isolation from its appropiation in use, that is to say, independently from any sphere of involvements from which it could be interpreted. That is to say, not only to we ask about hammers in an interpretative fashion, but we already perform the abstraction proper to the present-at-hand by de-contextualizing the hammer from taking place within involvements.

The problem thus arises from Dreyfus reading Heidegger as saying that hammers can be something that occurs in abstraction/theory in the mode of presence-at-hand; and which at the same time can be dealt with as as hammers with another mode of being, such as readiness-at-hand or deficient readiness-to-hand. But we must realize that entities present-at-hand are what in each case is given when we comport ourselves in theory or questioning; so that questions about hammers qua hammers are about entities which couldn't have another mode of being. To ask about hammers outside of the comportment proper to their respective mode of being (in this case presence-to-hand) is to ask a meaningless question; the equivalent to questions such as "how does something look when it is not being looked at". It is precisely the isolation of entities with respect to their potential inclusion within an equipmental/involvement-whole that precisely defines an entity as being present-at-hand.

This way, we must be cautious to remember that any talk about particular objects or entities in such a way is, for Heidegger, to deal with them as that something which is presently determined in questioning and theorizing. In this case, the purported thought experiment about hammers is to deliberate about either:

(1) A now-not-yet: thinking about what would happen if someone were to comport themselves indifferently with respect to the hammer;

(2) A now-no-longer: as when I am asking about would happen if someone had comported themselves indifferently with respect to the hammer.

(3) A now: as when I am asking about what is happening now that someone is comporting themselves indifferently with respect to the hammer.

The question about the mode of being of the ignored hammer thus turns out to be ambiguous between:

(a) What is the mode of being of an entity (present-at-hand), such as a hammer, when it is passed over indifferently by the Dasein?

(b) What is the mode of being of an entity (present-at-hand) when I ask about it being passed over by an indifferent Dasein?

Both questions are about particular entities, so of necessity they must be questions about an entity posited as present-at-hand. Question (a) seeks to ask a question about an entity present-at-hand in an alternative scenario where it may be somehow the same entity only with a different mode of being. This reasoning naturally results from misunderstanding the status of entities ready-at-hand. One thinks: just like the hammer can be either an object present-at-hand or a piece of equipment ready-to-hand, we can ask about how hammers show up in indifference. But this is to forget that we never had such a thing as the hammer as something ready-to-hand to begin with; the mistaken assumption begins from thinking that entities ready-to-hand can be particulars. To be accurate, we would have to say that hammers belong to the equipmental-whole geared towards hammering, but not as bundled parts or entities.

Therefore, question (a) has already determined in advanced the mode of being which belongs to what is questioned-that is, to the questioned hammer that is present-at-hand. This is necessarily implied by the inclusion of 'hammers' as particular entities into the form of questioning. To talk or theorize about isolated, self-sufficient entities such as objects with properties is always to talk about an entity present-at-hand, i.e. about this particular entity, the hammer, and how it is when it falls out of relation to the particular Dasein. But this is clearly a nonsensical question following Heidegger- to ask about a Dasein-independent entity in this way makes it downright incomprehensible. It asks paradoxically 'how am I comporting myself towards hammers when I am not comporting myself towards hammers'.

Yet this is something Heidegger is well-prepared to avoid, since he holds that all of our commerce with beings is determined by the various comportments which are proper to the Dasein as existing. We cannot reasonably ask about the 'mode of being' of an entity determined by the Dasein's comportment as if it could remain the same without entering into relation with the Dasein. Particular objects such as hammers are already constituted in relation to the Dasein as present-at-hand, and there's nothing 'behind' the entity determined by such comportment which we could meaningfully speak about. We just have no idea as to what that would be like. This is not to say objects or properties cannot be if there is no apprehensive Dasein, as idealists would, but only that the apprehension of entities with respect to their modes of being is to talk about how they take place for Dasein's understanding in some way or other. To sever the link between the hammer and the mode of comportment in which it is constituted as such is to relapse into the view that objects are what is given first, ontologically. Dreyfus actually acknowledges this in his commentary, even if he misses the point in lecture:

"But of course we must ask these questions from within that understanding of being that
alone gives sense to the questions. We cannot meaningfully ask, What would have been
occurrent if Dasein had never existed? if by that we mean, What would have been the case
if the above question made no sense? That would be to treat being--intelligibility--as if it
were in itself."

The question about the hammer therefore devolves to being a question about the mode of being of the hammer when it stands in relation to the Dasein through questioning, i.e. the only sensible question to make is (b). In this sense, the answer is both easy to obtain and uninteresting: the hammer has the mode of being of presence-at-hand, whether it is currently being dealt with or apprehended, or if one is merely stipulating about the possibility of not dealing with them at all. The entity in question is an entity present-at-hand as determined by the act of questioning itself. Put bluntly: it makes no sense to ask about hammers as something which is ontologically non-present at hand. One can't think hammers qua hammers [something present-at-hand] could still have another mode of being, as if both could be paired by sharing some transcendental quality or property connecting them to a particular entity.

Now, one may hypothesize the following problem: that if in indifferent activity one deals with hammers neither as objects nor as part of equipment (which is to say, does not deal with them at all), and this entails they have no mode of being, then we seem to be making even entities present-at-hand something which couldn't be without being apprehended by a human being at some point. For what mode of being could any entity have if it is not being used or thought of in theory, and it rather stands indifferently to Dasein?

This line of thought devolves in confusing the modes of being of entities with the properties of objects. Heidegger is not asserting that the properties assigned to entities present-at-hand are only good for as long as one holds them in assertion; these properties are precisely striking since when assigned they appear as having been there all along. To ask, for example, about whether the hammer is still on the cupboard when one is not paying attention to it at all is to ask whether it could be identified as something present-at-hand at some other hypothetical time (present). The subsistence of entities is never understood in isolation to their determination by a comporting Dasein, and in no way entails that entities present-at-hand need a comporting Dasein to subsist or have properties. At the most, we may conclude only that such objective determinations about entities can only be made with reference and from the active interpretation of the comporting Dasein for which these entities are presented in this way. By the same token, this means that in any case to ask about hammers is to invariably make a question about an object that is present-at-hand, and so an entity which has that mode of being. The relation to the comporting Dasein cannot be broken to ask about an entity which is only apprehended in a determinate way by the comportment of Dasein.

Dreyfus' answer is thus muddled by his incomprehension: he misreads Heidegger as saying hammers have the mode of deficient readiness-to-hand when dealt with indifferently. But this is an impossible scenario to work out; for it would mean that each and every entity which is dealt with indifferently at a given time by Dasein would have the mode of being of deficient readiness-to-hand. This is not merely implausible, but inconsistent with Heidegger's account. For it claims we should draw an ontological division between particular entities which have the mode of being of readiness-to-hand, and particular entities which have the mode of being of presence-at-hand. The former entities, it would turn out, are either directly used or else deficient ready-to-hand entities without being apprehended in relation to any use whatsoever. But how could such indifference still take the label of readiness-to-hand when it is precisely in circumspection and in express unavailability that we determine these entities in such a way? We would need to imply equipmentality played the role of some sort of property, decided in terms of its suitability or unsuitability for particular properties, and which belonged to self-sufficient entities without the need of a comporting Dasein.

This would obviously render the entire story about how ready-to-hand entities are not objects with properties as downright inconsistent. Heidegger insists for these reasons, and well-aware of these complications, that there is strictly speaking never an equipment and that only understanding an entity as something present-at-hand we can say that an entity ready-to-hand really is. Dreyfus comes dangerously close to this in his commentary when he claims:

"As we have seen, to be a hammer is to be used to pound in nails for building houses, etc. For a culture that always tied things together, there could be no hammers because there would be nothing that it was to be a hammer. But there could, nonetheless, be pieces of wood with iron blobs on the end, since wood and iron are natural kinds and their being and causal powers make no essential reference to any inorder-tos or for-the-sake-of-whichs."

Here Dreyfus misses the point. The point is that entities must of necessity appear for an understanding Dasein, even if what such understanding discloses is thereupon shown to be independent of Dasein. Although it makes sense to say pieces of wood could be irrespective of Dasein, Heidegger's point is that the world is not 'made-up' from entities present-at-hand which are then discovered; this would render Heidegger as a strict realist and an externalist. The idea that interpretation is always Dasein dependent entails that whichever way we end up characterizing nature as, even from the purview of an ontic classification of the present-at-hand, will as such be Dasein dependent. Without interpretation and readiness-to-hand preceding the present-at-hand in circumspection there would be no discoverdness of entities as particulars, no interpretative determination of any entity within an ontology of nature or whatnot. This does not mean, of course, that entities are description dependent, but that to assert 'pieces of wood' are in themselves even in the absense of Dasein is just to say that whatever gets disocovered after interpretation as occurent will prevail even after Dasein is gone. There isn't any one interpretation-description we could assign as natural in the sense that it would have been there without Dasein, since the disclosedness of entities can only take place for a comporting Dasein.

In any case, the point seems ambivalent: present-at-hand entities can subsist 'in themselves' (non-relationally to Dasein) only after a certain interpretation has taken place and can be assigned as the being of the entity retrospectively, from the interrupted sight of circumspection. Enough for now...

Dreyfus on Heidegger's Criticism of Cartesianism - Nature as Available

In discussing how nature becomes an 'intraworldly entity which is proximally available' (BT: 128, 95] Dreyfus begins by assessing how natural materials take place in Dasein's dealing with equipment. Here I find Dreyfus' interpretation to be particularly faulty, since he posits that "Dasein's self-interpreting everyday activity and nature codetermine what can be available for what". To support this thesis, he quotes Heidegger as saying:

"In the environment certain entities become accessible which are always available, but which, in themselves, do not need to be produced. Hammers, tongs, and needle, refer in themselves to steel, iron, metal, mineral, woods, in that they consist of these. In equipment that is used, "nature" is discovered along with it by that use- the "nature" we find in natural products" (100, 70).Dreyfus interprets this passage as saying that because of the properties of iron Dasein, having some task for which these properties appear useful, "appropriates iron into its referential whole... Yet of course, nature cannot be used in any way whatsoever... When something thus becomes unavailable, its recalcitrant properties or an aspect “announce themselves”, as does nature's contribution to the equipment's serviceability".

The problem is that by saying the properties of iron allow for it to be assimilated would entail the occurent properties of iron are somehow first and foremost what determine its assimilation as equipment; something that would require that Dasein has some (unconscious) apprehension of what these properties are in putting them to use. I think Heidegger's point is rather that whichever properties get discovered and thus assigned to the entity will be in direct accordance to the role these entities may play in equipment, and thus in relation to Dasein's sense of worldhood: "even the phenomenon of nature... can be grasped ontologically in terms of the concept of the world.." [94, 65].

This priority must be kept in mind, even if these properties, once discovered, make evident how an entity can be appropriate for some uses and inappropriate for others. He makes this explicit when he states that "In equipment that is used, "nature" is discovered along with it by that use"-[100, 70, My Italics].This is different from saying that iron has a recalcitrant set of properties which cause its assimilation into practice; rather, objective determination in assigning properties can only derivatively be assigned to objects on the basis of (un)availability. This distinction is not innocent, since if we follow Dreyfus we would be forced into accepting entities have a set of objective properties before they are discovered, and thus that Dasein's appropriation must be made to fit these properties.

But this is clearly in conflict with Heidegger's view that categories are derivative from use, and not the other way around. In other words, properties, qua linguistic predicates which function holistically with respect to Dasein's world, are never interpretation-independent.Entities present-at-hand are discovered always in sight of whatever tasks Dasein is engaged in, and the equipmental-whole to which it is imbued, and so in direct accordance to how entities show themselves as unavailable in practice. Discovery, in the Heideggerean sense, is therefore not about strictly discovering properties in entities which determine their potentiality for use; but how in terms of use one may derivatively assign a peculiar description about how an object shows itself. This is why in the act of appropriating the object for use; its possibilities for objective determination are already discovered, albeit not yet determined assertorically or in theory.

The properties discovered appear as having been there before, as the 'always already', but of course not as objective determinations on present-at-hand objects.The ontological priority of practice guarantees that no single set of properties can be said to be ontologically prior to its correspondent role inside a referential whole in equipment. At this point, we still have nothing like properties in objects, but just the horizon for such a future determination. Thus Heidegger: "Anything available is, at the worst, appropriate for some purposes and inappropriate for others; and its "properties" are, as it were, still bound up in these ways in which it is appropriate or inappropriate, just as occurentness, as a possible kind of being for something available is bound up in availableness" (115, 83)

In this way, when nature ends up conspicuously showing up as present-at-hand, it is always from the horizon of availability. Dreyfus does not quite get the subtly of this point, since he interprets Heidegger as saying occurent properties, in appearing constant, must have belonged to the object before and irrespective of its appropriation as equipment. But this is not what Heidegger tells us:

"Conspicuousness presents the available equipment as in certain unavailableness... It shows itself as an equipmental thing which looks so and so, and which, in its availableness as looking that way, has constantly been occurent too." (102-103, 73, My Italics)

The crucial thing to note about that passage is that only in sight of the role of the entity in availability is it shown as having a recalcitrant set of properties. This is to say that when we discover iron to be resistant or heavy, it is always in relation to some task; it doesn't break and so is appropriate to be used as a shield, it is too heavy too when I find it unsuitable to make fishing cranes from, etc. The predicates 'resistant' or 'frail' will be assigned to 'wood' as something present-at-hand on the basis of how it turns up as (un)available, and so in terms of its appropriateness for certain purposes and projects.

The assignment of predicates which can function as properties are never Dasein-independent in the sense that the meaning of such predicates can never be understood in isolation to the activity in which the present-at-hand entity is disclosed, even if it appears as having always possessed those qualities prior to their discovery in malfunction.This thesis is backed up by Heidegger's claim that even if we were to spell out any given set of occurent properties for those objects in nature which are present-at-hand, this would still not suffice to give us the phenomenon of the world. Since being-in-the-world does not consist of synthetically piling up occurent objects prior to putting them into use, Heidegger contends use must be ontologically prior to the rubric of 'nature':

"Nature as the categorial aggregate of those structures of being which a definite being encountered within-the-world may possess, can never make worldliness intelligible." [93-94, 65] and "nature as reality can only be understood on the basis of worldliness" [History of the Concept of Time, 199].

Dreyfus understands Heidegger's claim that we are for the most part not dealing with isolated, present-at-hand entities. The cognitivist objection would be that before an entity can be appropriated into a referential whole and thus be put into use, it must have been discovered in some way or another. Heidegger accepts this much: as long as we do not think that we first deal with entities qua occurent objects which are present-at-hand, we can make room for a story about how entities get incorporated into use by circumspection. Thus even "when the equipmental characters of the available are still circumspectively undiscovered, they are not to be interpreted as bare thinghood for an apprehension of what is just present-at-hand and no more" [112, 81]. Whether this is a plausible thesis is not for us to determine here.