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An everyday account of witnessing

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Abstract

This paper presents a discussion of an everyday ontology of witnessing drawing on the writings of Martin Heidegger, cognitive science and presence research. We begin by defining witnessing: to witness we must be present; and that which is witnessed must be available. Witnessing is distinguished from perceiving in that it implies and requires a record (a representation) of what has been perceived. Presence and availability are (relatively) uncontroversial but finding a place for representation, which is a classically dualistic concept, in an ontological account potentially presents difficulties. We address this problem by recognising that being available, ready-to-hand and proximal can also serve to represent the very thing being witnessed.

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Notes

  1. A quick word of explanation on Dasein before we continue. The German word Dasein (lit. being-there) is traditionally left un-translated and is taken to stand for ‘human being’ and is usually printed in a different font–like this. Being undefined, Dasein is recognized as being contingent or seen as a ‘placeholder’ for ‘who’ and ‘what’ we are.

  2. To describe present-at-hand as unavailable is a simplification but one which I do not believe misleads. Dreyfus (1991), for example, in his commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, distinguishes between available and unavailable as being aspects of readiness-to-hand and uses the term occurrentness to describe being present-at-hand (occurrentness also having two states or modes). While these are important distinctions I do not think that they are germane to the current discussion here.

  3. The everyday use of the term intentionality meaning intending, intentions or motivations such as the intention to drink a cup of tea should be distinguished from the concept’s philosophical sense.

  4. Heidegger’s ontology requires us to regard all things in the world as beings–e.g. chair-beings, book-beings, macbook-pro-beings, pencil-beings, cup-of-coffee-beings. While this is, to most people, unfamiliar it does remove the fundamental Cartesian assumption of subject and object. Instead, we encounter other beings but this is not to suggest that these beings have intelligence or sentience but that an everyday ontological examination of chairs would be into their chair-ness for me. The everydayness of a chair is its availability for sitting on, or standing on, or for barricading a door with and so on.

  5. Lewin (1936) referred to affordances as Aufforderungscharakter or invitation character.

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Acknowledgments

Sincere thanks to the reviewers of this paper and the editors of this special issue for their help in the preparation of this manuscript. Thanks also to Professor John Waterworth for his kind permission to reproduce Fig. 1.

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  1. Centre for Interaction Design, Edinburgh Napier University, 10 Colinton Rd, Edinburgh, EH10 5DT, UK

    Phil Turner

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Turner, P. An everyday account of witnessing. AI & Soc 27, 5–12 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-011-0323-9

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