Heidegger

In a message dated 01/01/2008 18:52:04 GMT Standard Time, jPolanik at nc.rr.com
writes:

1. what does ‘complete’ mean when said of a sentence?

the Wiktionary defines a sentence as:

“A grammatically complete series of words consisting of a subject and
predicate, even if one or the other is implied, and typically beginning
with a capital letter and ending with a full stop.”
 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sentence]

when I say ‘I am’ I assert that I am. I am not saying anything specific
about what I am, so the intransitive use (no explicit complement) serves
me just fine. but we know that, merely by asserting that I am, I am
implicitly asserting that I am not a member of the empty set or that I
am not nothing or that I stand out from nothingness. one can say it in a
number of ways; but, the message is the same: there is an *implicit*
assertion beyond the explicit statement that I am. when this implicit
assertion is made explicit the implicit copula complement is made
explicit; hence, there is always an implicit copula complement.

Joe

Jud:
Then your *I am* assertion conflicts with the wiktionary definition you
quoted of proper sentential definition.

*…consisting of a subject and predicate, even if one or the other is
implied.*

It has no predicate and you imply none.

Jud
Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
 http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

“The greatest of all the spirit’s task is to produce a worldview.
The reconstruction of our age can begin only with a reconstruction
of its theory of the universe. There is hardly anything more urgent
in its claim on us than this which seems to be so far off and abstract.”

-From The Philosophy of Civilization by Albert Schweitzer

Posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 10:10 pm
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