Heidegger

>[Joe]: You seem to be defending the claim that nothing that is lacks
>properties by which one may say what it is. as I’ve mentioned before, I
>think this is quite plausible and hope you’ll provide your argument in
>favor of it soon. in any event, I do not contest it; instead, I merely
>claim that I might not know enough about its properties to say what it
>is. You apparently believe that it is not possible to make such claims;
>but, you’ve never explained how to get the knowledge of ‘what’ out of
>the awareness ‘that’

>[Jud]: We are not concerned particularly with* *WHAT is** (**what it
>exists as** your obsession) we are initially concerned with the fact
>THAT such an object exists AT ALL.. Such existential judgements are
>such that add to the concept of the subject (formalised
>predicationally) and such predications naturally add to our knowledge
>of WHAT an object is - WHAT KIND of an object is under judgemental
>consideration.

I agree that one’s initial concern may focus on establishing that I am
before considering what I am.

however, you’ve confused the statement using the is of instantiation
with a statement using the is of predication. it is the latter that add
to our knowledge of what the object is.

I’m planning another post to address your complete agreement with and/or
misunderstanding of what Kant said about ‘exists’ as a predicate;
meanwhile, let’s consider some of his remarks that are more to the
point:

“I am conscious of myself, neither as I appear to myself, nor as I am by
myself, but only that I am. … this shows that I have no knowledge of
myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself. The consciousness of
oneself is therefore very far from being a knowledge of oneself…”
[Muller 92-93; B: 156-160]

clearly the judgement that I am is made before there is knowledge of
what I am.

>[Jud]: I will proceed on the basis that I am defending the claim that
>in order to be the subject of an existential judgement that which is
>named and known of a priori will have been automatically the recipient
>of some existential modalities as attributed by past human
>instantiators, i. e., the persons who have encountered the name
>previously, approved it, and mapped it to a known denotatum in the
>past.

would you explain what you mean by ‘known of a priori’?

>[Jud]: If the current human judge, faced with a name, is already a
>member of that class of antecedal instantiators, then the connection
>will be made and the name will be referentially linked (complete with
>its acknowledged existential modalities i. e., *the white ship* or *the
>tall man* or The Russian girl* etc., to the existentially modalised
>denotatum, the link will be judged to be a valid one.- and the object
>-properties relationship will be approved. If the name is unknown to
>the person who encounters it, either aurally, or visually, or in the
>case of a blind person by touch (braille) then it is impossible for
>such a person to assign any properties to it whatsoever, and as far as
>that person is concerned (not being a member of the class of antecedal
>instantiators) there is no evidence that the object exists at all and
>FOR THEM the object will be judged bereft of a denotatum and declared
>existentially invalid.

it is certainly true that, when considering an existential construction
such as ‘god is’, one encounters a word or name to which is associated
any number of past statements (by self and others).

but, we are supposing that at least some of those who encounter the name
that is the topic of apophasis will reject all those past thoughts and
arrive at a conclusion like, ‘and yet, god is’ or ‘and yet, the Tao is’
or ‘and yet, the Self is’ or ‘I know that I am; but, not what I am’.

this, of course, is what Descartes did. after concluding ‘I know that I
am; but, not what I am’, he sorted through the thoughts he formerly had
about humans and rejected all but a single idea, that the I is an
experiencing thing.

Heidegger describes a similar process happening involutarily when an
existing-here immersed in the ‘they-self’ (whence comes all its
self-identifications and self-knowledge) hears the call of conscience
and becomes an ‘existing-here/experiencing-guilt’. presumably some or
all of these previously held self-identifications will fall away as the
existing-here begins to live an authentic life.

in view of these considerations, I don’t think you’ll be able to argue
that, because you believe these statements are meaningless, the grammar
of every language on earth must be altered to make the verbalization of
these thoughts … ungrammatical. who’s in charge of making sure that
happens? and, how would we make such a judgement retroactive to cover
now dead languages? if Augustine can get away with saying ’si fallor
sum’ then the problem hasn’t gone away.

[Jud]: Such predicatationally truncated, sententially orphanic
verbalisms are meaningless.

on the other hand, perhaps you are trying to argue that existential
constructions are ungrammatical and therefore meaningless. if that is
so, you’d have to show that they were ungrammatical in all languages on
earth before you could conclude that such thoughts were meaningless.

would describe just what sort of relation, if any, exists between ‘is
grammatical’ and ‘is meaningful’?

>[Jud]: I would appreciate it if you did not insult my intelligence
>with this via negativa crap. I am not some half-arsed theologian
>attempting to describe *God* by negating the crackpot attributions of
>Christian sheep, nor do I seek to speak of God only in terms of what
>may not be said about the word God.

the question is whether the world will let you revise the grammar of
every language on earth just to make the statements emerging from a via
negativa sound ungrammatical.

>I HATE the idea of God - not because I hate the belief in some
>disgusting phantom that does not exist - but because of the real things
>in the real world that are committed by fanatics who believe in this
>monster of the imagination.

I realize that you may be contesting what you call transcendentalist
thinking in an effort to make the world a better place; but, telling
people that love doesn’t exist and that compassion doesn’t exist? how
could that help?

>So please drop the *via negativa* crap, which has no place at all in
>any discussion with an eliminativist.

the via negativa is just apophatic discourse or apophatic meditation
happening in a theological context. the same process is at work in the
opening lines of the Tao Te Ching: the way that can be spoken of is not
the true way. anyone can do an apophatic meditation on ‘Self’ without
any theological context at all.

you ask whether “and, yet, god is” refers to

>(A) The *term *… and, yet, god is {god}* means that the iconoclast is
>not referring to him or her self but to the twits who still continue to
>believe in such godly guff - in spite of the iconoclastic denier’s
>exhortations?

>or

>(B ) The mental state is one of some inadequate iconoclast, who, though
>rejecting all that is modally attributed to God, finally concludes that
>in the last analysis and in spite of all that he has said: FOR HIM *God
>still exists.*

I think it means something like option B but without the prejudicial
verbiage.

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

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 http://what-am-i.net
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Posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 6:03 am
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