Heidegger

13/09/2008 _jPolanik at nc.rr.com_ (mailto:jPolanik@nc.rr.com)

writes: Correct Translation of ‘Cogito; ergo, Sum’

_GEVANS613 at aol.com_ (mailto:GEVANS613@aol.com) wrote:

_jPolanik at nc.rr.com_ (mailto:jPolanik@nc.rr.com)

Jud (earlier)
The fact that he [Descartes] speaks perfect Latin and is able to
neurologically generate such a sophisticated ontological proposal is evidence enough
that he that he has a brain.

Joe:
who requires evidence that Descartes had a brain?

Jud:
So now you admit that … Descartes … was an embodied, embrained
philosopher … .

Joe:
I never denied that Descartes had a brain. I merely claim that this fact
does not, by itself, prove that the brain is the sole source of the
phenomenological experiencer.

Jud:
THAT fact that the brain together with its sensorium is the sole source of
the human experiencer does NOT need proving.
What NEEDS proving by you and your ilk is your outrageously wacky claims
bereft of ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE that some weirdo secondary ontological
*soul* or *mind or *consciousness* exists. I have been calling upon you to provide
such proofs for these claims and this spiritualistic craziness for the last
six months - result? Significantly - utter silence upon the matter.
Persistant and hysterical claims like yours without any evidence whatsoever is no
more than trannie spam.

Joe:
at present, neither philosophers nor scientists can explain how this
happens.

Jud:
I am not surprised - there is absolutely zilch to explain. It is like being
called upon to respond to a claim that the planet Mercury is inhabited by
animated bathroom plastic ducks. Such unhinged claims do not merit any answer -
just a tight-lipped smile, a patronising pat on the head and an
empathetically muttered:

*There, there my boy - don’t you worry you little head with such things.
Take these pills with a cup of hot solanum dulcamara and have an early night.*

It is EXACTLY the same with the nutty spiritualists, who claim they can
tempt ghosts to spew up some of their out-of-body fluids as ectoplasm (actually
gauze soaked in a see-through stiffening agent) during their pay and view
performances of Spirit Materialisation. I refer to those crooks who claim to be
an intermediary between the living and the dead and rip off silly, old,
confused trannie women who have lost their loved ones. They are similar sort of
con men as the brotherhood of transcendentalists, the difference being that
trannies milk their dupes of their money not at spiritualist séances and by
claiming communion with their dead Nazi hero, but by writing crap books like
Heidegger did, who even in death works the bookshops scam as a literary
pick-pocket. Right now it is hardly worth any philosophewr bothering to get off his
arse to *investigate* such childish non-questions.

Joe:
even Daniel Dennett, at least as severe an eliminativist as you, admits thi
s: “Somehow the brain must be the mind, but unless we can come to see in some
detail how this is possible, our materialism will not explain consciousness,
but only promise to explain it, some sweet day.” [Consciousness Explained, p.
41-2]

Jud: It is patently obvious that Dennett is NOT an eliminativist - a
progressive nominalist perhaps. The very fact that he mentions *mind* and mentions
*consciousness* as if it needed to be *explained* should have alerted you to
this fact - but obviously the penny failed to drop.

Hint. If you want to argue with an eliminativist (not that you stand a
snowball’s chance of any success) you need to be aware of what eliminativism is.
The only reason that I can argue successfully with the Heidi cult is that I
have read masses of cult literature and read up on the career of the Nazi
monster who is guilty for the existence of the cult. I have read much more of
Heidegger than I own up to - but if you wish to try and understand a madman you
have to listen and try to understand the babble whilst standing well clear of
the lip-froth.

Joe:
if you can explain *how and where* the brain generates awareness or
conscious experience; would you kindly share that explanation with the rest of us?

Jud:
It doesn’t. *Awareness* and *conscious experience* do not exist. It no
more exists than *Being*, or *movement* or *the history of Guatemala* or *the
picture of Osama Bin Laden tattooed on George W. Bush’s arse.* Only the
aware, consciously experiencing brain exists and you can see plenty of samples of
what they look like floating in jars of formaldehyde in any medical
laboratory. For a view of a working brain - key google and it will probably find you
a short film of *open brain surgery.*

I am sure that if you ere stopped by customs at Kennedy Airport and asked by
them to give an account of yourself, you would answer something like: *I am
Joe Polanik, a carpet-layer from Dead Man’s Gulch., Alabama. I am an American
citizen of Polish extraction.* (Or whatever) You would NOT answer: *I have no
idea who or what I am* … or even/…*I am Joe Polanik and I have no idea
what I am.*/

Joe: I am aware of the details of my personal identity, the ‘who’ I am; but,
that doesn’t tell me what the structure of the human individual is —
whether a human individual is more than or no more than a human body.

Jud: You are obsessed with this tom foolery Joe. Buy a book of physiology or
sign on for a class if you don’t know about the structure of the human
individual. Nobody can tell you or prove that human individual is more than a
human body -= only religious nuts and charlatans would suggest such utter
nonsense anyway. My advice? Put you question on hold. Get a life while you can, and
if you fantasies are right when you die your *soul* might end up on a cloud
with Mother Teresa for company - or up to your neck in diarrhoea down below
with little martin while the devil roars past in his motorboat.

Joe: you are confusing two questions: ‘who am I’ and ‘what am I’. this is
the second of the Heideggerian errors that you persist in perpetrating.

in BaT section 25, Heidegger gives his analysis of the ‘who’ of dasein; but,
there is no consideration of the idiosyncrasies of individual identity —
the ordinary meaning of ‘who-ness’. the analysis doesn’t depend on whether I am
of Polish extraction, whether I am from this Georgia or from that other
Georgia, and so on. the ‘answers’ that Heidegger discusses (self, soul, subject,
dasein) are all responses that might be offered to the ‘what am I’ question..

Jud: Self, soul, subject, dasein? That is precisely why the thicko thug
ended up in a lunatic asylum.

Joe:
the ‘I-ness’ that Heidegger discusses is not so much a ‘who-ness’ as a
self-referencing ‘what-ness’. perhaps one might want to call this a ‘which-ness’
because I know ‘which what’ I am: I am *this* being here. perhaps one might
want to call this a ‘which-ness’ because I know ‘which what’ I am: I am *this*
being here. Joe

Jud:
*I-ness, ‘who-ness, ‘what-ness’. which-ness, when-ness, whatever-ness,
whacky-ness, wheedle-ness, wheeziness, whence-ness, when the time comes-ness -
yawn - for Gods sake Joe - give us a bloody break from such linguistic
childishness - we are all grown-ups on this list and its 2008 for Christ’s sake.

Jud Evans.

Posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 6:01 am
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