Heidegger

In a message dated 10/27/2008 3:11:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
GEVANS613 at aol.com writes:

Joe:
and, in my own defense, I say that I have most certainly *not* perpetrated
any self-serving redefinition of ‘cogito’. the case for translating ‘cogito’ as
‘I experience’ is based on the fact that Descartes used it that way; either
because ‘cogito’ was already defined that way when Descartes wrote; or because
Descartes himself redefined cogito to suit his needs. both of the
possibilities assume that Descartes did in fact use ‘cogito’ the way we today might use ‘I
experience’; so, let’s start there.

Joe, the fallacious generality that “thinking” in any way or form is
synonomous with “experience” subverts the thinking process that gripped Descartes to
in fact indicate thinking was all he could do.
He no doubt thought (qua thinking) an orgasm when he diddled the Queen of
Sweden and then promptly died. It became apparent much later in history that
Descartes *cogito* was comparable to a thinking machine or artificial intelligence
as pioneered by Alan Turing, the father of computer science (re: the Turing
machine) and the turing Test. The possible link to the “thinking” of Descartes
thus delimits any notion that thinking and experience may be used
interchangeably for the simple reason that machines do not experience but certainly are
able to cogito. The misunderstanding here is due to an ignorance of the
function of thinking. If I may direct you and dear old Jud to Jung’s Psychological
Types book it may be noticed that thinking is the complement to gefhul and where
experience would better apply and by which “Feeling” *ist alles.” Apparently
Descartes was as bereft of feeling as were German philosophers, such as Kant
and all of which came to catastrophic climax with Nietzsche was totally
overwhelmed by feeling, so much so that he gave up philosophy to become a poet for
whom gefhul ist alles and by which his cogito was utterly compromised, i.e.,
his Zarathustra finally came down from the rare cogito air of his mountain top.
Bernard

Posted on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 7:00 am
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