Heidegger

[Joe]: the topic under discussion is whether ‘cogito’ is properly
translated as ‘I experience’ because Descartes used it that way.

[Jud]: So where does that statement take us as far as the cogito is
concerned? It means that following Descartes’ practice of exhaustively
spelling out the inclusive features of the verb *to think* we have no
alternative but to reformulate his cogito and show it in its full
existential expanse and implications as specified by him. Here is the
cogito recast into its fuller and more correct form - though it might
well also include ALL of the modes of a thinking human being:

>*I think, sense, perceive, see, hear noise, feel heat, sleep, walk,
>therefore I exist.*

>Why the hell he did not go the whole hog and simply say: I live
>therefore I exist. and give us all a bloody break?

for one thing, it would have made his connection to Augustine too clear
for comfort.

“Let a thousand kinds, then, of deceitful objects of sight be presented
to him who says, I know I am alive; yet he will fear none of them, for
he who is deceived yet is alive.” [De Trinitate XV.xii.21]

this statement could be cast into the format of a forensic inference,
thus: I am deceived; therefore, I am alive.

compare this statement to what Augustine says in the City of God, “if I
am mistaken, I am”, which would be cast into the forensic inference
format as “I am mistaken; therefore, I am”.

the difference between ‘I am deceived’ and ‘I am mistaken’ is
insignificant; but; the difference between ‘I am’ and ‘I am alive’ *is*
significant. in ‘I am alive’ the copula is complemented with something
other than the root predicate; consequently, ‘I am alive’ claims
additional knowledge as to what I am (a living thing) not just that I
am.

in the case of Heidegger, the additional, unwarranted information comes
*after* explicitizing the implicit complement of ‘am’, thus: ‘I am’ = ‘I
am a being’. so long as ‘I am a being’ means no more than the minimal ‘I
am not nothing at all’, ‘being’ functions as a root predicate. in such a
case there is nothing wrong with expanding ‘I am’ into ‘I am a being’.

however, Heidegger seems to think that, having decided that ‘I am’ = ‘I
am a being’, he can consult the latin, greek and sanskrit root of the
word ‘being’ to discover more about the I that I necessarily am.

that is as fallacious as noting the fact that the statement ‘there is an
even prime number’ can be translated into ‘an even prime number exists’
— and then claiming that one can redefine ‘exists’ to mean ‘exists as
matergy’ and apply that meaning to the subject, ‘an even prime number’.

===

the conclusion is inescapable: versions of the cogito/experiento
argument with an uncomplemented copula are more modest; and, therefore,
better for stating a certainty.

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, November 9th, 2008 at 7:02 am
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