Heidegger

In a message dated 09/11/2008 _jPolanik at nc.rr.com_
(mailto:jPolanik@nc.rr.com) writes:

Joe:
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.

Jud:
Humans differentiate between existing in the world on the one hand as
thinking, conscious, mistaken, unmistaken, deceived, undeceived, experientialists,
and on the other hand as merely being alive as corporeally functioning but
brain dead vegetables. The latter state is often described as *merely existing*
and *better off dead.* Obviously an exanimate piece of human meat would not
be able to think or utter the words ‘I am alive.’ … [or] mouth silly,
illogical redundancies like: I think therefore I am (or even worse: I experience
therefore I am).

Joe:
yes. ‘I allege that I am alive; therefore, I am alive’ is a self-verifying
performative argument. the fact that I can make the self-referencing allegation
‘I am alive’ demonstrates that it is true.

Jud:
NO! It is not a question of *I allege* that I am alive. You could not BE
ALIVE in the first place if you could not generate the sentence involved (or
any sentence for that matter.) You do not seem to grasp that humans DO NOT NEED
to *perform* in the way the mystic Jesuitically brain-washed Descartes did
(and you do three hundred years later.)

You do not NEED to *demonstrate* that you are alive. Everybody can SEE that
you do. The whole thing is a childishly naive notion. Why is it so important
anyway? If you do not exist - nobody is going give a shit - least of all
you? The fact that you and other people DO give a shit - is fine, but it does
not PROVE that you exist - No proof is required - you either exist - or you do
not. If you not - then I have just wasted a good second-person pronoun on
*you.* and I will have to watch out that my wife does not see that I am writing
to somebody that does not exist and call Heidegger’s favourite lunatic
asylum and book me in.

All sentences that are formed with what I sometimes call a hanging, covert,
orphanic or denotata-less predicate, and imply the existential modalic nature
of the utterer (the subject) by the verb employed … Thus: *I play football
therefore I exist,* suggests that the utterer is a footballer, or at least,
if not a professional in that sport, it implies that he or she is in the
habit of playing football as a feature of their current existential modalities.
If the utterer who makes such a claim is not a footballer, then the claim *I
am a liar therefore I exist* could legitimately be made in its place.

Joe:
I’m not sure what you are claiming here. usually by ‘orphanic’ you mean a
statement like ‘I am experiencing; therefore, I am’ in which the naked copula
has no explicit complement. Is this also what you mean by ‘denotata-less
predicate’?

Jud:
The denotatum is that which is denoted by the subject noun an actual object
referred to by a linguistic expression.. The abstracta and reificata beloved
of the *any metaphor will do* brigade lack such denotata. A designatum on the
other hand acts like the universal quantifier of predicate logic, for it
designates something (whether existing or not) that is referred to by a
linguistic expression. Any so-called logical expression employing the universal
*designatum* quantifier rather than the existential *designatum* quantifier is
not worth the paper it is written on or the time of the reader reading it.

With the exception of dialogical elision:

*Are you Joe Polanik? - *Yes, I am* (where the predication is antecedently
stated and merely confirmatory, means to repeat it would be a redundancy) Any
sentence ending in the universal quantifiers *is, are and am* have hidden,
implicit, subject-bound referential predicates. The precise scope of which lie
with the addressee. Thus the complexity of God’s implicit existential modes
is different from believer to believer. Presumably The Archbishop of
Canterbury’s awareness of God’s attributes is theologically greater than a novice
priest or the Christian lady who sells fruit from a barrow on the corner a North
52nd Street. Similarly with the cognito, but overwhelmingly so - for the
utterer of any word(never mind logical redundancies like *I think therefore I am*
is more aware of anyone else in the cosmos of his/her existential modalities
(the way he/she exists) Therefore the subject of the cogito does not need to
know, or have it confirmed that he exists, because he ALREADY knows more
about himself and the way that he exists than anyone else in the cosmos - and
(Unless he is a complete moron) ALREADY knows that the is no such thing as
Father Xmas of deceitful devils and that any lying that takes place is done by
humans - particularly bankers, politicians and priests. Joe:

in any event, if the statement ‘I am’ is expanded to explicitize the
implicit complement of the naked copula, we would get one of the following:

‘I am’ = ‘I am an existent (of some sort)’ ‘I am’ = ‘I am a reality (of some
sort)’ ‘I am’ = ‘I am a being (of some sort)’

Jud:
No need for all that crap - the utterer knows more about himself than any
explication could ever achieve - and it would take a hundred years at least for
a grown adult to even START to give an account of his self knowledge. The *of
some sort* is total childish crap!!! EVERYBODY ON EARTH KNOWS THEY ARE HUMAN
- and whether they are male or female (or somewhere in between, Chinese or
Danish, white or black etc.

Joe:
we have to add the qualifier ‘(of some sort)’ because of the ambiguity as to
the mode of being/existence/reality of the referent of ‘I’.

Jud:
NO WE DO NOT - you are writing TOTAL CRAP!!! There is NOTHING at all
*ambiguous about being human and knowing it.

Joe:
this is Kant’s point. I, this instance of phenomenological self-awareness,
knows that I am … a phenomenological reality ((of some sort); but, I do not
know whether I am a product of the brain, or a product of the soul or a
product of the interaction of the two.

I know *that* I am; but, not *what* I am. consequently, it can not be the
case that the ‘am’ in ‘I am’ indicates the modality in which I am
— except, significantly, for the instance of self-awareness that I am.

Jud:
Utter rubbish.

Posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 7:00 am
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