Heidegger

_29/01/2009.jPolanik@nc.rr.com_ (mailto:29/01/2009.jPolanik@nc.rr.com)
writes:

Joe:
you are presently engaged in redefining adverbs into adjectives to avoid the
evidence that you’ve been using the is of isness without knowing it.

Jud:
I am not *redefining* anything - I am reporting something. … There is a
cat in the garden. which equals = a cat (conceptually existing) is (singular,
now) — in the garden.

Joe:
yes. we’ve established that ‘there is a cat in the garden’ has the same
meaning as ‘a cat is in the garden’. let’s move on to remedial english grammar by
Americans for the British.

Jud:
I resent racialist jibes very much - cut it out!

Joe:
lesson 1: Adverbs. An adverb supplies information as to where, when, how,
why etc. let us apply this definition to the question that perplexed you
earlier this week. your wife asks you ‘Where is the cat?’ and you answer ‘The cat
is on the mat’. ‘on’ is a preposition. it introduces the remainder of a
prepositional phrase. so ‘on the mat’ is a prepositional phrase. are you with me
so far? okay, good. now the question that perplexes you is what role does the
phrase ‘on the mat’ play in the sentence. well, I won’t say ‘here is a clue’
because that might imply that you are presently clueless; but, I will give
you this mnemonic device. ask yourself ‘does the prepositional phrase answer a
‘what’ question or a ‘where’ question. if it answers a where question it is
an adverb because adverbs supplies information about where something is or
where something is happening. thus, when your wife asked you ‘where is the cat’,
did you tell her where the cat was at that time? oh, you did? what did you
say. if ‘on the mat’ answers the question ‘where is the cat’ then ‘on the mat’
is what part of speech? (pause for a moment of deep thought and cogitation.)

Jud:
Sorry to interrupt your self- applause and be a predicative logic party
pooper, but you are perhaps about to find out that my deep thought and
cogitation is much deeper than you think.

Joe:
yes! ‘on the mat’ is a prepositional phrase acting as an adverb. therefore
it is an … (are you ready for this) … an adverbial phrase! [the crowd
applauds]. …

Jud:
Maybe… by the time you come to the bottom line of my reply, it will
suddenly turn into a Polonikean self-slap on the wrist - who knows? Maybe the
front-wheel of your Dual-wheeled Bicycle of *Being* is so firmly wedged in the
trannie-tramlines that you will transcendentally totter on for the rest of
your comportment towards death - (*life* to non-Heideggerians) - who knows?

But first, I want to address your imaginary congratulatory audience for a
moment, for it is pretty obvious that you don’t listen to a word I say, and,
because you are so anxious to get back to the fact that you don’t know what
you are - you skip things, don’t do enough seriously detailed research and end
up like an Oliver Hardy to your predicational logical Stan Laurel, who,
looking into the mirror proclaims: - *That’s another fine mess you’ve got me
into!*

The two sentences which I am concerned in addressing are:

1) There is a cat in the garden.

and

2) A cat is in the garden’.

Other apparently similar (but not *same*) sentential forms will be analysed
separately not now, but as and when required.

First, to set the scene (before we get to the prepositional complementarity
nitty-gritty - some definitions and a brief recapitulation of the pronominal
*there.*

Subject - Cat. a word or word group denoting that of which something is
predicated.

Verb. A word that characteristically is the grammatical centre of a
predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being, that in various
languages is inflected for agreement with the subject, for tense, for voice, for
mood, or for aspect, and that typically has rather full descriptive meaning and
characterizing quality but is sometimes nearly devoid of these especially
when used as an auxiliary or linking verb.”

*is* does not qualify as a verb, for it does NOT express an act, express an
act, an occurrence, or mode of being. Why? Because there is no *is of
isness.* Sententially a cat is conceptually instantiated initially as a corporeal
subject which simply exists. If the sentence is composed of the two words: *the
cat.* without any additional predication, then that is all we would know
about the conceptually existentialised cat. Notice that no *is* is required to
effect this conceptualisation and also note that no additional information is
supplied if we DO add the *There* and *is.* Thus - *There is a cat.*

Conceptually: *The cat* and *There is a cat* provide exactly the same
information - they are both conceptual existence declarations. The *is* has not
bestowed any *action, occurrence, or mode of being.* There is nothing NEW that
we were not cognisant or aware of antecedently, when *the cat* was
conceptually existentialised as: *The cat.*

Why? Because the *is* is NOT A VERB, and so it has not pointed to any
existential modality - for in the sentence *The cat* there IS NO existential
modality mentioned and *is* only ever points to the existential modality
attributed by ANOTHER VERB which informs us further as to the way in which the cat
exists. If we HAD of introduced a REAL verb, things would be quite
different. If the sentence had been: *There is an old cat, or a one eyed cat, or a
ginger cat,* then we would know more about our existentially conceptualised
cat - but no verb or adverb was introduced.

Now let’s start to introduce a predicate containing some information about
the cat which we have previously instantiated by publishing/uttering the
conceptually existentialising sentence: *The cat.*

A predicate is the part of a sentence or clause that expresses what is said
of the subject and that usually consists of a verb with or without objects,
complements, or adverbial modifiers. But we lack a *verb* or adverbial
modifiers. never mind - onward!

*There is a cat in the garden.*

First let’s find the subject of this existential sentence. The most reliable
test for identifying the subject is subject-verb inversion, so let’s try it
here:

Declarative: *There is a cat in the garden.* Interrogative: *Is there is a
cat in the garden?* which can in turn be answered with *Yes, it is a cat in
the garden.

The inversion test has shown us that the subject is the pronominal *there.*
This is an example of *the conceptually self-existentialising there,* and
the sentence in which it appears the pronominal subject is an existential
sentence.

Ooops! We have a conceptually existentialised cat without any *doing or
action* verb! But first we must ask ourselves:

What pronoun does the pronominal *there* stand in for?

Can it be: *He is a cat in the garden? No, that cannot be certain. We do not
know the sex of the cat - all we know is that a cat is in the garden. Far
safer to substitute a neutral *IT* rather than *HE.*

Now to adverbiality:

An adverb is a word… typically serving as a modifier of a verb, an
adjective, another adverb, a preposition, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence,
expressing some relation of manner or quality, place, time, degree, number, cause,
opposition, affirmation, or denial, and in English also serving to connect
and to express comment on clause content.” OK. *It is a cat in the garden.*

But wait! If there is no verb and no adverb and no ACTION to be ADVERBILLY
QUALIFIED , how can such a prepositional phrase be described as an: *adverbial
phrase?

*IS* delivers no sense of action, occurrence and no instance of something
occurring, or mode of being like: *the cat is mewing in the garden* to
adverbially describe. I therefore claim that both the question *where is the cat*
and the answer: The cat is in the garden are no more than *existential
questions and answers and the *deep ontology* is Question: *Where is the cat
existing?* Answer: *the cat is existing in the garden.*

But of course *depth of thinking* is not your forte I know that well - you
are a tram-liner thinker hide-bound and intellectually imprisoned by the
tradition and I am a lateral more profound, individualistic thinker.

All that *is* does, apart from syntactically pointing to the predicate, is
to adjectivally CONFIRM the morphological make-up of the tri-phonemic symbol
c-a-t as describing the singularity of *cat* and flagging-up a description
of the time the cat exists as - the simple present.

So where does all this lead us? The on-line parser tells me immediately that
the phrases: *in the garden* and *on the mat* are immediately are
prepositional complements being the noun phrase that follows a preposition, like in,
on, through etc. *in the garden* is a good example, of a noun phrase, but
others include: the prepositions: around the shops, through the streets, on the
mat, etc.

Joe:
clearly, the examples that OED gives are similar in form to your ‘the cat is
on the mat’. they give ‘the cow is in the garden’ and ‘the book is under the
table’.
these phrases ‘on the mat’, ‘in the garden’, ‘under the table’ and
innumerable others are all adverbial. they say where something is or where something
happens.

Jud:
They are NOT adverbial in this form - they are existential declarations of
the way the cat exists.

Joe:
in contrast a sentence with a real adjective looks like this: ‘the cat is
black’. the word ‘black’ is an adjective because it says something about what
the cat is — it supplies a further determination of the subject (to borrow
Kantian jargon).

Jud:
Yeah, yeah, yeah - we all know that beginner’s stuff - I am way ahead of you
- I am engaged in pushing out and extending the parameters of ontological
knowledge - not piss-balling around with old scholasticisms in some sort of
defensive linguistic York’s Drift defence of the indefensible.

Joe:
one important difference between ‘the cat is on the mat’ and ‘the cat is
black’ is that they would be symbolized differently for logical analysis.

‘the cat is on the mat’ is symbolized (Ex)(Ey)(Cx & Mx & Oxy)

‘the cat is black’ is symbolized (Ex)(Cx & Bx)

the crucial difference is that the adjectival ‘black’ is a one argument
predicate whereas the adverbial ‘on the mat’ is a two-argument predicate.

so, I’m curious.

when you reclassify ‘on the mat’ from adverb to adjective, does ‘on the mat’
continue to define a two argument predicate; or, does it become a
one-argument predicate.

Jud:
Neither - It is an EXISTENTIAL PREDICATE. I ignore the LOADED Premissal
Propositional Dice of predicate logic like the plague as non- ontological
meaningless nonsense, Your over-complicated, uncomprehending metaphysical
meanderings are quite unnecessary. It is quite simple. My analysis of *is* (like
Georges Metanomski’s) identifies the symbol as an the indicative operator - a
syntactical symbol operating as: a time-and-number-bearing-indicant rather
than an existentialising verb (like *exist*)

This means that unless an extra adverb is introduced, (the cat is sitting
comfortably on the mat) the sentence is AN EXISTENTIAL DECLARATION and any
predication is totally concerned with the existential modality of the
self-instantiated subject and its adjectivally DESCRIPTIVE predicate which
communicates the mode of existence considered of interest enough to utter by the
textualisor.

Therefore to say or read that a cat sat, or is sitting - on a mat, is to
describe or discover more about the way, or the state, in which the cat used to
exist, or is existing at this moment. The predicational phrase DESCRIBES the
entity CAT and is therefore an adjectival phrase. The predicate does not
qualify *IS* because is not a verb of *doing* - there is no ACTION involved as
far as *is* is concerned, (to exist is not an action - the WAY an object exists
comprises its change or action and *is* does not embody or convey the not of
action.

The bottom line?

To answer the question: Where is the cat? is to describe or inform the
enquirer as to the cat’s present or past existential state, HOW THE CAT IS
EXIISTING AT THE MOMENT which includes any change of location, (if any) and bodily
posture, state of security or health, etc. (if it is thought to be relevant.)
Taking a leaf out of your book, it could be said (and I may develop this
theme in more depth) that ANY QUESTION posed or answered about any object
(including the human object) has an *investigative existential root* concerned with
asking for an existentially descriptive update or report and predicationally
delivering a description or existential modal-report of the object. But this
is out of your league and well *over your head* I know.

——————————————————————————
—————————-
Reifications - like biological entozoa are gut-enculturations which are not
necessarily reliant upon nor benignly disposed to the welfare of their
hosts.
——————————————————————————
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Sincerely,

Jud Evans.

Private Website: _http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
 http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

*Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different
speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing.*
(William James.)

Posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 7:01 am
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