Heidegger

Cologne 02-Oct-2007

Mr Evans is wheeled into the doctor’s waiting room. There he sees two
identical chairs, nothing unusual for a waiting room. The one is the
same as the other. But since the one chair is not the other chair, Mr
Evans understands also that the one chair is different from the other.
So the chairs are not only the same, but also different from each other.
But Mr Evans is not taken in by this experience of the chairs, for, as
he has pointed out to himself countless times before, this is the
admixture of “phantom concrecity to what is merely instantiational human
neurological activity” coursing through the synapses of his brain. Such
an experience must be eliminated from the ontological realm as illusion,
for he knows that the same and the other are merely “useful fictions”
that may be “instantiated, but only CONCEPTUALLY”, without ever
(illicitly) raising themselves to the dignified status of existence. The
chair is simply the chair, and in its true existence, is neither the
same as nor different from the other chair; it just is; it exists.
Indeed, in eliminative truth, there can be no other chair.

When Mrs Taylor enters the waiting room, the illusory “useful fiction”
of same and other allows her to sit her generous behind on one chair and
put her shopping on the other, but Mr Evans knows in his ontological
heart of hearts that Mrs Taylor is sitting neither on the one chair nor
the other, for it is only a conceptually instantiated fiction that one
chair is other than the other. Neither can Mrs Taylor and her shopping
be sitting existentially on the same chair, for that, too, would be the
reification of the conceptual fiction of ’sameness’ generated merely by
the neurological activity of Mr Evans’ brain, and would, in any case,
from a purely practical viewpoint, lead inexorably to squashed shopping
with all its attendant paraphenomena of dribbling tomatoes, dripping
cream, etc. Mr Evans, ensconced within the eliminative wisdom of his
brain, will not be deluded today or any other day by such trickery, even
when the other day does not exist.

However, it is indeed a coincidence more wondrous than the Leibnizian
harmonie préétablie that the neurological activity of Mrs Taylor’s brain
has generated, for all practical purposes such as sitting and placing,
the same useful fiction of the one chair and the other chair between
which Mrs Taylor’s bottom and her shopping are now distributed. But Mr
Evans knows that the neurological activity of his own brain and that of
Mrs Taylor’s are in synch only because this is laid down in the
materialist grand plan and program that co-ordinates all the movements
of the snappy synapses and the interbumping atoms and molecules from
behind the scenes. As a firm and proud believer in modern science, Mr
Evans feels entitled to generously indulge in the sober materialist
construction of such a deus ex machina. Thus, on occasion, he is known
– to the trembling and dismay of his invariably inferior and befuddled
interlocutors — to cleverly weave into his ontological discourse
smatterings of Einsteinian physics to bolster his own arguments and
lethally puncture fanciful, ontologically disreputable counter-arguments
from Pre-Evansians from Plato through to Heidegger. For who could doubt
the truth of empirically based scientific theory? Its truth needs no
ontology, he muses, for it is based on hard, empirical facts and
rigorously designed experiments. “A fact is a fact,” he ponders, “no
doubt about that,” adjusting his bib.

As if to prove his point, once Mrs. Taylor has been called into the
surgery, Mr Evans rolls over to the chairs and inspects them thoroughly,
top and bottom and behind. Not the least trace of the will-o’-the-wisp,
that ignis fatuus of sameness or otherness to be discovered! They are
indeed only figments of conceptual imagination, granted, useful fictions
projected as non-existent instantiations onto the movie screen of
consciousness that is generated from behind a low wall (_teichion_ 514b)
by the brain as the illusion that there is one chair and also the other.
“What you see is what you get!” Mr Evans chuckles to himself, “One more
piece of evidence for eliminativism that ‘abstractions are an
existential modality, but they don’t exist’”, a formulation of which he
is particularly proud, “and rightly so, even if I do say so myself”. As
an adherent of materialist experientialism, Mr Evans feels undaunted by
the endless, but very British, quest for a thorough-going, inductive,
empiricist grounding of his ontology. He is in a prodigiously
eliminative mood, in more ways than one.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ _-_-_-_- artefact at t-online.de _-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_-
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GEVANS613 at aol.com schrieb Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:46:16 EDT:

> In a message dated 01/10/2007 jPolanik at nc.rr.com writes: Joe
> writes:However, the thread

> (was or were if it was a past event, or is or are if it is a current
> happening.) The role of the *copula* is therefore to establish that
> what exists (the subject) exists in A PARTICULAR WAY, MANNER OR
> MODE. It would be impossible for the pure *existence* of the
> *existence before essence* joke every to emerge at any time or in any
> place in the cosmos EVER! Entities cannot exist without existing
> AS SOMETHING. If we bracket out the *is*of identity,’ (Karl Gustav
> is the King of Sweden) which does not concern us at this juncture, we
> are presented with the words *is’*and *am* and *are,* which current
> ontological thinking refers to by EITHER what linguists call: *pure
> presence* or *existential modality. The ontologically impossible *pure
> presence* (what you refer to as existence) usually relies on a simple
> naming (nominalisation) process *God* or *hair pin* followed by the
> BE-conjugate *is.* Such a cosmic presence is ontologically impossible
> UNLESS we assume that sufficient additional existential modalities are
> already known by humans *a priori.*I present for your consideration
> the traditional view of the two ontological alternatives interpolated
> with some comments of my own concerning the *ontological
> difference.*(A) PURE PRESENCE.
> The *is* of pure presence simple means that the subject [say *God* or
> *hair pin*] exists in the world. Such notions are usually, but not
> always introduced in forms such as: *God is.* or *the hair pin is.*
> Apart from the fact that it is named: *God* or *hair pin,* nothing
> more is said of it at that stage. We all know that a hair pin could
> not exist as a hair pin if it did not enjoy other existential modes.
> It has GOT to be made of some material or other, it has GOT to be a
> certain shape and size (it wouldn’t work as a hair pin if it were
> spherical and the size of a football for example.)As for the rest of
> its modes of existing, like God’s *I am* on the mountaintop, you
> need to mentally add [if you can or so desire] any other existential
> modalities that you can or wish to, based upon your a priori knowledge
> of other normal or usual existential aspects of Gods or hair pins. In
> other words the *is, are, were and [with caveats] the will be* of pure
> presence ONLY refer to the fact that, as the Swedes put it, *it can be
> found in the world.*)
> *Maps of the Town Centre CAN BE FOUND in the revolving display
> stand in the foyer.*
> The semantic import of which is of course that the PURE PRESENCE of
> the maps is being asserted with one additional existential mode thrown
> in for good measure – *of the Town Centre.* We are left to fill in
> the rest regarding the other existential modes of maps (what they are
> FOR etc) but we have been supplied with another mode - the fact that
> size-wise they are small enough to fit into a revolving display stand.
>
> EXISTENTIAL MODALITY. This meaning of *is, are, were and [with
> caveats] the will be* refers to THE WAY, MODE OR MANNER in which
> objects exist, which extends the simple named presence that the bare
> nominalisation provided (*God* or *hat pin*) the predications that
> accompany this type of BE -word tell us more information once the
> object’s nominalised PRESENCE has been established with the use of a
> name. Thus abstractions *are merely an existential mode of the
> abstractor.* Here the a priori of *the abstractor* is already been
> established [humans have been abstracting for thousands of years] and
> the abstraction of *abstractions* is indicated by the *ARE* indicator
> of existential modality because such activity is an existential
> modality of the human involved.
> not. Parmenides may well conclude that such a way is
> *unthinkable,* and it is interesting to consider which of the two
> meanings Parmenides meant by the word *unthinkable.* Perhaps it was
> both?
> 1. Incapable of being thought about, conceived or considered.
> 2. Out of the question, vigorously rejected as a behavioural policy.
> Though I admire Parmenides’ radical eliminativism, (are we dealing
> with the first eliminativist in history?) I think he takes his
> eliminativism a bit too far when he insists that: *that which is not*
> cannot be thought about. Though I am in general agreement with the
> great Eleatic philosopher that to reify such non-existents is to be
> discouraged, I do not agree that such reificational practices
> invalidate abstraction if employed with care, as a useful element of
> human discourse. In my view it is enough to inform people as to the
> dangers of reifying such abstractions and advise them that to think
> about a non-existent is not to existentialise it – but merely to
> instantiate the concept of it.
> If people were to be informed of and simply acknowledged the
> differences between existentialisation and instantiation, much of the
> dialectical tension between the transcendentalist and the materialist
> would evaporate. Thus would we be liberated from the dangers of
> objectifying such conceptual instantiations as *Being* and *Nothing*
> (as was the case with Heidegger,) and both sides of the ontological
> divide could draw closer, and talk about *being* and *existence* and
> *experience* free from the angst and annoyance that such ontological
> uncertainty engenders.
> It is understood and accepted that we have a need to be able to talk
> about Being and Not Being to render accounts of our world, but we do
> NOT have any need to reificationally interiorise the abstractions that
> we use to communicate such worldly observations – but simply to use
> them consciously, instrumentally and with care and most importantly to
> make our awareness known to our readers in a preliminary exposition.
> Parmenides, of course, would say that non-existence *to mae on* is
> impossible. Scientifically this complies with Einstein’s conservation
> of energy principle, whereby though mass and energy can turn into each
> other, mass cannot be absolutely created or destroyed. Sounding
> remarkably like Einstein himself, Parmenides writes of *to on*:
> Historically western man produced three different macroscopic
> world views to make sense of the Parmenidean theory of *The One.*
> (1) THE ONE WAS INTERPRETED TO BE MATTER. This was the approach of
> Democritus the 4th century Greek Atomist. Another materialist response
> was that of Empedocles, ca. 490–430 B. C.) who was a pre-Socratic
> philosopher from Agrigentum, in Sicily. who proposed that all matter
> in the Universe is composed of some combination of four elements:
> Earth, Water, Fire, Air.
> (2) *THE ONE* was re-represented by Plato as *the many* as provided by
> his theory of Forms. They too were Godlike in that they are claimed by
> him to be eternal and unchanging. Plato believed that there exists an
> immaterial Universe of *forms*, perfect aspects of everyday things
> such as a table, bird, and ideas/emotions, joy, action, etc. The
> objects and ideas in our material world are *shadows* of the forms.
> (3) **THE ONE* was later interpreted by theologians to be the
> Christian God.Plato’s critique of Parmenides claimed he was mixing
> up the *predicative* use of *is,* as in *The cat is black*, with
> *existential* use of *is,* as in *The cat is.* What Plato failed to
> grasp was that the existential employment of *is,* as in the biblical
> words of God, *I am what I am,* implies that at least some of the
> compendium of God’s existential modalities are either already known
> by the addressee [his omniscience, his triadic nature, his beneficent
> goodness and mercy etc.) or at least that some of his essences and
> spiritual properties existential modalities are available for
> discovery from the bible or some trustworthy theological source. To
> say *the cat is* is to say that the cat is an intrinsically, a
> seething similitude of physical, event-based somatic equivalences. The
> cat is an ever changing nominatum of the quantum-based, amalgam of
> mini-entities of which the entity we call *the cat* consists. The
> ongoing internal and external interactions and the totality of their
> dynamic somatic events and processes inhere to that physical
> entireness - the named existent subject entity - the cat.*. [1] (Jud
> Evans. *Intrinsicality* 2004.)
> Parmenides instinctively grasped this concept of the impossibility of
> *mere presence* and consequently never used any predications with *it
> is not,* simply because for him no predications are possible of the
> non-existent, and a predication- less entity is an impossibility.
> Somewhat annoyingly the phrase, *It is not,* seems to instantiate the
> erroneous ontological notion that there is a phantom *it* which is a
> pronoun standing for something.
> Plato fell into the trap of believing (a mistake that Meinong made
> hundreds of years later) that just to think or say about something
> implies that *it* exists in some way. Such expressions were called by
> the Greeks *sayables.*
> Even today many modern philosopher’s mistakenly believe that that
> which is *sayable* exists.
> Due partly to Plato’s influence, it became a common belief in
> western society that whenever a new noun entered the language an
> *ideal form* its nominatum was automatically represented in Plato’s
> emporium of ideal instances and remained there for infinity..
> What have leading modern philosophers contributed to an understanding
> of this *mere presence* versus *existentially modalic.*
> misunderstanding? Let us now examine one that is often characterised
> as the most prominent philosopher of the twentieth century.
> Martin Heidegger.
> Plato’s misconceived perception of an ontological ambiguity he
> believed existing between *what is* and *what is not* was picked up by
> the German philosopher in his *Platon: Sophistes* and invested with
> yet another level of supportitive reificational aporia…
> “Etwas Rätselhaftes, daß etwas ist als das, was es zugleich nicht
> ist.”
> “Somewhat perplexing that *something is as that* which, at the same
> time, *it is not.” (Heidegger *Platon: Sophistes* GA19:580.) [8]
> (Eldred. heidegger. an-archos.)Heidegger specialist Dr. Eldred claims
> that Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato’s employment of the
> *heteron* shows that a *false *logos* is indeed possible. Initially
> the sophist of insists that non-being, *to mae on* is impossible. He
> refers to the authority of Parmenides, who warned against the path of
> non-being, which should be avoided altogether. The Eleatic stranger is
> characterised as demolishing the sophist’s Parmenidean insistence
> that non-being, *to mae on* is impossible. In other words the claim
> that what is not does not exist.
> In his Sophist Plato introduces and weaves a clever self-contradiction
> of ideas as the determining factor in their contrived interaction that
> serves to enable the stranger to trap the sophist;
> Eleatic Stranger:
> Do you see, then, that not-being in itself can neither be spoken,
> uttered, or thought, but that it is unthinkable, unutterable,
> unspeakable, indescribable?
> Theaetetus: Quite true.
> This is an ontological red herring which is set up to catch a
> metaphysical mackerel, for (contrary to Parmenides) the human notion,
> idea or concept of *not being* or indeed of any abstraction CAN easily
> be conceptually instantiated - but only CONCEPTUALLY. Merely to think
> about some named or unnamed non-item does not existentialise it
> however. In the same way that to existentialise an ontic object is
> impossible - it is of course impossible to existentialise an idea.
> En passant, This also disposes of the currently faddish notion of the
> reification of the *meme,* which is no more than a slick word for the
> copy-catting of similar conceptual instantiations. (ideas.) The
> *meme,* a word deliberately chosen to sound redolent of *gene,* and
> impart some pseudo-scientific veracity, is not some disembodied
> pseudo-entity which gets passed on *memetically,* or mysteriously
> disseminates itself throughout society like some philo-epidemiological
> cold virus or benign ideative germ from human to human. Such
> dissemination of ways of thinking are made in the way that ideas have
> always been transmitted – by communicating corporeal humans,
> employing various media of communication, who pass on descriptions of
> the way they think to others who start thinking that way too.
> The Platonic attempt at an instantiation of the non-existent holeron
> (*the other*) can be seen to be initiated in the following dialogue:
> Eleatic Stranger: Stranger:
> I should think so. See how, by his reciprocation of opposites, the
> many-headed Sophist has compelled us, quite against our will, to admit
> the existence of not-being.*
> Theaetetus: Yes, indeed, I see. Interpreted this means: the negation
> of the one being does not lead to nothing, i. E.*no being at all,* but
> to the other. The *other* as opposite is the *to mae on* of the one.
> Rendered into modern language this means:
> If there is not *something* in the fridge – there must be *nothing*
> in the fridge. And that there is something else in there called
> *nothing.*
> Of course any modern school child of the age of ten or under would
> retort that there is ALWAYS something in the fridge – oxygen gas.
> For Dr. Eldred though:
> *This is *one of Plato’s most important discoveries — how otherness
> enables a non-being to *be* in a certain way, namely, as the opposite
> (*antithesis*) of something else (e. g. *the ugly* as the non-being of
> the beautiful).*But no, we do NOT see! This is red herring number two.
> If as Heidegger rightly claims; *Being* does not exist* it disposes of
> the possibility of the Platonic notion of the reciprocation and
> instantiation of opposites, for if (as Heidegger confirms) *being*
> does not exist - its opposite *holeron* or *other* of non-being
> cannot exist either.
> For Eldred, *Plato shows via the idea of *heteron*, i. e. of the
> *other* and *otherness,* that *otherness* is a FACET OF BEING which
> allows the one being to be different from the other non-being and
> automatically enables the *to mae on* to exist.
> Like the child noticing that the emperor has no clothes, we can now
> point out that as *being* does not exist it cannot have any clothes
> (facets) either.
> Not content yet, for Eldred: *Plato therefore sets out to analyse the
> *logos* to show how otherness and therefore falsehood is possible
> within it. Thus it seems the logos can be both truth and lies –
> every *logos* is a *logos * ti peri tinos* — every speaking is saying
> something about something even if it is a lie, blasphemy or a foolish
> error.
> Thus is the Christian Logos compromised as Good and Evil. The airless
> atmosphere within the fridge has asphyxiated the Christian logos
> referent, condemned as a weirdly connected negativised mirrored twin.
> A common back to front simulacrum – a negative copy of a positive
> copy whose relation to the model has become so attenuated that it can
> no longer properly be said to be a copy – two sides of the same base
> coin of a logos reduced and tarnished – each logos dependent upon
> its existence of the other – for if all true logos must have a
> holeron it can said to be equally dependant on the holeron as the
> holeron is dependent upon it. Thus we are dragged down to the abysmal
> level where according to Plato, Heidegger and Eldred the Christian
> logos is reliant upon the presence of evil to sustain it.
> On the face of it this is an astounding justification of lying as a
> feature of logos. In a sense it is in keeping with Plato’s notorious
> suggestion in the Republic that the hoi poloi should be lied to as a
> matter of course (for the good of the state of course.)
> A reminder: The Latin Vulgate states, *In principio erat Verbum et
> Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum.* (*In the beginning was
> the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God.*)Regards,
>
> Jud
> Personal Website:
> http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…
>
> The Experientio Part Two.
>
>
> There is no need to denude our language of such useful fictions if we
> can accommodate ourselves to their employment as
> useful linguistic tools. For me such abstractions and reifications are
> vitally important linguistic elements that enable us to
> talk about our world. That certain inferior forms of transcendentalist
> philosophy and religious doctrine accept such
> linguistic conveniences as being real is regrettable – but it is
> surely too much to ask that anyone who studies and
> practices philosophical enquiry is automatically wise? Some come to
> philosophy already attenuated and weighed down
> with the baggage of a bygone inhabituation.
>
> I am sure that Parmenides would be up in arms at the following
> suggestion, but It has been posited that non-existent
> opposites can be instantiated by using the ‘to mae on’ or otherness
> ‘of or to’ an existent as a cognitive device which
> enables us to instantiate such concept and refer to it. It has been
> claimed as:
>
> ‘…one of Plato’s most important discoveries.’ — how otherness
> enables a non-being to ‘be’ in a certain way, namely,
> as the opposite (antithesis) of something else (e. g. the ugly as the
> non-being of the beautiful). [8] (Eldred. heidegger.
> an-archos.)
>
> But the final denouement is yet to come…
>
> The concept of heteron or ‘the other’ as a ‘facet of being’ which
> enables the conceptual instantiation of ‘to mae on’ in order
> to off-set ‘that which exists’ with ‘that which is not’ is a valuable
> conceptual tool’ though some recalcitrant eliminativists
> might argue that technically ‘to mae on’ is NOT ‘an other’ or ‘the
> other’ of ‘being’ or ‘that which is’ but, on the contrary it is A
> NON OTHER of ‘Being.’ Why? Because as the explanation of the myth of
> pure existence makes clear – predicationless
> ‘being’ cannot not exist [only individual beings do that] and a
> non-existent itself it cannot HAVE ‘another.’
> The notion that there exists a thing called ‘otherness’ [difference]
> which allows one non– object to be ‘different’ from
> another non-existent is ontological non-sense.
>
> Thus for ‘Plato’s Greatest Discovery’ his breakthrough revelation
> means that the negation of the non-existent
> ‘non-being’ or ‘one being’ does not lead to ‘nothing,’ (i. e. no being
> at all,) but to the existentialisation of the ‘other’
> non-being. This prompts two inevitable questions:
>
> 1. How can the refutational negation of nothing [or ‘one non-being’]
> instantiate a ‘holeron’ when ‘to mae on’ ‘ is not a
> holeronistic opposite of that which does not exist anyway?
>
> 2. Surely (within the opposite of he other WHAT?’ The answer can only
> be …gasp…’the ‘other other.’
> To suggest that there is an opposite [a holeronic ‘no-apple’] of an
> apple, which is automatically instantiated when we
> mention the word ‘apple,’ is indeed a curious belief, but to go
> further and suggest that to negate the existence of one apple
> and believe at the same time that this instantiates the existence of
> an opposite ‘to mae on’ is as Alice cried, ‘Curiouser
> and curiouser!’
>
> It is time to leave the instantiation of nothing and examine the
> grammatical processes which allow reification to be
> expressed linguistically. We will therefore turn to consider the
> philosophicalisation of abstraction in general and the gerund
> in particular.
>
> To Be or not To Be?
> Such abstractions are the stuff of literature, philosophy and poetry
> as the phrase from Hamlet demonstrates,
> ‘To be, or not to be,’ that is the question?
>
> Considered from a strict ontological point of view Hamlet’s
> consideration whether to commit suicide is a non-question.
> In spite of Heideggerian opinion to the contrary ‘being’ does not
> exist. The aspirational state of moving towards a new state
> which the sign of the infinitive ‘to’ case of the verb stem ‘be’ in
> the infinitive ‘to be’ is a existential bluebird which flutters
> away the nearer we get to it.
>
> Compare: ‘She is going to be a dental technician.’
>
> It never happens. She is either studying to be a dental technician She
> is either waiting to be a dental technician, she is on
> her way to be a dental technician or she has arrived in London AND IS
> a dental technician.
> We are NEVER going to be anything – like every other object in the
> cosmos nothing is definite until we exist in some
> new state – whether that modality is desired or undesired. As
> Parmenides and Einstein both agreed we either are or we
> are not something. If we are not one form of entity we are always
> something else – we are either a butcher or a baker, a
> living human being or a pile of bleaches bones or grey ash or blowing
> about the cosmos like the cosmic dust that we
> originally were. The only exception to the existential rule is in the
> case of some object that has never and will never come
> into existence. As it has never been something – it can never be
> anything else. Plato was signally and dramatically
> wrong. The ‘has been’ [something] and the ‘is’ [something] are
> synonymous – such entities simply exist in different
> existential modes.
>
> Hamlet decides against suicide, since he cannot be certain it will
> really deliver him from his existence and his troubles. In
> fact for Hamlet, strictly from an ontological point of view it is a
> non-question, because there is no ’state’ of ‘to on’ (being)
> and there is no state of ‘to mae on’ (not being) there is only Hamlet.
> Sadly for Plato this ontological fact demolishes his
> well intentioned attempt to prove that ‘that which is not’ exists as
> is a holeronistic opposite of that which does exist.
>
> What has all this got to do with philosophy and the reification of the
> unreal? Everything. The entification of ‘nothing’ using
> the conceptual instantiation of the opposite is so much a part of our
> daily lives - we do not even notice it.
> ‘What’s that you say? ‘There’s nothing in the fridge!’ ‘OK, show
> me this ‘nothing.’
> But there is more on this very important theme later in this chapter.
>
> The Aggregation of Existential Properties.
> The expression, ‘The cat is black’ selects one just ONE existential
> mode of the cat’s existence – it’s blackness.
> Moses asked God for a name in order that he might tell the Children of
> Israel who sent him. God replied – ‘Tell them ‘I
> am’ sent you.’ The verb ‘am’ can be thought of as having a missing,
> unverbalised, blanket, non-specific, compendium of
> predicates to be ‘filled in’ by the believer.
> In other words, for the Jew or for the Christian, such essences and
> properties of God were not particularised individually by
> God on the mountain top to Moses. Christians and Jews were expected to
> understand, that for Him to be said to exist is
> to automatically include all of his modalities, of lovingness,
> patience, concern, power, omniscience and holiness etc., of
> which the believer is, or should be, already aware etc. Therefore
> God’s use of ‘am’ in the context in which it was used in
> the expression: ‘I am,’ was to use the words linguistically to
> existentialise God, with all of His properties [existential
> modalities] grouped together or considered as a whole.
>
> Now I grant that for the average person such a concept is difficult to
> grasp, so in seeking a simpler way of explaining this
> existential phenomena we could express it thus:
>
> God to Moses: ‘I am… [insert my total existential predicates here]
> which are already known to you.]
> Priest to believer: ‘God is… [insert God’s total existential
> predicates here] – those you do not know ask and I will tell
> you.]
> Now all that is quite clear to me theologically, though more wise and
> knowledgeable theologians might think somewhat
> differently, but what does this mean ontologically?
>
> The predicationally orphanic [unspoken] more comprehensive,
> multi-categorial predicative nature of God is left open, or
> unsaid, to be completed by the addressee.
>
> Many languages have the same sort of ‘nominal sentences,’ which are
> called copula depletive sentences, where a copula
> verb (is) is not even used. In Russian for example it is quite normal
> to say: ‘Ivan soldat.’ (Ivan is a soldier.) minus a copula.
> In the same way that the sentence ‘God is’ is ‘predicationally
> depletive.’ The present continuous conjugation of the verb ‘be’
> is omitted on the presumption that everyone knows what a soldier is or
> God is, and what existential modalities may be
> predicated of both of them. In the case of God’s answer to Moses, it
> is not the copula that undergoes depletion, it is the
> predicate.
>
> If we apply our new-found existential analysis to Descartes’ famous
> cogito what do we get?
> ‘I think therefore I am’ becomes a redundancy. Why? Because the mere
> utterance of the personal pronoun ‘I’ is sufficient
> to existentialise the subject. Even without Descartes’ choice of his
> ’special’ existential modality ‘think’ the one word ‘I’
> statement is enough to introduce a being who:
>
> 1. Speaks English.
> 2. Is educated to such a standard that he or she is aware of the
> function of the pronoun ‘I’ which is a function-word that is
> used in place of a noun or noun phrase and is a highly specialised
> self-referential which refers to a human speaker or
> writer.
>
> Therefore Descartes; original intention which was to begin in the
> manner of a tabula rasa could have been accomplished
> simply be thinking of or opening his mouth and saying the word ‘I.’
> The implicature contained in the both predicationally
> depleted sentences provides us with:
>
> (a) DESCARTES: ‘I think therefore I am.’
> (b) GOD: ‘I am.’
>
> Both of which with the predicational depletion restored read:
>
> (a) DESCARTES: ‘I use the word ‘I’ therefore I am an English speaker
> who is aware of the pronoun ‘I’ as a specialised
> self-referential function-word that is used in place of a noun or noun
> phrase when it refers to a human speaker or writer.’ A
> human speaker or writer of English is almost always equipped with arms
> and legs and the normal properties of a human
> being therefore it is fairly safe to provisionally attribute these
> existential properties to me as the utterer of the pronoun ‘I.’
>
> (b) GOD: ‘I use the word ‘I’ because as a Being who speaks all
> languages, I am an English speaker who is aware of the
> pronoun ‘I’ as a specialised self-referential function-word that is
> used by humans in place of a noun or noun phrase when it
> refers to a human speaker or writer. I have deliberately withheld a
> long list of my existential modalities because I expect
> all of my faithful followers to be aware of this information as a
> feature of their love for me.’
>
> The Myth of ‘Being’ and Being a Being.
> So what is the existential bottom-line in all this? The fact is there
> IS NO existential BE or BEING of ‘mere presence.’ It is
> physically impossible to exist totally purely - bereft of any
> existential modality at all. It is impossible to be present in the
> world and physically propertyless at the same time, in the absence of
> a single characteristic, attribute, or state. The very
> idea of ‘being’ is a reification – a misnomer for two very good
> reasons.
>
> (a) To exist with such a lack of essence, property or modality is even
> beyond that of our God. God is often accused of
> having no essence distinct from his existence - as pure existence.
> This is not true. Even the Supreme Being cannot
> escape from the existential modality of being loved, adored,
> worshipped and feared or even scorned. In fact God is himself
> making a predicational statement of his existential nature as that of
> a unity rather than of the Christian God’s triadic
> nature, by the very fact of saying to Moses; ‘Tell them I am sent you,
> ‘ rather than ‘Tell them we are sent you.’
>
> (b) ‘Being’ as a state is physically and ontologically utterly
> impossible. ‘Beings’ would never make it as a cosmic object,
>
> Plato and the many people who have followed him, (for he initiated a
> trend of misidentification) confused what he thought
> was a verb of ‘pure existence’ (or ‘mere presence’) with the present
> continuous versions of the ‘be verb’ (’is’ and ‘am.’) which
> it can now be claimed ALWAYS refers to that which exists as an ongoing
> existential modality and NOT an ontologically
> impossible The golden existential rule therefore is ‘ Never except the
> notion of *Pure Presence* (existence of *Being* as
> being in anyway ontologically meaningful. Such a conceptualised
> reification can be *thinkable* and *sayable* but can
> never be existentialised in anyway whatsoever.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jud
> Personal Website:
> http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…
>
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Posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 4:10 pm
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