Heidegger

In a message dated 03/09/2007 16:28:03 GMT Standard Time,
_michael at sandwich-de-sign.co.uk_ (mailto:michael@sandwich-de-sign.co.uk) writes: Jud spake this
recently:

“If anyone can prove that anything other than material objects exist…”

But, Jud, you have a million times defined in a straight-forwardly dogmatic
way your notion of what exists (existents, beings) as being nothing but and
only “material objects”; thus because of your definition (setting the limits),
no-one could possibly “prove” otherwise.

Jud:
But Michael old bean the fact that I have defined in a straight-forward way
what exists and what does not exist does not mean that you forfeit the
opportunity of proving me wrong. The podium is empty, is provided with a glass of
fresh water, and awaits you. Nothing has changed - the gauntlet still
remains on the floor at your feet. You can put your metaphysical meaning where
your mouth is and prove that all the instantiations you keep sticking into
sentences and treating syntactically and semantically as if they were like any
other noun actually REFER to something. When I use the word *Being* and
other nominata-less [orphanic] transcendentalisms in sentences I asterix them,
or order the lexical leper to leap into action and ring his bell to
signify that it is what Kotarbinski called a pseudo-name or “onomatoid.”

OK, let’s approach it from a different angle. Now if, as you and Heidegger
say, *Being does not exist,* why keep talking about the *Question of Being?*
Why even REFER to the word? If something does not exist, how can it be a
problem? Surely the only things that can be *questioned* or cause *problems* are
big bad beings? That is we OURSELVES can cause problems for ourselves and
others, or be a subject of questioning - and/or other beings can? I can quite
understand an object (say Hitler or Heidegger) which USED to exist, but has
now CEASED to exist being a problem or a subject of questioning, but how can
something that NEVER existed, does not now exist, and never WILL exist be a
problem?

MichaelP:
It is this religious (no inverted commas) conviction-cum-belief of yours:
‘that which exists = material objects exclusively’ that makes most discussions
on the subject redundant (just like attempted discussions with Jehovah’s
Witnesses).

Jud:
The eliminativist position is not at all religious. There is no belief in a
divine power. On the contrary their is a contempt for organised religion and a
feeling on genuine pity for the poor unfortunates, who limp through life
like a procession of cognitively be-crutched Tiny Tim Cratchits clunk-clicking
their way to the Poorhouse Christmas Party.

MichaelP:
And I am bearing in mind that by “material objects” you include the
energetic (e. g., quanta of electromagnetic radiation, photons) and the forceful (e.
g., gravity as gravitons) in and as material objects. For example, no-one to
my cognisance has actually concretely suggested that “reality” is itself a
concrete material object (like a “banana” or a vaulting meteorite or the mud
on my shoe: the things only and exclusively the like of which your philosophy
says exist); or for that matter [sic], that “material” or “object” or both
are actually concrete material objects…

Jud:
Then what do you think philosophers have been arguing about for the last
two thousand years Michael. What do you think that Ockham, Abelard and Scrotum
Scotus were complaining about the lack of duck’s feathers in monastery
pillows or the idiocy of the bishopry and the carnal cardinalia? There are many
confused people - it could be a mild form of Asberger’s syndrome - who actually
believe that *Being* and *Existence* exist and there are millions more who
instantiate the concepts of these words and bandy them about like old fish
wives talking about the Price of Wales’ bottom. The notion of a “mental
representation” is, arguably, in the first instance a theoretical construct of loony
psychologists mind mechanics, for any images that one can recall are
physiological neurological patterning’s. A crude metaphor would be that with the
archivist brain acting as both a buffer-storing blunderbuss peppering the inside
of the screen with organic pixilations [or fixilations] there is nothing
*mental* about it.

Michael: {neither word/concept “material” and “object”} actually have
material objects as their nominata, thus their nominata do not exist for you (your
philosophy), thus you are immediately in a philosophical quandary for
speaking seriously
(philosophically) of that which can not and do not exist for your
philosophy…

Jud:
What? That old chestnut again Mikey-boy? Come on old son - it’s 2007 I told
you years ago that eliminativists have no agenda to stop using certain words
or urging others to cease employing them. The name of the game is to use
them [for they are USEFUL fictions] but to make it plain that they are only
insubstantial shorthand for something else. As a matter of fact I almost never [I
can never remember using] the word *material* as a noun in the sense of: a
tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object. I use it as
an adjective, but that way is OK, for adjectivally no claim is being made
that there is an object called *material,* which exists, but rather that one is
referring to worldly rather than [what some refer to as] *spiritual*
interests.

MichaelP:
That is: you cannot possibly mean (seriously) what you say, thus we cannot
possibly seriously take you for being serious.

How can I take you seriously if you sit on the fence and say things like:
*{neither word/concept “material” and “object”} actually have material
objects as their nominata, thus their nominata do not exist for you (your
philosophy),

I find your rider *for you (your philosophy) very telling, for the inference
is that in your philosophy their nominata DO exist.

Therefore I invite you to dismount from your comfortable position on the
fence - take the floor and tell us good folks exactly what ARE the nominata of
the words you quote? But before you do remember that the term *nominata*
[sing: *nominatum*} is a very special [Latin] term with a very special
syntactical, ontological and semantic significance. It only has ONE specific meaning
which should never be confused with that of the indicative noun — with which
it shares a common etymological origin. Frege argues that *the fact that
we are interested in the nominata of words indicates that we acknowledge
nominata for sentences–if we have a meaningful proposition and then learn that the
name involved has no nominatum, we can lose interest in it. This is what
happened in the case of the word *Being* - most folks very sensibly side-lined
it for about two thousand years until Heidegger disinterred it, withdrew the
syntactical stake from its heart and dragged it out of its cognitive coffin..
The reason we acknowledge nominata is that we are not interested just in
meaningfulness, but also truthfulness. I know what you MEAN by *being* but I know
it is not TRUE. Eliminativists are predominantly interested in truth values
rather than simple street-level, bordello-level or Heidegger-level meaning
in the manner of old fogy folk ontology. When we are interested in the
nominata of the parts of the sentence, we are also interested in the sentence’s
nominatum, and this is because we are interested in its truth value. In fact,
the nominatum is the truth value, and the proposition expressed (or sense) is
the way in which the sentence presents this truth value.*

If you hold a pebble in you hand and you can feel, smell, taste, see and
(knocking it together with something) hear that it is a pebble - and IT IS a
pebble then that is the nearest thing that you will ever get to holding
*crystalised truth* in your hand.

regards

michaelP

Posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 12:15 am
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