Heidegger

In a message dated 01/10/2007 _jPolanik at nc.rr.com_
(mailto:jPolanik@nc.rr.com) writes:

Joe writes:
However, the thread has little to do with Aquinas, per se. it has more to do
with the ability (and, for some, the necessity) to say ‘I know that I am;
but, not what I am’. Jud denies that anyone is allowed to say this; not because
he has any evidence or any argument to back up his claim; but, because he has
banned use of is/am as an intransitive verb. even if convinced that you are
correct about Aquinas and scholastics generally; I believe he would persist
in defending this Orwellian approach to philosophy.

In any event, would you care to comment on the statement ‘I know that I am;
but, not what I am’? this seems to be what Descartes is saying at that point
in the second meditation just after he accepts as indubitable that no
malicious demon, however deceitful, could convince him that he is when he is not —
or, in the first person, that I am when I am not.

Jud:
Dear Joe. The reasoning that Descartes eventually uses to convince himself
that the Demon does not exist, is that a loving caring *God* would never
allow such a thing to happen - as God would never *con* him.

It is understandable that a victim such as Descartes would tend to believe
such meconium, if you had been ripped from your parents as a little child and
transported to a remote seminary and placed into the hands of the
black-garbed Jesuits (*God’s SS*) remote from your parents for 7 or 8 years - you
would believe that (or anything else they had brainwashed you with) too.
Remember the Jesuit slogan: *Give me the child and I will give you the man.*

But back to ontological basics. Any investigation of reification (the
imagination that such things as your *existence* actually exists) presupposes an
initial rigorous re-examination of man’s understanding of grammar, regarding
which, mention of the great Indian grammarian Panini is essential. We will
then consider what the Greeks called *to on* (that which is.) and the
conceptual instantiation of what they referred to as: *to mae on* (that which is not.)
This means returning to man’s first intellectual engagement with the
concepts of the so-called *ontological difference,* the little understood
differentiation between what linguists call *pure presence* and *existential modality.*
However, it is critical for a proper understanding that we first examine
this *ontological difference* in great detail, for the whole basis of various
ontologies of philosophy is dependant upon a certain critical appraisal and
interpretation.

1. The BE– Word – The so-called *Copula.*

The BE - word in the guise of its many conjugates has a number of meanings
which in certain ontological discussions can often prove to be the source of
much confusion. The conjugates *is’* and *are* and others are often mistakenly
referred to as *the copula* – a medieval syntactical labeling ( meaning
*linking, conjoining, coupling*) which was a consequence of their ignorance as
to the proper function of the words. Unfortunately the name stuck and is still
employed by linguists in parsing sentences.

The role of the *copula* is no more copuletic than any other word in a
sentential string. All words join other words in the syntactical matrix within
with which they are embedded and operate semantically. The role of the *copula*
is to indicate and agree with the existential mode of the subject (whether it
is singular, in which case ‘is’ or ‘am’ is used) or plural (when ‘are’ is
used) and the temporal nature of occurrence (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.*)
The ever-organised Swedes have developed a special verb to make this
existential *ontological difference* more obvious.
The verb *att finnas* in Swedish means to exist or to be, but in the sense
of *can be found.* Sometimes the English use a similar mechanism in such
phrases as perhaps we might find in a hotel reception - a sign might say:

*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.
Panini and the Sanskrit Reification.
In order to understand something of the underlying origins and nature of
reification and its implications for modern European languages, one needs to
travel backward in time to the Indian sub-continent of two and a half thousand
years ago. It is quite certain that the use of abstraction was widespread in
human language long before its efflorescence in the period of classical
Greece.
Elements of abstractive reification and examples of gerundial forms had been
isolated in Vedic Sanskrit by the great linguist of classical Sanskrit,
Panini. Ancient Sanskrit is characterised by linguists as the *ur language* of the
great European language family of which most modern European tongues
including Greek, are members of its sibling configuration.
We are lucky in the person of Panini circa 520–460 B. C. (possibly a
contemporary of Parmenides) to have a witness whose remarkable grammar defined
Classical Sanskrit. Panini was someone who is generally acknowledged to be the
greatest grammarian who ever lived.
His use of metarules, transformations, and recursion together make his
grammar as rigorous as a modern Turing machine. The Backus-Naur form
(Panini-Backus form) or BNF grammars is used to describe modern programming languages and
has significant similarities to Panini grammar rules. [19] (Wikipedia.
Panini.) The existential ambiguity (ontological difference) often caused by the
gerund, a word-type with which the abstract noun is a leading grammatical
component of reification, is not something new, nor is it restricted to its use in
philosophical writings and discussion. The Indo-European *mother language*
((ur language) Sanskrit has an unbroken historical record of about 3000 years.
So, beginning with any of the modern Indo-Aryan languages (like Urdu -
Hindi), one should in principle be able to reconstruct where and how complex
predicates originated.
In her *The Light Verb Jungle,* diachronic linguist Miriam Butt of UMIST
reminds us:
*The modern main verb form in complex predicates originates in the Sanskrit
*gerund”. The Sanskrit *gerund” was indeclinable and was formed by suffixes.
(see Whitney 1889:345–360, also Tikkanen 1987 for detailed investigations.)
These suffixes were also sometimes referred to as conjunctive participles.
The use of *tv¯a* on the end of words was manifold and varied (see Tikkanen
1987). One of the uses is comparable with the modern complex predicate — note
the same possibilities for ambiguity found in modern Urdu and Bengali. [18]
(Butt. 2003. 7.1. .)
With ambiguity in mind we will now move on to a consideration of the part
that the Greeks played in the consolidation of the habit and practice of
reification for philosophy in particular and natural language in general.
Reification and the Greeks.
The phenomenon of reification is not something unique to the Greek language
or culture, or indeed to the great Indo European language family itself of
which almost all European languages are a sibling tongue. Greek is more
interesting and relevant to our investigation because English adopted so many Greek
words into its corpus and our culture is heavily influenced by Greek ideas,
Greek abstraction and Greek reification in every domain of our practical and
intellectual activities.
Parmenides.
There comes a time in the development of any language when the pragmatic
prosaic crudities of descriptive naïveté make way for the inevitable progression
towards the sophisticated, fanciful and imaginative. In Europe this
linguistic transformation happened to the ancient Greek language before any other.
Parmenides provided a compelling reason-based argument in poetic form regarding
the way we talk about the abstraction *Being,* which recommended that all
reference to non-existents should be eliminated from human discourse.
It is a curious fact of language that the very mention of a *non-existent*
instantiates the concept of such a will of the wisp in the human mind and i
ntroduces a dimension of phantom concrecity to what is merely instantiational
human neurological activity. Non-being, for Parmenides is infeasible as
meaningful language because only *being,* exists, and non-being (*to mae on,) *is*
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*:
*How could what is thereafter perish? and how could it come into being? For
if it comes to be, it is not, and likewise if it is going to be. So coming
into being is extinguished and perishing unimaginable.*
*Being is a plenum (to use the Latin version of the Greek word), i. e. it is
full of Being, since any emptiness or any lack of density could only be due
to the disallowed Not Being. Parmenides bequeathed the argument about *Not
Being* to subsequent philosophy - that means us. What is to be made of it? It
seems to rule out the reality of the *real* world for us. *The One* became
the common name for *Being* as it was described by Parmenides.*

Plato, Heidegger and the Reciprocation of Opposites.
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…

“In nuclear war all men are cremated equal.”
Dexter Gordon

Posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 9:50 pm
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