Heidegger Email List

April 21st, 2008, search related
Related posts :: Exposing the Crifasi Maneuver :: Exposing the Crifasi Maneuver :: Anything Follows from a Contradiction :: Exposing the Crifasi Maneuver

Self-Indentity Over Time — A Necessary Condition of Existence?

The Crifasi Argument:

>1. If I know that predicates are attributable to me, then I must know
>that I exist.

>2. If I know that I exist, I must know that there is something which
>remains identical throughout all my perceptions.

>3. But there is no evidence that anything remains identical throughout
>all my perceptions.

>4. Therefore, I don’t know that I exist.

>5. Therefore I don’t know that predicates are attributable to me.

>Both antecedents (in #1 and #2) are negated by modus tollens.

>>you have justified premise 2 by the claim it is a “necessary condition
>>of My existence - i.e., that I remain self-identical throughout all my
>>perceptions”.

>LOL - he’s now clipped out my FURTHER argument for that premise FIVE OR
>SIX TIMES IN A ROW! For the sixth or seventh time, here it was:

>>>LOL - my answer is and WAS: “Denying that would be denying an
>>>identical referent for the identical first person pronoun that I use
>>>to refer to myself at any point in my life (I was born, I am now X, I
>>>will die).”

your claim is that it is a *NECESSARY CONDITION* of my existence “that I
remain self-identical throughout all my perceptions”; and, that is what
I am contesting when I claim that “you give no argument in favor of such
a preposterous claim”.

your reply concerning the implications of the proposition ‘I remain
self-identical throughout all my perceptions’ only attempts to prove
that proposition is true — it doesn’t even attempt to prove that it is
necessarily true.

and, in any event, I have in fact responded to that argument; but,
you’ve not replied to my counterarguments. I will summarize that aspect
of the argument in the thread entitled “Self-Indentity Over Time — Is
It True At All?”

here, let us focus on your claim that self-identity over time is a
necessary condition of existence. the objection would be that you have
not yet refuted the proposition that existence as a condition of
perceiving.

[JP, 2008-04-04]:

“existence is a necessary (but not a sufficient) condition of
perceiving. a stone exists but does not perceive. for you to claim the
reverse, that perceiving is a necessary condition of existing, you would
have to show either that stones perceive or that stones do not exist.”

[AC, 2008-04-13]:

“I see that you have now accepted Heidegger’s demand to transcend all
logic.”

[JP, 2008-04-16]:

toward the end of his career, Heidegger makes a startling admission. in
discussion Descartes, Heidegger writes: “The formula which the
proposition sometimes has, ‘Cogito ergo sum’, suggests the
misunderstanding that it is here a question of inference. … The sum is
not a consequence of the thinking, but vice versa; it is the ground of
thinking, the fundamentum.”

this is, of course, all that Descartes needs to prove ‘I experience;
therefore, I am’.

once we notice experiencing anything at all, we deduce that the logical
preconditions of experiencing have been satisfied; and, thus, we can say
either: ‘I experience; therefore, I am’ or ‘given that I experience; it
is necessarily true that I am’.

[AC, 2008-04-16]:

Please don’t talk about Heidegger - trust me, it doesn’t make you look
good.

[JP, (new material)]:

focus, Anthony. this is not about whether you think I ‘look good’
quoting Heidegger.

the question is whether your claim (that the proposition ‘I remain
self-identical throughout all my perceptions’ is a necessary condition
of the existence of the referent of ‘I’) is consistent with the passage
that I quoted from Heidegger.

Joe


Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.


banner ad