Heidegger

In a message dated 05/08/2009 10:40:53 GMT Standard Time,
_jpolanik at nc.rr.com_ (mailto:jpolanik@nc.rr.com) writes: _gevans613 at aol.com_
(mailto:gevans613@aol.com) wrote:

jPolanik wrote:

Jud: Because a neurologically traumatised person is the only paradigm of
the human condition which could possibly provide the model for the
existential state of self-referential ignorance and identity-unawareness that the
imaginary protagonist in the Cartesian philosophical parlour-game could
portray.

Joe: if the ramblings of a neurologically traumatized person is the only
model you can construct for the work of a philosopher you disagree with;
then, your modeling skills are inadequate.

Jud: Wrong. It is the inability of the traumatised person who, whilst
retaining the capacity to verbalise of the *I*-word, is unable to … retrieve
his neuro-autobiographical background. I such a case (as with Descartes’
counterfactual amnesiac) he lacks any normal awareness of the self or his own
identity as person considered as a unique individual, thus mirroring the
Cartesian: *Let’s Pretend I am not sure I exist* scenario.

Jud,

a brain-injured person might retain the ability to self-reference without r
etaining the ability to recall the biographical details of his life; but,
it does not follow that the brain-injured person is a model of the
philosopher pursuing an inquiry to which the biographical details of life are
irrelevant.

you served in the British army, a fact worthy of inclusion in any biography
or autobiography of your life but irrelevant to the philosophical issues
we’ve been discussing.

there have been disagreements on this list about qualia. I think that
people experience qualia. others disagree. is the fact that you served in the
British army relevant to the debate(s) over qualia? would you say “I, Jud
Evans, served in the British army; and, therefore, people experience qualia”
or would you say “I, Jud Evans, served in the British army; and, therefore,
people do not experience qualia”?

if you have any sense at all you wouldn’t make either of these claims
because each is a non sequitur.

is the fact that you served in the British army relevant to the issues of
personal ontology that Descartes considered? it hardly seems likely. would
you say “I, Jud Evans, served in the British army; and, therefore, human
consciousness is not the product of an immaterial mind”?

probably not.

where does that leave us? are we to conclude that the brain-injured person
is a model for your activity in pursuing your degree in philosophy because
your dissertation does not argue that your service in the British army is
evidence that analytical indicant theory is true?

Joe

Jud:
Sometimes your questions are a bit difficult to answer Joe, not in the
sense that I find problems in supplying the appropriate answers themselves,
but because it is burdensomeness and involves the time-wasting
regurgitation of the axiomatically obvious, which to other readers of this colloquy
will be blindingly evident. Brain injured people display ALL KINDS of
different symptoms of forgetfulness, ranging over a broad spectrum. If you have a
close friend who is a neurologist (as I have) you will discover (if you
talk to them) that at one pole of brain trauma a person lies completely
unconscious in a vegetative state, another is conscious, yet in unable to speak,
yet another can mumble disconnected, ungrammatical words but when pressed
claims they do not know who they are, etc. Others, though shaken and
distressed, are ambulatory and manage to recall their name and address and ask
the staff to telephone their family to alert them as to their predicament..

Which is the person on this wide-ranging spectrum of brain-trauma who
corresponds closest to the condition imagined by Descartes for his
counterfactual Latinist in the ontological parlour game we call The Cogito?
Descartes cogitoless-con man is represented by our wily ex-seminarian as a person
who, whilst remembering and generating a quite complicated
syntactico-semantic sentence (originally in Latin, which suggests an educated person,
familiar with the classics) who, in Descartes fantasy, does not know whether he
exists or not.

Referencing our crude and very basic spectrum of brain-trauma variation
above, this places him in a category of trauma as being only slightly less
neurally damaged than the patient in the vegetative state, yet more
attenuated than the mumbler of disconnected words, a man who though seriously hurt
demonstrates by his mumbling to other humans that he is aware that he
exists. *I have a terrible pain in the head - therefore I exist!* sort of
situation.

Shall we have some fun then?

What then, to enter into this childish game of
intensive-care-ward-philosophy, is the nature of this imagined, unnamed, incognisant, scholarly,
Latin-speaking ontologist who (presumably) lies there in the dark, not
knowing whether he exists or not? The very fact that he lies there wondering
about whether or not he exists suggests an unusual interest in ontology. Most
people’s reaction would be: *Where the hell am I?*

We see that not only is this man a skilful Latinist, but he speaks perfect
French too. Descartes’s original statement was “Je pense donc je suis,”
and in the original version, our *Ontological John Doe* would be stretched
out there thinking in French.

Now what sort of French Latinist spends his time in darkened rooms
meditating about existence? What sort of man would even question the fact that he
existed? What’s that you say? *A religious man?* A man who perhaps
believed that humans have a resident *soul* in their heads - hitching a lift
until the vehicle is defunct and it drifts skywards to that great emporium of
non-entities in the sky (along with the pie.) Perhaps he (and we assume
the masculine gender for the recumbent soul-mechanic) the product of a
seminary?

Mmmm! I don’t suppose that this 17th century , French and Latin speaking,
religious ontologist might have been based upon…wait for it…Descartes
HIMSELF do you? Well what a surprise - who would have guessed. Do you
think we need an Émile Poiret to work that one out?

You see Joe, when I speak of a person’s experiential biography or
humanness - I am not referring to the ability to remember any particular episodes
in that life-time of events - the period during which something is
functional (as between birth and death) though they would certainly help as
landmarks - such as I served in the British Army in the Middle East in the
1950s, or Rene Descartes joined the Dutch Army in 1617, and served with Prince
Maurice of Orange at Breda.

I refer instead to the retrospective course of existing as an
individual; from babyhood to one’s present age - a remembering of the GENERALITY of
our existence, actions and events that occur in living as the selves we
are HOWEVER HAZY those memories may be - which for most people usually
amounts to a parade of vaguely sequential images of the passing years,
sign-posted by important events.

I am not suggesting that it is the IMPORTANT-EVENT type of lack of recall
that our Cartesian model lacked, nor his real-life brain-trauma patient
Doppelganger in a Paris hospital - and - speaking of Paris, I am not
referring to the wonderful attempt at the total recall in Marcel Proust’s
brilliant À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) a work upon
which as humble tribute to Proust I called my own (pathetic scribbling by
comparison) attempt at a biography of my early life: *The Street - À la
Recherche du Temps Perdu - A Remembrance of a Liverpool Past.*
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/streetchapt01.htm_
 http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

Cheers,

Jud.

Posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 6:01 am
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