Implicit Copula Complement
October 12th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Has The Implicit Complement Been Found? :: Are you Denying that the Copula can have an Implicit Complement? :: Are you Denying that the Copula can have an Implicit Complement? :: Allegations of Demolition (3)
The Experiento: Allegations of Demolition 2: Implicit Copula Complement
for reasons that are slowly becoming less obscure, you seem be saying
that no one may ask ‘what am I’ because no one may claim to know that I
am but not what I am because the answer is given axiomatically:
Q: what am I?
A: I am a human being.
(given that are presently involved in various disputate as to what, if
anything, ‘being’ means when used by Heidegger aand others, it would
prejudice the inquiry to include that word in the name we have given our
species. so I’ll leave it out.)
Q: what am I?
A: I am a human.
this is true; but, not very informative.
‘human’ is just an arbitrary name that we’ve given our species. we could
have called ourselves ‘xertragons’ and we’d not know any more or less
than now.
just saying ‘I am a human’ invites the further question, ‘what is a
human?’.
Descartes considered one stock answer to this last question. Q: what is
a human? A: a rational animal. Descartes rejected this answer because it
just opened up further questions, ‘what is rationality’ and ‘what is an
animal’ and so on.
in any event, saying ‘I am human’ doesn’t answer the question ‘is the
human individual more than just a human body?’. In Heideggerian jargon,
‘is there Being or a being within the human?.
so, we still don’t know what a human is.
I still know that I am; but, not what I am.
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
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http://what-am-i.net
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