Heidegger

In a message dated 04/10/2008 15:29:40 GMT Standard Time,
_jPolanik at nc.rr.com_ (mailto:jPolanik@nc.rr.com) writes:

[Jud]:
I [am] interested in receiving the vital message from you which deals with
my recent demolition of the *I think therefore I am.* absurdity.

[Joe]:
and which demolition would that be? is it the one Heidegger promised but
never delivered? perhaps someday you could state your case without the florid
rhetoric that obscures the argument (if it is an argument) that you are trying
to make. no matter, let’s review …

Jud:
In dealing with a slippery customer like you who cuts out large sections of
your discussant’s text and by that mode ignore the questions asked of you,
it is good sense to write one’s contributions in the full so that your cuts
become more obvious. This was EXACTLY the sort of complaints you received
from other members of the list, who now refuse to have anything to do with you
after experiencing long-running battles of words. In the end they
withdrew from the discussion and declined to go any further until you answered their
questions. In the end they just gave up and refused to discuss anything
further. This message I to which I now respond completely ignores everything
but a tiny amount of what I wrote to you in my last letter. But that does not
worry me, for by the weakness and meaninglessness of what you write below, it
is apparent that you have now given up completely on you silly *I think
therefore I am* scam and are simply rummaging amongst the shattered pieces of the
*theory* which lie about in pieces following the demolition of Descartes’
flimsy house of marked cards. You remarks below are patently the words of a man
grasping desperately at straws, are effortlessly countered and demolished,
and bear the tone and trembling touch of a man who realises that his
transcendental rubbish is full of ontological absurdities and probably wishes that he
had never heard of Descartes in the first place.

Joe:
consider a statement such as ‘I experience; therefore, I am’ or the simpler
‘I am’.

Jud:
Such … verbalisms are meaningless UNLESS the addressor is already in
possession … of biographic, experiential, existential modes which map to the
statement *I experience.* (and the other well chosen, grammatically stated,
syntactically correct,semantically meaningful words of the cogito or the
experientio)

[Joe (new)]:
for ease of reference, I use ‘Experiento’ as the proper name of the
sentence, ‘I experience; therefore, I am’.

Jud:
NO! You overreach yourself ontologically - *to think* is an volitional
objective act - *to experience* is a subjective state. It is possible to simply
lie somewhere, sense the pressure of whatever it is that supports your body
and not *think* of anything - least of all think that you are experiencing
something.

you seem to assume that I can not assert the Experiento without
understanding the words of which it is composed.

Jud:
You take the biscuit as probably the most illogical person I have ever met
in my life. If you DID understand the meaning of *I* when you used it, you
would immediately admit a whole experiential subtext of language-leaning, school,
buses , carrying your girl-friends books, telling dirty jokes in the school
lavatories and all the rest of your educational days studying English and
leaning the pronouns, including the first person pronoun *I* which you are
using correctly and proving that your were a good pupil. If on the other hand
you claimed that you were completely ignorant of the meaning of the first person
pronoun *I* then you lay yourself wide-open to the question: *OK, then why
did you employ the word which to you was meaningless? Was do you reply?

1. It was pure chance that I used the word *I* out of the total number of
words in the English language of 1,000,000 I *just happened* to select the
correct one and position it in its correct syntactical position at the head of
the string immediately before the verb,
2. It was pure chance that I used the word *experience* and selected its
correct spelling and tense, out of the total number of words in the English
language of 1,000,000. Obviously I *just happened* to select the correct
one, position, spell and tense it correctly..
4. It was pure chance that I used the word *therefore* out of the total
number of words in the English language of 1,000,000 I *just happened* to
select the correct one and just happened to choose *therefore* when I could have
chosen: *consequently, hence, thus or possibly *so.*
5. It was pure chance or the fact that such silliness is in keeping with
this silliness that I used the word *am* out of the total number of words in
the English language of 1,000,000. I *just happened* to select the correct one
and just happened to choose *am* rather than *was, were, are or will be*
which happily (But not deliberately) matched the singular ontological nature of
the entity to which I was self-referentially referring. nature when I could
have chosen: *consequently, hence, thus or possibly *so.*

I agree (to some extent) and disagree (to some extent), as follows:

as to ‘I’ - in order to assert the Experiento, I must understand the word
‘I’ as the word (the linguistic tool) by which I self-reference. however, it
does not follow from the fact of self-referencing that I (the referent of ‘I’)
know what I am. all that follows is that I am self-referencing.

Jud:
In order to be aware that you are self-referencing and to do so by using the
first person pronoun *I* already opens up a epistemological bag of worms in
relation to an explanation of where and how you learnt such a grammatical and
semantic specificity, and how you gained knowledge of the self and self-
referencing in relation to the self as the referent of ‘I’ etc.

Joe:
as to ‘experience’ - there must be some recognition that the word
‘experience’ applies to all these ‘events’ of which I am aware.

Jud:
Now for the hapless Descartes to make such a remark or to think such a
thought introduces you to further epistemic problems.
How did you originally discover that *experience* is a blanket term which
applies to *events* and who taught you the significance of the word aware?*
Were these words also acquired during your schooldays? Perhaps you
overheard and remembered them when you were carrying your sweetheart’s books?

Joe:
as to ‘therefore’ - it seems that I must intend *some* meaning when I use
‘therefore’ in the Experiento; but, judging from the weight of philosophical
speculation as to the meaning of the ‘ergo’ in the Cogito, alternate but equally
correct interpretations (of ‘therefore’) are therefore possible.

Jud:
It matters not one jot what the linguistic or semantic alternatives or
interpretations are - what under analysis here is *how the hell did this idiot
learn all these words without some previous instruction?* How did he arrive at
the state of education that he even knows that to enunciate such words implies
a person with an civilised interest in the very fact that he exists, or
that anyone else would be interested whether or not had he never seen the light
of day.
Then there is the question of where and when did he learn to reason out his
*predicament* in such a logical manner, demonstrating more than a little
understanding of linguistics, grammar logic, psychology and the rest along the
way?

Joe:
as to ‘am’ - one may understand or accept ‘I am’ as a true statement without
knowing what is asserted of I when I say ‘I am’. bizarre as it may seem, I
did not begin to understand the meaning of ‘am’ until I realized that ‘I am’
is a true statement.

Jud:
There you go again piling on the existential modalities required even how to
figure out posing the question - all this ability to accept *I am* as a true
statement presupposes an awareness and an interest - even a preference for
the highly contentious philosophical meaning of truth and its connection or
association with the idea of existing. What you have achieved in this message
is not only *unconsciously) confirm the stupidiy of the cogito - but to add
to the conclusion that this entity was not only an educated English speaking
person - but, extrapolating from that - that he was also a philosopher
judging by what he said and the implication that follows fro what he asserted.

For this brilliant piece of detective work I have to publicly compliment
you, for (with a little bit of help from me ( *and my Socratic method) you have
reached the right conclusion. The writer of *I think therefore I am* WAS a
philosopher! His name was Rene Descartes and he lived long before you and I
were born. Well done Joe!

Jud:
What is emerging, and what you are in fact doing by these, your latest ill
thought out interventions is to BACK UP MY ARGUMENT which points out (not
*claims,* for what I indicate is apodeictically obvious and can be stated
axiomatically as:

*The generation of the English statements: *I think therefore I am,* or *I
experience therefore I am,* entails, presupposes, implies that the speaker
has at sometime been educated or trained to say these words, which, if they are
spoken in the spirit of meaningfulness admits of an advanced knowledge of
the language. Such a knowledge, strongly suggests that the person may be
English or a person for whom English is not their first language, but who has
mastered it to a fairly high degree…furthermore…it can be stated thus

IT IS WITH THE UTMOST CERTAINTY that the entity which uttered this
meaningful, sentence, WITH ALL THE EXPERIENTIAL accumulation of knowledge WHICH THAT
IMPLIES is an educated HUMAN BEING.

Joe

Posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 6:01 am
comment | rss 2.0 | trackback