Heidegger

In a message dated 29/06/2008 17:05:57 GMT Standard Time, jPolanik at nc.rr.com
writes:

GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:

>Metanomski on What Am I?

>WHAT AM I?

Georges:

>Better than that. Reading a book without knowing its context of
>author’s achievements and Weltanschauung often, if not always leads to
>put erroneous constructions on some assertions. Best example is “I
>think, therefore I am” of Descartes. Unprepared reading gives on the
>one hand the impression of “thinking” having some mysterious
>ontological power of creating “being”.

Joe:
it would be a naive reading of Descartes to suppose that “thinking” had
the power to creating “being”; but, it would be an equally naive
critique of Descartes to suppose that he intended such a meaning.
Jud:
I cannot speak for Georges Metonomski but I am an admirer of his and I agree
with him that perhaps some people could conceive of a spurious necessary
connection between thinking and being present as a thinking object in the world?
After all it is not necessary to able to think in order to exist in the
world as a material object of some kind. Occasionally children are born without
any brain at all - they do not usually live long, and kindly doctors most
often withdraw treatment and allow them to die - those allowed to live usually
end up as Heideggerians or post-modernists. Stones do not think, yet they
exist.

Now I grant you that stones are not aware of the fact that they exist. A dog
on the other hand is aware of itself (it licks its own arse and the arses of
other dogs if it gets the chance) To mouth the word *I* (the rest of the
Cartesian garbage is unnecessary) confirms the utterer as a self-denotative
human being - unless the utterer is a squawking parrot or a minhar bird that has
learned to copy human speech.

The word use of the word *being* used in the material-object sense (rather
than the stupid Heideggerian sense) of being some kind of object - i.e. human
- is ontologically and semantically confusing and has primitive religious
origins. If God is portrayed as *The Supreme Being* then anything made is his
image must be at least granted the *title* being too. It suggests that the
descriptor-word *being* refers to a being that is *being* human. Well why not
refer to a Chimpanzee being or a mouse being? Its simple - because they were
not made in the image of God. A bit unfair you say? Well, yes, for as
Chimpanzees look much like humans and humans are made in the image of God, it
follows that God looks a bit like a chimpanzee too. Maybe the film *The Planet of
the Apes* was on to something after all?

Well, a human is not *being human* IT IS HUMAN - just like the chimp and the
mouse IS a chimp or a mouse. The conglomerate of cosmically originated
material inherited from its parents and the ingested food of which the object is
constructed forms a composite entity that we classify as a human, a chimp or
a mouse. The material is not deliberately *being human,* or being chimpish or
mouselike - there is no intentionality involved on the part of the organic
cells, chemical and mineral constituents of its corporeal form. The ingredient
tangible substances that go into the makeup of a physical organic object
interact in response to the scripted directions contained in its
deterministically inherited DNA. So parrots and minhar birds apart, if a collection of
particles has a mouth rather than a beak and enunciates the word *I* you can
bet your bottom euro that it is a human, and furthermore a human that is
aware that he/she is a human (who does not lick dogs arses, but often licks
politicians and priests arses) and is confident and competent enough to use the
English language first-person pronoun as a symbol of such
self-referentiality with all of the antecedent educational experience that such a linguistic
skill implies.

Joe:
Heidegger overcame such a naive critique when he wrote (concerning
‘Cogito ergo sum’): “The sum is not a consequence of the thinking, but
vice versa; it is the ground of thinking, the fundamentum”. {1}
Jud:
Then the Philosopher of Nazism was wrong and his peasant understanding was
stunted - the *sum* is an unnecessary waste of his foul sauerkraut infected
breath - The *I* is enough - whether ideated or spoken aloud. Obviously
Heidegger had his head up his fulsome fundament when he spoke - not an unusual
position for that part of the anatomical structure in a fanatical Nazi.

Joe:
Descartes would have agreed with the conclusion. something that is (and
which is here called ‘being’) provides the possibility of experiencing;
and, thus, as soon as one notices one’s experiencing, one may validly
conclude ‘I am’.

Jud:
Descartes was just the brainwashed product of a Jesuit seminary - he could
not be expected to think clearly - and if he had - they would have burnt him
at the stake. Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS something
particular. Even God cannot exist without some attributed existential modalities.
To say *I* is to experience saying *I.* The word *being* is a spurious
primitive nonsense, for there is no non-being by which the word *being* can be
employed to differentiate one from another for the *other* (the heteron.)

Joe:
hence my updated translation: I experience; therefore, I am.
Jud:
There is no logically procedural conclusion involved (this pinpoints perhaps
your greatest confusion.)
There is no (Heideggerian) ontological difference. There is NO dichotomy or
separation between
existing as a particular object and experientially and existentially being
present in the world as that object.
Materiality includes changing the way one is a material object. The
neuro-physiological experiencing of oneself and the environment
is a participatory holistic undergoing - the juvenile concept of a
corporeal-spiritual divide is a load of medieval metaphysical meconium.

Georges:

>On the other hand, a slight linguistic competence tells us that it’s
>just bad English (or Latin for that matter), ill-formulated and thus
>meaningless. “(to) be” is a copula, an operator assigning (predicate)
>attributes to (subject) entity. “I am singing” is a statement. “I am”
>is a truncated cripple screaming for “what am I? mincemeat?”
Joe:
‘I am’ or the latin ’sum’ is, in fact, well-formed; for, there it has an
implicit complement — the root predicate.

shorn of the perjorative verbiage that passes for philosophical
analysis,

Jud:
Can anyone be blamed, (particularly a man of his vast experience) for
getting annoyed at being exposed to constant crap?
I try to leaven my opinion for metaphysicians and duellist garbage with
humour. Georges patience has probably run - out as mine will no doubt do
eventually.
One can only stand so much of the metaphysical madhouse - my way is simply
to laugh and poke fun at its transparently juvenile stupidity.

Joe:
Metonomski is correct in saying that ‘I am’ cries out for the
obvious question, ‘what am I?’ Descartes was explicit on this point;
but, Heidegger overlooked it — although one could say that it was
implicit.

Jud:
Where was Descartes explicit on this point? It should have been obvious to
the clown that the very use of *I* denotes an expression made by A HUMAN.
(all caps for emphasis not shouting)

given

[1]: the injunction that casein refer to itself in the first person by
saying ‘I am’

Jud:
*Dasein* was just a silly gerund reified into a stupid *Mister Common
Human Experience* or a hypostasised personification of *existence* just like
John Bunyan and his universalised *Christian* everyman who did this and did
that…

Joe:
[2]: Heidegger’s analysis of the voices of the ‘is’

it seems reasonable to suppose that any dasein pondering Heideggerian
philosophy in the first person would ask ‘what am I?’.

Jud:
Daseins do not *ponder.* Daseins are a figment of the deranged (probably
autistic) philosopher of Nazism’s fantasy (and other German nutters before
him)

>The auxiliary character of “be” and its lack of intrinsic meaning is
>stressed by its absence in semitic languages: “house is great” is in
>Hebrew ‘beit gadol” - “house great”.

Joe:
you’ve previously indicated that the copula is missing in Russian; but,
only in the present tense. is the copula missing in all tenses in
hebrew?

Jud:
If you think about it, whilst present-tense copuletic depletion is workable
in Russian
and a statement like: * Иван солдат.* *Ivan soldat* (Ivan is a
Soldier) is perfectly clear, one could not say
*Ivan soldat* if one meant that Ivan used to be a soldier. One would have
to qualify it by introducing *was* *buil* Иван был солдатом.
I suspect that it will be similar in Hebrew.

Joe:
in any case, the question is whether a native speaker of hebrew can say
without a copula what can be said by a native speaker of english with a
copula.

Metanomski wrote that the verbatim translation of ‘cogito; ergo, sum’
into hebrew was ‘ani hoshev mashmy ani kiim’ which he then translated
into english as ‘I think means I live/exist’.

Jud:
Descartes was in need of a good servicing of the fundament with the blunt
end of a ragman’s’ trumpet.
How could a pretended entity who cheerily addressed himself as *I* be aware
of the semantic meaning of the English, French or Latin first-person pronoun?
It is HUMANS who are packed off to school when the are young children (in
Descartes case to be incarcerated (like Heidegger) for years in a Jesuit
Seminary with a load of pedophiles. *Souls* (Catholic priestly pedofilic or
otherwise) do not go to school and study English grammar or all the kids would
have to stand with their backs to the wall rather than sitting at desks.

Joe:
this is not encouraging as it is not what Descartes intended; unless,
one suddenly redefines the hebrew for ‘live’ and ‘exist’ to mean what
Descartes meant by ’sum’ — *that* I am without knowing whether I am a
body (existent) or a non-physical entity (being) such as a soul.

Jud:
Over to Georges for that one. My knowledge of that language is rudimentary.

>The more complex issue of Cogito: It has no ontological existential
>implications, but is confined to epistemological problem of certainty,
>asserting that while the contents of my thoughts are subject to the
>permanent doubt, my awareness of thinking is certain.

Joe:
once I accept as true that my awareness of experiencing is certain, I
have resolved the epistemological question; and, as soon as I realize
that nothing unreal is self-aware, I have also resolved what Metanomski
calls the ‘ontological existential’ question.

Jud:
Such a pseudo *investigation* of *experiencing* is total crap.
Every human on earth knows that he or she is existing as soon as they open
their eyes in the morning or wake up with a compelling desire to urinate.
Furthermore, unless they awake in a hospital bed suffering trauma and memory
loss) they KNOW WHO THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY - AND WHAT THEY ARE!

Posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 6:00 am
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