Metanomski on What Am I?
July 6th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Metanomski on What Am I? :: [epistemology] Discovery vs Disclosure :: Are you Denying that the Copula can have an Implicit Complement? :: Metanomski on What Am I?
GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:
>jPolanik@nc.rr.com writes:
>GEVANS613@aol.com wrote:
>>Metanomski on What Am I?
>>WHAT AM I?
>Jud: Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS /something particular/.
this may be true. speaking in the first person (as dasein must), I would
say ‘I am; and, I know *that* I am something particular’. however, it
does not follow that I know *what* type of particular I am.
hence, the CPI: I know that I am; but, not what I am.
>Jud: 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!
the debate as to whether a human is or is not more than a human body has
gone on for thousands of years with no resolution.
I conclude from this that, while many individuals have opinions as to
the structure of a human, no one can prove (except to his or her own
satisfaction) that their opinion is true. hence, in that sense, no one
‘knows’ what a human really is.
>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, 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?
early in the second meditation [CSM II, 16-17], Descartes concludes that
not even a malicious demon of supreme cunning and power could “bring it
about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So,
after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude
that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is
put forward by me or conceived in my mind.”
the very next paragraph begins “But I do not yet have a sufficient
understanding of what this ‘I’ is, that now necessarily exists.
…. I will therefore go back and meditate on what I originally
believed myself to be,”
Descartes proceeds to ask himself variations of the question ‘what am
I?’.
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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