Heidegger

PART ONE OF TWO.

In a message dated 29/09/2006 10:48:14 GMT Standard Time,
_artefact at t-online.de_ (mailto:artefact@t-online.de) writes:

JUD EVANS:
Your contention therefore must be that if language is NOT an assemblage of
convenient abstractions - it must be an assemblage of convenient material
objects?

DR. ELDRED:
No, language is the articulation of human understanding — neither
especially convenient, nor a material object. It is sheer unfounded dogma to assert
that only tangible, material things exist.

JUD EVANS:
Human understanding does not exist - prove it does exist and its *Stockholm
bound!* and a specially struck Nobel Prize medal for *Services rendered to
Metaphysics in proving the existence of Nothing.* and a post-ceremonial
celebration dinner in the panoramic restaurant with spectacular views of the
*Venice of the North* spread out below.

It is sheer unfounded dogma to claim that human understanding or any other
mentalistic abstraction DOES exist without a SINGLE shred of evidence to back
up your preternatural claims. Believing in something without a shred of
evidence is mere faith. I on the other hand can produce an understanding human for
your inspection any time you like to provide the truth of my claims - in fact
the planet earth is TEEMING with them, and they are growing in number at an
alarming rate.

DR. ELDRED:
Our human understanding does not and cannot work that way. To understand the
various things in this list, “a whisky, a gin”, etc. as belonging together
in the class of “something to drink”, they must already be understood as
“something” and “something drinkable”. These latter categories are _prior_ and
_constitutive_ for our understanding, and the concrete specifications as whisky,
etc. are derivative.

JUD EVANS:
But what you say has nothing at all to do with the fact that these useful
abstractions ARE abstractions - all that you are adding here is the fact [which
I could have already told you] that we humans organise these useful fictions
and categorise them into similar types of utile convenient envisionings?

DR. ELDRED:
Here you are fallaciously equating “abstraction” with “fiction” without any
argument whatsoever. What is your argument that abstractions do not exist?

JUD EVANS:
I do not need one - you Dr. Eldred are the person who is making these
outrageous non-evidential claims and it is up to you to produce your evidence for
such a curious belief. Abstraction does not exist. That which does not exist
and (like *human understanding* or *pain*] is claimed to exist is a fiction -
therefore abstraction is a fiction. Provide your proof by sending a small
package to every list member containing a small amount of the abstraction *Human
Understanding.* You can pop some *pain* in the same box while you are at it
if you like - it shouldn’t take up too much space?

JUD EVANS:
The word or the substance *something* is NOT drinkable.

DR. ELDRED: You don’t say. Has nothing to do with the ontological argument,
but with evasively clowning around to divert attention from the Sache selbst.

JUD EVANS:
My writing is intentionally jokey BUT never evasive - every point
meticulously addressed] in order to reduce the mental burden on you a bit, for I can
see that you are whelmed and don’t really know which way to turn next. It
cannot be very edifying for you after a lifetime of commitment and dedication to
an abstraction-based faith seeing your dreams torn to bits by an eminently
more e powerful modern argument. And you keep claiming that universals exist
so, Folk ontology doesn’t exactly encourage seriousness - does it?

JUD EVANS:
What you say has little to do with ontology and all to do with ease of
communication. You are confusing a human understanding of the convenient
grammatical strategies of periphrasis and ambage with the ontological investigation of
the realities of what exists and what does not exist.

DR. ELDRED:
Language is not merely a convenient tool for “communication” (an extremely
superficial definition of language), but articulates human understanding. What
exists and what does not exist can only be decided _within_ the identity of
human understanding and being (see below) and articulated in language.

JUD EVANS: Humans exist as linguistically equipped, communicating, ideating
creatures who employ their communicative codes for [amongst other things]
sharing notions about what exists and what does not exist, and posit opinions as
to the way, manner or modes in which they exist. A brief glance at the
exchanges on this list over the past months will reveal that notions and opinions
as to WHAT EXISTS and the manner in which individuals PERCEIVE objects to
exist differs. In other words your abstractional fictions are very much generated
in the brain of the individuate beholder

DR. ELDRED:
Only by being able to understand something _as_ something can you ever see
and understand that cup of tea before you on the table as “something to drink”.

JUD EVANS:
That of course is true - but what we are discussing is what exists and what
does not exist and NOT our understanding of an object’s precise existential
modality in relation to [say] the traditional tea-drinking society of Britain.
A member of the Bongo-Bongo tribe from the foothills of Mount Wilhelm, the
highest mountain in The Bismarck Range, which is part of the central highlands
of north-eastern Papua New Guinea confronted for the first time with a cup
and saucer of a steaming brown liquid could see and pick up the cup, feel it,
smell it, hear the cup rattle in its saucer and even dip his little finger
into the hot liquid. He would know immediately THAT THE OBJECT EXISTED, but
would not know whether one was meant to drink the brown liquid or whether it was
used as a constituent of a plant-dye for the colouring of penis-sheaths for
the export market. Alternatively if you visited his village, you too might be
presented with an object of which its use was a complete mystery - but YOU
WOULD KNOW that the object EXISTED.

DR. ELDRED:
You would understand that it is something, and you could only do so because
you always already understand the abstract category of something that exists
in its own right just well as, but in a different existential mode from the
sock on your left foot.

JUD EVANS:
Amongst eliminativists the notion of a special category for something that
exists in its own right is an ontological redundancy - for ALL causal objects
exist in their own right and therefore the whole notion of *ontological
categories* is ridiculous and is a leftover from the long dark night of folk
ontology. Existential MODES of objects differ [though not one object in the cosmos
is exactly the same as another.]

JUD EVANS:
I think to introduce the subject of the anthropocentric consideration of
the USES and even UNDERSTANDING of the things in themselves that surround us in
such a basic, primary ontological investigation [the enquiry into NOT the
*problem of *Being* but whether there IS *Being* - the interrogation that
Heidegger never carried out] as to whether they exist or not is to invite someone
interjecting: *I don’t give a damn WHAT the object is USED for - for
hammering or as a doorstop - in this ontological examination I am only interested in
if it exists or not.*

DR. ELDRED:
I’m not talking about the uses of a thing especially, but about
understanding it in the first place as something, which is the precondition for
understanding it at all as anything specific.

JUD EVANS:
Humans, cat and dogs, mice, fish and fruit flies [Drosophila melanogaster ]
share nearly 60% of human genes and are studied by thousands of scientists
around the world to learn how the creatures sensorially distinguish the causal
objects which are important to their niche in Darwinian terms and are
important to their survival. Drosophila melanogaster know the difference between the
fruit they like and *nothing* - unless that is you have spotted one licking a
non-existent plum? So what is the big deal with humans? Even a cat or a
mouse realises the difference between the objects which make up a solid part of
their environment and *nothing* They will not jump off a high object into
empty space unless they can recognise another object [i. e., the ground, or some
other object upon which to land safely. To the cat it matters not whether the
object is your grandmothers Margaret’s oak wardrobe, or [in Paris] the
newly-painted round roof of a public pissoire - the main thing for the cat is that
THE OBJECT EXISTS - it is TOTALLY UNCONCERNED about WHAT IT EXISTS as. That
is the approach that I am taking in this discussion - the methodology that
Heidegger shirked and ran away from - - the main question in ontology is NOT
about sundry humans understanding an object AS a certain type of *something,*
but the FACT - the ACTUALITY that it exists.

JUD EVANS:
Humans are *understanding causal objects* who learn about the other objects
[like the cat or the fruit fly] in the world as they develop [change the way
they exist as causal objects] The *learning8 and the *understanding* itself
does not exist.

DR. ELDRED:
Human understanding moves from the most abstract universals through to more
concrete particularizations (or specifications) to grasp the singular in its
singularity, and never in the other direction, from the singular thing up to
merely nominal, conventional abstractions. (Our understanding would simply not
know where to head upward.)

JUD EVANS:
I interpret this as an acceptance on your behalf that abstractions do NOT
exist and that it is only the concrete objects exist.

DR. ELDRED:
Your conclusion here is only a tautological consequence of dogmatically
positing that only tangible, material things exist.

JUD EVANS:
The repetition of true statements concerning eliminative determinism is by
its very nature tautologous, as too are statements to the effect that the
claims of abstractional existence by folk ontology are utterly false. The only way
to such avoid tautology in this case of denying the existence of *nothing*
and other abstractions is to avoid truthful statements. I refuse to tell lies

JUD EVANS:
My challenge to you to PROVE the existence of the objects of your faith
still stands.

The list awaits with bated breath.

DR. ELDRED:
Of course abstract universals exist.

JUD EVANS:
In that case as you are so sure, you will encounter no difficulty in
immediately providing persuading evidence to back up your curious claims.

DR. ELDRED:
If you look closely (instead of constantly overlooking), you will see that
we are intimately familiar with, say, the category of something and literally
could not live as a human being without it.

JUD EVANS;
*Categories* are no more than convenient fictions - classificational
constructs to assist humans to sort out the objects that surround them. From an old
fashioned folk ontology perspective everything in the cosmos is *something*
so every *something* would be placed in the same fictional category presumably
named *everything* - what on earth use is that to man or beast?

JUD EVANS:
Again you consistently introduce human understanding which concerns opinion
AS TO THE WAY IN WHICH OBJECTS EXIST into the question of WHAT EXISTS AND WHAT
DOES NOT EXIST. Objects exist whether or not humans understand or not - or
whether they are right or wrong in their opinions of HOW they exist [in what
manner in accordance with human language etc.]

DR. ELDRED:
Human understanding is not “opinion”.

JUD EVANS:
Tell that to the Marines - the US marines in particular, for at the moment
THEIR human understanding or opinion is that they are the saviours of
democracy bringing freedom and deliverance from ignorance to a grateful Iraqi
population - while large sections of the native Iraqis are of the opinion and have
the understanding that it is THEM who have brought all this latest evil upon
them and want them out of the country as soon as possible. Understanding
humans when they make statements about their understanding are simply stating
opinions.

DR. ELDRED:
Outside the identity of human understanding and being

JUD EVANS: T
he IS NO *identity* of *human understanding* and *Being* - that is just part
of folk ontology’s internalised belief-system in an ontological duality
twixt brainbody-meat and some risible spiritual *product* of such an entity.

DR. ELDRED:
… there is nothing at all to say about whether anything exists or not,
for to say anything would be already to articulate a human understanding of the
state of affairs, thus bringing it within the identity of human
understanding and being.

JUD EVANS:
That really is not pertinent at all to do with the question we are
addressing, and in regard to the evidential proofs with I am continually pressing you
to reveal publicly. The REAL fact of the matter is that HUMANS EXIST right
now. We are not addressing what counterfactuality would possibly appertain if
no humans existed. Let us if we may stick to the ontological facts concerning
WHAT EXISTS AND WHAT DOES NOT EXIST and consider the ways in which you intend
to prove to the world that these extraordinary claims of yours can be
verified and proved. So I ask you again - please prove that what you claim exists
exists and where and when I may inspect these fictional [or if your prefer]
*abstractional * objects of which you are a self-appointed custodian.

DR. ELDRED:
That’s why your materialist eliminativism is a contradictio in adjecto. The
only consistent conduct for a materialist eliminativist would be to fall
forever mute — and not self-indulge in long-winded pugilism directed at anything
genuinely philosophical.

JUD EVANS:
There IS NO contradiction between the adjective causal and the noun object
it qualifies - because EVERY OBJECT IN THE COSMOS exists that way as a changing
entity. You claim that folk philosophy is *genuinly philosophical* and yet
you consistently refuse to provide any evidence whatsoever to back up the
claims of your philosophy which is grounded and constructed upon the very
abstraction which you fail to prove exists. You yourself have just employed a
contradictio in adjecto in your description of folk philosophy as *genuinly
philosophical* when it fact it is just out of date speculation based upon absolute
fiction.

JUD EVANS:
The objects of the cosmos existed eons BEFORE the human race developed and
will continue to exist long AFTER the human race has disappeared from the
universe.

DR. ELDRED:
You can only assert this from WITHIN the identity of understanding and
being.

JUD EVANS:
If by that you mean if I Jud Evans did not exist I would not be able to
type these words - you are quite correct - and what point are you trying to make
in saying that - I would have thought it was pretty obvious to anybody?

DR. ELDRED:
WITHIN this identity, of course, something can be said about what has been
and what will be — we are not restricted to the present in articulating our
understanding, but can develop, say, a theoretical understanding of the
so-called Big Bang billions of years ago when there were no humans around. OUTSIDE
the identity of human understanding and being, however, there are no human
beings and nothing at all to be said.

JUD EVANS:
The above is very true, but it is diverging from the main focus of the
discussion, which concerns the fact that we ARE here now and that you believe that
certain fictions actually exist and I do not and I am trying to get you to
start coming up with some evidence and proofs for the claims you keep making.

JUD EVANS:
OK, humankind can argue as much as they like about their perception of the
manner, mode or way in which that which exists is perceived to exist through
the imperfect sensorial medium of their sensors - but there is no argument AT
ALL about the actuality that ONLY objects exist, and that they exist IN the
way that they exist. If you have hard evidence that objects DO NOT exist in
the way that they exist then now is your opportunity to present it to the
public.

Dr. ELDRED:
As it is, your materialist eliminativism operates with a postulated,
unfounded basic unit called “causal object” which is no less an abstraction than the
category of “something to drink”. So denying the existence of the latter (as
a conventional abstraction) implies also the non-existence of the former.

JUD EVANS:
It seems you have forgotten that when a nominalist or an eliminativist uses
the term *causal object* he only ever employs it in the sense of addressing a
singleton

DR. ELDRED:
Yes, indeed. The eliminativist intends to address solely a singleton, but
immediately contradicts himself by actually saying a universal, namely
“singleton”. You keep on evading this point, but it keeps coming back.

JUD EVANS:
We eliminativists [and I had this out with MichaelP years ago) employ such
terms for convenience - in order to avoid long-winded circumlocution. For the
eliminativist the use of such words does not imply that he or she accepts for
one moment that universals exist. I have no intention of embarking upon a
long section to explain the various ways in which the eliminativist concept of
the individual can be extrapolated, for I have done so endlessly on this list
for years. The bottom line is this. Whilst the folk ontologist uses
universals in language and actually [consciously or unconsciously] believes that they
exist - the eliminativist uses such useful fictions but recognises then as
verbal conveniences and DENIES THAT THEY EXIST.

end of part one

Posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
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