Heidegger

THIS IS SECTION ZWEI OF JUD EVANS’ ANSWER TO Plato Theaet. 155e ’something’
PART ONE OF TWO
(THIS TOO HAD TO BE SPLIT IN TWO BECAUSE IT WAS BOUNCED AS BEING TOO LONG.)

DR. ELDRED: [PREVIOUSLY] … 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: [BEFORE] That really is not pertinent at all to do with the
question we are addressing,

DR. ELDRED: That is not only “pertinent at all to do with the question”, but
the pith of the issue. Parmenides already warned us two and a half millennia
ago not to try to leave the identity of human understanding and being. To
make the attempt leads only to asserting foolish things (cf. my proposed
non-experiment below).

JUD EVANS: [NOW} All that you do here is to replace one abstraction with
another. No such *human understanding of the state of affairs* exists just like
your * hearing *something* in the next room here in the flat and get up to
investigate what it was, but find nothing at all* does not exist. Only the flat,
the hearing and understanding you realising that the sound has been caused
by a book, and the next room with the falling book exist. As for Parmenides he
also exhorted us not to speak of that which *is not* - but that which is not
is the Grundbegriff of you whole fictional ontology. But then you are
obviously very selective in your sources and you only seem to take those bits of
Parmenides’ advice that gel with your curious folkish position. Maybe you find
the massed blanket of the vox pupuli or ontofolk for whom the traditional
folk ontology speaks to be in some way a comfort - a reificational reassurance
that you are *on the right track* philosophically?

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] and in regard to the evidential proofs with I am
continually pressing you to reveal publicly.

DR. ELDRED: The public revelation here is that you have no answer to this
dilemma that we human beings could leave the identity (the belonging-together)
of human understanding and being and still say anything at all. I challenge
you to be consistent and fall silent forever.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} Never mind what I think - in the bowels of Christ let us
see this PROOF that you deviously avoid presenting and deflecting [rather
clumsily I my opinion] Do not you feel embarrassed that you stand there for all to
see in the witness box before your peers yet all you can do is to prevaricate
and attack your invigilator who se only purpose is to try to elicit the
truth of what exists and what does not and to see to it that you are examined
fairly, prevented from cheating and given a reasonable opportunity to produce
hard evidence for the existence of the will o the wisps and ontological
phantoms which you vehemently insist exist in the world?

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] The REAL fact of the matter is that HUMANS EXIST right
now.

DR. ELDRED: Yep, we exist right now, understanding being.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} Well you SAY you understand *Being* but you have absolutely
NO PROOF that it exists? Who told YOU *Being* exists? Who told HE that told
YOU - if you were able to trace the concatenational connections far back
enough in time it would be some snot-dribbling shaman crouched out of the rain in
the back of the cave wolfing down the dead animal parts that the folkish
no-marks who had been out hunting in the pissing rain had given to him to
*Dedicated to the God of hunting* or the *being* who dwells in the oak tree where
the annual virgin is hanged.

DR. ELDRED: And existing right now, we human beings are in timespace and
understand and can think about what is past and what is future.

JUD EVANS: [NOW}
*In timespace* what the heck is THAT? What you are addressing here is the
way that humans exist neurologically. If you reread my sentence I speak the
REAL fact of the matter is that HUMANS EXIST right now. Not the way some exist
neurologically fantasising about what used to be or what might happen in the
future. You keep changing the subject - departing intentionally from the main
board upon which you are pinned like some helpless moth. Please address the
question of what exists and what does not exist. I f you insist that *human
understanding* and *Being* exist then bring out you proofs. You don’t even have
to describe them or even talk about them - just SHOW US the damn things, and
then the cruel pin can be withdrawn and you can flutter back up to the
light-bulb and dance in the clearing of *Being* and ping your worshipping wings
against the white hot vitrification of Heidegger’s verity.

DR. ELDRED: We can even develop theories (i. e. contemplations) of whatever
kind about times long gone, millions and billions of years ago, before human
beings existed on this planet. So human existence in the here and now means at
the same time being stretched into both the past and the future.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} Yes. Yes. very good. Embrained humans using their brains in
a way that they were meant to be used. Being ideationally stretched in the
here and now - Yes - a good phrase. But that is NO PROOF AT all that anything
other than the ideationally stretched, neurologically active humans exist. All
the rest refers to the WAY that they exist, which is not a job for the
ontologist but for the sociologist, the anthropologist in fact EXACTLY the way
that Husserl framed his main critique of Heidegger.

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] We are not addressing what counterfactuality would
possibly appertain if no humans existed.

DR. ELDRED: You keep on dogmatically asseverating that causal objects exist
in themselves, independently of whether human beings exist or not — so you
yourself keep on attempting to leave the identity of human understanding and
being. To no avail, and with only comical effect (see below).

JUD EVANS: [NOW} I have no intention of trying to escape from the modes of
existential understanding which my species has developed over thousands of
years. It would be an impossible and silly thing to essay. However the
intelligence with which I have been blessed due to the happenstance of the catenulate
causal interactions which preceded me is enough for me to comprehend that the
objects of the cosmos existed long before any human had reached such a level
of sentience that he or she could understand the fact. At this stage I am
curious to discover whether your rejection is that of a pre-Michael Eldred
cosmos or a pre-human one? Am I to understand you correct that you are claiming
that (A) there existed no cosmos before you were born or (B) that no cosmos
existed before there were humans who could comprehend the cosmos as the cosmos?
[or world]

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] 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: The onus is rather on you to prove that the phenomena before our
eyes, especially before our mind’s eye, of each and every one of us — such
as the phenomenon of something –, with which we are all thoroughly intimate
and familiar, does not exist. Your touchy-feely criterion of really real
existence is simply a peculiar idee fixe of yours. What exists first and foremost
for us human beings understanding the world are the ideas within which all
that is shapes up and becomes understandable.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} You turn your begging-bowl of solicitation for your
*fallacy of appeal to authority* to the masses, which is the hallmark of the folk
ontologist - now you can understand why the term was created and is spreading
like memetic wildfire throughout our institutions of higher learning.

DR. ELDRED: You claim that I am deluded to assert that abstractions such as
the category of something exists. When someone is suffering from delusions,
however, and sees things that do not exist, some explanation is provided of the
delusion, either that what is seen is in truth something else
(e. g. what the deluded one sees as his general’s hat is in truth a tea
cosy), or that what is said to exist is merely imagined and refers to nothing
that is truly present and apparent to anyone present on the basis of its own
phenomenal evidence.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} Yes it is true - I DO think you are deluded - but in spite
of that I am willing to allow you the chace

DR. ELDRED: [PREVIOUSLY] But you do not claim either. All you do is keep
repeating that abstractions, such as the category of something that is
thoroughly manifest to each of us, does not exist, without showing that what we see in
truth is not something but Contradictio in adjecto other thing, nor even
claiming that we merely imagine something.

JUD EVANS: [NOW] It’s simple then - just prove them.

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: [BEFORE] There IS NO contradiction between the adjective causal
and the noun object it qualifies-

DR. ELDRED: A “contradictio in adjecto” has nothing to do with adjectives.
It means, “abject contradiction”.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} You are wrong I’m afraid: Ein verbreiteter Spezialfall des
Oxymoron ist die Contradictio in adjecto (lat. „Widerspruch in der Beifügung“
). Oft steht dabei ein Adjektiv, welches normalerweise ein Substantiv näher
erläutert, im Widerspruch zu diesem. Here are some examples of contradictio in
adjecto for you to see that in all cases the adjective contradicts the noun
- in other words the term is just a fancy way of describing an oxymoronically
conjoining contradictory term as in: a *deafening silence - a tiny giant, a
forced volunteer, an honest liar, a wrong proof, a variation of the
constants, an eloquent silence, the relatively best.* It has no connection with the
Latin word for abject - which is: *abiectus.* abicio -icere -ieci -iectum [to
throw down or away]. Transf. , [to pronounce carelessly, break off abruptly ;
to get rid of, give up; to dash to the ground, weaken, dishearten]. Hence pa
rtic. abiectus -a -um; of position [low, common]; of character [cowardly,
mean]; of style, [without force, prosaic]. Adv. abiecte, [without spirit, meanly].

abiectio -onis f. [throwing away]; ‘animi’ , [despondency, despair].
_http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=ab&ending=iectus_
 http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/looku…)

BTW. Nietzsche used it in this adverbial sense in Beyond Good and Evil.

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] … because EVERY OBJECT IN THE COSMOS exists that way
as a changing entity. You claim that folk philosophy is *genuinly
philosophical*

DR. ELDRED: It would be real nice if the folk, or some folk, could really do
this folk ontology.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} They call it *folk ontology* PRECISELY because the folk
CANNOT DO ONTOLOGY.

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] 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.

DR. ELDRED: The evidence I have constantly provided is to call on you to
open your eyes, especially your mind’s eye. Just relax, stop denying and take a
look around.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} Calling upon someone who rejects the very existence of what
you claim exists to *open their eyes* is just whistling in the dark - the
only way to deal with somebody like me whose eyes are already wide open is bring
the phenomenological objects or *metaphysical objects* or whatever gobble de
gook you folk ontologists use to describe the indescribable and PRODUCE THEM
FOR INSPECTION.

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] 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: I am not just talking about empirical individuals, but
ontologically about human understanding and being in their identity with one another.
The British empiricist in you cannot get beyond individualism.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} But we are not addressing chattering human individuals
gossiping out their ideas of what they think they understand [ and plainly do
not] nor are we addressing British empiricists who you allege cannot get beyond
individualism. We are trying to address what exists and what does not exist,
but you keep changing the subject like some addict who keeps deflecting any
mention of abstinence.

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: [BEFORE] 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.

DR. ELDRED: Yes, “we ARE here now”, and can think and say ONLY from WITHIN
our human understanding of the world, so we have to pay attention to how a
world shapes up within and for human understanding. We cannot possibly do any
better than that. It’s mere twaddle to attempt to say anything at all about
things in themselves, outside at possible human experience and understanding of
them.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} As I type I look down at the keyboard which plainly exists
as a thing in itself.

Are you claiming that it DOES NOT exist as a thing in itself? Perhaps you’re
claiming that it exists as part of another thing’s self, or are you claiming
that it clings for comfort and company to some swirling flock of Platonic
*somethings* in the sky, which sometimes make a visitation to the other room in
your flat in order to go *bump in the night* or hover like hesitant hawks
awaiting for some ill-informed human to summon them down as a stand-in
*something,* if strange sounds are made in another room, or if a hostess is too lazy
to list the available drinks on offer?

DR. ELDRED: You persist in shining your tiny flashlight on that rusty
toolbox of mechanistically mutually impinging causal objects under your bed that
your wife keeps banging the Hoover up against, claiming that only they exist,
but everyone can see otherwise, namely, that what you keep denigrating as
“useful fictions” actually do exist. We cannot be human beings at all outside the
identity of human understanding and being, and to be understanding human
beings, we must see, first and foremost, the ideas, especially the abstract and
most abstract ideas that allow the world to shape up as a world and be
understood. Even though, for the most part, we overlook these ideas (such as
’something’) upon which we vitally and essentially depend, and take them for
granted, ontological thinking’s task is to bring these ideas to light — and
philosophy from Plato through to Heidegger is this endeavour to make us aware of
what we already implicitly know.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} I enjoyed the stuff about the causal objects under the bed
- 50-years ago I would have thought you were referring to the pisspot which
caused one the luxury of staying in the warm bedroom instead of fighting
against the storm to reach the lavatory at the bottom of the yard. [happy days]

*Everyone* that YOU mix with - those who mitseinically dance the
metaphysical mambo with you on the dance-floor of Dasein - may believe the guff about
the existence of abstraction - but the gang I run with think differently. Now
the fact that your gang is bigger than my gang makes not a lot of difference -
the fact that there are x-million muslims does not mean that their prophet
was right and the fact that there are x-million Catholics doesn’t mean that the
ex-Hitler Jugend guy in charge is infallible either. I keep telling you that
it is a waste of time to regurgitate aspects of human linguistic behaviour
and the point to the abstract and most abstract ideas that allow the world to
shape up as a world and be understood - they are human created
communicational shortcuts and nothing more and have no bearing whatsoever on your claims
that they really, really exist other than the fact that the ho polloi have been
USING these terms for thousands of years and have come to take it for
granted that they actually exist. Das Volk can be forgiven for this - but I can see
no excuse for their more educated and articulate mouthpieces to descend to
the same level.

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] 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: I have not for a moment denied the existence of the tangible
things around us. Why should I?

JUD EVANS: [NOW} You did say somewhere that without humans the at things in
themselves do not exist?

DR. ELDRED: But you’re stuck in onticity, and do not see the ontological
task of grasping both the causality and the objectivity of your “causal objects”
in well-founded, thought-through concepts. Debating whether or not certain
beings exist is beside the ontological point and a task for the explorers of
onticity of whatever kind. If you hadn’t written off all philosophy from Plato
through to Heidegger as “folk ontology”, you could have learned something.
You seem to be deluded that your rumbunctiously aggressive polemic can wipe
these greats off the slate as mere idiots. Philosophy does not work that way.
Philosophy moves and changes only through fine minds thinking carefully and
deeply. Since your eliminativism eliminates minds as non-existent, perhaps that
does not matter to you.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} Of COURSE I see all the aspects you point out - I am a
highly educated aware member of society with a catholic interest in every aspect
of our world, from our political institutions to poetry - from history to
hermeneutics, from music to metaphysics - from math to foreign languages. I have
raised many children, known many relationships - have been an assiduous
omnivorous reader of educational and aesthetic books and magazines since I was a
small kid. To make the wild statements that I have not been thinking carefully
is just another way of saying that I have not been thinking carefully and
deeply in the poplarist mode that you have chosen - a mode that I have an
understanding of but no sympathy with. As to the *greats of *philosophy* they are
the *greats* of YOUR KIND of philosophy NOT mine - for me thinkers have to
earn my respect and the only mitigating factors that I can think of to excuse
the crap that Socrates, and Plato spewed out was the fact that they lived in a
society that had so recently been nothing more than bare-assed savages. As
for Heidegger I shall employ the *Contradictio in adjecto*
*elequent or deafening silence* to speak for me.

JUD EVANS: [BEFORE] 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.

DR. ELDRED: Be that as it may. The denial of existence is no solution, for
your situation is much more dire. It is not at all that you are merely a
conformist that goes along with convention, but that, with every sentence you say
and every thought you think, you are in self-contradiction.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} I am part of no convention. My personal ontology of
Eliminative Determinism is (as far as] I know a unique creation of my own. In fact I
am very probably the only member of this list who has actually produced a
fully functional ontology. Now obviously you disagree with its principles, but
at least it stands up well to criticism and I have no trouble at all defending
it and I am willing to provide evidence for my claims at every turn - which
is something that you cannot say for your ontology which if you are honest,
you will admit is not really an ontology at all - but no more than blind faith
in the manner of the masses that you represent?

DR. ELDRED: E. g. walking past an elm, you think to yourself, that elm over
there looks sick, and you mean that singular elm over there in its singularity
and no other.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} The fact that I address that singular elm over there in its
singularity does NOT mean that I am unaware of the other elm trees that
exist in the world. Some of them I am personally aware of - others I am willing
to accept on the say-so of others. The fact the we do not accept that
universals exist [the very idea seems utterly childish and ridiculous] does NOT mean
that we disregard all the other individual elms in the world.

DR. ELDRED: You intend to think solely the elm in its singularity, but
cannot avoid thinking “elm”, a kind of tree.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} You are just erecting *straw elms* - but nothing of the
sort that you claim describes the reality of the eliminativist.

DR. ELDRED: So, in thinking that that elm looks sick, you think and
understand a universal, namely ‘elm” as a kind of tree, and you cannot do otherwise.
And so you are left in the dilemma of saying and thinking affirmatively
universals whilst at the very same time denying that they exist. No deeper
self-contradiction is possible.

JUD EVANS: [NOW} I think of the kind of tree an elm is but it is the
individuate elms that exists - NOT *The thinking of the kind of tree an elm is*
which is no more than an existential modality of the thinker about elm trees.. Is
that TOO difficult for you to understand?

Once more thank you for the good natured tenor of your contributions - we
are miles apart ontologically I know, but I like to think that mine are also
suitably restrained in the cause of our common interest - the philosophical
truths that we both hold dear.

regards,

Jud Evans. Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
 http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)

regards,

Jud Evans.
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

Posted on Saturday, September 30th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
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