QED
March 28th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: No related posts
Anthony Crifasi wrote:
>Joseph Polanik wrote:
>>you are claiming you can prove ‘I am really them’. I’m calling your
>>bluff. state your case or fold up your tent.
>I predict that you will once again similarly cast yourself as the one
>who hasn’t been ignoring the arguments I’ve been giving.
quite so. I have provided numerous objections which you have ignored.
>Yet you continue your rhetorical tapdancing and maneuvering by
>attacking the conclusion without addressing the premises.
I attacked your conclusion *first*. that’s how modus tollens works as a
refutation of your attempted modus ponens.
you have a set of premises, P = {P1, P2, P3}, that together
entail a conclusion Q.
P1. I remain self-identical throughout all my perceptions.
P2. If I know that I exist, I must know that there is something which
remains identical throughout all my perceptions.
P3. I have no evidence that anything remains identical throughout all my
perceptions.
Q. (therefore), I don’t know that I exist.
thus you have your major premise: P -> Q
you then have your evidence/argument that your premises, P, are true.
you are a little vague here; but, we’ll get back to that.
thus you also assert P.
Then you conclude Q.
schematically, your argument is a classic modus ponens:
P -> Q
P
(therefore) Q
my refutation is a simple modus tollens. I show that Q is
self-contradictory or leads to a contradiction. in the present case I
show that
Q -> -Q
having shown this contradiction, I have proven that at least one of your
premises is wrong.
how could that happen, you ask?
you have indicated that ‘existence’ means ‘not nothingness’ — to say
‘I exist’ means only ‘I am not nothing’.
you have indicated that ‘to know’ means ‘to prove by evidence-based
logical deduction’.
you have indicated that a skeptical conclusion as to my own existence
has the form ‘I do not know that I exist’ (rather than the form ‘I know
that I do not exist’).
putting all these definitions together, it is clear that you are
claiming that, from your set of premises, you deduce the skeptical
conclusion, Q: I have not proven by evidence based logical deduction
that I am not nothing.
and, now, the rest of the story…
Q -> -Q [Q implies its own negation] because any assertion of Q is in
violation of the First Law of Reality: nothing unreal is self-aware.
if I conclude Q, I am asserting self-awareness. I am asserting that I,
the referent of ‘I’ have no evidence when I assert ‘I am not nothing’.
hence, it can not be the case that I am unreal. the fact that I can draw
a conclusion, *any* conclusion at all, proves that I am real in
some sense — that I am not nothing.
[remember, for any x that is, x is not nothing. for you this universally
attributable meaning ‘not nothing’ is carried by ‘exists’ or
‘existence’. for me the meaning ‘not nothing’ is carried by ‘real’ or
‘reality’.]
it doesn’t matter what the conclusion is. it could be sacred or profane,
profound or trivial, true or false, and so on.
the fact that a conclusion, *ANY* conclusion, is drawn demonstrates that
the referent of ‘I’ which draws the conclusion ‘I have not proven by
evidence based logical deduction that I am not nothing’ has in fact
proven that it is not nothing.
nothing unreal can possibly conclude ‘I have not proven by evidence
based logical deduction that I am not nothing’.
think about it calmly and rationally: in the total absence of any
reality (of any reality type whatsoever), in the total absence of any
existent (of any mode of existence whatsoever), in the total absence of
any being (of any mode of being whatsoever), what could possibly draw
any conclusion about its own knowledge? the Nothing?
could Heidegger’s the Nothing ever draw the conclusion ‘I have not
proven by evidence based logical deduction that I am not nothing’.
of course not. whatever draws this conclusion thereby proves that it is
not nothing.
so, the skeptical conclusion your set of premises produces is
self-refuting.
Q -> -Q
hence, -P [at least one of your set of premises is wrong].
and that concludes this lesson in the theory and practice of modus
tollens.
===
we could review your case for each of your premises to see if we can
spot the false premise(s); or, having proven by evidence based logical
deduction that ‘I am not nothing’ is true, we could move on to ‘what am
I?.
it’s your call.
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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