Heidegger

gevans613 at aol.com wrote:

[Jud]: I [am] interested in receiving the vital message from you which
deals with my recent demolition of the *I think therefore I am.*
absurdity.

[Joe]: consider a statement such as ‘I experience; therefore, I am’ or
the simpler ‘I am’.

[Jud]: Such predicatationally truncated, sententially orphanic
verbalisms are meaningless

[Joe (new)]:

the theory of the implicit copula complement unifies the theory of the
(subject + copula + complement) sentence and the theory of the (subject
+ copula) sentence — the is of predication and the is of
instantiation, respectively. hence, a statement such as ‘I am’ is a
complete sentence. it is neither truncated nor orphanic nor empty, etc.

interestingly enough, you recently expressed your theory that a (subject
+ predicate) sentence has an implicit copula; thus, accomplishing a
further theoretical unification.

consider the simple (subject + copula + complement) sentence:

I am an experiencer.

the complement (an experiencer) is a subject complement. it predicates
the subject (says something about *what* the subject is). in english
this predication can also be expressed in an appositive structure:

I, this experiencer, am.

now, two things could happen. first the ‘am’ can become implicit. this
results in ‘I, this experiencer’ which is the implicit copula structure
some languages use. [note: this is also the so-called ‘topic/comment’
structure of the african-american dialect of english.]

secondly, the appositive structure of predication makes it clear that,
even when saying *what* I am via the appositive/predicative word or
phrase, the assertion *that* I am is still made. {footnote 1}

I experience
(hence) I am an experiencer
(hence) I, this experiencer, am
(hence) I am
(hence) I experience; therefore, I am

thus, as Heidegger and Descartes both agreed: sum grounds (is the
necessary condition of) cogito.

Joe

{1}: I, [some name] uses the appositive structure to express identity;
thus allowing a further theoretical unification.

I am Claudius = I, Claudius [title of a fictional autobiography of an
emperor of Rome]

I am Harcourt Fenton Mudd = I, Mudd [title of an episode of Star Trek,
the Original Series]

I am Q = I, Q [title of an essay written by young Q in Star Trek,
Voyager (Q 2)]

I am (a) Robot = I, Robot [title of a collection of short stories by
Isaac Asimov then a movie]

–
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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Posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 6:01 am
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