Heidegger

Cologne 15-Jun-2008

Joseph Polanik schrieb Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:04:32 -0400:

> Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> >Joseph Polanik schrieb Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:47:07 -0400:
>
> >>Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> >>>>>ME: All I pointed out was that you can’t help predicating
> >>>>>something of nothing,
>
> >>>>JP: on the contrary, one *can* prevent predicating something of
> >>>>nothing simply by defining ‘is’ and ‘Nothing’ thru use:
>
> >>>>where
>
> >>>>N = ‘Nothing’
> >>>>E = existential quantifier
> >>>> = biconditional (ie equivalence)
>
> >>>>[1]: (x)(-N)
>
> >>>>translation: for any x that is, x is not Nothing
>
> >>>>this is logically equivalent to
>
> >>>>[2]: -(Ex)(Nx)
>
> >>>>translation: it is not the case that there is an x such that x is
> >>>>Nothing. thus:
>
> >>>>[3] (x)(-N) -(Ex)(Nx)
>
> >>>>hence, one can not attribute predicates to nothing because the word
> >>>>’nothing’ has no referent to which any predicate may be attributed.
>
> >>>ME: If you define nothing away, then you define nothing away.
>
> >>JP: precisely.
>
> >>>>one can not attribute any predicate to nothing because the word
> >>>>’nothing’ has no referent to which any predicate may be attributed.
>
> >>>ME: You have merely formalized “referent” as “x that is”, but nothing
> >>>is the negation of any “x that is”. We’ve been here before: nothing
> >>>is not something, and that is what you cannot avoid predicating of
> >>>nothing.
>
> >>JP: you are contradicting yourself. above you that I have avoided
> >>predicating ‘nothing’ by defining it away and that I have made the
> >>problem vanish by using formally manipulable symbols. you can’t then
> >>turn around and claim “you cannot avoid predicating of nothing”.
>
> >ME You do both. In order to define nothing away, you first have to
> >distinguish it from something, which necessarily provides also a
> >predication of nothing.
>
> JP: your argument is more legalistic than philosophical. when accused of
> predicating nothingness, you say: “I didn’t do it; and, if I did,
> everyone does it”.

ME: I didn’t say that. I said that, by predicating that something is not
nothing, you also predicate that nothing is not something. So even before you
get to define nothing away by shrink-wrapping it down to a minus sign, you
have predicated that it is not something.

>
> JP: let’s not go down that road. instead why don’t you deal with something
> more concrete, a simple assertion that has previously stumped Professor
> Crifasi:
>
> I am self-aware.
>
> in the total absence of any reality of any reality type; in the total
> absence of any existent of any mode of existence; in the total
> absence of any being of any mode of being; etc., — what asserts ‘I am
> self-aware’?
>
> Joe
>

ME: I’ve already long since disposed of this as part of your so-called
Confession of Partial Ignorance, which has to become a Confession of Total
Ignorance to become philosophically interesting. Instead, since you assert
that something is not nothing, the next question is, what, precisely,
distinguishes nothing from something. Cf. Plato and Hegel. Skipping over
philosophical questions and shrink-wrapping them in symbols of logic which is
unquestionably taken as a basis for thinking is a philosophical program (cf.
Carnap) that has long since been given up under the pressure of the evidence
of the phenomena themselves.

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_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred (c)_-_-
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Posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 6:00 am
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