Heidegger

20/11/2008 _jPolanik at nc.rr.com_ (mailto:jPolanik@nc.rr.com)

writes: Jud,

your recent posts concerning the natural language quantifiers ‘is’ and
‘exists’ display a fundamental confusion insofar as they suggest that there is a
relationship between natural language quantifiers and logical quantifiers.

there is no such relationship.

the logical quantifiers are ‘all’ and ’some’.

what you are calling natural language quantifiers are the uses of ‘is’: the
is of predication and the is of isness.

in the hope that you are willing (and able) to clarify this point …,

Jud:
Let me attempt to *de-confuse* you Joe. First of all there is no right which
reserves the term *quantifier* exclusively for use by predicational
logicians. The term was only introduced in the early nineteenth century as a term
in logic. It has been in use in NL for centuries and comes from the
Medieval Latin quantificre : Latin quantus, how great; see quantity + Latin -ficre,
-fy. Literally in the sense of “determine the quantity of, the measure of*
etc.

What I am claiming is that *is* and *exist* are (God forbid!) not the SAME
as the predicate logic (all and some) version of the UQ and the EQ, but act as
the *some or none* NL VERSION or VARIANT manifested linguistically as
sentential tools in the quantification of the presence or non-presence of
matter, material, matergy, (call it what you will.) In that sense, formalised
predicate logic being a later innovation, the PL version is the variant of the
NL one really.

In the sense that NL is more equipped and more seriously engaged with
questions of ontology than PD, where the emphasis is on the soundness or
unsoundness of arguments, rather than the truth or falsity parlour games of
propositions, it comes as no surprise that the NL quantifiers are going to be more
sophisticated than the PL, for the PL formulations are concerned merely with
*let’s pretend* situations* (my professor, a German logician, agreed with that
characterisation) whereas NL is concerned with the human linguistic
interface with the real world which engages not only with questions of *all or some,*
but with perhaps the more important grown up question of *some or none*
too.

The NLUQ and NLEQ provide ways in which claims may be made as to whether
there IS an objective empirically verified quantity of ’stuff’ that can be said
to exist and can be described in its various existential modalities, or
whether the designatum is a so-called *ideal object* (Berkeley, Meinong, etc) or *a
state of affairs* which is materially unquantifiable (and undefinable) in
the way that Heideggerians phaff around trying to explain *Being* etc.
An example is the way that Heideggerians never use and always avoid the
expression exists* in relation to *Being* (vide; The Sandwich Board (or is it
*Sandwich bored* or even *bawd?* ) but will employ the NLUQ quite
happily in expressions like: *Heidegger’s Being is…blah, blah, blah* or *For
Heidegger Being is…blah, blah, blah, which is used with alacrity.

My modular conception of the NL version of matergic quantification is not
one of a quantificational claims of entirety of class inclusiveness, ( I can
rubbish universals quite easily with my nominalist hat on) nor is the NLEQ
characterised as to indicating some unspecified number or unspecified quantity,
expressions of which is already present in natural language in profusion and is
something which *is* actually does address in the case of number, (is, are
etc.) The relationship of *is* and *exist* is one were *is* universally
matergically quantifies designata (which may or may not exist as material
quantities) and *exist* is employed when an existential claim is made that the subject
exists in a materialistic modality as in the case of subjectival nominata.

Jud.

Posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 am
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