Unacknowleged Consequences
July 6th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Unacknowleged Consequences :: Unacknowleged Consequences :: Germans outplayed by Ahmadinejad in their own Spiegel/Mirror :: Broken Tools
michaelP wrote:
>MichaelE:
>>>ME. Not everybody tries to assert that nothing can be predicated of
>>>nothingness, and I have shown how you contradict yourself in the
>>>attempt to do so.
>JoeP:
>>you have shown (to your own satisfaction, of course) that *any* effort
>>(not just my effort) to formally disallow the predication of
>>nothing(ness) is self-contradictory; but, you refuse to admit that you
>>have thereby proven that it is possible to attribute predicates to
>>nothing(ness). that’s the HNA.
>That’s the rub… I may have gotten it wrong but it seems to me that
>contra-diction embraces both the possibility of predicating and not
>predicating nothingness or be-ing;
you *have* gotten it wrong in two respects.
1: I am not talking about the *possibility* of predicating nothingness
vs the *possibility* of not predicating nothingness.
I am talking about the the choice between two mutually exclusive
assumptions: the assumption that it is *possible* to attribute
predicates to nothing(ness) vs the assumption that it is *impossible* to
attribute predicates to nothing(ness).
2: you persist in speaking in the same breath about predicating
nothingness and predicating be-ing; implying that these cases are
identical. I make no such claim.
>of course, one *can* *concretely* (it is “allowable” to) attribute
>predicates to nothingness or be-ing (e.g., nothingness is blue and
>shaped like Zappa’s guitar solo in Willie The Pimp), but analytically
>it might amount to silence and thus be analytically im-possible.
I agree that it is possible to crank out syntactically correct
meaningless nonsense statements (e.g., nothingness is blue) that have a
subject-copula-predicate structure.
are you saying that you infer from this fact that it is *possible* to
attribute predicates to nothingness?
I am saying that, unless it is possible to utter a meaningful statement
that attributes some predicate to nothingness, then it is impossible to
attribute predicates to nothingness.
>I am not going to say categorically that one cannot (should not)
>concretely predicate nothingness/be-ing: my point is that it makes no
>sense (nonsense) to even try …
if it makes no sense to even attempt to predicate nothingness; then, I
would say that it is impossible to to predicate nothingness.
>… (because neither nothingness nor be-ing is {a being}).
is it possible for someone to agree with you that “neither nothingness
nor be-ing is {a being}” AND be willing to say “be-ing is” AND be
unwilling to say “nothingness is”?
>The problem here, for me, is that of … whether the very basis of
>predication (’isness’ if you like) is not itself … what all
>predication ‘assumes’ in order for predication to take place at all.
yes, the basis of predication is what all predication assumes. is that
‘isness’? well, that depends on how you define ‘isness’. for me, that
which is is not nothing; so, isness is not nothingness.
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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