Mike:
I’ll come with you down that road. Here ‘I’ will denote ‘individual
self-awareness’ or something of that kind.

Next the sense of ‘real’ has to be provided.

If we agree that awareness is real yet immaterial (’material’ here including
all measurable features of the universe) then we have to work from a dualist
ontological perspective.

Now, within that dualist perspective we have to ask whether _any_ terms
normally used in the material monist perspctive are of any use at all. Primarily,
can the notion ‘exist’ be indifferently employed to denote a ‘presence’ in
both realms?

We are getting dangerously close to the category-mistake territory here that
Jud warns of.

Mike

Jud:
Mike is perfectly correct. The term *I* is simply the way the skin-bagged
thinking meat refers to itself.

The words *real* and *fact* are a far more dangerous words to use than any
other. Half the population take *real* it to mean objects that physically
exist. The other half ( predominately the hoi polloi) include
interactional events between material objects, or *facts* that comply (agree) with
their own assessment of *actuality.*

Thus coins are false rather than *real,* a woman is not considered a *real*
beauty, etc. The Effel Tower is *real* and it is a *fact* that it stands in
Paris.

Mike:
however, it is not clear that the referent of ‘I’ exists *as* a physical
object or *as* a nonphysical entity or whatever.

Jud:
When, in normal speech, a person says: *I am going to the races.* he refers
to the thinking, speaking, acting, self-referential, embrained meaty
organism he/she is - not some airy-fairy *soul* or *spirit* dreamed up by ancient
Greeks who wiped the arses on leaves and worshipped gods like Kronos who feared
his children would someday overthrow him, so at birth he took them from
Rhea, ripped the heads off and ate them.

Humans are mobile, electrochemical-Humans are mobil ideating meat
encapsulated in epidermic envelopes.

That which they ideate - the call *real.* That which happens and accords
with their version of their *real world* (as they call it) they call *a fact.*

What exist are causal objects. Material matergy. Force-fields. Spatially
situated physical entities (call them what you will)

Al the rest of the story is what the skin-bagged thinking-meat we call
*humans* think and say about such concrescences.

Cheers,

Jud.

>jPolanik@nc.rr.com writes:

>WHAT AM I?

>Jud: Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS something particular.

>Joe: this may be true. speaking in the first person (as dasein must),
>I would say ‘I am; and, I know *that* I am something particular’.
>however, it does not follow that I know *what* type of particular I am.

>Jud: Then you are the only person in the world (apart from the
>traumatised and brain dead etc.) who does not know what type of
>particular he is. For your information - and I am sure you are simply
>dying to know - you are a human - like the rest of us.

‘human’ is just a name we give to our species. it doesn’t tell us
anything about the *structure* of a human individual. in particular, it
doesn’t tell us whether the human individual is more than a human body
or not. so, ‘human’ doesn’t answer the ‘what am I?’ question.

>Jud: Are you seriously contesting the fact that humans do not know who
>they are unaware of the fact that they are humans?

I contest the claim that knowing the name of our species tells us
whether the human individual is more than a human body.

>Joe: I conclude from this that, while many individuals have opinions
>as to the structure of a human, no one can prove (except to his or her
>own satisfaction) that their opinion is true. hence, in that sense, no
>one ‘knows’ what a human really is.

>Jud: Wrong. We all know what a human is - we ARE ONE. As to the human
>structure, not only do we have the script (DNA) for a human, but you
>can check into a medical centre and be fitted with a new heart if you
>are in need of one.

we know a lot about the structure of the human body; but, the question
is whether or not a human is more than a human body.

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

Joseph Polanik schrieb Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:52:51 -0400:

> HNA: Non-Clarification of Non-Entities
>
> >>>ME: 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: I don’t know whether you presently work in the field of
> >>mathematics; but, you’ve told us that you have two degrees in math and
> >>that you’ve written papers in the field. what do mathematicians say
> >>about attributing predicates to members of the empty set (even though
> >>there are no such members).
>
> >>mathematicians might say that any x that is something is not a member
> >>of the empty set. would they then spin around like you do and claim
> >>that it follows that a member of the empty set is not a something? in
> >>other words, would professional mathematicians attribute a predicate
> >>’not something’ (or, whatever) to ‘member of the empty set’?
>
> >>what other predicates do you feel may be attributed to members of the
> >>empty set (even though there are no such members)?
>
> >ME: Here you are taking mathematical set theory as a yardstick for
> >philosophical questioning, as if this were possible. But it isn’t. Why?
> >Because mathematics takes for granted certain entities such as sets and
> >members of sets, whereas philosophy aims at an ontological
> >clarification of entities as such.
>
> JP: I have no objection of clarification of entities as such — once it is
>
> given that there is an entity.

ME: Yes, that’s your problem. You have to be given an entity before your
thinking can start. So you do it by axiomatic force, exercising your
definitional choice. If you take the giving for granted — then No Problem!
Thereby you skirt the question of the giving of beings and the question of
‘not’, of negation and nothingness, which has been with us since Plato
(you’re Plato’s sophist, but with the opposite sign). Formal logic is too
puny for such questions. Even analytic philosophy today acknowledges the
failure of Carnap’s positivism.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ http://www.arte-fact.org _-_-_-_-_-_-_ artefact at t-online.de _-_-_-
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred (c)_-_-
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

>
>
> the point of mentioning the phrase ‘member of the empty set’ is that it
> is a phrase that *by definition* has no referent. the empty set has no
> members.
>
> so where is the entity to be clarified?
>
> similarly,
>
> if, for any x that is, x is a being; then, ‘nonbeing’ is a word that has
> no referent. where is the entity to be clarified?
>

WHAT AM I?

Jud: Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS /something particular/.

Joe:
this may be true. speaking in the first person (as dasein must), I would say
‘I am; and, I know *that* I am something particular’. however, it does not
follow that I know *what* type of particular I am.

Jud:
Then you are the only person in the world (apart from the traumatised and
brain dead etc.) who does not know what type of particular he is.
For your information - and I am sure you are simply dying to know - you are
a human - like the rest of us.

Joe:
hence, the CPI: I know that I am; but, not what I am.

Jud:
Then the CPI is a load of old bollocks.

Jud:
Every human on earth knows that he or she is existing as soon as they open
their eyes in the morning or wake up with a compelling desire to urinate.
Furthermore, unless they awake in a hospital bed suffering trauma and memory
loss) they KNOW WHO THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY - AND WHAT THEY ARE!

Joe:
the debate as to whether a human is or is not more than a human body has
gone on for thousands of years with no resolution.

Jud:
You are deviously twisting the question - I said they know WHO they are (as
well as What they ARE.)
Are you seriously contesting the fact that humans do not know who they are
unaware of the fact that they are humans?

The so-called *debate* is only due to the fact that to a large extent our
human culture has been in the palsied hands of intellectual dead-beats many of
them ravaged by syphilis. Many of the lesser wits continue to be influenced
by losers like Descartes, Heidegger and Uncle Tom Cobley and by the
anti-intellectualism of the church (and religious bummery in general.) See religious
terrorism, priestly child abuse etc, etc, etc. The *christains Bush and Blair
dropping bombs on children.

Joe:
I conclude from this that, while many individuals have opinions as to the
structure of a human, no one can prove (except to his or her own satisfaction)
that their opinion is true. hence, in that sense, no one ‘knows’ what a
human really is.

Jud:
Wrong. We all know what a human is - we ARE ONE. As to the human structure,
not only do we have the script (DNA) for a human, but you can check into a
medical centre and be fitted with a new heart if you are in need of one. If
there was no consensus of agreement amongst humans regarding physiological
structure you would not dare let a surgeon with a knife anywhere near you. It is
up to the nutters who claim in *the mind* and *the ontological difference* and
other fantasies to PROVE such crap exists - not to those who deny such
autistic quackery. They have been yapping on for centuries about *the soul* and
other crap - time for the loonies to put up or shut up - they should pack-up
their pernicious crap and leave the universities and take jobs on check-out
counters or car-washes where they belong..

Georges:
On the other hand, a slight linguistic competence tells us that it’s just
bad English (or Latin for that matter), ill-formulated and thus meaningless.
“(to) be” is a copula, an operator assigning (predicate) attributes to (subject)
entity. “I am singing” is a statement. “I am” is a truncated cripple
screaming for “what am I? mincemeat?”

Joe: ‘
I am’ or the latin ’sum’ is, in fact, well-formed; for, there it has an
implicit complement — the root predicate. shorn of the perjorative verbiage
that passes for philosophical analysis, Metonomski is correct in saying that ‘I
am’ cries out for the obvious question, ‘what am I?’ Descartes was explicit on
this point; but, Heidegger overlooked it — although one could say that it
was implicit.

Jud:
Where was Descartes explicit on this point?

Joe:
early in the second meditation [CSM II, 16-17], Descartes concludes that not
even a malicious demon of supreme cunning and power could “bring it about
that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something.

Jud:
Where does he prove the existence of such a counter-factual malicious demon
of supreme cunning and power that appears so necessary to prove his point. If
his counterfactual crackpottery is dependent upon such lets pretend
ontological shenanigans then why did he not also pose the Meinongian-style question:

*I think of the existence malicious demon of supreme cunning and power (or a
crystal mountain covered in diamonds) therefore it exists.*

Should not the falsifying Frenchman have first established the existence
of such a Mickey Mouse demon before coming up with an explanation upon which
such an crudity was founded. This is a gutter-level * philosophy of *the
lower depths* redolent of skinhead Heideggerianism.

Joe:
I conclude from this that, while many individuals have opinions as to the
structure of a human, no one can prove (except to his or her own satisfaction)
that their opinion is true. hence, in that sense, no one ‘knows’ what a human
really is.

Joe:
Descartes proceeds to ask himself variations of the question ‘what am I?’.

Jud:
No wonder he has become a laughing-stock in the corridors of shame. The
answer to his self-questioning *What am I?* was quite obvious … he was a
stupid, time-wasting idiot who should have had his arse smacked and sent back to
the Jesuit Palace of Pederasts. He should have stuck to arithmatic.

Joe:

>jPolanik@nc.rr.com writes:

>GEVANS613@aol.com wrote:

>>Metanomski on What Am I?

>>WHAT AM I?

>Jud: Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS /something particular/.

this may be true. speaking in the first person (as dasein must), I would
say ‘I am; and, I know *that* I am something particular’. however, it
does not follow that I know *what* type of particular I am.

hence, the CPI: I know that I am; but, not what I am.

>Jud: Every human on earth knows that he or she is existing as soon as
>they open their eyes in the morning or wake up with a compelling desire
>to urinate. Furthermore, unless they awake in a hospital bed suffering
>trauma and memory loss) they KNOW WHO THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY - AND WHAT
>THEY ARE!

the debate as to whether a human is or is not more than a human body has
gone on for thousands of years with no resolution.

I conclude from this that, while many individuals have opinions as to
the structure of a human, no one can prove (except to his or her own
satisfaction) that their opinion is true. hence, in that sense, no one
‘knows’ what a human really is.

>Georges:

>>On the other hand, a slight linguistic competence tells us that it’s
>>just bad English (or Latin for that matter), ill-formulated and thus
>>meaningless. “(to) be” is a copula, an operator assigning (predicate)
>>attributes to (subject) entity. “I am singing” is a statement. “I am”
>>is a truncated cripple screaming for “what am I? mincemeat?”

>Joe: ‘I am’ or the latin ’sum’ is, in fact, well-formed; for, there it
>has an implicit complement — the root predicate. shorn of the
>perjorative verbiage that passes for philosophical analysis, Metonomski
>is correct in saying that ‘I am’ cries out for the obvious question,
>’what am I?’ Descartes was explicit on this point; but, Heidegger
>overlooked it — although one could say that it was implicit.

>Jud: Where was Descartes explicit on this point?

early in the second meditation [CSM II, 16-17], Descartes concludes that
not even a malicious demon of supreme cunning and power could “bring it
about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So,
after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude
that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is
put forward by me or conceived in my mind.”

the very next paragraph begins “But I do not yet have a sufficient
understanding of what this ‘I’ is, that now necessarily exists.
…. I will therefore go back and meditate on what I originally
believed myself to be,”

Descartes proceeds to ask himself variations of the question ‘what am
I?’.

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

Jud:
Descartes was just the brainwashed product of a Jesuit seminary - he could
not be expected to think clearly - and if he had - they would have burnt him at
the stake. Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS something
particular. Even God cannot exist without some attributed existential modalities. To
say *I* is to experience saying *I.* The word *being* is a spurious primitive
nonsense, for there is no non-being by which the word *being* can be employed to
differentiate one from another for the *other* (the heteron.)

Whaddyamean, Jud: “There is no non being…?” Are you saying that human
beings are immortal and not subject to the non being of Thanatos? Or would you
consider Death a state of being? On the other hand, if you are dialectically
enough inverted, you might suppose that the double negative “no non-being” posits
being. Are you perhaps lapsing more and more proto-metaphysical or
hyper-transcendental when you say “Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS something
particular.” Always? Always? Is the your time frame of eternity, the realm of
“no non-being” of Death come to life? That’s real mind boggling… heavy shit.
Perhaps you have left the constipated man-of-mind thinking so prevalent
around here and are indulging another mode of consciousness. Now all you have to
do is say “yes” and like Paremenides sing *che sara, sara.* In any case, I’m
glad you are aboard because you are the only clunker worth clunking with.
Carry on, Old Bean….er…Being,
Bernard

**************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for
fuel-efficient used cars.  http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut000…)

>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

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

>>>ME: 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: I don’t know whether you presently work in the field of
>>mathematics; but, you’ve told us that you have two degrees in math and
>>that you’ve written papers in the field. what do mathematicians say
>>about attributing predicates to members of the empty set (even though
>>there are no such members).

>>mathematicians might say that any x that is something is not a member
>>of the empty set. would they then spin around like you do and claim
>>that it follows that a member of the empty set is not a something? in
>>other words, would professional mathematicians attribute a predicate
>>’not something’ (or, whatever) to ‘member of the empty set’?

>>what other predicates do you feel may be attributed to members of the
>>empty set (even though there are no such members)?

>ME: Here you are taking mathematical set theory as a yardstick for
>philosophical questioning, as if this were possible. But it isn’t. Why?
>Because mathematics takes for granted certain entities such as sets and
>members of sets, whereas philosophy aims at an ontological
>clarification of entities as such.

I have no objection of clarification of entities as such — once it is
given that there is an entity.

the point of mentioning the phrase ‘member of the empty set’ is that it
is a phrase that *by definition* has no referent. the empty set has no
members.

so where is the entity to be clarified?

similarly,

if, for any x that is, x is a being; then, ‘nonbeing’ is a word that has
no referent. where is the entity to be clarified?

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@
 http://what-am-i.net
@^@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@^@

GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:

>Metanomski on What Am I?

>WHAT AM I?

Georges:

>Better than that. Reading a book without knowing its context of
>author’s achievements and Weltanschauung often, if not always leads to
>put erroneous constructions on some assertions. Best example is “I
>think, therefore I am” of Descartes. Unprepared reading gives on the
>one hand the impression of “thinking” having some mysterious
>ontological power of creating “being”.

Joe:
it would be a naive reading of Descartes to suppose that “thinking” had
the power to creating “being”; but, it would be an equally naive
critique of Descartes to suppose that he intended such a meaning.
Jud:
I cannot speak for Georges Metonomski but I am an admirer of his and I agree
with him that perhaps some people could conceive of a spurious necessary
connection between thinking and being present as a thinking object in the world?
After all it is not necessary to able to think in order to exist in the
world as a material object of some kind. Occasionally children are born without
any brain at all - they do not usually live long, and kindly doctors most
often withdraw treatment and allow them to die - those allowed to live usually
end up as Heideggerians or post-modernists. Stones do not think, yet they
exist.

Now I grant you that stones are not aware of the fact that they exist. A dog
on the other hand is aware of itself (it licks its own arse and the arses of
other dogs if it gets the chance) To mouth the word *I* (the rest of the
Cartesian garbage is unnecessary) confirms the utterer as a self-denotative
human being - unless the utterer is a squawking parrot or a minhar bird that has
learned to copy human speech.

The word use of the word *being* used in the material-object sense (rather
than the stupid Heideggerian sense) of being some kind of object - i.e. human
- is ontologically and semantically confusing and has primitive religious
origins. If God is portrayed as *The Supreme Being* then anything made is his
image must be at least granted the *title* being too. It suggests that the
descriptor-word *being* refers to a being that is *being* human. Well why not
refer to a Chimpanzee being or a mouse being? Its simple - because they were
not made in the image of God. A bit unfair you say? Well, yes, for as
Chimpanzees look much like humans and humans are made in the image of God, it
follows that God looks a bit like a chimpanzee too. Maybe the film *The Planet of
the Apes* was on to something after all?

Well, a human is not *being human* IT IS HUMAN - just like the chimp and the
mouse IS a chimp or a mouse. The conglomerate of cosmically originated
material inherited from its parents and the ingested food of which the object is
constructed forms a composite entity that we classify as a human, a chimp or
a mouse. The material is not deliberately *being human,* or being chimpish or
mouselike - there is no intentionality involved on the part of the organic
cells, chemical and mineral constituents of its corporeal form. The ingredient
tangible substances that go into the makeup of a physical organic object
interact in response to the scripted directions contained in its
deterministically inherited DNA. So parrots and minhar birds apart, if a collection of
particles has a mouth rather than a beak and enunciates the word *I* you can
bet your bottom euro that it is a human, and furthermore a human that is
aware that he/she is a human (who does not lick dogs arses, but often licks
politicians and priests arses) and is confident and competent enough to use the
English language first-person pronoun as a symbol of such
self-referentiality with all of the antecedent educational experience that such a linguistic
skill implies.

Joe:
Heidegger overcame such a naive critique when he wrote (concerning
‘Cogito ergo sum’): “The sum is not a consequence of the thinking, but
vice versa; it is the ground of thinking, the fundamentum”. {1}
Jud:
Then the Philosopher of Nazism was wrong and his peasant understanding was
stunted - the *sum* is an unnecessary waste of his foul sauerkraut infected
breath - The *I* is enough - whether ideated or spoken aloud. Obviously
Heidegger had his head up his fulsome fundament when he spoke - not an unusual
position for that part of the anatomical structure in a fanatical Nazi.

Joe:
Descartes would have agreed with the conclusion. something that is (and
which is here called ‘being’) provides the possibility of experiencing;
and, thus, as soon as one notices one’s experiencing, one may validly
conclude ‘I am’.

Jud:
Descartes was just the brainwashed product of a Jesuit seminary - he could
not be expected to think clearly - and if he had - they would have burnt him
at the stake. Something NEVER just *is* - it always *IS something
particular. Even God cannot exist without some attributed existential modalities.
To say *I* is to experience saying *I.* The word *being* is a spurious
primitive nonsense, for there is no non-being by which the word *being* can be
employed to differentiate one from another for the *other* (the heteron.)

Joe:
hence my updated translation: I experience; therefore, I am.
Jud:
There is no logically procedural conclusion involved (this pinpoints perhaps
your greatest confusion.)
There is no (Heideggerian) ontological difference. There is NO dichotomy or
separation between
existing as a particular object and experientially and existentially being
present in the world as that object.
Materiality includes changing the way one is a material object. The
neuro-physiological experiencing of oneself and the environment
is a participatory holistic undergoing - the juvenile concept of a
corporeal-spiritual divide is a load of medieval metaphysical meconium.

Georges:

>On the other hand, a slight linguistic competence tells us that it’s
>just bad English (or Latin for that matter), ill-formulated and thus
>meaningless. “(to) be” is a copula, an operator assigning (predicate)
>attributes to (subject) entity. “I am singing” is a statement. “I am”
>is a truncated cripple screaming for “what am I? mincemeat?”
Joe:
‘I am’ or the latin ’sum’ is, in fact, well-formed; for, there it has an
implicit complement — the root predicate.

shorn of the perjorative verbiage that passes for philosophical
analysis,

Jud:
Can anyone be blamed, (particularly a man of his vast experience) for
getting annoyed at being exposed to constant crap?
I try to leaven my opinion for metaphysicians and duellist garbage with
humour. Georges patience has probably run - out as mine will no doubt do
eventually.
One can only stand so much of the metaphysical madhouse - my way is simply
to laugh and poke fun at its transparently juvenile stupidity.

Joe:
Metonomski is correct in saying that ‘I am’ cries out for the
obvious question, ‘what am I?’ Descartes was explicit on this point;
but, Heidegger overlooked it — although one could say that it was
implicit.

Jud:
Where was Descartes explicit on this point? It should have been obvious to
the clown that the very use of *I* denotes an expression made by A HUMAN.
(all caps for emphasis not shouting)

given

[1]: the injunction that casein refer to itself in the first person by
saying ‘I am’

Jud:
*Dasein* was just a silly gerund reified into a stupid *Mister Common
Human Experience* or a hypostasised personification of *existence* just like
John Bunyan and his universalised *Christian* everyman who did this and did
that…

Joe:
[2]: Heidegger’s analysis of the voices of the ‘is’

it seems reasonable to suppose that any dasein pondering Heideggerian
philosophy in the first person would ask ‘what am I?’.

Jud:
Daseins do not *ponder.* Daseins are a figment of the deranged (probably
autistic) philosopher of Nazism’s fantasy (and other German nutters before
him)

>The auxiliary character of “be” and its lack of intrinsic meaning is
>stressed by its absence in semitic languages: “house is great” is in
>Hebrew ‘beit gadol” - “house great”.

Joe:
you’ve previously indicated that the copula is missing in Russian; but,
only in the present tense. is the copula missing in all tenses in
hebrew?

Jud:
If you think about it, whilst present-tense copuletic depletion is workable
in Russian
and a statement like: * Иван солдат.* *Ivan soldat* (Ivan is a
Soldier) is perfectly clear, one could not say
*Ivan soldat* if one meant that Ivan used to be a soldier. One would have
to qualify it by introducing *was* *buil* Иван был солдатом.
I suspect that it will be similar in Hebrew.

Joe:
in any case, the question is whether a native speaker of hebrew can say
without a copula what can be said by a native speaker of english with a
copula.

Metanomski wrote that the verbatim translation of ‘cogito; ergo, sum’
into hebrew was ‘ani hoshev mashmy ani kiim’ which he then translated
into english as ‘I think means I live/exist’.

Jud:
Descartes was in need of a good servicing of the fundament with the blunt
end of a ragman’s’ trumpet.
How could a pretended entity who cheerily addressed himself as *I* be aware
of the semantic meaning of the English, French or Latin first-person pronoun?
It is HUMANS who are packed off to school when the are young children (in
Descartes case to be incarcerated (like Heidegger) for years in a Jesuit
Seminary with a load of pedophiles. *Souls* (Catholic priestly pedofilic or
otherwise) do not go to school and study English grammar or all the kids would
have to stand with their backs to the wall rather than sitting at desks.

Joe:
this is not encouraging as it is not what Descartes intended; unless,
one suddenly redefines the hebrew for ‘live’ and ‘exist’ to mean what
Descartes meant by ’sum’ — *that* I am without knowing whether I am a
body (existent) or a non-physical entity (being) such as a soul.

Jud:
Over to Georges for that one. My knowledge of that language is rudimentary.

>The more complex issue of Cogito: It has no ontological existential
>implications, but is confined to epistemological problem of certainty,
>asserting that while the contents of my thoughts are subject to the
>permanent doubt, my awareness of thinking is certain.

Joe:
once I accept as true that my awareness of experiencing is certain, I
have resolved the epistemological question; and, as soon as I realize
that nothing unreal is self-aware, I have also resolved what Metanomski
calls the ‘ontological existential’ question.

Jud:
Such a pseudo *investigation* of *experiencing* is total crap.
Every human on earth knows that he or she is existing as soon as they open
their eyes in the morning or wake up with a compelling desire to urinate.
Furthermore, unless they awake in a hospital bed suffering trauma and memory
loss) they KNOW WHO THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY - AND WHAT THEY ARE!

>Metanomski on What Am I?

>WHAT AM I?

>Better than that. Reading a book without knowing its context of
>author’s achievements and Weltanschauung often, if not always leads to
>put erroneous constructions on some assertions. Best example is “I
>think, therefore I am” of Descartes. Unprepared reading gives on the
>one hand the impression of “thinking” having some mysterious
>ontological power of creating “being”.

it would be a naive reading of Descartes to suppose that “thinking” had
the power to creating “being”; but, it would be an equally naive
critique of Descartes to suppose that he intended such a meaning.

Heidegger overcame such a naive critique when he wrote (concerning
‘Cogito ergo sum’): “The sum is not a consequence of the thinking, but
vice versa; it is the ground of thinking, the fundamentum”. {1}

Descartes would have agreed with the conclusion. something that is (and
which is here called ‘being’) provides the possibility of experiencing;
and, thus, as soon as one notices one’s experiencing, one may validly
conclude ‘I am’.

hence my updated translation: I experience; therefore, I am.

>On the other hand, a slight linguistic competence tells us that it’s
>just bad English (or Latin for that matter), ill-formulated and thus
>meaningless. “(to) be” is a copula, an operator assigning (predicate)
>attributes to (subject) entity. “I am singing” is a statement. “I am”
>is a truncated cripple screaming for “what am I? mincemeat?”.

‘I am’ or the latin ’sum’ is, in fact, well-formed; for, there it has an
implicit complement — the root predicate.

shorn of the perjorative verbiage that passes for philosophical
analysis, Metanomski is correct in saying that ‘I am’ cries out for the
obvious question, ‘what am I?’. Descartes was explicit on this point;
but, Heidegger overlooked it — although one could say that it was
implicit.

given

[1]: the injunction that dasein refer to itself in the first person by
saying ‘I am’

[2]: Heidegger’s analysis of the voices of the ‘is’

it seems reasonable to suppose that any dasein pondering Heideggerian
philosophy in the first person would ask ‘what am I?’.

>The auxiliary character of “be” and its lack of intrinsic meaning is
>stressed by its absence in semitic languages: “house is great” is in
>Hebrew “beit gadol” - “house great”.

you’ve previously indicated that the copula is missing in russion; but,
only in the present tense. is the copula missing in all tenses in
hebrew?

in any case, the question is whether a native speaker of hebrew can say
without a copula what can be said by a native speaker of english with a
copula.

Metanomski wrote that the verbatim translation of ‘cogito; ergo, sum’
into hebrew was ‘ani hoshev mashmy ani kiim’ which he then translated
into english as ‘I think means I live/exist’.

this is not encouraging as it is not what Descartes intended; unless,
one suddenly redefines the hebrew for ‘live’ and ‘exist’ to mean what
Descartes meant by ’sum’ — *that* I am without knowing whether I am a
body (existent) or a non-physical entity (being) such as a soul.

>The more complex issue of Cogito: It has no ontological existential
>implications, but is confined to epistemological problem of certainty,
>asserting that while the contents of my thoughts are subject to the
>permanent doubt, my awareness of thinking is certain.

once I accept as true that my awareness of experiencing is certain, I
have resolved the epistemological question; and, as soon as I realize
that nothing unreal is self-aware, I have also resolved what Metanomski
calls the ‘ontological existential’ question.

Joe

{1} Heidegger, Martin. “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics” an
except from _What is a Thing_ contained in _Martin Heidegger: Basic
Writings_ by David F. Krell. p. 279

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

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