From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 16:18:55 EST
Subject: Dilemma of Modern Metaphysics Part One (b Malcolm



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Malcolm:
But you never listen, you only like to proselytize your snake oils, and after
a while your devil's advocacy just wears thin for me. You don't offend me at
all, and I filter your emails to a separate folder to glance through every
now and then cos sometimes I find you rather outrageously witty. But I do a
lot of work on the internet and I need to control my information flow.

Jud:
You adopt a sensible and prudent course - all that Rene has to do is to
consign any of the mails with my name on to the re-cycle bin and to do the
same immediately he spots another mail from somebody else in conversation
with me.  His blinkered mind-set-in-stone-type is not the sort of reader or
debating partner that I seek anyway.

Malcolm:
I'm assuming that you are aware that you come across, to me at least, as a
rather un-philosophical ranter who mostly SHOUTS THROUGH A LOUDHAILER THAT
EVERYONE ON THIS LIST INTERESTED IN HEIDEGGER IS AT BEST A CONFUSED MORON AND
AT WORST A NEO-NAZI CULTIST... I also assume that you realise you are
broadcasting this to all four corners of the world across the global internet
to an international audience currently comprised of about 140 people from
diverse cultural, academic, linguistic and professional backgrounds with
likewise diverse interests and interpretations of Heidegger.

Do you want to keep doing this?

Jud:
I hardly ever use caps - and then only for emphasis.  My outbursts are always
in reaction to ad homonym to which my usual response is to up the anti.
IMO I perceive a nit-picking concentration on some harmless aside as a
stratagem to avoid and deflect a consideration of my ideas. Personal ad
homonym ALWAYS originates in another - not me. This is well documented in the
archives.  I have NEVER accused anyone of being a =E2=80=9Cconfused moron=E2=80=9D or indeed
I have never used a swearword on this list - neither have I ever made any
racialist remarks. I will try to find the original message in which I accused
Rene of having Nazi tendencies but I might have difficulty.  These responses
of mine were to something that he said which appeared to me to be an
exoneration of some of their activities or beliefs. I remember only that I
said something like: =E2=80=9CNow we all know=E2=80=9D so it must have been=20something fairly
explicit that he said.



Jud:

=E2=80=9CDo I wish to keep doing this?=E2=80=9D The answer is no - if people treat me with
respect I do the same - I can't stand personal abuse that's all - people can
abuse my ideas in whatever language they like for as long as they like, but
once they turn their venom on the messenger rather than the message I don't
take it sitting down.



Malcolm:



If you could just preface your opinions with 'IMHO' or 'AFAIK' and present
yourself with some degree of reasonableness, even respecting the different
perspectives others might have, and perhaps losing your ridiculous messianic
zeal, then maybe you might get taken seriously. Otherwise you're just a bore


Jud:

One person's =E2=80=9Cmessianic zeal=E2=80=9D is somebody else's =E2=80=9Centhusiastic involvement=E2=80=9D

Or =E2=80=9Cdedicated commitment.=E2=80=9D  I've grown accustomed to Tudor's =E2=80=9Cmessianic
zeal=E2=80=9D for example and it doesn't bother me at all like it used to do when he
was in his Priest of On phase.  =E2=80=9CBoring=E2=80=9D Well that is a very subjective
judgement.  I don't get the impression that some consider me boring but that
in itself is a subjective view.
I certainly try to enliven my writing to make it appear as fresh as I can.

Regards,

Jud.

I've lost track of where the following section slots in





Malcolm:

In what sense is Kant's transcendentalism a rejection of logic? I think
you're a bit confused as to what 'transcendental' means, especially in
relation to the 'transcendent' reality of a god or gods. The transcendent
isn't transcendental, the former refers to a supernatural realm beyond the
problem of empirical reality and phenomena while the latter represents an
attempt to explain the regularities in our experience of phenomena. Kant's
philosophy isn't a theology, in fact it underlines the modern break with god
and was considered as verging on heresy by the church authorities at the time.





Jud:

I didn't make reference to Kant or say that his philosophy was a theology.
Your comments on the question of logic in general and Kant in particular
raises a series of interesting points regarding what is considered to be
logical and what is to be thought of as illogical. Videlicet:



The first pitfall is that we are dealing with two of the most dangerous types
of words in any language - abstract nouns. Abstract means: theoretical,
non-objective, conceptual, ideational, that is every Tom, Dick and Harry has
a different personal idea of what it is to be logical and [more importantly]
what constitutes a logical or a logically arrived at determination. There is
no such thing as =E2=80=9Clogic=E2=80=9D in the same way that there is no such thing as
=E2=80=9Ctranscendentalism=E2=80=9D there are only logicians or people who consider
themselves to be reasoning logically, and there are only transcendentalists
who =E2=80=9Ctranscendentalise=E2=80=9D this or that concept.  There are of=20course a
multiplicity of =E2=80=9Ctypes=E2=80=9D or =E2=80=9Carms=E2=80=9D of logicians who manage to rationalise
and treat and accept logically the most extreme positions, and the same goes
for transcendentalists whose range over a spectrum of illogicality from the
half-hearted believer (but non-practitioner) who perhaps goes to church once
per year on Christmas Eve, to the fanatic who will crash a plane into a
building and kill him or herself and as many other people as possible at the
same time.



For example is the belief in God inculcated in the musjid or the madrassa or
the schules, or the religious colleges and schools of the west or for that
matter in the Catholic school in Messkirch where Heidegger received his
initial instruction - is that belief arrived at logically? It is an important
point, for as the Jesuits insist - if you give them a child of tender years
they will give you back a Catholic for life.

You may answer that the logical process is no different in any human being
[apart from the mentally handicapped] and that the apparent differences in
the conclusions arrived at depend on the acceptance or rejection of the
original premises, and that in the case of a belief-system that accepts a
divine being that the belief has been arrived at logically as a natural
consequence of the validity of the premise in the light of a consideration of
other variables both competitive and supportative.

Of course we all know that logic or a logical person is not logical 24/7 and
furthermore a person can [like Kant] be logical in some areas of enquiry but
not in others.



There was a professor of Logic, a man a punctilious personal habits, the very
epitome of rationality and reason, who, after a hard slog in the Lecture Room
went home and caught his wife in bed with the next-door neighbour. He ran to
the kitchen in a most illogical fashion and returned to the bedroom in an
illogical fashion and put twenty stab-wounds in both of them in an illogical
fashion.



I was once many years ago involved in a project which entailed a survey of
the Doctors of Lourdes, and it was discovered that almost one hundred per
cent of the clergy of that city (very logically) visited the doctor when they
required medical treatment, and seemed to have momentarily dispensed with the
illogicality of prayer which they were encouraging and stewarding amongst the
vast crowds of pilgrims that flock to that place to participate in the
drinking of the water whilst praying the while.

Perhaps the logical clergy refrain from supping the water because they are
aware that the spring is in fact formed from a fissure that allows water from
the nearby river to seep up through the crack at the centre of the shrine?

Extensive enquires amongst the denizens of the river-side properties dotted
along the river bank revealed no cases of miraculous recoveries due to
deliberate or accidental immersion in the shrines supply water, but sadly
there were reports of various drownings over the years.



The clergy and the same desperate people who travel hundreds of miles (IMO
illogically) in the hope of a cure, will demonstrate the logical value in
brushing their teeth every day in order to ward off teeth decay.

I am not just taking this opportunity to =E2=80=9Chave a go=E2=80=9D at religious
illogicality but merely pointing out that =E2=80=9Clogic=E2=80=9D in another of those pesky
abstract nouns and that there is NOT one fixed Platonic model of =E2=80=9CLogic=E2=80=9D up
there in the sky somewhere that caters as a template for atheists, the clergy
of Lourdes, the pilgrims, Kant, and the architects of the Great Mosque of
Jerusalem.







One mans logic is another mans fanaticism. Sometimes as in the case of the
7/11 tragedy the, [from the our point of view] illogicality of
transcendentalism  - i.e., any system of religion or philosophy emphasizing
the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical and material, became, in the
actions of the terrorists a dualistic partnership between logic and illogic,
for the planning and preparation of those willing to sacrifice themselves for
their transcendentalist beliefs was extremely logical, so much so [that from
their point of view of their objectives] they succeeded in being more logical
than those agents of the US Government and the politician paymasters who are
remunerated to be logical and to foresee such acts of illogicality.



Kant, [like the murderous Professor] and like any other human being could be
extremely logical in some areas and illogical in others. Kant could be a
transcendentalist too, in spite of his well known logical refutation of the
Cartesian ontological argument - which states that from the concept of a
being containing every perfection it is possible to infer its existence-is,
could be extremely logical in some areas and illogical in others.: Whilst he
was perfectly logical in his demolition of the Cartesian premise that:



=E2=80=9CI perceived clearly and distinctly that existence belongs to the nature or
essence of a supremely perfect being; Therefore, existence can be stated as
true of a supremely perfect being, that is, a supremely perfect being
exists.=E2=80=9D



Descartes' premise from with he proceeded to extrapolate his apparently
logical conclusions were based upon an illogical premise - just like the
young Arabs and Jews and Hindus and Christians of the West.



As ex-President Clinton might have said: =E2=80=9CIt's the accepted premise=20stupid!=E2=80=9D
[nb. this is not directed at you]



We (I - IMO) may wonder if his final acceptance of a supreme being was not
illogical after all, but a logical career-move tactic to secure and mantain
his university position - we will never really know. To be frank I don't know
enough about the prevailing religious pressures upon academia in the
Konigsberg of his time, or the details of his private conversations, to make
a logical judgement.  I just wonder what the future would hold for [say] an
American academic who had a chair in a religiously orientated and funded
university who professed atheism. I don't know the answer to that?

In Kant's words: "If, in an identical proposition, I reject the pedicure
while retaining the subject, contradiction results; and I therefore say that
the former belongs necessarily to the latter. But if we reject subject and
predicate alike, there is no contradiction; for nothing is then left that can
be contradicted" (KrV, B623) It could be sustained that given God, the
necessary predicates of its concept should be verified as God's predicates.
However, if we suppress the existence, every other predicate of God could not
be verified without contradiction. "The omnipotence cannot be rejected if we
posit a Deity, that is, an infinite being; for the two concepts are
identical. But, if we say, "There is no God," neither the omnipotence nor any
other of its predicates is given; they are one and all rejected together with
the subject, and there is therefore not the least contradiction in such a
judgment" (KrV, B623)

Kant states there would be a contradiction only if, given the subject, the
necessary predicates of its concept weren't verified. But the suppression of
the subject together with the predicates wouldn't imply a contradiction. As
to the minor premise, Kant's argues that existence shouldn't be considered a
predicate. Being cannot be a determination of the concept of God; on the
contrary, it requires having the realm of thought, positing as existing what
was before just conceived.

End of first part.


Jud Evans
<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A>
ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY
<A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com/">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace</A>



Jud Evans
<A HREF="http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/">http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/</A>
ANALYTICAL INDICANT THEORY
<A HREF="http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com/">http://uncouplingthecopula.freewebspace.com</A>


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