From: GEVANS613-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 05:37:15 EST
Subject: Re: Being & Time 2



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Jud, here is a link to one of your replies in the archives of this list, in 
which your reply appears twice, one after the other, in different formats:

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/cgi-bin/spoons/archive_msg.pl?file=heidegger

.archive/heidegger.0304&msgnum=16&start=3126&end=3457


Jud:
Thanks a lot Anthony.

> >You are getting things confused Anthony - the name of the game - what is
> >desired - is to make existential propositions or claims about objects which
> >have referents in the real world, NOT to identify any linguistic 
> >differences
> >between the format of the language-code which we employ to describe their
> >actual presence of the name-referents. The truth of the actuality of the
> >referent identifies and corroborates the lingual asseveration as being a
> >truth statement.
> 
> 

Alright good, so the truth of a sentence depends on the actuality of the 

> referent, and is not rendered meaningless by the fact that the sentence 
> itself contains no element which would distinguish it from a mere 
> sentential 
> existentialisation. For example:
> 
> >Look I'll make an existential truth claim [proposition about a real entity.
> >Alongside me as I type is my three-year old son Marius. Here comes the 
> >truth
> >claim about a real entity:
> >
> >"Marius Alexander George Evans is sitting upon the stool in my study."
> >
> >In this case the proposition is a truthful one, for the entity, which is
> >referenced by the name Marius Alexander George Evans, is a real one, {I 
> >have
> >just rested my hand on his head.] The truth of the existential statement is
> >verified by his temporal presence
> 
> 

Now, next question: Is my being not also verified by my temporal presence 
> (as opposed to my non-presence)? 
> 
> 

Jud:
The truth of any  statement  which claims that there is a veridical entity 
which is referenced by the name Anthony
Crifasi is certainly verified by you being  temporally present, even if you 
were dead and your body was lying in the funeral parlour. 
If you are not temporally present then the statement would be false.

If sufficient proof were available that you had once been present however, 
any truth statement  which claims that there is a veridical entity which is 
referenced by the name Anthony Crifasi would have to be modified by the 
replacement of the type of BE-word employed. and "was" would replace "is".

The stage when the body of Anthony Crifasi is no longer referenced by the 
name Anthony Crifasi is an interesting one which I shall not explore
at the moment.

Now we have arrived at the interesting bit, and without acrimony I must point 
out that we could have arrived here much earlier
if you hadn't insisted in trying to trip me up rather than move the 
discussion on to the ramifications of my claims in 
respect to Heideggerianism. Putting all that behind us, at least we have 
arrived at a degree of clarification, and can proceed to examine the use and 
meaning of language in relation to non-entitic significations [words] which 
have no corresponding palpable veridical reality in the world.

Before we start though, I fear we will encounter a number of important words 
which need to be defined as to their meaning for you and for me,
for if our interpretations of the words existence, actuality, presence, 
reification, and perhaps most importantly for Heideggerians - "Being,"
differs radically it is most unlikely that we will achieve any degree of 
agreement.  What normally ensues then is that the transcendentalist and the 
analytician return to their private bunkers and continue the thinly disguised 
war of attrition.
As to your question: "Is my being not also verified by my temporal presence 
> (as opposed to my non-presence)?" My answer would be "No," for you do not 
> "have" any temporal "presence"
> [the word "presence" being a mere convenience to avoid the longer phrase 
> which describes an entity being present rather than
> not being present]  you are either "here in the world" or "not here in the 
> world" and if you ARE "here in the world" you do not HAVE a "here in the 
> world"
> you are simply "here in the world." Put another way, if  Anthony Crifasi is 
> in the world busily being the entity which is referenced by the name 
> Anthony Crifasi he does not HAVE a "being in the world,"  because "being in 
> the world" is simply a linguistic code that we use to describe totality of  
> the existential modalities of  the ongoing phenomena of  the entity Anthony 
> Crifasi, rather than selecting one modality out of the nexus as I did when 
> I made the existential truth-claim that: "Marius Alexander George Evans is 
> sitting upon the stool in my study."  Marius may be sitting on my stool, 
> but he doesn't HAVE a sitting,
> and Anthony Crifasi doesn't HAVE a "being" - Marius is "sitting" on the 
> stool and Anthony Crifasi is "being" the entity which is identified by the 
> name Anthony Crifasi. Sitting and Being are STATES of the respective 
> 

Anthony:
And if so, what's wrong with making a 
veridical statement about my existence, such as, "I exist"? 

Jud:
There is absolutely nothing wrong  with you making a 
veridical statement about my existence, such as, "I exist."
But if you make the veridical statement "I am" it causes confusion [in spite 
of what Jason says]
for in natural language most people would wait for the rest of the predicate 
and then say "You are what?"
This is because in English the BE-word is always used to indicate existential 
description
(like Marius is sitting on the stool) and not existential truth claims 
regarding simple presence.
Claims about simple presence employing the BE-word are usually   reserved for 
God,  [I am] Descartes
{I think therefore I am] for Hamlet [to be or not to be] and for Popeye [I 
yam whad I yam] and it is 
for dramatic or poetic effect. But the subliminal unspoken  understanding is 
always:
1) I am [God]
2) I think therefore I am [alive]
3) To be [alive] or not to be [alive?]
4) I yam [the sort of person] whad I yam.

Anthony:

And if so, then what's wrong with a philosophical analysis of my being, which 
is what 
Heidegger is all about? 

Jud:
There is nothing wrong with embarking upon a philosophical analysis of you 
being the entity referenced by the name
Anthony Crifasi. Where Heidegger goes wrong, [and it can be traced right back 
to the leaf episode] and is a BASIC and PROFOUND
error on his behalf, is that he actually believes that the bit of 
unreferenced  linguistic code: "being" actually is something that can be 
talked about genitivally as if it BELONGS  in some way to the entity Anthony 
Crifasi, when in fact it has no veridicality at all
being simply a composite word which describes the actions and states of the 
entity which corresponds to the name Anthony Crifasi.
If we try to describe the "Sitting" of Marius Alexander George Evans on my 
stool we only do so in the knowledge that we are describing the actions and 
bodily states of the entity and not something either tangible or attributable 
as anything other than a gerundial device to describe the  relative spatial 
positionality
and bodily posture of the entity Marius in relation to the relative spatial 
positionality of the stool.
Marius no more HAS a "Sitting" than you HAVE a "Being."

Anthony:
After all, the actuality of the referent, which is verified by my temporal 
presence, does not depend on some linguistic 
reduction to the subject itself (since you have granted that the subject 
contains nothing distinguishable from mere sentential existentialisation) or 
the predicate (same reason). So you cannot object on a linguistic basis, 
such as that the referent is a mere reification of the copula or something 
like that, since the actuality of the referent does not depend on such 
linguistic factors, but rather on my temporal presence.

Jud:
There is no linguistic dependency involved in  the actuality of any referent 
which exists in the real world.
There is a tree in the middle of the African jungle somewhere that has never 
been talked about by humans
which nevertheless exists. We are addressing the ways in which we can talk 
about  such a tree or trees
and how "a tree becomes "the tree" and why, and how language operates when we 
attribute predicational description to fictional
[sentential] entities and why we don't get the two entitic categories [the 
veridical and the fictional] mixed up in communication.
It is not the "referent" [the entity Anthony Crifasi] which is reified and as 
an abstract concept to be real, but the particular conjugational morph of the 
BE-word
which is reified by the term "Being." The temporally present entity known as 
Anthony Crifasi exists but "his being" does not for it is no more than a 
code-word to 
attribute the modalities and states and experiences of the entity known and 
respected as Anthony Crifasi.

cheers,

Cheers,

Jud.

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

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