Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 13:06:41 -0400
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: PLC: After this, only 80 Proof


Dennis,
	Since you are correct that one can make valid claims about what is if one accepts the premise and reasons correctly therefrom, let me say that I disagree with your first premise, and for a number of reasons. But here's just one: Something does *not*
exist -- there is no such thing as a something.  "Something" is an empty universal, a signifier, a word waiting to be filled up with every and any sort of content -- and you proceed to do so straightaway, I might add.  In other words, there is no
thing that is the 'real correlate' of "something."  "Something" is, indeed, no thing -- it's  real correlate is nothing really -- and therein lies the serviceability of this word "something."  Show me one single something and define for me how that
something is different from anything, or nothing -- and don't show me some thing, like a tree or a mouse, for they are not somethings but rather quite determinate things.  If you can't define one of the two terms in your primary premise -- something
--, then your proof must be thrown out. I suspect the most you can say, regarding the existence of "something" is that "there is a word, 'something,' that exists."  I think you'll have considerably more difficulty in deducing the existence of god
from a thing whose existence is as determinate as a word.
	In the very definition of "something" is its lack of definition, or more precisely, not its lack of definition (for "something" indeed may be clearly defined), but "something" refers to a thing which, in contrast to things that can be clearly
specified, *doesn't* exist in a signifacnt respect; when "something" becomes an real object of (possible) experience, it is no longer "something" but that determinate thing that it is, say, a tree. Therefore -- and here you also dodge, premptively,
saying what you mean by "exist" -- I'll say if something exists it must be experiencable, and the nature of "something" is that it indicates what lies yet beyond the specifying nature of experience.  Therefore, people experience all sorts of things,
but they never experience a something because something is no thing, and only things exist.  Therefore, something is even paradigmatically a non-existence (which, paradoxically, is tantamount to saying nothing exists) -- it is at best a promise of or
hope for possible existence -- but it certainly is no fact of experience.
Reg
rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu

	PS.  Aristotle's unmoved mover had no potentiality (dunamis) whatsoever.  Aristotle's god was finite, as are all things, but had the virtue of being pure energeia, pure actuality.  Aristotle's god certainly was not capable of eating or even moving,
which require body/matter (dunamis), nor was Aristotle a proto-Spinosist, who might claim god was the actuality in all actual things.  To see Aristotle's god as infinte, especially as having infinite capabillities to act, can only be done through a
Christian optics.  Whatever you are, you are no Aristotelian!

Tschuss!
Reg
rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu
 
> THE PROOF:
> 
> Premise 1: Something exists.
>         This is a fact of experience.  At least I exist (cogito ergo sum), so let's take our self to be >?concrete.