File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1998/phillitcrit.9802, message 26


Date: Mon, 02 Feb 1998 12:44:22 +0100
From: "Joerg T. Gruel" <jtg-AT-owl-online.de>
Subject: Re: PLC: sets


Patsloane-AT-aol.com wrote:

> This is so embarrassing, like when they ask you at the airport if you're
> really sure no  strangers gave you any bombs that they asked you to carry on the
> plane.  I didn't know Walter was setting a trap for you.

No reason to get exited: the "trap" would consist in opening up a minefield of
difficulties by one innocent-looking question, and the "embarrassment", or aporia,
caused by it is an objective one. So what did you smuggle in from Delphi, Walter ?

> I have to admit I don't spend a lot of time thinking about whether or not I
> exist, because I can't see what difference it would make one way or the other.
> It's rather like asking if I was glerg or not glerg when nobody knows what glerg
> means.

So don't I. Nor do I ponder the Big Bang, nor the intrinsics of fuzzy set theory,
though I wouldn't blame Hawking, or Bart Kosko, for doing so. It's expert's lore,
and I'm much on Sherlock Holme's side who said he knew nothing, nor intended to
acquire knowledge, about e. g. the solar system, having to concentrate on his own
stuff. If Heisenberg's "vagueness relation", though widely popularized, still
sounds "glerg" to me, my stating this would merely cause a shrug of shoulders.

I might try and grok revelations, but then, there's still that spiritus malignus
around, trapping people into using his proprietory web server. However, I could
easily find out what "glerg" means in this case, if only I'd bother to study
quantum physics, which is the only place where it would make perfect sense.

Philosophers are supposed to deal with, inter alia, questions of thinking,
existence and, in particular, "the difference it would make". They usually do it
within a framework of traditions, from which their utterances have to be
understood (even if they claim to be independent from it). And we'll have to
remember that René is not our contemporary, but a 17th century nobleman with an
idiosyncrasy for spiritual independence.

Now Heisenberg and Hawking and Bart might tell us a lot of stories far more hard
to swallow than René's innocent-looking reflections are. Why then does the "cogito
ergo sum" cause so much embarrassment, or even pathetic aversion, more so, as it
is generally considered as the starting point of modern continental civilization?

> I'm not sure I understand what "exist" means, or how one could distinguish
> between what exists and what does not exist. Joerg?

Okay: you asked for it. Wait till I've donned my metaphysical lederhosen (though I
fear to have outgrown them while attempting to become a Java guru), and you'll see
me settle that question once and for all. For the time being, let me only hint at
Parmenides, according to whom this distinction could be easily made, considering
that it's only the being that is, whereas the nonbeing is not.

(Parmenides and his school, BTW, stirred up a discussion about "the One and the
Many" that vaguely resembles the "set of all sets" question at the beginning of
this thread.)

> Well, that's how your mind works. Mine doesn't.  First time i heard that
> "Cogito ergo sum," I said, no, I don't think so. Makes no sense.

How, or by what qualitas occulta, would you know that, as you expressedly make the
point that you "don't spend a lot of time thinking about " it ? And, BTW, does the
Big Bang make sense ? What is required for a statement to "make sense" ? And, er,
what's sense ?

Anyway, wouldn't it seem more appropriate to ask questions like "What did René
mean when he said this?" or "What was the problem he was trying to solve?", or
even "in what context would this dictum make sense?" ?

> I like sensible statements, like Aristotle saying you can't see yellow at the
> same time and place you see blue. Or Goethe saying there are no optical
> illusions, only optical truths.

"We don't understand the Greeks - they are to strange to us.", Nietzsche, owner of
a large database, would say, waning us that it might be dangerous to discover our
standards for "sensible statements" in their sayings. As for Goethe, he earned
from the rich tradition of European thought that had set the framework for
considering "truth" and "illusion" the way he did, and had at its root the
"cogito, ergo sum",

Just about to vulcanize into Captain Headgear,

Cheers,

Joerg
"Bene qui latuit, bene vixit"




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