Subject: Re: Being and Time-section 2 Part One
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 19:44:01 +0000


Alright, I'm going to try with Jud, one more time. (One request Jud, please 
keep your answers brief - no offense, but you tend to say in many words what 
could be said in a few, and I have limited time). Michael, the way to 
convince analytic types like Jud is to show that their position reduces 
itself to either self-contradiction or an outright denial that we can know 
anything whatsoever about "external reality". For example, Michael said to 
Jud:

>You seem to be suggesting that the very naming of a being is enough to
>linguistically grant it existence status

And Jud answers first that the naming itself (e.g., "leaf" in the sentence, 
"The leaf is green") does not grant existence status:

>No, you misunderstand. You have disregarded a whole sentence in which I 
>say:
>"once an entity is named it  is nominally extant  or "sententially  extant"
>for the purposes of  making some comment about it, though that of course 
>does
>not mean that it actually exists in the real world as an actual spatial and
>temporal object.
>In other words if we say: "The leaf...is green" we are introducing the leaf
>as viable subject of communication, and extantalising it sententially for 
>the
>purpose of making a statement about the real or imagined entity which may 
>or
>may not exist in the real world as a referent of the word "leaf."

But in the very next two sentences, Jud says that the word "is" (e.g., "The 
leaf IS green") does not signify that the subject exists "BECAUSE THAT HAS 
ALREADY BEEN ACCOMPLISHED":

>You can now see that by the a priori  nominalisation or referentialisation
>the entity which corresponds to the word "leaf" it is existentialised for 
>the
>purposes of making the proposition that it "is green."  Hence the role of 
>the
>"is" can be seen as indicating this modalic information [its greenness] and
>not that of existentialising the entity which corresponds or is
>referentialised by the word "leaf," because that has already been
>accomplished.

Now, if the part of the sentence by which "existentialising the entity ... 
has already been accomplished" is not the predicate (viz., "is green"), then 
the only part of the sentence left is the subject itself: "The leaf". 
Therefore you are now contradicting what you said before - that the simple 
naming of "The leaf" does not grant existence in the real world.

Anthony Crifasi

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