From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 19:03:42 MDT
Emlyn O'regan writes:
> I'm still stuck on "I exist" => "Something exists" =>
> I don't exist" => "Nothing exists". Ack.
I think (but am not sure) you are mixing up your levels of
abstraction.
I (undefined and possibly including *nothing*) exist
does *not* imply that *something* exists.
Something exists is the axiom it should be on the left in
your statement above. "you" know "you" exist as
"something" but not what you exist as.
The whole point of substitution the I with something was to
acknowledge that the self the I may not be a fundamental
or elemental thing. But there is "some" elemental thing
which "you", in your case, take as truth or you cannot,
develop a concept of self, indeed you could not suspend
disbelief in the existence of an external world long
enough even to have learn its language. The words "self"
and "solipsism" are older than you. But you have learnt
to imbue them with meaning as all of us do. I think this
is because they have utility for you and you were a
social creature before you knew it.
What that "something" is that exists can remain undefined
because you know it exists experientially not just
intellectually. From infanthood when you were not even
aware where your self ended and the world started your
would have created a division between yourself and the
world as a sort of thesis, tried it, found it worked for you
and then moved into it. Later your body got boundaries of
movement control and pleasure pain sensing, and still latter
you got language. And the whole social interaction thing
became possible (actually that was happening pre-language).
Some-thing can exist at the same time as no-thing exists
because the references are to two different domains.
Some-thing and no-thing in the same domain is a
contradiction and breaks contingency but contingency
is not violated if the domains are different.
Shit now I am talking clear as mud. :-)
Ignore me if I am not helping.
Regards,
Brett.
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