RE: Consciousness Quadlemma!
May 26, 2017 at 7:04 am
(This post was last modified: May 26, 2017 at 7:21 am by Edwardo Piet.)
(May 26, 2017 at 5:56 am)Ben Davis Wrote: Although , I'm a little worried that with so many people keen on philosophy on this board, no-one seems to be interested in my sig
Your sig translates to "I am therefore I am" but it is essentially saying "I am what I am" which is a tautology thereby making the "therefore" aspect redundant. Satisfied?
"I think therefore I am" means "My thinking presupposes my existence and I already know I am thinking therefore I must know that I am existing."... so it has a little more depth
But... it is true that "I think therefore I am" requires "I am what I am" but it also requires "I think what I think" and "being is being" and "thinking is thinking" so basically... the law of identity is even more fundamental than both cogito ergo sum and sum ergo sum.
Satisfied yet?
The law of identity or "A=A" can be described in English as "a thing is whatever that thing is".
Now let me just use Google translate to translate "a thing whatever that thing is" to Latin for ya--
--
"Quidquid sit aliquid"
There ya go... your new sig. That's genuinely Latin (according to Google translate) for "a thing is whatever that thing is".
Quidquid sit aliquid.
I think it's rather amusing because to us British folk a quid=£1. So surely "quidquid"= £1 + £1 or in other words... £2?
And "sit" is obviously... "sit". As in sitting down.
"aliquid"? Well surely that's a typo... it meant "a liquid".
So basically... the law of identity is having £2 in one hand while you sit on a chair with a glass of water in the other hand (I added in the chair, the glass and the fact the liquid was water purely for comic effect.... bah okay I call it "comic effect" but what I really mean is "fundamental silliness").
LOL joke I just find it amusing.
But seriously your new sig should be
"Quidquid sit aliquid" Which is... "A thing is whatever that thing is". Because that's the most fundamental truth in the universe... it's very truth is presupposed when we know that the most fundamentally known fact of the universe is our own consciousness... because even to know that we have to know that consciousness=consciousness. To experience it we don't have to know that... but to know we are experiencing it we have to know that. Unless we deem the mere experiencing of something to be worthy of the term "knowledge". I wouldn't say so.
(But the fact I differentiate between the most certainly known fact in the universe and the most fundamental truth in the universe is only because I consider truths and facts to be a little different...... it's the whole analytic/synthetic truth dichotomy. The whole... truths of reasoning/truths of fact... dichotomy.... the whole a priori/a posteriori dichotomy ... ala Leibniz and Kant)
Satisfied now or have I gone overboard with my philosophical babble?