Request to Reread Entry

"Is my English so abominable? Please read entry 117 again! To name just one thing: I state that Aristotle's principium contradictionis "Can only be part of the equation", implying there is more to the equation, obviously.

Your response: "Finally, your usage of Aristotle's principium contradictionis, whereby contradiction must be part of the whole equation, as an absolute contradicts the agreed limitedness of our perspective. Also, your argument using Aristotle.....etc...."

What argument? At least try to understand an other's line of reasoning, instead of looking for weakness up front..."

Raoul Starren December 14 2000

117. Entry:

"In order to illustrate my perspective further, I've chosen first to rewrite your reply on entry 115 in its image, so to speak:

When I investigate statements like "We cannot know who we are and be who we are at the same time", I am using supreme reason in terms of our being, not in terms of our perspective.
In other words, we cannot get outside of our minds, so anything we know is through being.
(The being makes up our minds, not vice versa: Its law determines what we can know, not that we can know its law)

In my view, reducing the challenge proposition to "we can't be two different things at once" does not exclude the consideration, that thoughts themselves are not who we are, especially since any thought exists through our being.

My example of me having an unreasonable perspective and knowing that I do, can stand because I conceded that I have "limited" perspectives of being, which due to the certainty of being, are never true nor false, yet a manifestation of THAT which is beyond my reach, the supreme reason "being". Since THAT is beyond my reach, my ideas about it will contain unreasonableness in one form or the other.

I can never reasonably claim to be more reasonable than you, as my perspective implies.
What I can claim in my opinion, is that my perspective is equivalent in this particular context. Were we to play a game with preset rules, it might be different. But I have a feeling this isn't, or can't be perceived as such a game, considering the topic.

The fact that I state my perspective to be "unreasonable" since it is limited, is in my view equivalent qualitatively to your perspective, that is "reasonable" within limits. In my view the proposition NEEDS the supreme reason "being" to make any (limited) sense.
If not, I wonder where the whole proposition came from to begin with. I sympathize with the notion that we can never reach this so called beyond, but stress that this same limit prevents us from getting rid of it. As I see it, our truth consists of a large body being our minds contents, and a non-definable symmetry breaker, present in every part of these contents.
A seed of dynamics, so to speak, or in terms of Goedels theorem, that one blasted term that always gets away.

I'm not sure that the human perspective is characterized by reasonableness, although I'm unreasonably certain that it is constituted by reason. For us to discover in the open realm of reason what knowledge is the most reasonable, is in my opinion an attempt to reduce the diversity of existence to a single form, not unlike the formulation of a deity, or the election of a miss America. To discover the most reasonable perspective might be "reasonable" when it comes to the distribution of food or other means of existence in a given context, but I don't think it applies to a matter like the one we are discussing. As soon as terms such as irrefutability come into play, we have to concede that behind the scene an absolute is lurking. Speaking of a "most absolutish" leaves the scent of a matter of taste. This might not be enough to count as a refutation, but seems sufficient to induce "reasonable doubt".
Were this to be conceded, turning the proposition into something as:

"This proposition, and yet there's Goedel.", or a similarly "holographic" projection (meaning the suggestion of an extra dimension like perspective does in a painting), I would no longer see reasonable grounds to contest it.

Finally, I emphasize that this modified proposition goes for my own perspective as well, implying that anybody who sets out to find unreasonableness within it, can always do so.
But since this is my point to begin with, a reason that contains its own refutation as the axis of it all, I state that this is the exact reason my perspective might be more reasonable than the proposition's, which in my opinion is less reasonable in the sense that it defies its own refutation, where my perspective doesn't. My perspective honors Goedel's theorem, so to speak, where the proposition's does not. To rephrase this, Aristotle's principium contradictionis can only be part of the whole equation.

I hope you will look for the sense in this, before you take it apart. (I hope to have proven that according to my perspective, you could somehow do either)."

Raoul Starren September 18 2000

Second Response:

To assert that you have an "unreasonable" perspective, because you have a limited perspective of something like being, is incorrect. In our view, all thoughts, without comparison of them, are reasonable, because reason is apparently the basis for thoughts.
So through the comparison of thoughts, we can only determine levels of reasonableness. (Note, we define reasonableness as something that has conscious meaning.)
Moreover, even if someone were to claim that they know directly that "one’s being is static", their claim would be reasonable itself, because the claim has conscious meaning, and more or less reasonable than other claims. For instance, the claim would be less reasonable, due to the apparent need for intrinsic separation between who we are and thoughts, than the claim that we cannot know our being.

Also, we do not claim that the challenge proposition is "irrefutable". Rather, we contend that the proposition cannot be reasonably overcome, though we are not fully certain. However, we acknowledge that even if the proposition is not ever overcome, it will only be an unrefutable and yet uncertain perspective on being and knowing, which should not be adopted over all other perspectives due to the uncertainty of what we know. (In our view, according to the self-referential nature of knowledge, there should always be room for mistake.)

In a literal sense, we agree that the challenge proposition "contains its own refutation", and yet "it defies its own refutation." (i.e. if we cannot know who we are, it does not follow how we can know that we cannot know who we are.) However, we do not define the proposition in a literal sense. For example, "who we are" is a label for whoever we are. The label merely implies that we exist and that there is a basis behind us. (i.e. we are not nothing or everything, or our thoughts themselves.) So the proposition does not contain its own refutation, and therefore it does not defy its own refutation. You may respond with the question, how can we know anything about "who we are" if it is beyond or outside of our minds?
We know indirectly from what we reason.

For first response, see Entry 117.

143. Entry:

"You can coincidentally know who you exactly are. As for the second half of the statement, you are who you are all the time. You can know exactly who you are and be who you are."

David K Duke December 23 2000

Response:

How can you know that you know who you are at exactly the same time as being who you are? In other words, how can knowledge be instantaneous, when you apparently know from what you know? Also, what is the process that not only allows you to know coincidentally, but know that you know coincidentally?

Just because you cannot help from being who you are, it does not necessarily follow that you know who you are. What you know may be a limited representation of who you are.

144. Entry:

"I think Descartes stated it correctly. "I think therefore I am". Since I am a thinking person, I am making a choice from my being and in order to make such a choice I not only must know who I am but I must know where I am coming in order to make this choice and where am I going. Therefore, I think I had answer both questions simple and honestly."

Gerald J. Gambale December 23 2000

Response:

By stating that you make choices from your being, you appear to be implying that your being is separate from your thoughts, because there is no other way you could know that you makes choices from your being. (i.e. you cannot help from being who you are. So the word "from" implies separation.)

It does not follow that in order to make choices and know where you are going that you have to fully know who you are. You could make choices and know where you are going from limited knowledge of who you are (i.e. knowledge that has limited connection, through sensory and thought process, to whatever is outside of who you are and who you are yourself.)

145. Entry:

"This is not so much a refutation as it a challenge to what I see as an assumption that who we are and knowledge of it are sufficiently separable for the argument to make sense.

Existence of everyday things like us depends on accepting that we can legitimately overlook parts that are accidental to it. Such things do not enter the sphere of being unless we are in a position to disregard these features. This is to say that existence depends already on our particular position in the world.

So, the objection is that there is no way to prevent our being in the world except by our capacity to know it.

This doesn't respond to the specific challenge, but to do this is merely to point out specific and concrete instances of knowing already imply specific and concrete instances of being in the relevant way."

Jim Dix December 23 2000

Response:

Yes, we agree that our existence is dependent "on our particular position in the world" or "our capacity to know". (i.e. to take away our ability to know, we apparently take away our existence.) However, our capacity to know does not necessarily have to include our ability to really know who we are in order to exist in the world.

In other words, separation between who we are and what we know, does not mean that we have no capacity to know, nor does it mean that we cannot exist in the world as we do.

Entries 135-141 Entries 146-147