Re: CHAT Cartesian parataxis (was: ANNOUNCE: First longer sentence in S7)

I thought you referred to the original sentence of
Descartes (Cogito, ergo sum; or Cogito, sum). This is
1st person singular. I understand that the conclusion
of it is "I exist !" (Hurrah !)

I meant that this doesn't prove that "I" exist or that
"I" think. Maybe there is no "I" at all. Anyway, it
doesn't prove that somebody is thinking or existing
neither. Remember of Chuang-Tseu who dreamed he was a
butterfly, and when he woke up, he didn't know any
more whether he was Chuang-Tseu dreaming he was a
butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang-Tseu.

This is all very desperating. That's why, in
linguistics, it's better to stick to common sense and
usage. If you show a dog to 100 people at 99 of them
tell you it is a dog, so ok, we'll call it a dog, even
it the 100th person thinks it is a flying alligator.
And if in another country, 99 people out of 100 tell
you it is a "perro", then you might infere that dog =
perro, and perro = dog (they are synonyms). And that
there are such things as dogs, or perros, in the
world, even if it is all illusion in the end (a game
played by your neurones, for ex, or simply a dream).

--- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:
>
> > --- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> > > I'm sure it's just another Whorfian lock, but I
> am
> > > no more able to imagine
> > > thinking without something which thinks than
> > > existence without something which
> > > exists, or blue without something which is blue.
> > >
> > I can do it. "It thinks through me". Something
> uses me
> > to think. I think that I think, but it's not my
> own
> > thinking, but someone's, or something's else.
> Nothing
> > difficult in that. Or, to be even a little less
> > egotist, "the world thinks through me", me being
> part
> > of the Whole and not an individual bag of skin, as
> I
> > believe somebody said (Watts ?)
>
> Quhat?
>
> If something thinks thru you, clearly there is
> something which thinks. If the
> world thinks thru you, clearly there is something
> which thinks. We were asked
> to imagine thinking goinf on without _anything_
> which thinks.
>
>
Andreas


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)

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