Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA01379 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 5 Aug 2001 08:09:50 +0100 Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 00:07:40 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Macguffin To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <3B6CF0BC.17E58A2F@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Yahoo;YIP052400} (Win95; U) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: en References: <3B6C9ED9.29522.168A681@localhost> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Joe,
> > > > > But illusions of self do arise with thoughts such as "I might
> > > > > have been a giraffe." The "I" in that sentence is just a
> > > > > pronoun, not a self. ;-)
> > > > >
> > > That's right, but the word "I" does have a referent, that is, it
> > > stands for something other than itself, which is what words do, and
> > > guess what that referent is? (Clue: "I" is the self-referential
> > > pronoun).
> > > >
> >
> > That's from me, not Ted. :-)
> >
> > I stated it clumsily, I guess, but what I meant was that the "I" in
> > that sentence only appears to have a referent, it does not actually
> > have one.
> >
> Oh, it has one, all right, as Heidegger stated, "Dasein is in each
> case MINE." BTW, if there were no referential self for the pronoun
> "I", then just exactly who would it be that it would APPEAR to have
> a referent TO/FOR?
Well, the Dasein of the giraffe and my Dasein are *not* the same. I,
with MY Dasein, could not have been a giraffe.
OTOH, that kind of statement is not meaningless, though contrafactual.
But to say what its meaning is is not trivial, and that meaning is lost
if the "I" refers to me.
Ciao,
Bill
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