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On 5 Aug 2001, at 0:00, Bill Spight wrote:
> Dear Joe,
>
> > > None of this requires an "actual" self, OC. ;-)
> > >
> > The self emerges,, that is, it becomes. The genetic capacity (big-
> > complex brain) is there, but it requires environmental interaction
> > to actualize it. To say that it never exists because it's not there
> > at first is like saying that trees never exist because they cannot
> > be found in acorns.
>
> To be clear (and I hope not tedious), my remarks about the lack of a
> referent for "I" in some sentences does not mean that there is no
> self, to which it might refer in other sentences.
>
> Philosophically, I think that the human self is always becoming.
> Sartre talks about "nihilization" as the process through which the
> self, in its aspect as For-Itself (Pour Soi) is constantly emerging. I
> think he was onto something there. That is not the same thing as
> acorns becoming oak trees.
>
No it isn't. I'm familiar with the pour-soi (for-itself), or subject, and
the en-soi (in-itself), or object. Only the for-others, that is, the
phenomenon, can be known by the for-itself; the in-itself, or the
noumenon, must remain an ideal limit, approachable yet in principe
not realizeable or completely knowable. There is one thing we can
know about the whole in-itself of which the for-other is a part, and
that is that whatever the noumenon may be, it must be such that it
noncontradictorally, that is, seamlessly, subsumes or assimilates
the phenomenon as a part or aspect of itself; in other words, the
noumenon must be so that, when it is confronted by our perceptual
apparati, the phenomenon results.
Just remember that self-consciousness is trapped between
completely unconscious nonselfawareness (thinghood) and
omnisciently self-transparent knowing (godhood). These
parameters are a necessary consequence of the nature of recursive
self-referentiality (see Godel's Incompleteness Theorems I and II).
No recursive system may be simultaneously flawless and
complete. The snake of conscious self-awareness must bite its
own tail, but cannot swallow its own jaws.
>
> Best,
>
> Bill
>
> "So remember who you say you are." -- Mick Jagger
>
> ===============================================================
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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