Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (5)
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2013 10:01:30 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus.
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus.
Let’s go through it point by point.
1. When someone says, “I think”, he is obviously thinking of something, i.e., thoughts. I’m aware and conscious of my thoughts.
2. “I think” necessarily means there are thoughts.
3. The difference between the statements “I think” and “there are thoughts” is that the latter does not presuppose the existence of the “I”.
4. To prove the existence of the “I”, we cannot presuppose its existence. Therefore, we cannot use the statement “I think” or anything with a subject “I”.
5. We are left with the statement, “There are thoughts”.
Which of the above arguments do you disagree with and why?
first of all, Nemo, let me say that I haven’t had as
much fun since a couple of weeks ago when a
much fun since a couple of weeks ago when a
friend and I were trying to come to a conclusion
about the meaning of memory, is memory all of
one’s memories, or is it the process of
remembering
I thought the process set the thing in motion
after which the memories themselves took
hold
but for the process to take hold you need at
least two memories, my friend more or less
retorted, I paraphrase
where does that leave us
I’m still thinking about it
perhaps we’ll end up at the same place,
loggerheads, but let’s try
I object to your second proposition, ““I
think” necessarily means there are thoughts“,
I believe “I think” to mean only “I think”,
nothing more, nothing less, these two
words are our speculative arena
but I admit you have a point, to think
presupposes a thought, and perhaps
not as peripherally as I’d thought
previously, if I refer to my earlier,
memory, model
but before you jump up and down in
apparent victory remember that the
thought cannot be thought without
the thinker, who initiates the thought
an apparent paradox, much like the
relation between energy and matter,
which came first
I believe the consciousness of my
consciousness came first, and from
there I evolved the process that gives
order to my world, memory, and then
its development into reason
but that’s just what I think, and, of
course, I could be wrong
essentially I, of course, must be wrong
somewhere, but I’ll never know where
nor will I know where I’m right, ever
on questions of philosophical speculation,
of course, without the advantage of
mathematics, the closest thing I can think
of, incidentally, to what we think of as God,
or is that, to what I think of, me, no one else,
what do I know of what others are thinking
of, as God, there goes He, She, It, out the
window, as a Jungian idea of collective
unified consciousness, or as a frozen
Platonic, universally conceded, ideal
what I do know is that I exist
that’s also, I think, all you know
the rest is entirely speculation
thank you Descartes
Richard
psst: all that speculation, note, is what has,
to my mind, made a paradise, for some,
of our world, for others a work of always
fascinating and wondrous invention
read Proust
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