> Hi me silk: wow, how did I miss this one!
> Talk about riddles!
Cretin Cogan
You miss a lot, so I'm not surprised.
> Cretin Cogan wrote: Primary premises are cognitively
> validated by their logical necessity as presumptions in
> everything else and by the impossibility of denying them
> without assuming them. Thus, premises such as that one
> exists do not need proof based on prior premises, nor can
> they be accepted on faith.
silk
> Silk here: Man this chaps got it bad! I showed this to a
> psychiatrist here at the university in amsterdam & he just
> smiled & said "he's simpy overcompensating silk"? Well I
> don't know I'm not a shrink
Cretin Cogan
Sounds like you need one, though. I gather that you have not given him a
collection of *your* posts, hmmmm??
silk
> but I must admit that I'd rather
> have my kids (I have none, thank god) running the streets with
> the likes of cogan & other "overcompensators" lurking on the
> corners than child molestors!
Cretin Cogan
Me too!
> Cogan scribbled: : Find a nice cave with no books, no reading
> matter of any sort, no radio, no TV, no neighbors, no phone,
> no computer, and go sit in it, huddled inside of some animal's
> skin. This way, you would not have to contend with people
> who think.
>
> Silk: Now why on earth would I want to do such a thing?
> Because you, one miniscule pebble on the beach, says so?
Cretin Cogan
No. Just so you won't have the apparently unbearable pressure dealing with
stuff you can't handle.
silk
> "contend with people who think?"
> What you do can not by any stretch of the imagination be
> refered to as thinking!
Cretin Cogan
I don't think you know what I do. You seem to respond to "cue words,"
regardless of actual meaning. If a person uses a word or phrase that you've
learned to respond to, your response is automatic, regardless of context,
crucial details, and qualifiers.
> Who do you think your fooling?
Cretin Cogan
I seem to have fooled you, though I did not intend to.
> Any 10
> year old clown with an encloypedia can duplicate your
> riddles.
Cretin Cogan
Riddles? Oh, now I remember: My failed attempt at getting Jones to think by
asking Socratic questions about false alternatives, etc. Did you think I
would ask these questions without having what I thought were good answers?
Or what? Or did you not even understand the questions? If you think it's so
easy, get out your encyclopedia and go to it, questions, answers, and all.
You've already got the clown part down pat, though you may be more than 10
years old. So far, your questions have not shown you to be particularly
good at answering the question of what questions are the good questions to
answer.
silk
>That it does not embarrass you to be so phoney &
> corny is curious! I have a keen eye for the absurd
Cretin Cogan
--And a keen knack for *being* absurd.
silk
> therefore
> find you amusing
> though not in the least unique.
Cretin Cogan
You should learn to read more carefully; Jones is *not* to be emulated in
this respect (or in several other respects, either, but that's a different
issue). Ignoring all the qualifiers and the context and the *actual*
relationships of terms and concepts means that you miss a lot.
silk
>The internet is choc-a-bloc full
> of imposters hiding behind
> their monitors proclaiming & spouting off all
> kinds of drivel that of course can't be substantiated!
Cretin Cogan
Well, at least it's obvious you are not an imposter. That is, unless you
are pretending to be, uh, a few pancakes short of a stack when in fact you
are not.
And, anyway, I *can* substantiate my "drivel." My remarks on the "Cogito,"
for instance, were taken from my work on it twenty or thirty years ago,
along with more recent formulations. Actually, this Cartesian claim
was answered by Aristotle (implicitly, at least) a couple of thousand
years earlier, and by Ayn Rand more recently (and explicitly). As I pointed
out: Since it's circular and since circular arguments don't prove their
conclusions, it's an invalid argument. Existence is primary, not
consciousness (this is why Bertvan's basic claims are false).
Further, though my formulation and particular "slant" on the "primaries"
question is my own, the basic ideas involved have been around in a modern
form for at least forty years that I know of. Non-foundationalists,
subjectivists, absolute skeptics, and intrinsicists (such as Plato) *all*
make one or another variant of the same mistake, and then pick and choose
concerning subsequent mistakes to make.
Do you agree that something exists? Good. Determine how you are able to
know that something exists, and ask yourself if it would be possible for
the question to be raised if nothing existed. Do you agree that you have
perceptual level experiences? Good. Then you have a foundation for
knowledge that does *not* rest on an infinite regress of prior premises, or
on grasping something "clearly and distinctly" (Descartes, again), or on
neo-Popperian non-foundationalism, *or* on "*simply* assuming" them (Jones'
words in one post). You may be an idiot, but if you actually *understood*
this issue (and, believe me, it's *not* that hard, though it's not trivial,
either), you will have a better grasp of philosophy than most people,
including many university philosophy professors.
silk
> Oh well,
> whatever gets you off so long as no one gets hurt!
> chao/silk
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