It is an interesting paper. However, as I understand Hintikka, he is NOT
saying that 'I am' is analytic in the way 'Bachelors are unmarried males'
is analytic. It is not tautological. Rather, attempting to say, and by
extension also to think, that I don't exist involves a performative
contradiction similar to Moore's paradox because the fact that I am
thinking it proves that is false. If I didn't exist there would be nobody
trying to think that I don't exist. The contradiction is only present when
trying to (mentally) assert "I don't exist" in the first person, whereas
for someone else to think that Omar doesn't exist would not necessarily
involve a contradiction.
On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx for
DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 7/8/2015 7:08:18 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"Did he really?"Hintikka proved that "I am" is indeed analytic>
This reminds me of Grice's joke:
i. A: Mary got married.
B: Oh, really?
A: No: O'Riley.
Austin claimed that most uses of 'really' are otiose. But in terms of the
implicature, the 'really' at the end of a question makes it not rhetorical.
Note that 'prove' carries implicatures of its own:
ii. Hintikka proved that "I am" is analytic.
iii. But he was wrong.
I.e. the idea that 'prove' is factive was disproved by Goedel, or Gödel as
Palma prefers to cite him.
The implicature of the 'really' question by McEvoy is indeed that Hintikka
cannot have proved that "I am" is analytic, since it's not. But then
'prove' ain't factive.
Still, it is hard to prove, other than via conceptual analysis (which
Popper detested), that "I am not" IS analytically false, either!
Cheers,
Speranza
"In as much as I am unable to prove either that I exist or that I don't, I
do now and heretoeverafter, publicly announce my acceptance of the
proposition that I am. If I am not, it doesn't matter for I will never
know that I
am not. I am still not sure about anything or anybody else's actual,
real, physical existence and I do not feel that logic can prove that all
such
experiences of such other beings that I encounter in my existence are not
just flashbacks from the sixities. Now then, since I am -- and since I
cannot
prove that all you people are, then I get to make up, decide, determine,
delineate all the rules. I and I alone get to differentiate between the
ineluctable and the eluctable, the inexorable from the exorable. Other
than
the crude bodily processes that impinge their inexorableness and
ineluctableness upon my existence, other than the screaming of the gonads
(more like
a whimper now) and other such gross bodily needs and demands (can you tell
that I was raised Catholic?) other than that, life is mine to be
meaningfillized in whatever way pleases me. I am the meaningfiller of
existence. It
is totally up to me what it all means. So then, what is meaningful? Ah,
there's the rub."
------ Geary, Memphis Metaphysical Mission, Memphis.
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