[lit-ideas] Re: tense
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 14:49:16 +0000 (UTC)
As to lawyer being abusive, my post was scherzo - but it may be used as a term
of abuse and often has been (indeed the Hebrew term "o....-din" has often been
used that way). [Does the Hebrew "din" relate to "noise" - and is this part of
the sense of "Judge said to Curty: 'What's this noise about?'" in Dylan's
version of Delia on World Gone Wrong?] And if "lawyer" were abusive, then it
might be abusive whether or not I am one (abusive language may be true).
As to being a lawyer, I have in the past made comments, perhaps unwisely, that
may have purported that I am one - but what it is safe to infer from that may
be left aside as beside the point of my scherzo post.
But perhaps I should clarify something here. The most extensive posts I recall
making on a legal issue were on the issue of a 'hidden trust' [in the English
case Pilcher v Rawlins]. But these were not intended as merely lawyerly but as
a preliminary to a Popperian account of legal thinking. This account I have not
got round to presenting as yet; but we may take Pilcher as exemplifying how
World 3, including World 3.3, is vital to understanding the law - for the
soundness of the decision in Pilcher depends on evaluation in W3 terms. These
terms include the unavoidable consequences that would follow from any decision,
where those consequences hold in W3 and even W3.3 terms [rather than W1 or W2
terms]; such consequences may hold irrespective of how cognisant the court was
of them [in its W2] or whether the consequences had been expressed in any W1
form. In my old posts, Pilcher was tacitly offered as a good example of how
understanding and evaluating the law involves a W3 reconstruction of the
relevant problem-situation - and this reconstruction may go far beyond what is
encoded in W1 [say in the relevant law report - which, in the Pilcher example,
does not analyse 'what is at stake' as set out in my posts] or what passed
through W2 [in the minds of the judges in arriving at their decision - which
may have fallen short of appreciating 'what is at stake' as set out in my
posts]. On the contrary, our understanding of the Pilcher law report, and of
what the Pilcher judges were thinking, depends fundamentally on our
understanding of the W3 legal problem-situation exemplified by the case. So
even these old posts on Pilcher were intended to introduce material, and its
analysis, to bring out philosophical themes and ideas that have to do with the
'theory of knowledge' - given that any proper understanding of the law must
involve using the right 'theory of knowledge'.
Though I did not bother to make explicit the importance of a case like Pilcher
for any viable 'theory of knowledge', I think anyone re-reading those old posts
might see they present a challenge to anyone who thinks 'law' can be grasped
via a Lockean kind of empiricism, or a Cartesian 'intuitionism' etc. Apologies
for not making this clear at the time but I did not get round to developing
this underlying point - and thanks to Omar for giving me this opportunity to
clarify some things.
DnlLdn
On Tuesday, 3 March 2015, 12:23, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Is 'lawyer' an abusive term ? Aren't you a lawyer ?
O.K.
On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 12:59 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Donal orech-din.Donal is a lawyer.>
Surely, after the recent exodus, we've all seen enough of the dangers of
abusive language.
Dnl
On Tuesday, 3 March 2015, 10:35, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
1. There is a way to express a more or less analogous message but I doubt that
it would be very effective as a slogan
2. Not sure that this is correct. Islamic theology has concerns with what God
is like; for Al-Ghazali, he is powerful, merciful, living, posesses language
etc. The arguments in medieval Islamic culture between the orthodox theologians
(Ghazali) and the philosophers (e.g. Ibn Sina and later Averroes) did not
revolve around the existence of God but around issues such as the ontological
status of God's attributes and the manner in which God created the world. The
theologians held that God created the world in time, while the philosophers
argued that the world was also eternal.
3. For the present tense of the other verbs, it is constructed without the aid
of 'to be'. Where English has copula, in Hebrew it is simply omitted.
Donal orech-din.Donal is a lawyer.
O.K.
On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 9:47 AM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I thought that I already pointed out that Hebrew does not have the present
>tense of 'to be,' hence it cannot express I AM THAT I AM.>
1. Does this hold for "I AM WHAT I AM" ("I AM THAT I AM" not being a gay
anthem, nor ever likely to be)?
2. In addressing 1., is it of any relevance that pre-Newtonian philosophy (and
"natural theology" as a response to the rise of modern science) did not pretend
to arguments as to what God was only that God was [e.g. the First Cause or
"cosmological argument" concerned proof only that there is God not what kind of
God there is; post-Newton this argument took a different bent, via "natural
theology", of trying to address what kind of God there is compatible with
modern science - but this 'compatibility' was not an issue for Aquinas or
Anselm or Aristotle or even any of the Bs or Cs].
3. What in Hebrew does one do when in English one wants to say "I am thinking",
"I am alive", "I am tired" etc.? What does Hebrew do where other languages use
a present tense of 'to be'?
4. Perhaps 3. should be addressed first.
Dnl
On Monday, 2 March 2015, 8:37, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
B’seder (aside from the relatively highly marked distance between Hebrew
=everyday or even classical in Agnon etc. – and the torahic Hebrew which is a
bit of a difficult …. Spiel) best From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: 02 March 2015 10:36
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: tense In every-day Hebrew one can of course "ani
nimza bebeit holim" etc. but that is location, not the ontological I AM that is
meant here. O.K. On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 9:31 AM, Adriano Palma
<Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: That is know (the absence of present tenses) Maybe it
helps to remind people that tense structures are not at all conceptual, hence
each particular idiolect and dialect has particular tenses, if at all. Not any
specific tense need to be morphologically expressed (morpho expression= in
English, e.g. the unmarked are stem+’ed’ at the final right end position)
From:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: 02 March 2015 08:59
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The tetragrammaton I thought that I already pointed
out that Hebrew does not have the present tense of 'to be,' hence it cannot
express I AM THAT I AM. O.K. On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 3:16 AM, Redacted
senderJlsperanza@xxxxxxx for DMARC <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: O. K.
writes wonders (if that's the verb) that "whether God originally
spoke to Moses in some language other than Hebrew, such as Egyptian - is a
matter of conjecture."
re: his previous quotation
"is the common English translation (JPS among others) of the
response God used in the Hebrew Bible when Moses asked for his name
(Exodus 3:14)."
Mmm. So let's revise -- after all, Emerson said that conversation is not
permitted without tropes. I shall hypothesise that a conversation did take
place between Moses and Good. Let's revise Exodus 3:13 and 3:14. 3:15 is
mainly Moses's counter-move in the conversation, "Yet they won't believe me."
But in 3:13 we have Moses's question:
"Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to
them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is
his name?’ what shall I say to them?”"
This is clear as can be.
It's not as if Moses himself is interested to know the name. It's just in
case the people of Israel _wonder_.
3:14 opens:
14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”[a] And he said, “Say this to the
people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
Here there is a use-mention distinction:
i. "I am" has sent me to you.
Note that that differs from
ii. "I am who I am" has sent me to you.
God is advising Moses what his conversational move in reply to a possible
question by the people of Israel to Moses as to what the name of 'the God of
your fathers'.
This possibly struck Kripke in "Names and descriptions". For consider:
iii. If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your
fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall
I say to them?
In the above, Moses is distinguishing between what Donnellan has as a
definite description:
(D) "The God of your fathers".
and
a proper name.
Note that it does not occur to Moses to have as a ready answer, "And why is
THAT relevant. I'm saying HE is the God of your fathers. What does a name
add to HIM?"
Exodus 3:15 continues with what God thinks is the best reply for Moses to
give, in case they ask for the name of the God of the fathers of the people
of Israel.
"15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The
Lord,[b] the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to
be remembered throughout all generations."
So, it does seem as, to echo Emerson, God is using a trope when he utters:
v. Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
vb. Say this to the people of Israel: "I am" has sent me to you.
As Geary notes, Moses was careful about this, since when he faced the
people of Israel and they asked for the NAME of the God of their fathers, "he
must have been emphatic in the quotation marks".
Postulating Egyptian as the source of the tetragrammaton does not seem to
fit that it's FOUR letters, and four letters only, which are involved here
-- unless in Egyptian only four letters are involved, too?
Cheers,
Speranza
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