Hello Ham, Thank you very much for your response, what you propose sounds much Like Gottlieb Fichte's "the I posits itself"
"The I must posit itself in order to be an I at all; but it can posit itself only insofar as it posits itself as limited (and hence divided against itself, inasmuch as it also posits itself as unlimited or "absolute"). Moreover, it cannot even posit for itself its own limitations, in the sense of producing or creating these limits. The finite I (the intellect) cannot be the ground of its own passivity. Instead, according to Fichte's analysis, if the I is to posit itself at all, it must simply discover itself to be limited, a discovery that Fichte characterizes as a 'check' or Anstoß to the free, practical activity of the I. Such an original limitation of the I is, however, a limit for the I only insofar as the I posits it as such. I does this, according to Fichte's analysis, by positing its own limitation, first, as a mere "feeling," then as a "sensation," then as an "intuition" of a thing, and finally as a "concept." The Anstoß thus provides the essential occasion or impetus that first sets in motion the entire complex train of activities that finally result in our conscious experience both of ourselves as empirical individuals and of a world of spatio-temporal material objects. Though this doctrine of the Anstoß may seem to play a role in Fichte's philosophy not unlike that which has sometimes been assigned to the thing in itself in the Kantian system, the fundamental difference is this: the Anstoß is not something foreign to the I. Instead, it denotes the I's original encounter with its own finitude. Rather than claim that the Not-I is the cause or ground of the Anstoß, Fichte argues that the former is posited by the I precisely in order to "explain" to itself the latter, that is, in order to become conscious of the same. Though the Wissenschaftslehre demonstrates that such an Anstoß must occur if self-consciousness is to be actual, transcendental philosophy itself is quite unable to deduce or to explain the actual occurrence of such an Anstoß - except as a condition for the possibility of consciousness. Accordingly, there are strict limits to what can be expected from any a priori deduction of experience. According to Fichte, transcendental philosophy can explain, for example, why the world has a spatio-temporal character and a causal structure, but it can never explain why objects have the particular sensible properties they happen to have or why I am this determinate individual rather than another. This is something that the I simply has to discover at the same time that it discovers its own freedom, and indeed, as a condition for the latter. (It must be admitted, however, that Fichte's own ambitious descriptions of his project sometimes obscure the essential limits of the same and that he sometimes gives his readers the false impression that the Wissenschaftslehre proposes to provide a complete a priori deduction of all the empirical details of experience. This however is certainly not the case.)" Ham: While I'm sure that you can find a quotation that supports this view, it will undoubtedly be vague and euphemistic, since any such ontology verges on SOM, and the author is reluctant to even acknowledge the self as an independent entity. Ron: Ham, I'm not much for using Pirsig Quotes but I don't think he denies The existence of self but illuminates the construction of it. He illustrates That the self as we know it is composed of many variables and not necessarily a concrete thing in itself as what one might presume it to be. If I ride my motor cycle without a helmet and fall damaging my brain, The portion that creates self, like Pirsigs experience of having his Self eradicated and recreated via electro-shock, the "I" is no longer Present, the "I" I know myself and others know me as is gone. But My value sense lives on however traumatically altered. Pooping myself And getting upset about it might be the most value awareness I express. The individual autonomous free agent becomes a flimsy mass of neurons In this regard. This is why I question the concreteness of self. Thanks, hope I'm not irritating you. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
