On 14/12/06 16:16, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> quoted VN (Bend Sinister):
All those who are because they do not think, thus refuting Cartesianism.
Not so fast! Lest we put Des Cartes before De Horse! If you take ‘C (cogito) ergo S (sum)’ as simple IMPLICATION (“‘thinking’ implies ‘being’”) written as C -> S, we can rephrase VN’s proposition as “‘being’ because ‘not-thinking,’” written as S <- ~C or ~C -> S. [read ‘~’ as logical negation.] Alas, ~C -> S does NOT refute C -> S!! There’s no LOGICAL contradiction. Both ‘thinking’ and ‘non-thinking’ can imply ‘being.’
I’ve just checked by kicking a nearby BRICK (but I’m mixing my philosophers!)
Re-Anglo-Saxon: Charles protests far too much and without due process, methinks, against the use of the old term OLD ENGLISH to describe the vernacular Germanic language[s] prevalent in Anglo-Saxon England between about 600 --1100 CE. OLD ENGLISH is a useful description, used [usually OE suffices!] by the very scholars devoted to its study. Its chief merit is to offer the rough taxonomy: Old, Middle, and Modern manifestations of our noble tongue (to which one can add ad lib subdivisions such as Late-Middle and Early-Modern). A cute in-house variant is the OE adjective* ENGLISC (pronounced ENglish not INglish). All languages are ‘bundles of dialects’ so naming them is far from trivial. Many tribes just don’t understand the question “What language are you speaking?” (rendered in their own language, of course!)
- We can be grateful that modern English has shed considerable OE grammatical baggage. OE adjectives decline with singular/plural, 3 genders, 4 or 5 cases (Nom, Acc, Gen, Dat, possibly Instr) each with weak and strong variants — a total of 43 inflections to learn! Now down to one! Russian and Lithuanian, e.g., have not been so lucky!
Stan Kelly-Bootle.