[MD] I think I am a verb...

[ian glendinning]

Nice one Arlo.

I may copy your post into the "inlcusionality" forum if you don't
mind, where Hofstaderian circularity just came up in a "fluid dynamic"
vs "solid object" context.

I think therefore I am a verb - Grant.
Any connection except Descartes, with ...
I talk nonsense therefore I am human - Dostoyevsky.

Talking and thinking are active processes, not "conclusions" or "things".
Ian

On 4/14/08, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> All,
>
> While I am making my way through Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop",
> I stumbled onto this while doing a routine web search for "uberty".
> As I have learned, our former president Ulysses Grant made the
> following statement shortly before succumbing to cancer.
>
> "The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A
> verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify
> all three." (Grant)
>
> This sentiment is examined in the aptly titled "I think I am a Verb"
> by Thomas Sebeok, you can read the first part of the book here using
> Google's Book Search
> (http://books.google.com/books?id=PBEBnvop2w0C&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=sign+three+uberty&source=web&ots=jV2LkV27el&sig=K9II0do1L21M4wzb-bmBleLIZFQ&hl=en#PPT18,M1)
>
> I'd skip past the preface and acknowledgements and go right to
> chapter one (self-titled, I think I am a Verb) about half way down the file.
>
> Be warned, Sebeok is not writing for a lay audience, but an audience
> versed in the discourse of semiotics.
>
> However, I do find it MOQish that the sentiment of the "self"
> expressed by Grant is about "process" or "activity" or "doing",
> rather than as a static, objectified "thing".
>
> Arlo
>
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