I hear you. Would I be right in summarising your argument as follows.bucky wrote: ↑January 15th, 2019, 12:56 am Would you agree that if you want to call Category 1 as anything that's essential to my nature and i think that being a non physical being is essential to my nature, you wouldn't be able to get to Bodies existing. And if I think of being a purely physical being you can't get to the existence of non physical minds.
You can call it Category 1 if you like, it makes no diffetence. As you said yourself, your reasoning will only work if someone has a definition of what Minds or, or Category 1's if you now prefer, that is similar to yours. Otherwise all of the reasoning makes no sense.
So if you want to do good philosophy you need to first reason our what Minda are, then when we've agreed that you've reasoned It out correctly, you can start your thought experiment and successful move from "I exist" to "I am a mind".
I am guessing you for some reason find it more poetic to try and claim you're starting from a blank slate, but it's literally *impossible* to start with a blank slate because then you have no definitions of what it is to a) Be an I, 2) Be an existing thing, 3) Be a mind/Category 1. It's only 3.that I'm impugning because it's the obvious logical error because the way you've defined mind, even though you don't want to admit that you have, is necessary for all of your reasoning to work. But you don't want to be intellectually honest and admit that you've predefined it either because a) you don't want to have to defend that definition by first getting the reader to agree with you about what minds are so you can get going or b) because youre insistent on trying to keep this poetic device of a blank slate, perhaps as a homage to Descartes Meditations.
P1. Communication between humans needs language.
P2. The accuracy of the communication between two humans will depend on how closely the meaning that each person assigns to each word and its usage.
C1 Therefore the first step is to establish a common understanding of the words used.
Now if the above is where you are coming from, why would the common usage of the words as given in a dictionary not be sufficient?
1. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/mind
Mind : a)The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
b). A person's ability to think and reason; the intellect.
2. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/time
Time: The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.
3. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/space
Space : A continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied.
4. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/matter
Matter : Physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy.