@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:
Quote:Table salt is absolutely table salt
It seems to me you are trying to establish an independent and unchanging
world of ideas from which meaning derives, then to say that this world is absolute, everything in it eternal or infinite. This seems backwards to me.
We have table salt because salt has been used in food for ages, and at some point we started using tables, and then it was practical to keep the salt in a container on the table. Your take on it turns that on it's head, indicating that "table salt" is some kind of eternal idea that was just waiting to be discovered.
Quote:For example, the concept of a dog is never complete, but our minds working on the many examples of dogs distill an absolute concept by which we define the examples we find of dogs as dogs
This would mean that our concept of dog is relative to every dog we've ever seen, the very opposite of absolute. It is also relative to human understanding, and "dog" is a meaningful distinction contrasted to everything that it is not. Nothing absolute about it.
I think you are making things a lot more complicated by dealing with these forms of yours, and you are introducing elements into your understanding that allow for assumptions and conclusions that may serve to complicate things even further.
The way I see it, nothing is absolute. In every single aspect of reality, we have perception. Perception or observation is not passive. It is a factor that determines how reality appears
to us. Table salt, lines, dogs, justice, truth etc. are all ideas that make sense
from our perspective. Change or remove that perspective, and none of these things may have any meaning at all.
The fact that many forms of salt have been used on food does not mean table salt is not table salt, and was not always so before we had tables... We look at the past through our lens as they could never look at the future in any other lens but their own... We cannot possibly lose or give up our perspectives, but we can compare them and if necessary change them...
The primitive's conception of humanity was his own people, and for most of us that group is considerably larger, and yet the sheer number of human beings is staggering, and economic forces that bind us to one group parochializes our view to justify our enmity or exploitation of others...
Table salt was not the only salt people used, and when people came to preferentially use table salt they had to define it in some fashion apart from other salts... We say: Property Rights so we can refer to rights that effect or benefit only those with property, or that remain with the property when it is alienated...To call these property rights rights at all is false in the sense that calling table salt salt is not... Clearly table salt is a salt, but all rights come with obligations, primarily that one will or can defend those rights to the death if necessary... Since people can own far more than they can defend, the right of property requires no obligation except on the part of the society that defends the privilage of property for a few...
It was thought that property in few hands would support the society better than property in many hand, but this has not been the case... The more property is held by few hands, the more demands it makes on the many for its support and defense which the people must provide out of their own resources...We have many such examples, such as a the road apple, which is no apple at all... We have an ossage orange that is no orange at all, but the seed of this tree resembles roughly an orange, at first glance... It is not at all unusual to use one thing in the environment to characterise another, as in table, to differentiate one salt from another, but a concept goes deeper than just the name which is a sign...And yet every word is a sign associate with a definition, and the definition and sign for it are the concept...
Identity is a part of all concepts, and that identity is conserved.... That an ounce is always an ounce, and a kilo is always a kilo allows us to reason upon them which we could not if these notions were not conserved and were always in flux, always subjective, or relative...
Did not Voltaire say: if you would converse with me, define your terms??? It is pointless to try to converse with anyone who considers the meanings of any terms as purely subjective... Is Evil purely a matter of intent???
Before you answer, try to grasp what liars human beings are, and to what extent each liar is his own victim... No crime would ever be commited were it possible for the criminal to see his own defense of his actions from the perspective of the jury.... People need no more justification to do what they intend to do than the thought that they can escape detection, and fool others so easily as they fool themselves... The nazis said of the Neuremberg trials that they were suffering victors justice... By what right did they have to complain of an act they had so often exercised upon others???
