Different in Degree or Kind?

coberst,

Similarity and difference are just two sides of a coin. To put an extreme and trivial case, any two items like "an elephant" and "my visa card" are similar (they are both objects of my attention) and different (because there are two of them). Poets make a living from "simularity". The terms have no objective basis and are entirely relative to the purpose in hand. One man's "freedom fighter" is merely another man's "terrorist". The classic from philosophy is one generation's separation of "morning star" and "evening star" are both this generations "planet Venus"

The argument about "difference in degree" (the ordinal level of measurement) is contingent on the prior negotation (you use the term manipulation) of a name" (the nominal level of mesurement). The ordinal level subsumes the nominal level. They are not separate distinctive properties although it may be meangless talk about ordination for some concepts. (NB The complete scale runs nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio and statisticians have be careful about making assumptions as to the level of their data when testing for "significant events")

Fresco

Does this mean that the terms 'different in degree' and 'different in kind' have no importance? Does your response indicate that what I said about the terrorist and freedom fighter is vacuous?

They are vacuous out of context. Context is"importance".
(Consider also ....Wittgenstein: "meaning is use".....Capra: "Words are co-ordinators of action") Whether you call a suicide bomber "a terrorist" or " a freedom fighter" is making a statement about the nature of the perceived social context and the appropriate response to such bombers.

Fresco

Thanks. I was doing the same thing Marx talks so much about. Removing the idea from the historical context.

But my experience of phenomena is: "a suicide bomber" or "a freedom fighter"?
That is curious.
Because there are different levels of experience.
I can only see a man with some objects attached to his chest, entering a bus, if I don't know what a bomb is or what a terrorist is.

But in both cases I will be killed by the explosion.

It is obvious that experience is not passive. I experience facts or phenomena within my "circumvision" and those facts have the meaning - they are the meaning - allowed by the conditions of my experience.
A rock is only gold when I give a social meaning to the word gold. Then, I see gold, not a rock.

But facts - or phenomena - sometimes resist to my perception of them. Even if I don't know what a bomb is, I will be killed by it.
Language gives a meaning - but I doubt that a previous meaning condition is not previous to language - but the being of the thing is not necessarily accorded to that language meaning.
As I said, things resist.

Val,

In as much that we are all members of the same species, we could argue we have the same basic hardware for perception. Such hardware will interact with "the world" in a similar manner for all individuals. It is sets of these interactions or the predictions thereof NOT "the world itself" which becomes associated with language.

To take the word "bomb" for example, its meaning usually involves the expectancy of "an explosion" but the term has been used for other "things" like a primitive computer. Therefore it is the entire interactive context, not the word on its own which denotes meaning.

Wiitgenstein points out that much nonsense can occur when "language goes on holiday" i.e. words are abstracted for analysis outside their normal contexts. For example in the question "Do machines think" the word "machine" normally implies (sets up the expectancy of) a non-biological device, but reductionists then might argue that organisms are "machines".

The mind tends toward a symbolic representation of what the senses perceive. In my opinion, abstract thought is such a symbolic representation of apparently fundamental natural laws, which we encounter in our experience of consciousness.

1+1+2 (mathematics) is a good example. The law of conservation of matter and energy does this in real life, so the mind is likely to see this as a abstract law. This representation in the mind is a quality (more of a conception) apart from the object itself. The tricky part is that our mind derives new concepts from more fundamental ideas making their origin hard to determine.

So, abstract ideas are in the natural world around us because real natural laws of existence exist. However, the abstract idea derived is in our minds. (Of course this does have many materialistic -spirituality get away- assumptions about reality, I only posted this to give a plausible explanation for discussion)

coberst,

This theory seems very logical to me. I will read it when time allows.

Coberst,

This doesn't seem like a very radical concept to me. You're basically saying that we can make associations between abstract concepts that are corellated. I would say that this is obvious.

It seems to me that almost everything I understand is a simple thing. It seems to me that everything I try to understand but am not successful is a difficult thing. I think that many things need to be understood before other things can be understood. I am trying make sure that I share a common pool of knowledge with the reader before I move on to a subject that depends on this knowledge.

Ask the hard question first, and if people need clarification, they will ask. Not many people will have the patience to wade through pages of clarifications before seeing what your point is!

505

They need to know that anyway. Its all free anyway.