Inequity is wrong, because that's the meaning of inequity.

Merry xmas, believers, happy holidays, thinkers :))

Flying to somewhere in Africa, Central America, Nepal, Siberia, wherever, to drive around, camp, photograph, and so on isn't helping wild animals. — Bitter Crank

We should not selectively look at the flying, driving, and camping when the published films produce acquaintance, knowledge and empathy towards wild animals. If we'd only see Jaws, and other films that exploit our ignorance or selectively show wild animals as monsters, then the situation would be worse for the animals, and there would be little interest to fund organisations who work for animals' rights, preservation and so on. Urban populations would have no clue of the relation between their consumption and the fate of wild animals.

Nowadays we can see films of the lives of animals in their natural habitat, so the zoo has little reason to capture and lock up animals in cages just to show them to people. The zoo is, however, justified as an institution for education, research, and preservation.

It seems to me that an elementary particle is also a compound of the particle plus some property that it has. Or is that just a property of language imposed on the thing described?

'all things which have no matter are without qualification essentially unities.' Things with matter are however inescapably matter/form. — mcdoodle

Are there unities without parts?

The higher order reality has modified the lower order constituent. — Wayfarer

Interesting. So, could an elementary particle exist without having any real properties by itself but getting properties from other things?

Anything which is simple, not compound. — Metaphysician Undercover

What is an example of an existing object which is anything and simple, not compound?

What is an example of an existing object without parts?

Universals are properties and relations of things. For example, when you identify three things, you may also identify a fourth, such as the sum of the three, or a relation between them which has the shape of a triangle. That's not an approximation of some idea of a perfect triangle but a relation which exists independely of ideas. Its ontological status is that of the things: without three things there is neither their sum nor their relation.

We'd vote for a destroyer of the world if it meant more titties and beer prior destruction.

Applied logic made more sense to me than symbolic, but they're both formal. Informal logic seems to be a controversial term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic

Skepticism arises from the dubious assumption that we'd never see the real world, only our own impressions, ideas, or sensed "data". Too many thinkers have been taking that assumption for granted.

. . not logical in the sense of formal logic or deductive inference, but rather logical in the wider sense that it is something which can be understood by way of reasoning. — Moliere

What is there to understand, by way of reasoning, in the many unreasonable injustices which partly characterize the human condition?

I don't know whether the ability to recognise something requires intuition or insight. To intuit, or see, are modes of perception, and what sets the intentional features of the entailment relation that you intuit might just be the present brute reality of the relation. For example, a sea urchin hardly intuits anything (it has no brain), yet acts as if it would intuit the entailment of present predators (e.g. scoops up gravel to hide).

Well, I suppose one could identify entailment (say, as a recognizable pattern, possibility, or state of affairs) regardless of insight on what entails or why. An ability to identify the relation is sufficient.

Insight, or rhetorical reason, which precedes the argument that entails. Like a skill that one acquires which enables identification of entailment.

Is this some kind of wacky pomo course? — Terrapin Station

Yeah I thought the same, the "ingredients" seem to be there: e.g. an all-encompassing assertion, a lack of argument, the misuse of scientific terminology, and some wilfully constructed absurdity or conundrum in order to make the whole thing appear deep or advanced. The medieval dark ages were probably brighter and intellectually more honest and prosperous.

The human condition is partly characterized by hypocrisy, irrational beliefs, and misapplied logic. How could something alogical be a logical entity?

What do people mean when they say: "what is the meaning of life?" or "life has no meaning." — Emptyheady

They first seem to assume that life should have one primary or all-encompassing meaning, and since there can be no such monstrosity some get stuck asking what that meaning is without ever finding an answer. Others therefore conclude, but incorrectly, that life has no meaning (a conclusion that arises from an incorrect assumption).

I'd say life consists of uncountable meanings, or varieties of meanings: some are found, others created.

It seems clear that thought about things in a manner of signs and signified is presupposed in representation.

Yet an overwhelming amount of the things in our environment are not signs, they don't represent something else. We identify trees and pictures whose coloured shapes resemble trees because we have a background capacity to perceive and identify things in our environment and their properties, including differences and resemblances. In this sense resemblance is psychologically more primitive than representation.

For example, you see what a bundle of coloured shapes on a photograph resembles, but you've got to learn what a traffic sign represents. It seems clear that in order to know what something represents we need more than a capacity for identifying things: we need a symbol system, a language, and thus thought about the thing in a manner of sign and signified.


(clarified some parts, deleted others)

Here's an example of signs and realism.

A photograph of Ghandi signifies its object, the man, by resemblance between some of his visual features and some of the visual features of the photo. The photo may also represent the man, or what he stood for. But as a representation the photo is used as a symbol, and in order to represent the man or what he stood for we could substitute the photo with his name without changing the representation relation. From the logical difference between resemblance and representation it follows that if a portrait resembles, then it cannot represent in the same respect.

For someone who does not know of Ghandi the photo may still signify by resemblance between some of its visual features and visual features of men, whereas its possible use as a representation of Ghandi or what he stood for remains unknown. Unlike what the photo resembles, what it represents does not depend on the photo but on symbolic convention. Someone who has never seen a photo, nor a half-naked man, could arguably still see a symmetric relation between colour patches on the photo and the visual features of the man.

It's the perception of the photo which is direct, neither more nor less. Likewise, one perceives the light of a distant star directly despite that the star "died" millions of years ago.

You are not adhering to the definitions that I am using, which come from Peirce and are well-established in semiotics, so we are just talking past each other. — aletheist

There is no good reason to exclusively adhere to the terminology of a 19th century theory of signs. It is fairly easy to see that representation is an asymmetric relation whereas resemblance is symmetric. That's what sets portraits apart from representational symbols, e.g. traffic signs or words.

In particular, you seem to have a very narrow concept of representation. If "the portrait signifies primarily by resemblance," then it represents its object by resemblance--it is an icon. — aletheist

Granted that a portrait can both resemble and represent its object, but if resemblance is the predominant relation which determines how a portrait signifies its object, then in this respect (i.e. as in how it predominantly signifies its object) it cannot represent its object, because representation is asymmetric whereas resemblance is symmetric. The portrait may, of course, represent its object in other respects by way of convention, for instance. *

Would it make sense to say that the portrait primarily signifies its object symmetrically (by resemblance) and therefore "represents it" (i.e. signifies the object asymmetrically)? I don't think so.

The weather vane represents (i.e., indicates) the direction of the wind, regardless of whether anyone interprets it as doing so--it is an index. — aletheist

But the question is how, recall. A tumbling dust ball is also connected to the direction of the wind, but that does not make it a representation of it, does it?

If the photo "presents certain features which are recognizable as the face," then it represents the face--iconically due to the resemblance, and indexically due to the causal process that placed the image on the film. Now, just about every sign has all three aspects--iconic, indexical, and symbolic; but I am focusing on the predominant relation of the sign to its object. — aletheist

I'm also focusing on the predominant relation, but the mere application of semiotic terminology is not an argument for "HOW a particular sign represents its object".

(*some clarification the day after my original post)

A portrait does not represent the person whom it portrays (resemblance)? — aletheist

Any picture can represent the person, but then it is used as a symbol, regardless of its resemblance. A caricature, for instance, seldom resembles yet represents; resemblance is neither necessary nor sufficient for representation. A portrait, however, resembles, and a photographic portrait could be visually indistinguishable from the present features of the person. Granted that it could also represent the person, but if the question is: how does the picture signify, then it seems fairly clear that while a caricature represents by asymmetrically exaggerating or contorting known features of the person the portrait signifies primarily by resemblance.

A weather vane does not represent the direction of the wind (connection)? — aletheist

It represents the direction of the wind by being used as a conventional symbol for it, regardless of its direct causal connection to the wind.

You do not recognize a familiar face in a photograph (both)? — aletheist

There is no face in the photo but colour patches, and the photographic process arranged those patches in a way that resembles the way which makes the face familiar. The photo does not represent the face, it presents certain features which are recognizable as the face.

I am looking at HOW a particular sign represents its object. There are only three options--by resemblance (icon), by direct connection (index), or by convention (symbol). — aletheist

While it seems fairly clear that conventional symbols represent I don't think resemblance represents. Resemblance is symmetric, i.e. one thing resembles another by actually possessing some of its recognizable properties. Representation, however, is asymmetric, i.e. one thing represents another, regardless of whether they share properties.

Therefore, resemblance does not represent. Neither does direct connection (index) or perception. Conventional symbols, statements, and beliefs represent things. Resemblance and direct connection, or perception don't (they present things).

For example, a photograph presents properties which resemble properties of the optical state of affairs which was photographed, i.e. the photo reflects light in ways which resemble how the photographed things reflected light when they were photographed. The resemblance relation does not re-present the things (nor an impression inside the head of the photographer). It presents what's really there to see on the surface on the photo: properties shared by two different optical state of affairs.

Bullshit disguised as logic is worse than bullshit, it's fraud.

In what sense is the human body independently existing from its visual field? What is left of a visual field if you remove the body which constitutes its point and angle of view, i.e. the properties which constitute the field?

a form of an argumentum ad ignorantiam — Gooseone

Spot on!

This is merely communication and inference. — darthbarracuda

"Merely"? What do you expect? Ability to be someone else?

What's active is what's constituitive for sensing: e.g. sense organs interacting with physical force, radiation, synaptic events in the brain etc. But sensing also involves a passive identification of what is sensed, for, as you say, "We do not get to choose what is in our visual field".

So it seems fairly clear that sensing is active in one use of the word but passive in another use.

at least conceptually we can open these containers and see their contents. We cannot do this with mind. — darthbarracuda

Evidently we can, for example, when we talk about the mind, and share insights into the minds of different speakers. Therefore, the mind is not isolated.

The cat does not cause the observer to have a visual experience, but it does cause the visual experience to be that of a cat. — Real Gone Cat

I agree.

Sensing is passive. — Real Gone Cat

I would amend that slightly ;). Sensing is hardly passive but it is passively identifying what is sensed, for example, the cat.

Pretty clear analogy, but... unlike the boy who must kick the ball to break the window the cat does not really act to produce the observer's visual experience of it. The cat's presence in the observer's visual field is not sufficient but it is necessary for having a visual experience of the cat. One could probably hallucinate it, but in hallucinations nothing is seen.

The visual experience of seeing a cat is obviously caused by the presence of a cat in your visual field. Otherwise you'd be hallucinating. The biology of the being causes an activity by which things can be sensed but in which nothing is sensed, whereas the presence of the cat causes this activity to sense a cat. In this way the presence of the cat causes you to see the cat.

I find no counter argument to this in your posts (only stinking ad hominems).

That's an obvious fallacy. The fact that some "parameters" like electrical firing rates are sufficient for photosynthesis to work in plants does not mean that computers or toilet plumbing could produce photosynthesis. Like photosynthesis consciousness is a biological phenomenon.

Now that I have given up naive realism — intrapersona

Lol did you ever stop rejecting naive realism?

I'm not positioning the seen cat within the sensing being. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yet you wrote this:

... Let's position the referred to activity, seeing, where it truly is, within the sensing being, ... — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems fairly clear to me that you suggest to position the cat within the sensing being since we were talking about a cat that you see. Now if "the referred" does not mean the cat that you see, then what?

I think you'd agree that there is no cat within you when you see a cat but perceptual activity which enables you to see a cat when there is a cat to be seen in your visual field. You can't see your own perceptual activity at work when you see the cat.

I am positioning the sensation of the cat within the being, and saying that the cause of the sensation is the act of sensing. — Metaphysician Undercover

With respect to the OP which concerns the relation between sense organs and experience the location of the act of sensing is hardly an issue here. Obviously sensing is located within the one who's got the sense organs, not elsewhere (we're not discussing whether remote sensing is possible, are we?).

Can things be the both a cause and an effect? Can they cause themselves? Seems incoherent. — dukkha

Seeming incoherences tend to arise from fallacies of ambiguity. For example, when using of the word 'see' in two different senses: for what constitutes seeing (perceptual activity), and for what you see (what the activity is about or directed towards). Unless the two are understood as different, then it may serm as if seeing would both be its cause and effect.

I merely corrected you, by pointing out that the act of "sensing", is the cause of the sensation of a cat. The cat is not the cause of sensing nor seeing the cat. Rather, the living being which senses is the cause of this activity of sensing. Let's position the referred to activity, seeing, where it truly is, within the sensing being, not within the thing being sensed. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're not correcting anyone by "positioning the referred" cat "to activity, seeing" within the sensing being, because then you'd neither refer nor see the cat, only your own activity of sensing (e.g. "data" or ideas or hallucinations of an invisible cat).

Our biology causates perceptual activity as the sense organs interact with physical force, radiation etc.. This activity is constituitive for seeing things, but it is the presence of a cat in your visual field which causes your biology to see a cat. The cat is what the perceptual activity is about when you see the cat.

This act produces sensation, perhaps the seeing of a cat. — Metaphysician Undercover

The act is the sensation/seeing, the act cannot produce the cat that you see, only its presence in your visual field can.

I suppose you could describe the intentionality of perception as a "gaze" which goes out from your body towards the object that you see.

Unlike electromagnetic radiation which goes towards your body so that your sense organs can interact with it the sensing is characterized by an outwards going direction as in identifying what causes a sensed change in the frequencies of the radiation: for example, the presence of a radiation-reflecting object in your visual field. The sensing is about that object, so you see the object, e.g. a cat. Unless you're hallucinating the present cat is the cause of sensing/seeing a cat.