But to start down the rabbit hole of discussions lacking even preliminary definitions, there is no such thing as a something that can be pluralized. — tim wood

I am not sure what the confusion is about 'pluralize'. Merriam Webster online dictionary gives a decent definition: "to make plural or express in the plural form." Thus to pluralize means to add a 's' to the end of the word (in English) making it plural form. The Google search dictionary adds: "cause to become more numerous." Merriam Webster online dictionary definition of plural: "relating to, consisting of, or containing more than one or more than one kind or class."

Thus, there is something that can be pluralized: Words can be given plural form. I don't know of any other somethings that can be pluralized, but words certainly can.

Merriam Webster online dictionary at something: 1a. some indeterminate or unspecified thing. 2. a person or thing of consequence.

Something about having to begin the discussion in this way feels like Bill Clinton's famous answer at deposition: "It depends on the what the meaning of is is."

Wikipedia has an article on Sortal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortal

But then, suicide itself creates meaning - why? — Banno

I found this a week ago on Google Books while searching for the term sacrificium intellectus:

“From this point of departure he proceeds to his critique of the different ways of ‘philosophical suicide’, which he characterizes as so many ways of speculative evasion. All existential thinkers quoted by Camus have realized the futility of reason, all them are seen to have recourse to some transcendent entity as raison d’être: Husserl to his ‘extratemporal essences’ of innumerable phenomena, Chestov and Kierkegaard to a deity whose loftiness consists precisely of His incomprehensibility, indeed in His inconsistency, arbitrariness, inhumanity. Chestov is quoted as saying: ‘We address our-selves to God only to obtain the impossible; as to the possible, humans suffice.’ Such deity, to Camus, shows all the features of the absurd; He demands, in the old way, the sacrificium intellectus. In point of fact, it could be said that Tertullian’s credo quia absurdum has arrived, in the modern situation, at a vivo quia absurdum. ... Camus rejects the ‘philosophical suicide’; he refuses to accept any transcendent ... but seeks to remain within the pale of this world and to maintain himself on his scarce certitudes. He like-wise discards ... physical suicide, because this also, in its ultimate consequence, resolves, dissolves the absurd, implying acceptance. ‘The point is, to die irreconciled and not of one’s own accord.’” – Erich Kahler, The Tower and the Abyss (1957) (available free on Google Books).

From this, I would say that first, Banno is correct in that Camus might not have considered himself an existentialist (and Erich Kahler may agree as well), and second that (in Khaler's reading) suicide does not create meaning in Camus' mind, rather, it "resolves, dissolves the absurd, implying acceptance." Is resolution, dissolution, and acceptance the same as creating meaning?

On the other side of this however, are we talking about creating meaning for the deceased or for the living? It seems kind of absurd (irony intended) to say that meaning has been created for the deceased by the act of suicide. But perhaps meaning can be created for the living (e.g., martyrs) by suicide?

This is an interesting twist, but not surprising. It flows into the social sciences as well. A year or so ago, I did a Google search for "Jared Diamond racist" and came up with two pages of hits on blogs, articles, etc. arguing about whether Professor Jared Diamond is a racist in relation to his book Guns, Germs and Steel (1997, won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize) and his theory of "geography is destiny." Jared Diamond in interviews has stated that he is not a racist and that those who say he is have misunderstood or refused to understand the geo-environmental destiny argument (and consequently, also the problem). A similar search at the same time for "Max Weber racist" returned similar results, with the addition of him being accused of imperialism, Darwinism, nationalism etc.

David S. Landes in "Why Europe and the West? Why Not China," (Journal of Economic Perspectives – Volume 20, Number 2 – Spring 2006) describes "the seventeenth-century European mania for tinkering and improving." Together with Jared Diamond, the two describe what is now known as the East-West Technological Inversion in macro-history. Professor Raymond Birn in Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe 1648 to 1789 describes generally a similar process in European orientalism:

"Not only did the Jesuits bring Christianity to China, but they also brought China to Europe. In doing so, they impelled an intellectual mutation that had been taking root since the Thirty Years War. To the troubled European society of the late seventeenth century, the Jesuit image of a near utopian civilization governed by moral sages uncorrupted by intolerance, passion, or material desire, offered a refreshing contrast. Kangxi was viewed as a philosopher king whose sense of justice and virtue made Leopold I or Louis XIV seem like moral pygmies. Europe swallowed fact and fancy about China. For the first time, a significant body of Western intellectuals cast doubts on the ethical superiority of their own civilization. Paradoxically enough, this was occurring at the moment when the very same thinkers were producing rational explanations about the physical universe that Eastern sages could not hope to match." (2nd Edition, p. 169).

It comes down to this: Because of European colonization and exploitation over the course of 500 years, a significant part of which (but not solely) was due to technological superiority, anything associated with the West is suspect (look up the actual meaning of "Boko Haram"), and science and technology in particular (and a form of materialism, consumerism) are seen as belonging to the West and not to humanity in general in much of the world, and thus, we now have discussions under various guises of how to separate science from the West. Science is associated with both racism and with bad history, and with the uncertain changing world in which the youth of those places find themselves. This is a huge barrier to education in those places, as opposed to the West where science can easily be presented in primary schools as beneficial.

Poe's Law. :smile:

I don't know. The sale was private -- the old forum site was owned by an individual (Paul); somebody bought the site for unknown reasons and then let it languish. This one is owned by Jamalrob. "Somebody" has to own the site -- as far as I know, there is no such thing as a sovereign URL. Corporations are persons, but URLs haven't reached that status yet.

Corporations are artificial persons for legal purposes only. As to whether natural persons are sovereign or ever were, that is a fascinating discussion for probably another thread. In any event, corporations are not sovereign (for example, under Max Weber's classic definition of sovereignty) and therefore if URLs reach the status of corporations, they probably won't be sovereign.

Thank you Galuchat, I hope I have not offended?

I am a 'tendentious pedant' - a phrase I picked up from Norman Spinrad a few years ago (I highly recommend reading The Void Captain's Tale (1982) - a challenging read but quite a bit of philosophy in it - and Science Fiction in the Real World (1990)).

And thank you all, this has been a good discussion I think, and it has clarified some points and brought to the fore some questions I had not thought of previously. :smile:

I was out for awhile yesterday and so was not on the forums, but began thinking of an outline of the argument that I have made from Mr. Case's four orders of natural phenomenon (both here and in my project), and I have been busy tapping away at it this morning. :flower:

Ahhh, Galuchat pounces!

I will try to respond in order to your objections (rather than embedding quotes in quotes):

1. You misread my previous. Comte's astronomy chemistry and physics became Mr. Case's first order of natural phenomenon because they are all part of a continuum in the non-living physical world. This continuum was perhaps not clear in Comte's time, but was clear by 1924 (Einstein, the Curies, Planck did their major work in the late 19th century to the early 20th century, it was becoming clear that the physical universe was a continuum running from the sub-atomic to the stars and galaxies, with different frames of reference, i.e. that the rules of Newtonian physics applied to stars and galaxies but not to the atomic or sub-atomic, and so on).

However, it is also true in Mr. Case's structure that physics, biology, psychology and sociology form a continuum through the first through fourth orders of natural phenomenon, for example, if you connect physics and biology via abiogenesis.

2) I do not believe I am conflating interpretation with fact. Within the first order of natural phenomenon, interpretation is not fact, as you said, in that framework, an interpretation is an attempt to explain facts. Within the fourth order of natural phenomenon, and even the third, it must be regarded as fact to humanity but not fact to the first order of natural phenomenon.

3) I believe it in implicit in Mr. Case's four orders of natural phenomenon that the orders are incommensurable. This also does not seem to be incorrect in observation.

4) I understand that there is considerable interplay between quantum interpretation and metaphysics and that it is often dismissed in the scientific community as 'quantum mysticism' (which is not exactly the same, but sometimes relates).

As you seem to have answered your last question on your own, I agree to the extent of your answer and will not delve further in quantum metaphysics except to say that one should not confuse emergent with quantum interactions in all cases; e.g., a snowflake is often used as an example of emergent behavior in the first order of natural phenomenon and video games are often written to intentionally generate emergent narrative during play by humans, because that is what humans do.

Are there natural kinds, or are classifications merely cultural and/or linguistic conventions? — Galuchat

There are natural phenomenon and interpretations. One cannot claim that natural phenomenon are themselves cultural/linguistic conventions, e.g., the Sokal Hoax. But we have interpreted them in different ways - as history shows - that are suitable for the milieu of the times, compare Aristotle to modern physics. Part of the issue is that interpretations have not been accepted as equally factual, instead they have been dismissed as non-objective, illusion, human fallacy.

The fallacy has been to try to treat them as facts within the first order, whereas they are actually facts within the fourth order. The same fallacy occurs in reverse when you try to deny that first order facts are facts within the fourth order - i.e. treating physical facts as cultural/linguistic constructs - again, the Sokal Hoax. There is not exactly a symmetry in this arrangement, facts of lower orders cannot be denied by higher orders, but facts of higher orders are not facts in lower orders. It's sort of like the way time flows in only one direction (I hadn't actually thought of it this way before I typed this). Time is then probably - is definitely - related to - is probably even the 'cause of' - emergences in all the orders.

I'll give your second question some thought.

It appears that between Comte and Case, a transformation was underway in the way the world was classified (and this is historically interesting, we often forget to put famous people in their historical milieu, Friedrich Nietzsche's "alienated from the present"):

1) By 1924, intellectuals and scientists understood that astronomy, chemistry and physics were all part of the same continuum. Stars have chemistry, astronomy makes and bows to physics, and there was a whole lot going on there, but it was all in the same 'spectrum'. Thus, Comte's first three categories collapsed into the first order of natural phenomenon in Case's structure.

2) Mr. Case makes clear in the introduction that the mental sciences were just recently becoming members of the "elite circle" (formerly occupied exclusively by physics and biology) and modern psychology was not yet ready during the time of Comte - Comte died the year after Freud was born. So in Case's structure, the mental sciences in 1924 were added into the third slot (i.e. the third order of natural phenomenon).

Yes, that is Professor Elwell. I don't have that book, but I have two other textbooks he wrote on macrosocial theory on my Kindle: Macro Social Theory (2009) and Macrosocial Theory: Four Modern Theorists (2006). I believe he is the only one writing macrosocial textbooks in the United States currently, he has a video on YouTube where he lectures parts of the intros of one of the books, and he also has a large cache of 45+ essays on various subjects and authors that can be found at https://faculty.rsu.edu . They are all free to read and save (print, save as PDF). He is an expert on past theorist.

Professor Emeritus Mary Jo Deegan also has a book from 2008 that I don't think is intended as a textbook per se, called Self, War and Society: George Herbert Mead's Macrosociology. Professor Elwell does not place Mead in his pantheon of founders of macrosociology (in fact, does not even mention him in the two books I have, word search is a great invention) and Mead has always been an issue because he is claimed as the founder of "American sociology."

I like Mr. Case's classifications because they are simple and intuitive and the audience can thus grasp them immediately. Artificial wasn't really a big issue in 1924, no one had yet thought of cloning, the technological singularity, even the atom bomb was just a theory, also, by definition, artificial can't be a 'natural phenomenon' and thus would not have a place in the four orders unless as a special extension of the fourth order (i.e. man made as a natural phenomenon of humanity).

There are many ways to slice the pie, it just depends on what you want at the end, I have had many times to decide how to slice the pie in my project. In your classification, the fourth order would simply become 1) b) ii) and 2) b) (or not to be...), I am not sure if you did that intentionally or not, but it's pretty clever.

My project, in part, involves an argument about macrosociology. Mr. Case's four orders provided a structural ground for the argument; Mr. Case argues that society/culture is a fourth order natural phenomenon. This ties into a lot of threads, e.g., arguments that social phenomena must be treated as facts equal to first and second order phenomena, Professor Elwell's comments about the current overwhelming dominance of microsociology, the development of true fourth order phenomenon terms and descriptions, etc. Mr. Case's intro also provides a historical record of the struggles of sociology to be recognized as science in the early 20th Century, much of which still echoes today.

Thanks, I am trying to figure out how to have a conversation here if my responses disappear seconds after I post them. Thanks, I thought your response must have been to mine. :smile:

I responded to your comment half an hour ago, but my response disappeared. Can you see it?

Thank you, that's a good clue. Before he reaches the four orders, on the preceding page, he has a footnote referring to "the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte." This was however, in reference to an argument that math is not supreme:

"The student of mathematics does not, as a mathematician, know anything whatsoever about the world of concrete reality. This is true because mathematics is not a body of knowledge with respect to any of the order of phenomena in the objective world. It deals with concepts and is a kind of quantitative logic, purely subjective in its essential nature. But that is not to say that it is not an immensely valuable discipline. Quite the contrary. While one who knew only mathematics, even if he mastered it all, would know nothing about the objective, phenomenal world, he would be in command of an incomparable mental equipment for the accurate explanation of natural phenomena if he were to turn his mathematically equipped mind to their systematic investigation. Thus it is that pure mathematics, far from being a single science, is no science at all. It is, however, the measure of accuracy for all sciences, or the 'standard of positivity,' as Comte expressed it." - Clarence Marsh Case, Outlines of Introductory Sociology (1924), p. xvi.

Thus, Mr. Case was familiar with Comte (but I am not) and you may be correct that he deduced the four orders from Comte.

I also did not know there was a book about Mr. Case. So I may take a look at the PDF. Mr. Case wrote mostly about non-violent resistance from what I gather, but I found his four orders fertile ground.

Thank you much :-)