do you or do you not agree that good food nourishes the body, and that bad food poisons it? and that food that neither nourishes nor poisons it does it neither good nor ill? — Leghorn

Yes I agree with that — Pfhorrest

Then would you also agree it follows from this that we cannot define food as dry nourishment for the body?

I’d say it’s something being used for that purpose. If it’s not actually useful to that purpose, it’s a bad thing of that kind, but still a thing of that kind.

I’d say it’s something being used for that purpose. If it’s not actually useful to that purpose, it’s a bad thing of that kind, but still a thing of that kind. — Pfhorrest

Would you then define food as anything ingested?

I should have phrased my question rather like this: would you define food as something that is ingested with the intent to nourish the body?

Sure.

Can anyone think of other cases where being a kind of thing at all is conflated with being a good example of that kind of thing? — Pfhorrest

Well J.L. Austin talks about how to decide if a bird is a goldfinch or not, and he uses the example to draw out the criteria we use in making that decision, in determining its identity; this is in distinction from other birds, what distinguishes it.

In another case, we would identify two dogs as bloodhounds but hold one over the other, say, in its "bloodhound-ness". We might say we use criteria of judgement. The importance of saying one is a better example or more representative (rather than just a set of criteria, or ideal) is that there is an embodied comparison and thus no way to explicate all the ways one example differs from another, or, more importantly, how we might value one over another.

And we wouldn't normally say criteria of identity are set by us (that we created the distinction between a crow and a bluebird) but usually that criteria of judgement are in a sense manufactured: utility, beauty, right, etc. Stanley Cavell said "modern" art brought its identity (its medium, its form) into discussion with us as part of our judgement. We might also say when we identify something as fair it is also a matter of judgement.

what is art?” [...] “what is good art?” — Pfhorrest

It's all got to do with vagueness. The boundary between art and not-art is fuzzy and it's a Herculean task to tell the difference. Good art, on the other hand, is further away from the grey area mentioned above and identifying it as art is easy peasy. Thus, art and good art are conflated.

Same goes for so-called manliness, men and women overlap in terms of certain qualities creating a no man's land between them populated by masculine females and feminine males. A man/woman who's farther away from this intersection will be considered a good man/a good woman or simply a man/woman - you know what happens to those in the twilight zone!

would you define food as something that is ingested with the intent to nourish the body? — Leghorn

Sure. — Pfhorrest

And would you define poison as something ingested with the intent of harming the body?

That raises the complication of whose intent we’re taking about, since I expect usually the people ingesting poison themselves are not intending to harm their bodies and merely don’t know that it will harm their bodies. They are using it as food. Someone else may have given it to them with the intent to cause them harm, though.

I expect usually the people ingesting poison themselves are not intending to harm their bodies and merely don’t know that it will harm their bodies. — Pfhorrest

Do you really believe that people who ingest poison on purpose, in order to commit suicide, are fewer in number than those to whom it is administered in order to commit murder?

Do you really believe that people who ingest poison on purpose, in order to commit suicide, are fewer in number than those to whom it is administered in order to commit murder? — Leghorn

I don't have a strong belief about it either way, but that was my initial expectation, yeah. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to learn that it was wrong.

@Pfhorrest

So would you be willing to accept, for the sake of the argument, that the intent of harming the body by the ingestion of poison commonly belongs to the one ingesting it, and not to someone else?

Commonly, sure.

@Pfhorrest

Damn!...I gotta go up. I’ll ask you a further question tomorrow.

Do you think that there is no such thing as bad art? — Pfhorrest

It's not my place to think such things, as I am not a member of the elite who decides about such things.

Before you seemed to be saying that only the art elite is capable of making such distinctions when you wrote, "Provided it's used by the right people, the ones who are in the position to determine whether something is art or not, and whether it's good art or not." Now you're saying that any school child (provided they're schooled in Europe) knows the difference.

Can you resolve this apparent contradition? — praxis

Certainly. At least up until some 30 years ago, children were typically taught to distinguish between proper art and that which is not proper art. This knowledge, however, has to go hand in hand with knowing one's place in society, and knowing whether one is in the position to speak on a topic or not.

Hm. I guess this is hard to explain to an egalitarian/democrat. I'll put it this way: If you belong to the (lower) middle class and lower, it is, by old European standards, inappropriate for you to go to a classical music concert. Such art is simply considered to be out of your league and you're just not appropriate for it. It's completely irrelevant how much you might like it or how much you might know about it. You must know your place. If a member of the elite has a particularly charitable day, they might tell you that your time would be better spent in other pursuits, otherwise, they'll just frown upon you.

Cute.

So would you be willing to accept, for the sake of the argument, that the intent of harming the body by the ingestion of poison commonly belongs to the one ingesting it, and not to someone else? — Leghorn

Commonly, sure. — Pfhorrest

So if I ingest something, thinking it is poison, with the intent of harming my body, but instead nourish it, would you say the thing I ingested is poison or food?

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food. It was also bad poison (ineffective at doing what poison is for), and at least marginally good food (somewhat effective at doing what food is for).

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food. It was also bad poison (ineffective at doing what poison is for), and at least marginally good food (somewhat effective at doing what food is for). — Pfhorrest

When you use something for some purpose, does the use of it lie in the outcome or the intent? For example, if I thrust a knife at your throat, intending to cut your jugular, but instead inadvertently cut off a cancerous tumor that would have otherwise killed you, have I used that knife to save you or to destroy you?

Both, in different senses. This reminds me of a post about whether speakers mean things or the words they say mean things, that I made in another thread yesterday: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/563120

Do you think that there is no such thing as bad art?
— Pfhorrest
It's not my place to think such things, as I am not a member of the elite who decides about such things. — baker

I'm so glad you are obedient. I would hate to think you had ideas of your own. :razz:

So if I ingest something, thinking it is poison, with the intent of harming my body, but instead nourish it, would you say the thing I ingested is poison or food? — Leghorn

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food — Pfhorrest

I failed to notice that you were answering my question by avowing that the substance I ingested was indeed food, though I thought it was poison. Likewise, were I to ingest something thinking it to be food, but it ended up poisoning me, wouldn’t you agree that it was really poison? If you do, then doesn’t that contradict what we agreed to earlier, viz:

would you define food as something that is ingested with the intent to nourish the body? — Leghorn

Sure — Pfhorrest

In other words, whether what I ingest is food or poison depends, not on my intent in ingesting it, but rather on its effect on my health. Would you agree with that?

In other words, whether what I ingest is food or poison depends, not on my intent in ingesting it, but rather on its effect on my health. Would you agree with that? — Leghorn

I think either intent or effect can be used as the criteria to define it, as I said just above in response to your question "When you use something for some purpose, does the use of it lie in the outcome or the intent?"

So you retract this then?

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food — Pfhorrest

.

For there you avowed that the intended poison was indeed actually food.

To your last response let me point out that the “use” of something is not obviously identical with the thing used.

No, that quote of me tracks perfectly with what I just said. You had one intent, but a different effect occurred, so you used it with one intent, but got a different use out of it in the end. To the extent that the use of something for some purpose makes it a thing of a some kind, the conflict between intended use and effective use creates conflict in defining the kind of the thing. It's just like how if I use a word to mean something, but that word means a a different thing to you than what I intended it to, there's conflict over what the meaning of the word is.

It's just like how if I use a word to mean something, but that word means a a different thing to you than what I intended it to, there's conflict over what the meaning of the word is. — Pfhorrest

In this case, is the word whose meaning is in conflict “food”, in your statement,

You meant to use it as poison, but you ended up using it as food. So something you meant to be poison was instead food. — Pfhorrest

?

Or don’t we both understand that you considered food in that statement to refer to what is good for the body, and poison what is bad?

In this case, is the word whose meaning is in conflict “food”, in your statement, — Leghorn

I'm not saying that there's literally a conflict over the meaning of a word here, but that use-of-a-thing-defining-what-it-is is analogous to use-of-a-word-defining-what-it-means.

I'm so glad you are obedient. I would hate to think you had ideas of your own. — Tom Storm

Nonsense. One of the most important things to know in life is to know one's place. It's amazing how much trouble one avoids that way. There's just no use in forcing oneself upon a culture or social group that doesn't want one.

To the extent that the use of something for some purpose makes it a thing of some kind, the conflict between intended use and effective use creates conflict in defining the kind of the thing. — Pfhorrest

So let me apply this to the example of someone ingesting food though thinking it poison: by ingesting it for the purpose of harming his body, ie as poison, he makes it a “thing of some kind”, ie poison, defined as “something ingested which is harmful to the body”. Therefore food, what nourishes the body, becomes poison, what harms it, “to the extent that the use of something for some purpose makes it a thing of some kind”.

Furthermore, since

either intent or effect can be used as the criterion to define it — Pfhorrest

it is also still food, since its effect was to nourish the body. So it is both food and poison at the same time. Therefore it both nourishes and poisons the body, and the body is both bettered and made worse at the same time.

But I must make note of this apparent caveat in what you said: “TO THE EXTENT THAT the use of something”, etc....Maybe the use of food as poison doesn’t extend so far, and we can avoid the absurdity that results in attempting to stretch it beyond reason. After all, what reasonable person would call “poison” what, after ingestion, nourished instead of harmed?