I mean, if you can, tell me something that isn't relational and then maybe we can proceed. I can't think of a single example. Or maybe you have some different concept of relation than what I'm using. — Manuel
So the natural thing is to start with a location that has an extra feature, as my location does, by being an instance of ‘here’. And that seems doubly right as an entry point because here is always where we are and the universe is always where we are. — Srap Tasmaner
That’s not the way my here works, because I know what neither of those does, that I’m spatial and must have a location, and that location is always at least ‘here’, whatever it is in relation to other things. — Srap Tasmaner
at least by then we should have a little more to say about what that relation is and how it works. How much could we say about the relation we tried to start with? — Srap Tasmaner
We have a location here on Earth — Manuel
So you're tying space to a location, here, namely where your body is. — Manuel
My location, then, is to be defined relative to a thing that is not me. — Srap Tasmaner
But not just any thing. If I am a member of a club, my location cannot be defined relative to the club. Why not? — Srap Tasmaner
Not where my body is, but where I am; I am not my body, but a person, a living, thinking organism. — Srap Tasmaner
I assume you're using the club as a metaphor for the universe. — Manuel
the body becomes an essential component of the identity of here-ness we are trying to understand — Manuel
No, no, a club. The International Brotherhood of Amateur Philosophers. That’s a thing that’s not me, but we can’t define my location relative to it. Or relative to 7. Or relative to ‘conformity’. Or relative to July 3rd, 1807. — Srap Tasmaner
But not just as a body, but as my body, and only so long as I am a going concern. Once I’m dead, what you’ll call ‘his body’ doesn’t tell you where I am. — Srap Tasmaner
How far off is the International Brotherhood of philosophers from you? — Manuel
so the question — for me — was whether those ideas are the same, or related to each other, or what. For instance, some location words like “here” are flexible in their boundaries, and can encompass as little as my knee to as much as the whole universe. — Srap Tasmaner
But why is it so tempting, and can we approach the idea of location in such a way that we are not tempted to think of the universe as there, somewhere? It’s one of those perfect nine-year-old philosophy questions that we are too sophisticated to understand. — Srap Tasmaner
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