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Hope

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Everything posted by Hope

  1. Could you please be more explicit. I don't see what your getting at with either of your remarks. Perhaps I should point out that the problem of mistakenly discussing taxonomic categories *as though* they are the things themselves, was in fact a side-issue that began with post #24. (I mentioned it as an additional possible fallacy, without having any cases of it to point to.) I tried to get off the side issue and back onto the main issue with post #28.
  2. You can feed your dog, Rover. You can feed your cat, Fluffy. You cannot feed "Dog" or "Cat", they are taxonomic classifications. The answer to the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is this: Chicken and Egg are both concepts without any temporal or sequential relation between them. I can say nothing about the relation between a specific egg and a specific chicken because you haven't shown me any. Yeah. In my prior post in reply to Dante.
  3. Thanks Chris. You have stated succinctly what the issue is, to the point where I thought I saw my mistake. Unfortunately, I'm still dissatisfied. If I "stand back" to examine my own existence, and say to myself "Your existence IS identity", I see no reason to dispute it. If I do the same and say to myself "Your existence is all that exists.", it smacks loudly of subjectivism, because it implies that the whole Universe ceases to exist the moment I do. Obviously, *for me* the Universe ceases to exist, but that's only because I lose all consciousness of it (not to mention consciousness of my own existence into the bargain). Existence remains objectively, "out there", whether I'm conscious of it or not. This is my distinction, "existence IS identity", but "Existence isn't identity", rather "Existence is the sum of all identities". This is why I see that two very distinct meanings are being comingled, incorrectly, into one.
  4. I can see how I've become confusing. Sorry. In many discussions about Existence I've read I see important distinctions glossed over and comingled in completely illegitimate ways. The main comingled distinction is between Existence as "all that which exists" (or Nature or the Universe) vs Existence of individual entities. A secondary comingling of a distinction is to treat abstracts and instances as interchangeable. For example, in the sentence, "The Keyboard is a means of entering text", the keyboard is in the abstract, no particular keyboard is indicated. In the sentence, "This keyboard is sticky" the keyboard is a concrete instance, and a single keyboard in particular is indicated. It is my habit to capitalize abstracts I simply did not realize my ambiguity. I only used Aristotle as an historic figure. Maybe I should have used "Carthage's existence", or "the Colossus' of Rhodes" existence. All this clouds the issue, unfortunately. You asked, "The formulation 'existence is identity' does not in any way refute or conflict with existence is 'all that which exists' Why would you think so? " My answer is that comingling "Existence as 'all that which exists'." with the "Existence of individual entities." is completely fallacious -- the Fallacy of Equivocation. They are two entirely different meanings of the word. It is essential to specify which is meant with every use, otherwise no meaningful discussion is possible.
  5. Now I notice your capital E on Existence. It is very important to distinguish the abstract concept Existence (in your meaning here) from a specific instance of it. By this I mean, the concept Existence is to Aristotle's existence as the concept Keyboard is to this one I'm typing on with a smudge of coffee on the F11 key. Unfortunately, the meaning of that Existence with a capital E is entirely distinct from the meaning of the Existence with a capital E, that is the great macro-container of everything.
  6. Nicely said. I concur. Because... Aristotle's existence was for a few decades. After that, he ceased to exist (granted his works live on). Meanwhile Existence, as the great 'macro-container' "all that which exists." is timeless and in no way contingent on Aristotle's (or yours or my) identity or existence. They are two entirely distinct things. It is not legitimate to coagment the two. I agree with, "existence is identity". I do not agree with "Existence is identity" In fact if you are arguing that Existence will cease when your personal existence ceases then you are arguing pure subjectivism.
  7. My keyboard exists independantly from my curling iron. Is that a property of my keyboard? Independant existence of one thing from another is an extrinsic property of all things and hence says nothing about each thing itself. So I don't think we can count that one. This is interesting! The *term* "Existence exists" is axiomatic within a logical framework. Unless you want to argue that a thing can be an axiom, Existence itself, the thing out there in (or should I say -- as -- ?) objective reality, is not an axiom. On the other hand, if you do want to argue that it's an axiom then you prove my point because *axioms have no properties*! So I don't think we can count that one. All things that exist have identity, identity is not a real property since it provides no defining characteristic that sets one thing apart from another. So I don't think we can count that one. My keyboard's hair cannot be curled! This again is an extrinsic property, since the list of things that cannot be done to things is infinite. So I don't think we can count that one. Out of all the things that exist, can you name even one that acts *out* of accordance with its identity? Acting in accordance with one's identity is, again, a property shared by all things, so it is not a real property. So I don't think we can count that one. Curly hair is not a property of my keyboard. Not being a property of something else is a shared property of everything else. So I don't think we can count any of those, and I am back where I started. I know of no properties of Existence.
  8. Actually I got it from the earlier quoted quote from OPAR, "Ayn Rand offers a new formulation of this axiom: existence is identity.", which seemingly was brought forward to disprove this, "... identity is not a property of existence. Identity is a corollary concept of existence. It is a grasp of existents in a manner that illustrates 'this thing' is different from 'that thing'." At the same time there is Miss Rand's response to Prof. B., "... all that which exists." In the former use, (the one you use for the bedroom objects), existence is the property of existing as an entity distinguishable from all others. I have no difficulty with that per se, except that, as a property it is uninteresting because it applies to anything and everything. In the latter use, existence is meant either as "a Set" with a capital S (the abstract entity Set), or as "a set" (a specific instance of Set). I'm unclear which is intended. If I'm not wrong about these three simultaneous uses (property vs Set vs set) then we have a case of the Equivocation Fallacy. I'm open to being wrong. I just don't see where I am. Can anyone clarify this for me? (Sorry about dropping out of the discussion for so long. Pressures of work and all that ...)
  9. So existence and identity are intechangeable terms? Synonyms? So if existence is all that which exists, and if existence and identity are synonymous then identity is all that which exists? Hmmm. (Sorry if I'm being thick. For one thing, I'm kind of new to this. For another, I write software so I am in the habit of trying to nail down what each "thing" really is. Assuming a bad definition is correct, can be a hugely costly mistake.)
  10. There is a thorough and simple way to separate the state from business. 1) Allow all and everyone to create their own monies, with the condition that issuers alone must accept their money at par. 2) Government may not go into debt by any other means than by issuing more notes 3) Note denominations can be in anything the issuer wants: courtroom hours, ozs of Gold, kilowatt hours, etc. This means that, for example, the justice system would pay invoices and payroll with money it issued itself, and any other money it took in for fees for services. No suppliers to the court system would have to accept payment in any single form of notes except ones they themselves emitted. With those simple rules government would quickly find over-issuance purposeless and find itself booted out of office for over-taxation. HS
  11. Leonid, Can you supply even *one* property of existence, other than the uninteresting observation that it is a property of everything else? This is a question I have mulled on a long time. I still don't have an answer. HS
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