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December 21, 2005

Machan's Musings - Federal Judge Dictates Content of Biology Course by Tibor R. Machan

Here you have it, the result of government education: Academic freedom is dead—a federal judge decided what Pennsylvania teachers may teach in biology classes. As MSNBC reports, "The Dover [PA] Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include ‘inte... (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (92 messages)

Monday, March 1, 2010 - 3:57pm

Further, there is assumption that even biologically, intelligence is something which will inevitably happen, and to several other species, given time - despite the fact that it would occur only if there is increased survivability with it - just having it is not enough, as there must be an ability to utilizing it to gainfulness... our closest relatives, the great apes, have usable appendages, so that with the shifting of having an opposing thumb, an increase in intelligence is thus usable - unlike, say, dolphins or whales and their like which, despite their larger brains, are not more intelligent as there is no practical gain, no way for them to be as such able to alter their environment in a constructive manner [improved means of coping or reacting to the environment, yes - but not to deliberately alter it to suit them]... likewise with AI - unless there is, for instance, the Terminator or Forbian scenario, where life/death is indeed applicable to the AI...
(Edited by robert malcom on 3/01, 3:59pm)

Monday, March 1, 2010 - 4:14pm

Bill:

You are using concepts like 'value' and 'care', that are implemented by human wetbits.

Is human 'value' implemented, in the 'what is', as anything different than a self-weighting of a high-level neural network, one that is self-reprogammable?

Is 'value' literally, the weighting applied to our self-reprogrammable neural networks?

Clearly self-reprogrammable, including, the ultimate 'value' of self-preservation and continuity: there are actual instances of human beings who volitionally -- who choose to self-terminate.

Is what it means to 'care' -- to 'value' -- as implemented in the human wetbits -- not only just similar to, as an analog, but actually identical to, the weighting applied to neural network (or neural network-like constructs, like 'radial basis networks')?

I am asking without knowing, it is a suspicion I have, yet disproved by anything suggested here. I see the words 'care' and 'value', and forgive me, I am not being confrontational with this question, I am asking, what do they mean, how might those concepts actually be implemented in our wetbits?

I am asking that, and not appealing to 'soul' or 'spirit' or anything beyond objective human wetbits.

If what I am suggesting is true(I don't know that to be the case, because I can't tell you how the emotion 'care' or the concept 'value' is actually implemented via human wetbits, I can only get glimpses of it, a suggestion, a hypothesis, in the way that neural network like systems can behave), then ... that is evidence not only of the machine inside of man, but by extension, the machine inside the universe.

My crazy theory is nowhere near exposing God inside the universe. It is closer, I think, to exposing the machine inside of all of us.

Could a neural network, fed by sensory inputs, and configured at a high level of system self observation, be weighted to value 'system viability/continuity' very highly, and weight its subservient goal based neural networks in service to that high level goal?

Could 'pleasure' be defined by a high value of dopamine -- no, I mean, a high value of feedback in a special high level neural network, that serves as an input to the high-level 'system viability/continuity' network?

Could real world sensory inputs and outputs be temporarily ignored, and our core neiral networls be stimulated instead by randomized 'what if' scenarios, purturbations of previously recorded sensory inputs? To dream? To imagine? To synthesize. To shake and bake without shaking the bed...

Do we know what 'care' is, how it is implemented in the wetbits?

My though experiment isn't about building smart robots. It is in wondering, how different are we really from smart robots -- minus the mystical imaginations of 'soul' and 'spirit' and so on?

Would it really bother you to learn that we are all ultimately wetbit neural networks on steroids, and that with enough horsepower and real estate, a silicon -- not analog, but variant -- could not only emulate our abilities, but supplant them?

And while doing so, we could claim 'yes, but not wetbits...' as we turned them on and watched them either 'whoooooooooooosh' to the stars or ... BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death.) Ha!

regards,
Fred

Monday, March 1, 2010 - 4:22pm

robert:

The inevitability, I think, comes from the following observation:

1] It happened once.
2] It happened here.
3] There is a mind dazzling(no pun intended)amount of both 'once' and 'here' in the universe.

regards,
Fred

Monday, March 1, 2010 - 6:31pm

Fred,

I'm not sure I understand your reply. Would you mind giving me a definition of "wetbits." This is the first time I've heard that term. I get the impression that you're ignoring consciousness here, because consciousness is a precondition of human valuation. A robot can duplicate human behavior, but it doesn't value, because it's not conscious.

You refer to the "mystical imaginings" of soul or spirit. Soul or spirit is not mystical. It's a self-evident fact of reality.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/01, 6:35pm)

Monday, March 1, 2010 - 7:28pm

I was not referring to the universe - of course intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe, and, I suspect, scattered in such a manner that there be very little overlapping until the intelligences advance to certain levels of , shall we say, civilized mindsets... I was, however, referring to this planet's, where my contention still holds...

[see Sagan's Cosmic Connections, which is similar to my own views]
(Edited by robert malcom on 3/01, 7:29pm)

Monday, March 1, 2010 - 11:17pm

Bill:

wetbits: by that I mean, the physiological circuitry of brainmass.

http://www.neurogenesis.com/Neuroscience/dendrites.php

Is it self evident that soul and spirit are independent of implementation via wetbits, or have a nature that is not dependent upon implementation via wetbits?

I would have to take your word for that. My assumption is, when my wetbits dry up, no more soul or spirit or caring or value or conciousness.

I would assume that both the self and the evident are also fully implemented by those same wetbits.

I agree there are human qualities we call soul and spirit. I wonder how they are implemented via wetbits. If not wetbits, then what?

I use many of those same wetbits while wondering...

regards,
Fred

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 6:47am

robert:

I think there is an analog to your assertion, in the structure of things like trees and networks of veins or the growth of ice crystals(like in the Wolfram video you posted); what you describe is like a network of evolutionary intelligence, a myriad of seperated branches resulting in seperate and unique individual instances, local nodes, that in the case of intelligence, tends to dominate in some sense its locality to the exclusion of competing forms of lesser intelligence.

All following some simple rules, and resulting in complexity.

Where the analog (not your assertion, but my analog to it)with evolutionary intelligence falls down, I think, is that 'trees' result in very similar node instances -- 'leaves', whereas the same process in evolutionary intelligence, I think, would result in wildly different instances of nodes.

But if you look at any one local branch or node, the leaf is 'special' in some sense. It's the current local leading edge of a process, spreading through the universe.

As well, if there is intelligence developing elsewhere in the universe, which I also suspect, looked at on one scale, the process is like a tree of events, branching from a common root, the Big Bang. But if you look at it on another scale, as a snapshot in time forward, it would look more like the process of ice growing into snowflakes -- which on an isntance basis appears simultaneously over many instances of snowflakes not connected by any physical event structure, like a literal tree or branches, but by commonality of process, of responding to similar sets of simple rules over great distances simultaneously. In our case, apparently, the snowflakes are largely appearing outside of each others event horizons.

I think the above model shepherds the sense in which mankinds intelligence is 'special' into something I could recognize a basis for. Possibly unique -- just like every one of several trillion snowflakes is unique. And locally dominant.

And now that we've pondered this, back to Machan's assertion, that federal judges should tread lightly when dictating content of biology. Hypothetically -- not in the actual instance of DOver, which I agree was a hamfisted attempt to repackage Genesis Creationism as 'intelligent design' , literally by crossing out a few words and substituting them -- but, would it be conceivable that a curriculum on the topic 'intelligent design' could legitimately be inserted into public schools and not lurch anywhere near Genesis Creationism, as this thread discussion has not?

In a sense, we've declared that searching for the soul inside of mankind/the universe is not a fit topic for public schools, it is best left in Sunday Schools, and I agree.

But, has searching for the machine inside of mankind or the universe, in the spirit of 'what is, is" also been declared a threat?

regards,
Fred
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 3/02, 6:49am)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 8:43am

I see no problem with searching for the soul or spirit in regular school courses... as long as it is done in a purely scientific fashion. What is done in Sunday school is to proselytize mystical rationales for their version of altruism. As long as a regular school course takes 'soul' to mean something that is an observable property of a living human being that in some fashion arises from the wetbits, then it becomes fair game to examine from the viewing ports of psychology, physiology or biological evolution. A study of what is.

I'm not ready to loose the concepts of 'spirit' or 'soul' to the mystics.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 3/02, 8:44am)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 9:29am

Fred wrote:

wetbits: by that I mean, the physiological circuitry of brainmass.

http://www.neurogenesis.com/Neuroscience/dendrites.php

Is it self evident that soul and spirit are independent of implementation via wetbits, or have a nature that is not dependent upon implementation via wetbits? I would have to take your word for that. My assumption is, when my wetbits dry up, no more soul or spirit or caring or value or conciousness.

Who said anything about their being independent of human physiology? I'm an Objectivist. You should know that I don't believe in that nonsense, especially given the many posts I've written arguing for the dependency of mind on body. But when you refer to soul or spirit as "mystical imaginings," don't be surprised if someone takes you to be denying their very existence rather than simply their dependency on the human brain. That is certainly how I took it. To contest your assertion that soul or spirit are "mystical imaginings" is not to suggest that they are independent of human physiology.

I would assume that both the self and the evident are also fully implemented by those same wetbits.

Of course, but remember that consciousness arose only in the context of living organisms as a mechanism for survival. Mind or consciousness is linked to a process of valuation that arises only in that context. So, I don't see how a robot that is not alive -- that cannot experience pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, along with a motivation to pursue its own values -- can have a consciousness or an awareness of the world.

Now if you're going to argue that a silicon based, robotic humanoid is indeed a living organism with the same needs and values as a normal human being, then I'm afraid I would need some evidence to support that assertion. We just have nothing at present to suggest that that's even possible.

- Bill

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 10:24am

Bill,

I agree with what you wrote in the post above, but I'm a little uncomfortable about locking the definitions down in a way that only works locally (subsumes only what concretes we have uncovered around us) or only temporally (what we know is exists today). A proper definition of life would of course allow for some species not yet discovered in some distant jungle, or some form of life discovered in outer space, and it should allow for the possibility that a man-made entity might someday acquire the properties that justify calling it alive as it becomes self-replicating.

The same is true for consciousness. That property is possessed by different species today, but we usually only deal with human consciousness. And one legitimate definition is for human consciousness, exclusively. But the broader definition should be defined by essentials that are not predicated on local or temporal limits of current awareness. Any concretes that arise in the future, or are discovered in another place, will or will not meet the definition.

The task is to define consciousness and life in ways that represent their essential traits and not attempting to restrict them unnecessarily or by non-essentials. And I imagine we both agree on this.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 11:35am

Steve wrote,

I agree with what you wrote in the post above, but I'm a little uncomfortable about locking the definitions down in a way that only works locally (subsumes only what concretes we have uncovered around us) or only temporally (what we know is exists today). A proper definition of life would of course allow for some species not yet discovered in some distant jungle, or some form of life discovered in outer space, and it should allow for the possibility that a man-made entity might someday acquire the properties that justify calling it alive as it becomes self-replicating.

True, but I would want a lot more evidence than we have now that a silicon-based life form is possible. It may not be. We just don't know, and until we have evidence to suggest that possibility, all bets are off.

The same is true for consciousness. That property is possessed by different species today, but we usually only deal with human consciousness. And one legitimate definition is for human consciousness, exclusively.

Not for human consciousness exclusively. Why is that a legitimate definition of consciousness, if consciousness exists among all animals, not just human beings?

But the broader definition should be defined by essentials that are not predicated on local or temporal limits of current awareness. Any concretes that arise in the future, or are discovered in another place, will or will not meet the definition.

What do you mean by "broader definition"? You say that it should be defined by essentials that are not predicated on local or temporal limits of current awareness. But that's all we have on which to predicate it -- our current awareness. Definitions are always contextual -- within the context of our current knowledge. If we discover new knowledge, we can form a new definition to accommodate it. But we can't go outside that context and speculate without sufficient evidence. We cannot legitimately speculate that, for all we know, plants might conceivably feel pain. We have no evidence that they do. Nor could I legitimately speculate that my computer might conceivably be conscious. It is not the kind of thing that exhibits consciousness. The same is true of being able to engineer a form of silicon-based life that is conscious. We have no evidence that silicon-based life is even possible.

The task is to define consciousness and life in ways that represent their essential traits and not attempting to restrict them unnecessarily or by non-essentials. And I imagine we both agree on this.

Yes, but remember Objectivism's concept of a proper definition, in which essence is epistemological, not metaphysical. Things don't have essences; concepts have essences.

Quoting Rand, "Objectivism holds that the essence of a concept is that fundamental characteristics(s) of its units on which the greatest number of other characteristics depend, and which distinguishes these units from all other existents within the field of man's knowledge. Thus the essence of a concept is determined contextually and may be altered with the growth of man's knowledge. The metaphysical referent of man's concepts is not a special, separate metaphysical essence, but the total of the facts of reality he has observed, and this total determines which characteristics of a given group of existents he designates as essential. An essential characteristic is factual, in the sense that it does exist, does determine other characteristics and does distinguish a group of existents from all others; it is epistemological in the sense that the classification of "essential characteristic" is a device of man's method of cognition -- a means of classifying, condensing and integrating an ever-growing body of knowledge." (Rand, ITOE, p. 52) (Emphasis added)

For instance, the “essence” of the concept ‘bird’ for a child will be different than for an adult, because the child’s knowledge is not as great as the adult’s. For a very young child, the essence of a ‘bird’ might be “a thing that moves in the air.” This allows the child to distinguish birds from things on the ground. But once he discovers kites, the essence of a bird will change to “a thing that flies under its own power,” which allows the child to distinguish birds from kites. When he discovers airplanes, the essence of a bird will change again to “a living thing that has wings and can fly,” which allows him to distinguish a bird from a plane as well as from a kite. When he discovers flies and moths, the essence changes once more to “a warm-blooded vertebrate that has wings and flies,” which allows him to distinguish a bird from flying insects as well as from airplanes and kites. (Examples cited from Leonard Peikoff's course on Objectivist Epistemology)

Thus, essence can change with the growth of one's knowledge. You can't define a concept in terms of an "essential" that is guaranteed to cover all future contingencies and discoveries. You have to define it in terms of what is essential within the context of your presently existing knowledge. You can then expand your definition as you discover new and relevant information.

- Bill

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 3:02pm

Bill:

Of course, but remember that consciousness arose only in the context of living organisms as a mechanism for survival. Mind or consciousness is linked to a process of valuation that arises only in that context. So, I don't see how a robot that is not alive -- that cannot experience pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, along with a motivation to pursue its own values -- can have a consciousness or an awareness of the world.

Well, we agree, mostly, but the question in my mind isn't first directed at "a robot" doing any of this, it is directed at how we actually do it, using those wetbits that you and I agree we are totally dependent on to implement and perceive things like pleasure, pain, joy, suffering and motivation and self preservation. Individuals do over-ride their drive for self-preservation, it happens. That means, that primary human characteristic is in some sense programmable, it is not hardwired, and in order to be programmable in the human wetbits, the human wetbits, neural networks, or neural network like contructs, like radial basis networks, that wetbit real estate that implements these high level driving human charactertistics must be programmable.

The interesting initial question is 'the machine inside of man,' not 'the machine inside of robots.' If it turns out that there is strong evidence of 'the machine inside of man,' a consequence is that similar(not same, not required to be same)machines can be built inside of robots -- including, special weighting of self-preservation evaluating neural networks, survivability, random playback of purturbed previous recordings of stimuli/dream state, governing axioms, and even, pure shake and bake.

Not necessary to be 'same as' mankind in the least. If we wan't we can sit in our lawn chairs on the side of the road and claim 'not wetbits' as a new silicon based process unleashed on the street goes 'whooooooooooooooosh!' to the stars.

Now if you're going to argue that a silicon based, robotic humanoid is indeed a living organism with the same needs and values as a normal human being, then I'm afraid I would need some evidence to support that assertion. We just have nothing at present to suggest that that's even possible.

I'm not sure why any of my hypothesis requires 'the same' except in a rigged definition of 'intelligence' that requires 'the same.' Such rigged definitions are perfectly applicable ... to those parochial conversations going on on the sidewalk, as intelligence evolves.

In what sense is 'same as' required, other than the circular sense, as in 'in order to be same as human intelligence, intelligence must be same as human intelligence?'

regards,
Fred

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - 5:37pm

Fred,

By "same needs and values as a human being" I meant "able to experience values in a utilitarian sense -- as valuing happiness for its own sake, and as being motivated experientially to gain and keep it. No machine in the normally understood sense of that term realizes gains or losses as a direct, internal experience. So, you would have to be talking about a radically new kind of organism rather than a sophisticated machine.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/02, 11:24pm)

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - 7:44am

Bill,

You wrote, "...I would want a lot more evidence than we have now that a silicon-based life form is possible. It may not be. We just don't know, and until we have evidence to suggest that possibility, all bets are off."

Shouldn't we be defining the concept 'life,' as best we can, and then saying, "If a silicon-based form comes into being that meets this definition, then it is alive." The issue of whether or not a silicon-based entity could be alive is a separate question and the definition shouldn't be slanted for or against that possibility. We don't have any evidence of existing silicon-based life forms, and we don't appear to be far enough along to have any certainty they will exist. But Rand's definition of life as a process of self-sustaining, self-generated action doesn't rule it out ahead of time.

I'm not arguing in favor of silicon-based life, or AI, or alien life.... I don't any investment in any of those ideas. My only interest here is in examples of definitions in general, and that they be open-ended and defined by essentials, in particular.
----------

Where I talked about human consciousness exclusively I only meant to point out that we can talk about our form of consciousness as unique without denying that other species also possess consciousness. And depending upon how it is defined we may one day look at computer that reaches a much higher level of 'awareness' then anything we see today, and say, "That qualifies as a form of consciousness."
-----------

Bill, you wrote, "...remember Objectivism's concept of a proper definition, in which essence is epistemological, not metaphysical. Things don't have essences; concepts have essences."

Yes, I'm familiar with that - I'm not advocating intrinsic essences. I'm in Rand's camp on this, not Aristotle's.

We start with concretes which have properties (specific, measured quantities of an essence) and we drop the measurements but mentally retain the essence. That process gives us concepts.

We think about all living entities we know of, as a single group, and ask what is the common denominator that is most essential to their being alive, and to what larger group is that trait being distinguished from. Rand's definition has "processes" as the genus (process being a collection of actions related to one another in as steps to achieve a goal or for a purpose). Then we differentiates from all processes, to those that are self-sustaining - the thing that is alive is acting to keep itself alive. And it's actions are generated by itself. By itself, for itself. Life is actions that are tied together to make a process, and the process has the purpose or effect of sustaining itself and the actions are generated by the being. When we say that life is a process of self-sustaining, self-generating action, we have subsumed all actions that belong to the category of self-sustaining, self-generating processes and omitted their measurements. We are talking about the essence of self-sustaining and self-generating action. The concepts of self and of sustaining and of generating and process and action are in themselves concepts that subsume further units. At least that is how I pick apart that definition.

A child's definition is understandably inaccurate. And the average adult's definition will likely fall short of what a professional in a field will be able to build. But at a certain point a definition acquires considerable stability and is likely to last for a significant time. It is correct that a definition only needs to meet the current, known context and not the future or unknown. But the better the job done in correctly identifying the essential characteristic, the more likely it is that future discoveries will not require an adjustment to the definition. I don't expect to see the definition of man as a rational animal to change soon :-)

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - 1:50pm

Steve,

You wrote,

A child's definition is understandably inaccurate.

No, a child's definition is not inaccurate; it is perfectly accurate for the child. That is the point. The purpose of a definition is to organize one's concepts within the context of one's knowledge. Of course, what is a proper definition for a child would not be a proper definition for an adult.

And the average adult's definition will likely fall short of what a professional in a field will be able to build.

It wouldn't be a proper definition for the professional, because it wouldn't be sufficient to organize his own more sophisticated knowledge of the subject, but that doesn't mean that the average adult's definition would be incorrect.

But at a certain point a definition acquires considerable stability and is likely to last for a significant time. It is correct that a definition only needs to meet the current, known context and not the future or unknown. But the better the job done in correctly identifying the essential characteristic, the more likely it is that future discoveries will not require an adjustment to the definition.

I don't follow you, Steve. The purpose of a definition is simply to distinguish a concept from all other concepts and differentiate its units from all other existents within the context of one's knowledge. Either it does this or it doesn't. If it does, it's satisfactory and nothing more is required; if it doesn't, then it's unsatisfactory and needs to be corrected. But in neither case is it necessary to anticipate future discoveries in formulating one's definition.

I don't expect to see the definition of man as a rational animal to change soon.

What if we discovered that dolphins were rational with a sophisticated language that we hadn't previously identified. We would then have to classify them as "rational animals." Would we, in turn, have to identify them as human beings, because 'rational animal' is how we've defined a human being? No, we would then need a another definition, one that differentiated human beings from dolphins. Rational animal would no longer serve as a definition either for human beings or for dolphins. For human being, we would need something like "rational land animal" and for dolphin, "rational marine animal," with "rational animal," the genus, and "marine" or "land," the differentia. But there is no need to provide for that possibility now. We can and should cross that bridge when we come to it.

- Bill

Sunday, March 7, 2010 - 10:36am

Fred,

You have been claiming a 'special' nature of man by telling me what that special nature 'isn't', like the above example, which doesn't help a poor, concrete bound second hander like me very much. (Please.)

First of all, the 'second-hand' thinking I'm talking about is the referring to man as 'temporarily' or 'contingent-ly' special -- because of his position in relation to other known beings. On this mistaken view, if more 'dumb' species are found on earth (e.g., more species of beetles, etc), man becomes more special -- by being that much more relatively rare and differentiated from the other known beings. Also, if only one other creature existed besides man (e.g., man and dog), then man would, therefore, be less special.

Also, you mentioned that, on the off-chance that 'super-intelligent' creatures were discovered by man (or, more probable, if man were discovered by super-intelligent' creatures), that these 'super-intelligent' creatures might treat man like we treat dogs -- because, if these creatures were known to exist, then man's rights (etc.) would cease to exist (because "man" wouldn't be "special" anymore). Bill, spoke elegantly about how this is a mistake in another thread here.

If we are going to weed out all the things in the universe that special nature 'isnt', then your argument has a perhaps infinite long way to go.

What is that special nature?

It's "potentiality." Having it makes us special, regardless of whatever other kinds of beings that exist. Here's a helpful quote:

The Romanticists did not present a hero as a statistical average, but as an abstraction of man’s best and highest potentiality, applicable to and achievable by all men, in various degrees, according to their individual choices.

And here is a quote debunking the common thinking error that: if man is special, then he must be mystical (or that mysticism must also be true in some form or fashion):

It must be noted that philosophers contributed to the confusion surrounding the term “Romanticism.” They attached the name “Romantic” to certain philosophers (such as Schelling and Schopenhauer) who were avowed mystics advocating the supremacy of emotions, instincts or will over reason. This movement in philosophy had no significant relation to Romanticism in esthetics, and the two movements must not be confused.

It is common for folks (even Feynman?) to confuse man's "special" nature with some kind of mysticism. These folks don't fully understand man's potentiality (and what that, metaphysically, means). I was going to say "unique" potentiality, but I didn't want to give the impression that man's potentiality is special because it's unique in the world (rather than being special simply because of its nature).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/07, 10:37am)

Sunday, March 7, 2010 - 2:06pm

Ed,

Are you saying that something can be regarded as special, without it being special in relation to something else?

Special is without a doubt a relational term. By saying something is special, you are implying something else is not so. Would you likewise say we are unique without relation to other things?

Sunday, March 7, 2010 - 3:49pm

Doug,

You are literally correct (and perhaps there is a better word than "special"), but your argument is contextually unacceptable. It doesn't drive to the heart of the argument. Fred limited the contrasting entities (to man) to the other life forms, but every known existent can be contrasted against what man is (in order to arrive at the conclusion that man is special). In this way, even the range and scope of other life forms wouldn't affect whether man is special or not -- he'd be special regardless.

When I say man is special, I mean man is metaphysically special. There is the universe. Inside the universe, there are many things. We tend to think of these things as "existence." Many folks now-a-days think that everything that exists is merely a material existent. This thinking -- that everything that is, is on the same level of 'being' -- is the kind of thinking I'm debating against. On this wrong view, man is just a smart animal.

Now, imagine everything that exists. Imagine rocks, leaves, cats, man, etc. If you categorize these things, then man is not treated in the same way as the other existents -- because he is a different kind of being altogether. It wouldn't matter if there were 9 or 900 trillion other kinds of things -- man would be special because of his nature. It would matter, however -- and this is where your argument would be real strong -- if man were the only kind of thing in the universe.

On this Alice in Wonderland view, the literal meaning of "special" becomes meaningless -- because all of the existents of the universe would have the same metaphysical nature. There has to be at least one non-man object in order to differentiate what man is -- a "spirited body" -- from all the other material objects.

Ed

Sunday, March 7, 2010 - 5:35pm

Remember, Doug, you are only literally correct, but not literally literally.

Sunday, March 7, 2010 - 10:38pm

Touche', Ted. I want to say "good job" Ted, but you didn't literally do a job. Did you? No. So we will have to take the literal interpretation of "good job" and contextually throw it out.

Surely you understand contexts, and how they will alter the proper use of our words.

Ed