On 19 August 2011 12:44, Jonathan Jones <eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:Form recognition is conditional and arbitrary. I already explained that.
> No. A rhino is not a brain. This isn't philosophy. And even philosophy
> disagrees with you anyway. Rhinos and brains have distinct Forms, idealized
> or actualized.
I'm going to try to clarify that in another way. And let's have
"elephant", because there is a gismu for that.
Suppose the elephant brain, lo xanto besna, is so unique that
biologists can differentiate it from all the other types of brains.
There would be at least this sense where one can taxonomically
identify a certain type of brain by the term "xanto". You would then,
according to your view, argue that "lo xanto" should refer to
something more than a brain. That something would be a group of body
parts. Which group? There are countless combinations of body parts. Is
something without the left ear lo xanto? Would something cease to be
lo xanto if hunters removed its tusks? Or would any combination of
body parts do, as long as 'it' is alive? If so, then the group
combination wouldn't be essential. What would definitively make
something lo xanto would be not some mereological conditions like
"being more than a brain" but the event of being alive in whatever
form that can be identified by the term "xanto", which would include
the type of the brain. And, if our technology were so advanced that we
could keep the brain alive independently of other organs, we could
call that brain lo xanto. I can imagine conversations like:
A: lo vi besna cu mo
B: xanto
C: lo vu xanto cu mo
D: besna
You might suggest that lo xanto need not be alive, that we can call a
dead body lo xanto. And I would agree. But again, what body? Which
combination of body parts?
What does most commonly and objectively remain about lo xanto over the
different states of being alive and dead? What is the most basic
picture of lo xanto, if any, that persists throughout the process of
birth and decay? You mentioned actualization; actualization through
what? I would say DNA, in this case. The hereditary blueprint, the
Form of "xanto", if any, is the genome, the information encoded in
DNA. Wherever is an elephant DNA, we can recognize the identity of lo
xanto. What you would call an actualized xanto is a developed image, a
projection, from the more fundamental xanto, the genome.
If parts of the projection such as an ear or tusks are compromised for
whatever physical reasons (e.g. diseases, ionizing radiation, bullets,
blades), the overall identification of lo xanto would still be
possible based on an analysis of the DNA, the projector of the genome,
from whichever remaining part. In other words, lo xanto resides in
every part of lo xanto. The whole qualitatively permeates, if not
quantitatively identical to, the parts. Conversely, it could happen
that you consider something to be lo xanto based on its macroscopic
(human-friendly) appearance but its genome is scientifically
classified as lo na'e xanto. What exactly is the basis of the Form of
"xanto" that you would say is distinct and unique?
In my opinion (which you might not give a flying ivory), the genome is
the most objective and stable definition, and the DNA the most
'concrete' instance, of lo xanto we can get. This isn't to say that we
can't use "lo xanto" to refer to what we usually call an "elephant" --
the atomic projection that comes out of the DNA. Nor is this to say
that the xanto genome is invariable. In every stage of reproduction,
it gets modified. There is not such a thing as one absolute blueprint
of "xanto". All 'actualized' xanto not only are different bodies but
also derive from literally different metaphysical schemes, forms.
We could have a set of certain selected forms and consider it the
generic form of "xanto". And that would surely be arbitrary on the
selector's part and conditional upon the available biological
instances of xanto as well as upon the aforementioned standard of
technology that could change the form in which life exists.
You say I'm being way too technical and nit-picky. I'm trying to do
the opposite about the actual usage of the selbris in question. In an
actual Lojbanic conversation, I wouldn't unconditionally fault people
for referring to a non-brain or a brain by "lo xanto". The details of
my comments are directed towards your argument that a term for a
perceived whole cannot represent a perceived part. I'm not trying to
impose more restrictions on how we use Lojban; I'm trying to clarify
what I see as the problems of your restrictive assumption about the
physical world, which requires a degree of technicality.
mu'o
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