humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 10, 12:38 am, David Schwartz wrote:

> On Mar 9, 7:40 pm, Jim Klein wrote:
>
> > You may prove this to yourself. Name a relationship--I think
> > we were using, "The Sun is larger than the Earth," but any
> > will do--and you'll discover that the relationship was NOT
> > created by our consciousness.
>
> The relationship was created by our consciousness.
> Absent a
> consciousness to compare them, there is no relationship.

How absurd. I wouldn't have expected this from you, David.


> In fact,
> absent a consciousness, there is no rule for determining what is part
> of the Sun and what is not, hence no sufficiently precise referent for
> "the size of the Sun".
>
> Even the concept "The Sun", which considers some parts of the Universe
> to be treated as a single entity and not others exists only as a
> convenience for consciousness. Absent consciousnesses, there is no
> reason to consider some parts of the Universe to be "the Sun" and not
> others.
>
> We draw a border in a particular place and call everything inside it
> "the Sun" as a convenience for our own reasoning. In the Universe
> without consciousness, there is nothing special to say "this is part
> of the Sun" and "this is not part of the Sun".

This is fairly well put and I agree completely with the gist of it.

So now you're left with no objects with any identity, unless we're
there to discretize them out. Are you sure you want to go there?

There is an answer to the conundrum, which is my (AFAIK unique)
approach to context as metaphysical rather than epistemological.

But this is not the time for that. You're left with either no objects
and no relationships unless we're there to "cut up" the universe,
or you're left with objects and relationships that are there
regardless of whether or not we are.

Which is it for you, David? This is an either-or. You can't have
metaphysical objects but only epistemological relationships
between them. Take your pick, but stay consistent.


jk