humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 24, 4:45 pm, Mark N wrote:

> Saying that something is part of the Sun means that it is part of [what
> *we* mean by "the Sun" *now*].

Of course.

> As long as we have a sufficiently clear
> idea of what we mean by "the Sun" (and/or "being part of the Sun"),
> there will be an objective matter of fact about whether or not something
> is part of the Sun. Either it *is* part of [what we currently mean by
> "the Sun"], or it isn't! And it won't stop being part of [what we
> *currently* mean by "the Sun"] as a result of a change in how we use
> words or how we define concepts.

I agree.

> > If we stop considering the corona to be part of the Sun, it stops
> > being part of the Sun. The same applies to the rest of the Sun.

> If we stop considering a dog's right hind leg to be part of the dog,
> does the dog stop having four legs? I'm just curious. :-)

I think you're missing the issue here, perhaps because my analogies
are imperfect. The case we are really talking about is not some subtle
change in definition, but the removal of the possibility of definition
entirely. We're talking about cases where the possibility of turning
collections into units that are capable of having properties is
removed from the Universe entirely.

This is a model of the Universe that results from consciousness, much
like indivisible atoms or particles with precise positions. While
there are still whatever the concept indivisible atoms referred to
even without consciousnesses to model them that way, but they are not
indivisible anymore. The indivisibility was a property of the model,
not the thing modeled.

The size of the Sun is a property of the model. It has a size only
because we have a rule for what is and isn't part of it. Absent such a
model, the concept of 'size' doesn't apply.

Just as absent consciousness, the concept of precise position probably
doesn't apply either.

DS