So I was driving home from another day of work this evening, and I started thinking. A bad habit, I know, but I just can't seem to stop myself.
I was thinking about the fact that every individual has a variety of roles or functions that they play in the world. For instance, I am a father, a husband, a son, an accountant, a consumer, a teacher, a student, etc. We members of this human beehive are fairly versatile, no?
Would that this blasted thinking stuff had stopped there.
We serve vital functions within these various systems. The words "vital" and "function" lead me to compare people with the organs of a living body. I serve a vital function within my family. My liver serves a vital function within my body. Without a properly functioning liver, or some suitable replacement, I will die. I am dependant on the proper functioning of my liver. It follows, then, that my liver serves a vital function within my family. Huh? Could you read that last part again? My liver serves a vital function within my family?
This is not really profound; I think most of us have thought something like this. Why, then, does it come as such a surprise? My liver is part of me, I am part of my family, so my liver is part of my family.
Oh, thinking, stop, please!
Since we are all so connected through the various roles we play, what connections are we missing or misunderstanding that might be analogous to the connection between my liver and my family, which seemed so strange to me at first, and which now seems so natural and obvious?
We may never know, and that's the point! You can't know what you don't know, unless you think of it first. If you think of it, then it's not unknown, so you still can't know what you don't know. Damn frustrating, that.
This is what happens when our thoughts are not directed toward constructive tasks - they go in circles.
Oh, by the way: We have secured an apartment and we will be moving in a week or two. Happy day! Originally that was all I was going to write, but then I thought why not ramble on meaninglessly?
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7 comments:
Ramble on, Snaars, ramble on. There's a scripture that says, "the foolishness of Snaars is wiser than the wisdom of [other] men."
Or something like that. Congratulations on the apartment! That comes as a real relief, even to those of us who are only watching from a distance.
Doesn't the bring up the vagueness of properties beind shared over indentity barriers? My only concern is that your thought trend could be potentially taking a intransitive property and applying it transitively.
Let ask ourselves this: Is vitality a transitive property? If the leaf's structure and process is vital to a plants survival... and a plant is vital to the survival of say a gorilla that feeds off of the plant... and the gorilla is vital to the gorilla flea ( a well known insect that exists in my fantasy world and only feeds on gorilla blood ), then can one truly say that the structure of the leaf and process of the leaf for the plant is vital to the gorilla flea?
That seems absurd. We are not taking into account the adaptive ability of the indivdiuals as a whole. Gorrillas could adapt and change into feeding off of something else.
But here is a thought, could this simply be a vagueness inherent in the phrase vital? because to be honest for something to vital, it would have to be something that if destroyed would take down whatever it is "vital" to.
My point, i may seem to be rambling but, here we go. My point is that vitality isn't transitive i believe. Vitality is a function of interactions and not a property of objects. As such, it can't be passed around via an object's existence, but must be passed around through an object's interaction with other objects.
As such, I believe you are in fact vital to your family, and your liver is in fact vital to you, but your liver is not vital to your family as a whole.
oh by the way... AWESOME! FREE AT LAST thank god almighty... SNAARS IS FREE AT LAST!
"AWESOME! FREE AT LAST thank god almighty... SNAARS IS FREE AT LAST!"
Thank you, thank you both. I feel like jumping up and down from excitement.
Way to go, Arglor! Flex those philosophical muscles! You're a powerhouse, man!
You are absolutely right of course. It occurred to me while I was writing that the whole idea hinged on the vagueness of the word "vital", but I did not stop to analyze it that much. You make some good points.
The other members of my family would survive even if the failure of my liver caused my death. If all the other members of my family survive, then the family survives. Therefore, if the failure of my liver caused my death, my family would survive.
I could argue that the loss of me would cause my family to change drastically, such that it would be a very different entity after the system had adjusted to compensate, and that justifies my characterizing myself as "vital". But, as you say, this would lead us to an analysis of "vital" and it's going to be problematic.
But perhaps I would only need to show that "A is vital to B" and "B is vital to C" therefore "A is vital to C" is true at times under certain conditions, and does not have to hold as a general rule. So, even if vitality is not a transitive property, then A, B, and C could share this vitality-relationship.
All of which goes to show that I can agree with everything you said and still come up with some bullshit to salvage my original orgument - which was what? I can't even remember, but somehow I feel good about myself.
The difficulty with your option is causation. Built within the phrase "vital" are key ideas. Let us break this into the abstract.
A is vital to B.
What this is saying effectively is that it is the case that
If it is the case that it is not A, then it is also the case that it is not B. It doesn't say that If A, then B. And it doesn't say if B then A. It simply says that for B there must be an A.
So in conclusion, i believe that in order for me to prove that your liver isn't vital to your family, all I would have to do is prove that there is a case in which your family could exist and your liver not.
I actually know someone who lives without his liver. They have a device that is connected to him that performs the same actions.
But you foresaw that did you not? You argued above ", or some suitable replacement" which suddenly turns my argument on its head.
This is the core of my arguement. There is a problem with this argument, that consists primarily of causation. If you die because of liver cancer, i can say exactly that. You died because of liver cancer. Causation is transfered. Now, Assuming after your death, your family changes drastically and is broken apart due to your death. (BY THE WAY this is very egotistical to believe of yourself, but that is another issue entirely).
Are we honestly able to say that Liver Cancer tore your family apart? It is a common statement, but i don't think it is an accurate summation. A lot more had to be going on during this point to tear your family apart. It may have been the most important thing to happen, but it certainly isn't the only thing that happened to make your family fall apart. It isn't as though liver cancer occuring to Snaars would in effect make your Mom hate your children.
Or is there another vagueness inherent in this argument that i've uncovered, the definition of Family. When you say vital, it makes the point that without it, the family ceases to function in the same manner. This is very much true in the case of Snaars. Snaars ceases to function in the same manner as before liver cancer. BUT his family will still function at least more then 50% of the same.
They will eat...
they will sleep...
they will talk...
they will even love each other
They will even grow to depend on each other more to fill the gap...
They will share in their loss of Snaars...
they may fight amongst themselves due to the grief...
they may also grow distant from the world...
But do they cease to be the snaars family? I wholeheartedly disagree..
you pompous egotistical man you ;).
I never said that they would cease to be a family. I said just the opposite.
This may be the silliest argument ever, but I'm glad you're arguing with me because we need to keep sharp somehow, don't we? It's good play!
Arglor, you say that "A is vital to B" says that for B there must be an A. Also, you say that:
"in conclusion, i believe that in order for me to prove that your liver isn't vital to your family, all I would have to do is prove that there is a case in which your family could exist and your liver not."
It seems to me that you are arguing against a straw man. I never said that the vitality relationship was tied to existence. It could instead involve physical health or emotional well-being.
But if so, then vitality becomes even more vague, not less - because it's relatively easy to observe whether or not someone exists or is alive, but it is not so easy to determine whether some cause has a net positive or negative effect on health or well-being. Such things or not easily objectively measured. So, your original vagueness objection is well-founded.
Your other objection, that vitality is intransitive, is not fatal to my original argument, because it can just so happen that in some case A is related to C in a way not altogether different from A's relation to B and B's relationship to C, and that A's relationship to C happens to be causally connected with B and other antecedent conditions. In other words, even though vitality is not directly transmitted from A to B to C, there could be causal involvement in certain cases.
We know that relationships between things exist, and based on our history of discovering such relationships, it is highly probable that there are many more relationships that are unknown and undiscovered. And my ultimate thesis, reworded, is this: It's ironic that we can know that relationships exist between things, without knowing just what those relationships are; we can't know the unknown, because as soon as you know something, it's not unknown anymore.
It's a tautology really, and like most tautologies it's completely, utterly useless.
On the other hand there is also a fallacy of composition going on in my original example, which is revealed through your gorilla flea example. It goes to show that systems are more resilient than individuals.
A lost liver can cost me my existence, but, as we both agree, my family would continue. The larger system can compensate even though my personal systems can't. So, my body organs are not quite analogous to people in the larger system. To make the analogy work, I'd have to say that people are like organs that can adapt and change to take on the functions of different organs depending on their circumstances, and that's not what I had in mind originally. Either that or we are mere cells and the body hardly notices our passing, and that's not what I had in mind either.
So, we have proved once again that idle thoughts make awful philosophy.
HAH thats that damn phrase... fallacy of composition... been trying to concieve of that name for this whole argument. Thanks snaars...
I kept going the transitive property route and that wasn't my intention, but it seemed like it worked... i was attempting to explain the fallacy of composition.
sigh..
that was fun... well played...
ide thoughts make awesome philosophy... in a indirect manner ;)... they spawn discourse and argumentation and brain flexing.
Thank you, Arglor.
By the way, I'm not egotistical, I'm snaarsissistic. Egotism is an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
Snaarsissism needs no explanation. In fact, explanation detracts from the reality. It has to be experienced to be believed.
Gooosfraba! (I'm thinking of adopting a catch phrase - like that one?)
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