(May 12, 2010 at 12:15 am)tackattack Wrote: I see ht process of definition of something, to use your example as : a car is a car, cars usually have 4 wheels, a motor and are used for transportation.
Then you can value the individual car you're looking at through further classification: This car I see is red.
Then you can add value or worth to those attributes including the base: I like cars, they are useful. I hate the color red, this car is red, I'd like it more ifit were a different color.
You could asign a value to tires, motors and transportation, but typically only the object identified in it's whole has a worth initially at least.
All that above is simply a metaphor for my opinion.
It is one way to look at value... and I look at it somewhat similarly (however... I expand its importance in definition considerably more by my understanding of definition as a self-created construct, hence value becoming indistinguishable from the attribution itself... so that one might say their definition of reality will always formulate around what they value, else what would we make of perception at all?)
A car is indeed a car... but does a car necessarily stop being so if it has neither 4 wheels or a motor? And say it was not used for transportation, would is remain a car?^ This is precisely the problem I have with defining 'person'. There are so many 'usually's and 'often's involved. And finding a base through deductive reasoning is difficult when one knows not the rule... hence the reasoning between 'is a woman a person?' and 'is a dog a person' is inductive... and hence all the more difficult to understand the rule.
Quote:I was simply clarifying the direction you wanted to go with your question. You were at first discussing the "what" of a person (definable base attributes) and now seeking the "why" (ascertaining a meaning or worth to those attributes. Is this a correct assesment?
Indeed.
It seems that I still do not know what a person is... so if I can understand why a thing would be a person: i might deduce 'what' from it... not dissimilarly to discovering the facets of a crime through understanding the intent of the crime. I still am interested in 'what' a person is (those 'definable base attributes')... but if it were so easy to pinpoint: I should have known already...
IT'S A CONSPIRACY!
Please give me a home where cloud buffalo roam
Where the dear and the strangers can play
Where sometimes is heard a discouraging word
But the skies are not stormy all day
