[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Headhunter claims man is a rational animal.
I rest my case.[/quote]
Headhunter claims man is a rational animal.
Wreckless is not a rational animal.
Therefore Wreckless is not a man.
(Modus Tollens is a bitch, eh…)
[quote]brucevangeorge wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Enjoying life is an essential part of being alive. If it bothers you that some people freely produce products to make life better and these are freely bought by those who desire same, then simply don’t buy any of those products.
Freedom’s a bitch, isn’t it?
That’s not what I’m arguing against.
You said that the purpose of industrialization is to “feed the world”.
I called your bullshit and said that industrialization is mostly to produce shit that we want and shit we think we want. Entertainment, stuff to make tasks easier, and etc.
You wrote earlier:
If we want everyone in the world to have what we consider a middle class existence — enough to eat, a place to live, health care, and so forth — that requires an industrial, productive civilisation.
-Headhunter
I didn’t say that I didn’t enjoy the comforts of having such things, I just said that you are wrong in your speculation.
-Bruce[/quote]
No, you assumed that I meant that the purpose of an industrial society is that more and more people have basic neccessities. (1) It is not within my rights to assume or tell an industrialist what to produce or why. (2) Having a middle-class life is a result of an industrial society. It is, however, not its purpose.
Do not confuse consequence with purpose.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Man’s primary characteristic is his rational faculty. This is our unique and defining characteristic. Other characteristics are secondary. It therefore follows that man needs to produce what he needs to survive as the rational animal. He might survive by living in a cave, naked, in a warm climate. But pretty soon, it might be a good idea to produce some clothing, grow some food, and so forth. What other animal does those things?
What makes man’s primary characteristic his “rationality”? [/quote]
Every entity has one characteristic which defines it. We then attach a word to that concept, yet the word is not the totality of the concept.
For ex: we don’t define man by skin color. It’s a minor characteristic.
But, what is it about all normal humans, what property is it, that each normal human has that all share? Could it be the ability to use words to represent ideas? Do all apes share that quality? Do all dolphins do this? No. Man is ‘the animal that uses reason to form and articulate concepts’.
Read some Ayn Rand. These are all her ideas (+ Aristotle).
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Every entity has one characteristic which defines it. We then attach a word to that concept, yet the word is not the totality of the concept.
[/quote]
All entities only have one characteristic that defines it? This is much too simplistic in my opinion. I can think of many entities that have multiple characteristics that help define it. From your explaination any entity that shares one characteristic must then share the same nomeclature. For example what is the characteristic that defines a carrot? Color? root vegtable? taste? texture? It is the sum of all characteristics that define the object.
Taxonomists (scientists who classify things) have broken our entire biology down into a naming convention that uses six levels of distinction to describe major characteristic of a living organism:
Kingdom; Phylum; Class; Order; Family; Genus; Species. By convention scientists use binomial nomenclature to name objects; for example, homo sapiens which is the genus and species respectively which means man think. I would not take this term literlly because of the philosphical trap I may fall into.
It is a trap because we have labeled and thus come to identify ourselves by this label. To say we are uniquely identified by our ability to think and or reason can falsely lead to the conclusion that we are the only species capable of this.