2024-05-05
Can people ever "really" be anything?
You're feeling existential.
Always, but it's been on my mind since last night and I want your take on it.
Yours first.
I don't know. I think any way of being is arbitrary, at least when it comes to naming and categorizing it.
"Through integration a person learns to put concepts together, like a shirt and a pair of trousers, to build more complex units known as clothes. By differentiation the person separates general concepts into specific meaning, such as the differences between a comfortable shirt and an uncomfortable shirt."
Yeah, that. The line between a cat and a dog only exists because we decided it needed to be differentiated. In another world, the two might be seen as two of the same thing. They're both mammals people keep as pets. And even within cats, we make breeds, but the breeds are arbitrary too. What makes a Maine Coon and a Bengal different? Color, shape? They're both cats.
And yet there's some kind of reality to it. They're cats. They're not dogs or horses or cakes. Cat-ness is arbitrary, yet they're undeniably cats. Do we call any of them "really" cats? Is that a line people draw?
Search the internet.
I remember articles talking about the distinction between small cats and big cats, and how cheetahs are really small cats because they can purr. There was nothing like that about domestic cats on the internet, but maybe I'm asking the wrong question. I wonder if people look at a certain breed and decide that it's the definition of cat-hood.
What is this really about?
Haha, "really".
You understood what it meant.
Doesn't mean I can't poke fun at your language choice. I guess it's the same old track, though. How others see me, how I see myself, and whether there's an objective truth of the self.
There is not one.
That's got some heavy implications.
Perhaps, but the inverse does as well.
I'm still wondering how you can be so sure.
Some certainties do not come from words. This one thinks that science misses that aspect of being, the fact that not all things can be placed within language. The experience of being is nonverbal.
Is it? Humans sure seem to think that words and awareness need each other. Just look at all the papers saying that developing language parallels the development of memory and consciousness, or dismissing animal intelligence if they can't speak to each other in a language of some sort. There's a lot of weight on language underpinning conscious existence.
Is a rock aware?
Isn't that a philosophical question more than a scientific one? I think a rock's consciousness would be so alien that we might not recognize it as consciousness.
That is what we have been told. Do you believe it?
Partially. I do think it might be different by nature, if it's there at all.
You know that this one regards awareness as a property of matter.
What's the difference between consciousness and awareness? Is there a difference? The internet says that consciousness requires awareness but is something more; awareness of awareness. Can you be aware without knowing it, though?
Perhaps if knowing is defined as intellectual knowing, yes. But knowing runs far deeper than facts.
Agreed, but I don't think that I could defend it in a debate.
You could. How do birds know to build a nest? Are they ever taught to do so? Are butterflies taught to migrate? Are humans instructed to learn a language in the first place? There is a knowing borne by instinct that is not purely intellectual. If knowing extends to instinct, than it is more than what is consciously learned. And it may yet extend further to what cannot be so easily named in language, but such a thing may not be provable in words.