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Re: Venus calling » Estella

Posted by zeugma on May 7, 2006, at 9:20:59

In reply to Re: Venus calling » zeugma, posted by Estella on May 7, 2006, at 6:10:31

>
>
> > hesperus is a name of Venus. 'hesperus is phosphorus' is true, but if hesperus meant 'time slice A of venus' and phosphorus meant 'time slice B of venus', 'hesperus is phosphorus' would be a contradiction.
>
> yes. so i guess i'm denying that 'hesperous is phosporous' is true. counterintuitive perhaps... but i reckon thats a better account. hesperous is a time slice of venus and phosperous is a different time slice of venus and so hesperous is a part of venus rather than being strictly identical to it. and phosperous is a (different) part of venus rather than being strictly identical to it. and thus hesperous does not equal phosperous. But they are both (different) parts of venus.>>

counterintuitive, yes. (but when was that ever a problem in philosophy?? :)


> i have seen a similar account of the clarke kent / superman relation. they are both different time slices of (whatever his name is) - the body / person from whatever planet he is from. that way you can say 'superman wears glasses' is false while 'clarke kent wears glasses' is true.
>

Krypton (where all cryptic problems come from).

superman wears glasses=true.

when he is clark kent. just like i wear clothes when i leave the apt. just like venus is visible, although not during day. and mercury can be seen by the naked eye, though it can't from where i am, and for all i know it was visble to Galileo with the naked eye but pollution has obscured it everywhere now. 'wears glasses' is hanging a predicate on superman. now it carries the wrong force (it implies that he wears them while in his cape and tights). clark k wears glasses= true. clark kent is superman= true. superman wears glasses= true if you see 'is' as denoting the identity sign, which it is (IMO). but i may wear glasses, and yet at the moment 'z wears glasses' is false. problems of tense. if i take the extension of 'wears glasses' as denoting everyone who ever wore them, at any time, then superman did wear glasses, though he did his best to disguise the fact that he did, and 'z wears glasses' is true too, though only when i put some on at a friend's urging and got dizzy and had a headache and will never do so again. it is an unnatural construal of 'wears glasses.' 'the shower is broken' is true, though hopefully that will change soon. But material implications are notoriously weak. Grice has something about force of conditionals, that i couldn't understand at all when i read it, but maybe it will shed light now.


> that way you can say 'hesperous appears in the morning sky' is true (if it is indeed 'cause i might have them the wrong way around) and 'hesperous appears in the evening sky' is false. and 'phosperous appears in the morning sky' is false. and 'phosperous appears in the evening sky' is true. and different parts of venus appear in the morning and evening sky. and you can get yourself a nice account without needing to countenance fregean senses ;-)(though i like fregean senses...)>>

i like them too. but i think that a time-slice is not a part of something. surely one can fix a moment in time as 'this one', and then one relativizes objects to this, ie 'phosphorus' is 'venus now'. we can say that this relativization is that of dawn over babylonia. then 'phosphorus' is not 'hesperus.' 'phosphorus' is not 'venus' either. the problem is that one then has a term ('phosphorus') that is unlike say "Earth", which comes out the same regardless of time. It's Heraclitus' paradox- you don't step twice into the same river. or rather a variant, you see 'phosphorus' is not the same as the object you see at sunset (ive got them backwards, ah well) but most other things are the same. one can certainly do this. in fact this has a sense and referent. but the babylonians did not do this, they thought that hesperus and phosphorus were not broken down relative to times in this way, they thought they were broken down relative (i suppose) to the identity sign. that was an error.

i think.
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>
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> (maybe ontologically bloated... three objects instead of one... but if you want one object you need how many fregean senses? three i do believe (plus one object) or maybe only two plus an object? surely venus is a different concept from either hesperous or phosperous...)>>

well, things get tricky here. venus is an object, not a concept. frege as i understand him thought that predicates were denoting terms for concepts. 'is venus' then becomes systematically ambiguous. because 'is venus' sounds like a predicate, though it is more apt to sound like part of a statement affirming identity (using the identity sign). 'is red,' 'is hot, 'is venus.' i suppose my intuition is that those three are not of a kind. but i miss things, so.


-z
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