Posts by DCBCauchi
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to BenWilson,
Go on then. I have to know. Who's got the biggest infinity of them all?
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to Islander,
There are plenty of words that are without real world (or, as I prefer to call it, 'world of appearances') signifieds – symbols that exist solely to manipulate other symbols, much like how + and = functions in an equation.
You can't point to 'which' for example.
However, grammar is dependent on humans in a way that numbers aren't. If people had never existed, grammar wouldn't exist. Numbers, though, would.
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to Sacha,
Yes.
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to BenWilson,
That you need to consider such a thing as an 'abstract idea-space' for it to exist in shows what a deeply strange thing two is.
No longer can you have a strictly material conception of what exists.
Down the rabbit hole we go.
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Never did I say he had.
I am not discussing Derrida.
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to BenWilson,
Numbers are excellent examples. They are symbols with which you can do operations according to a self-contained set of non-arbitrary rules. However, numbers are signifiers without an actual world signified. You can't point to two. You can point to two things, but not to two itself.
Likewise, just as you can't have a text or an author without a reader to construct them, so you can't have space, time, or causality without an observer to likewise construct them.
'Not only does nothing exist outside the text' but the text itself does not exist. Nor does the reader.
The text is constructed by the reader, and the reader is constructed by the act of constructing the text.
Nothing is real! Nothing is true! Nothing exists!
Nothing like a bit of nihilism on a sunny afternoon, eh?
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Hard News: Gaying Out, in reply to Tim Hannah,
I remember seeing something about a brother and sister who'd been separated at birth. Before they found out they were related, they'd met and fallen in love.
Then they found out they were related, realised they could never have kids, but wanted to continue their relationship anyway.
This did not go down well with friends, family, or the wider community.
I found that very affecting, and couldn't think of a reason why they shouldn't continue their perfectly genuine relationship.
I do not think this is a different debate than marriage equality between gay and straight at all. It's a simple question – on what basis should society sanction some relationships but not others?
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Hard News: Gaying Out, in reply to Matthew Poole,
If the only reason for banning incestuous relationships is inherited health issues (since we're ignoring the 'ick' factor), then should we not also ban all other relationships that would result in inherited health issues?
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Hard News: Gaying Out, in reply to Rich Lock,
So your argument for denying someone a basic human right is that they do not make up an arbitrarily sufficient proportion of the population and that they may not want to exercise that right?
Would you also argue that, since gay people make up a small proportion of society and many do not want to get married anyway, marriage equality for gay people is not important?
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I'm not so sure Kracklite's response to Scalia was quite the knockout blow that is assumed.
Certainly, informed consent deals with necrophilia, bestiality, and incest between adults and children. However, there are cases of incest between adult siblings where there is no coercion or imbalance of power – that is, where there is informed consent.
If the only criterion for marriage equality is informed consent, should they too not be allowed to marry?