humanities.philosophy.objectivism

In article <7f3c057f-1e5d-4a4b-a6aa-ceb523f62ce7
@m71g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, davids@webmaster.com says...
> On Mar 30, 5:33 pm, Gordon Sollars wrote:
>
> > BTW, is a chimpanzee that can distinguish objects by size thereby
> > conscious?
>
> Our ability to describe the chimpanzee's ability in this way means we
> are conscious.

We are conscious and we happen to describe the ability in that way, but
I don't see why that "means" we are conscious.

> We can describe the movement of the solar system using
> complex math, that doesn't mean the Earth "solves" those equations the
> same way we do.

So? The point is that sorting by size does not "depend on
consciousness". The chimp has its own purposes - it is not simply a
mechanical device, like a coin sorter.

> > > we don't know what conceptual "errors"
> > > are built into our notions of "Sun", "Earth", and "larger".
>
> > So what? We know that what we now refer to as "the Sun" is larger than
> > what we now refer to as "the Earth", and this "depends on
> > consciousness" only in the sense that the entities that use language
> > happen to be conscious. Or so we think.
>
> So what about the Greek's knowledge that the smallest unit of gold was
> indivisible? They would have argued that this knowledge doesn't depend
> on consciousness either.

And they would have been right. Whether the smallest unit of gold is
indivisible depends on facts about gold, not on consciousness. The
ancient Greeks had no way to divide the smallest unit of gold, so the
conjecture remained tested (assuming they actually tried to divide gold)
and unfalsified. Subsequently it has been falsified, and no longer
counts as knowledge.

--
Gordon