webber@constance.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (04/10/88)
In article <5539@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, gautier@ai.cs.wisc.edu (Jorge Gautier) writes: > ... > "Let's see, I belong to the group of brown-haired-animals, the group of > animals-with-freckles-on-their-face, the group of catholic-high-school- > alumni, the group of 23-year-olds, ... Yeah, I guess the (infinite) sum > of all these groups defines my self. How useful and enlightening." Actually, if it were the case, it would be both useful and enlightening. The reason is because although there are an infinity of such groups, the infinity of the ones we can talk about is the smallest of infinities. Thus the claim that everything that is significant about an individual can be related by language (which lies at the basis of the notion that we are completely defined by the groups we are a member of so that by merely listing such groups we would be completely defined) actually makes a substantial restriction on the nature of ourselves. Interestingly enough, the claim that we are a product of our environment also ends up coming down this same path as it turns out that an environment that contains indescribable parts is not much different from an individual that contains aspects independant of the environment. > Groups do not exist. Individuals exist. Hmmm. And what are individuals? Humans? Unicellular animals? Molecules? Atoms? Quarks? Minds? TCP-IP packets? Bits? Is a human just a wierd metamorphisis that an egg goes through to create another egg? [oops, wrong alt group.] ---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)