pawsplay
Hero
It's red. There is no definition issue. You don't see astronomers or astrophysicists or paint mixers arguing over what color something is once it's measured. That's a problem unique to philosophers.
I take it you've never mixed paint. Also, I feel the need to point out that astronmers deal almost entirely in multiple spectra, in addition to having some serious red-shift issues to look at.
Dude, it's done all the time. Go look at a USGS map. All those green blobs with forest markings are forest. All the bits that aren't, aren't. The USGS definition specifies density, canopy cover, root density, tree size, and distance between trees. It also includes bits about whether or not an area denuded or thinned is still a forest or not and if two areas separated by such an area are a single forest, or two forests.
Well, you've proven one thing: You didn't read a single bit of what I wrote in that paragraph.
That's because philosphers get paid to argue over questions, not answer them.
That's actually not true.
My nickname on this board is Krensky, my real name is X. I was born on [Month] [Day], [Year] by the United States Civil Calender, at HH:MM Eastern Standard Civil Time to [Mother] and [Father]. I grew up in [town], and attended [Elementary, Junior High, High School, and College]. I truthfully identify myself as such, and I have official, legitimate documentation that demonstrates it.
That in itself identifies me uniquely. Unless you want to claim that there is another human being in the history of the species that shares those quantities.
There are thousands. I can identify another human being who has those identical characteristics, yet shares no more than a handful of molecules in common with you. Go back about three years and find the person living under your identity, and you will discover an entirely different physical being with all of those characteristics.
Atomic Tune-Up: How the Body Rejuvenates Itself : NPR
Add in the elements of my DNA, my facial structure, my dental records, my distinguishing scars, my fingerprints, etc you get a pile of features that narrow me down to being 1 in several billion. Heck, from the ones I listed I'm fairly confident it's 1 in more then all the humans who ever lived.
What if I remove your fingerprints and scars, then clone you from some of your DNA? Wouldn't that make the clone "you" and the current you no-longer-you?
Because the people working on the problem have a vested interest in not solving it. Like consultants.
You have a very strange understanding of what philosophy is for. For instance, the people writing the DSM-V, which defines mental illness and will affect billions of people to the tune of trillions of dollars, are faced with countless really difficult philosophical questions which must be answered to some satisfactory degree for them to finish. The Supreme Court has a vested interest in solving philosophical problems, such as what defines a human being.
There is no consensus to be reached. You're (not you specifically) arguing over an inherently subjective topic while steadfastly refusing to develop an objective, working definition. In fact, I doubt you could even do that since not everyone involved is rational (not that anyone is crazy or inferior, that's not the meaning of rational being used here) and is operating using different criteria and with different priors. Truth in any sense other then not false is meaningless construct. My sole criteria for truth is the boolean one.
"There is no consensus to be reached" is not only logically impossible (otherwise we couldn't agree that we couldn't agree) but can be empiracally be demonstrated to be false, since several people in this discussion have agreed on many things.
"Boolean truth" is a nonsense phrase. Boolean logic produces the same kind of truth as any other kind of logic.
If one person wants to say all RPGs are D&D and another wants to say that only OD&D is D&D and I want to say that 4e (while objectively D&D) doesn't feel like D&D are any of us wrong? No. In fact we're all correct because we're all (assumedly) honestly relating the results of our purely subjective classification systems.
How is that everyone can be correct but no one can be wrong? What if one of us believes the others are wrong, are they also correct? Radical subjectivism is a failed approach to truth.
Also, Boolean logic doesn't allow for more than one truth.
You're using "subjective" in an unprecise way. You are implying that because we each have subjective opinions, talking about those opinions is subjective. But actually, we can verify with each other that we hold those opinions. Wittgenstein's later theory talked about the idea of a "private language" and concluded there is no such thing.
I'm pointing these things out in order to be informative, perhaps to spur others to read up on these topics, perhaps even so you can reflect later on what I have said and consider whether there may be some value in it. At this point it appears to me you are mainly interested in squelching dissent and have little real interest in what I have to say. Since you're intent on polluting the discussion and I can't stop you, I'm pretty much done for now.