Re: Abstration and Epistemology particals (was Re: Gender in
Rob Zook 
Thu, 15 Oct 1998 23:17:08 -0500

At 04:34 PM 10/14/98 PDT, Sorik of Vulcan wrote:
<snip>
MDriest wrote:
>>> C'Thia would be conceptual. There is nothing you can point at and say 
>>> that it is 'C'Thia'. It has no practical relation with the physical 
>>> world.

I wrote:
>>I would not call that entirely accurate. C'Thia in our minds simply
>>refers to a rather fuzzy set of ideas about Vulcan logical practices,
>>theories and applications. That the set of fuzzy does not mean you
>>can't point to practice X, practice Y, and practice Z and say that
>>70% of Vulcans would agree these practices exemplify the ideal of
>>C'Thia.


Sorik wrote:
>The _concept_ of c'thia is most certainly abstract as we cannot see the 
>concept.  It is an idea.  If we see it practiced, then we can use the 
>semi-objective, but if we are talking about the nature of the concept, 
>then it is entirely abstract.

What does "the nature of a concept" refer to Sorik? 

Note that I never said that C'thia was not abstract, quite the contrary. 
I was just pointing out that it does have referents, just a set of them 
rather than one particular thing, and that the set was fuzzy since it
would likely very depending on the indvidual using the word.


>>However, I would certainly agree that it seems very abstract in
>>nature. There is no _one_ thing which the word refers to but there
>>is a fuzzy set that the word refers to. Using fuzzy logic (which I
>>only have a passing familiarity with unfortunately), a Vulcan could
>>probably describe the nature of C'thia very precisely in a particular
>>situation.
>
>Just because a thing is not entirely defined does not make it less than 
>objective.  It does mean that the "word" might reffer to more than one 
>thing, however.  And just because you can see the way something is used 
>does not make the "something" visable.

Nor do I see that I said anything resembling that.


Rob Z.