[02:20] huangm: Dating subjects seem to get you lots of comments though
[02:20] huangm: if you are into that sort of thing
[02:20] huangm: though of course I suppose your biggest success is the whole karaoke thing
[02:21] moritheil: Yeah, people feel they can speak with authority on dating whereas they have not much to say about mereology.
[02:21] moritheil: It’s a fallacy; I just don’t know which one.
[02:21] huangm: it’s because everybody thinks hey have some sort of experience
[02:21] huangm: which gives them authority
[02:21] moritheil: Yes.
[02:21] moritheil: But we all have experience with chemistry and physics and anatomy, and are not experts.
Comments (15)
I’m a chemistry expert.
So can mereology be used to examine political systems, like a democratic government being a whole made up of many parts with neither dominating the other, or is used more to look at personhood and fragmentation in the individual or am I completely off base with this line of thought?
I suck at dating. Philosophy is way easier to navigate.
@cuteluvr21 -
Actually, I am a scientist too. I think a larger than normal portion of my readers are in academic and technical fields. But I also think you know what I was getting at
@abbylyne -
I’m not really any good at mereology itself; it’s just that mereological nihilism is closely wedded to empiricism (and empiricism is grounded in my bones.)
Historically, mereology is the study of questions like, “If you have a pile of sand, and you take away one grain of sand, you still have a pile of sand. It’s true no matter how many times you repeat it. So then doesn’t that mean that one grain of sand (the last one left) is itself a pile of sand?”
@moritheil -
Oh, baby, I meant that I’m a chemistry-between-people expert. I used to be in the technical fields, but gave them up for non-technical ones.
The interest in dating (and mating) is hard-wired into our genes!
eh, some people are ACTUAL pros at things. but a lot of “self-proclaiming” experts come up to says
@moritheil -
If that’s the case, it probably knocks heads with Philology because my language-obsessed mind immediately says “no, pile denotes more than one and in no way can pile indicate anything other than multiple pieces of sand, even if you’re down to two.” Which doesn’t solve the merelogical question at all, it just sends us spiraling towards an inevitable collision with the deconstructionist problem of interpretation. Actually, your mereological nihilism sounds eerily familiar to deconstructionist readings of text.
@SuperSafe68 -
My point exactly.
@abbylyne -
Well, on some level it’s a problem of definition. For example, mereologically, objects that we perceive do not exist; there are only arrangements of fundamental physical particles that we refer to as objects for the sake of convenience. But outside of academia, who is going to say, “Please pull up that arrangement of particles and forces that is shaped like a wooden chair?” The entire point of developing the term and concept of “chair” is to act as shorthand in these situations.
@moritheil -
Sure, I see where you’re coming from. Most of my work has come from the side of “fine, we accept that it’s all shorthand. So now what what does calling it ‘chair’ mean?”
A question: Does anything qualify as an object? If specific arrangements of particles in particular shapes can’t be called objects then what can?
@abbylyne -
A true mereological nihilst would say no, objects don’t really exist. Atom, for instance, is a term mereological nihilists try to avoid, because it is shorthand for something intermediate that has neither true indivisibility (an atom is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons – which themselves may be made of still more fundamental particles) nor virtue as a shortcut to the immediately visible (unless you work in an electron microscope lab.)
I’m just still sore that we’re not talking about the weather.
@moritheil -
What irritating little punks!
this is why i never “commented” on dating topics haha
Romance is an awful topic. Too many people think they are experts and in reality are just mediocre observers. Even love and the psychology of dating can require such an informed stance as chemistry or physics.