Below is a dialogue arguing that traditionals view of objects,
endurance, perdurance in philosophy and logic are incorrect. I would
be interested to hear your comments, whether you see flaws in its
argument or what the extensions of it may be. Sigmund.

----------------------------
The Clay Ballerina
----------------------------

A) Ok, I bet you a drink that you can't tell me how many things there
are on this table.

B) Easy money. There's one thing there, obviously. A clay statue of a
ballerina. Its lovely. Now pay up.

A) I certainly won't - your answer was wrong.

B) Not unless your hiding something it wasn't - and that'd be
cheating.

A) I'm not hiding anything, but you were still wrong. I'll prove it.

A) Ok, so is that the same piece of clay as before?

The one bloke said he saw a ballerina for purposes of quotidian, IOW
conventional conversation. Of course there was no ballerina, but a
figure one might call symbol of a ballerina. In the end, reduction
removes the social meaning of the whole thing. It was clay all the time.
Or perhaps it was dog poop.

s.j.lagoe@googlemail.com wrote:

Extensions are pointing to flaws.
Like JJ said, it was clay all the time, but it's changing properties
(attributes).
This may be nice intro story for dialectic reasoning:) Relation of
subject and object and attributing attributes to objects etc.

Regards...

On Sep 18, 1:19 pm, John J wrote:

Thats fine. Just substitute "ballerina" for "figure" then. The clay is
there all the time. The figure for some of the time. Both different
things with different properties.

On Sep 18, 1:57 pm, Josip Almasi vrspace.org> wrote:

Sure, but a statue can be repaired when it becomes damaged resulting
in the same statue but with different material composition. Then of
course it is the statue that's properties have changed. There is
nothing special about the clays objecthood compared to the figures
objecthood - they are both valid things right, and the both "exist"?

On Sep 18, 6:24 am, s.j.la...@googlemail.com wrote:

I'm not sure why you claim two statues are the same if they have
different material composition? What kind of concept of identity
have you?

Consider personal identiy.

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:57:31 -0700, s.j.lagoe wrote:

s.j.lagoe@googlemail.com wrote:
[...]

[snip a dialogue constructed to p[rove a point, ie, one that really
proves nothing at all. ;-) the point to be rpoven appears at the end, thus:

Nice riff on George Berkely. He posited God as the Someone who is always
around, so that the world does in fact exist even when you and me aren't
there to "impose a context."

HTH

I think that this is the key statement of B, and one which wins him
the argument almost by chance due to his wording.

He states that there is one thing, but then qualifies this one thing:
"a clay statue of a ballerina". He is free to do so, because he is
making the statement, and thus imposing the "point of view" on the
situation.

If, in this situation, the one thing is equal to "a clay statue of a
ballerina", and not just "a ballerina", then I do not see how the clay
itself could be a separate, distinct object, since it is included in
B's definition of the "thing".

For example, if it were a pitcher of milk, instead of a clay statue of
a ballerina, then I do not think a similar argument could be made so
that there are both "a pitcher of milk" and "milk" on the table
without changing anything about their placement/orientation.

On Sep 18, 3:32 pm, forbisga...@msn.com wrote: