At 02:05 PM 09/04/2004 -0700, you wrote:
><<The label is the thing.>>
>
>Not at all, except in nightmare scenarios such as the
age
>of the image and of pseudoevents... Seriously, very
often
>there is no "thing" to go with the label.
Exactly. These are abstractions that are nothing but their
labels. The labels are the things, the ideas, the
concepts.
But this is true even with more concrete "things". I have a
dog. Well, dogs are so loyal and faithful that it is hard to
imagine them with their own lives and purposes, so let's make
my dog a cat. Cats are more independent. They seem to possess
an independent point of view. I, and others have agreed to
label the categorization of observed biological details and
behaviours that this animal exhibits as "cat". The cat itself
may have a night job doing stand-up comedy, and I can
conceive that such behaviour is possible, but neither I nor
anybody else, to my knowledge, have seen this happen (outside
of the comics- which would make my dog a comic-book
character, not truly a cat) and so we would have to adjust
the abstraction behind the label if we were to stumble into a
cat comedy club.
Meanwhile my dog, for the purposes of argument, remains a
cat, bred and trained to loyalty and faithfulness, and
whatever behaviours and appearances that match the human
ideas of what a dog should be. Some dogs, it seems to me,
have been bred to look more like cats.
>Best, and have a nice weekend.
Oh dear. More abstractions.
Kerry
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Literary events Calendar (South Ont.) http://www.lit-electric.com
The evil men do lives after them http://www.murderoutthere.com
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