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Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:42 pm
by peter
Vraith wrote:Yes...the mirror image looks exactly like it would if you somehow could be in two places at once and stepped forward to where the mirror is without turning around, then looked at yourself with eyes in the back of your head.
Vraith - if you can get your head around that there is
no pay grade you don't deserve to be on!
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 6:19 pm
by Vraith
peter wrote:Vraith wrote:Yes...the mirror image looks exactly like it would if you somehow could be in two places at once and stepped forward to where the mirror is without turning around, then looked at yourself with eyes in the back of your head.
Vraith - if you can get your head around that there is
no pay grade you don't deserve to be on!
Heh...it only seems that way cuz we're trying to do it with words. Ordinarily, I'm not a visual/image/space person, but in this case that's the best/simplest/most obvious way. Kinda like if I tried to write out a description of a spiral to you right now [if you didn't know what the word "spiral" meant]...long and complicated, but if you were standing here, even if we didn't speak the same language, I'd just have to twirl my finger and you'd see it practically instantly. [[I KNOW long-time readers, I've used similar spiral analogy before! I'm just boring that way I guess...I use gravity a lot, too!]] I could show you why he's wrong in less than a minute with a mirror and my cat's laser toy. [or a pencil and a piece of paper to draw on, but the mirror and toy would be more fun...especially if the cat's were hanging around. ]
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:09 am
by Avatar
The laser really upsets my cat. He hunts obsessively for it long after I turn it off, so I've stopped using it for him.
--A
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:29 am
by peter
Avatar wrote:The laser really upsets my cat. He hunts obsessively for it long after I turn it off, so I've stopped using it for him.
--A
Which of you guys has a cat called 'Shrodinger'? C'mon.....you know I'm right - own up!
(ps Mines called Daisy and she doesn't have a laser
)
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 3:11 pm
by Vraith
peter wrote:Avatar wrote:The laser really upsets my cat. He hunts obsessively for it long after I turn it off, so I've stopped using it for him.
--A
Which of you guys has a cat called 'Shrodinger'? C'mon.....you know I'm right - own up!
(ps Mines called Daisy and she doesn't have a laser
)
I tried. But the cats are really my wife's thing. I WAS allowed some input, so we got Kierkegaard [who recently died] Nicodemus, and Alia [of the Knife]. She's a visual artsy fartsy type, so the name has to suit what the cat's "look." I just don't see it.
[our ferret, gone now, was Phaedra.]
Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:50 am
by peter
Ferrets Vraith! If only the world knew the pure unadulterated JOY that can be accesed by the simple expedient of aquiring a ferret.
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:08 am
by Avatar
peter wrote:Which of you guys has a cat called 'Shrodinger'? C'mon.....you know I'm right - own up!
Sorry, my cat doesn't have a name. I tend to call him "You" but that's about it. And it's not "mine" per se. He just sorta adopted us.
--A
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:57 am
by peter
All cats have a name Av* - you just don't know his yet. They say that all cats also have two homes as well, so if one billet goes belly up they have a fall back. Thats why I love them - they're so 'in it for themselves'. In the UK the naturally peripatetic nature of cats is even recognised in Law in that there are no 'ownership rights' as such attached to cats as there are to dogs.
(* Actually, didn't I read/hear somewhere that all cats have three names - one that only they know, one that other cats know and the lowest grade name, the one that humans use for them.)
Rumor has it that the Queen does not like cats - she can't abide anything that looks down on her which, apparently is why she opts for dogs.
Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 4:53 am
by Avatar
I don't buy it.
Animals don't need names. Especially cats. There is only them, and everything else.
--A
Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:30 am
by peter
Ok - I'll buy that, sounds good to me
(just one thing - how do I call my cat in at night if she has no name
)
Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:29 am
by Hashi Lebwohl
peter wrote:Which of you guys has a cat called 'Shrodinger'? C'mon.....you know I'm right - own up!
No Schrodinger but I did name my old cat Fractal.
Fractals, of course, look the same no matter what scale you use so I figured that his behavior would be indicative of all cats, thus he was a fractal of catdom.
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:39 am
by Avatar
peter wrote:Ok - I'll buy that, sounds good to me
(just one thing - how do I call my cat in at night if she has no name
)
Hahaha, I dunno. Mine comes and goes as he pleases. If he's inside when I lock up, he stays, if not, he doesn't.
--A
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 4:08 pm
by Vraith
Avatar wrote:I don't buy it.
Animals don't need names. Especially cats. There is only them, and everything else.
--A
I fail to see how that isn't just as true for people...
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 4:22 pm
by Hashi Lebwohl
Technically, we don't need names. Names are only useful tools through which we can clearly identify one person from another, espcially if those people are not physically present.
For fun, ask people "who are you?" and watch--they will immediately respond with their name. When they do, tell them "that is only your name--it doesn't tell me who you are". They won't know how to respond.
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 4:49 pm
by Vraith
Hashi Lebwohl wrote:
For fun, ask people "who are you?" and watch--they will immediately respond with their name. When they do, tell them "that is only your name--it doesn't tell me who you are". They won't know how to respond.
heh... did you know there's a fairly common [but damn hard!] actor training game that plays around with that idea?...often a successful one ends up sounding kinda like that star trek episode with the story/myth aliens? "So and so and so and so at Tanaka" or however it went.
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:30 pm
by Hashi Lebwohl
Most people don't know how to define themselves other than their name, their job, their marital status, where they live, etc. none of which tells anyone who they really are. In short, most people do not know who they are.
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 5:01 am
by Avatar
Hahaha. I know exactly who I am. I'm me. Not my problem if that doesn't mean anything to anybody else.
Thinking about it though...
No matter how you define yourself, you're doing so in reference to something that people will be able to grasp. Describing yourself in terms of your job is no different to describing yourself in terms of
any other thing.
Almost by definition a description of yourself must be of, or incorporate, things that make you who you are, whether it's a job or an age or a marital status or a political or religious belief.
I can't readily think of a possible answer to your question that can't be "questioned" in the same way you question somebody describing themselves in terms of their job...
--A
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:46 pm
by Vraith
yea to pretty much all of that...a conjunction of some things Nietzschean [at least one, anyway] and Foucaultish [at least one].
Many have said in various ways and intents "There is no I," but I prefer that there is no "am." State of being verbs, for the most part, describe exactly that which does not be.
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:02 am
by Avatar
I had to read that last part a few times.
--A
Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 3:13 pm
by peter
Surely there is much truth in the saying 'you are what you do'. I would agree with Hashi that I'm not at all sure of 'who' I am. Am I who *I* think I am: am I the sum of how I am taken to be by all the others who know me and of me and of my doings; Am I some other 'who', who only God (if he existed) could know the truth of.
In the face of this dilema, and as a reasonable summary of what it might mean to most people, the 'who' I am is probably best summed up by what I do.