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Moral Nihilism

Started by xSilverPhinx, January 27, 2020, 02:41:49 PM

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billy rubin

Quote from: Recusant on March 01, 2020, 05:13:28 AM
Quote from: billy
why is the "course of a zpecies exiztence" in any way "significan?"  youve cited influence, but there are many different meaningz for that word.

Is it your contention that as a general principle a hair of an organism is equally significant as the organism as a whole? I think that isn't a particularly useful approach, though it may be justified on occasion to find an individual hair on a cat equally significant as the cat as a whole. For significance here, I find the Oxford English Dictionary sufficient: "The quality of being worthy of attention; importance, consequence."

i contend that there is no such thing as a general principle in this matter. "significance" must be put into a specific context every time it is used. sometimes that context may be assumed to be shared, sometimes not.

to use your example, an individual hair from a cat is as significant as the cat itself, if the issue of significance is a forensic determination of whether a cat has been prsent. before my floods, i used to have keys to the dorsal guard hairs of north americab mammals, like this one

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2422262.pdf?seq=1

a single hair is as good as the whole animal, depening on its purpose.

interestingly, i once read a taxonbomic treatis in which the author pointed out that losing a museum skin of an animal was generally of less consequence than losing the label that had been tied to its foot. without the label, the skin was useless, but the label was still significant even without the skin.

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"significant" merely means "worthy of attention," as you point out. but "worthy" is completely situational.

Quote from: recusant
Thank you for a diverting discussion. 

sure.

Quote from: recusant
ETA:  :lol: Literally striking through half of an offered definition of "nihilism" when responding to a post in which the term "half-nihilist" is used.

lol

i never said i was perfect


set the function, not the mechanism.

billy rubin



set the function, not the mechanism.