Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Philosopher8675309, I did not say that reality is a quality. I said that it has qualities. I said that something that has qualities is a thing.
I have still said nothing about my position on the expansion of space. Now I will. I am not yet convinced that space itself is expanding. It seems that space is probably infinite, but some scientists disagree. If there is an end to space, space would exist between an object in space and nothingness, or where space ends and nothing is beyond it.
Now you are making more sense. If you study Aristotle and actually log his synonyms ( he was a synonym freak) You will find that a things qualities are its forms and material differences. I actually made a Windows Help file once logging the synonyms, definitions, and adding Venn diagrams to what he was saying. His conception of what predication is was entirely wrong, however. How Plato had it right but Aristotle never grasped it is beyond me, but I do see how normal people seem to find it impossible to grasp.
Space is a material difference, and thus has no limit. If it did have a limit, it would be, by definition a thing. You can apply limits to material difference and create things.
One thing to be noted, We can only know things and make either abstraction from them, either form, or material difference. Aristotle did say that these two elements can never exist in of itself. This is the real difficulty in the concept of Universe--which is on some level a collection of things, or a class of things.
By definition any lenght of line in a line segment is infinite--when you include the limits, the boundaries, then it is a finite segment.
What does all this have to do with Grammar? We name our abstractions, but an environmental acquisition system can only abstract qualities, ie. material difference or form. Thus, grammatically we have three primitive naming categories. Names of things, from which we abstract forms and material difference, and the names of forms and the names of the material difference in those forms.
How these names are manipulated in accordance with the truth of things is when predication is the inverse function of abstractions.
Since names are conventional, it means that all truth is constructed when one can simply keep their word, i.e. the original naming convention.
So, one of the first principles of any logic system is, there is no process or thought or theory in a grammar that violates the original naming convention. It can only be violated, as Aristotle did point out, when we assert when we should have denied, or denied when we should have asserted, since the unit sentence is so very simple.
Grammar books, books on logic, math, science, today violate these simple ideas wholesale--because it is not known, or taught, what the constraint upon words are--it is simply the definition of a thing.
One can see the difficulty in not understanding this when you read the commentators on Plato's Parmenides--they don't understand what the gibberish is about. It is written to get the reader to start realizing what happens in the mind when it treats these names not in accordance to what they name. Using the name of a form as if it were a thing, or a thing as if material difference. It makes all the difference in the world when you cannot, because you are unaware, keep these names distinct in your mind.
This is why Parmenides was an example of a mental exercise. Normal language training is completely oblivious to these distinctions. And it is true, unless you understand the use of names in accordance with the primitive form of language, you will never know when you are speaking non-sense.
Myself, I am not subtile. I often give people a swift kick in the head to see if you can do more than bite back. See if they can wake up just a little. Subtilty has been done, but man sleeps on.
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