Equality and Parmenides

[Phil8659]

But to the above irremediable difficulty in the communicability, by means of words, of new conceptions that are not merely lexicographical definitions, we add an avoidable difficulty of which the following is an example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Equal in what ?—surely some men are created deaf, some blind, some idiotic, deformed, feeble, black, etc. How self- evidently untrue, therefore, is the above miscalled self-evident truth of our Declaration of Independence! Such criticism is sometimes heard from men in high stations, and it may be philological, but to deem it controversial of the author’s meaning is to commit the error I am anxious to expose. The meaning of the declaration is not what it excludes, but what it includes;—not what is false therein, but what is true; and thus interpreted it is a summary of many truths; as, for instance, men are created “not with saddles on their backs,” to designate that they are to be ridden, but rather with no peculiar adaptation to the artificial distinctions that men impose on each other. All are created equally subject to the same infections, pains, wounds, mischances, and death; all are created with the same passions, instincts, self-love, and impatience of injury; and though some men are created deaf, blind, idiotic, etc., such evils are dispensed with no reference to artificial social distinctions, but like sunshine and rain fall on all classes indiscriminately.

MEANING OF WORDS A. B. JOHNSON

I am not picking on the above author, his fault is common, all too common. In trying to correct a misconception, he simply goes to another misconception. A definition is used to determine class membership, all members are equally members of a class by definition. When it is given that A = A, one can substitute any name in the equation Man = Man.

One the problems with attempting to be rational is not knowing when you are switching coordinate systems of reference, what you are comparing in making a judgment. Some men are short, but we are not then comparing men, we are comparing the height of men. etc.

This is one of the topics given in Parminides. If one uses a sail, to cover a number of men, does part of the sail cover part of the men? The question, generalized, is, can the divisor be divided? Is the boundary bounded? No. As abstraction is the inverse function of predication, one cannot predicate of a predicate.

The dialog Parmenides is designed to start the reader thinking about the principles of predication, what happens to reason when you do not know them. It is not a non-sense piece–it is a piece that is necessary to master to even begin to reason. In this piece, Plato credits Parmenides, and thus the work of Zeno as being directed to get the reader to learn from the examples they give. They are not teaches like Aristotle, for Aristotle was not on par with them.

I do fault the author in this, how is it that he believed he could write about the meaning of words, when he did not even comprehend what equality is? Why things with the same name are equal by the criterial in which they were given that name was discussed by the ancients.

How would you, or do you comprehend equality?

[Impenitent]

the declaration claimed all men were equal

sam colt made them so

-Imp

[Juggernaut]

All individuals described and defined by a concept are equal in quality. All chickens are equally chickens, but if you are big chicken you are quantitatively different, and not qualitatively different, but I would advise you to get your quantitative difference out of dodge, asap cause weones doesn’t like chickens unless they is in the barn yard, or on the dinner table.