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A thing that is is precisely what arfa brane insists that a Coulomb of charge is. He says that charge is a "real physical thing". It's right there in his posts. Why aren't you accusing him of "pretending"?
Reading comprehension, James, that's all. Stop whining. In order to answer Arf you describe extracting a fraction of a whole thing and containing it a bottle; that is your pretense. And it's one thing if you can't pull a Coulomb out of an electron the way you might pull an egg out of a chicken, but holding the charge in a bottle is the wrong analogy.
Go back and read the rest. It just isn't helpful when you take things out of context, like that, in order to complain.
Look at what I wrote:
• In that sense, your question is fallacious: You pretend the Coulomb as a thing that is, in order to ask your question. But the answer is in the word "is". In what sense is the charge a physical thing? In the sense that it is. In this case, in the sense that it does something.
You missed a lot of context when you skipped out on context. Thus:
You raised a pretense of a Coulomb as a thing that is in order to ask your question. That's it; that's all it means to pretend something in order to answer the question. The answer to the question, however, has to do with what it means to be. Or, as you have it, what constitutes a thing. Part of a thing's existential realness is that it does something. And part of the difference is in your words: "But when we look … we don't see …". Well, what are we supposed to see? Some little veil around the electron? Some arc between electron and nucleus? And if it occurs to you to remind me of science, that we can't always "see" things directly, and must observe the effects of their presence and interaction and all that, yes, that's kind of the point.
One thing about things—
(This is using my understanding of a "real physical thing" being things like rocks and apples, not arfa branes definition of them as "anything with physical units".)
—is that they are a bit more subtle than what you insist. Okay, you know that bit about gravity holding people down on the planet, and it's all well and fine except for the part where people seem to think that's all it does? Well, as frustrating as that can be to explain to people over and over again, it only gets more complicated when we consider that gravity is not a real thing—oh, right, it's not a "real physical thing". Rocks and apples? Don't you think that's a bit broad? Gravity isn't a real physical thing; the lightning that just struck that person right there might have caused severe injuries, but it wasn't a real physical thing.
I think you're insisting on artifice when hewing to your "understanding of 'a real physical thing'". Thus:
Then you're in agreement with me that ....
Oh, actually, first, we need to make a certain point about this rhetorical form, which is, stop doing that, please. You're either not very good at it, or else you are actually pretty good at it, and in either case it just isn't helpful.
Anyway ... oh, right, insisting on artifice, understanding of a "real physical thing". Thus:
Then you're in agreement with me that the "attribute" we call "color" is not something that is somehow contained in the rose. There's something else to it. Charge is no different.
Okay, so, the reason red is red is bcause that's what we call it.
We are the "something else to it".
Perdurabo↱ was actually on about something else, but refers to something real: The red we see is what the rose casts off. And, sure, it has its reasons for doing so, but, yes, Perdurabo is correct that it is reflected light that we perceive,
i.e., what the rose refuses. Red is the one color it is not, but also the color by which we identify it, because it is what remains for us to perceive.
But what we call red represents something. It corresponds to a range of wavelengths describing blackbody radiation. The rose does not actually refuse the red; its redness is not an explicit act of will. But it reflects those wavelengths of light, and those reasons depend entirely on the rose. Beyond rocks and roses, cell structure, and even the pigment molecules themselves, what we are looking at is inherent to the structure of the rose. Why does the anthocyanin in the red rose look red insteda of blue? Because that is the molecule present, and its structure is such that it reflects those wavelengths. Calling the "color" "red" is something we do; what results in the reflection of those wavelenghts is part of the structure of the rose. That "color"
is a fundamental part of the rose.
Yes, even "components" like the red colour of the rose (although maybe not, because "red" might not have units). Certainly the velocity of the rose is something arfa brane considers to be "part of" the rose, in some sense. I do not.
But that depends on our reason for looking. Let's try this part:
For the rose, it seems obvious to me that "red" and "fast" and "200 grams" are attributes, not entities
Those words describe different kinds of attributes, as such; the attributes they describe
do different things.
Perdurabo aside, the reason that red is there for us to perceive is part of the rose. That we describe "red" corresponds to a real thing in the Universe. Inasmuch as some of our speculative neighbors might be shifting contexts, I don't think yours are necessarily consistent.
Still, the idea that the object is a rose, and red at that, speaks nothing of its velocity. But what do we mean by "fast"? Again, even the Reticulan can figure out that the roots are not normally airborne. But both a normal rose and I are moving at a velocity of about a thousand miles an hour. Oh, wait, that's sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. Or ninety thousand. Or a half-million. That would be axial rotation, solar orbital, galacitc central attraction, and galactic orbital velocities.
Notice how relativistic these measurements are? Again, if God could have done differently, or, more scientifically, if the math of the Universe could have worked out differently, then it would have. Whatever I'm describing as I ask you what we mean by fast, the fact remains that the rose, presently, has those velocities, and that also includes the vectors of those velocities. Because here's the thing, if the rose had a different velocity, the question remains why. What are we describing. If someone has yanked a rosebush out of the ground and thrown it at me, how fast is fast; if it was blown off the side of an erupting volcano, it would probably be going faster. If I'm on the moon and the Earth has just exploded, sending that rosebush toward me at whatever velocity, it probably doesn't matter how fast is fast.
More realistically, as I stand here beside the rosebush, I share its velocity. If one of those vectors was ninety degrees different, I probably wouldn't notice for the simple reason that the math works out,
i.e., if the Universe was supposed to be different, it would be. However, compared to the Universe, yes, as long as the math works out it's all good, but a full existential accounting of that rosebush in the math of the Universe would describe a different circumstance. Maybe the same equations apply, but the variables resolve differently, so any mathematical descripition of the circumstance will resolve differently.
To a certain degree, the redness of the rose, or even the fact of the rose as an object, is entirely inconsequential. We would think more of the velocity of the rose if it was somehow unusual, such as hurtling through the air in our general direction. But as we stand there next to the rosebush in the park, we share a certain velocity and vector near to a thousand miles per hour on our axial rotational course. If the rosebush had that same velocity on a vector ninety degrees different, but we did not, I assure you, sir, it would be an unusual circumstance. Especially if it was still firmly rooted in the ground. Even you would not fail to notice.
But compared to what you or I expect of a rosebush, or why we even have expectations of a rosebush, an aphid cares more about the context of a rosebush as an object than the math does.
We see a rose or a rock; the math operates at a much more fundamental level.
Two hundred grams is a different sort of attribute, and most people don't use the word "mass" when they mean "weight" even if they are not aware of the difference. Think of it this way; the mass of the rose is the rose, its redness is inherent to the way in which its mass exists, and its velocity is an imposed attribute or characteristic,
i.e., something that depends on external influence. They're not strong comparisons. Again, the rose as an object is our classification, and for as many reasons as red is what we call red.
This is important because—
My point is that the rose is not its mass. The rose is not its redness. The rose is not its beauty. Those are all attributes. The rose is the entity. Notice that attributes are concepts, first and foremost. You can't bottle redness or beauty or mass. Don't confuse that idea with bottling an entity that has attributes of redness, beauty and mass, which you can certainly do. Where is the beauty of the rose after you put the rose in a bottle? The beauty isn't in the bottle; it's in the eye of the beholder.
—it's one thing if we use familiar objects for the sake of familiarity. But that is not the limit of our precision.
[(cont.)]
