Opposites, defined...

The first thought I had about this was that maybe birth and death are opposites, they are both bodily, and at opposite ends of the life-line. But is birth the beginning of bodily life? No...cells are always living, and you are living before birth.

That's a tough one.

Opposites, I believe, work on two different levels...aka two different kinds.

One could be ends of a line...but not of the line is a continuum.

And the other being...A is the opposite of B...because B contains absolutely no qualities that A does, and in fact contains qualities that are opposite A's qualities...in the manner that things are opposite in my first example.

 

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Thank you for clarifying what “opposites” are.

I think I also saw an episode of Sesame Street on this topic.

Now I am certain that you are definitely my opposite.

 

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"One of these things, is not like the others... some of these things are kinda the same..."

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How is finding the meaning of "opposite" a philosophical quandry and not one that you can't solve in 5 seconds or less on dictionary.com?

I assure you that a corpse has cells. And they are certainly NOT living. It's electricity that never "dies".

Here's another idea to make you think for awhile. Some things have no opposites.

 

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What has no opposite?

 

How is accepting vague definitions and not questioning the world around you virtuous at all? Isn't philosophy the search for truth? How can one accept things unquestioningly and be a philosopher?

Surely there are things for which opposites do not exist. Opposites most likely can only be things which work on scales/seeming continuums.

 

Dark,

I personally think that debating the meaning of opposites is frivolous, not that debating and questioning the world around us is not important. Quick... name me a philosopher that debates or discusses the meaning of opposites in their works...


Satyr,

What the opposite of an orange? Of paper? Of water?

Remember that an opposite is not the absence of an item. The opposite of wet is dry, but the opposite of water is not dry, nor the absence of water.

 

Are you agreeing that ~wet is the opposite of wet?

Plato, Jean Baudrillard, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno,...

Need I go on?

 

Yes, because I don't remember any of those philosophers specifically debating the "meaning of opposites". While they debated different opposite ideas and subjects, they didn't discuss and question why there were opposites and what having oppposites in the world actually meant.

 

If memory serves me right opposite is equal quantity with maximally different quality.

 

Okay. But how can absolute zero be found, even in space, when the energy from the sun must effect space for a great distance?

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Firstly these things would need to be defined with a strict definition that only defines those things, and then an opposite can be found.

 

That's close to the essence. What is the opposite of green? Well, if you looked at a color wheel, you could pick something bluish out. In other words, "...opposite of..." needs something to place it in context. The opposite of a green lawn might be a brown lawn. Or no lawn at all.

Opposite has to be defined by it's context.

 

Do you think that contextual opposite isn't the only form of opposite? Maybe there's an absolute opposite?

 

"Up" and "down" are supposed to be opposites. But what's "up" or "down" in space? "To my right" and "to my left", or "in front" and "behind" are supposed to be opposites, but that depends on which way I'm facing. "Alive" and "dead" shiould be opposites, but that ignores the process of "dying". Is brain dead really the death of an entire organism?

Name one instance where there can be opposites without context other than infinite/eternal vs finite (which can only be conceptual).

 

proton and anti-proton

 

Yes. This relates to my "differscape" concept, whereby such pairs as up-down, left-right, etc. contextualize each other to define others pairs. For example, to distinguish left-right when all you've got is an up-down, you also need a.... (this is a puzzle)... answer: front-back. Otherwise, there is only the continuum without its name or meaning to the observer.

I did start mapping out this vast complex of differelations using more than 200 such pairs, but it is hard work and I set it aside to focus on more immediate concerns.

 

what about dividing directions into thirds? its a bit hard to conceptualise because we are so used to up/down,left/right,front/back, but down/upleft/upright, back/frontleft/frontright, left/rightfore/rightaft is a spacially valid description w/o any 'opposites' by definition.

Don't know if this directly applies to the discussion at hand, but it certainly is interesting to me.

(also, to distinguish left-right when all you've got in an up down, you also need a....2-dimentional surface.)

 

I was talking about absolute opposites...aka: something that transcends contexts.

 

Since context is the web of relationships that establishes existence, how can anything be out of context?