QUALITIES, OBJECTS AND CLASSES Lecture December 4th, 2005 This is a lecture given on December 4th, 2005, entitled Qualities, Objects and Classes. QUALITIES, OBJECTS AND CLASSES There are qualities, objects and classes. An object is that which is made of (has) qualities. A quality is that which makes up an object. It is considered that objects are a collections of qualities, and classes are collections of objects. The collection of qualities that makes up an object is called the Object Quality Set or OQS for short. The object quality set contains all the qualities that make up or describe an object. The object quality set is sometimes called the object description set. There is nothing about an object that is not in the object quality set. Objects are gathered together into classes because of qualities that are common and unique to all the objects in the class. The set of qualities that are both common and unique to a particular class of objects is called the Pertinent Quality Set or PQS of that class. For example, brown is a quality, Joey, my dog, is an object, and dog is a class. The pertinent quality set for the class of dogs is what ever group of qualities constitutes 'dogginess'. Dogginess is probably difficult to specify exactly, but pertinent quality sets don't have to be complex. The pertinent quality set of the class of spheres, for example, is simply spherical. Commonness means that every object in the class has all the qualities in the pertinent quality set, all spheres are spherical. Uniqueness means that only objects in the class have that pertinent quality set as their pertinent quality set. Every object in the world that is spherical is a sphere. LABELS Words are labels, symbols, for qualities, objects and classes. Brown is a quality label. Joey is an object label. Dog is a class label. QUALITIES OF BEING AND QUALITIES OF RELATION There are two kinds of qualities that an object can have. They are qualities of being and qualities of relation. Qualities of being are those qualities an object has by virtue of being alone. Qualities of relation are those qualities an object has by virtue of being unalone. Existence is a quality of being. It is considered that an object can exist alone even if nothing else in the world exists. In particular we conclude that an object can exist whether or not anybody knows it exists. Some objects may only exist when they are known about, this does not change the fact that EXISTENCE is a quality of being, even though it may depend upon a relation to a knower in order to be. FIVE KINDS OF QUALITIES OF RELATION Qualities of relation fall into 5 basic kinds. Spacial relations, temporal relations, material relations, energetic relations, and causal relations. For example, take a book, put it on a table. It now has a quality of relation to the table in that it is on the table. "The book is on the table", is a quality of both the book and the table. It is true of the book that the book is on the table, and it is true of the table that the book is on the table. Qualities of relation are thus equally true of both objects involved. This is in part why a single object alone can not have any qualities of relation! THE FOUR FOLD TEST FOR QUALITIES OF RELATION Further, qualities of relation can often be described by a dichotomy of comparable and opposite magnitude, by an opposite quality. For example 'the table is under the book' is an opposite quality to 'the book is on top of the table'. Notice it is also true of the opposite quality that it is equally true of both objects. It is true of the book, that the table is under the book, and it is true of the table, that the table is under the book. Thus for any quality of relation we expect to find 4 equally correct ways of describing the relationship. It is true of the book, that the book is on top of the table. It is true of the table, that the book is on top of the table. It is true of the book, that the table is under the book. It is true of the table, that the table is under the book. In this way we can know for sure that a quality is a quality of relation. Spacial relations are of the form: on top of, under, next to, far from, near, bigger than, smaller than, inside of, outside of, to the left of, to the right of, in front of, behind, above and below, etc. Anything that has to do with space or the spacial relationship between two objects is a spacial quality of relation. Temporal relations are relations that have to do with time: before, after, and during are the 3 basic ones. An object by the way can be defined as any moment of spacetime, or any chunk of spacetime. Notice that an object at one time, is a different object at another time because they have two different object quality sets, even if its time stamp is the only quality that changed. Material relations are things like heavier than, lighter than, etc. Energetic relations have to do with potential energy and kinetic energy, faster than, slower than, hotter than, cooler than, etc. Causal relations relate how objects affect, create or destroy each other. Goober is the father of Dufus is a causal relation in a family tree. A Rubic's Cube reflects light of certain frequencies is a casual relation between the cube and the photons hitting it from the sun. CAUSAL CHAINS AND PATHWAYS Any two objects that affect each other have causal relations between them. A series of cause and effects is called a causal pathway or causal chain. It may have an unprovoked instigator at the beginning of it, and it may have a last event on the chain. Notice that every separate spacetime event in a causal pathway is a different separate object. A process is defined as a single object undergoing a cause/effect event resulting in a change of state or quality set. STATEMENTS OF FACT Statements of fact are statements of the form 'Quality belongs to Object' or 'Object belongs to Class'. We are going to concentrate on the first kind, quality belongs to object. Statements of fact do not have to be true, they are called statements of fact to distinguish them from other kind of statements such as commands, expletives, questions and anything else that might be stated or said. Notice a statement of fact is itself an object with qualities. Statements of fact may be presented as symbols, words, or may be taken as themselves as pure ideas even separate from a conscious or mechanical knower. In other words, some things are true whether or not anything exists at all to know it or state it. For example if nothing existed, that would be true whether or not anyone was around to know it, which there wouldn't be because nothing existed. Thus the statement of fact 'Nothing exists' is true or false regardless of whether anything exists or not. The statement "Either something exists or nothing exists" is true at all times for all people's and places, so it is an absolute truth. TRUTH Truth is a quality of relation between a statement of fact and a given specified actuality. In other words a statement of fact has to be compared against a given specified actuality to determine whether or not that statement of fact is indeed true, that is whether the object in question actually has the quality as asserted in the statement of fact. For example, the statement "My dog Joey is brown" is only true in relation to my dog Joey, if he really is brown. There are four kinds of statements of fact, and therefore four kinds of truths. There are logical tautologies that are true by virtue of being logical tautologies. Either something exists or nothing exists is logically always true. There are definitional truths, that are true by definition, the person has chosen to define them as true. So when we claim that a symbol refers to a referent, know that is true because we defined symbol as any object that refers to a referent. As an aside, we further *DEFINE* a referent and its symbol as any two events that are causally related. Intuitional truths which the person feels they are true mainly out of some gut feeling that it couldn't be any other way. Something can't come from nothing is an intuitional truth. And observational truths, things that you have directly observed and reported what you found, and have to do with the universe at large. Joey is brown is an observational truth, but notice it would be true whether or not anyone had actually made the observation! Unless you want to get into quantum mechanics. LOGIC Logic is the ethics of language. Another example of a logical truth is something like "Either Goober is a Christian or Goober isn't a Christian." One of the two statements has to be correct because actuality limits us to only two possibilities, Christian or not Christian. You can be a Christian and a Jew, but you can't be a Christian and a not Christian. Logical tautologies are often of the form, Either A or not A, or A implies A, or It is always the case that A or not A, IT is never the case that A and not A. Also certain syllogisms become logical tautologies if you accept their premises, All dogs are animals, Joey is a dog, therefore, Joey is an animal. Also opposite syllogisms, All dogs are animals, My pet rock is not an animal, therefore my pet rock is not a dog. Logical tautologies get their authority from the idea that IS means IS, and IS NOT means IS NOT. In other words IS does not mean IS NOT, and IS NOT does not mean IS. We can say this mathematically with the following: IS IS IS IS IS NOT IS NOT IS NOT IS IS NOT IS NOT IS NOT IS One might think the above is either a silly logical truth about IS and IS NOT or definitional truths to suit our mood of the moment. Neither is the case, these are in fact direct OBSERVATIONAL truths about the nature of IS and IS NOT. We took at look at something that was and noticed that it wasn't wasn't. Thus the above word matrix on IS and IS NOT is not an arbitrary creation, but a well justified description of things that are. Thus we have the description pattern of IS AND IS NOT which observably applies to the actual universe we see around us, most particularly our own consciousness. We are and we aren't aren't. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't looked and is in fact wrong. Some people like to confuse the matter by claiming there are gradient degrees of beingness, that you can be somewhere between not being and being, or be both not being and being, or be neither not being and being. Frankly either you be or you ain't, and that's a very important part of the description of isness. Its also a very important part of personal integrity. Remember, logic is the ethics of language. If you say something is and isn't, what have you said? For example, if you say All dogs are animals, And Joey is a dog, But Joey is not an animal. what have you said? Nothing of any meaning or import. Contradictions carry no meaning, and thus are a waste of time except to notice them when offered by language criminals, and those engaging in dharma treason to cheat at winning philosophical debates. You can always tell dharma treason, their sword is blunt, and they claim to have cut you when they haven't. OK, that's the end of this lecture. Homer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Homer Wilson Smith The Paths of Lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink (607) 277-0959 KC2ITF Cross Internet Access, Ithaca NY homer@lightlink.com In the Line of Duty http://www.lightlink.com Fri Nov 17 01:06:24 EST 2006