Theos-Talk Archives (February 1997 Message tl00177)

Ben wrote:

>Tom,
>
>Just for me to get an idea of an inseparable thought do you mean for >example in the idea of "a black cat" you try to separate the idea of "black", >and the idea of "a cat"?

That could be an example.  Someone who could not distinguish between
his or her feelings about black and his or her feelings about cats
might see a black cat, feel a certain way about it because of its
color, and conclude that he or she felt that way about cats.


>since "femininity" has no relations, as far as I know, other to the idea of
>"masculinity" how could you discriminate between the two?

We were discussing the possible definition of the word "good" in a
newsgroup once, and I said that it was simply the opposite of bad, bad
being the opposite of good.  Someone responded and said that jdfhghk
was the opposite of wjrkfhk, and vice versa, and that now I could now
know what jdfhghk and wjrkfhk mean.  His point was that, even though
words are defined in terms of other words, their meanings are
intuitively grasped, by observation.  The meanings of words and their
definitions are different.  Masculinity and femininity can both be
observed, distinctly from each other, and defined as the opposites of
each other.


>Could you give me an example of a separate feeling?

I can't think of a feeling that can be separated either from thought
or from the physical.  But it is crucial to be able to distinguish
between the physical, feelings, and thoughts.  Someone once told me
that she thought that emotions are physical.  I asked her what color
anger was, and she said green!


>If something is inseparable from something else, how can it and/or why >must it be an opposite?

Many opposites cannot exist independently of each other, but that does
not mean that all two things that are inseparable from each other are
opposites.

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