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? asked in Arts & HumanitiesPhilosophy · 1 decade ago

How do you know if something is really what it is cause it could really be called something else?

have you ever thought about this?

what if a cake wasn't really a cake but was a bicycle or a bird

what if the moon is actually called a wolf but we have just called it the moon because that's what we think it is.

do you think all these things mind if we get their names wrong constantly or do they just become what we call them and lose there real names all together.?

how sad...

Does anyone else know what i'm talkig about or is this just weird to think about?

please tell me what you think

Ains

3 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Oohh you are skirting around the edges of what philosophers call epistemology, the idea that asks whether it is possible to know anything.

    Plato in his vast repertoire questioned, like you, how we know something exists. It is a bit clunky and hard to read but imagine you are sitting at a brown desk. If you turn off the lights is it not brown anymore, as you see it?

    What makes a dog a dog? It is furry and has four legs. What if it loses a leg? Is it a dog?

    What about an old car. You have had it fixed, parts replaced over the years to the extent that not one piece of that car is original. Is it the same car?

    Plato had the idea that things exist as ideal forms and that all else was a shadowy copy of these forms.

    Rather than bamboozle you here, go and read some Plato or some secondary texts and be prepared for an interesting ride.

    Have fun

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    That depends on whether or not you think every inanimate object should have a name. The words we use to refer to objects aren't their names they are just words that refer to that object - they are Nouns.

  • 1 decade ago

    wel cause um mean you wonder ae thiking who named all this things and how do they know but i guess its just the way it is but yes i do wonder

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