I don't trust that this will go any better than it did with Holla Forums, however discussion is still discussion...

What? Since when is "art" measurable?

I know you think you're making sense but you aren't. A statue is a medium by which art is portrayed. A statue of nonsense can still be beautiful while the statue of a man may be perceived as being dull and monotonous.

nailed it. Music talks to you, it speaks no eternal truth( if such a thing is said to exist). If the statue of the man is not a real man, but the sculptures idea of a man can it really be said to be true? Or is it an idea of man who was never materially realized. Music has objective elements to it, quality of music is subjective and unmeasurable but music isn't subjective.

sculptors*

Study the wisdom of the ancients. Plato and Aristotle are a good start. After that, study metaphysics. If that doesn't do it for you, then I'll be a bit lonely.

Who cares for that?

"Good" is subjective.

Your pictures are not art. They're forever subjective. They're inferior to truth, they're the makings of the conscious of a single man. What truth do they hold? Your personal taste on certain things are by no means a disapproval of my statement. It's tasteful. Therefore subjective. I'm looking for objective beauty. Which I know to be truth.

So, then, your idea of Music is that of emotion? Well, like I've mentioned above, that is taste. Not beautiful. No truth in it. The Conscious, or what you call emotions are a void. Therefore it can not be considered an art. Many things can trigger emotion. Food, sex, fighting, all these humanly base things are subjective.

Incorrect. Art is measurable absolutely. Art must portray truth. Your idea of subjectivity is that of a materialistic fool. Evidently, your rejection of eternal truth is enough for me to not take you seriously. If there is no objectivity or truth (eternal truth) then anything can be considered everything. We know that not to be the case.

No, music is a language that you are unaware that you speak.

smells spooky
What is perfect for me, is not inherently perfect for others.

k

On an unrelated(?) note, you said you first posted on Holla Forums. Do you post regularly on there?

Oh god OP. If I was forced to have a 5 minute conversation with you in RL I think I would kill myself.

Nothing exist more beyond the material, and it's impossible to say with certainty it does. This sounds like the ravings of an incessant Greek idealist(which makes sense considering you are).

That being said, art never portrays truth and neither does the statue of the man. The statue of the man is an extrapolation of a really existing thing - this is true for music. It's an extrapolation of really existing combinations of sounds. The statue will never be completely accurate to the man, just an extrapolation of the artist perception and idea of a man. Similarly, music will never be an accurate representation of the eternal sounds of the universe. It's an extrapolation of what is always heard, turned into what could be heard.

Further more, there is truth in music. There are types of sounds that are objectively different from another combination. Your last sentence:

Lacks coherency. I'm talking about objective quality, not objective classification and music can be objective classified and quantified. It's a nice try to dismiss me, but reeks of the fallacious rhetoric Socrates uses in everything I've read by Plato to silence dissent.

I take you never studied the metaphysical.

Then it's subjective. This was the wrong board. A much of materialistic idiots with no understanding of physicality and metaphysics. Try not to live too deep in lies.

It's not art, that's correct. No I have better things to do than to autistically complain about niggers. Sadly you don't have the mental capacity to understand the underlying factor of the universe. I suggest trying to understand, if you can, trans-Euclidean Geometry. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

sounds like pomo garbage 2bh OP

The metaphysical doesn't exist and in all my readings of Aristotle and Plato I found their reasoning to be flawed and unfalsifiable. Give me one good reason I should believe in metaphysical "truth".

Only in so much as every form of communication, and thus every form of art, is subjective.

One simple statement: What is a field in principle? Not a definition. A child can give me a definition.

A statue of a man can be perfected and therefore is objective.

Or, we can use that amazing ability to make arbitrary classifications. In other words, since there is no inherent truth behind the world, we'll just invent one.
just like what you're doing right now

shouldn't you be masturbating to your own pseudo-intellectualism right now?

So are you going to answer my question?

I did. What is a field in principle.

No, it can not, because a simulation is never an exact replica of the original. Come on, this is basic Socrates. You want to talk about metaphysics without knowing what the relationship between a form and that which contains the essence of the form within it is? I'm a fucking materialist, and I know that shit. Get your philosophical shit together, OP.

No, studying spooks is a waste of time.

Do you even know what logos is?

What about a statue of a futa?

nigga u wat

If a man somehow grew breasts.

It changed with every new philosopher. Which one do you think is applicable here?

No it can't. Maybe, you could perfect a shallow representation of him aesthetically. What about his organs who function to make him move, and the running blood through his vein? Certainly, any truthful man would have to embody all the functions of the world at that moment, everything that could possibly affect him. As he stood that moment. What about the truth of the moment he was captured in? The speed of the wind, the sun of the sky. What about his thoughts, hopes and dreams at the moment. These are all parts of the man that can never be sculpted, what can be sculpted is merely aesthetic and will never be representative of the truth.

No, you employed socratic irony on me. Define "field" for me, you mean a field of study? I'm not wasting time on metaphysics if all you can do to justify your own delusions of self grandeur is bring up red herrings.

Logos is Form, Idea, what is commonly known as the conscious.

A magnetic field. An electric field. Define a field in principle.

A field is something real in your mind

Is there a problem?
The metaphysical a spook

nvm tought you were speaking about a field of study.

Okay, you are using the Socrates/Plato definition. Then you should know that the form of a thing is never posessed in full by anything that exists physically, like a statue.

Of course, why you are arguing using Plato at all I do not know. The Theory of Forms is utter bullshit. You would be better off using Nietzsche if you want to argue from an idwalist position.

The Form of a thing is entirely metaphysical. I'm speaking of the physicality of it. You have a physical hand. You can not make an exact replica of a man since making a logos is the equivalency of making God. You speak from ignorance. Do you even try to understand these things?

threads like these just reinforce my opinions on why philosophy and the arts annoy the shit out of me. 90% of the time people in these fields just bicker and argue over the mere definitions of words and the arbitrage between their meanings rather than make actual points.

now I'm a transhumanist, so for me, give me arguments on what it means to be human, if you replace 50% of a human brain with 100% identically operating artificial neurons, are you still human? What about just 1 neuron? What about all but 1? What about 100%?

If you genetically engineer a human from scratch, literally in a lab with no natural source, not even DNA, just literally use a computer to replicate a DNA strand from another person just from a data sheet, and manufacture all tissue in a lab, is that a human?

Shit like this are questions with meaningful discussion, not all the crap that comes out of the arts and philosophy classes these days.

Philosophy is the study of understanding the universe. Sadly, since language is imperfect you'll have to find a common axiom and common definition of that axiom. If you replace 50% of your brain with something that's not your brain then you remain with only 50% of your brain. You can effectively stay human but you are not a human. The 50% of you that isn't human isn't human. Doesn't matter either way.

And i tought PoMos were sophists…

ITT: babbie's first weed induced 'philosophy'

Strange, isn't it, how you can't define a field in principle. I wonder why?

Well, use reductive reasoning to explain to me what a human is. If you don't know what reductive reasoning is, it's removing what a human isn't.

well first you have to come to an agreement on what defines Human, are we talking genetics or mind? If genetics, then a person with an artificial brain is human since their body is still human, since arguably a brain and leg are fungible in this scenario, unless you mean mind, in which case they're still human since the artificial neurons replicate organic neurons perfectly.

A field is an effect of another phenomenon.
A gravitational field, by example, is the deformation of space around a mass, modifying the trajectory of every object coming inside.
What do you mean by in principle?

Space is the lack of something else. A shadow isn't physical, the same as Space. You've fallen for Einstein's insane ramblings. Try again.

In Mind they'll stay human, however I'm speaking of the physical. It's why I said you'll effectively be human but not human. In effect you are.

Ramblings allowing us, among other things, to use GPS…Or ramblings getting vindicated everytime they are put to test… Quite a fluke for insane rambings…
You really should give a try to non Newtonians physics, their counter intuitive description of natural phenomenons can be quite scary sometimes, but it is - for now - the best tool we have to understand the material world.

Ever heard of electromagnetic retardation? Distance is a relative conception, a reflection of the mind of physical limitation. Nikola Tesla both predicted smart phones and global positioning satellites.

Plato's position toward music/poetry is that they had to comport with proper conduct for young men in both Laws and The Republic. In the latter, he emphasizes that the artistic work in his ideal city may not necessarily demonstrate the whole truth or entirety of human experience. Poetry and music were mainly instrumental in both, tools to produce better citizens.

Aristotle's own On Poetics is a work mainly about dramatic form. The main purpose of art for Aristotle is ideally to produce certain feelings in the audience; it isn't "truth" per se Aristotle is mainly looking for in the dramatic work.

This board's really gone downhill letting people with these absurd notions post…

Speech is subjective. The Knowledge the speech tries to express isn't.

I have a feeling some asinine tripfag from 4/lit/ made those. Same belligerent wall-of-text style, same idiotic opinions.

No it isn't. There is a medium, which has virtual existence, and is depicted of kinetic networks through interlinked signifiers. The truth of the "subject" is produced by the "subject" and yet the "subject" themself has no knowledge of this truth. This is why, for example, the truth is always unconscious, and why what is specific to (psycho-)analysis is that it can constitute for itself knowledge concerning the truth.

...

Hmmm yes experience fits in here somewhere.

Yes, dimensions aren't real. Vacuum energy doesn't exist. Dark energy doesn't exist either. It's something called inertia.

I'm sure the entire scientific world will be shocked at your revelations, you will surely gain a Nobel prize for your starting discovery. We can finally put a nail in the coffin of cosmology and physics and get back to the real sciences of jerking off over 2000 year old dead men's ideas of reality and the meanings of words.

Hopefully one day. Until then we must continue to live in a world where insane lunatics run the scientific world.

I'd at least be able to take him more seriously if he got Plato and Aristotle right, but he's made errors continuously.

This is not what one meant. I am just saying that speech must embrace two opposed factors: the element of knowledge as such and that of objectivity. Together they constitute the experience and leave there nothing in the substance given-in-experience but what falls within such experience; it must itself underlie the object which at first confronts it as alien, and which is then repossessed and seen as its own. The "experience" then has the abstract element of immediacy, and also of the separation between information and truth.

Rather strange thing to say since you guys have nearly no understanding of metaphysics.

That makes even less sense, since the man who is the subject of the sculpture is not exactly physically the same when the sculptor finishes carving as he was when the sculptor began carving. Reality is in constant motion.

ITT: people misuse the word spook and positivists don't realize that positivism is a form of metaphysical idealism.

You are getting owned left and right, and denial is not going to help your case.

in b4 no response

Heraclitus pls go

You could just say reality is a void. Regardless the sculptor is making a sculpture of a man, not necessarily himself.

No one has disproved any of my statements. Considering that some of you think that reified shadows can somehow act on things. Your ideas of the universe being a bunch of marbles hitting against each other is idiotic and illogical, not to mention incredibly inconsistent. None of you have any understanding of metaphysics beyond what you "feel" it to be. Having me to point it out is worrying enough.

What is their respond to? I asked whether or not music is an art. I wanted to see if I was correct in thinking it's not. You're rambling on about things that I'm not arguing.

I have a hard time believing you understand even your own metaphysics. statement that "A statue of a man can be perfected and therefore is objective" is a real howler of an interpretation; you have to misunderstand Platonic metaphysics completely to get that one. "Art must portray truth" at is neither Platonic nor Aristotelian. It directly contradicts Plato in both The Republic and Laws, in fact. From Laws, Book IV:

Art, for Plato, simply cannot portray truth. Plato also makes this same point about art being mere imitation in The Republic.

What makes you think I've based my logic off of Plato and Aristotle? I make suggestions to him is all. Philosophy isn't the study of other men's work, it is the pursuit of the explanation of the universe. Either way Plato is speaking of speech there.

No, he isn't simply speaking of speech. Poetry was sung in the Greek world and considered music. You would know this if you'd actually read the fucking book.

Speech. Vocals is cancer. Literally don't know what you're talking about.

I should say, since I now really understand how clueless you guys are that you say that space and time both measurements created by humans (not being real) is what makes up gravity is the same as saying that tiny little unicorns run around your wall to give you electricity.

"Vocals is cancer." Are you just trolling now or what? Also, you were using the Forms above at which would suggest to nearly anyone you're using Platonic metaphysics, contradicting the assertion that you weren't using their logic (unless you mean that literally in which case it would be a non sequitur).

It's cancer because it isn't music. It's just speech that sounds nice, not that it's really much different from music. To first understand Logos you first understand the ancient Trinity: The Soul (Mind, Nous, Holy Spirit, whatever you wish to call it), The Body (Rocks, Your physical person, anything physical), and the unity between the two. Logos is the unity between the two. This isn't unique AT ALL to the ancient Greeks. So, again, you're assuming that all of my logic is based off of Plato. Metaphysics isn't unique to Plato either. I will repeat this again. You have no idea what you're talking about. I will also say this again. Philosophy isn't the study of ancient men.

Regardless of who the subject is, both the subject and the creation of the work exist in motion. The sculpture upon completion can not possibly exactly mimic the subject, since time progressed while it was being made.

That is not the definition that you used here . Your switching between philosophies is creating cognative dissonance in your own philosophy. The reason that philosophers treat the complete works of individuals as one body and not bits and pieces to be mixed and matched is that each conclusion that is made rests upon previously established premises. Your conclusions are not supported by the metaphysical pillars upon which you have placed them.

Because the unity between the two is Form, Conscious, and idea. Can you not puzzle these things together? It's like I'm speaking to a toddler.

You're entirely right. Perfection of imitation of a specific person can (theoretically only) be reached, however impossible in effect. Art is however about reaching the ultimate peak (of beauty). It is what drives men to new heights.

I should mention that perfection in only physicality. Like I've said in my above posts.

So singing isn't music now? As I said before, Greek poetry was sung and frequently accompanied by musical instruments (usually the aulos or lyre). It makes no sense historically to say it wasn't music as it certainly was music to the Greeks. Even from a modern standpoint, your view makes absolutely no sense.

You were using the bedrock of Platonic metaphysics, the Forms. That suggests you're using Platonic metaphysics specifically. If you're not, why are you using the Forms?

That's rich coming from you.

You were the one who brought up Plato and Aristotle as authorities then proceeded to stretch and abuse the former's ideas beyond recognition.

They aren't authorities you blithering idiot. I'm using Forms because it's easier than saying "The Unity between the physical and the metaphysical that propagates and forces the both our bodies, the metaphysical being the mediator or the unmanifest null-point that precedes all physicality called by some Trans-Euclidean Geometry, and the physical is the things acted upon by pressure and other physical objects. Simply put pressure mediation. Now our being is a good example of the unity between the two, the body being the physical, or the lens, and the Metaphysical null-point. The Conscious is the unity of these two things, making our being ultimately "three" things that are in actuality only two, the physical and the metaphysical. In analogy you can say that the metaphysical is the light, the physical a red lens, and the conscious the red light that comes out of the red lens. Two of these things are void, the other eternal, and of the two things one of them being a void of a void. I'm talking about that red light." If I had to write that every time I want to say Logos I would kill myself.

Even then if I were to repeat this every time I would have to explain each and every part and what they mean, and how they play into other things. EVEN THEN I would not accurately explain what I'm speaking of because of how hard it is to say these things in words we both understand. If by some miracle it would require someone with a reasonable grasp on metaphysics to understand, and a person not entirely indulged in materialism. Even in what I wrote I see problems that may arise from it if taken in even a slightly different understanding.

For example, I know I'm practically spamming, the point where I say "known by some as Trans-Euclidean Geometry", I don't mean that is what it literally is. No, what is is known by many names, the Will, the Soul, the Nous, some more accurate in explanation of what it is. Some ignorantly call it "dark energy", failing to see (not literally) that it's not material. Tesla called it the Mediator, some called it Inertia, some called it the Ether or Aether, other God and others zero-point energy. I've called it truth. All are pointing towards what it is really, which as I said is just a unmanifest null-point. You can very easily confuse this as religious, however it isn't. Religion is secularized metaphysics. It would be accurate to say that it's spiritualistic however that doesn't really express what it truly is. It dictates everything that happens in the universe, which can be semi-accurately said as pressure mediation. Meaning that everything happens coincidentally out of necessity, meaning that our Soul (what I just said to be the Ether, God, Mediator but a different manifestation of the such) is there coincidentally. This is what is known as a Void in it's original sense of the word. A void is like a wave, in a constant state of becoming and becoming again. You can continue to add this onto what Gravity is, which really in actuality doesn't exist. It isn't space and time, both space and time being measurements made by humans. Both being a reified shadow. Gravity is incoherent acceleration, magnetism being coherent acceleration. Coherency is an entire other thing entirely.

I'm rambling on. However it annoys me to see you fools speak of such ignorance without a care in the world.

I suspect that this post is part of a bet to see if OP can get to 100 replies while posting inconsistent nonsense.

So why recommend Plato and Aristotle as the "wisdom of the ancients" if they have no authority, then proceed to recycle their concepts—poorly—in a system which has nothing at all to do with either? It's sheer lunacy.

Total nonsense. There is no "trans-Euclidean geometry" in math; non-Euclidean geometries are based on either removing Euclidean axioms (usefully; removing lines and points would be ludicrous) or posing alternative axioms, usually changing the parallel postulate to something else (e.g. the cases of hyperbolic and spherical). What you're describing has nothing at all to do with any kind of geometry.

How can you complain about being misunderstood when you're outright contradicting yourself from one post to the next?

In it's divine simplicity comes such depth that the primordial tools of man can never accurately express it's even most basic concepts.

Math is a tool. Math is a human concept, it has no basis in reality. This is what many people forget. Math should only be used as an expression, just like language (speech). This is what is called knowing the numbers but not the meaning. I use the two because they're a good step into the understanding of the metaphysics. They are certainly not the authorities, they're long dead.

It is that, Trans-Euclidean Geometry. It is most accurately said to be a modality of the unmanifest null-point, a field. It is not a contradiction. It is an example, if I said that physicality is a rock but that's not what it literally is would I be contradicting myself? After all, physicality isn't just a rock. Euclidean himself speaks of something preceding Geometry.

inb4 ban

I should state that this is what a field is in principle. An unmanifest null-point. Meaning it's immaterial. I'm tired of this constant explaining. I also believe that no one is willing to sit and actually understand what I speak.

Triggered. You are fucking stupid

It is my failure for not being articulate.

Then that's something you and math have in common.

You don't seem to know either the numbers or the meaning, judging by your abuse of both mathematical and philosophical concepts.

It's not a field by any common definition of the term, but you're changing the meaning of words and concepts at will so who knows what "field," "modality," "null-point" or even "the" mean in that sentence.

My words have been consistent and true. Perhaps the basis has not be laid out? Either that or you've already assumed what I'm saying to be babble.

I've concluded that this board is willfully ignorant of both politics and philosophy.

this is what happens when you don't take school standards seriously and allow idiots to set those standards

This is probably the most absurd thing you've said yet.

You've already amply demonstrated your ignorance in the latter and I have little doubt of it in the former. You'd do well to read the philosophers you mentioned, if only for the sake of avoiding future embarrassment.

Either way, "your" metaphysics is full of flaws. I clearly demonstrated(which you neglected to reply to) that a statue of a man can never be truthful, it's only an extrapolation of real material things and it's roots reside in the mind of the artist which holds no eternal truth, and is only relevant and relative to the artist. Surreal art and realistic art are both extrapolations of material things - there exist no eternal truth beyond this. Their basis is not qualitatively different, they're just different ends of one mean. Which makes your post in laughable, since you can't define any of your positions beyond being a 3deep5u contrarian metapmhysist. Your points about space and time being arbitrary human distinctions is even more ironic, considering even though space and time are both relative forces they are a lot more eternal than any type of art, let alone "true" art - whatever that means.

When you say religion is secularized metaphysics your completely right. I see no difference between you and the ravings of an evangelical. Incoherence and arrogance are your trademarks.

I applaud you for sticking with it.
I would have just called it a day and said "spooks" hours ago.

No thanks

I have accurately told every point. It's rather strange since you seem to completely miss the point of most of my writing and I doubt you even read any of it. Sadly, however, your stupidity is entirely your own. Your inability to understand the metaphysical, to understand the most basic of concepts is strange. I have to ask whether or not you're too narrow-minded to understand anything beyond your tiny materialistic world view.

Since you refuse to consider any of my writing I then suggest that you read the writing of the people who created almost 100% of our electrical engineering theory, N. Tesla, Heaviside, JC Maxwell and CP Steinmetz. Have fun claiming they're idiots for not believing in your materialistic delusions. This will be my last post. Hopefully this thread dies.

Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.

Marx was the gravedigger of metaphysics. Take your bourgeois, reactionary horseshit elsewhere.

Yo, isn't that the dude who wanted to fuck a pigeon?

You have yet to clearly define any view of yours in this thread and I challenge you to point to where you did. There's a reason metaphysics declined and that's because its unfalsifiable nonsense. And I don't care if those scientist held metaphysical views. Newton, Keplar believed in some sort of metaphysics as well. I don't have to accept someones entire world view just because I agree with one part, and I don't think they're idiots. I think you are. I'm glad you're done posting and that your "field" of philosophy is mostly dead in the ground, partly due to the fact that incoherent esoteric lemmings like you are the ones who advocate it.

My strange excitement in discussing this makes me linger on here more. I will say that you've completely misunderstood what a field is. I'm not speaking of a field of study, I am speaking of the immaterial fields. Gravitational fields, Magnetic Fields, Electric Fields, all these things are what I speak of. No, claiming that I'm an idiot is claiming that these geniuses are. I have clearly defined every view. Sadly the limitations of speech, and I would add on to say the limitations of your intelligence has allowed such misunderstandings as your post is a clear example of. Here is a quote from one of my favorite books on magnetism.

Your TV, cellphone, car, computer, hard drives, absolutely everything you touch or use every day is run off either a permanent
magnet or magnetic fields or powered by them at their source; however there is not one person on this earth that knows what a field is,
what magnetism is, what instant action at a distance is and what mediates it (since it is by particles). We use, replicate, make, and
utilized magnets on every corner of the earth and yet all that is present are descriptions of the nature of magnetic uses, but not a single
logical or rational explanation of what magnetism actually is. The world is long in descriptions, for which even a child can
accomplish. True genius arrives where explanations begin and descriptions end. The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ have eluded humanity on
magnetism for far too long. Most amazingly to myself and not to the other lemmings of the world is that magnets are found in every
device we use, our cars, phones, televisions, hard drives, headphones, the list in utterly stunning and without end but we are either free
not to care or too busy to bother to understand. We, as peoples reproduce magnets and use then in enormous quantities but have no
idea what they are.

But wouldn't the recent discover of gravitational waves disprove these things being immaterial in their entirety?

Except the ones laid out in the OP, about why one branch of art is more real than the other if they're both subjective interpretations of the artist. If it's because music doesn't "represent the material world", I would beg to differ. The notes the composer strings together are influenced by real life events and are his interpretations of different moments in his life, just like a statue.

magnet or magnetic fields or powered by them at their source; however there is not one person on this earth that knows what a field is,
what magnetism is, what instant action at a distance is and what mediates it (since it is by particles). We use, replicate, make, and
utilized magnets on every corner of the earth and yet all that is present are descriptions of the nature of magnetic uses, but not a single
logical or rational explanation of what magnetism actually is. The world is long in descriptions, for which even a child can
accomplish. True genius arrives where explanations begin and descriptions end. The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ have eluded humanity on
magnetism for far too long. Most amazingly to myself and not to the other lemmings of the world is that magnets are found in every
device we use, our cars, phones, televisions, hard drives, headphones, the list in utterly stunning and without end but we are either free
not to care or too busy to bother to understand. We, as peoples reproduce magnets and use then in enormous quantities but have no
idea what they are.

I don't see how this is unique to magnetism and not just material matter in general. We can touch and sense material matter, but have no idea what an atom is. We know its structure, but not its origin. Since we know gravity material exist, I wouldn't go so far to say magnetism is immaterial, but that the source of all material forces(including those not available to the senses) is immaterial. What your saying is similar to Hume's critique of science(which I largely agree with seeing as Kants "eternal" space and time were shown to be relative),but I hardly see how this has any bearing on art and what makes "true" art.

Not even once

This tbqh. Plato was a reactionary fuckstick that permanently poisoned Western thought.

Democritus is the best philosopher.

"Aristoxenus in his Historical Notes affirms that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect"

SO MUCH FOR SOCRATES, PLATO

Nah. The guy that used to relentlessly shit on Greece's bourgeois culture and told fascists to fuck off and die was the best philosopher.

This

In a rich man's house, the only place to spit is in his face.

???

Barrel Man is best.

It seems like this whole thread, he made an arbitrary distinction between material forces we can sense and ones we can't(in truth, the source of both is what we can't sense) and somehow, this relates to music being less real that statue( which are represented in time and space which according to him are arbitrary human distinctions).