Ask Lemmy

I see this classic question as a sophistic trap premised on a false dichotomy. You can create "categories" of things in any way you like and then drive debates about what they mean or imply.

I'll look at this one:

1. A live person is a body, but a body can also be dead, so "life" must be Aruvam.
2. But how do you know if something has Aruvam? It moves? It reproduces? A river does both of those.

It then usually goes on one of two directions:

• Lots of things look and act like they're alive; therefore Aruvam must be in everything, and the whole universe is alive, and there's your religious framework.
• Or: Aruvam clearly can't be in a chair, since a chair doesn't demonstrate Aruvam in any observable way by. Rivers might fulfill most of the qualities of life, but they clearly don't demonstrate Aruvam. So only some things have Aruvam and so they're imbued by something with this holy essence, and there's your religious framework.

I think this is all lazy, and built on sloppy ontology. I've decided that my new word, Bliggigly is everything that poops, and everything that doesn't poop is Fanfasma. So: is life Bliggigly, or Fanfasma? Debate! And then, create a religion around it, get a few generations behind it and gather up some texts written by some philosophers on the subject into a book, make it a canonical holy text, and now you've got everything you need to have a good holy war against the infidels.

Under Tamil philosophy, life is clearly Aruvam, because that's how they've defined their categories. You have a li ving person. You kill them. The same body exists; this must be Uruvam. So the difference must be Aruvam, therefore life must be Aruvam. Oh, but now we get to say that Aruvam is distinct, and we get to infer that there must be a spirit.

But: can rocks have Aruvam. Why not? How do you tell if a rock is happy? What makes a rock happy? We don't like getting broken up, but maybe that's the greatest thrill for a rock. Or, rocks can't have Aruvam - why not? Can you prove rocks don't have Aruvam? Can you prove dead people don't?

Choose your categories, and you have to build religious frameworks around them to make sense - but, ultimately, it's all predicated on some distinctions that are axiomatic and yet unprovable, and yet people build entire cultures around this stuff.

I believe Aruvam and Uruvam is a false dichotomy, and poor distinction that falls apart under scrutiny. It's interesting to debate it for the sake of the argument, but there's no intrinsic Truth you can derive from the debate. Anymore than you can glimpse some Truth about the universe from Bliggigly/Fanfasma.