Did I ever say that there is only one procedure? Quote me saying it. The fact that you have to choose a finite number of points to test means that there is more than one procedure for determining whether something is a circle or not. There is a procedure that picks a hundred points, a procedure that picks a thousand points, a procedure that picks a million points and so on. It is not me who’s saying that there is only one procedure. If there is someone saying such a thing then it is James.
Yes. We want to understand how that process works. And we only want to do so up to a certain level of precision that is of interest to us.
That’s not important.
That’s a sufficiently precise description of how we differentiate between circles and other shapes. You can derive it on your own using nothing but introspection. But if you want you can also derive it by observing how other people behave.
That’s all he does. And he’s been doing it for years. It’s pathetic.
His definition is all-exclusive. In other words, there is no phenomenon that can be categorized as a circle. According to James, nothing is a circle. Instead, there are phenomena that are more or less close to what a circle really is. Even though nothing is a circle there are phenomena that are more or less close to circles. I think that’s a seriously backwards way of thinking. It’s like how people can’t accept that the concept of Absolute (or Universal) Truth is meaningless and instead cling onto it by making excuses such as “no theory can ever reach Absolute Truth, theories can only come more or less close to it”. The button on my monitor is a circle. The CD on my desk is a circle. It is not close to being a circle. It IS a fucking circle. That’s what a circle is. Sure, some circles are more perfect than others. What this means is that there is a RELATION between more and less perfect circles. In the same way there is a RELATION between taller and shorter people. When we say this or that guy is tall we do not do so in relation to some PERFECTLY or INFINITELY TALL guy. We describe things in terms of other things. Not in terms of meaningless concepts. When we measure the length of a line we do so in relation to some smaller line. We ask: how many of these smaller lines can be synthesized, i.e. put next to each other, in order to form the main line?