3 ms·
1000 and 2000 are big numbers. 10 and 20 are not. One can have a legitimate debate about 48, 70 and 99 being big numbers. But not 30, 28 or 19.
by FreeHugs 7y ago
1000 and 2000 are big numbers. 10 and 20 are not.
One can have a legitimate debate about 48, 70 and 99 being big numbers. But not 30, 28 or 19.
- lisper 7y ago"Big" and "small" are not properties, they are relations. 1000 is big relative to 0.001, but it is small relative to 100000000. In common parlance, "big" and "small" are often used in context where the thing being related is implied, and usually taken to be a human being. Mountains are big (relative to humans) and ants are small (relative to humans). But ants are big relative to atoms and mountains are small relative to planets. But "conscious" isn't a relation, it's a property. Normal humans are conscious. Rocks are not. This is not to say that consciousness might not be a continuous property rather than a dichotomy; it almost certainly is. Nonetheless, there is a point at which the degree of consciousness in a system is indistinguishable from zero, at which point it is no longer useful to say that the thing is conscious.