A poll:Follow

Yes, that's the point.



All of this is true, but it's not relevant.



This is incorrect. If someone puts value in having X it does not guarantee X to have ultimacy in terms of value. Certainly you recognize that and have merely misspoken, but this little distinction is the entire point.



The money is not your end in any case. Again, provide an example. Make one up, using any caprice you'd like. You aren't going to get it. Money is peculiar in that it's concept simply is not something which can be valued as your ultimate goal. Part of what makes money, money, is that it it considered to be valuable for exchange, and if you rob money of that potential to be used, it ceases to actually be money. The second you treat money as an end it simply isn't money anymore: it's paper.

It's like saying that a bag of old bones and entrails is a human being. It was once before but is no longer. Both a human and money have certain conditions which make up their conditions and definitions, and if you remove something required, it doesn't fit anymore. The only difference here is that a human being requires consciousness as one of it's qualities, whereas one of those necessary conditions for money just happens to be the potential use of it as a means.



Crying false dilemma doesn't actually work when the dilemma is true. Sometimes you have A or not A, and you simply can't have both at the same time.

I can save or not save money. We should be able to agree that the latter is immediately not an ends. If the former also does not allow for the existence of an end, then there is quite simply no other option, and any attempt to consider money as an end is an exercise in self-delusion.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 2:19pm by Pensive

At a certain point money is simply a means of keeping score. There are people who for whom simply acquiring more money is their actual goal, they have no need for it, nothing they will get with it, nothing they could do with it, aside from perhaps using it to get even more money. It also doesn't cease to be money just because you don't use it. And it always has the potential to be used. Perhaps that would make it easier? People like acquiring more potential? It's the same thing.

I'm not going to pretend it's a view that makes sense to me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Imagine if I liked pipes. I would collect pipes, and have hundreds of them. I never smoke, because I don't like smoking, but I like pipes, and simply having one more pipe is an end in and of itself. Do the pipes stop being pipes because I don't use them? Am I really just valuing wood and plastic in a certain form? Because this is what you seem to be saying.

True, but use doesn't determine value. And the problem with the idea that being secure is the goal falls apart when people continue to value money after their security is assured.

I've found a flaw in your argument, sir!

I have a Danish Kroner that a client brought back and the bank won't let us deposit (they don't take foreign coins). It has a hole in the middle of it, and I think it's pretty. I put it on a chain and wear it around my neck, 'cause it makes me happy. That piece of money is an end, and not a means!

It's like my analogy with a child. If you don't know what money is used for, that it has a value and can purchase something, or if the money is obselete (the gold coins that the Franklin Mint sell), then it becomes an end and is no longer a means!

Am I right?

I disagree. That's basically the end of any meaningful or mutual clarification. I would like to amicably put up a pretty close analogy I thought of in the shower, to show how this process can happen, even if you don't think it does with cash.

I think it's a decent comparrison to make the sort of destroyed-in-the process-of-honouring-it sense about money as the same one as is in virginity.

Now just imagine a dude who's been really snookered by the puritans into the notion of respecting virginity forever but he, in a very similar and understandable (if you may empathize with such conflicting morals act of rationalization, decides that the best way to honour the idea is to engage in it's consummation with his wife every day! The thing you're trying to honour as an end simply can't endure the process which converts it into one; you have to ruin the very thing you're trying to value because it simply isn't something which you can simultaneously value and preserve.

This is not a perfect analogy. You could actually value virginity as an end by never breaking it. I want to illustrate just a simple point though for your consideration, in that some things must break to have the value that we normally give them, and money without that sort of breaking simply doesn't work as money. You can value the things which compose the idea as ends sure, but it's a hard notion to swallow that a pool full of paper actually counts: it doesn't have the same behavior, use, function, or even value (not even by scrooge.) Maybe it looks like a duck, but it's not quacking, it's not walking, and it's not swimming like one.



I took a rock off of my shelf from an old rock collection, put a rope around it and hung it from my lamp. Your coin is not currency anymore than that rock. With a little work and modification, both could become money, but they really just aren't at present.

(I did not actually take a rock; just pretend I did ok?)

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 3:00pm by Pensive

But your rock was never currency. My coin is currency. It's not been ruined by my making a necklace out of it or my valuing it apart from what can be done with it.

Look at the stores who frame and hang their very first dollar bill. That dollar bill is still money. But that dollar bill is the end, not the means. They want to keep that dollar bill, not because of it's worth $1 USD, but because of the emotional value it has. It never stops being a dollar. If someone broke into the store and emptied out the cash register, then broke the glass and took that dollar just for spite, they could spend it.

ETA: Your analogy about the rock is no different from any of Xarus's analogies about items, by the way. It doesn't work in the same context because it's not the same thing as money.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 2:11pm by Belkira

Um... sure?



Sure it is. It can still be spent. It's value is not gone. If the proprietor got really thirsty and needed that dollar for the vending machine, he can take it down and use it at any time. The deer heads in your father's bedroom are still deer, yes. Dead deer, I hope, but deer nonetheless. It is also a trophy. Items can have more than one label, more than one use.



Why won't there be money anymore...? Of course there will be, unless the physical incarnation of every coin and paper bill is destroyed.

Not really. You don't have to destroy or consume a pipe in order to enjoy it.



Because that's not what "money" means.

Bringing me to the next point

This dispute is terminological at this point. It's an arbitrary ******** about what a single word means, and doesn't have much to do with a dispute of reality, but rather clarity and communication. Now, the only reason for anyone to continue to mutually ***** about those sorts of things is a general sense of pride and knowledge of the usage of a word, but I @#%^ing hate purely terminological disputes, meaning from this post on further dialogue changes from useless but having at least redeeming esoteric intellectual value to being utterly arbitrary and pretty much worthless because it consists of lots of people saying the same thing with different words.

In that regard, on a constructive point at least, I would say, that if you insist on holding what you hold as "money" as a concept (why shouldn't you? you need not use the same words I do,) that you should make up some new words for what I am indicating, whether or not you give up your present word choice. I really don't care what words you use if you do, in fact, make different ones.



Function, and it's not things, just certain things which are functionally manifested, like intelligence, sensation, consciousness, beauty, etc.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 3:44pm by Pensive

How can I enjoy a pipe if I never use it?

I agree with you on the terminology, and I've stated that the last two posts I've made. I'm not entirely clear on what your definition of money really is, aside from the fact that it is inextricably tied into it's use. I understand that argument, seeing as money is largely imaginary, and is mainly a voucher that lets you acquire something else. I don't disagree with this definition, but I'm still going to maintain that people, for whatever reason, can value the simple possession of that voucher, without any intent to use it. The ability to spend it is still there, and that's what they value. That ability to spend, is essentially what money is these days, and while I find it absurd to place value in that for itself, that does not mean people don't.

Pensive, let me know if that ability to acquire something is what you mean by money? Or else define it please.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 2:53pm by Xsarus

This is what bothers me about Pensive, and why I don't usually enter into these conversations with him:



So, we're wrong because we don't see things as you do (and, really, as a Philosophy major, one would think that you could understand that different people perceive things differently, and it's not black and white) and, to further that, we've degraded into a semantic argument that should no longer be discussed. Oh, and we're instructed to begin using different terminology because Pensive says.



It's frustrating. I quit.

I did not say this



I did not say this



I did not say this

(

This isn't a universally applicable maxim. If it was, it would kind of be self-defeating. Always think about context! There's a pretty obvious contradiction.



Yes, misinterpreting posts and intuiting non-existent malicious intent is a very fast qay to get bothered, I would think.

Look, writing in response to stubs? Malicious intent. look, it's totally right there.

Ugly: again, malicious intent, pure diatribe!

Xsarus and belkira: not there

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 4:03pm by Pensive

yeah, I know, I just like bugging you

Most choices of words can be changed, and are unnecessary. It isn't necessary to use words like esoteric or conflate, other words will be more widely understood. You have a good vocabulary and enjoy using these words, instead of using of a combination of simpler words, and that's fine. This doesn't make them necessary, and you would be better understood if you chose not to use them. Please don't stop though, I think everyone should know as many words as they can

Also I don't care, talk to me about money.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 3:07pm by Xsarus