[696] Re: The kicking of rear ends.

It would be easy to fall into a false dichotomy here. It's entirely possible for his shape to affect his mind/mood... but not necessarily determine them.

I'm not completely sure what you're hinting at here, but it just occurred to me that the body Reynardine is currently occupying doesn't actually have any sensory organs, so he must either be sensing his surroundings magically, or his presence in the toy has enhanced the faked organs to actually work. That may also give a different result

Why debate points that La Goon has already demonstrated aren't applicable to the topic at hand? Clearly you can't generalize the situation of an immortal folk spirit in the body of a cotton-stuffed toy to any reality-based theoretical philosophy.

In my humble opinion, having watched this back-and-forth for several pages, it still seems to me that the best course of action is to just accept what Tom Siddell said about his own creative work, and accept that Rey was being sarcastic, and be content with that.

One could certainly debate the points of whether a theoretical real world person's world-view would be changed by transformation into another creature (Kafka's Metamorphosis, anyone?), but what I'm trying to say here is that such a debate would have no bearing on what we can expect from "reality" in the given case, where you're talking about a different kind of entity in a fictional universe.

Would it be too troublesome to point out that Rey isn't even changing bodies?

Eh, I've posted and then subsequently deleted two different posts responding, but ultimately decided that engaging this just isn't worth it to me. Suffice to say that I for one see some very large inconsistencies in your differing arguments. Got way more important things to think about than this debate though... no insult to you, of course, it's just that this is merely a Pointless Internet Argument.

It is a change. A shape change. He doesn't have several bodies and switch from one to another. (Where would he stash them, to have them always on hand?)

I'm not sure this whole deal is really relevant - likely we'll see Reynardine's current body weight change between heavy and light as the plot requires. I say this not to kill the discussion, but to suggest that Tom is probably not going to feed you too much information on it, because in the comic itself it's not really important.

Agree.



Okay, I think I can untangle this confusion about what I've been saying if I clarify two points.

First, the only time I favorably mentioned Aristotelian Forms was as a side note. Reynard's transformations so far seem to be limited to wolves because the toy he possesses is a stuffed wolf, so Forms may be in play within the fictional universe of the comic. If they are in play then it strengthens my argument about the importance of changing bodies/forms/shapes (see below).

The post you quote might have been more clear if I'd written "doesn't that mean" or "doesn't it follow that" instead of "does that mean." I wasn't arguing for the Forms of sense organs in reality. I was asking if we all agreed that sense organs have mechanical traits so we could move on to the implication that has for my argument. I've tried to clarify this twice before but appear to have failed.

The implication of sense organs having mechanical traits and not Forms is very important to my argument because if bodies' senses work mechanically then reality is experienced differently from body to body and form to form. The greater the difference in the mechanical construction of the sense organs, the greater the difference in how reality is experienced. [See? I was going somewhere with that.]

Second, I have been using the words "body" and "form" and "shape" interchangeably because for my argument it doesn't matter. The quality or amount the body/shape/form changes only affects the degree of impact the form/body/shape later has on the mood/mind. That's where the distinction of degree comes in once we've established that it's a possibility.

Again, I agree that the mind/mood of Reynard is in complete control, but the form/body/shape he assumes when he changes then has an impact on his mood/mind. The impact may be minimal or even negligible but we do have evidence within the comic that bodies have mechanical traits instead of Forms. We also have a Formspring response that if Reynard possessed a girl his voice would sound like a girl, which I would argue means that Reynard's possession doesn't alter the mechanical construction of a living body per se. With a nonliving body he appears to have a lot more ability to transform it, including increasing its mass and changing the shape and characteristics.

Oh believe me, nobody regrets where this thread's gone more than I do. All that philosophical-speak in my previous post was at least as tedious to write as it was to read.

However, I felt obligated to write it to defend my previous highly-controversial positions such as Reynard acting a little different in big wolf form, and maybe having an obligation to protect and comfort Antimony because he's in the body of a stuffed toy.

[edit] On further reflection, if a single reader anywhere on the net was entertained then it was all worthwhile. [/edit]

Bless you, though I don't regret my ideas... just my lack of ability to clearly communicate them. Even now I can't think of a simple and concise way to explain the reasons behind them.

At least I didn't bring up Ernst Mach or Edwin Boring.