How do we know a tree is a tree?

Question

A wise Arostotle once said: "When I see a tree, I know it is a tree because my mind perceives the form of treeness in it."

Thoughts? Comments?

Spelled Aristotle wrong. It's Aristotle, not Arostotle.

Answer 1

Correct, but the form of treeness that is registered in the mind is based on a consensus about what the characteristics of a tree are.
Such a consensus is culturally determined and it is quite possible that some other culture does not agree at all that everything WE call a tree is a tree indeed.
Aristotle was only right as long as all people involved (he himself and his audience) belonged to the same culture.

Answer 2

It's a tree because it's not a dog, cat, astronaut, supermaket, highway, ocean, garbage pail, shoe, concubine, jet, atom bomb, whipped cream, desert, thunderbolt, lava flow, school, fish, dinosaur bone, prison...

If all we had were trees without dirt, sky, squirrels--
1)you could not recognize it without that backdrop
2) supposing you could, in the "world of trees", since they are all that's given, they would be differentiated according to their dissimilarities. A cedar and an oak would be as different as a cat and a dog.

And that still doesn't stop the tree from being a cleverly designed portal into the negaverse.. which we can never know by looking at it. Recognition is normative.

I agree with Saurwelios answer also.

This is an actual philosophical question ... in the philosophy section, I can't believe it.

Answer 3

Aristotle had not made it clear whether the'treeness' is a product of several attributes or the manifestation of a single essence. Frankly, Aristotle's saying is as good as a priest's testimony, 'it's in the Bible'. You know a tree is a tree because of empirical knowledge - the green leaves, stem, roots, fruits.

Answer 4

There are two possible explainnations, I think.
Firstly, language is arbitrary. We call 'it' a tree because the rest of the world so call. ''Tree" is just a word, we can call a plant with trunk, branch, leaves by another word, like ''trye'', and that word can be popular (like ''tree'' now) only if it is widely accepted and used.
Secondly, it is because materials came first, then thought. Imagine a new-born child, the first time he looks at a plant with trunk and branches and green leaves, and he asks his Dad 'What is it called?' ' A tree,' he replies. From that time on the child connects the image of 'a plant with trunk and branches and green leaves' to the notion of 'a tree'. So later whenever he sees that image, the word 'tree'' will immediately comes in his mind.

Answer 5

That is real nonsense. We have first invented "the form of treeness" by separating what we call the tree from its surroundings (separating it in our minds, "distinguishing"). A tree is *not* an individual (literally), it is divisible, infinitely divisible (into branches, leaves, cells, molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, etc.). We have first invented the idea of a "particle". We have thereby projected our own imagined individuality into nature, which is really one big moving mass, one big flux (a mass which is moving within itself, "changing"). We had to distinguish ourselves from our environment in order to interact with it, in order not to disappear in it, lose ourselves in it, be absorbed and devoured, disintegrated, by it. Next, we projected our imagined individuality on parts of our environment, so that the subject would have objects to interact with, and not just one big object - "the world" - with which it could not do anything (you cannot grasp the whole world, only relatively separate parts of it). Eventually, this projection became instinct, we *forgot* that it was *we* who first invented the concept "tree", and began to imagine there was something like a "tree in itself"...

Answer 6

Try this for size. What if what you call a tree I have been brought up to believe is an elephant? My mind percieves it has a trunk, therefore it is an elephant ;)

It is only a tree because of the general consensus.

Answer 7

Sounds like somebody was smoking trees when he wrote that. We know a tree is a tree because we humans made up the word tree, and thats what we want to call it. So it is what it is.....

Answer 8

Similar to how we know that the symbol '1' is ONE, '2' is TWO. That's what we are taught. If I were to put you in seclusion and tell you that the object we perceive as tree is called a MONSTER, who is there to refute or concur with you!!!

Answer 9

Elimination process, my dear. if a cat is not a tree and a dog is not a cat then the tree could not be a dog and the cat is surely not a tree,so if the tree is not a dog and the cat is not a tree,the tree must be a tree! SIMPLE!

Answer 10

We know a tree is a tree, because Pete the Koalas dog is sniffing round it,and there is no light at the top.