The Most Important Boat is the Literal or Metaphorical Boat?
At first, this debate may seem inane, but really it's looking for something deeper:
Is a literal (physical or real) boat the most important thing?
or, Is a metaphorical (an idea or concept) boat the most important thing?
Can we have ideas without objects, objects without ideas?
Literal Boat
Side Score: 1
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Metaphorical Boat
Side Score: 3
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I chose the literal boat because you can call anything that gets you from point A to point B on the surface of the water a boat. For example, a log. If humans had never seen a log floating on water, and maybe even jumped on the log in order to cross a river, we may have never come up with the idea of a boat. Side: Literal Boat
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Knowledge is a purely human concept (as far as we know); animals follow patterns and learn the causes and effects of actions, but we cannot say they fully understand the action to begin with. In order for the boat to have been "created", first, we acquired knowledge of water; how water flows, wind and air flow around water, depth, etc... Second, we took these concepts and created a "tool" to ride on the surface of the water, efficiently. But, without this knowledge, these concepts (ideas), we would have never ridden on the surface of the water in (what we call today) a "boat". After, we have ridden on the boat what remains isn't the physical boat. It's the idea of the boat that we remember. Our subjective view of that boat is what remains entrenched in our mind for the rest of our lives. Side: Metaphorical Boat
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