Chris Bacon wrote:
bigegg wrote:
What a strange thing for a "philosopher" to say - if you
put your cat in a sealed box, is it alive or dead?

That is a very simplistic question.

It's also a very simple one to answer., It isn't anything until you make
such a judgement call on the cat as to determnine, in human terms, which
of the sets of deadness and aliveness it falls into.

Is the hair on your head alive? Or dead? does it cease to be alive when
you cut it? Where does a cat end? What constitutes a cat in the first
place? Is a cat minus a paw still a cat? Is a cat minus its fur still a cat?

The map is not the territory.

For humans who deal exclusively in maps, the only certainty is that
there are maps, and there may be territory, and their would appear to be
mapmakers.

The territory doesn't really care, one way or the other.