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Question So I was having an argument with a friend that went a little like this: He was saying that because he was a genius, he walked like a genius. I was saying this was logically invalid, that is, he couldn't walk like himself. If there was a particular way of walking that was specific to geniuses, and he was walking this way, then fine. He could be walking, and he could be a genius, so his walking was a genius walking, but it wasn't like a genius. He couldn't be like himself; he was himself. Who was correct?

Accepted:
March 9, 2011

Comments

Hm. Technically I'd ahve to side with your friend. The relation "is like" strikes me as a perfectly reflexive one, as the logicians might say: everything is like itself. If "being like" is a matter of "being similar", then why wouldn't "identity" simply be the hghest degree of similarity? Everything definitely IS identical with itself, ie maximally similar to itself ... If so, then a genius definitely could walk like a genius .... (Now your debate might have other things going on: you might be relying, say, on ordinary English usage,a ccording to which it sounds a little strained to say something is like itself; but then we should distinguish between the logical status of the relation "is like" and the ordinary usage of the phrase "is like", and you can both be right!)

hope that's useful...