Talk:xliver

RFV discussion: December 2022–February 2023

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xliver

xheart

These look like nonces used in the work of a single author. Ioaxxere (talk) 03:39, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

lol, I see Daniel Carrero found a new non-attestable hobby after Pokémon. Equinox ◑ 04:07, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Maybe I should try creating some new Pokémon entries. I created Pokédex the other day, that one looks attestable. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 13:38, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

These terms seem to have been coined by Eklund (2006), who used them as nonces to make a specific philosophical argument. But more recent philosophical works by multiple other authors have also used the terms, including Thomasson (2015), Lubrano (2016), Brenner (2018), Miller (2021), and the Gaskin work already cited in the entries. Might be worth comparing the Quinean sense of cordate, which passed RfV and is a somewhat similar case. I can still see potential arguments for excluding the terms (independence, conveying meaning), but I think making a judgement on that would require investigating the sources in greater detail than I have so far. Another very notable philosophical nonce is grue. 70.172.194.25 04:10, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Cf. the citations I gathered at incar when that was put up for RFV, the last one of which in fact references xhearts/xlivers with no context. If the terms are in general use by authors in metaphysics as 70.x's citations suggest then I don't think they can be considered non-independent or (at this point) nonce words. With regards to conveying meaning, it's worth bearing in mind that the authors are discussing the status of the things these terms refer to, not the words themselves, so I doubt that criticism would hold up either. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:36, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Are the other cites using the term independently, or referring to the original usage? The cite included in the entry is clearly referring to the original usage, and not independent. - TheDaveRoss 16:15, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

(And here I wondered if xliver was a rare spelling of cross-liver a la xdresser, ha.)
Thomasson (2015) attributes the term to Eklund ("Eklund's xheart/xliver cases"), as does Gaskin (2020), and perhaps some of the others, which means we have to judge whether it's being used independently or just quoting Eklund. The Gaskin quote in this entry and in incar does not seem to be using the words independently of Eklund (indeed, whether it's using the words at all is debatable, "objects that Eklund mentions [...] such as incars and xhearts/xlivers" is a bit mention-y, like "words Eklund uses, such as foo and bar"; certainly it doesn't seem to be using the word independently of Eklund). I can believe there are independent uses out there, though. - -sche (discuss) 22:40, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

(Festive night-time wall of text incoming, apologies in advance.) I made the same point over incar, but there's a bit of a red herring with independence IMO because WT:CFI#Independent has a very clear and narrow definition of non-independence, i.e. either it's the same author or "verbatim or near-verbatim quotation". That narrowness seems right to me because there are plenty of terms associated with specific people that are rarely brought up without some kind of attribution to those people, especially in niche terminology like this, and that shouldn't count against their attestation. For example, the term transvaluation has broad currency in certain corners of philosophy but is near-exclusively associated with Nietzsche, and unsurprisingly both of the citations there are either by him or discussing him explicitly. The narrow definition at the CFI avoids this becoming a grey area. I'd ultimately reject the relevance of whether a concept is attributed or not if the immediate author is discussing it in their own words.

In case of xheart etc. things are complicated by the fact that these are terms exclusively used in metaphysics in the context of discussions of the metaphysical status of the theorised objects they denote. Because of the field itself and the nature of those discussions they're not going to be used in the same way as a mundane noun, but it's worth being very clear that the discussions are about the referents and not the terms, so they are uses and not mentions. Likewise in the case of the "Eklund mentions..." quotation I don't think it's a mention of the term as we define it—what's being mentioned are the objects, not the words, and the author's making a point about those objects that contributes to understanding what the words refer to (i.e. they're 'things' whose existence as things is debated). I do imagine there are better citations out there for xheart/xliver though. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:36, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Definitions

Are we sure we have the definitions right? I cant get to the original 2006 paper in which the terms were first defined. I only can see some of the later ones. But hold up .... we have xliver defined as A hypothetical thing said to exist if a liver exists but no xheart exists (thus deliberately creating a contradiction, because an xheart exists if a heart exists but no xliver exists).

Where is there a contradiction? If there exists a heart and a liver, there can also exist an xliver, and we can stop right there. Because the xliver exists, there is no xheart. And because there is no xheart, the xliver can exist. Where is the contradiction? It actually makes perfect sense, and I thought I might have been misreading something until I drew it on paper with pictures where I can typically understand things better. Did we misread the original paper, or is there something Im missing? Thanks, —Soap— 01:31, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

I won't be digging around for specific citations tonight (so my rambling above should be taken as contingent on actual verification), but I believe the definitions as currently written are wrong, yeah. The point is that xhearts are things that are the same as hearts but only exist if xlivers don't exist at all, anywhere, and vice versa for xlivers being just like livers but only if xhearts don't exist at all anywhere. It's not about xhearts etc. existing in a particular body. They are not contradictory in a paradoxical sense, it's just that the general existence of one presupposes the general nonexistence of the other, which creates a meaningless but apparently necessary choice. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:43, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Oops, sorry if the definitions are wrong so far. I wrote them. I don't mind if anyone wants to change them. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 03:45, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the conclusions of this discussion are, but since no new quotations have actually been added to the entries I will close this as RFV Failed Ioaxxere (talk) 02:49, 9 February 2023 (UTC)