Regarding "Non-Universal" Concepts and Concept Manip

[Executor_N0]

I think that it's more a case of how we are going to explain why we saw that a soul is different from a concept. Simply saying that a concept needs to be 'something above the soul", really isn't a good explanation. With is why I said that we should simply work with a multi-layered existence, with multiple levels of existence (material, spiritual, ideal, etc) and simply use "metaphysical essence" to refer to these things. The power level would be defined by the own franchise in relation to how many of these levels of existence and how they relate to each other, and then things like "souls, minds, concepts" will loose the meaning that we use now and became totally dependent on the names that are in the franchise.

Although we could give a general difference to these abstract things, like saying that a "conceptual" essence would be a more "universal thing" that is shared among the particular, and this is the diference between the "concept" and the "soul".

 

[Agnaa]

Wouldnt that be Type 4?

No. Type 4 concepts don't change reality when they're modified, the concepts Bob's referring to do.

 

[Bobsican]

No one is going to object at all the current draft of Executor N0? Normally complaints or things that seem off would have been discussed by now.

 

[Agnaa]

No one is going to object at all the current draft of Executor N0? Normally complaints or things that seem off would have been discussed by now.

I haven't even read it. But don't take the lack of objections or approvals as an approval.

 

[Bobsican]

Of course, after all, no one has actually said stuff in the lines of "I agree with it being applied" either, respectively.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

From what I understand this thread is attempting to apply standards that go for any verse which utilizes and has souls of some sort, which doesn't make much sense to me.

There is no objective definition of what a soul is. In the context of a fictional story, it's a made-up idea that's completely up to the author's personal beliefs of what a soul is, and we can't use any real-world analogy to describe and define a 'soul' without dipping into theological debates that predate the wiki by millenia.

Meanwhile we at least have concrete definitions of what a 'concept' is under platonic and Aristotelian theory, and the art of philosophy is a lot easier to discuss and dissect than any given religious system.

A lot of these revisions don't make any sense to me at all, but on specifically the above point I soundly oppose it, if I'm interpreting it correctly.

 

[Agnaa]

I don't understand much about this, but after talking to some people off-site, I'm not sure if there's any issue that needs to be fixed here.

I don't know what the **** the KH example is, so I'll respond to the examples that were actually explained.

Kakegae Yuzuriha, Fate Origins, and I/O

Individual people having their own concepts doesn't make those concepts non-universal. The concept applies to everything that partakes in it (making it universal), even if only one thing currently does.

Nasuverse, different concepts in different worlds, aliens only have their native concepts

That just sounds like different parts of the universe have different fundamental laws/axioms. Concepts are just ideas, mental abstractions. Like you said, those concepts don't go away when aliens go to other places, so it's not like those worlds cannot have other concepts, they just don't natively have them due to different fundamental laws.

 

[Antvasima]

So we do not need to make any changes here?

 

[DeathNoodles]

Not exactly:

Anyways, I have no particular opinion on this topic, although I can see myself agreeing with Executor in that maybe "Conceptual Manipulation" needs to be widened into something looser in definition. From what I see, the problem seems to mostly come from how "concepts" as the page defines them are different from how specific verses may define them, so it often creates cases of incompatibility, like in Fate as mentioned above.

Although we might need more input about changing the Conceptual Manipulation page's definition of the types of concepts and the specifics of those changes.

 

[Agnaa]

Specific verses being weird can usually still be reconciled. We don't need a new category of Concept Manip for every weird fictional take on concepts.

 

[Nehz_XZX]

Cases like that would probably still warrant an explanation on the page for Conceptual Manipulation since we would want to avoid confusion in such cases.

 

[Agnaa]

I disagree, explanations for those belong on character profiles, verse pages, and explanation blogs.

 

[Nehz_XZX]

Well, I just thought that a general explanation for weird cases of Conceptual Manipulation might be nice since it would be relevant to the power. I'm not in favor of including every single variation of Conceptual Manipulation in fiction on the page for it if that is what you thought.

 

[Executor_N0]

@Bobsican This isn't a "current draft", it's just a informal blog were I'm trying to explain these concepts to "you", trying to explain what a "concept" or simply "essence" really is (While I also tried to explain other concepts, such as the one of nothingness/non-existence). If I would made a "draft" for changes, that would be done in a very different way.

@Dargoo Faust I don't know what gave you that impression, in no time I think I said that. Anyway, if we have two franchises that have the same principle derived from emanationism or other philosophies about levels of beings with souls, spirits and minds existing in higher planes of existence, we simply doesn't have a reason to say that manipulating this is really different than what we consider "conceptual manipulation".

Both are the ability to control some higher essence that exists in a higher plane of reality and the only difference would be that a particular essence would affect only one being while the "concept", the universal essence, would affect multiple things at once.

And then we encounter the problem that simply because a franchise uses the term "concept" to refer to every essence, even particular ones, we'll use "conceptual manipulation", but if another series uses the term "soul/spirit/essence" to refer to the particular essences, we normally would simply call it "soul manipulation" or something like that, unless someone tries to call it "conceptual manipulation" and turns into a big debate that sometimes are accepted simply by exhaustion (I'm thinking about Kingdom Hearts or even Sailor Moon, although in this case there was the addition of "essence manipulation" to the profiles).

For some, putting "Essence Manipulation" is the same as putting "Conceptual Manipulation" and we just don't put it because "It doesn't really look like a concept". I don't think that if we adjust our Conceptual Manipulation page any more than something like "The power to manipulate a essence that exists in a higher plane of reality/level of being that determinate what some "thing" is in a lower plane of reality".

Its fits what concept manipulation is, doesn't create any confusion to separate concept and soul/spirit without solid evidence and after that we would simply need to explain the idea, and any more specify rules would be in the profiles themselves.

 

[Antoniofer]

Welp, as I said, by writting the standard definition for all these terms would be enough to differentiate concept from soul or essence, something between the words of:

• Spirit: The non-corporeal essence of the beings/matter.
• Soul: The immortal and non-corporeal essence of the living.
• Essence: The set of attributes of beings/matter that made what it fundamentally is.
• Concept: The general definition of something specific on the universe.
• Principle/Archetype: The complete and fundamental characteristics behind everything in the universe.

Of course, those are paraphrased and simplied definitions and can be better, but keeping it simply works, so people doesn't need to google philosophy concepts to known about the power.

 

[Overlord775]

Spirit and Soul are almost always threated as the same thing tho

 

[Antoniofer]

Kind of the same, the soul is the immortal spirit, only sentient beings have it almost all the time; however, you'll find stuff like the spirit of the forest or mountains, that aren't sentient (may be fitting to the definition of essence in few cases). Soul is for those beings that can go to an afterlife an such.

 

[Overlord775]

actually no, most of the time non-sentient beings have souls too

spirits of the forests or mountains are just non-corporeal beings and most of the time are sentient too

 

[Antoniofer]

Really? We assume that entities such contruct and machines are soulless, as they aren't sentient (or perhaps, sentient wasn't the correct word, and concious beings is more fitting?). And when I said spirit of the forest/mountain/environment I do not mean a manifestation (like a magical deer or something), but that "essence" that makes it "alive" (call it life-force).

 

[Overlord775]

We assume machines and contructs don't have souls because they are made artificially and don't have the spark of life

i was talking more of stuff like animals

and that's not how nature spirits are threated tho, the manifestation thing is how there's basically always potrayed as

 

[Antvasima]

I have to unsubscribe from this thread due to time constraints. You can notify me later via my message wall if you need my help after you have reached a conclusion.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

I don't know what gave you that impression, in no time I think I said that.

This entire paragraph, for starters. That and if this text gave me the impression in the first place, my impression was reaffirmed greatly by everything that follows in this post.

I think that it's more a case of how we are going to explain why we saw that a soul is different from a concept. Simply saying that a concept needs to be 'something above the soul", really isn't a good explanation. With is why I said that we should simply work with a multi-layered existence, with multiple levels of existence (material, spiritual, ideal, etc) and simply use "metaphysical essence" to refer to these things. The power level would be defined by the own franchise in relation to how many of these levels of existence and how they relate to each other, and then things like "souls, minds, concepts" will loose the meaning that we use now and became totally dependent on the names that are in the franchise.

We can't say any of this until the verse itself does; a franchise can sort of pull whatever it wants out of it's ass when attempting to talk about souls, minds, and concepts, which are all completely up to interpretation by any individual, barring the mind when it's being discussed as a part of the physical body. Like I said earlier philosophy is easier to discuss but even then we have extremely flexible standards regarding stuff like concepts since barely any of the time when a verse makes some obscure reference to Plato or Aristotle does it accurately represent their ideas in the work.

Anyway, if we have two franchises that have the same principle derived from emanationism or other philosophies about levels of beings with souls, spirits and minds existing in higher planes of existence, we simply doesn't have a reason to say that manipulating this is really different than what we consider "conceptual manipulation".

I'd honestly be surprised if there was more than two franchises total that matched this incredibly specific description.

What do we consider as conceptual manipulation? Without the verse itself making specific references to concepts of some kind, we have no objective definition of what a concept is; just two-three somewhat popular definitions we try to defer to.

Both are the ability to control some higher essence that exists in a higher plane of reality and the only difference would be that a particular essence would affect only one being while the "concept", the universal essence, would affect multiple things at once.

Just because two things share properties does not make them identical, to begin with. Even if we objectively defined a concept as what you're describing, something we have not and hopefully will not ever do, something being at "a higher level of existence" doesn't automatically mean it's some kind of Ideal Form, especially when so many verses that use language like that have completely different ideas of what they mean by "higher level".

Again though, there is no objective definition of a concept or soul. It's entirely up to the jurisdiction of the verse that uses those terms; us trying to extrapolate a 'default' meaning that ultimately isn't there is dishonest.

And then we encounter the problem that simply because a franchise uses the term "concept" to refer to every essence, even particular ones, we'll use "conceptual manipulation", but if another series uses the term "soul/spirit/essence" to refer to the particular essences, we normally would simply call it "soul manipulation" or something like that, unless someone tries to call it "conceptual manipulation" and turns into a big debate that sometimes are accepted simply by exhaustion (I'm thinking about Kingdom Hearts or even Sailor Moon, although in this case there was the addition of "essence manipulation" to the profiles).

This makes very little sense to me.

What we call a power and what a power's specific functions and mechanics are, are two different things. For example, we'll call a magic-user's flame spell Fire Manipulation, when it functions entirely different than the real-life chemical reaction, which we'd also call a manipulation of fire if a character is using something like a flamethrower.

So we call it concept manipulation if the verse calls it concept manipulation. Platonic theory and Aristotelian theory are two entirely different schools of thought, for example, but we list them both under the same power. Same goes for soul manipulation. Trying to make an objective definition for either is a fool's errand, no offense.

For some, putting "Essence Manipulation" is the same as putting "Conceptual Manipulation" and we just don't put it because "It doesn't really look like a concept". I don't think that if we adjust our Conceptual Manipulation page any more than something like "The power to manipulate a essence that exists in a higher plane of reality/level of being that determinate what some "thing" is in a lower plane of reality".

I mean, if we just change our definition of what concept manip is, we can make it describe anything we want, even something wholly unrelated to what we'd normally describe under that power. For stuff that's so subjective as concepts and souls, it's far less confusing to just use the linguistics that the verse does.

Which does make this particular point purely a matter of linguistics, if I read this right; in which case I don't see the need to haphazardly rename stuff on the site.

Its fits what concept manipulation is, doesn't create any confusion to separate concept and soul/spirit without solid evidence and after that we would simply need to explain the idea, and any more specify rules would be in the profiles themselves.

Hopefully I'm speaking for many other users here who have also commented this, but this entire thread seems to be a confusing mess, and I still have trouble understanding exactly what you're proposing unless it's just using different linguistics for our powers, in which case it would have been really great if it was simply explained in the OP.

I'm still against this proposal.

 

[Tyri456]

From the Conceptual Manipulation page:

Concepts that are not abstract or universal, such as those outlined in Idealism and Nominalism, do not qualify for conceptual manipulation of any kind. For a character to qualify for conceptual manipulation the character must be able to manipulate abstract and universal concepts.

I think that, this make sense

 

[Executor_N0]

@Dargoo Faust If the series doesn't use the concept, then we shouldn't use it. I'm not trying to determinate what the verse should do, I'm just giving a idea to try to demystify what some people think "concepts" are. The very blog that I started writing was simply I trying to explain these concepts in a informal way so when I would need to explain to someone, I could already have the idea of what to say.

If the franchise says that a "soul" is X, "mind" is Y or anything else, it's fine. In the very blog I said that the name means nothing without its meaning. If a franchise says that the "mind" are electrical pulses in our brains, then it's fine. The same if it's said the soul is simply matter that fallows other laws of physics, then it's fine.

I never tried to make this the standard to any series or anything like that, I'm just trying to say that in some franchises they are the same thing, but the lack of using "concept", makes hard to apply this power in the profiles, the same when it was accepted simply because the word "concept" was used without simply explanation.

I still have trouble understanding exactly what you're proposing unless it's just using different linguistics for our powers, in which case it would have been really great if it was simply explained in the OP

Well, I agree with that but.. This isn't my thread, it wasn't really my idea to create it, and If it was for me to create it, then I would make it in a whole different way.

But for now, I'm simply a random person in this thread trying to say what's in my mind. Nothing more than that.

 

[Elizhaa]

From the Conceptual Manipulation page:

Concepts that are not abstract or universal, such as those outlined in Idealism and Nominalism, do not qualify for conceptual manipulation of any kind. For a character to qualify for conceptual manipulation the character must be able to manipulate abstract and universal concepts.

I think that, this make sense

I also think that makes sense.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, I agree with that but.. This isn't my thread, it wasn't really my idea to create it, and If it was for me to create it, then I would make it in a whole different way.

But for now, I'm simply a random person in this thread trying to say what's in my mind. Nothing more than that.

What's to be done then?

 

[Agnaa]

@Bob You're the one who made the thread, what are you trying to get changed? What's the issue that lead you to making this thread?

 

[Bobsican]

Let's see the retrospective

First, after all the clean-up on KH profiles I do the other KH CRT to review the removed stuff from scratch with new proof, etc.

Then, some stuff gets accepted, Dragon and Executor N0 push stuff into being "essences" and the entire discussion turned into universal and non-universal concepts

Finally, it goes to the point I go ahead and do this CRT because aplying such idea of the new "Essence Manipulation", that appears now that I think about it to have been something Executor N0 and Dragonmasterxyz should have kept for a wiki-wide separate CRT later (As this also affects many other series as discussed briefly in the OP).

Overall, it seems the entire thread came from me wanting to push the idea of Executor N0 to see if it was actually relevant and so on, as it was the main thing that was affecting the discussion on the other CRT I was on (and there being many other series this would affect, as said in the OP), so I guess Executor N0 should start doing a "draft" page eventually so this can go somewhere.

 

[Executor_N0]

If changing our "Conceptual Manipulation" standards isn't a good idea, what about simply updating "Soul Manipulation" and explain that could exists "higher souls" or simply "thing that are different to souls, that are to soul what the souls are to the body". Basically explain that there could be more than one level of "soul" and these other "souls" could have a different name.

After all, I think that the main problem is that there are franchises where the "being" is made with something more that isn't the soul, and since this "abstract thing" is said to be different to the soul, then the "concept" is the first thing that some people think.

Since we can't add something like that to the "Conceptual Manipulation" page, I think that simply adding the idea that could exists other types of "soul" that could even be "beyond normal souls" to our "Soul Manipulation" page is a nice option.

And I think that this is the simplest option. No necessity to change our standards very much, only update one page so that it include things that some people think that it should be separated.

 

[Agnaa]

I don't know any series like that so I can't tell how necessary it is.

 

[Bobsican]

I don't know any series like that so I can't tell how necessary it is.

Well, it appears that this affects a surprisingly high amount of verses, practically nearly all verses with the mere idea of "conceptual" things targeted to a single being, like, for example, "Conceptual Existence Erasure", as unless they scale to being able to affect the universe with such abilities, even if of abstract nature and so on, they would be totally affected by this, as it's either this or just getting the ability totally removed as it doesn't qualify by the current conceptual manip standards, and we all know this sort of abilities can't exactly be ignored either and need an standard, as said in the OP

 

[Antoniofer]

I would avoid to separate more powers into types, by creating an Essence Manipulation and simplifying the Concept Manipulation one is what I consider more appropriated. If not want to go through definitions, just take into account that essence is based on identity, and concept is based in perspective.

 

[Agnaa]

Well, it appears that this affects a surprisingly high amount of verses, practically nearly all verses with the mere idea of "conceptual" things targeted to a single being, like, for example, "Conceptual Existence Erasure", as unless they scale to being able to affect the universe with such abilities, even if of abstract nature and so on, they would be totally affected by this, as it's either this or just getting the ability totally removed as it doesn't qualify by the current conceptual manip standards, and we all know this sort of abilities can't exactly be ignored either and need an standard, as said in the OP

I already explained to you that this is false.

Concepts being "universal" doesn't mean "they need to affect the universe", it just means that they need to affect all objects that participate in that concept, even if that is just one object because the concept is so niche.

So conceptual EE, and any other concept-hax that targets one specific being is still fine.

 

[TheUnshakableOne]

I think conceptual manipulation being simplified would be a good start, before loosening something considered "OP" up..

Or maybe we should be a lot more stricter on what qualifies as conceptual manipulation?

 

[Nehz_XZX]

I think conceptual manipulation being simplified would be a good start, before loosening something considered "OP" up..

Or maybe we should be a lot more stricter on what qualifies as conceptual manipulation?

If the qualifications for Conceptual Manipulation become stricter, we'll need to decide as what powers, which wouldn't qualify any more for Conceptual Manipulation as a result but are still obviously of an abstract nature, would qualify as.

 

[Bobsican]

Bump.

Once again, any other ideas on how to expand the standards?

 

[Antoniofer]

What even qualify as "ones concept"? If most of the times it refer to stuff like "that immatterial thing that makes all of you", the it doesn't qualify as concept, as it doesn't involve the point of view of others, and instead it qualify as essence, that represent identity.

Is not really that hard, although we can't standarize what does involve to damage the essence of others, as effects vary from "downgrading" the target to erase part of its memories.

 

[Executor_N0]

And this is why I would like to use "Essence", simply using "Concept" makes sometimes hard to apply some of these things. Although it seems like most of the ones here don't want a change mostly based on linguistics.

I think that simply updating Conceptual Manipulation page to explain a bit more about the "immatterial thing that makes all of you/this thing" would already be a nice idea.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

Once again, any other ideas on how to expand the standards?

Again, you've failed to actually present any issues that would require the standards to be expanded. We can't say how it would be updated until we know what problem needs to be addressed.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, in that case, I guess Executor N0 is the one with the main idea, as I'm really only following, overall.