Yep.Kripke argued that the essence of a gold atom is the property of having an atomic number of 79, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of a gold atom. — Arcane Sandwich
If your philosophy of language forces you to ho and hum and deflect away from questions like "did cockroaches not exist until humans decided to 'count' them as such?" then yes, that seems like a rather major defect. — Count Timothy von Icarus
So you do think insects existed prior to anyone deciding what counts as an insect? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Anti-essentialism can only get one up to a certain point. "Essence" might be an ugly word for an analytic ear, yet Kripke argued that the essence of a gold atom is the property of having an atomic number of 79, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of a gold atom. Kinda hard to argue with that, even if one isn't an essentialist. — Arcane Sandwich
Others, perhaps you and I and maybe Dawnstorm, think that there may be multiple ways to divvy up stuff, each of them capable of being coherent if not complete. — Banno
...there is also nothing essential to insects? — Count Timothy von Icarus
And "fish" was used to describe whales for a long time. But clearly, while whales were whales before man, whales were not both fish and not-fish during this period. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Fossil record doesn't say much. Whatever fossils we have of anything are a miniscule fraction of individuals that have existed.
The name? Just nonsense. — Apustimelogist
Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect? — Banno
Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect? [/I]
It's not correct for insects at all times. Consider the caterpillar. Which is not to say that I don't think that we can unambiguously delineate insects, we clearly can (although there might be ambiguities in classification in edge cases). However, the basic rules for word application known to all competent speakers of a language often do not accomplish this delineation particularly well. That's why science has specialized terminology.
Which makes sense. Entomologists do not study insects and refine their intentions towards them by studying how the word "insect" is used in normal language. Physicists do not primarily study physics by observing how that fields terms are used by the average English language speaker. To say "you can identify what an insect is by looking at everyday language," is getting things backwards. Often, a term is created in the sciences and only later enters everyday usage, and often everyday usage diverges from proper scientific usage.
How are these questions distinct?
Extensionally, they are identical.
And there is no such thing as a fish.
This seems like an argument from ignorance. I know of no reputable biologist who claims that there have actually been very many hominid-like families throughout the history of Earth, just "lost to time." There are just the fairly recent hominids. And the same are true for many families.
What's the idea here. "A man like species could have walked the Earth with the dinosaurs, or any time since, but we just don't know about it." But not only this, but it's "very likely." I don't think so.
The idea that very many families of hominid-like animals have evolved many times is highly unlikely for a number of reasons. — Count Timothy von Icarus
But it's the thing signified by the scientific term that existed before man existed, not "whatever the term can apply to." I hope you can see the problem here. Insects can't have existed before man and be defined by however "insect" is used in normal language, because the term is used in various ways in different contexts in normal language. This would mean that some things would be both insect and not-insect. Nor can they be defined by "however science currently defines 'insect,'" since this would imply that whenever a scientific term is refined the being of past entities is also thereby changed. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yet morphology can be a useful way to classify species. Biological species are very complex, so we should not be surprised if there are many useful, correct ways to classify them. But what they are, their existence, does not seem like it should depend on our classifications. Otherwise, they would undergo a fundamental change whenever we reclassified them (although note that, if all predication is per accidens, then what something is does change when we speak of it differently; mapping the coastline changes what it is, reclassifying animals might cause fish to vanish from history, etc.) — Count Timothy von Icarus
Must we pretend? Do dogs do not exist outside human linguistic frameworks? — Count Timothy von Icarus
If your philosophy of language forces you to ho and hum and deflect away from questions like "did cockroaches not exist until humans decided to 'count' them as such?" then yes, that seems like a rather major defect. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If you have to affirm nonsense like "fish don't exist," it's a knock against your philosophy. Fish would have existed in Melville's day as both a commonly recognized type of animal and a scientific designation. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, yes, as I said, it's not a great example. We might get out our CRISPR and re-arrange the genetics of a fruit fly so that it has an extra body segment and two more pairs of legs. Is it still an insect? — Banno
I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology. — Banno
Good question. I've no idea. I can see arguments for, as well as against. — Arcane Sandwich
Although it does not seem that evolution is always very gradual (e.g. proposed cases of observed speciation). There is evidence for rapid evolution due to bottlenecks, fertile hybrid offspring reproducing in the wild, etc., and the whole EES controversy. It's an open question how larger shifts in anatomy (e.g. hands to wings, hands to fins, fins to hands, etc.) — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yet neither is the argument: "Either species are defined rigidly in this way, or they don't exist," a good one. It's a false dichotomy. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Processes can be more or less stable. We can think of an entire ancestral line as a process. For some species, such as the cockroach, the process has been in a fairly stable equilibrium for an extremely long time, perhaps 100-300 million years. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yet if two species are indistinguishable, even upon close inspection with instruments, then in virtue of what could they even be said to be "two species?" — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology.
The extension of a predicate is the list of individuals to whom it applies. In your example, the set of animals having six legs is an insect, and it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect. That is, the set of animals that have six legs and the set of animals to which the word "insect" applies are the vey same. they are extensionally equivalent. (Part fo the problem here is the one mentioned much earlier, where it remains unclear what you think an essence is, especially in extensional terms).
Well, no it isn't, but if it were, then that might be a good thing.This is to make language into first philosophy. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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