Re: KT boundry event


uraniumcommit...@xxxxxxxxx kirjoitti:

neverbetter wrote:

So, let's say the theory that some group left no living descendants is
discredited;

You're assuming the conclusion. Is there a sale on question-beggging
today?

I got the notion earlier that you accept the evidence that birds have
evolved from dinosaurs. True or false?

True. The question is the equivalence of "birds have evolved from
dinosaurs" and "birds ARE dinosaurs". I reject the latter formulation.

If you agree that the theory that the group of dinosaurs left no living
descendants is discredited, you have no reason to say that this sentence was
question-begging and assuming the conclusion. There is some actual *evidence*
that dinosaurs are living descendants left by dinosaurs.

I agree. That is not the same thing as saying "birds are dinosaurs".
Those are semantically distinct utterances.

Yes. This means that no conclusions were assumed.

If you think
that this fact alone implies that there's an assumed conclusion that
birds are dinosaurs, then maybe you should ask yourself why you thought
that. Because it's logical that birds are dinosaurs if they're their
descendants?

Not everything that is a descendant is still the same. Whales are not
fish.

If that is so, what is question
begging about this? Are you now saying that the evidence that birds
have descended from ancient dinosaurs is false?

No. Not at all.

What group did they
descend from then? If birds have descended from dinosaurs, dinosaurs
have left living descendants.

So what? Fish have left descendants that inlude whales, but whales are
not fish.

The first eukaryotes left a lot of descendants that differ greatly from
their ancestors, much more than whales differ from fish or birds from
extinct dinosaurs, but you're still okay when people call whales, fish
and birds eukaryotes. Why? The differences are far greater, and yet
they're the same group.

Because one is a scientific name that is intended to be inclusive, and
the other is a vernacular term that is NOT intended to be inclusive.
This is what I have been trying to get across for several days now. the
rules for using 'eukaryotes' and the rules for using 'fish' are
different, just like the rules for using 'fellatio' and the rules for
using '(censored)'.

No reason why words can't shift their meaning and become more or less
inclusive. 'Car' was intended to be inclusive of the things they knew
back when they invented the word but we have broadened the usage to the
things we know now.

Also, there are plenty of other words whose referents are somewhat
different in scientific usage and common usage and people are able to
handle it. I can't see why terms for groups of animals would be more of
a problem. When we say that we're going to eat fish for dinner,
everybody knows from the context what we refer to; nobody is going to
ask "Salmon, frog, whale, chicken or beef?". When we say that whales
are not fish, it's understood from the context that we mean to
emphasize the fact that they're mammals and the group characteristics
that differ from salmon. When we say that humans are fish, it's
understood from the context that we are talking about systematical
evolutionary relationships and emphasizing the similarities between the
jawed vertebrates.

This is something you teach children:

http://www.edhelper.com/AnimalReadingComprehension_11_1.html

Well, the texts intended for third graders are hardly ever the whole
truth about any matter since they need somewhat simplified facts. Let
them first learn that whales are mammals and what it means, there's
plenty of time to get them acquainted with the whole slew of
cladistical notions later. It would be confusing to children to read
that whales can be fish in a sense and non-fish in another sense but
adults with normal abstraction ability can usually handle that.

I think it is absurd to say whales are fish in any sense of the
vernacular usage of 'fish'. I'll not even discuss it with you.

Fine, you don't have to, but the fact remains that there are other
things beyond vernacular usage. Which, incidentally, can also change.

http://students.ceid.upatras.gr/~pirli/whales/whales.html

This doesn't appear to be a page with educational materials for
children, it's just the homepage of a Greek computer engineering and
informatics student who happens to like whales.

So?

So it's hardly what I would choose if I wanted an example of how the
proper usages of English words relating to biology are taught to
English-speaking children. It's not educational materials, it's not a
page by a teacher and not even by a biologist, it's not a reading
comprehension exercise (the site looks like it could be a course
project), and since the words may not have exactly the same referents
and inclusivity in Greek and English he may be following Greek
conventions instead of the ones preferred by you for English words.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... Word usage has everything to do with language. ... that the vernacular term "fish" is not generally used to refer to the ... dinosaurs is getting to be that way, ... record of birds by this definition actually predates, by just a bit, the ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... The word 'fish' does the job it is asked to do. ... Absolutely unacceptable to say "birds are dinosaurs". ... are not 'insects', but no great harm is done in using this term by the ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... living dinosaurs but for some time didn't recognize them for what they are. ... The trouble with saying that birds are ... their most recent common ancestor. ... Whales are artiodactyls. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... creatures that were thought to be extinct at the time. ... living dinosaurs but for some time didn't recognize them for what they are. ... The trouble with saying that birds are ... Whales are artiodactyls. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... I know you won't accept it, but Mark *is* a fish. ... whose distant ancestors were not men. ... doing the analogous thing with birds. ... analogy to calling birds dinosaurs is calling whales mammals. ...
    (talk.origins)