A friend writes:
"It's completely absurd to attempt to draw some sort of deep relationship between animals which have wings and animals which fly. There are just too many exceptions! Lot's of things have wings but don't fly, like ostrichs and also that serving of chicken which I had for lunch yesterday. There are also lots of things that don't have wings but still fly, like my cousin Bob, the airline pilot. Also, Time sometimes flies, but I don't see how wings can be reasonably incorporated into the theory of Einsteinian four-space. So Einstein himself has disproven all this racist nonsense!
"Furthermore, both "wings" and "flight" are very poorly structured definitional categories, hence neither one really exists. Exactly the sort of "categorical mistake" we learn to avoid in Modern Philosophy 101."
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6 comments:
I agree, a lot of the opposition sounds about like this.
For a much more informed opposing opinion, see this recent interview with James Flynn over at gnxp:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/12/10-questions-for-james-flynn.php
In my experience, anyone associated with philosophy - but particularly people who merely took a course or two in college - are the worst but most pretentious thinkers ever. Their training consists in mindless quibbling; every analogy by an opponent is described as "strained" (even when not), every term is described as "loaded" (especially when the term is accurate), and every "always" is derided: "But surely 2+2=4 is not ALWAYS true! There are always exceptions!!" Sorry if this sounds harsh, but they seem to be in the same category as education majors.
Not according to their SAT and GRE scores in math and verbal ability.
Can anyone say definitively, at any given time, whether it is day or night? When does day begin and night end? Vice versa? You mean, it changes by latitude? It changes by the time of the year? What? You microlatitudinarian supremacists! Night and day are socially constructed and are meaningless. Anyone who thinks the terms night and day mean anything at all is a loser, Nazi and a racist.
Also, didn't Bill Clinton win the Rhodes scholarship? He must, must be an apartheid enthusiast and an unrepentant white supremacist exactly like Rushton who sucks off the Pioneer Fund teat.
The full link for the GNXP Flynn interview is http://www.gnxp.com/blog/
2007/12/10-questions-for-james-flynn.php
philosophy major said:
Not according to their SAT and GRE scores in math and verbal ability.
That's a strained analogy with loaded terms and are you dogmatically implying it's always true? I win!
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