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• A reply on Conversation: Where does arguing semantics get us?

  Mar 24 2012: Hehe, yeah. A specific issue is good for getting people interested, but when it's controversial, there's a risk it'll drown out the larger conversation (as, indeed, I'd argue the case is in the example; the controversial semantics issue drowns out the larger issue of the veracity, extent and fine details of evolution).
  
  Made another edit today and reduced emphasis on specific arguments against Kohlmayer's assertion that we're not apes; don't want to risk contaminating the discussion with too many of my own opinions on that specific matter.

• A reply on Conversation: Where does arguing semantics get us?

  Mar 24 2012: A very interesting point. Very often in the debate about abortion, somebody will ask the debaters: "When does life begin?" or "When does an embryo become a human?"
  I'd wager that if you'd ask a biologist, they'd almost certainly answer that the very first diploid cell formed from the merging of a sperm cell and an egg cell constitutes a lifeform, and I also have little doubt they'd classify it as human.
  Those who are against abortion will often say that life - human life - begins at the moment of conception, while those who support abortion seem more skittish about this, because words like "life" and "human" carry a lot of emotional weight with us.
  
  However, that really doesn't seem to get us anywhere, because carrots are alive and most of us have no ethical problem with eating them, and skin cells are living human cells but we don't mourn the loss of each individual skin cell. To that extent I agree with the bio-ethicists mentioned in that article, not saying anything about their conclusions; if we're going to talk in terms of very broad categories, we need to be careful about making sweeping generalizations about those categories.
  
  Switching focus to personhood seems a good idea on the surface of it, but unless people can agree on what they're actually talking about, and actually talk about the societal and moral ramifications before they start lumping things into categories, there's a risk we just switch from one argument over semantics to another.

• A comment on Conversation: Where does arguing semantics get us?

  Mar 23 2012: It was probably a mistake of me to make this specific case so big a part of the discussion. Tried changing some of the wording to make it more about the larger issue of definitions and arguing semantics, and less about whether or not we were apes.
  
  Please let me know if you have any feedback on how I can improve the original post!
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Where does arguing semantics get us?

  Mar 23 2012: Indeed, a rigorous, universal description gravity as a vector function carried more explanatory power than "It's that thing, when you fall" ... and yet, I sometimes find myself describing gravity in terms closer to the latter description than the former.
  
  I suppose there are really two different things to consider:
  WHAT is the definition in use?
  and
  HOW is it being used? [Is it to be taken literally? Is it to be applied universally? etc.]
  
  Certainly, Newton meant for his description to be taken quite literally and universally, and so it was, and that's both what makes it so useful and what's allowed scientists to falsify it.
  
  Descriptions like "It's that thing when you fall" are certainly not meant to be taken too seriously; they're over-simplified descriptions that we give to children or use in extremely casual conversations.
  Problems don't start to arise until somebody gets it into their head to apply it more broadly than intended, and start using it in arguments without explaining what they really mean.
  
  
  The article I liked to in the original post seems a prime example. Below is my (admittedly rather subjective) summary of said article:
  
  
  The author takes a quote by a person, D, who's using a particular who's using a particular definition of the word "ape".
  He argues against that definition by setting up his own definition of an ape, without addressing the definition that D is using.
  
  He concludes:
  D says humans are apes. I've shown that they're not. Therefore, D is wrong about evolution.
  
  What he SHOULD have concluded was:
  D uses a particular definition of apes. I use a different one.
  D claims that humans are apes by his definition. I have not addressed that claim, but just so you know, according to my definition, they're not.
  
  
  In the end, because the article focuses too much on the words being used and not enough on what's being conveyed by them, it ends up having little value to the subject it's meant to address. [At least in my opinion.]

• A reply on Conversation: Where does arguing semantics get us?

  Mar 23 2012: That certainly seems to be the case in Kohlmayer's article, but I'm sure there are many who would disagree with you. For example, anthropology professor John Hawks: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/phylogeny/taxonomy/humans-arent-apes-2012.html
  
  Another person writes in a comment related to Hawks' entry:
  "I’m an organismal biologist and I am all about the monophyly of formal taxa.
  On the other hand, I think it’s kind of arrogant of biologists to insist on redefining centuries-old vernacular terms for groups of organisms to match recent advances in phylogenetic taxonomy."
  http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/were-all-apes-including-dawkins/#comments
  
  
  That being said, even if it were the case that the only reasons to argue against calling apes are religious, the question remains:
  
  Are we spending too much energy on discussing semantics?
  Are we too obsessed, perhaps, with words being used "correctly"?
  
  What impact do semantics really have on an argument, so long as one is conscious that there are different definitions in play?
  
  Certainly, there are cases where a semantic misunderstanding can lead to an erroneous argument. For example:
  
  "The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy - which is a fancy word for "disorder" - of a closed system will always increase over time. But I just cleaned my room with the door and windows were closed! In order words, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is wrong."
  
  In these cases, we need to point out to the person that the definitions they're using to make their argument don't match those which are used to state the Second Law of Thermodynamics which he uses as a starting point, and therefore his argument is not necessarily valid (and, in fact, in this case it's just plain wrong).
  
  The same pretty much goes for Kohlmayer's article, but the argument we should have then is not whether or not his definition is correct, but rather its significance for the conclusion he draws.

• A comment on Conversation: Where does arguing semantics get us?

  Mar 23 2012: My own thoughts on the matter:
  
  Language is many things: A tool for communicating concepts, a tool for eliciting emotions, a toy to amuse oneself with...
  
  When one moves into the field of assigning labels to things, however, and when one uses those definitions to formulate arguments, I feel that one needs to emphasize the first role - a tool for communicating concepts - and the main merit of a definition becomes clarity.
  
  At this point, referring to some authority becomes useful.
  "X says W is defined as D. Please bear this in mind when considering my arguments."
  
  If you wish to use a definition that is widely disagreed with, and the concept it describes is central to your argument, it's a good idea to acknowledge common definitions and explain how yours differs.
  "X says W is defined as D. Y says W is defined as E. In my argument, I shall be defining W as F. Please bear this in mind when considering my arguments."
  
  It also becomes important to keep this in mind when quoting people as a part of your argument:
  If you define W as F, and you find a scientific paper linking W to X, you can't always assume that the paper says there's a link between F and X; you must ask yourself: "Are we using the same definition of W?"
  
  If you do this, people may still argue over whether or not it's a good definition by whatever virtue, but at least anybody wishing to analyze your argument will have the ability to do so, because whatever definition they prefer, they can "translate" your argument using the "key" you've provided.
  This allows the conversation to move on to the argument itself, without getting bogged down too much in semantics*.
  
  
  *Not to say that semantics aren't INTERESTING, because I think they are (otherwise I wouldn't have started this thread); it's just that sometimes you want to keep discussions separate, and it's seldome appropriate to use semantics as an argument for or against a theory in, say, evolutionary biology or cosmology.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Can we prove Aristotle�s �Prime Mover�:Everything that happens is caused by something else?Then what caused the first cause?

  Mar 7 2012: It is worth noting that the big bang theory does not necessarily conflict with the idea of an eternal universe; consider, for example, the cyclic model of the universe proposed by Steinhardt and Turok (I haven't looked directly at their research, but they have an excellent pop science book called "Endless Universe").
  
  You may already be aware of this, but what you're asking is very similar to asking "Does the Kalām cosmological argument stand up to scrutiny?"
  As such, my recommendation to you would be to search the internet for people arguing for and against this argument.
  A good place to start is, as always, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81m_cosmological_argument
  (see also the video at the end of this post)
  
  I'm a university Physics student planning on getting my Master's in theoretical physics, but I'd be lying if I said I understood much about the science of the early universe. As such, I won't try to account for modern theories of the beginning of the universe. I would however like to make one more reflection:
  
  A common feature of these discussions is "the law of cause and effect"; causality. I'd like to point out that this law is based on observations made within the universe; between different events in spacetime.
  If there was no time before the big bang, we cannot assume that the law of cause and effect holds sway here.
  We can ask if it's still valid; we can posit it as a hypothesis and see where it takes us. What we can't do, however, is to use it as proof for anything until we've shown that it's actually valid. If we do, we have to rely on an appeal to intuition...
  ...and while intuition is a great tool, and not to be underestimated, in science, it takes a back seat to evidence.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUYjnL2PqUg
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

  Aug 4 2009: I do not believe that you are meant to take them as indicators of morality, and certainly not as indicators of "correct" morality. To quote Haidt's own words, these are "the sorts of things that people talk about across disciplines, that you find across cultures and even across species?"
  What he stresses is that we weigh these concepts differently; the goal here is not to find a philosophy which maximizes the emphasis on all of them.
  
  This scale is not meant to tell us what is moral, but rather how people judge what is and what is not moral. While it is of course a gross simplification, I believe that it does in a way explain why we find Nazism to be immoral: Across ideological lines, people place high emphasis on "harm-care", and we perceive Nazism to place high emphasis on loyalty, authority, and purity at the cost of care (and fairness).
  
  "we [...] feel compassion for others, especially the weak and vulnerable. It gives us very strong feelings about those who cause harm."