Bad Dogs and Defective Triangles

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Is a dog with three legs a bad dog? Is a triangle with two sides still a triangle or is it a defective triangle? Perhaps if we just expand the definition of triangle a bit we can have square triangles.

There is a point of view that holds that to define something we must say something definitive about it and that to say that we are expanding or changing a definition makes no sense if we don’t know what it is that is being changed.

It is of the essence or nature of a Euclidean triangle to be a closed plane figure with the straight sides, and anything with this essence must have a number of properties, such as having angles that add up to 180 degrees. These are objective facts that we discover rather than invent; certainly it is notoriously difficult to make the opposite opinion at all plausible. Nevertheless, there are obviously triangles that fail to live up to this definition. A triangle drawn hastily on the cracked plastic sheet of a moving bus might fail to be completely closed or to have perfectly straight sides, and thus its angles will add up to something other than 180 degrees. Even a triangle drawn slowly and carefully on paper with an art pen and a ruler will have subtle flaws. Still, the latter will far more closely approximate the essence of triangularity than the former will. It will accordingly be a better triangle than the former. Indeed, we would naturally describe the latter as a good triangle and the former as a bad one. This judgment would be completely objective; it would be silly to suggest that we were merely expressing a personal preference for straightness or for angles that add up to 180 degrees. The judgment simply follows from the objective facts about the nature of triangles. This example illustrates how an entity can count as an instance of a certain type of thing even if it fails perfectly to instantiate the essence of that type of thing; a badly drawn triangle is not a non-triangle, but rather a defective triangle. And it illustrates at the same time how there can be a completely objective, factual standard of goodness and badness, better and worse. To be sure, the standard in question in this example is not a moral standard. But from the A-T point of view, it illustrates a general notion of goodness of which moral goodness is a special case. And while it might be suggested that even this general standard of goodness will lack a foundation if one denies, as nominalists and other anti-realists do, the objectivity of geometry and mathematics in general, it is (as I have said) notoriously very difficult to defend such a denial.

– Edward Feser. Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good

This raises a number of interesting questions, by no means limited to the following:

What is the fact/value distinction.

Whether values can be objective.

The relationship between objective goodness and moral goodness.

And of course, whether a three-legged dog is still a dog.

Meanwhile:

One Leg Too Few

469 thoughts on “Bad Dogs and Defective Triangles”

  1. Elizabeth: How do same gender marriages affect the status of any family?

    I’m sure you read KN’s stories in the other thread. Among other things, he said, “The point is that the hospital would have had the legal authority to override the wishes of the family…” Whatever you take “family” to be, I’m sure you see that it’s affected. And no, this is not just one example how families are affected. I have brought a bunch of examples, but you are playing thick. Which is not nice.

  2. Erik: but you are playing thick. Which is not nice.

    And you’re posting GUANO.

    Which is not nice.

  3. Erik, Aristotle was certainly a great philosopher, but his logic has been known to have multiple defects at least since the time of Thomas Reid (another great philosopher, but of the mid-18th Century). Reid’s essay, A Brief Account of Aristotle’s Logic may be found at the logic museum site, http://www.logicmuseum.com/joyce/reid_aristotle.htm along with this introduction.

    This thirty-page essay [of Reid’s] on Aristotle’s logic was originally published in Kames’ Sketches of the History of Man in 1774, when Reid was 64. It is useful and interesting in a number of ways. It is helpful even today as an introduction to Aristotle’s logic, which it summarises in a comprehensive, clear and economical way. (Despite the fact, as Reid admits, that lack of courage and patience prevented him from ever reading the whole work).

    It provides an insight into views of traditional logic in the eighteenth century, showing in particular the neglect of the systems of scholastic logic in that period. Reid is sympathetic to traditional semantics, and notes that much useful work on the structure of language was done by the scholastic logicians. Nevertheless, his view of logic is mostly negative.

    It is also interesting for Reid’s insightful remarks (chapter 6, sec. 1) about the defects of the traditional system of logic. He says, for example, that it fails to explain propositions without a subject and predicate, as ‘it rains’; that the hypothetical proposition ‘whatever is A is not B’ is not obviously affirmative or negative; that it assumes all propositions have two terms, when many propositions have more than two terms; that identity propositions cannot be regarded as either universal or particular propositions, and that Aristotelian logic, being unable to explain arguments such as ‘A=B and B=C therefore A=C’, is therefore useless for mathematics. This anticipates difficulties raised much later by logicians such as Frege.

    But one idea is especially good, and may still be of interest to students of early modern philosophy. This is Reid’s observation (chapter 2, sec. 1) of an interesting continuity between the Aristotelian account of the proposition, and the early modern theory of knowledge. He argues that the (then modern) empiricist theory of knowledge is simply a modification of the ancient theory of the predicables, a classification of all the possible ways in which the predicate can be related to the subject, and thus a classification of all possible judgments.

    The doctrine of the Five Universals, or Quinque Voces, or Predicables, was an essential part of the scholastic systems of logic, taken from the Isagoge of Porphyry (c. 1, 5), based on remarks made by Aristotle in the Categories (c. 2, 5). It depends on the assumption that judgment connects two terms, the predicate and the subject, by affirming or denying the one of the other.

    According to the theory, there are five possible relations in which the predicate can stand to the subject. The first is where the the predicate is the genus of the subject, as in Reid’s example proposition ‘This is a triangle,’ ‘Jupiter is a planet.’ The genus is that part of the essence of the subject which it has in common with other kinds of thing. In the second the predicate is a species of the subject, as in, ‘This triangle is right-angled.’ The species of a subject is its essence or definition or quidditas, its ‘whatness’. The third is where the predicate is the specific difference of the subject, as in ‘Every triangle has three sides and three angles.’ The specific difference is that part of the essence which distinguishes the subject from other things of the same genus or kind. The fourth is where the predicate is a property of the subject, as in ‘The angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles.’ A property is an attribute that is not part of the essence of the subject, but somehow results from the essence, and is found in all things that possess it. The fifth is where the predicate is accidental to the subject, as in ‘This triangle is neatly drawn.’ An accident is an attribute that is not part of the essence, nor follows from it as with a property.

    The predicables are thus a complete enumeration of all the kinds of things that can be affirmed of any subject. All that can be said of anything whatsoever, is either the genus of the thing, or its species, or its specific difference, or some property or accident belonging to it.

    Though the rejection of the idea that things have essences or species was fundamental to the ideas of early modern philosophers such as Locke and Hume, Reid notices mischievously that the doctrine of of the predicables bears comparison with the theories they substituted in its place. Locke, in the Essay on the Human Understanding argues that all our knowledge consists in perceiving certain agreements and disagreements between two ideas. (See Bk IV c. 5, where he says that truth is the correct joining of signs, i.e. of words or ideas, according as the things signified by them agree or disagree with one another, and Bk IV c. 1, where he says that knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas). He classifies all such possible agreements, and hence all judgments, into four types, namely, Identity and Diversity, Relation, Co-existence and Real Existence. Here are four predicables given as a complete enumeration, says Reid, and yet not one of the ancient predicables is included in the number.

    Similarly in A Treatise of Human Nature, (Bk I Pt I sec 5) Hume says that all knowledge is a perception of the relations of our ideas, which may be comprised under seven heads:- 1, Resemblance; 2, Identity; 3, Relations of Space and Time; 4, Relations of Quantity and Number; 5, Degrees of Quality; 6, Contrariety; 7, Causation. These may be further reduced (Pt III sec 1) to two main classes, namely those which are the object of truth and certainty because they depend on the connection of ideas (1, 4, 5, 6), and those (2, 3, 7) which do not depend on the connection of ideas, and cannot be the object of truth and certainty. This division is the cornerstone of all Hume’s philosophy. Here, says Reid, are seven predicables given as a complete enumeration, where all the predicables of the ancients, as well as two of Locke’s, are left out.

    Reid’s point is of course ironic, that (then) modern doctrines are arbitrarily rearranged versions of an ancient theory. The whole of the early modern theory of knowledge rests upon on the Aristotelian doctrine that judgment connects two terms. This idea would not be challenged until the late nineteenth century: by the theory of multiple generality, that there can more, or less than two terms in a proposition.

    A further irony that Reid would not have known was that in Frege’s theory of judgment, there is still a fundamental division of judgments into two kinds: those that connect concepts (all mammals are land-dwellers) and those which connect an object with a concept (Socrates is is a land-dweller).

    I should note that additional defects were uncovered in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

    Why, in spite of these quite well known facts, you continue to champion Aristotelian logic and apparently stopped your study of the field with Aristotelians among medieval Christian schoolmen is just one more sign of your theocratic tendencies.

  4. walto,

    Aristotelian logic can’t even handle “every head of a horse is the head of an animal”. Compared to the modern logic of relations it is woefully inadequate.

  5. Kantian Naturalist:
    walto,

    Aristotelian logic can’t even handle “every head of a horse is the head of an animal”. Compared to the modern logic of relations it is woefully inadequate.

    It’s notable that despite all of your knowledge of (the history of) logic, your ability to devise workable examples and rigorous proofs for your position is not so adequate. At least I am not impressed.

    In my view, it doesn’t matter so much which particular logic one employs. It’s the rigour of reasoning that matters. Whatever logic one employs, a few basic assumptions remain the same, such as the law of non-contradiction, the law of excluded middle, the law of identity and the principle of parsimony. Most of these are explicitly present in ancient Indian and Chinese works that cannot be said to be Aristotelian in any way.

    Moreover, logic does not operate in vacuum. Aristotelian logic was never alone, but practically coeval with Stoic logic. Any logic operates in the mind where there are always more considerations besides a single formal system, even though it’s of course good to be aware what is being employed at any one instance. For example, surely Plato and Aristotle had training in arithmetics and were employing the logic present there – we all use it, inevitably. The way analogies work can be likened to the relationship of geometry and the empirical world. Etc.

    In the European culture, it’s all present since Plato, even though the discernment of these things is at the reader’s discretion – and this is precisely how Plato wanted it. Had Plato wanted to spoonfeed what he thought to be formally correct results, he would have written treatises like Aristotle and Plotinus, not dialogues.

  6. Acartia:
    (1) Heterosexual reproduction (husband and wife) forms the basis of family (parents and children).”

    What about a heterosexual couple who adopt?

    Where do adoptees come from? Biology 101.

  7. Kantian Naturalist:
    walto,

    Aristotelian logic can’t even handle “every head of a horse is the head of an animal”.

    In what sense Aristotelian logic “can’t handle” this? When it rephrases the statement according to its own formal logic, it can handle it just fine. Any formal system can be viewed as certain restrictions imposed on (statements in) natural language – a grammar where exceptions are disallowed.

    If you don’t permit rephrasing, then “can’t handle” applies to absolutely every formal system and it would be weird if Aristotelian logic were expected to be any different here. Absolutely each and every formal system has its limits with regard to statements in natural language, because pretty much anything can be stated in natural languages, and the range of natural grammar is debatable. Some say “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is grammatically okay, others say it’s not.

  8. Erik: I’m sure you read KN’s stories in the other thread. Among other things, he said, “The point is that the hospital would have had the legal authority to override the wishes of the family…” Whatever you take “family” to be, I’m sure you see that it’s affected. And no, this is not just one example how families are affected. I have brought a bunch of examples, but you are playing thick. Which is not nice.

    OK, thanks for that example.

    So, one way in which extending the rights of adults to marry the life-partner of their choice to gay people affects families is that it extends the curtailment of the rights of parents to interfere with their adult children’s choice of next-of-kin to cover their gay adult children as well as their straight.

    Right.

  10. Elizabeth: OK, thanks for that example.

    So, one way in which extending the rights of adults to marry the life-partner of their choice to gay people affects families is that it extends the curtailment of the rights of parents to interfere with their adult children’s choice of next-of-kin to cover their gay adult children as well as their straight.

    According to KN’s story, the family didn’t do anything except disapprove of the relationship – which parents often do for various reasons. According to KN’s story, the relationship itself only existed by the testimony of the outsider. The supposed other end of the relationship didn’t say anything in the story. There certainly was no marriage.

    You might want to re-read it. From the air of the story, it seemed to me that KN thinks that one of purposes – if not the main purpose – of marriage is to defy parents. I don’t see any “love”, “tolerance” or “justice” in his point, not even “equality”. And even if he managed to conjure up a story where all these things were present, none of this has any necessary connection to marriage.

  11. I assumed you were talking about the cases in which parents denied their offspring’s partner the right to visit them in hospital, a right that would have been accorded a married partner.

  12. Not that it matters. If some adults have the right to have their choice of life-partner recognised as next-of-kin in law, so should all adults, if equality under the law is to be maintained as a principle.

  13. Erik: Where do adoptees come from? Biology 101.

    From sex between two people, not necessarily a married couple or even regular partners. Many, perhaps most, adopted children have never lived with their biological parents, and so have never had a “family”.

  14. Elizabeth:
    If some adults have the right to have their choice of life-partner recognised as next-of-kin in law, so should all adults, if equality under the law is to be maintained as a principle.

    So now marriage is essentially about “the right to have their choice of life-partner recognised as next-of-kin in law”? How is that necessarily marriage? Isn’t it rather so that marriage (in the traditional sense) makes it the case that the partners (husband and wife) are equivalent to next-of-kin, really are that, not “have the right” to it?

    Piotr Gasiorowski: From sex between two people, not necessarily a married couple or even regular partners.

    And not necessarily heterosexual sex? Did your answer pass Biology 101?

    PS @Elizabeth
    My grade to your moderation capabilities is sinking fast. You have not taken action with a comment that says little else but “guano”

  15. Erik: PS @Elizabeth
    My grade to your moderation capabilities is sinking fast. You have not taken action with a comment that says little else but “guano”

    A link would be helpful.

  16. Erik: And not necessarily heterosexual sex?

    Insemination by donor does not require sexual activity of any sort.

  17. Erik: So now marriage is essentially about “the right to have their choice of life-partner recognised as next-of-kin in law”? How is that necessarily marriage?

    How is it not?

  18. Erik: And not necessarily heterosexual sex? Did your answer pass Biology 101?

    It was you, Erik, who conflated reproductive biology with a social unit and said, “Families provide to society the continuity of its population”. Not only families do, and procreation is not the sole raison d’être of family life. If a child grows up with and is socialised by people who are not her/his biological parents, they are the child’s family in every sense that matters.

  19. Erik: In my view, it doesn’t matter so much which particular logic one employs. It’s the rigour of reasoning that matters. Whatever logic one employs, a few basic assumptions remain the same, such as the law of non-contradiction, the law of excluded middle, the law of identity and the principle of parsimony.

    I completely agree with that (except for parsimony, which I don’t take to be a logical principle). But it indicates why your regular bringing up of Aristotle on this issue is just a red herring. You have constantly relied on an incorrect notion of what words mean and how language works which you say you are taking from Aristotle and Aquinas–a medieval follower of his, and you seem to take that as point in the view’s favor. But (i) the view is wrong and has been known to be so for a very long time; and (ii) your appeals to authority hurt, rather than help your claims. Even if “horse” or “dog” in one of their connotations were natural kind terms (and many would say even THEY aren’t) “Marriage” certainly is not such a term. The entire edifice crumbles as a result.

    But, as I have said, that whole argument seems to me a sham, anyhow. It’s not the real basis for your attitude about gay marriages. I believe that you are simply a theocrat who is grasping at whatever you think might confuse people into believing that you have any but religious reasons for your take on this matter. But you’ll have to do better than Aristotle, I’m afraid; his errors are too well known. Maybe you could focus on some obscure Syrian logician of the 1200s or something?

  21. walto: … it indicates why your regular bringing up of Aristotle on this issue is just a red herring.You have constantly relied on an incorrect notion of what words mean and how language works which you say you are taking from Aristotle and some medieval followers of his, and that that is a point in the view’s favor.But (i) the view is wrong and has been known to be so for a very long time; and (ii) your appeals to authority hurt, rather than help your claims.

    (i) The view is wrong only after you demonstrate it to be so, specifically, concerning the words I used in relation to the topic at hand. Until then, you are not even saying anything worth responding to.
    (ii) False. I don’t rely on Aristotle. I very specifically do not rely on him. Aristotle is just an example of what (classical) logic means to me, as opposed to rejection of essential and accidental properties which has evidently taken away KN’s ability to analyse whatever we discuss. If anything, it’s you (walto) who appeals to authority by citing guys who in broad strokes refute points brought up by Aristotle, of all people – which has to do with me and the matter at hand, what exactly?

  22. Piotr Gasiorowski: It was you, Erik, who conflated reproductive biology with a social unit and said, “Families provide to society the continuity of its population”.

    Conflated? Care to demonstrate that family (as I defined it – parents and children) does NOT provide to society the continuity of its population?

    Piotr Gasiorowski:
    Not only families [provide to society the continuity of its population]

    What else does? Immigration? Compared to families, to what extent does immigration (or whatever you had in mind) provide the continuity of society’s population? And in what sense is it continuity, as opposed to “exogenous shock”, to borrow a term from economics?

    Piotr Gasiorowski:
    …and procreation is not the sole raison d’être of family life.

    I was talking about the definition of family. You are talking about “family life”. Different things, are they not?

  23. Erik: (i) The view is wrong only after you demonstrate it to be so, specifically, concerning the words I used in relation to the topic at hand. Until then, you are not even saying anything worth responding to.
    (ii) False. I don’t rely on Aristotle. I very specifically do not rely on him. Aristotle is just an example of what (classical) logic means to me, as opposed to rejection of essential and accidental properties which has evidently taken away KN’s ability to analyse whatever we discuss. If anything, it’s you (walto) who appeals to authority by citing guys who in broad strokes refute points brought up by Aristotle, of all people – which has to do with me and the matter at hand, what exactly?

    “Marriage” is not a natural kind term; it does not refer to some entity having essential and accidental properties (an Aristotelian concept you absolutely continue to rely on, in spite of your denials above). Do you understand that, or not?

  24. walto: “Marriage” is not a natural kind term; it does not refer to some entity having essential and accidental properties (an Aristotelian concept you absolutely continue to rely on, in spite of your denials above).Do you understand that, or not?

    Yes, I understand very well what marriage is NOT. Can anyone of you finally say what marriage IS so that it doesn’t fall flat on itself?

    Not holding my breath.

  25. Erik,

    “the legally or formally recognized union of a man and a woman (or, in some jurisdictions, two people of the same sex) as partners in a relationship.”

    It says here.

  26. Alan Fox: A link would be helpful.

    Erik: http://theskepticalzone.fr/?p=28337&cpage=2#comment-72752

    The linked comment points to a comment of yours as guano-worthy. The poster presumably thinks the accusation “playing thick” is tantamount to an accusation of dishonesty. I guess Lizzie excused you because English is not your first language and you may not have intended it.

    Easily found with Ctrl+f

    Thanks for the tip. There was not much of a clue about what to search for in your previous comment.

  27. Allan Miller:
    Erik,

    “the legally or formally recognized union of a man and a woman (or, in some jurisdictions, two people of the same sex) as partners in a relationship.”

    It says here.

    I said: so that it doesn’t fall flatly on itself. If it depends on jurisdiction and you are okay with that, then you have no argument to trump your “same-sex” definition and we have no dispute. But if you are not okay with the fact that it differs from jurisdiction to another, then the definition you cite says nothing about what you really think marriage *should* be.

  28. Erik: Can anyone of you finally say what marriage IS

    It’s what my wife and I have been doing for over forty years. Sharing our lives. I know many married couples who appear to do the same.

  29. As Sondheim explained to Rorem once, when they were discussing the difference between operas and musicals, Operas are what take place in opera halls. Similarly, marriages are all and only those relationships that entitle one to the legal benefits of what is called ‘marriage’ in any jurisdiction, and obligate those who are married to the lawful duties. In other words, being a legal term, it’s whatever the statutes and regulations say it is. And if there’s a dispute, it’s whatever a court of competent jurisdiction (finally) decides it is.

    There’s no real mystery here–Biblical or Aristotelian. That’s all there is to legal terms. As has been explained to you countless times, you can apply your ‘logic’ to any non-legal term (like ‘holy matrimony’) if you like. You may also fume about the recent Supreme Court Decision as being contrary to public policy if you think it is, but all the rest of your faux ‘logic’ chopping is just so much nonsense.

  30. walto:
    And if there’s a dispute, it’s whatever a court of competent jurisdiction (finally) decides it is.

    Legal “finally” means, in reality, “currently” or “for the time being”. Which says nothing interesting and thus falls flatly on itself.

    Actually, I am not even aware of a legal “finally”. There’s something called “appeal to the next instance”, until the “last instance” is reached. But the “last instance” does not give “final” decisions, merely decisions of its own instance similar as any other instance. And it may revise and keep revising decisions, and that’s what it does. Nothing final.

    Anyway, of course marriage is not simply a legal term – a term without real-life content. Pure legalism has been explicitly denied by e.g. Elizabeth contra Gregory when Gregory argued for “civil unions”. And I reject pure legalism of the concept of marriage for other reasons, as already explained.

  31. Erik: But if you are not okay with the fact that it differs from jurisdiction to another, then the definition you cite says nothing about what you really think marriage *should* be.

    I’ve been married for 24 years to one and the same woman, and we have brought up our own biological children. It doesn’t mean that I must hold my rather conventional personal situation up as a model to follow for everyone else. Definitions of “marriage” and “family” are cultural constructs; they are neither clearcut nor universally valid (for all societies and all legal systems, past, present or future). I can live with this and don’t feel personally threatened by the fact that the term “marriage” may be applied to a same-sex relationship (or to a polygamous one, for that matter), different from the one I happily live in. Do you need a separate essentialist pigeon-hole for every concept you use?

  32. walto: I believe that you are simply a theocrat who is grasping at whatever you think might confuse people into believing that you have any but religious reasons for your take on this matter.

    This presupposes that Erik has brought his motivations to full consciousness and is deviously plotting to support them. I think it more likely that his motivations are not fully conscious, and that he is simply struggling to find arguments to support what he wants. Thus far, his arguments are very poor.

  33. Piotr Gasiorowski: Do you need a separate essentialist pigeon-hole for every concept you use?

    Of course not. I am interested in distinguishing things with essential qualities from things that lack those qualities – based on how those things really are, not based on what people think/say they are. Whatever you think or say about something, you’d better be ready to prove it.

    Neil Rickert: Thus far, his arguments are very poor.

    Example and proof, please.

  34. Erik: Where do adoptees come from? Biology 101.

    But that wasn’t your point. Your point was that a husband and wide reproducing forms the basis of family. Which is true. It forms the basis of their family, but not yours or mine. Many children who are adopted come from single mothers, not a husband and wife. When they are adopted by a heterosexual couple, does this not form the basis of a family as well? If not, please explain. If so, please explain why a same sex couple adopting a child does not also form the basis of a family.

    Are you seriously suggesting that allowing same sex marriage will reduce the number of children being born? That now that it is legal, heterosexuals will suddenly become homosexual?

  35. Erik: Legal “finally” means, in reality, “currently” or “for the time being”. Which says nothing interesting and thus falls flatly on itself.

    Actually, I am not even aware of a legal “finally”. There’s something called “appeal to the next instance”, until the “last instance” is reached. But the “last instance” does not give “final” decisions, merely decisions of its own instance similar as any other instance. And it may revise and keep revising decisions, and that’s what it does. Nothing final.

    The “finally” was intended to suggest that decisions of competent courts may be appealed to higher courts. But it’s quite true that even decisions from the highest court may one day be overturned. Meanings of terms–legal or otherwise–can change.

    Sorry, Erik.

    Anyway, of course marriage is not simply a legal term – a term without real-life content. Pure legalism has been explicitly denied by e.g. Elizabeth contra Gregory when Gregory argued for “civilunions”. And I reject pure legalism of the concept of marriage for other reasons, as already explained.

    Actually, part of that is precisely backwards. “Civil union” is NOT a legal term in most jurisdictions, it being undefined in the statutes, regs or case law. There have been some (who have not considered the “separate but equal” issue very carefully or who don’t care what the populace actually wants), who would LIKE “civil union” to become a legal term. But at present it is not so, almost anywhere.

    To be fair, however, there is a grain of truth in your paragraph. “Marriage” indeed does contain a non-legal residue, which is why proposals for civil union laws did not satisfy the gay and lesbian population. (Similarly “opera” has a residue that makes it hard to believe that a pole vaulting event is an opera, even if it takes place in an opera hall.)

    So, you ask, what IS this non-legal residue? As has been pointed out many times to you, it is a changing (because fluid) connotation that generally conveys some of these: commitment, couple, love, tax deductions, mommies and daddies, adults, sex being allowed, etc. And we have learned that it conveys to you stuff like one-man-and-one-woman, fertility, sex-at-the-center, being pushed by God, etc. As these batches are connected only by what Wittgenstein called family resemblances, what it conveys to you may not be precisely what it conveys to Elizabeth or KN: some, but not all of the properties are likely to be common. There is no requirement that there be some “kernel” or essential group that is always present when the term is used, in or out of court.

    None of that really matters, though: only the legal determination counts with respect to the benefits and obligations under the law.

    Sorry.

  36. Erik: Whatever you think or say about something, you’d better be ready to prove it.

    The relativity of social/cultural institutions such as “marriage” is easy to demonstrate. Just take off your blinkers and have a look about.

  37. Erik: Example and proof, please.

    Well, you wrote:

    Marriage is directly connected to family. Marriage is the cultural institution that signals “family is the nucleus of civilization”. When marriage is redefined, then the status of family is directly affected. The disregard for family is clearly seen from how same-sex marriage advocates “define” family – they see no problem in declaring that family is perfectly fine without a father or a mother or a child. But when mother, father and child are irrelevant to family, then what is relevant? Clearly, they don’t care.

    This seems pretty poorly argued. The legal institution of marriage in the US has just been broadened so that it no longer discriminates against same-sex partners who wish to live in a marriage and have the same legal protection and recognition of that relationship as heterosexual partners. No families were harmed in this process.

    ETA link to quoted comment.

  38. walto: And we have learned that it conveys to you … being pushed by God, etc.

    Until proof to this arrives, I have nothing else to say to you.

  39. That’s kind of good. You’re better off saying nothing, actually. When you write, mostly gibberish emerges.

  40. “The relativity of social/cultural institutions such as “marriage” is easy to demonstrate.”

    Piotr, It’s ok of course for you to come to this site, Lizzie’s majority atheist ‘skeptical zone’ and spout your leftist atheist views as much as you like, including your ‘relativist’ views of ‘marriage.’ But since I’m living on your nation’s border, it should be made clear to readers who might not know that you would be absolutely slaughtered if you said this in Poland. So, ‘live dangerously’ here with the ‘skeptical’ USAmericans and Brits (and a few Canadians), but don’t pretend that your views on this topic have any traction in your home country. They don’t.

  41. walto:
    That’s kind of good.You’re better off saying nothing, actually.When you write, mostly gibberish emerges.

    If you think some of Erik’s comments are, well, unconvincing, try Ed Feser or even worse, and I caution those of a nervous disposition to take care, the comments to that thread.

  42. Acartia: Are you seriously suggesting that allowing same sex marriage will reduce the number of children being born? That now that it is legal, heterosexuals will suddenly become homosexual?

    In my country the folks most concerned about these matters are the Catholic clergy, who themselves are officially forbidden to have sex or directly contribute to the growth of the population — whatever they do unofficially. They also condemn homosexuality in general, and of course are firmly (and, so far, successfully) opposed to same-sex marriage or adoption of children by same-sex couples. Interestingly, however, the first Roman Catholic archbishop ever to be tried before the Vatican’s own court for sexual abuse (molestation of young boys while he served as nuncio in the Dominican Republic) is a Pole.

  43. Erik: Of course not. I am interested in distinguishing things with essential qualities from things that lack those qualities – based on how those things really are, not based on what people think/say they are. Whatever you think or say about something, you’d better be ready to prove it.

    Example and proof, please.

    But marriage has always been based on what people think it is. Until the last century, people thought that marriage was a union between a man and a women in which the wife must promise to obey the husband, and the husband had the legal right to use reasonable physical force to ensure that the wife obeyed him. Does that sound like the marriage that I have, or Piotr, or you (I assume)? Why do you think that it doesn’t. Could it be that we have changed what we think marriage is? And now we have changed what we think about it again, opening it up to same sex couples.

  44. Erik,

    I said: so that it doesn’t fall flatly on itself. If it depends on jurisdiction and you are okay with that, then you have no argument to trump your “same-sex” definition and we have no dispute. But if you are not okay with the fact that it differs from jurisdiction to another, then the definition you cite says nothing about what you really think marriage *should* be.

    What marriage should be? A definition shows what that thing is, by definition. I see no reason to declare jurisdictions that include same-sex couples ‘wrong’, any more than those that exclude them. Neither is wrong definitionally, which is what you asked for – a definition. The legal status varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, which is pretty inevitable given the terms ‘legal’ and ‘jurisdiction’. The formal status also varies from place to place, as does the degree or necessity of involvement of religious ceremonial.

    Is there some problem with that definition you aren’t telling us about? Something unholy about it, perchance?

  45. Gregory: But since I’m living on your nation’s border, it should be made clear to readers who might not know that you would be absolutely slaughtered if you said this in Poland

    I don’t keep my views secret, and somehow I’m still alive. I have already commented on the appalling hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in Poland, and I very much regret its political and ideological influence. Feel free to quote me.

  46. Piotr Gasiorowski,

    Piotr, as with this, as well as your ‘evolutionary linguistics’ (the appalling hypocrisy of those ‘relativist’ academics!) that you can’t back up, I don’t find you worth quoting. You don’t represent faithfully the Catholic church. As an atheist (even if of the ‘socialist’ or ‘solidarnost’ kind), you stand only for Piotr Gasiorowski.

    p.s. though you teach English language and might have understood the term, ‘slaughter’ here means ‘widely disagreed with in society’, not physically terminated

  47. Gregory: They don’t.

    Wikipedia has some poll info on attitudes in Poland. Whilst it indicates an Ireland-style referendum might not succeed today, there seems a large minority in favour at least of civil unions.

    I wonder if Piotr would agree whether the dead hand of Karol Wojtyła still directs opinion in Poland.

  48. Alan Fox: Well, you wrote:

    This seems pretty poorly argued. The legal institution of marriage in the US has just been broadened so that it no longer discriminates against same-sex partners who wish to live in a marriage and have the same legal protection and recognition of that relationship as heterosexual partners. No families were harmed in this process.

    First sentence first. You say I argued poorly, but you give no proof for what you say. Nothing in your reply shows how I argued poorly. Given my premises, my conclusion either follows or it doesn’t follow. If it doesn’t, then I argued poorly. Or you can demonstrate why my premises cannot be accepted.

    But you do nothing like this. You simply state your own case where none of the terms has the same meaning as in my case. This is a bad start from you, because it doesn’t address my case. It doesn’t show how I argue poorly. It shows how you argue.

    Given this bad start, I am not interested in the rest.

    Allan Miller:
    Erik,

    I see no reason to declare jurisdictions that include same-sex couples ‘wrong’, any more than those that exclude them.

    No reason? This means you have no case and there’s nothing to argue.

  49. [Erik sez:]Until proof to this arrives, I have nothing else to say to you.

    walto:

    That’s kind of good.You’re better off saying nothing, actually.When you write, mostly gibberish emerges.

    Heh, if I had a nickel for every time Erik has used his effort to respond by saying nothing better than the equivalent of “You’re not worth responding to” …
    I bet I would have enough pocket change to buy Starbuck’s most expensive cup of coffee.

  50. I wonder if the dead ideas of Alan’s worldview might show some spiritual respect? Probably not.

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