I’m not sure if you’re missing that the whole point is that trying to treat “common” terms like scientific terms creates logical conundrums like this because nature isn’t about clean lines and groups.
The whole point of saying “Whales are fish” and things like that is as a reminder that human classification (even detailed and precision-focused scientific classification) is still just a human construct we use to order the world around us. It’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish.
In fact we see science educators bring this up so much, I think, because it’s important to be able to answer “why don’t the scientists just call them fish?” when discussing ray finned fishes or something like that and this discussion is helpful practice for that.
Yes it’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish… So why pretend that the category is something other than what it is? Noone who isn’t being weird about it on the internet thinks all vertebrates are fish.
Because why not? It’s in the same view as thought experiments. Things that make you go “huh”. Nobody is being weird about it, they just aren’t being serious about it.
I’m not sure if you’re missing that the whole point is that trying to treat “common” terms like scientific terms creates logical conundrums like this because nature isn’t about clean lines and groups.
The whole point of saying “Whales are fish” and things like that is as a reminder that human classification (even detailed and precision-focused scientific classification) is still just a human construct we use to order the world around us. It’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish.
In fact we see science educators bring this up so much, I think, because it’s important to be able to answer “why don’t the scientists just call them fish?” when discussing ray finned fishes or something like that and this discussion is helpful practice for that.
Yes it’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish… So why pretend that the category is something other than what it is? Noone who isn’t being weird about it on the internet thinks all vertebrates are fish.
Because why not? It’s in the same view as thought experiments. Things that make you go “huh”. Nobody is being weird about it, they just aren’t being serious about it.
I didn’t detect anyone treating it as a tight experiment… maybe it was an implication that was lost through the textual medium…