Lots of different and only loosely related types of plant have evolved to be tall with thick strong stems to get above other plants and capture the light.
That is a way of growing, and we call it a tree, but the point here is not "trees do not exist" but "lots of totally different unrelated types of plant came up with being tree-shaped independently."
Also missing from “no such thing as” discussions is the idea that it’s perfectly fine and useful to use the word tree casually when the general shape and appearance are what matters, and also perfectly fine to want to avoid that term when something more precise is what matters.
And we name them 'tree' because they have a certain shape and configuration. Then we created taxonomies and "discover" that tree isn't a single thing
We seem to cling too tightly to definition, as the expense of paying attention to the things as they are.
My point is resonant with the piece because it illustrates that conventional naming doesn't match taxonometric systematisation. I am happy to be wrong though, if it makes you feel better.
I mean, I like your attitude to the debate, but I don't really get it.
"A is not B." "No, A is a B, but B is not the same as A."
"Ah, but, there is no such thing as an alphabet, really, it's all just vibrations in the air or marks on paper."
You can dismiss almost any argument in science by deconstructing it to symbols and then saying that symbols are not real, but I don't see this as a valid contribution to the debate, myself. Your mileage clearly varies.
There absolutely is such a thing as "a tree". Trees are a real thing. They are an identifiable type of land plant.
But "tree" is a growth habit. It's not a family of plants. This is an important distinction and it's not a hard one to grasp. I still find it odd that it surprises people.
Similarly, I have zero time for this "no such thing as a fish" bollocks. Yes there is such a thing as a fish. It's an obligately aquatic, legless, gilled vertebrate.
It is quite easy to define what "fish" means in unambiguous terms that exclude tadpoles, axolotls, terrestrial vertebrates such as humans and so on.
The argument seems to rest on their being (at least) two families of fish. Big deal. Fish are real, trees are real. They aren't families, but they are identifiable groups.
I was not going for the semiotic-reductionist interpretation, but it's a fair assumption to think that that's what I meant by 'name ≠ thing named'.
My point was more to do with the construction of meaning and the general trend of clinging to knowledge at the expense of learning, hence the Taoist addage, since this is a phenomenon that is driven primarily by Western scientific thought.
To put it more verbosely - taxonomies, especially those driven by classification based on gene presence and regulation, will end up with lots of loose ends and contradictions, because this is not the fundamental mechanism by which new forms emerge. The metric is distorted and, by extension, so is our understanding of the morphogenetic space that it is attempting to describe. Calling it phylogeny is somewhat circular because it insists on genes being the regulating mechanism, whereas the article specifically draws attention to the limitation of this category-system, instead looking at the direct experience of a tree, which would more aptly be described as its morphology: "a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood."
I do not see nature (of which we are a part) as entirely gene-regulated, though obviously they are involved. But what else is there? Following Michael Levin, I say 'agential material', meaning that life solves problems with full acknowledgement of an unpredictable context. In this interpretation, it is no surprise that a dandelion can become a tree, or vice versa; what matters is the needs that the plant expresses and the responses given by the environment it is exploring. This is cell-level cognition; heretical and beautiful.
I'm a sucker for these kinds of discussions. Evolution is way messier than you think it is, and evolutionary biologists get really heated about clades vs grades and so on and so forth. For fun, spend some time on the r/evolution and r/biology subreddits and you'll occasionally run into one of these heated debates. One of my favourites:
If you ever meet an evolutionary biologist at a party, ask them if apes are monkeys. I think the closest thing for a Web developer like myself would be casually dropping into conversation the comment that "an Englishman invented the Internet".
There's no such thing as a fish, there's no such thing as a tree, there's no such thing as a vegetable, there's no such thing as a man, there's no such thing as a woman. Biology is weird and blurry and doesn't fit into well-defined groups
But "there's no such thing as a fish" is a different statement than "there's no such thing as a man". First off, "man" is not a biological category, but a human social category. Biologically, "boy" and "man" are both "male". And there is such a thing as male in biology.
There is such thing as a fish, just not phylogenetically: all the different organisms that we think of as fish don’t form a group that includes all the descendents of all fish and all fish. Why is that? Some things we consider fish today have common ancestors that have legs, i.e. not fish.
Indeed. A fish is a category that we have made up to make it easier to communicate the concept of a wiggly thing that lives under the sea, in the same way that man is a social category we made up to communicate the concept of someone who presents in a male way
This is an analysis of the term "man" which is, at the very least, overly specialised to a technical reading in rhetorical or cultural analysis.
In areas of cultural analysis, terms are often read rhetorically, meaning as merely social actions with a persuasive or claim-making intent. E.g., to say "I know that ball will go in the net!!" isn't a claim involving actual knowledge, but something like a rhetorical act which appeals to the literal meaning of "know" in, say, something like an ironic/exaggerated/fabricated/social way. If one analysed the term "know" as-if this rhetorical context were its primary meaning, then one would conclude that all knowledge is merely a social presentation, knowing itself is no real thing in the world, only a game of making claims.
This is a deeply implausible primary meaning of "know", because it makes inexplicable why anyone would claim to know (ie., why would playing this game have any persuasive force?). It only makes sense if a literal meaning is available in which it is possible, and indeed quite common, to actually know things in an ordinary way. Then claiming to know, and being ironic/etc., makes sense.
It's no coincidence then that from this fields of analysis, in which any term whatsoever can take this merely rhetorical meaning, are terms like "man" given such a reading. However, the claim that this constitutes the only or even primary meaning of "man" is quite implausible. Since in the vast majority of cases, e.g., in biology, law, science, medicine etc. the authors are not taking "man" to be a kind of social rhetorical assertion. For example, pension ages differ in law across men/women -- its implausible to suppose that this law concerns itself with merely rhetorical actions of individuals insofar as they make claims to be men/women.
Indeed, as above, unless there is a literal meaning of "man" the social act of claiming to be one in a variety of non-literal contexts becomes meaningless. Consider eg., "I'm not really a man, I'm just playing one on stage with a lot of makeup". Here I'd suppose "man" has to have a literal meaning of having the characteristics of (human, adult) males in order for social claims of the sort, "I am a man!" to make any sense.
The very contemporary move to re-read these terms as primarily rhetorical claims might make some sense from a political/cultural perspective; but its quite important to remember that this cannot be their literal meaning -- or else a vast amount of derivative rhetorical meaning, and indeed existing law/textbooks/discourse/etc. becomes meaningless.
What does the term "man" mean in the assertion, "I am a man!"
Two interpretations:
1) It has a literal meaning: the speaker has the characteristics of adult human males.
2) It is has a social-asserting meaning: the speaker wants to be perceived as "the kind of person who makes those assertions"
For asserting-meanings like (2) to make sense, literal meanings (1) have to be available.
Consider, "I'm not a crook!"
For it to make sense to claim not to be a crook, it has to be literally possible not to be one (ie., to be innocent of crimes) independent of claiming to be one.
Many today want (2) to be the "primary" meaning of terms like man/woman, ie., we are told that we should always read them as social assertions. But we have to keep in mind that literal meanings (1) have to exist in order for (2) to even make any sense -- not least that in almost all historical cases (most of the law, medicine, etc.), the literal meaning is the intended meaning.
To say "I am a man!" cannot always mean, "I wish to be seen as having the characteristics of adult males". Just as saying "i am not a crook" cannot always mean, "i wish to be seen as innocent".
A person saying, "I am not a crook" is hoping to persuade the audience that they are innocent. They are "borrowing" from the literal meaning, hoping to persuade the audience that are innocent -- even if they are not.
People saying "I am a man" who are not literally men are likewise borrowing from "what would make this claim literally true" when the say it. If they arent, it wouldnt make any sense to say. The audience has to already know what men literally are before a person claims to be one.
I would say that "a man" is someone who presents, or deeply wishes to present, in the way the society has generally dictated people who have been assigned male at birth have to. For example, I have a friend who is a trans man. I would class them as "a man", since they wish to present, and exist in society, in the same way that people who have been assigned male at birth would. As such, they have short hair, refer to themselves by a name that has more masculine connotations, wear clothes generally aimed as masculine people, etc
The issue with this analysis is that it cannot explain the use of the term "man" in most contexts, nor literal claims to being a man.
In the first case, take a law about pensions -- the law-writer wasnt giving masculine-presenting people fewer years of their pension than feminine-presenting people; they were applying it to adult males. This applies very generally across many uses of man/woman -- the speaker just doesn't mean masculine-people and feminine-people, even if that highly correlates with the people they did mean. (Taking masculine/feminie to mean those presenting-characteristics).
In the second case, consider the claim, "I am really a man!", if that's only a claim to masculine-presentation then 'really' doesnt make sense, right? How could an audience ever be mistaken about this? What is at issue when people claim this, or dispute this? No person who asks, "are you really X?" is disputing how something is already perceived as-being-X.
Compare with, "are you really a crook?", "are you really a police officer?", "are you really a witch?" In each case there is a literal, descriptive, perception-independent meaning.
One reply to me here is to bite the bullet and say, "I am really a man(, I am just perceived to be a woman)!" is meaningless. That claims, "I am really a man/woman!" are meaningless. That makes sense out of the view that it's all just social perception, but its kinda implausible -- because we've written so much using these terms that there's clearly a literal meaning.
Eg., consider going to the pension office to collect a pension at the age for which women are allowed it but men are not. You speak to the pension officer and say, "I'm a woman, so I'm allowed my pension now". It seems the pension officer can meaningfully dispute this, "Are you really a woman?"
If you asked, "what do you mean?" the pension officer could coherently say, "pension age for women is 66, meaning if you are female and an adult over 66 then you are entitled to.."
It would seem disqualifying to reply, "I am a woman because I am perceived to be the same as the people who qualify"
I wouldn't say "I am a woman because I am perceived to be the same as the people who qualify", I would say "I am a woman because I am choosing to present in the same way that is generally associated with those assigned female at birth". It is a label created by society that I would want to conform to
Transgender people would also be taking hormones and get surgery(/ies), changing their bodies to be closer to the sex they weren't born as. I get what you're saying, but am just clarifying because it sounds too close to the "hairy bearded man in a dress" stereotype.
The question is whether there is a gap between the people who qualify and the people who are perceived to qualify given the language of the law, ie., can we make any sense out of the pension officer who then says, "choosing to present this way doesnt qualify you for a pension under this law"?
You can redefine the terms to eliminate any non-presentational meaning, but it seems quite implausible to say that the people who wrote that law mean to make it a choice as to whether you qualify for a pension.
When they said, "women qualify for a pension at age 66", they were not using the word "woman" which would have any sense of a choice associated with it, right?
Giving the terms "woman", "man" etc. only a presentational meaning renders a vast amount of our discourse using these terms absolute bizarre, at the very least. Law makers of 1940s setting pension ages were not handing the qualification criteria to individuals to decide, right? The law is not encouraging people to present-as-women, it's not saying: if you choose to present as adult females, we'll give you a few more years pension! Indeed, its hard to imagine any law-maker involved ever thought that qualification for a pension could turn on any choice an individual could make.
You can argue that people should not use "woman" to refer to "adult human females" in most contexts, or that it is better to take the rhetorical meaning of "woman" as the primary one (ie., the ones in which one claims to-be-like literal women) ---- but I cannot really see how you could claim the law makers of the 1940s were writing pension grants based on how people happened to present.
Likewise the same goes for medical textbooks, biology textbooks, etc. And a vast amount of social conversation. If bob says "I'm only interested in dating women", and eve replies, "I present in all the ways adult females do!", bob isnt mistaken to say, "no, i'm looking for someone to start a family with".
It's really really strange to say that when bob said, "i'm interested in dating women" he was confused when he thought being pregnant wasn't ordinarily entailed by the term "woman".
Again, you can try to change how these words are used. But the claim that lawmakers, doctors, biologists, ...people going on dates... that everyone is either confused or "always meant" making-choices-over-presentation.. is a very strange view that just seems patently at odds with what people mean.
I have no idea why there is a disparity in pension ages between men and women. And if a trans woman is dating a cis man, generally she will make it clear that she is trans. For some men this isn't a problem, for some it is, hence why its a good idea to be upfront with it. And I feel like there is a difference between "I want to date a woman" and "I want to start a family". I personally don't want to start a family, but I would like to date women. You can start a family by adopting, so the gender of your partner, or even if they exist at all, doesn't matter
The issuing I'm addressing isn't whether its possible to define man/woman in a way that makes these just presentational terms -- but whether that's what people actually mean, or have always meant.
It doesn't really make sense to me to say that "this is what people have always meant", nor much sense to say today, "most people mean this". We can change the terms, or adopt a kinda rhetorical practice where we don't use them literally, but its hard to imagine that's what most people have meant in most usages of these terms.
It rubs people up the wrong way when people try to tell others what their words mean in order to win an argument, so it comes across as bad-faith/manipulative to assert that this is what people mean. The reason i use pensions as an example is just because its neutral and specific, but people use man/woman in exactly those ways all the time.
It's straightforward to have an open argument about how to integrate people into society who present-as-women (, -as-men) etc. whether/when these class of people should be treated as-if a part of the relevant sexual class. But this requires giving arguments, being understanding of people who are sceptical, trying to persuade people, etc.
It comes across bad faith when people try to say, instead, "the very words you're using already mean i'm right" -- not only isnt this a very plausible account of the history of the terms, or of what people using them intend them to mean, it's alienating to people who would otherwise be quite tolerant. It turns a discussion of how to change society to be accepting into one about how everyone is profoundly mistaken about the words they use, and control over the meaning of these words "really" lies with others, who have happened to define them in ways that make most common thoughts about the issue incoherent.
Fyi, i dont think you are doing that -- ie., acting in bad faith. i'm just explaining why it rubs people the wrong way
Sex is "reframed" to a matter of performance / visibility (Gender) because your friends emotional well-being depends on it. The recent-ish gender theory is all about accommodating people with these kind of feelings. From that perspective, the "What is a Man/Woman" discussions make much more sense than they currently do.
You lost it a bit at the end with women and men. Those aren't phylogenic groups, so not even closely related to the concept. It's a bit like saying "there's no such thing as granite" because not all granite is the product of two other pieces of granite having sex.
I mean granite is just an arbitrary group we've made by saying that a rock that falls within certain percentages of quartz, feldspar, mica etc. Outside that, you get into the granitoids. The amounts are completely fluid and continuous, so the boundary is completely arbitrary. I guess in a way, there is no such thing as granite either
I can't resist... Language is, in fact, a matter of common usage. A man is (or was) generally considered to the thing that is (or was) a male human. While I recognise that gender theory has challenged this notion, introducing the idea that gender is socially constructed, it can easily be understood (by those who have the intention of understanding) why this confusion might exist.
Before contemporary gender theory challenged the distinction between male and man, there was also a common distinction, e.g. by "becoming a man". A man is a male human adult, and the idea of adulthood is to some degree fluid. The legal age limit of 18 or 21 suggests that this is/was when we consider humans adults. But notions of "when your brain fully develops" suggests ages of 25-28 for men. Other factors involve when your beard grows big enough, and when children on the sidewalk saying "that man" about you. Society seems to have a duck-typing approach to what a man is, i.e. when a male human transitions from boy to man. And indeed, transgender men fit the duck-typing of society to a point where "strongly influenced by testosterone" seems like just as good a definition of, at least, "manly". Contemporary Western culture would have that you can make all sorts of other transitions at different points.
It’s occurred to me before (and I’m sure to someone thinking more seriously about it) that our way of categorizing organisms seems to be ultimately based on their origin, and not on something…more beneficial to the human experience, or more in-line with aesthetics and colors, or in some other way.
In other words, it is a deliberate choice to “taxonomize” organisms by their origins, and not by some other thing. This seems like an assumption that no one really questions, and I wonder if it ultimately leads to some unforeseen problems, or at least a view of the world that’s less than true or optimal for human flourishing.
I think it's the case that both these systems can, should, and do coexist. When doing research or development, precision is more important than immediate grasp-ability. With people in general conversation, we operate on rules of thumb and appearances really do sometimes matter more than rigor. Colloquial speech then takes precedence, even if it is imprecise.
This article is nice because it is both interesting in the purely rigorous sense (phylogenetically), and it highlights this divide between precise definitions and the words we find useful (most of all in that catchy title!).
The biological system of taxonomy is really for the biology of the organism. We have other categories we use (as humans who are not biologists), even though we borrow organizational structure from biologists! For example, the conceptual category of "vegetable" is a culinary term, not a biological one, and is a good example of a category not used by biologists.
There's a common saying, "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad". I believe that biologists should be categorizing organisms based on their origin, but people who are not biologists should not be bound by categories created by biologists.
For example, palm trees and bamboos are not trees biologically, but actually tall grass. The biological category of "tree" may not apply, but when you hire a landscraper, you aren't using the biological category of "tree", but rather the gardening category of "tree" (when you need a palm tree cut down). That's not a failure of biology, that's just because we use 1 word "tree" to describe 2 categories used by different fields.
Since an organism characteristics depend a lot on its evolutionary history, classifying organisms like that helps us make predictions and assumptions based on our knowledge of related organisms, so it's quite beneficial to humans. Also, the other classifications like tree, shrub, fruit, whatever, are also valid and used in biology, just not the main classification system. The other feature of phylogenetically classifying organisms is that it's valid for all life, which is a nice property.
Biology is fundamentally based on evolution, so when viewed through a biological lens, a classification based on evolution is appropriate.
We know of course that taxonomy is only one way to group organisms. People use plenty of others, including ones more beneficial to the human experience.
We group plants by the hardiness zones they can tolerate, for example. If you go to a plant shop they'll likely have plants which thrive best in sun outside, while others which need shade are inside or covered.
A zoo might group animals by where they are found, with zebras, ostriches, elephants, and giraffes together in the savanna section, rather than place all of the mammals together and the birds elsewhere.
As others already mentioned, "fruits" and "vegetables" are culinary definitions, not biological ones. Far more people use the culinary term "vegetable" to describe a tomato than the botanical term "fruit".
We also have religious classifications, like the Biblical prohibition: "“Nevertheless, these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof: as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean unto you.”
There is no "first fish from which all fish derived".
Phylogenetic existence refers to the evolutionary history and relationships of a species as represented in a phylogenetic tree. This tree is a diagram that depicts the lines of evolutionary descent of different species, organisms, or genes from a common ancestor.
So monkeys are phylogenetically related, because all monkeys that we know have common ancestors.
Fish came to be multiple times independently. Being a fish, a tree, or a crab is a strategy, not a species.
Which is ironic because we call it the "tree of life", but it should be "forest of life" (but since life originated in the sea, it should be the "sea of life"), since trees don't have a single phylogenetic root: There wasn't a "first tree that all trees descend from": Things became trees independent of one another, because being treelike is beneficial early on, much like being fishlike and crablike.
I understand the idea, I was asking for a link where the original "there's no fish" is discussed. I've seen it linked on HN but haven't been able to find it since.
a) There are fish. Sharks are fish. Trout are fish. So therefore humans are fish as we are more related to trout than we are to sharks. This is basically saying that "fish" is roughly the same as "any vertebrate" or "any vertebrate with teeth" (depending on where you draw the line).
or
b) There is no such thing as a fish. There are THREE things: sharks/rays, ray finned fishes, and lobed finned fishes (which includes humans)
Lots of plants have leaves. A few don't, some primitive because they hadn't evolved them yet (e.g. algae) and a few because they lost them (broom, cacti). If there were no trees and nobody had ever seen a tree you could still explain leaves.
Lots of plants have wood. Things that aren't trees have wood. They're called bushes. Wood is a thing separate from trees. Not all trees have wood: bananas grow on really big herbs that people call trees because they are tree-sized, but they're herbs. Palm trees aren't really made of wood.
Yeah. But that wood and that leaves of plant don't get you a tree. You are filling in the blanks that makes something a tree with information you already know about trees.
> You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
I don't think so?
All non-tree plants have leaves (almost all maybe? edit: not cacti, so not all but most).
Wood can be defined biologically ("cellulose fibers embedded in a lignin matrix" or something like that)
I initially thought this was a criticism of phylogenetic trees (the mathematical object) rather than whether trees (the kind of plant) exist phylogenetically! Much less radical than I was expecting.
A hacker news favorite:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35081277
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621646
Well, the name is not the thing named, so ultimately there is no such thing as anything. See also "ceci n'est pas une pipe".
True but the wrong point here.
Lots of different and only loosely related types of plant have evolved to be tall with thick strong stems to get above other plants and capture the light.
That is a way of growing, and we call it a tree, but the point here is not "trees do not exist" but "lots of totally different unrelated types of plant came up with being tree-shaped independently."
Also missing from “no such thing as” discussions is the idea that it’s perfectly fine and useful to use the word tree casually when the general shape and appearance are what matters, and also perfectly fine to want to avoid that term when something more precise is what matters.
And we name them 'tree' because they have a certain shape and configuration. Then we created taxonomies and "discover" that tree isn't a single thing
We seem to cling too tightly to definition, as the expense of paying attention to the things as they are.
My point is resonant with the piece because it illustrates that conventional naming doesn't match taxonometric systematisation. I am happy to be wrong though, if it makes you feel better.
Um.
I mean, I like your attitude to the debate, but I don't really get it.
"A is not B." "No, A is a B, but B is not the same as A."
"Ah, but, there is no such thing as an alphabet, really, it's all just vibrations in the air or marks on paper."
You can dismiss almost any argument in science by deconstructing it to symbols and then saying that symbols are not real, but I don't see this as a valid contribution to the debate, myself. Your mileage clearly varies.
There absolutely is such a thing as "a tree". Trees are a real thing. They are an identifiable type of land plant.
But "tree" is a growth habit. It's not a family of plants. This is an important distinction and it's not a hard one to grasp. I still find it odd that it surprises people.
Similarly, I have zero time for this "no such thing as a fish" bollocks. Yes there is such a thing as a fish. It's an obligately aquatic, legless, gilled vertebrate.
It is quite easy to define what "fish" means in unambiguous terms that exclude tadpoles, axolotls, terrestrial vertebrates such as humans and so on.
The argument seems to rest on their being (at least) two families of fish. Big deal. Fish are real, trees are real. They aren't families, but they are identifiable groups.
I was not going for the semiotic-reductionist interpretation, but it's a fair assumption to think that that's what I meant by 'name ≠ thing named'.
My point was more to do with the construction of meaning and the general trend of clinging to knowledge at the expense of learning, hence the Taoist addage, since this is a phenomenon that is driven primarily by Western scientific thought.
To put it more verbosely - taxonomies, especially those driven by classification based on gene presence and regulation, will end up with lots of loose ends and contradictions, because this is not the fundamental mechanism by which new forms emerge. The metric is distorted and, by extension, so is our understanding of the morphogenetic space that it is attempting to describe. Calling it phylogeny is somewhat circular because it insists on genes being the regulating mechanism, whereas the article specifically draws attention to the limitation of this category-system, instead looking at the direct experience of a tree, which would more aptly be described as its morphology: "a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood."
I do not see nature (of which we are a part) as entirely gene-regulated, though obviously they are involved. But what else is there? Following Michael Levin, I say 'agential material', meaning that life solves problems with full acknowledgement of an unpredictable context. In this interpretation, it is no surprise that a dandelion can become a tree, or vice versa; what matters is the needs that the plant expresses and the responses given by the environment it is exploring. This is cell-level cognition; heretical and beautiful.
I'm a sucker for these kinds of discussions. Evolution is way messier than you think it is, and evolutionary biologists get really heated about clades vs grades and so on and so forth. For fun, spend some time on the r/evolution and r/biology subreddits and you'll occasionally run into one of these heated debates. One of my favourites:
https://www.reddit.com/r/evolution/comments/o6yja1/serious_a...
If you ever meet an evolutionary biologist at a party, ask them if apes are monkeys. I think the closest thing for a Web developer like myself would be casually dropping into conversation the comment that "an Englishman invented the Internet".
There's no such thing as a fish, there's no such thing as a tree, there's no such thing as a vegetable, there's no such thing as a man, there's no such thing as a woman. Biology is weird and blurry and doesn't fit into well-defined groups
But "there's no such thing as a fish" is a different statement than "there's no such thing as a man". First off, "man" is not a biological category, but a human social category. Biologically, "boy" and "man" are both "male". And there is such a thing as male in biology.
There is such thing as a fish, just not phylogenetically: all the different organisms that we think of as fish don’t form a group that includes all the descendents of all fish and all fish. Why is that? Some things we consider fish today have common ancestors that have legs, i.e. not fish.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/fisheye-view-tree-of-life/wha...
Fish only exist in a duck-typing sense, not in an unambiguous ancestry tree sense.
Being a fish is better seen as an interface rather than an inheritance.
Which is how cyborg feminism sees those human categories, too.
Indeed. A fish is a category that we have made up to make it easier to communicate the concept of a wiggly thing that lives under the sea, in the same way that man is a social category we made up to communicate the concept of someone who presents in a male way
This is an analysis of the term "man" which is, at the very least, overly specialised to a technical reading in rhetorical or cultural analysis.
In areas of cultural analysis, terms are often read rhetorically, meaning as merely social actions with a persuasive or claim-making intent. E.g., to say "I know that ball will go in the net!!" isn't a claim involving actual knowledge, but something like a rhetorical act which appeals to the literal meaning of "know" in, say, something like an ironic/exaggerated/fabricated/social way. If one analysed the term "know" as-if this rhetorical context were its primary meaning, then one would conclude that all knowledge is merely a social presentation, knowing itself is no real thing in the world, only a game of making claims.
This is a deeply implausible primary meaning of "know", because it makes inexplicable why anyone would claim to know (ie., why would playing this game have any persuasive force?). It only makes sense if a literal meaning is available in which it is possible, and indeed quite common, to actually know things in an ordinary way. Then claiming to know, and being ironic/etc., makes sense.
It's no coincidence then that from this fields of analysis, in which any term whatsoever can take this merely rhetorical meaning, are terms like "man" given such a reading. However, the claim that this constitutes the only or even primary meaning of "man" is quite implausible. Since in the vast majority of cases, e.g., in biology, law, science, medicine etc. the authors are not taking "man" to be a kind of social rhetorical assertion. For example, pension ages differ in law across men/women -- its implausible to suppose that this law concerns itself with merely rhetorical actions of individuals insofar as they make claims to be men/women.
Indeed, as above, unless there is a literal meaning of "man" the social act of claiming to be one in a variety of non-literal contexts becomes meaningless. Consider eg., "I'm not really a man, I'm just playing one on stage with a lot of makeup". Here I'd suppose "man" has to have a literal meaning of having the characteristics of (human, adult) males in order for social claims of the sort, "I am a man!" to make any sense.
The very contemporary move to re-read these terms as primarily rhetorical claims might make some sense from a political/cultural perspective; but its quite important to remember that this cannot be their literal meaning -- or else a vast amount of derivative rhetorical meaning, and indeed existing law/textbooks/discourse/etc. becomes meaningless.
Um... maybe I just need some coffee, or maybe I need more knowledge of philosophy. Would you be able to dumb that down a bit, or summarise?
What does the term "man" mean in the assertion, "I am a man!"
Two interpretations:
1) It has a literal meaning: the speaker has the characteristics of adult human males.
2) It is has a social-asserting meaning: the speaker wants to be perceived as "the kind of person who makes those assertions"
For asserting-meanings like (2) to make sense, literal meanings (1) have to be available.
Consider, "I'm not a crook!"
For it to make sense to claim not to be a crook, it has to be literally possible not to be one (ie., to be innocent of crimes) independent of claiming to be one.
Many today want (2) to be the "primary" meaning of terms like man/woman, ie., we are told that we should always read them as social assertions. But we have to keep in mind that literal meanings (1) have to exist in order for (2) to even make any sense -- not least that in almost all historical cases (most of the law, medicine, etc.), the literal meaning is the intended meaning.
To say "I am a man!" cannot always mean, "I wish to be seen as having the characteristics of adult males". Just as saying "i am not a crook" cannot always mean, "i wish to be seen as innocent".
A person saying, "I am not a crook" is hoping to persuade the audience that they are innocent. They are "borrowing" from the literal meaning, hoping to persuade the audience that are innocent -- even if they are not.
People saying "I am a man" who are not literally men are likewise borrowing from "what would make this claim literally true" when the say it. If they arent, it wouldnt make any sense to say. The audience has to already know what men literally are before a person claims to be one.
Thank you =)
I would say that "a man" is someone who presents, or deeply wishes to present, in the way the society has generally dictated people who have been assigned male at birth have to. For example, I have a friend who is a trans man. I would class them as "a man", since they wish to present, and exist in society, in the same way that people who have been assigned male at birth would. As such, they have short hair, refer to themselves by a name that has more masculine connotations, wear clothes generally aimed as masculine people, etc
The issue with this analysis is that it cannot explain the use of the term "man" in most contexts, nor literal claims to being a man.
In the first case, take a law about pensions -- the law-writer wasnt giving masculine-presenting people fewer years of their pension than feminine-presenting people; they were applying it to adult males. This applies very generally across many uses of man/woman -- the speaker just doesn't mean masculine-people and feminine-people, even if that highly correlates with the people they did mean. (Taking masculine/feminie to mean those presenting-characteristics).
In the second case, consider the claim, "I am really a man!", if that's only a claim to masculine-presentation then 'really' doesnt make sense, right? How could an audience ever be mistaken about this? What is at issue when people claim this, or dispute this? No person who asks, "are you really X?" is disputing how something is already perceived as-being-X.
Compare with, "are you really a crook?", "are you really a police officer?", "are you really a witch?" In each case there is a literal, descriptive, perception-independent meaning.
One reply to me here is to bite the bullet and say, "I am really a man(, I am just perceived to be a woman)!" is meaningless. That claims, "I am really a man/woman!" are meaningless. That makes sense out of the view that it's all just social perception, but its kinda implausible -- because we've written so much using these terms that there's clearly a literal meaning.
Eg., consider going to the pension office to collect a pension at the age for which women are allowed it but men are not. You speak to the pension officer and say, "I'm a woman, so I'm allowed my pension now". It seems the pension officer can meaningfully dispute this, "Are you really a woman?"
If you asked, "what do you mean?" the pension officer could coherently say, "pension age for women is 66, meaning if you are female and an adult over 66 then you are entitled to.."
It would seem disqualifying to reply, "I am a woman because I am perceived to be the same as the people who qualify"
I wouldn't say "I am a woman because I am perceived to be the same as the people who qualify", I would say "I am a woman because I am choosing to present in the same way that is generally associated with those assigned female at birth". It is a label created by society that I would want to conform to
Transgender people would also be taking hormones and get surgery(/ies), changing their bodies to be closer to the sex they weren't born as. I get what you're saying, but am just clarifying because it sounds too close to the "hairy bearded man in a dress" stereotype.
The question is whether there is a gap between the people who qualify and the people who are perceived to qualify given the language of the law, ie., can we make any sense out of the pension officer who then says, "choosing to present this way doesnt qualify you for a pension under this law"?
You can redefine the terms to eliminate any non-presentational meaning, but it seems quite implausible to say that the people who wrote that law mean to make it a choice as to whether you qualify for a pension.
When they said, "women qualify for a pension at age 66", they were not using the word "woman" which would have any sense of a choice associated with it, right?
Giving the terms "woman", "man" etc. only a presentational meaning renders a vast amount of our discourse using these terms absolute bizarre, at the very least. Law makers of 1940s setting pension ages were not handing the qualification criteria to individuals to decide, right? The law is not encouraging people to present-as-women, it's not saying: if you choose to present as adult females, we'll give you a few more years pension! Indeed, its hard to imagine any law-maker involved ever thought that qualification for a pension could turn on any choice an individual could make.
You can argue that people should not use "woman" to refer to "adult human females" in most contexts, or that it is better to take the rhetorical meaning of "woman" as the primary one (ie., the ones in which one claims to-be-like literal women) ---- but I cannot really see how you could claim the law makers of the 1940s were writing pension grants based on how people happened to present.
Likewise the same goes for medical textbooks, biology textbooks, etc. And a vast amount of social conversation. If bob says "I'm only interested in dating women", and eve replies, "I present in all the ways adult females do!", bob isnt mistaken to say, "no, i'm looking for someone to start a family with".
It's really really strange to say that when bob said, "i'm interested in dating women" he was confused when he thought being pregnant wasn't ordinarily entailed by the term "woman".
Again, you can try to change how these words are used. But the claim that lawmakers, doctors, biologists, ...people going on dates... that everyone is either confused or "always meant" making-choices-over-presentation.. is a very strange view that just seems patently at odds with what people mean.
I have no idea why there is a disparity in pension ages between men and women. And if a trans woman is dating a cis man, generally she will make it clear that she is trans. For some men this isn't a problem, for some it is, hence why its a good idea to be upfront with it. And I feel like there is a difference between "I want to date a woman" and "I want to start a family". I personally don't want to start a family, but I would like to date women. You can start a family by adopting, so the gender of your partner, or even if they exist at all, doesn't matter
The issuing I'm addressing isn't whether its possible to define man/woman in a way that makes these just presentational terms -- but whether that's what people actually mean, or have always meant.
It doesn't really make sense to me to say that "this is what people have always meant", nor much sense to say today, "most people mean this". We can change the terms, or adopt a kinda rhetorical practice where we don't use them literally, but its hard to imagine that's what most people have meant in most usages of these terms.
It rubs people up the wrong way when people try to tell others what their words mean in order to win an argument, so it comes across as bad-faith/manipulative to assert that this is what people mean. The reason i use pensions as an example is just because its neutral and specific, but people use man/woman in exactly those ways all the time.
It's straightforward to have an open argument about how to integrate people into society who present-as-women (, -as-men) etc. whether/when these class of people should be treated as-if a part of the relevant sexual class. But this requires giving arguments, being understanding of people who are sceptical, trying to persuade people, etc.
It comes across bad faith when people try to say, instead, "the very words you're using already mean i'm right" -- not only isnt this a very plausible account of the history of the terms, or of what people using them intend them to mean, it's alienating to people who would otherwise be quite tolerant. It turns a discussion of how to change society to be accepting into one about how everyone is profoundly mistaken about the words they use, and control over the meaning of these words "really" lies with others, who have happened to define them in ways that make most common thoughts about the issue incoherent.
Fyi, i dont think you are doing that -- ie., acting in bad faith. i'm just explaining why it rubs people the wrong way
Sex is "reframed" to a matter of performance / visibility (Gender) because your friends emotional well-being depends on it. The recent-ish gender theory is all about accommodating people with these kind of feelings. From that perspective, the "What is a Man/Woman" discussions make much more sense than they currently do.
You lost it a bit at the end with women and men. Those aren't phylogenic groups, so not even closely related to the concept. It's a bit like saying "there's no such thing as granite" because not all granite is the product of two other pieces of granite having sex.
I mean granite is just an arbitrary group we've made by saying that a rock that falls within certain percentages of quartz, feldspar, mica etc. Outside that, you get into the granitoids. The amounts are completely fluid and continuous, so the boundary is completely arbitrary. I guess in a way, there is no such thing as granite either
There is such thing as a men and women. Gender has nothing to do with biology!
I can't resist... Language is, in fact, a matter of common usage. A man is (or was) generally considered to the thing that is (or was) a male human. While I recognise that gender theory has challenged this notion, introducing the idea that gender is socially constructed, it can easily be understood (by those who have the intention of understanding) why this confusion might exist.
Before contemporary gender theory challenged the distinction between male and man, there was also a common distinction, e.g. by "becoming a man". A man is a male human adult, and the idea of adulthood is to some degree fluid. The legal age limit of 18 or 21 suggests that this is/was when we consider humans adults. But notions of "when your brain fully develops" suggests ages of 25-28 for men. Other factors involve when your beard grows big enough, and when children on the sidewalk saying "that man" about you. Society seems to have a duck-typing approach to what a man is, i.e. when a male human transitions from boy to man. And indeed, transgender men fit the duck-typing of society to a point where "strongly influenced by testosterone" seems like just as good a definition of, at least, "manly". Contemporary Western culture would have that you can make all sorts of other transitions at different points.
Or perhaps phylogenetics does not determine what categories are relevant.
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It’s occurred to me before (and I’m sure to someone thinking more seriously about it) that our way of categorizing organisms seems to be ultimately based on their origin, and not on something…more beneficial to the human experience, or more in-line with aesthetics and colors, or in some other way.
In other words, it is a deliberate choice to “taxonomize” organisms by their origins, and not by some other thing. This seems like an assumption that no one really questions, and I wonder if it ultimately leads to some unforeseen problems, or at least a view of the world that’s less than true or optimal for human flourishing.
You've got that exactly backwards. Humans say "fish" and "tree". That's the entire point of the article.
I think it's the case that both these systems can, should, and do coexist. When doing research or development, precision is more important than immediate grasp-ability. With people in general conversation, we operate on rules of thumb and appearances really do sometimes matter more than rigor. Colloquial speech then takes precedence, even if it is imprecise.
This article is nice because it is both interesting in the purely rigorous sense (phylogenetically), and it highlights this divide between precise definitions and the words we find useful (most of all in that catchy title!).
Ehhhh I strongly disagree with your statement.
The biological system of taxonomy is really for the biology of the organism. We have other categories we use (as humans who are not biologists), even though we borrow organizational structure from biologists! For example, the conceptual category of "vegetable" is a culinary term, not a biological one, and is a good example of a category not used by biologists.
There's a common saying, "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad". I believe that biologists should be categorizing organisms based on their origin, but people who are not biologists should not be bound by categories created by biologists.
For example, palm trees and bamboos are not trees biologically, but actually tall grass. The biological category of "tree" may not apply, but when you hire a landscraper, you aren't using the biological category of "tree", but rather the gardening category of "tree" (when you need a palm tree cut down). That's not a failure of biology, that's just because we use 1 word "tree" to describe 2 categories used by different fields.
Since an organism characteristics depend a lot on its evolutionary history, classifying organisms like that helps us make predictions and assumptions based on our knowledge of related organisms, so it's quite beneficial to humans. Also, the other classifications like tree, shrub, fruit, whatever, are also valid and used in biology, just not the main classification system. The other feature of phylogenetically classifying organisms is that it's valid for all life, which is a nice property.
Biology is fundamentally based on evolution, so when viewed through a biological lens, a classification based on evolution is appropriate.
We know of course that taxonomy is only one way to group organisms. People use plenty of others, including ones more beneficial to the human experience.
We group plants by the hardiness zones they can tolerate, for example. If you go to a plant shop they'll likely have plants which thrive best in sun outside, while others which need shade are inside or covered.
A zoo might group animals by where they are found, with zebras, ostriches, elephants, and giraffes together in the savanna section, rather than place all of the mammals together and the birds elsewhere.
As others already mentioned, "fruits" and "vegetables" are culinary definitions, not biological ones. Far more people use the culinary term "vegetable" to describe a tomato than the botanical term "fruit".
We also have religious classifications, like the Biblical prohibition: "“Nevertheless, these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof: as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean unto you.”
What is this "there no fish" thing? The blog link takes to a British show.
All fish are not phylogenetically correlated:
Things became fish multiple times independently.
There is no "first fish from which all fish derived".
Phylogenetic existence refers to the evolutionary history and relationships of a species as represented in a phylogenetic tree. This tree is a diagram that depicts the lines of evolutionary descent of different species, organisms, or genes from a common ancestor.
So monkeys are phylogenetically related, because all monkeys that we know have common ancestors.
Fish came to be multiple times independently. Being a fish, a tree, or a crab is a strategy, not a species.
Which is ironic because we call it the "tree of life", but it should be "forest of life" (but since life originated in the sea, it should be the "sea of life"), since trees don't have a single phylogenetic root: There wasn't a "first tree that all trees descend from": Things became trees independent of one another, because being treelike is beneficial early on, much like being fishlike and crablike.
I understand the idea, I was asking for a link where the original "there's no fish" is discussed. I've seen it linked on HN but haven't been able to find it since.
Cladistically you can decide:
a) There are fish. Sharks are fish. Trout are fish. So therefore humans are fish as we are more related to trout than we are to sharks. This is basically saying that "fish" is roughly the same as "any vertebrate" or "any vertebrate with teeth" (depending on where you draw the line).
or
b) There is no such thing as a fish. There are THREE things: sharks/rays, ray finned fishes, and lobed finned fishes (which includes humans)
That's the joke in the name of the British show.
> we are more related to trout than we are to sharks
wait what
It says in the wikipedia article that the quote comes from the show.
Edit: Removed.
I would delete but I can't, because there's a reply now.
Even though you might not want the answer to the question you only accidentally asked, I think it's useful to answer it for others.
It looks like this post was second-chanced, and already has a few better answers than what I had written here a few days ago.
I only answered because nobody else had commented on this post at the time.
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Sorry for commenting, I guess. I was just excited to share something I knew.
I deleted my reply as much as I could.
In the future, you might want to ask your question a little more clearly, or else you risk being misunderstood again.
> First, what is a tree? It’s a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood.
Hmm. This is a circular definition. You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
No you don't.
Lots of plants have leaves. A few don't, some primitive because they hadn't evolved them yet (e.g. algae) and a few because they lost them (broom, cacti). If there were no trees and nobody had ever seen a tree you could still explain leaves.
Lots of plants have wood. Things that aren't trees have wood. They're called bushes. Wood is a thing separate from trees. Not all trees have wood: bananas grow on really big herbs that people call trees because they are tree-sized, but they're herbs. Palm trees aren't really made of wood.
Yeah. But that wood and that leaves of plant don't get you a tree. You are filling in the blanks that makes something a tree with information you already know about trees.
> You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
I don't think so?
All non-tree plants have leaves (almost all maybe? edit: not cacti, so not all but most). Wood can be defined biologically ("cellulose fibers embedded in a lignin matrix" or something like that)
Non tree plants still require you assume what a tree is.
Ok, but all plants have leaves so you would only have to agree on what a plant is. You are trying to make a point but it makes no sense.
EDIT: you could also have totally separate definitions on what wood and leaves are without talking about trees or plants, don't you think?
Sure. But when most people think of plants they already use a tree like thing as mental model.
People who have only seen non tree plants doesn't exist.
And nor does any non tree plant leaves help you generate a tree leaf.
Do trees display carcination? Surely memes collide?
I initially thought this was a criticism of phylogenetic trees (the mathematical object) rather than whether trees (the kind of plant) exist phylogenetically! Much less radical than I was expecting.