This seems to me one example where many philosophers don’t seem to understand that the word doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning apart from how people define it.
I suspect it’s more that they don’t care.
Eliezer objects to Aristotelian syllogisms, saying that (for example) concluding that a human is mortal is silly because mortality is part of the definition of human.
This is a mistake. Mortality isn’t part of the definition; it doesn’t need to be. The point is that mortality has been observed to always apply to entities that possess the necessary defining qualities of humanity. This is a separate and distinct observation.
We don’t need to see Socrates die to conclude that he was human. “Socrates is human” and “All humans are mortal” are very different and independent inferences. The data necessary for us to accept one as true have nothing to do with the data necessary for the other.
If we kept trying to kill Socrates, and failed despite meeting the conditions that we’ve found to normally kill people, we would then be confronted with an inconsistency, and would have to discard at least one of our prior assumptions. We could abolish the idea that all humans are mortal, since this being we recognize as human seems to be immortal. We could abolish the idea that Socrates is human. Or we could abolish both.
Which option we choose has a lot to do with the relative strength of the supporting arguments for each assumption.
I suspect it’s more that they don’t care.
Eliezer objects to Aristotelian syllogisms, saying that (for example) concluding that a human is mortal is silly because mortality is part of the definition of human.
This is a mistake. Mortality isn’t part of the definition; it doesn’t need to be. The point is that mortality has been observed to always apply to entities that possess the necessary defining qualities of humanity. This is a separate and distinct observation.
We don’t need to see Socrates die to conclude that he was human. “Socrates is human” and “All humans are mortal” are very different and independent inferences. The data necessary for us to accept one as true have nothing to do with the data necessary for the other.
If we kept trying to kill Socrates, and failed despite meeting the conditions that we’ve found to normally kill people, we would then be confronted with an inconsistency, and would have to discard at least one of our prior assumptions. We could abolish the idea that all humans are mortal, since this being we recognize as human seems to be immortal. We could abolish the idea that Socrates is human. Or we could abolish both.
Which option we choose has a lot to do with the relative strength of the supporting arguments for each assumption.