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From: tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: \"Words mean what I pay them to mean . . .\"
Message-ID: <1057@ihlpg.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 16:31:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihlpg.1057
Posted: Sun Aug 11 16:31:12 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Aug-85 20:25:11 EDT
References: <410@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 26

> [Thomas Newton]
> Arguments on the definition of the function HUMAN(X) seem to occupy a large
> amount of time in this newsgroup, and to a great extent these arguments can
> not be decided by science since the decision to include/exclude particular
> terms is philosophical in nature.  This is not to say that any definition of
> HUMAN(X) is as good as any other -- I'm sure most people on the net disagree
> with the examples given above -- but that it is hard to resolve differences
> because ultimately there are no objective tools for doing so.
> 
> On the other hand, the function ALIVE(X) is fairly well-defined.  Rich's
> assertion that ALIVE(fetus) = FALSE was thus either a lie (intentional or
> not) or an attempt to introduce a second meaning for ALIVE.  If it was a
> lie, it was definitely counterproductive.  But even if it was an attempt
> to redefine ALIVE it was counterproductive -- do we really need the sort
> of confusion surrounding the word "alive" that we have surrounding the word
> "human"?  If every word used to communicate has extremely ambiguous meanings,
> we will all be the worse off for it.
-------------------------------------------------
Dead wrong.  ALIVE(X) is also pretty damn ambiguous.  It is not at all
unreasonable to say that many individual cells in the human body are
alive.  Long semantic arguments about what is alive and what is not
are just as futile and scientifically undecidable as what is human.
Your statements about HUMAN(X) are right on the mark.  These same statements
also hold for ALIVE(X).
-- 
Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan