12-08-2008, 11:50 PM
kj,
First of all, a sincere thanks for reading my big post. I'm glad to know there was an audience. :-)
The simplicity was deliberate, as I'm not trying to construct a true analogy or metaphor for the particular case. Rather, I'm boiling it down to "a thing that happens a certain way."
Really, it could be anything. Greg eats an orange. A company hires people from a certain country. A dog sleeps in a certain position.
Any of these will illustrate why the quoted argument fails. It's reasonable to say that I might eat an orange, but not that a given orange will be eaten by me. It's reasonable to say that the company might hire someone from the same country, but not that someone from that country will be hired by the company. It's reasonable to say that the dog will sleep in the same position, but not that something sleeping in that position will be that dog.
The real-life situation is not that simple, but the principle is the same. The principle here is that just because thing x occurs in a certain way y, one cannot say that something which occurs in way y will be thing x.
First of all, a sincere thanks for reading my big post. I'm glad to know there was an audience. :-)
The simplicity was deliberate, as I'm not trying to construct a true analogy or metaphor for the particular case. Rather, I'm boiling it down to "a thing that happens a certain way."
Really, it could be anything. Greg eats an orange. A company hires people from a certain country. A dog sleeps in a certain position.
Any of these will illustrate why the quoted argument fails. It's reasonable to say that I might eat an orange, but not that a given orange will be eaten by me. It's reasonable to say that the company might hire someone from the same country, but not that someone from that country will be hired by the company. It's reasonable to say that the dog will sleep in the same position, but not that something sleeping in that position will be that dog.
The real-life situation is not that simple, but the principle is the same. The principle here is that just because thing x occurs in a certain way y, one cannot say that something which occurs in way y will be thing x.