I disagree with this one. In fact I am having trouble coming up with a concise intentional definition at all.
The fruit of various trees of genus Malus;
How does one define a genus? By it’s genome? I would call an entirely artificial fruit ‘an apple’ if it were sufficiently similar to one.
green, yellow, or red in color; possessing a fivefold symmetry readily observable in cross-section;
If we bred them to be blue and to have a fourfold symmetry, they would still be apples.
I’ve really picked apart this one example but your comment is good overall and I applaud you for taking the time to write all this up; many of my definitions were very complex, so I did not bother.
How does one define a genus? By it’s genome? I would call an entirely artificial fruit ‘an apple’ if it were sufficiently similar to one.
I would call a raven a writing desk if it were sufficiently similar to one :P
But yeah, since we’re really talking about human pattern-matching, apple is defined in terms of “common but not strictly necessary traits.” Similar violations of any non-fuzzy definition could be constructed for shoes (hand-shoes), wire (a piece of wire shorter than it was wide), green (yellow), politicians (candidates), and hope (simple expression of preference). You might even be able to convince people that if you make a shape out of wood it can be a square even if the sides aren’t exactly the same length. However, it is a convenient convention to omit this fuzziness in definitions since it’s so common, and instead rely on the judgement of the reader to associate a thing with the closest definition.
Or, if there is no definition that is not different from the observed pattern in some key way (“key” here is subjective and mostly functional—a biologist might find genes of a species key but a non-biologist might find appearance key, and not vice versa), humans might make up a new category for this pattern.
I picked apple because it was the farthest from a true definition. For the others, I think one could use them in an ‘if-and-only-if’ manner and not be objected to.
Oh, I had assumed that the piece of wire was supposed to be performing some wiry function, since I would describe this case as “some wire” but not as “a wire”.
I disagree with this one. In fact I am having trouble coming up with a concise intentional definition at all.
How does one define a genus? By it’s genome? I would call an entirely artificial fruit ‘an apple’ if it were sufficiently similar to one.
If we bred them to be blue and to have a fourfold symmetry, they would still be apples.
I’ve really picked apart this one example but your comment is good overall and I applaud you for taking the time to write all this up; many of my definitions were very complex, so I did not bother.
I would call a raven a writing desk if it were sufficiently similar to one :P
But yeah, since we’re really talking about human pattern-matching, apple is defined in terms of “common but not strictly necessary traits.” Similar violations of any non-fuzzy definition could be constructed for shoes (hand-shoes), wire (a piece of wire shorter than it was wide), green (yellow), politicians (candidates), and hope (simple expression of preference). You might even be able to convince people that if you make a shape out of wood it can be a square even if the sides aren’t exactly the same length. However, it is a convenient convention to omit this fuzziness in definitions since it’s so common, and instead rely on the judgement of the reader to associate a thing with the closest definition.
Or, if there is no definition that is not different from the observed pattern in some key way (“key” here is subjective and mostly functional—a biologist might find genes of a species key but a non-biologist might find appearance key, and not vice versa), humans might make up a new category for this pattern.
I picked apple because it was the farthest from a true definition. For the others, I think one could use them in an ‘if-and-only-if’ manner and not be objected to.
I really want to see both of these things now.
A piece of wire shorter than it was wide would just be a very small disk. Imagine cutting a wire into little slices.
Oh, I had assumed that the piece of wire was supposed to be performing some wiry function, since I would describe this case as “some wire” but not as “a wire”.