I think that your concerns are valid, but we should focus on the problems, assuming that we are in the least convenient possible world if needed.
(1) and (2): I believe, we should consider him to be real. I think that Jaynes meant “person is real and most stories about him are true”, however.
(4): I think Jaynes talked not about “dinosaurs by definition” but about actual dinosaurs. Loch Ness Monster is a surviving plesiosaur or something.
(5): Why “see” should mean “detect light”? If I taboo word “see”, I will get something like that: “Owls are able to avoid obstacles and find food in the total darkness”, not “Owls are able to detect light in the total darkness”.
Slight quibble about the fifth problem: I see what you’re doing, and I mostly agree with it, but I think you’re stretching the taboo thing a bit. By those criteria, eyeless people, cats and bats can see in total darkness.
(I’m using “eyeless” to avoid trouble with what “blind” means, and also to get around the fact that “total darkness” isn’t a well-defined concept; taken literally it would mean “no variation in the electromagnetic field along the time axis”, which even if it were physically possible would probably require a very life-threatening environment.)
Depending on the environment, one can use touch, smell, sound, taste (even electricity if you’re a shark) to avoid obstacles and find food, and “see” can be colloquially used to describe this, especially where the particular sense is sufficiently acute and/or predominant to resemble the usual importance of sight for humans (as it’s often the case with bats and cetaceans), but it doesn’t seem that’s what the exercise meant. (BTW, IIRC owls can in fact hunt mice using only sound, though I suspect they can’t navigate much around silent obstacles. But the feat was demonstrated by filming the action with IR—having determined first that owls can’t see IR despite their very good low-light vision—which brings us back to that “total darkness” problem.)
If you define “can see” as “able to avoid obstacles and find food”, then you’re pretty much forced to conclude every motile living being can see.
I think that your concerns are valid, but we should focus on the problems, assuming that we are in the least convenient possible world if needed.
(1) and (2): I believe, we should consider him to be real. I think that Jaynes meant “person is real and most stories about him are true”, however.
(4): I think Jaynes talked not about “dinosaurs by definition” but about actual dinosaurs. Loch Ness Monster is a surviving plesiosaur or something.
(5): Why “see” should mean “detect light”? If I taboo word “see”, I will get something like that: “Owls are able to avoid obstacles and find food in the total darkness”, not “Owls are able to detect light in the total darkness”.
Slight quibble about the fifth problem: I see what you’re doing, and I mostly agree with it, but I think you’re stretching the taboo thing a bit. By those criteria, eyeless people, cats and bats can see in total darkness.
(I’m using “eyeless” to avoid trouble with what “blind” means, and also to get around the fact that “total darkness” isn’t a well-defined concept; taken literally it would mean “no variation in the electromagnetic field along the time axis”, which even if it were physically possible would probably require a very life-threatening environment.)
Depending on the environment, one can use touch, smell, sound, taste (even electricity if you’re a shark) to avoid obstacles and find food, and “see” can be colloquially used to describe this, especially where the particular sense is sufficiently acute and/or predominant to resemble the usual importance of sight for humans (as it’s often the case with bats and cetaceans), but it doesn’t seem that’s what the exercise meant. (BTW, IIRC owls can in fact hunt mice using only sound, though I suspect they can’t navigate much around silent obstacles. But the feat was demonstrated by filming the action with IR—having determined first that owls can’t see IR despite their very good low-light vision—which brings us back to that “total darkness” problem.)
If you define “can see” as “able to avoid obstacles and find food”, then you’re pretty much forced to conclude every motile living being can see.
How are birds not actual dinosaurs? :-)
I agree that he probably was thinking of non-avian dinosaurs (and possibly was intending “die out” more broadly than ‘die without descendants’), but…