The Aristotelian syllogism would run, “Humans have ten fingers, Fred has nine fingers, therefore Fred is not a human” but the way we actually think is “Humans have ten fingers, Fred is a human, therefore Fred is a ‘nine-fingered human’.”
It’s not important to your central claim, but this is the strawmanniest thing since Straw Man came to Straw Town.
No; most philosophers today do, I think, believe that the alleged humanity of 9-fingered instances *homo sapiens* is a serious philosophical problem. It comes up in many “intro to philosophy” or “philosophy of science” texts or courses. Post-modernist arguments rely heavily on the belief that any sort of categorization which has any exceptions is completely invalid.
It’s not important to your central claim, but this is the strawmanniest thing since Straw Man came to Straw Town.
No; most philosophers today do, I think, believe that the alleged humanity of 9-fingered instances *homo sapiens* is a serious philosophical problem. It comes up in many “intro to philosophy” or “philosophy of science” texts or courses. Post-modernist arguments rely heavily on the belief that any sort of categorization which has any exceptions is completely invalid.