The falacy of "one thing or the other."

[xiphias]

Just something that's been going through my mind: people like to put things in dichotomous categories. But nature, and reality in general, doesn't. . .

See, I was thinking about some of the real nasty political and ethical and moral fights people have. And one thing that hit me is that people really put things in one box or another: "This is alive, or it's dead. This is male or it's female. This is right, or it's wrong. This is a canine or it's a vulpine."

And nature doesn't work that way.

Example: I was reading a creationist web site at one point -- I do this sometimes -- and they were talking about how stupid evolution claims were. They were dismissing some clear evidence that several species of modern whales came from a common ancestor. They said something along the lines of, "So what? One kind of whale changed into another kind of whale. They're still whales! God created whales and they remained whales! There's a difference between a whale beoming a whale (which CAN happen according to our 'theories'), and a hippopotomus-like-critter becoming a whale, which can't."

And I said, "Sure, but do they CARE that they're whales? 'Whale' is a name that WE HUMANS stuck on this beast. The animal itself doesn't care if it or its ancestors were in one box or another."

Another example. We think, things are "alive" or "dead". But that's not how the world works. There's stuff in between. Viruses, for instance. They're not alive, they're not dead. They're somewhere in the middle.

And I was thinking about the abortion debate: "A fetus is a human being right from the time of conception!" "No, it's not, not until birth."

Of course, in reality, a developing fetus doesn't suddenly become a human at conception, or suddenly at birth, but rather slowly becomes more and more human through the pregnancy. It doesn't go from 0 to 1 instantaneously at conception, or at birth, but rather takes the entire time of pregnancy to slowly go from not-human to human. And it's always in an in-between state.

I don't know. It's just something I've been thinking about.

Comments

[vonbeck.livejournal.com]

The human mind is geared towards categorizing and grouping
things. This dose not fully explain the issue. Mostly
I believe it comes down to people are stupid sheep.
Most people never really learn/are taught how to critically
think about things. Thus not only do they want simple answers
for things, they want to be told the simple answers.

[redbird]

Yes, the human mind is--among other things--a classifying organ. That doesn't mean it has to be all "A or not A": "red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, magenta, gray" is also a set of categories, and so is "sweet, salty, sour, bitter, savory, bland."

[supergee.livejournal.com]

And as well as two-value and multivalue categories, there are continuous and discrete ones. Colors are continuous categories; chemical elements are discrete ones. The trick is knowing which one is dealing with.