And yet, if I show you various things, you’ll be able to tell me if they are a vegetable or not. Vegetables are a social construct, not a biological construct. But that’s OK. Money is also a social construct.
Vegetables, like shapes, and fish, have no objective definition which includes everything you would put into it but excludes everything you would reject from the group.
The lack of a universally agreed upon definition does imply the lack of an objective definition. And it also does not imply there isn’t a general definition that most people agree on that works in most cases.
Almost all words have different meanings when you get into a specific niche. “Elastic” in casual contexts means stretchy, but in physics contexts, specifically describes a materials ability to return to it’s prior state after being stretched. But if it happened to be that “Elastic” lacks a definition in physics entirely, we wouldn’t run around saying “nothing is elastic”.
Yet for some reason people do that exact thing with Vegetables/fish.
What do you mean by objective? If i say that vegetables are things contained in this list: {carrot, potato} and nothing else, wouldn’t this be an objective definition of my own making?
If i say that fish are all members of the monophyletic group of vertebrates, including hagfish, reptiles, birds, and humans, but not including tunicates, that is also an objective definition.
I think you mean that these things don’t have a universal generally-accepted definitions, as reasonable people might use “fish” and “vegetable” to mean very different things in different contexts.
They can still be valid and useful definitions, it is still useful to talk about eating a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, or seeing fish at the aquarium, but the definitions are fuzzy until you specify them for a specific context.
Wisdom is understanding that all word categories are largely arbitrary, based on the distinctions which are needing to be made at any one time, and thus to apply the scientific, botanical definition of “fruit” to a general culinary context is foolish.
Vegetables don’t exist. A good deal of the “vegetables” you eat are fruits. The rest are leaves, roots, flowers, and stems.
And yet, if I show you various things, you’ll be able to tell me if they are a vegetable or not. Vegetables are a social construct, not a biological construct. But that’s OK. Money is also a social construct.
“Fish don’t exist”-ass fact.
Yes they do. Something lacking a definition in one specific profession does not remove it’s definition from other fields or the colloquial definition.
Shapes don’t exist because actually they are all squares, circles, triangles, etc.
spoiler
Shapes & vegetables both exist. Provide your definition of Vegetable & source if you actually want to push this issue.
Vegetables, like shapes, and fish, have no objective definition which includes everything you would put into it but excludes everything you would reject from the group.
The lack of a universally agreed upon definition does imply the lack of an objective definition. And it also does not imply there isn’t a general definition that most people agree on that works in most cases.
Almost all words have different meanings when you get into a specific niche. “Elastic” in casual contexts means stretchy, but in physics contexts, specifically describes a materials ability to return to it’s prior state after being stretched. But if it happened to be that “Elastic” lacks a definition in physics entirely, we wouldn’t run around saying “nothing is elastic”.
Yet for some reason people do that exact thing with Vegetables/fish.
What do you mean by objective? If i say that vegetables are things contained in this list: {carrot, potato} and nothing else, wouldn’t this be an objective definition of my own making?
If i say that fish are all members of the monophyletic group of vertebrates, including hagfish, reptiles, birds, and humans, but not including tunicates, that is also an objective definition.
I think you mean that these things don’t have a universal generally-accepted definitions, as reasonable people might use “fish” and “vegetable” to mean very different things in different contexts.
They can still be valid and useful definitions, it is still useful to talk about eating a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, or seeing fish at the aquarium, but the definitions are fuzzy until you specify them for a specific context.
Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is technically a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes in Fruit Salad
Wisdom is understanding that all word categories are largely arbitrary, based on the distinctions which are needing to be made at any one time, and thus to apply the scientific, botanical definition of “fruit” to a general culinary context is foolish.
Koreans use tomato as a fruit all the time. Drives me nuts.
Tomatoes and watermelon are both berries.
Strawberries are not berries.