“Every time” is inaccurate.
Naaah. He’s an idiot for reasons entirely unrelated to my knowledge of lingustics / psycholinguistics or the hotness of the Chinese.
When someone says ‘groups do not exist’, then their meaning seems clear. And wrong. As I said earlier, the determination of groups is absolutely a cornerstone of science. If someone says ‘groups do not exist’, then they have either stuffed their head in a bag and the bag in a sandpit, or they do not mean precisely what they say.
In practical terms, this is just not so - for the most part, words do mean the same thing when used twice (or n-times). Some words have different meanings in different contexts, sure. If you go into hospital for an operation, you’d better hope that the surgeons mean the same thing when they say it multiple times:
‘Remove the tumor from his amygdala.’
<chop>
‘You did mean amputate his bollocks, yes?’
‘No, I meant give him a breast enlargement.’
‘OK, I’ll perform Lasik on him right away.’
Ha! Even Magritte knew that one!
The meaning of anything is in us, as far as we are concerned. We can only see things through our own eyes.
Well, in the ‘Asian’ / taste example, this happens to be defined by a specific gene that tends to occur in ‘asian’ populations. The extent of ‘asian’ in this context has not been determined fully.
However, the ‘asian’ group has utility. It is possible to be more precise in this case. More precise, and more unwieldy, more clumsy.
There are ‘good’ examples of groups, and ‘bad’ examples. In this example, it seems that the groups were perhaps not well defined. However I’m not arguing that all groups are meaningful, or that the basis of all grouping is sound. That’s not to say that all groups are ill-defined, and it’s not to say that groups do not have utility in science.
Whenever an experiment takes place in behavioural science, differences will be sought that define groups. It’s the very basis of the science. If someone - FinnAgain - really means that the individual is all that truly exists, and is all that should be studied, then we might as well give up fire and head back to the caves.
Now, if FinnAgain meant:
- Groups are defined by humans. They do not have any ‘absolute’ existence.
- Membership of groups is generally probabilistic, and most groups have exceptions.
- The formation a group can lead to overgeneralisations and the assignment of negative characteristics to said group.
Well, these are all fine. However, to deny the very existence of groups in a practical sense is simply idiocy. Now, I am biased here - I do science and I do not have the luxury of pretending that groups do not exist. Pretending that groups exist, however, works.
It is also a fool’s errand to crusade for hyper-accuracy in speech, but I suppose we all need a hobby.
It’s going to be difficult to give an example without using words. But even when it’s possible it’s not necessarily the best solution.
To use a situation that has arisen in this thread, suppose somebody asked me what the word “Jew” meant. If I said “it’s a person who believes in the tenets of the religion of Judaism” I’d admittedly be imprecise - we could think of several exceptions to this definition that would still be encompassed by the term.
But suppose I tried to explain what a Jew was by example:
“Joseph Lieberman is a Jew.”
“So a Jew is a term for a person who’s run for President?”
“No, Woody Allen is also a Jew.”
“They’re both men. Is that what a Jew is?”
“No, Natalie Portman is also a Jew.”
“They’re all Americans. Is that what it means?”
“No, William Shatner is a Jew but he’s from Canada.”
“Okay, they’re all famous. Is being a Jew the same thing as being famous.”
“No, my friend Jim is a Jew and he’s not famous.”
“Okay, I’ve never met your friend, so I don’t know what he’s like. But I’ve noticed everyone you’ve mentioned is alive. Is a Jew another way of saying a living person?”
“No, Albert Einstein was a Jew.”
As you can see, trying to convey meaning by means of “twenty questions” is not really conducive to good communications.
Keep in mind, Linguistic Student #1 is not the same as Linguistic Student #2.
As I said earlier, “Generally, science tries to use only the most generally useful systems of classification and even those get overturned from time to time.” Scientists are very aware of the unreliability of grouping. (Look at recent thinking on “race” for example.) Science uses grouping for utilitarian purposes, but scientists are aware that these groupings can quickly become obsolete.
Little Nemo, since we don’t seem to be able to define Jew very well either by definition or by example, maybe all Jews are not alike.
(Excellent post, BTW.)
And I hereby resign as defender of linguistic studies! It is a fascinating field, but I haven’t thought about abstraction ladders in years.
Pax
For those interested in a debate, who can give up calling me names, You have been Debated!
See ya there. 
Nobody is claiming all Jews are alike - that’s the strawman that Finn was trying to build. But if you took the list of people I mentioned before; Joseph Lieberman, Woody Allen, Natalie Portman, William Shatner, Albert Einstein, and my friend Jim - you’d have a group of people that are Jews. Now suppose you considered this list of people; George W. Bush, Sean Connery, Alfred Hitchcock, Jennifer Lopez, Mao Zedong, and my friend Kenny - now you’ve got a list of people who are not Jews. And anyone who knew these people would was independently asked to divide them into a group of Jews or non-Jews, would arrive at the same groups. This proves that there is some real characteristic in the world that defines somebody as Jewish or not.
And yes, there are people in the world that some people might define as Jewish while other people do not. But only a fool tries to claim that something does not exist because it cannot be measured with absolute precision.
And yes, even more truely, being Jewish is not the only characteristic the former group has and holding Jewishness in common does not make them identical. I could just as easily divided the same twelve people into groups of men and women, Americans and non-Americans, living and dead, famous and non-famous, and in every case the resulting groups would be different. Only a bigger fool that the one I mentioned before thinks that putting a person in a group defines the person.
Finn, with his claims about fallacious fungibility, was saying that if we identified people as belonging to a group we were saying that every member of the group was identical. That would indeed be a stupid thing to believe. But nobody was making that claim. Nobody is claiming that people are identical because they have a single common characteristic. But what Finn was saying was equally ridiculous - he was trying to claim that because nobody is identical it’s impossible to identify common characteristics that some people have.
Finn, you may have missed it, but you were the one primarily responsible for the name-calling. You might find your debating skills limited in a forum where you can’t swear at your opponents.
You’re lying through your teeth. Look at my posting history in this thread. I had not one unkind word for any other Doper before I was called haughty. You don’t get to insult me and then claim my debating skills are somehow limited because I respond to you in kind.
Now, I can finish with this thread. If you want to debate facts, come to GD. If you want to insult me some more, knock yourself out.
Oh, and, Zoe I wanted to email you, but you’ve got your email disabled. You are right about my responses and emotions being my own. Nobody can ‘make’ me feel anything. I envy you your rationality and poise, and I respect you.
Namaste, and thank you.
Holy crap! If you thought Finn was pretentious in this thread, check out his GD thread. :eek:
Sheesh. How many times are you going to “leave this thread for good”?
This whole exchange reminds me of Good Will Hunting. You’re like the guy in the ponytail who gets bitch-slapped by Matt Damon. Just regurgitating a bunch of shit he’s learned, “full” of knowledge (and himself), yet completely incapable of creative thought.
It could be worse. We could be unfortunate students who didn’t hear the rumors going around campus and enrolled in FinnAgain’s class.
“Hello, my name is Professor Finn. Now if everyone would take a seat and shut the fuck up, I’ll start telling all of you stupid morons what the truth is.”
Hm, having cast a bloodshot eye over the GD thread, I’m still not entirely sure what FinnAgain’s truth is, but I think it probably involves a lot of lubricant and a hosepipe. He seems a little wobbly on some of the literature, too, but maybe it’s just a problem with his vertical hold.
(Disclaimer: The meaning of this paragraph is ephemeral. Do not use as a floatation device. APR 10%. Objects on the interweb are different than they appear.)
I would just like to observe that “Fallacious Fungibility” would be a dynamite name for a racehorse.
I am taken aback by the idea that someone would believe this as a general rule.
C’mon, if it were true, where are all the corresponding 1-800 fantasy hotlines?
“Talk to real, live, hot, 100% Jewish women!”
Eeesh. :dubious:
Are you saying you don’t like Jewish women? 
SOME. He doesn’t like SOME Jewish women. Come on!
By the way, having further scanned through the masterwork of fungibility and semantic jousting that comprises this thread, I would have to agree that the “Jewish girls are hot” comment is offensive, in the context of this thread.*
Imagine if you will, someone starting a thread to discuss the rumor that David Duke is part African-American. And then someone leaps in with an aside to the effect that “Wow, black women are hot!”
Gives you kind of a crawly feeling, no?
It’s those long cilia and complex organelles.
*and thus I apologize for my own crack on the subject.
No.
I’m still trying to figure out what you meant by the crack.
Perhaps we need to go back to the classic tool of the syllogism:
Brooke Burke is a Jewish girl.
Brooke Burke is hot.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Try this: making fun of the juvenile generalization that all members of a particular racial or ethnic group are “hot”.
And if you can’t comprehend that it would be offensive to an ethnic group to see 1) statement of an idea that most members of the group would find repulsive, (in this case, that Hitler was “Jewish”), followed by 2) a remark that “well, those ____women sure are hot!” - then your mental processes and empathy are certainly deficient today.