[Svartalfiar]

You couldn’t slap sauce and cheese on Wonder bread and call it, “pizza.” Pumpkin pie crust is made of those same ingredients; is a pumpkin pie and open-faced sandwich? How about crackers and cheese?

Why not? We did it a bunch when we were kids, thought we were crazy clever figuring that out!

Pie crusts usually also include shortening or oils, and typically (as in I have never seen) don't use yeast, so there's no rising period. And a pie is pretty clearly not a sandwich. (Also, an "open-face sandwich" is not a sandwich either!) Crackers and cheese, you can make a sandwich out of them, but they aren't necessarily one.


Whenever someone uses that word, there’s a good chance they’re about to make the reductionist fallacy.

“The human body is just a combination of a few dollars’ worth of chemicals.”

“The fetus is just a blob of tissue.”

“The Constitution is just a piece of paper.”

Calling pizza crust 'bread' isn't reductivism, it's what it is. Decribing something using the parts isn't always a fallacy.

Champagne is grape juice, it's just fermented.

The human body is a collection of (more than) a few dollars of various chemicals.

The fetus is a blob of tissue (just like you and me are).

The Constitution is a piece of paper, just with a special combination of words on it.

[dangus]

>> Calling pizza crust ‘bread’ isn’t reductivism, it’s what it is. Decribing something using the parts isn’t always a fallacy... Pie crusts usually also include shortening or oils, and typically (as in I have never seen) don’t use yeast, so there’s no rising period. <<

TONS of different types of bread use shortenings or oils or butter or something of the sort. And TONS of different types of bread DON’T have yeast.

But apparently you don’t understand the reductionist fallacy. It’s not falsely claiming something is something that it is not. It’s saying something is the MERE sum of its parts (or, more technically, its antecedents), as if there were nothing transformative in bringing the antecedents together in a necessary, special way.

>> The human body is a collection of (more than) a few dollars of various chemicals. <<

See, this is the ultimate, textbook example of the fallacy of reductionism, so if you use this as an example of what is not the fallacy of reductionism, it’s proof you don’t understand the fallacy. (In fairness to you, the textbook example is a LIVING human body.) See, there’s no way you can separate a living, human body into its constituent parts, and EVER have that be a living, human body. (On the other hand, I’m NOT being unfair to you, because you CERTAINLY can’t make any form of a human body AT ALL out of its constituent chemicals.)

>> You couldn’t slap sauce and cheese on Wonder bread and call it, “pizza.”... Why not? We did it a bunch when we were kids, thought we were crazy clever figuring that out! <<

LOL! That is truly disgusting and proves you don’t have a frickin’ clue about what pizza is. ;-)

>> Also, an “open-face sandwich” is not a sandwich either! <<

I would argue that what makes a sandwich a sandwich is the ability to pick it up by the bread in such a way as the bread prevents your hands from getting messy. The actual definition is debated. I certainly have eaten food sold as “open-faced sandwiches” which fail to meet this definition, such as mounds of gravy-smothered roast beef served on a small piece of white bread. On the other hand, although some foods I would sloppily call “pizza” (such as “medium” or “personal” pizzas) meet that definition, I would argue that although you eat “real” pizza with your hands, you can’t prevent them from getting messy.