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To: JasonC
For every bird, for every environmental disruption, bird is resilient to the disruption. That is what you need for your inference

"Birds are like rats". Not "some birds", not "many birds", "birds". In English, usage of 'Xs are Y" clearly carries the implication "all Xs are Y. Use of the unqualified term carries an implication of generality or universality. The idea that, of the three species in the intersection of the two sets, Coulter meant to include two in and exclude one from the comparison with rats, is just plain idiotic. If I showed you three cards, two of which were black and one was white, would you say that "the cards are black" was a true statement?

Some women are undoubtedly whores. In fact, many women are whores. So, according to you, "women are whores" is a true statement. I guess that puts you in with Dr. Dre.

345 posted on 06/08/2006 11:03:44 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor (...I'm dancin' right there with you, Iraqis.)
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To: Right Wing Professor
You are simply wrong about the standard meaning of classes in ordinary English usage, and about the logical relations between classes and their members. The latter has been known with some exactness since the scholastics, at the latest. The twin fallacies of composition and of division expose the slips routinely committed in misuses of logic in merely verbal wordplay, which generate scads of false syllogisms. You should have learned this in your first year of college, if it wasn't covered in your high school.

When something is predicated of a class, it is not thereby predicated of every member of that class. See the example of wages of progammers for a typical common use. Classes or compositions may in general have attributes entirely distinct from those of their members. E.g. the set of all integers is not an integer. Sodium and chloride are each poisonous, sodium chloride is not poisonous.

Statements about classes that are explicitly meant to run downward without exception are verbally marked by quantifiers, by saying "all" or "every". A statement about a class without such a universal quantifier does not mean "some", either - one may be speaking of an attribute of the class as such e.g. the cardinality of the integers is aleph null. Which does not imply that the cardinality of any integer taken separately, let alone of each of them taken separately, is aleph null.

When a statement is meant to run downward without being universal, but is not restricted to an attribute of the class as distinct from its members, it may be marked by "some" or in more careful context, by "there exists a ... such that ..."

When something is predicated of a member, it is not thereby predicated of all classes of which that something is a member. See the example of salt, above, which is an instance of the related fallacy running in the other direction, the fallacy of composition.

Distinctions are allowed to "tree" orthogonally in any desired manner, controlled by the speaker and his intention, and read charitably in the senses intended. Speakers are not responsible for marking up their speech with exact quantifiers in ordinary usage - they are expected to be understood. Forced readings of another's statements that change them in order to make their statements seem less reasonable, are another well known sophistic tactic, the straw man.

You simply don't have a leg to stand on. Coulter never said eagles are rats, and she did not imply it either. You are attempting to put words into her mouth, but it is hopeless. The words are in your mouth, not in hers.

346 posted on 06/08/2006 12:55:31 PM PDT by JasonC
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