Dear Howard, lists - At 10:20 AM 4/21/2015, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote: Howard said: There are no a priori foods as illustrated by the many extremotrophs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremotroph>.
FS: Haha! But that is not the argument. The argument that the categories food and poison are a priori, not which substances are nourishing or poisonous for the single type of organism. HP: I would say your statement that food and poison are a priori categories is only a proposition. It is not an argument. I agree that your realist mental construct of an abstract or universal category like food is logically irrefutable (except to me it violates parsimony). So I will only restate the empiricist's concept of food as whatever organisms actually eat that keeps them alive. In evolutionary terms survival is the only pragmatic test. How do logic and universal categories explain anything more? I think we have been through this before. You say "Food as whatever organisms actually eat" - but this IS a universal category. It does not refer to empirical observations, individual occurrences, protocol sentences, measurements in time and space, all that which empiricism should be made from. It even involves another universal, that of "organism". It is no stranger than that. So I see no parsimony on your part. I see that you deny the existence of the universals you yourself are using. But I'd be really curious to hear more about your take on the corollarial/theorematic distinction ! Best Frederik
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