So you think that a stove can become a planet if everyone uses the word 'planet' to refer to it?
Doesn't that strike you as an absurd position? If not, we may have to dig a little deeper into why you think this. It strikes me as completely insane. I'd say myself it's still just a stove, and obviously not a planet; but now the word 'planet' can be used to refer to stoves, is all. — The Great Whatever
I do not think that at any point in human history Pluto became, or ceased being, a planet. Part of the confusion here I think is we're trying to treat linguistic practice as if it rested on decisions made by experts, which it doesn't. — The Great Whatever
But you are saying it can become a planet if everyone uses the word 'planet' to refer to it? — The Great Whatever
I've repeatedly told you that I'm not claiming that we can turn a stove into a celestial body by naming it a planet. So I don't know why you keep bringing it up. — Michael
What I'm drawing attention to is the fact that Pluto was a planet but now isn't — Michael
Nonsense. According to my idiolect, Pluto was a planet and still is; according to the scientists, it isn't and never was. — The Great Whatever
It's difficult to criticize your position if it can't be pinned down.
But, since a planet is a celestial body, you can't change something into a planet without changing it into a celestial body. But you seem to be claiming that if everyone calls a stove a planet, then it will become a planet; but since it will not become a celestial body, this is wrong. Hence your position is incoherent, and merely protesting against the fact that I'm pointing this incoherence out will not help you, since the problem lies in your position and not any misunderstanding I have of it.
What I'm suggesting is that a thing's identity is not (directly) determined by its pre-linguistic properties but by its linguistic categorisation. — Michael
This is obvious in the case of proper nouns. I was once Yahadreas and now I'm Michael (so not Yahadreas). Muhammad Ali was once Cassius Clay. I'm simply extending this principle to common nouns (a real-life example of this is the pre-op transexual who newly identifies as a different gender; "I was a woman but now I'm a man"). — Michael
To put it simply, nouns denote properties — The Great Whatever
Sure, and which properties they denote depends on how we use the noun. If we use the noun "planet" to refer to stoves then the noun "planet" would denote those properties that stoves have (and so not those properties that Jupiter has). — Michael
And given that a planet is whatever thing has the properties denoted by the word "planet" — Michael
What I'm drawing attention to is the fact that Pluto was a planet but now isn't, even though nothing material about Pluto has changed – only our use of the word "planet". Therefore there is a connection between a thing's identity (as a planet) and our naming of that thing. — Michael
There is a threshold of mass above which gravity ensures that agglomerated celestial objects become, at least in appearance, spherical. I think that would be the best criterion for planethood.
Under this criterion alone, though, many moons would be counted as planets; so another criterion, "that to be counted as a planet, a celestial body must orbit around no other body than a star", would need to be added. — John
When Pluto was considered to be a planet it was thought to be a certain kind of thing, and later when it was considered to not be a planet it was no longer thought to be that kind of thing. Its identity however, as the unique object it is (with whatever set of characteristics it has) remains unchanged. — John
In fact I find your views kind of fascinating, almost to the extent that I would give them to undergraduates as essay prompts as examples of linguistic confusions for them to untangle in the Wittgensteinian mode. — The Great Whatever
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