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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!decwrl!chabot@amber.DEC (All God's chillun got guns)
From: chabot@amber.DEC (All God's chillun got guns)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: avoiding Anthropomorphism
Message-ID: <207@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 14:59:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.207
Posted: Wed Aug 28 14:59:41 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Aug-85 11:12:07 EDT
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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But, Jeff, reread my foolish jokes, and maybe you can catch that I'm not
making fun of your point about assuming that human motivations are 
different from other animals', but rather the all-too-common human mistake
of drawing correspondences between the wrong two behaviors; hence the 
honeymoon/salmon, cuckoo/daycare, and so on.

Incorrect correspondences combined with the rationalization that if animals
do that's justification enough for humans to do it can lead to a rather
idiotic model of behavior.  Unfortunately, I have held conversations with
people who claim that "Ducks rape; therefore why not."  (spiders/spouse-
murderers)

I was not concluding that "Some correspondences are false: therefore all 
correspondences are false."  However, I did leave out an explicit premise of
that premise, not apprehending it would lead to such misunderstandings. 

L S Chabot   ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot