Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dartvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!dartvax!betsy From: betsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Quote Without Comment Message-ID: <3640@dartvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 15:52:11 EDT Article-I.D.: dartvax.3640 Posted: Mon Sep 30 15:52:11 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 21:09:04 EDT Distribution: net Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH Lines: 38 "There is another [error] which is the opposite of this: we may deny the reality of differences because there is continuous variation between the different things. A very old example illustrates this error. One may throw doubt on the reality of a beard by a process beginning by asking whether a man with one hair on his chin has a beard. The answer is clearly "No." Then one may ask whether with to hairs on his chin a man has a beard. Again the answer must be "No." So again with "three," "four," etc. At no point can our opponent say "Yes," for if he has answered "No" for, let us say, twenty-nine hairs, and "Yes" for thirty, it is easy to pour scorn on the suggestion that the difference between twenty-nine and thirty hairs is the difference between not having and having a beard. Yet by the process of adding one hair at a time we can reach a number of hairs which would undoubtedly make up a beard. The trouble lies in the fact that the difference between a beard and no beard is like the difference between white and gray in the fact that one can pass by continuous steps from one to the other. In this argument, the fact of continuous variation has been used to undermine the reality of the difference. Because there is no sharp dividing line, it has been suggested that there is no difference. This is clearly a piece of crooked argument which would take in no reasonable person, so long, at any rate, as it was used about beards and not about anything which engaged our emotions more strongly. From "How To Think Straight," Robert H. Thouless, Simon and Schuster, 1939, pp. 127-128. -- Elizabeth Hanes Perry UUCP: {decvax |ihnp4 | linus| cornell}!dartvax!betsy CSNET: betsy@dartmouth ARPA: betsy%dartmouth@csnet-relay "Ooh, ick!" -- Penfold Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com