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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9075982" data-attributes="member: 177">But I haven't said it is wrong.&nbsp; I have said the support behind it doesn't look very solid.The number of things that are built in the natural world, with varying degrees of &quot;will,&quot; is far more interesting than a simple statement of, &quot;this is natural, that is unnatural.&quot;At the top of a mountain, do we not find the distinction between ground and sky starts to break down?&nbsp; Mammals and fish are not a dichotomy.&nbsp; Neither are reptiles and birds.&nbsp; There are bacteria and fungi and plants and fish and reptiles and mammals and birds and so on. They form a branching tree of history as well as classification, and the system of classification winds up with things like &quot;mammal-like reptiles&quot; when things don't cleanly fit.&nbsp; Hot and cold, light and dark, those are merely ends of bands of continuous, rather than discrete, measures.&nbsp; If you want to talk about a spectrum of naturalness, rather than a dipole, you might have something interesting.&nbsp; But &quot;I declare that X is fully natural, and Y is completely unnatural,&quot; seems a like an arbitrary,&nbsp; simplistic approach that does not allow nuance to exist in reality.&nbsp; Is that the way to bet?Understanding isn't usually about deciding what you categories are, and placing things in them.&nbsp; It is an act of discovering what things are alike, and by how much, and why.&nbsp; The classifications we use are a shorthand, that work because they are defined by observation, rather than definition.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 9075982, member: 177"] But I haven't said it is wrong. I have said the support behind it doesn't look very solid. The number of things that are built in the natural world, with varying degrees of "will," is far more interesting than a simple statement of, "this is natural, that is unnatural." At the top of a mountain, do we not find the distinction between ground and sky starts to break down? Mammals and fish are not a dichotomy. Neither are reptiles and birds. There are bacteria and fungi and plants and fish and reptiles and mammals and birds and so on. They form a branching tree of history as well as classification, and the system of classification winds up with things like "mammal-like reptiles" when things don't cleanly fit. Hot and cold, light and dark, those are merely ends of bands of continuous, rather than discrete, measures. If you want to talk about a [I]spectrum[/I] of naturalness, rather than a dipole, you might have something interesting. But "I declare that X is fully natural, and Y is completely unnatural," seems a like an arbitrary, simplistic approach that does not allow nuance to exist in reality. Is that the way to bet? Understanding isn't usually about deciding what you categories are, and placing things in them. It is an act of [I]discovering[/I] what things are alike, and by how much, and why. The classifications we use are a shorthand, that work because they are defined by observation, rather than definition. [/QUOTE]

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