[lit-ideas] Re: Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation

  • From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 11:11:14 -0500

Adriano Palma wrote:

note simple cases of necessity
1. people (as in humans, homo sapiens etc.) are born of people (vastly non refuted conjecture, to keep a popperian view of the matter) 
hence
(2) stronger conjecture [it involves all sorts of observable, and some observed and some not and some never to be observed, events 
HUMANS HAVE HUMAN OFFSPRING AND ONLY SO
then [the conclusion[
it is a necessity given "humanity" (the property of being human) that humans have human offspring
Not only is this not "necessarily" true, it is obviously false, when extended to other species. If we take it as a general rule that "species X necessarily have offspring of species X" then evolution would be impossible. Some day, a human will probably have an offspring that is a "Generation Y"offspring which is strictly speaking not "human." 



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