ok ok ok guys

such large posts metaltabs has never seen!

__________________

Your refusal to be proven wrong does not make you correct, nor do your irrelevant asides and blatant inaccuracies (Latin? Biologists are social scientists?). We're debating here whether or not the common usage of a particular word is accurate, not whether or not it exists. You keep claiming victory based on the fact that there is a common usage, without reference to whether or not is accurate, and completely ignoring the other implications. You won nothing at post 89 except your own approval, which you've had all along. Congratulations on that. When you can prove that race is not a specific biological concept, and that the public usage of it isn't based on a misunderstanding (this is the most kind way I can put it) of this concept, then you may have an air tight case. Until then you're just resorting to populism, which is faulty logic among other things.

Now, I'll restate something here: the idea conveyed by the common understanding of the word 'race' is a very powerful and relevant one, which seems to be all you're arguing, but its mere existence and acceptance doesn't make it correct any more than anything else is proven correct by the fact that a lot of people believe it.

And, finally, the reason this is important is that English should convey ideas accurately rather than letting them get bogged down by corrupted and decayed common understandings of once sharp words. Again, I'm not arguing that this definition exists, that it's important, that it's influential, that it's widely-held, or whatever. I'm just saying it should be corrected, because it's both inaccurate and harmful. If you think you've proven that it's accurate because people believe it, you're a fool, and if you think it's not harmful because people believe it, I don't know what you are.

http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cyb...orts/patel.html

I am not refusing to be proven wrong. I said my argument was air tight, not bomb proof. I did not say biologists were social scientists. Etymologists study words and word origins. If a biologist is claiming a word is defined in a certain way, then he is dabbling in etymology which is a social science. You are continually missing the point and failing to establish your core argument.

Here is where the debate stands at the moment:

My argument:
1. Race (relating to humans) is understood by english speaking people in the year 2005 to mean "a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type"
2. Words have no physical qualities.
3. The only measure of a word's meaning is what people understand it to mean.

Therefore, race is properly defined as "a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type" and should only be used as such in the context of the english language when discussing humans. Claiming that there is only one race of humans is in direct contradiction with the accepted definition and is therefore bad practice.

Your argument:

Some as yet unknown scientists supposedly claim according to unknown research that there is only one race of humans but their definition of race is also unclear at this point and is based off of obsolete historical references.
???????????????????
???????????????????

Therefore, people should throw away their current definition of race in favor of this old definition (whatever it is) and make the appropriate changes to the dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, etc...


You are welcome to try to fill in these blanks. If you did so successfully, then that would qualify as a bomb which has the potential to blow up my argument. If you did this, then I would congratulate you and alert the media because that would guarantee you some big awards and a huge press conference. Maybe even a book and movie deal. This debate has taken place over and over again throughout history and the accepted result is always the same and is the standard for defining words.

This is the standard:

"How does a word get into a Merriam-Webster dictionary?

This is one of the questions Merriam-Webster editors are most often asked.

The answer is simple: usage.

Tracking word usage
To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it's used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them.

Each day most Merriam-Webster editors devote an hour or two to reading a cross section of published material, including books, newspapers, magazines, and electronic publications; in our office this activity is called "reading and marking." The editors scour the texts in search of new words, new usages of existing words, variant spellings, and inflected forms—in short, anything that might help in deciding if a word belongs in the dictionary, understanding what it means, and determining typical usage. Any word of interest is marked, along with surrounding context that offers insight into its form and use. "



I think it would be really interesting if you could establish that maybe quantum physics dictates that words have a universal meaning which should not be deviated from in order to ensure peace and harmony on the planet. That would force us to determine our language through scientific research and everyone on the planet would have to speak the same language. That would be sweet...

Have been a bit low lately, just didn't care to reply earlier. Sorry about that.


Yes. What kind of "scared" me was that you were (in my eyes) exagerating and showing only points to support and explain your view.


Something like that happened here in Sweden last summer. A bus driver wasn't allowed to wear shorts at work, despite the high temperatures. But there was no rule saying he couldn't wear a knee-long skirt. So he did. That I find rather laughable.


Ah, no, that's not what I meant. I meant that what you said about uniforms making everyone equal was (in my opinion) not correct. I completely agree that it would be a rather bad idea to force some students to wear the uniform, while others would not have to. What I meant was that forcing all students to wear the uniform would never remove all differences. It would disguise one small part of one difference.


IMO, uniform is not going to make much of a difference, as that type of dislike is already present for many other reasons (the one I've experienced so far is people disliking you because you don't need to study to get good grades). But I guess a uniform might help a little bit, and as long as it doesn't cause any trouble, I'd say sure, go ahead.

At my school, the boarding students are (I think) required to buy a uniform, and wear it on special occasions (term start/end, and stuff like that). The non-boarding students are advised to buy the uniform ($200 or so I think), but not many do. This causes some trouble, since the nonboarding students with uniforms get a rather "upper-class" image (since the majority of the boarding students are "upper-class"). So non-boarding students either seem "rich", or just very eager to get "acceptance" from the boarding students.
But a compulsory uniform that causes no additional expenses to the students is IMO not a problem.


What happened to your math skills?


This, I guess, depends on your definition/interpretation of "segregated". What I mean is that most of the population need to culturally remain who they are, or else there'll only be a homogenous mass of culture. I do not mean that people from different cultures need to remain separated, which is how I think you may have interpreted what I said.


Or it could be seen from "the other side": She didn't feel that the British culture had tolerance for her culture, and demanded this of the school. Which made some people upset. I don't know which side's view I support, and I don't feel like I should support any side considering (among other things) that I haven't seen any media coverage on the issue.


The only issue I can relate to about this is dress code and behaviour in religious buildings (you may see other cases of this that I don't know about). And if that's what we're looking at, I think a major part of the cause of this is that "christians" of today's western societies are rather secularised (sp?), and don't really take their religion as seriously as I would believe that many muslims do.


That wasn't my point. The point was the rather obvious change from something like 'could possibly' to 'is certainly'. But you've explained a lot, so it doesn't really bother me too much anymore.


I know that, what bothered me was that the two things (as far as I could see) really had no relevance to each other at all. As in "yeah, you've got a green hat, so I'm probably going to school tomorrow" but not quite as extreme.


Even though I don't understand the term "combat regalia", I take this quoted part to mean that you were referring to uniforms used by the military in everyday "paperwork" and such, not uniforms used in combat (or combat training), in which case my points are rather worthless.



This is good. I like it when people can debate things instead of going mad, jumping to conclusions all over the place, exagerating everything completely out of scale, and so on. I do my best to remain calm and keep it friendly (and fail all too often), and I like it when others do too (well, not the 'failing' part ). You've been doing this since I started noticing you around here, and I was worried by your initial post that you had somehow lost a little bit of this. You apparently have not. So I'm happy.

(In some parts of the above (mainly the last part) I feel like I'm coming across as some kind of "father" or "master jedi" or whatever, preaching his knowledge to "the apprentice" (=John). That's not my intention, but I don't know how to word my replies to avoid this. So, if you too get that feeling, I'd be glad if you'd kindly disregard it.)

__________________

Not neccessarily (I still can't spell that word properly). A biologist needs to know that a word he's using is understood in the way that he means it. Thus he may need to claim a certain definition as true and correct.

Take a look at some utility patents. Many of them have several paragraphs defining certain words and phrases, so that the patent may not be missunderstood easily. The same goes for the license agreements that you agree to when installing software. In my opinion, that does not mean the lawyers are dabbling in etymology, it means their making sure no one is going to missunderstand their patents/licenses. Same goes for biologists (imo). They're just making sure no one is going to missunderstand their claims/theories.


Do you really think it is of no relevance how well educated the people are? If you ask 10000 randomly chosen American citisens what "metal" (referring to a musical genre) is, what answer will you get? I would guess that many would mention bands like Led Zeppelin, Metallica, and Iron Maiden. What do you call Psycroptic and Morbid Angel then? It shouldn't be metal, right?

__________________

Biologists are of course welcome to coin words. As I said, when doing this they are dabbling in Etymology. Word creation is in no way intrinsically linked to any physical science. The issue here is that there is currently an as yet unfounded claim that some unknown biologists are able to change the meaning of a word that is already widely understood to mean something which contradicts their definition. This is posturing and pretentious behavior at best.



Again, of course these guys have to define new terms on occasion and are welcome to do so as long as they don't infringe on trademarks or intentionally rebel against conventional wisdom as part of some personal crusade.



I've never said education is of no relevance. As far as metal goes, this is another similar word with multiple meanings. All the bands you mentioned are considered to be metal. Led Zeppelin is also known as hard rock. Just as there are different races of humans, there are different strains of metal as well. Speed, death, doom, black, Heavy, Nu, glam, etc... If making an analogy, you could say that 'metal' is to 'human' as 'metal genre' is to 'race'. There are of course many other ways to manipulate this analogy and I have no doubt that some people will not like this analogy, but that is all extraneous and of no consequence to the core debate about the validity of a word's meaning.



EDIT: I should probably go ahead and draw a parallel with metal to help clarify my point:

If I were to find out through obscure research that the ancient Egyptians invented music and called it "metal", could I then claim that all music is actually "metal" and by segregating "metal" (all music of all types) into different genres we are somehow harming society and distorting our language?

Yes, I could claim this. Would anyone buy it? No.

There are no other points to show! All in all, this girl has come off quite badly from the whole affair with no real positives drawn from the case other than her own victory.




So are you saying that the compulsory wearing of uniforms by all students would erradicate the situation you describe, ie make the 'rich' equal to the 'not so rich'? If so, wouldn't that imply that wearing uniform does help schoolchildren to see each other as equals, at least in the sense that you detailed?




Well, in Liverpool I don't personally know of any schools that have adopted the policy that I described. Of course in this case Denbigh High has, but I was using the fact that I know of no school - in a reasonably sized and ethnically diverse city such as Liverpool, remember - that has adopted a similar policy as a point to illustrate how flexible Denbigh High have been with this girl.




I knew you were playing Devil's advocate rather than actually holding that belief

I guess there is a very fine line between between full integration, integration with retention of culture and segregation. Of course, the sublimation point of retaining culture with integration is desirable but I fear while there are people who solely want full integration or people who solely want segregation then it will remain in the realms of ideology.




And understandably so. She knew that the wearing of the jilbab form of dress was banned (for the reasons explained in my first post) yet she still attended the school. Make no bones about it, Denbigh High offered what most would describe as a more than reasonable policy on religious dress that would not have been afforded in 95% of schools in the UK. Remember, the Clerics that the school consulted approved the Muslim dress code in place so I feel that it was Ms Begum who was being intolerant of British culture.




I agree, but other people being indifferent on a subject still doesn't give anybody the right to moan and whinge their way to being given special exceptions or concessions.




The possibility of the girl's brother being an extremist didn't form part of my argument and was merely in response to Blizzard Beast's ponderings. It doesn't matter how, but it is patent that Islamic extremists got hold of this girl and advised her in a way that would further their own agenda.




Yeah, that's what I meant. Combat regalia is the clothing soldiers wear when in combat or missions, ie, camouflage, helmet, boots, weapons, backpacks, etc.

__________________

Quantum mechanics could not be used in a field that is as subjective and man-made as giving words meaning. I'm guessing that you yourself arleady know this, but for the clarity of others I felt it necessary (<= G_urr_A ) to at least mention in passing.

__________________

I never bothered arguing the invalidity of the actual (accepted) definition because I was merely trying to point out how inaccurate and offensive it's popular use is. The fact is, the definition as you've accepted it is entirely incorrect. If the word race were, in fact, used to describe divisions of man possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type, that it is nothing more than a junior synonym of the word ethnicity, and therefore irrelevant.

However, it is not. Race is used to arbitrarily group together unrelated ethnicities based on such stupid 'relations' as skin color or geographical location. Africans and African Americans are refered to as being a race, yet within those 'races' are various ethnicities, many of which have nothing to do with each other. How about the fact that North Africans are more closely related to Mediterraneans than they are to other Africans? These facts continuously go ignored. Instead, the word race, as it has come to be used, is nothing more than the word color. All you are doing with the word race is to describe if somebody is yellow, red, white, black, tan, or brown. It makes completely no sense.

My argument was that the word race is irrelevant (and illogical) in it's common use because of it's origin and the controversy surrounding how it came into popular use. Your entire counter-argument hinged on your belief that the original use of the word is irrelevant, which I can only say I disagree with. However, the definition you have supplied is itself entirely erroneous, leaving your argument baseless.

I also want to point out that the word race as it was originally used in science is still being used in science, which would mean that even if you are right that a word's origin is irrelevant to it's legitimacy, you would be wrong on the grounds that the word is still commonly being used in it's original form.

__________________

Bla.....semantics!

Are important, Bia.

Chris has more or less dealt with this, and I know by now I'm never going to actually convince you, but I've got a few things to add:

Etymology is not the creation of words. It's not even the study of a word's meaning. The first is neologism; the second, semantics. Etymology is the study of the history of various words' meanings. For example, in that dictionary definition you posted here, when it says that it comes from the Italian razza, that's etymology, not the current definition of the word. Biologists are not dabbling in etymology when they define a word. If it's a word that has to do with their field, they're dabbling in biology.

Now, as to your argument: your first two points are correct. Air-tight so far, for what that's worth. Your third, however, is a logical fallacy, and one which I've already pointed out. (Hear that hissing sound? That's not the sound an air-tight seal makes.) There is no reason to appeal to common usage as being correct, only as being useful. Since even in common usage it's a biological term, saying that a lay person is better equipped than a biologist to know the correct definition is illogical. Now, if we were saying that the mere fact that a biologist has a degree means he knows better than people who don't, then you'd be right, that would be pretentious, fallacious, and otherwise incorrect. However, since we're referring to biology, a biologist's field, and so is the common solecism, he (this biologist) probably knows best.

The common usage is a definition. It's certainly valid from a modern anthropological standpoint, and it's sure as hell the most useful and easily communicated meaning of the word. It's still incorrect. Everybody believing it to be right doesn't make it right, and you should know better than to think so. Just because words don't have any physical properties doesn't mean that they don't have meanings that can be misunderstood at least as often as they're understood.

Oh, and your Ancient Egypt tangent's just as inane, irrelevant, unanalogous, and illogical as I expected from you. Thanks.

You're correct....I again am guilty of being facetious and simply trying to stay light....but in no way ever want to come across as demeaning others ideas and opinions....this discussion has gotten very deep and I dont feel qualified to jump in....so I throw comments like the one above.....I apologize...however, am laughing as I write this.

Huh? I was just using it as a segue into my point. Jesus, get your laughs without apologizing. Unless you laugh when people get vital organs removed with unclean implements and no anesthesia. Unlicensed surgery's no joke, kids; go to a real hospital and get the job done right!

This has been an installment of the new Metaltabs Fact Series: Because Knowing is Half the Battle!

Now I gotta put Slayer on.

In the situation I described, the compulsory use of school uniform would make it impossible for the "upper-class"-liking non-boarding students to show their "admiration" for the boarding students. However, if there was no school uniform at all, nobody would wear one, and the "upper-class"-liking non-boarding would not be able to express their "admiration" in that way.
Note that the "upper-class"-liking non-boarders are not neccessarily richer than other nonboarders, just more eager to be accepted among the boarders. So the difference that I'm talking about in this particular case would not exist if either path was chosen. It's the attempt to walk between the roads that allows the difference to exist.




That's something I often do, to a lesser or greater extent. Mainly, I'm very eager to point out flaws in other peoples' statements, regardless of if they're relevant, if they support my opinion or not. It's (to a great extent) finding faults that amuses me. If this leads to a debate about something, that's also something I usually enjoy. But, on the other hand, I get in trouble for disecting what people say.



Ok, thanks for clearing that out. As I guess is rather apparent from my posts here, I'm not a native english speaker, so every little bit of advice/correction is appreciated.

__________________

That's OK, but I hope that you realise that you are one of the more articulate members here even considering that English is only your second language. There are some members who's mother tongue is English and who don't possess the diction and clarity that you do.

__________________

[QUOTE=Chris Rezendes]I never bothered arguing the invalidity of the actual (accepted) definition because I was merely trying to point out how inaccurate and offensive it's popular use is. The fact is, the definition as you've accepted it is entirely incorrect. If the word race were, in fact, used to describe divisions of man possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type, that it is nothing more than a junior synonym of the word ethnicity, and therefore irrelevant........ [\QUOTE]
I figured as much. It's obviously a subjective viewpoint on which we differ and I have no problem with leaving it at that. As you point out ethnicity is slowly replacing race as the pc term in applications and media usage. Because of this race will probably be phased out of popular use entirely after a while anyways...

I will add this to the long list of things you have said that I will not dignify with a response. I'm really unsure of where you are coming from and what you are getting at and as before most of your commentary on my statements is based off assumptions or errors in logic. I will drop this debate since I have made my point and have no need to add anything else. I strongly encourage you to study more philosophy and argumentative logic.

Well, ethnicity isn't actually replacing the word race, the word race is still in heavily popular use and doesn't figure to die out soon. The word ethnicity is entirely different from race, really. Ethnic groups have always been recognized. For example, I don't know, like, say Dutch and French. Two completely ethnic groups. Race is kind of like a catch all word where people just kind of throw in whatever is convenient with no real substance. It's strange, I can't even really explain it, because it differs from person to person. For example, the white race would include all those of European descent to some, others might only include about 3/4 or even half of those of European descent. It doesn't make any sense. Like I said, it's just a word used for arbitrarily linking together ethnicities that often (and usually) don't have much to do with one another.

__________________

I totally agree with all this. By replacing it I don't mean as a direct substitute. I do believe people are slowing shifting from the race concept to the ethnic concept (maybe seems more apparent to me in a liberal California city like mine). They are replacing the race question with the seven or so old standard choices to the ethnic question with a shitload of choices on applications. I guess this is the main reason I have not understood your argument all this time. Why would you want to keep the word in use by changing it's common meaning even if it's a return to the "correct" meaning? Why not just let it die out and use some other word for your one race concept?

On a sidenote, it will definitely not be going away too soon. A black guy on the street asked me for a cigarette the other day and I said no, so he asked me if I was a racist. And that's another problem right there. I have to say the guy is black to set up the point of the encounter because I have no way of knowing what ethnicity he is or if he is a citizen of America (of course with that kind of attitude where else could he possible be from?). He's the one who established the racial difference between us and basically opened himself up to be discriminated against by "hating" on me.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahaha

I didn't realize you were pretending all this time. In your spirit, I'll tell a physics major to study basic physics. Thanks!

Actually, as I understand it, we disagree on minor points. Regardless, I'm beyond sick of pursuing this point, and hope your offspring feel as self-justified as you. If not; I pity them their self-consciousness.

Rich, you need to study more basic logic. You're obviously TEH WRONGG VEINS!!!11 Actually, you're not. But I'm not posting seriously here because you're all transparently gay.

Holy arsemelts, Batman! What a thread! What breadless bitchfighting! Slide us through cultural relativism and back out the other side! My ham! MY HAM! You will never pignest my knees!

MORE! MORE! More crankies with the patina of politeness! More hubris! More yelling and academic fangdancing! More fucking stupid asides! More Internet huffing! More noses in more air! Spread my ankles, you buttercakes!

__________________