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Chicken vs Egg (mander.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The act of giving it a name is irrelevant.

The distinction between "chicken" and "egg" is biologically irrelevant: they both refer to the same organism. The terms are descriptive, not prescriptive. The organism will progress the same way, regardless of what we decide to say about it.

The chicken/egg argument is purely one of semantics. "Giving it a name" isn't just relevant to the discussion, it is the only factor relevant to the discussion.

The way you would have us describe the egg prevents us from accurately and consistently defining an egg. An egg laid by a chicken could mature into a new species, and by your arguments, should be described as an egg of that new species.

This creates a linguistic uncertainty in any case where the egg's potential is not and cannot be known. Is there a Shicken egg among the dozen you bought? A Blargleblat egg? Do you have the eggs of a dozen new evolutions with a common chicken ancestor? You cannot say with certainty.

However, if we describe the egg as the product of the creature that laid it, we have no such uncertainty. If we describe it as the possession of the offspring within it, we have no such uncertainty. The uncertainty only arises when we try to define it by an unknowable condition that may or may not occur.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But that same argument works the other way too, no? If you define a chicken egg as an egg that came from a chicken, then if you have a dozen of eggs you cannot know whether they're chicken eggs or whatever eggs unless you know specifically a chicken laid them. Even if you take a dna test of it and it comes back as "a chicken", you cannot know whether it is in fact a chicken egg.

In the other definition you are capable of determining whether the egg is in fact a chicken egg by its contents.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

you define a chicken egg as an egg that came from a chicken, then if you have a dozen of eggs you cannot know whether they're chicken eggs or whatever eggs unless you know specifically a chicken laid them

Correct, but that is information that can be known, whether it is actually known or not. When you eat a bird egg, you can know what bird it came from. You cannot know what bird it would have become, specifically because you prevented it from ever becoming that bird.

You could speculate that it could have become a new species, based on the genetics within the egg. But, even if you didn't eat it, it could have failed to mature for any number of reasons. It might have become a new species of bird; it might have become a rotten egg.

The aphorism "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched" specifically warns us against considering the future possibilities of the egg.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I just don't get why you're so hung up on the potentiality of an unhatched egg when that has nothing to do with the scenario. The egg in the scenario hatches and it has a chicken in it. That's the whole point of the scenario.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The potential of an unhatched egg means that the egg can't be accurately described as belonging to the offspring, until the offspring actually exists.

The proto-chicken egg does become a chicken egg, but not until a chicken exists. While the egg that will eventually become a chicken egg does exist before the chicken, it is not a chicken egg until the chicken exists. Until there is a chicken, it is just the egg of a proto-chicken.

We are discussing which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg. The answer cannot be the egg. The answer can be "neither". The answer can the "the chicken", if by "before", we mean that the status of the egg is dependent on the existence of the chicken.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Exactly, it doesn't belong to the offspring, that's why I said it is a proto-chicken's egg. It belongs to the ones that made it and raised it. But we know the contents because it's a preset hypothetical in which the egg hatches and it has a chicken in it. So it's a chicken egg that belongs to proto-chickens.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

OK, think of it like this instead. Obviously fuck accuracy, for ease we'll call them cavepeople. Two different cavepeople that are genetically distinct from humans have sex, resulting in a genetically human fetus. That doesn't suddenly change the cavepeople into humans, they're still genetically different. It's a caveperson's fetus, but it's a human fetus. Same thing with the egg. Genetically, the thing inside is a chicken and, genetically, the things that made the egg are not.