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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] 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.