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>the concept of "dinosaur" becomes nothing more than a fanciful way for paleontologists to come up with predictions about which fossils they will discover next.
by ryanmonroe 11y ago
>the concept of "dinosaur" becomes nothing more than a fanciful way for paleontologists to come up with predictions about which fossils they will discover next.
I'm having a hard time understanding this criticism. What use do we have for the concept of "dinosaur" other than as a means of predicting future discoveries and building a predictive theoretical model for our environment?
- n4r9 11y agoFor most people, the concept of "dinosaur" has a meaning beyond what use we have for it. Most people (some religious fanatics excepted) believe that dinosaurs really did exist, i.e. they would assign an ontological status to the concept of dinosaur. The instrumentalist attitude, conversely, is to refuse to assign any meaning to things beyond their predictive power. I suppose you could say that one identifies "what is" with "what use do we have", so in a sense your question presupposes an instrumentalist approach.