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Well yes, if there were actual mammal-mushrooms then it would make the proposition more credible, and rightly so. The whole reason why "a mammal can not be a pl

Well yes, if there were actual mammal-mushrooms then it would make the proposition more credible, and rightly so. The whole reason why "a mammal can not be a plant" argument works is because it assumes we know that there is no such thing as a plant-mammal. If you see a helicopter in the sky, but somehow believe it is an airplane, saying "it can't be an airplane because it has no wings" is perfectly valid. It doesn't somehow make the claim "a bird is an airplane because they both have wings" more plausible - it just means that a different argument is needed to refute it.

xg15 10y ago
Well yes, if there were actual mammal-mushrooms then it would make the proposition more credible, and rightly so. Well, I think, even if that were the case, it would still be a logical fallacy, because the fact that a mammal could be a plant/fungus/whatever doesn't tell anything about whether that particular mammal is. All it does is to increase the "refuted counter arguments" score which gives it the illusion of credibility. So the whole "can a mammal be..." debate would be a red herring. You could pull the same trick with the airplane example: "What do you mean, this thing can't be a plane because a plane needs wings? The rocket plane XYZ-34 doesn't have wings either." (while ignoring the fact that the helicopter you're watching doesn't look anything like that rocket plane)