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Why did the chicken cross the road? The next time someone asks you this question, you can give them the following answer. The question "Why did the chicken cr
by sysrpl 6y ago
Why did the chicken cross the road?
The next time someone asks you this question, you can give them the following answer.
The question "Why did the chicken cross the road" is invalid. It is invalid because "why" assumes that the chicken had some reason for taking the action "cross the road". This, in turn, assumes that the chicken has the concept of "road"; after all, if the chicken doesn't know that the road is there, then the chicken did not - from the chickens point of view - cross the road, and consequently it is meaningless to ask for its motivations for doing so.
Since chicken is an animal, it is unlikely that it has the concept of road in the same sense than humans do; since it is a bird, whose ancestors were propably capable of flight in the near past, it is unlikely to have the concept of road in any sense - why would a flying bird need roads?
Therefore, the chicken can never have any motivation for crossing the road, since from the chickens point of view, it never does any such thing. It simply moves from one point to another, and these points happen to be on the opposite side of a flat area of ground. No road-crossing has happened.
Think of it this way: if you walk over a scent trail left by some animal, and you don't know that the trail is there, it is foolish to ask your motives of crossing that trail. One can ask your motives for walking in the first place, but the crossing was pure coincidence and not something you chose.
- jameshart 6y agoTl;dr: to get to the other side
- 082349872349872 6y agoThe blood sport connection makes me wonder "when the chicken crossed the road[1], what was his entrance music?" "He's constantly confusing, confounding, won't throw the towel / Everyone give it up for America's favourite fighting fowl" [1] a "road" might also be a sea route, but it looks like land-based roads predate seaborne trade by several thousand years.
- baddox 6y ago> "why" assumes that the chicken had some reason for taking the action "cross the road". I don’t think so. It’s pretty normal to ask “why” questions about non-conscious entities. “Why does my stomach hurt?” “Why is the sky blue?” And so on.
- cgriswald 6y agoDoes a chicken have consciousness? If so, when talking about conscious beings, are we using why in the sense that we use it when asking why the sky is blue?
- baddox 6y agoI don’t think it even necessarily matters whether the chicken is sufficiently conscious. If we asked “why does the chicken have a red comb?” it would be clear we weren’t asking for an explanation of the chicken’s conscious choices.
- cgriswald 6y agoSure, but I think if I ask “Why did you do that?” I’m specifically asking for an explanation related to your consciousness rather than a physical explanation. That’s a different sort of question than “Why are you six feet tall?” I asked if chickens are conscious because, if the chicken is conscious (or at least if the question asker believes they are) than we’re asking the first sort of question and it may or may not be fair to call that question invalid based on a chicken’s conscious understanding and sysrpl’s reasoning. If it’s not, then we can only reasonably ask the second kind of question and I agree it wouldn’t be “invalid” to do so.
- cgriswald 6y agoDo I have to have the same understanding of a road as you do to intentionally cross it? Maybe my understanding is only “the thing that makes me feet hot when I walk on it.” I can still make a conscious decision whether I want to get my feet hot in order to accomplish something on the other side.
- kumarharsh 6y agoI think it'd be easier to reply "I don't know" than killing the party with this answer.
- daseiner1 6y agoif this was intended as an anti-joke, good work. if you’re being sincere, good god man lighten up