4 ms·

Would you feel comfortable saying that a human who isn't bipedal is unnatural and abnormal? What if it there were such a person in your family? Words matter.

ta8645 3y ago
> Would you feel comfortable saying that a human who isn't bipedal is unnatural and abnormal. We're talking about the language of science here. Biologists often talk about humans in terms of their biological characteristics. There is no judgement, only classification. And acknowledging what is normal, is not a value judgement. It's not meant in a hurtful way. Intent matters.
- Angostura 3y ago
  If we are talking about the language of science, 'unnatural' wouldn't be used. Abnormal may be used in context of say, a development issue, but something like 'atypical' is more likely to be used.
smsm42 3y ago
Abnormal - certainly. Unnatural - not a good term, since it implies connection to the philosophy where "natural" somehow implies good. Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too. But that term is useless - there's no useful distinction between losing a leg via "natural" or "unnatural" event. If there would be a person if my family thag lost a leg it'd depend on their wishes I assume - some people are comfortable talking about their loss or joking about it, others aren't.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  >Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too I don't think that's natural at all. "Natural" would be simply dying from cancer in your leg, after it metastasizes to the rest of your body. Amputation isn't natural, nor is any other human medicine. All medicine is unnatural, and working against what would happen in nature. Just putting a bandage on a small cut to avoid infection is unnatural: to be natural, you should let it get infected and then die from it.
  - zogrodea 3y ago
    What do natural and unnatural mean? Are human activities not part of nature, the same way the activitiy of other creatures like spiders and elephants are? Why or why not, and if a distinction between human and non-human activities is drawn, what justifies it?
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure that human activities ("artificial") are unnatural by definition. What justifies this is that we're humans, we have language, and we make words in those language to mean certain things (or make certain distinctions) that are important to us. So we can make the words mean whatever we want. We want "natural" to mean "unaltered/unaffected by humans", and "artificial" to mean "made by humans", so that's what they mean. Are you looking for some kind of deity to define English words for you?
    - smsm42 3y ago
      For me, it means nothing, it's just stupid confused term that some people use to try to appeal to some vague authority. That's why said it's not good or useful term and I wouldn't use it.
  - smsm42 3y ago
    Not all medicine. A lot of medicines are derived from plants or other organisms. Many animals use their saliva to avoid infection. Not sure if any use other materials.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      >A lot of medicines are derived from plants or other organisms. That's irrelevant. There's nothing natural about extracting some chemical compounds from a plant on the other side of the world and using it to improve a medical problem you have. >Many animals use their saliva to avoid infection. Sure, that's fine. That's not the same as extracting chemical compounds from some plant somewhere else. Animals aren't doing anything like that. Even ancient medicines, where they dug up some root somewhere and boiled it into a tea, is unnatural. Animals don't know how to do that, and even ancient humans had to figure it out with a long trial-and-error process that probably took thousands of years. They certainly didn't know about this stuff instinctively. Saying "plant-based medicine is natural!" is like saying that concrete-and-steel buildings are "natural" because they're made with materials found in Earth's crust. It makes no sense at all.
ilovetux 3y ago
I feel like there is a balance here between connotation and denotation. Personally, I would not use ether unnatural or abnormal because they have negative connotations even though, by definition, they might be correct. If I had to chose a word for this purpose today, I would chose the word atypical. To my knowledge, there is not a negative connotation to the word atypical, but if we start using any word to refer to any specific group of people then the word we chose could, in time, develop its own connotations.

ta8645 3y ago

> Would you feel comfortable saying that a human who isn't bipedal is unnatural and abnormal. We're talking about the language of science here. Biologists often talk about humans in terms of their biological characteristics. There is no judgement, only classification. And acknowledging what is normal, is not a value judgement. It's not meant in a hurtful way. Intent matters.

Angostura 3y ago
If we are talking about the language of science, 'unnatural' wouldn't be used. Abnormal may be used in context of say, a development issue, but something like 'atypical' is more likely to be used.

smsm42 3y ago

Abnormal - certainly. Unnatural - not a good term, since it implies connection to the philosophy where "natural" somehow implies good. Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too. But that term is useless - there's no useful distinction between losing a leg via "natural" or "unnatural" event. If there would be a person if my family thag lost a leg it'd depend on their wishes I assume - some people are comfortable talking about their loss or joking about it, others aren't.

shiroiuma 3y ago
>Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too I don't think that's natural at all. "Natural" would be simply dying from cancer in your leg, after it metastasizes to the rest of your body. Amputation isn't natural, nor is any other human medicine. All medicine is unnatural, and working against what would happen in nature. Just putting a bandage on a small cut to avoid infection is unnatural: to be natural, you should let it get infected and then die from it.
- zogrodea 3y ago
  What do natural and unnatural mean? Are human activities not part of nature, the same way the activitiy of other creatures like spiders and elephants are? Why or why not, and if a distinction between human and non-human activities is drawn, what justifies it?
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure that human activities ("artificial") are unnatural by definition. What justifies this is that we're humans, we have language, and we make words in those language to mean certain things (or make certain distinctions) that are important to us. So we can make the words mean whatever we want. We want "natural" to mean "unaltered/unaffected by humans", and "artificial" to mean "made by humans", so that's what they mean. Are you looking for some kind of deity to define English words for you?
  - smsm42 3y ago
    For me, it means nothing, it's just stupid confused term that some people use to try to appeal to some vague authority. That's why said it's not good or useful term and I wouldn't use it.
- smsm42 3y ago
  Not all medicine. A lot of medicines are derived from plants or other organisms. Many animals use their saliva to avoid infection. Not sure if any use other materials.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    >A lot of medicines are derived from plants or other organisms. That's irrelevant. There's nothing natural about extracting some chemical compounds from a plant on the other side of the world and using it to improve a medical problem you have. >Many animals use their saliva to avoid infection. Sure, that's fine. That's not the same as extracting chemical compounds from some plant somewhere else. Animals aren't doing anything like that. Even ancient medicines, where they dug up some root somewhere and boiled it into a tea, is unnatural. Animals don't know how to do that, and even ancient humans had to figure it out with a long trial-and-error process that probably took thousands of years. They certainly didn't know about this stuff instinctively. Saying "plant-based medicine is natural!" is like saying that concrete-and-steel buildings are "natural" because they're made with materials found in Earth's crust. It makes no sense at all.

ilovetux 3y ago

I feel like there is a balance here between connotation and denotation. Personally, I would not use ether unnatural or abnormal because they have negative connotations even though, by definition, they might be correct. If I had to chose a word for this purpose today, I would chose the word atypical. To my knowledge, there is not a negative connotation to the word atypical, but if we start using any word to refer to any specific group of people then the word we chose could, in time, develop its own connotations.