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Social construct.
#21
RE: Social construct.
The domestication (or semi domestication, in the case of cats) shows in their dna, and in fact their dna even paints the picture of human colonization and colonialism. Pets are domesticates we keep for fun, not food. For the record, weed is never a weed or a grass - it's a domesticated flower - and yes..you can also determine this by it's dna.

The notion of a social construct isn't hard, and I'm pretty sure there's a moneyshot here somewhere. I wish we'd just get to it and be done with it.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#22
RE: Social construct.
(December 20, 2022 at 12:51 am)Jehanne Wrote:
(December 19, 2022 at 11:04 pm)Belacqua Wrote: Likewise you can tell the difference between animal species scientifically, but the category "pet" is a social construction.

Biologists have excellent answers to these questions. A pet is a nonhuman animal that lives with or at least among humans, in a dependent (or, in the case of cats, a feigned dependent) relationship such that the animal in question would likely die of natural causes if the humans did not continue to provide for them.
But lots of domesticated animals become stray, and there's degrees of domestication. I don't think there's a strict precise definition of what's stray, feral, wild and so on. I heard somewhere for example that pigs change quite rapidly without human contact and turn wild quite easily. I don't think a scientist would be able to observe this process and be able to state at precisely what time the animal became stray, feral or wild.
A spider would be a good example of how it can be my pet if I think it is and be a pest also if I think it is.


Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.

Impersonation is treason.





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#23
RE: Social construct.
(December 20, 2022 at 10:27 am)paulpablo Wrote:
(December 20, 2022 at 12:51 am)Jehanne Wrote: Biologists have excellent answers to these questions. A pet is a nonhuman animal that lives with or at least among humans, in a dependent (or, in the case of cats, a feigned dependent) relationship such that the animal in question would likely die of natural causes if the humans did not continue to provide for them.
But lots of domesticated animals become stray, and there's degrees of domestication. I don't think there's a strict precise definition of what's stray, feral, wild and so on. I heard somewhere for example that pigs change quite rapidly without human contact and turn wild quite easily. I don't think a scientist would be able to observe this process and be able to state at precisely what time the animal became stray, feral or wild.
A spider would be a good example of how it can be my pet if I think it is and be a pest also if I think it is.

Agreed. It seems that cats have domesticated Us as much as we have domesticated Them.
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#24
RE: Social construct.
(December 20, 2022 at 9:08 am)Jehanne Wrote:
(December 20, 2022 at 8:48 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: in what way are they invasive?  they clearly co-evolved with humans over millions of years.  they are as native to the habitats of the human body as any species can be native to the the environment in which they evolved.

Our distant ancestors consciously and deliberately chose to domestic the ancestors of our modern cats and dogs; no such conscious choice was made with respect to lice.  They are not pets (at least for most of us).

so consciously choosing means it is a social construct?
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#25
RE: Social construct.
(December 20, 2022 at 10:27 am)paulpablo Wrote: But lots of domesticated animals become stray, and there's degrees of domestication. I don't think there's a strict precise definition of what's stray, feral, wild and so on.
There are definitions for all of those things (and genetic distinctions, too) - and yeah, there are degrees of domestication.  Dogs are fully domesticated, cats are not.  That's why stray cats are a bigger issue than stray dogs.  Cats, if left to their own devices, would not change their behaviors very much and have no trouble surviving and reproducing.  Our dogs (and our cattle, and our sheep, etc), on the other hand, don't last very long in a post human world.

Quote:I heard somewhere for example that pigs change quite rapidly without human contact and turn wild quite easily. I don't think a scientist would be able to observe this process and be able to state at precisely what time the animal became stray, feral or wild.
A spider would be a good example of how it can be my pet if I think it is and be a pest also if I think it is.

Domesticated pigs have trouble breeding true even with our help.  They are super smart, though, smarter than our own kids by some estimates, so they do alright when they get loose, considering.  Scientists can and do track feral populations, and this change does show up in their dna and behaviors.  

None of this has anything to do with social constructs, though, unless we'd like to contend that pigs and cats and dogs and weeds also create useful fictions in their own societies.  Something being a pet, a stray, feral, or wild....a weed, a domesticate, a semi domesticate...does represent an objective reality.  You could call a domesticated pig a wild hog but you'd just be calling it that, and vv, and the pig and the hog would continue to be distinct animals complete with a laundry list of genetic and behavioral disparities.  

OTOH, you could take a pair of human twins and put them in different societies, and they could be apprehended as a different "race" than each other.  Or... two very different people could just as easily be apprehended as being of the same race - This, because "race" does not represent genetics, or behavior, or in fact any objective reality.  It's a purely human overlay. There are lots of things like that - so you're bound to see plenty if you look. Probably has something to do with being a hyper social species in a vast and well connected society. However, there is more in the world, much more, than that which our social groups construct.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#26
RE: Social construct.
(December 20, 2022 at 10:40 am)Anomalocaris Wrote:
(December 20, 2022 at 9:08 am)Jehanne Wrote: Our distant ancestors consciously and deliberately chose to domestic the ancestors of our modern cats and dogs; no such conscious choice was made with respect to lice.  They are not pets (at least for most of us).

so consciously choosing means it is a social construct?

I think that this is an area of biology and zoology as opposed to sociology or philosophy.
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#27
RE: Social construct.
all sociology is ultimately biology, just as all biology is ultimately chemistry, and all chemistry is ultimately physics.   But what animals humans elect to introduce into its ow
n environments as distinguished from what it finds in its environs,  is a matter of behavior, which is arguably in the subset of biology that is called sociology.
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#28
RE: Social construct.
(December 20, 2022 at 12:48 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: all sociology is ultimately biology, just as all biology is ultimately chemistry, and all chemistry is ultimately physics.   But what animals humans elect to introduce into its ow
n environments as distinguished from what it finds in its environs,  is a matter of behavior, which is arguably in the subset of biology that is called sociology.

Seems reductionistic.
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#29
RE: Social construct.
There are morphological, behavioral, and genetic differences between wild corn and domesticated corn. Not a social construct.

There is no difference between a vidalia onion, and any other yellow granex onion, there is a federal marketing order protecting the trademark and brand name. A social construct.

That some native american tribes refered to horses as big dogs is a social construct (as are the contents of every language), though no amount of calling a horse a dog makes it a dog, as there is an objective difference between the two. So there we have a social construct employed on top of a biological reality which begs to differ. Religions are very often social constructs - not the shamans or the buildings, but the ideologies themselves. Are we ever going to get to the moneyshot? To the point of pretending that this is difficult to understand and/or that everything is a social construct - or that social constructs themselves reduce to biology (or chemistry, or physics)....? The last one is particularly onerous, as social constructs are literally defined as categorizations or concepts which -do not- have their basis in any objective reality, such as biology, chemistry, or physics. We're in "what is word?" territory...here.....
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#30
RE: Social construct.
(December 20, 2022 at 12:48 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: all sociology is ultimately biology, just as all biology is ultimately chemistry, and all chemistry is ultimately physics. 

Yeah, and physics is ultimately mathematics, but it's funny how people can't even tell you what a mere three bodies with only the gravitational interaction will do over the indefinite future.
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