Re: Mr. Bird and other carnivores

And Rosta scripsit:

> (I take it that some bears eat plants?)

Every kind of bear eats plants with the sole exception of polar bears.
(It is a point of dispute whether giant pandas are bears, raccoons, or sui
generis, but if they are bears, they are the only bears that eat no meat.)

> Yes. But I think Mr US President is not a subkind of Mr White Male, even
> though there is no US President who is not a white male. I have tried and
> failed to think of cases where X is a subkind of Y, Y is a subkind of Z,
> but X is not a subkind of Z, and indeed would claim that this is impossible.

The second point is uncontroversial (it's a direct consequence of the
transitivity of the subset relation), but the first seems to me doubtful.
You are going to say that it is a mere contingency that all presidents
hitherto have been white males, but it seems to me that when dealing
with Mr., what is actually the case rules. Mr. Goat is a subkind of Mr.
Quadruped, notwithstanding that we may be able to engineer six-legged
goats some day. It was only after the discovery of Australia that
we (i.e. non-Aboriginals) learned that Mr. Swan was not a subkind
of Mr. White: before that date it would have been perverse to claim
otherwise.

-- 
A witness cannot give evidence of his John Cowan
age unless he can remember being born. jcowan-k6JZYsoqQQ8PxK1qzZLvrwC/[email protected]
--Judge Blagden http://www.ccil.org/~cowan