Posted by dorayme on 01/29/08 22:15

In article <Xns9A33CF8CEF04Dnanopandaneredbojias@194.177.96.78>,
Neredbojias <monstersquasher@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:55:57
> GMT dorayme scribed:
>
> >> Right. It was never a cup to begin with.
> >>
> >> > It is a cup without a bottom.
> >>
> >> Nope.
> >
> > Ah Boji, you very significantly don't say what a bottomless cup
> > is. Most of us would have no trouble, it is *a bottomless cup*.
> > But all you can say is "Nope". I do understand your predicament.
> > Having eschewed a perfectly natural form of words, you are at a
> > loss to describe such a cup.
>
> A cup needs a bottom to be a cup. Is that unreasonable?

Not really, no. What would you call the cups I have previously
described without being silly? Would you make up your own terms?

I can see that you have no patience or stomach for the enquiries
I have made to you to explore a distinction you yourself made.
There is no need to explain why this is so, I accept all
responsibility.

For anyone else that might be interested (highly unlikely to be
many <g>): The idea that a cup without a bottom is still a cup is
not some sort of joke. It is the serious point that if you do not
call it a cup, you have lost a perfectly proper and natural way
of describing it. This point is an objection to the common
practice of avoiding real issues by red herrings about words.

The point of probing the distinction between design and
engineering is to see what the true ingredients are of a designed
object, to distinguish in it the various aspects. These aspects
can be divorced from the actual histories and psychology of the
object and its creators.

--
dorayme

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