Disputatio:Inundatio
man-made?[fontem recensere]
Re: "How to say man-made (as opposed to natural)"—Subicio nomen adiectivum artificiosus, artificii qualitatem habens. IacobusAmor 23:31, 28 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- The idea of man-made has the idea of culpability and responsibility mixed in, i.e. that "it could have been otherwise" which I am not sure artificiosus has, although perhaps I am wrong. I would figure some moral philosopher like Augustine or Aquinas or Spinoza would have had a specific term for "man-made".--Rafaelgarcia 23:47, 28 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Cassell's: "artificiosus . . . skilfully made . . . hence artificial (opp. to natural)." IacobusAmor 23:59, 28 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- That not quite the same thing. Skillfully-made versus man-made. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking there is a significant difference. However, it seems to me that something man-made is not necessarily skillfully made. Skillfully made implies something positive/achieved, man-made implies blame/credit/responsiblity. In philosophy, made-made-ness is the prerequisite for blame/punishment/justice.--Rafaelgarcia 00:32, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- I don't quite follow you here. The opposite of nature is art (as Cassell's says). Either something is natural or it's artful. If it's artful, it's man-made, because nature doesn't make art. Art is the result of artifice. By definition, anything that results from artifice is artificial. And that gets us to artificiosus. IacobusAmor 00:48, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- The distinction is: murder is man-made, natural death is not; but I wouldn't describe either as artful.--Rafaelgarcia 01:08, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- In English murder wouldn't be called 'man-made' either, because murders are not artifacts to be made, they are deeds to be committed. (Of course philosophers who appropriate the language for their individual uses might disagree, but they were not the ones in mind when 'artificiosus' was being glossed.) —Mucius Tever 01:45, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Happier with facticius? --Neander 01:14, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, perhaps that may be the mot juste. It doesn't imply skill or art, just being made/done.--Rafaelgarcia 01:35, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- L&S, s.v. facticius: "made by art, artificial, factitious (postAug.)." IacobusAmor 03:45, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Yes this still requires reading some moral philosopher in latin who spoke/wrote on the subject. I wouldn't be surprised if there were another term. However, facticius sounds more likely artificiosus mostly because its origin is in facere instead of ars.--Rafaelgarcia 08:38, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Maybe we're working from different notions of "art," and all you really want is the adjective humanus. IacobusAmor 12:49, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Yes this still requires reading some moral philosopher in latin who spoke/wrote on the subject. I wouldn't be surprised if there were another term. However, facticius sounds more likely artificiosus mostly because its origin is in facere instead of ars.--Rafaelgarcia 08:38, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- L&S, s.v. facticius: "made by art, artificial, factitious (postAug.)." IacobusAmor 03:45, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, perhaps that may be the mot juste. It doesn't imply skill or art, just being made/done.--Rafaelgarcia 01:35, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- The defintion I was working from is the one given in Lewis and short, where they state the root meaning of the word ars is:"I. skill in joining something, combining, working it, etc., " and "I. Skill in producing any material form, handicraft, trade, occupation, employment (technê).", the relavent english concept apparently is "skill", Lewis and Short go on to explain how the meaning was later extended to mean "art": "B. Transf. 1. With the idea extended, any physical or mental activity, so far as it is practically exhibited; a profession, art (music, poetry, medicine, etc.); acc. to Roman notions, the arts were either liberales or ingenuae artes, arts of freemen, the liberal arts; or artes illiberales or sordidae, the arts, employments, of slaves or the lower classes.".
- Thus ars, both in its primary meaning and secondary meanings, seems to go significantly beyond the concept of "artificial" and "man-made". We would not want to say that a catastrophe is "skillfully done". Nor does "humanus" do the job of conveying the idea of man-made in this instance..--Rafaelgarcia 13:44, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Re: "We would not want to say that a catastrophe is "skillfully done."—Why not? It took a lot of skill to engineer 9/11. ¶ Perhaps we're using different definitions of skill. I take it to mean merely the (human) ability to act, or, as Merriam-Webster says, 'the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance'. In other words, if caveman A hits caveman B with a club so as to kill him, A shows his skill in the art of combat. IacobusAmor 14:08, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Skill as above implies purpose, a deliberate effort to achieve an end by a certain means, whereas a man-made also encompasses incompetence and evasion. If a baby dies because the mother failed to nurish it, then that baby's death is man-made, but can one call it skillful? The concept of man-made, hinges on the single fact of human free-will, the fact that we are in charge of our choices, that something done or having happened could have been otherwise. A man-made disaster is one which could have been avoided if someone had instead paid attention, did their job properly, competently and skillfully. The fact that skill in the execution of one's function was absent or done poorly is presumably the cause of such disasters. Thus we cannot call them skillful.--Rafaelgarcia 14:25, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- I think we're getting to the right direction now. Obviously, the single dimension "natural" vs. "artificial" isn't quite enough. "Man-made" seems to conceptually encompass both "artificial" and something else. What is "artificial" is by the same token "intentional". But what is "man-made" may be either "intentional" or "unintentional". An offence of negligence, for example, is unintentional yet "man-made". As for Latin, "artificiosus" is to be ruled out as an expression for "unintentionally man-made", but I tend to think that neither does "facticius" fare too well in this function. Maybe we should say "haud voluntarius" or "non consulto factus" (in this case, "factus" is PP of "fieri"). I'm open to other proposals as well, these came off the cuff. --Neander 00:49, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- I would regard "intentional" to be different from "deliberate". Nevertheless, such distinctions are irrelevant to the idea of man-made. The only thing that matters is that something man-made is the result of a human choice.--Rafaelgarcia 02:25, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Deaths are not made either, man- or otherwise. Not all things that are due to man are man-made. In fact, not all things that are made by humans are called man-made either (sweat is an example). The word is generally only used in ordinary language for things that might more technically be called synthetic. —Mucius Tever 01:52, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- In the context of technology and materials, synthetic captures well the idea of something artificial like nylon or plastic. However, the philosophical idea of man-made is quite different. It is the basis of the idea of crime, blame and punishment, of judging a person to be good or bad. Death can indeed be man-made if it is the result of human choice, such as happens when there is murder or child abandonment. On the other hand, things made by the human body automatically can be regarded as natural, since they are generally unrelated to the exercise of free will, and thus are "metaphysically-given" as opposed to "man-made". At the same time, if the sweat is regarded as the result of a willed human choice, then in that context it is indeed man-made. The distinction is subtle, but straightfoward once the context is given.--Rafaelgarcia 02:22, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Not subtle really, but, if philosophers use the word that way, it's jargon (or bad translationese), not anything like ordinary language. —Mucius Tever 00:56, 1 Maii 2008 (UTC)
- In the context of technology and materials, synthetic captures well the idea of something artificial like nylon or plastic. However, the philosophical idea of man-made is quite different. It is the basis of the idea of crime, blame and punishment, of judging a person to be good or bad. Death can indeed be man-made if it is the result of human choice, such as happens when there is murder or child abandonment. On the other hand, things made by the human body automatically can be regarded as natural, since they are generally unrelated to the exercise of free will, and thus are "metaphysically-given" as opposed to "man-made". At the same time, if the sweat is regarded as the result of a willed human choice, then in that context it is indeed man-made. The distinction is subtle, but straightfoward once the context is given.--Rafaelgarcia 02:22, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- I think we're getting to the right direction now. Obviously, the single dimension "natural" vs. "artificial" isn't quite enough. "Man-made" seems to conceptually encompass both "artificial" and something else. What is "artificial" is by the same token "intentional". But what is "man-made" may be either "intentional" or "unintentional". An offence of negligence, for example, is unintentional yet "man-made". As for Latin, "artificiosus" is to be ruled out as an expression for "unintentionally man-made", but I tend to think that neither does "facticius" fare too well in this function. Maybe we should say "haud voluntarius" or "non consulto factus" (in this case, "factus" is PP of "fieri"). I'm open to other proposals as well, these came off the cuff. --Neander 00:49, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- I guess the most interesting outcome of this discussion is that this idea of man-made that I've regarded as universally-obvious, is apparently not so obvious at all. I know that my philosophical background is objectivism, but I never had the inkling to regard this distinction of metaphysically-given versus man-made as being anything original to Ayn Rand. I will try to trace its origins, by reading the great free-will philosphers Aquinas and Augustine and perhaps also Spinoza and see what I can learn about this concept.--Rafaelgarcia 02:36, 30 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- The meaning you're trying to convey is clear, and how this is close to the ordinary use of 'man-made' is understandable, but using the word 'man-made' to describe it is the kind of thing Twain warned about when he stated the right word should be used, not its second cousin. I don't know how the Objectivists arrived at its use, unless perhaps it's a truncation of a more complete or natural phrase. —Mucius Tever 01:21, 1 Maii 2008 (UTC)
- Well, you can imagine my surprise, as I thought it was standard english usage. I imagine I must feel just like our Catholic friend who couldn't fathom how not everyone could regard the "catholic church" as synonymous with "the roman catholic church". :-)--Rafaelgarcia 01:48, 1 Maii 2008 (UTC)
- I fear I haven't been reading all this, but if we're talking about "man-made" disasters etc., I think of that as a normal English expression. My first Latin equivalent would be "facticius"; my second (preferable if people intended to cause the disaster) would be "artificiosus". I see that both words appear above. Ignore me if irrelevant! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:21, 1 Maii 2008 (UTC)
- Well, you can imagine my surprise, as I thought it was standard english usage. I imagine I must feel just like our Catholic friend who couldn't fathom how not everyone could regard the "catholic church" as synonymous with "the roman catholic church". :-)--Rafaelgarcia 01:48, 1 Maii 2008 (UTC)
- The meaning you're trying to convey is clear, and how this is close to the ordinary use of 'man-made' is understandable, but using the word 'man-made' to describe it is the kind of thing Twain warned about when he stated the right word should be used, not its second cousin. I don't know how the Objectivists arrived at its use, unless perhaps it's a truncation of a more complete or natural phrase. —Mucius Tever 01:21, 1 Maii 2008 (UTC)
- Skill as above implies purpose, a deliberate effort to achieve an end by a certain means, whereas a man-made also encompasses incompetence and evasion. If a baby dies because the mother failed to nurish it, then that baby's death is man-made, but can one call it skillful? The concept of man-made, hinges on the single fact of human free-will, the fact that we are in charge of our choices, that something done or having happened could have been otherwise. A man-made disaster is one which could have been avoided if someone had instead paid attention, did their job properly, competently and skillfully. The fact that skill in the execution of one's function was absent or done poorly is presumably the cause of such disasters. Thus we cannot call them skillful.--Rafaelgarcia 14:25, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Re: "We would not want to say that a catastrophe is "skillfully done."—Why not? It took a lot of skill to engineer 9/11. ¶ Perhaps we're using different definitions of skill. I take it to mean merely the (human) ability to act, or, as Merriam-Webster says, 'the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance'. In other words, if caveman A hits caveman B with a club so as to kill him, A shows his skill in the art of combat. IacobusAmor 14:08, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- The distinction is: murder is man-made, natural death is not; but I wouldn't describe either as artful.--Rafaelgarcia 01:08, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- I don't quite follow you here. The opposite of nature is art (as Cassell's says). Either something is natural or it's artful. If it's artful, it's man-made, because nature doesn't make art. Art is the result of artifice. By definition, anything that results from artifice is artificial. And that gets us to artificiosus. IacobusAmor 00:48, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- That not quite the same thing. Skillfully-made versus man-made. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking there is a significant difference. However, it seems to me that something man-made is not necessarily skillfully made. Skillfully made implies something positive/achieved, man-made implies blame/credit/responsiblity. In philosophy, made-made-ness is the prerequisite for blame/punishment/justice.--Rafaelgarcia 00:32, 29 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- Cassell's: "artificiosus . . . skilfully made . . . hence artificial (opp. to natural)." IacobusAmor 23:59, 28 Aprilis 2008 (UTC)
- I was in a car crash, my back was broken and I had to spend a year in the hospital. The driver was unhurt. I call this a "man-made" abandonment, as I had a 5 year old daughter who I never mothered for a year. There appears to be nothing I can do to rectify and re-connect.[a_cameron@mail.com]