Joe wrote:
We can test the Alice in Wonderland thesis that words have the meanings - which Khuno assigns them. If Khuno were thrown into a sealed crypt and all of the oxygen sucked out of it, no amount of his redefining that: "The lack of an oxygen supply means the sufficiency of an oxygen supply." would save him from suffocating to death. Khuno's ability to redefine words depends on the conditions in the world - not the conditions in the world on his redefining of words. For example - when he mutilates, mauls and murders the meaning of a science-term, the phenomena, associated with this term, do not blast out of the gates of reality into non-being.
The Alice in Wonderland thesis is exactly what is proposed when sexual selection (SS) terms - such as "preference" are redefined into "useful metaphors", the flies "conscious" preferences, etc. to make it appear that insects have somehow lost their observed mate preferences. Under SS, the presence of non-metaphorical, i.e. real mate preferences are required for it to be a viable theory. Preferences for ornaments - among non-human organisms - is a hard-fact of the world. No one can make these facts of nature swirl-down the drain-hole of reality into non-being - by plumbing-about with bio-terms.
A knowledge paradox emerges from Khuno's redefining the terms of a scientific theory (SS) into "useful metaphors", "conscious" preferences, etc. SS in the mating systems of insect species is known to exist, but - after Khuno's redefinition, biological facts are known not to exist - since by the redefinition, insects (and many other organisms) lose their mate preferences. Had no mate preferences on the part of insects ever existed, then the consequences of sexual selection ("exaggerated male traits", speciation, experimental outcomes, sexual dimorphism, the magnitude of genetic diversity found in nature, etc.) would not be observed by biologists. The conflation of the bio-term "preference" with "conscious" preferences, "useful metaphors", etc. if allowed, would generate a knowledge paradox, i.e. what is known to happen in nature is - after the redefinition - also known not to happen in nature. However, not quasars, nor protons, nor mate preferences nor the DNA helix owe their existences to human (re)definitions. They are mind-independent features of the world. They are not word-facts. There are no word-facts.
Suppose that a person on a Myspace group shifts the value of c in Einstein's equation, e=mc², from 299,792,458 m/s to zero and insists that one consequence of c being equal to zero is that Einstein's theory no longer explains how the sun radiates light and heat through fusion. It does not follow that Einstein's theory no longer explains how the sun radiates light and heat (or that citing the theory of General Relativity is the thought-process of a "Sociopath"). This's the diseased root of the khuno/norton problem. Evidence, not the linguistic torturing of a theory into a manufactured contradiction, is required to dispose a scientific theory. Khuno and Norton lack the base-line, intellectual humility to concede that their sabotaging of Darwin's theory is simply not allowed - anymore than my above sabotaging of Einstein's is.