Does a butcher butch? Does a butler buttle?
My butcher butches it up. (Don't have a buttler, but if I did, I hope he would buttle.)
I've found it odd that someone who once held a political office is still addressed in person with their former (highest?) title: President Clinton, Governor Romney, Secretary Albright, School Board Member Jones, ...
Philo,
It's my understanding that President/VP are supposed to be the exceptions to that rule. So it's now Gov. Bill Clinton, Ambassador George H. W. Bush, and Gov. Jimmy Carter.
And the problem that C. Ewing is not limited to professions. "Tabby eats mice" is the example Quine uses in Word and Object. It does require, I suppose, that Tabby have eaten at least one mouse, but it doesn't require that Tabby ever eat a mouse in the future.
There's a significant literature on the problem of these "dispositional properties".
"Tabby eats mice" is the example Quine uses in Word and Object. It does require, I suppose, that Tabby have eaten at least one mouse, but it doesn't require that Tabby ever eat a mouse in the future.
There still seems to be a distinction between habit (repeated actions, or things a person "tends to do") and a singular occurrence. If Tabby ate a mouse once upon a time, it seems straightforwardly false to say she "eats mice", not only because it was a once upon a time occurrence (a person who merely experimented with weed back in the day no longer "smokes weed"), but also because mouse is singular, and mice is plural. This doesn't synchronize well with our actual usage, and that seems to be an obvious problem.
Just take the example of a smoker. If you smoked cigarettes for twenty years, and stopped then you are now a non-smoker. It's simply inaccurate to describe you as a smoker at that point onward. You are not one who smokes. Are the other examples importantly different? If so, how?
I'm not sure having toyed with water colors when I was a kid (which I did) somehow makes me a painter. In fact, I'm rather confident in saying that I am not a painter, regardless of that past reality.
You are right in that it need not be limited to professions, but I was simply using a specific example. I didn't intend to imply some sort of exclusivity in regards to professions or hobbies.
I suppose if you were, Zen-like, totally in-the-moment, you would always answer the question "What is your occupation?" (an activity on which someone's time is spent) with "I am answering the question 'What is your occupation?'"
The reason I say that "Tabby eats mice" does not imply that Tabby will ever eat another mouse in the future is this: Tabby may well die before getting a chance to eat another mouse.
Similarly, a person might be a painter all of her life, even though she didn't paint during the last two weeks of her life because she was on vacation when she was unexpectedly hit by a bus.
Brock:
That's both trivially true, and seemingly beside the point. The statement is not regarding future actions or potential future actions. The wording is being used descriptively not speculatively so far as I can tell.
In the official State of Alaska / Governor bio page it states:
Palin is a lifetime member of the NRA
which should mean she had signed up when she was a newly-born infant - or even before.
Commenting by HaloScan
