I love the amount of effort that went into this, and find it very amusing. I've had similar forays into defining sandwiches, ravioli, soups, and so on, but never in such meticulous detail.
But taking it seriously, a word like "salad" is best understood, IMO, as a family resemblance [0]: a group of inconsistently overlapping properties. Or, you could understand it functionally/pragmatically (a salad is what I order when I want a salad), where the meaning is not derived from an internal property but from the social system that produced it.
For salad or sandwich, it's all rather unimportant, naturally. But I do think taking this step back and questioning what it even means for an utterance to have meaning can help dissolve some serious and otherwise contentious philosophical issues. ("Intelligence" seems to be a rather relevant example.)
Mathematical definition is enchanting to those of us with an inclination towards abstraction. But just because it's a noun doesn't mean it's a thing --- or at least, not a thing independently of the speaker and their community of speakers.
The only additional realization you need is that things like “fruit salad” and “chicken salad” are using the word “salad” figuratively. There’s no reason to expect our definition of “salad” to cover figurative usage. After all, do you really expect to cover, for instance, “word salad”?
It might seem trivial when debating silly topics, but when you get to the actual structure of reality, debating where one thing ends and another begins is really interesting.
I enjoy this kind of thing. I definitely take objection to their entropy argument though. A cheeseburger with like 5 ingredients stacked into layers is not in the same entropy universe as a salad with hundreds of little leaves and chunks of food in a big pile. Criticizing the cube model on the basis that eating the food can change the category seems a little silly when even they would admit that a salad eaten down to just a singular crouton is no longer a salad.
> Mathematics is the study of precisely imagined things. It's about imagining something so precisely that your idea of it is fully defined. There's no space for opinion or interpretation. Two mathematicians thinking about the same mathematical object, defined in the same way, are not thinking about two versions of it. They're actually thinking about the same object.
- Rob Miles
Any time I read something like this post, I can't help but think that it's people mimicking the language of mathematics because they don't understand its purpose. To them, math seems like pedantry, constantly obsessing about minor details that are seemingly irrelevant. When in reality, that obsession with full and complete definitions in math serves a purpose.
This discussion of salads serves no purpose. In fact, it's arguably meant to be confusing.
I refer to the Spanish definition of "ensalada": La ensalada es, en términos generales, un plato que combina verduras frías - a salad is a plate which combines cold vegetables.
Thus pizza, in Spanish, is not a salad, until about an hour after it comes out of the oven.
I'm surprised to not find the word "salt" anywhere in the page. "Salad" essentially means "salted". Other words like "salsa"/sauce, and sausage share the same root: salt.
With this in mind it's more clear to me what a salad is. First you have to understand that we are talking about food preparations. A salad is not just raw ingredients on a plate. It is explicitly a preparation. Most preparations are cooked, but a salad is merely salted, or sauced, which itself contains salt.
I don't think actual salt is necessarily required, but you do need something to "bring together" the ingredients into a salad. A balsamic glaze is a good option if you are avoiding salt.
But taking it seriously, a word like "salad" is best understood, IMO, as a family resemblance [0]: a group of inconsistently overlapping properties. Or, you could understand it functionally/pragmatically (a salad is what I order when I want a salad), where the meaning is not derived from an internal property but from the social system that produced it.
For salad or sandwich, it's all rather unimportant, naturally. But I do think taking this step back and questioning what it even means for an utterance to have meaning can help dissolve some serious and otherwise contentious philosophical issues. ("Intelligence" seems to be a rather relevant example.)
Mathematical definition is enchanting to those of us with an inclination towards abstraction. But just because it's a noun doesn't mean it's a thing --- or at least, not a thing independently of the speaker and their community of speakers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
> A salad must be a mixture of greens.
The only additional realization you need is that things like “fruit salad” and “chicken salad” are using the word “salad” figuratively. There’s no reason to expect our definition of “salad” to cover figurative usage. After all, do you really expect to cover, for instance, “word salad”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
It might seem trivial when debating silly topics, but when you get to the actual structure of reality, debating where one thing ends and another begins is really interesting.
- Rob Miles
Any time I read something like this post, I can't help but think that it's people mimicking the language of mathematics because they don't understand its purpose. To them, math seems like pedantry, constantly obsessing about minor details that are seemingly irrelevant. When in reality, that obsession with full and complete definitions in math serves a purpose.
This discussion of salads serves no purpose. In fact, it's arguably meant to be confusing.
https://youtu.be/JgJUbmGDc6k?si=CvS6vuBU5R5JwoDg&t=10
Thus pizza, in Spanish, is not a salad, until about an hour after it comes out of the oven.
With this in mind it's more clear to me what a salad is. First you have to understand that we are talking about food preparations. A salad is not just raw ingredients on a plate. It is explicitly a preparation. Most preparations are cooked, but a salad is merely salted, or sauced, which itself contains salt.
I don't think actual salt is necessarily required, but you do need something to "bring together" the ingredients into a salad. A balsamic glaze is a good option if you are avoiding salt.
This goes to proves that you can reason your way out of everything.
Pedantry is an excessive, boastful, or annoying focus on minor details, formal rules, and trivial points of learning.