CHICKEN OR EGG

F Richard Singer III         edition date August 2007

website: www.conceptualstudy.org      email: richardsinger3@sbcglobal.net

Overview: Altho purportedly about the chicken or egg, this paper merely uses this so-called paradox to indicate a conceptual distinction to be designated using the terms ‘question’ and ‘query’. I refer to any proposition that is not purely conceptual as paraceptual (see note at the end of this paper). As with any conceptual paper, this one is neutral with respect to any significant paraceptual propositions, and it does not argue for or against anything or any course of action. It merely presents and relates some concepts and indicates how I find them personally useful. Concepts make sense as components within some network of conceptual distinctions and relations. The concepts in this paper are all included in our public routine net, i.e. they are concepts most people routinely use for a variety of ordinary matters. However, our routine public net does not encourage us to bring the main conceptual distinction considered in this paper into clear focus. Thus it allows us to ask which came first the chicken or the egg and think of the answers as giving rise to a paradox.

Questions & Queries: The term ‘question, is used to designate an individualized instance of an interrogative sentence. The primary purpose of a question is to request information. In most cases, asking a question indicates some uncertainty about information, so the most we would expect of the person who initiates a question is an awareness of several propositions that might supply the information. Often the person asking a question does not have candidates for answers, but is at least aware of the type of information that would suffice. Questions that could be answered by giving the type of information the individual asking the question intended are called queries. This is a specialized use of the term ‘query’. That we do not have a word whose ordinary meaning expresses this concept is one of the main factors motivating the conceptualization just mentioned. This conceptualization is presented in more detail in Part 2 Chapter 2 Section 2 of my book entitled A Personal Approach to Conceptual Philosophy. It is presented in the context of another similar epistemic distinction from Section 1 involving concepts designated by the terms ‘statement’ and proposition’. The term ‘statement’ is used to designate an individualized instance of an interrogative sentence. A statement is a proposition for a person when the person is clear about the information involved.

Example Al’s teacher illustrates the idea of time zones by saying that altho it is 2PM. here in St. Louis, it is 1PM. in Denver, and it is 3PM in Boston. Al asks what time it is on Mars. The teacher explains that the concept of standard time only applies to established time zones, and Mars is not in a time zone, nor is it the type of place that would normally be in a time zone. Altho this proposition about the nature of time zones is an appropriate response to the question, it is not the type of information that Al intended to request. Al does not understand the concept of time zones well enough to request appropriate information, so his question was too vague to be a query. For anyone who understands the concept of standard time, Al’s question may immediately suggest a question that would normally be a query. ‘Is Mars in a time zone?’

Example Jo knows that Santa is fictitious and ask where Santa lives. Her mother responds that Santa lives at the North Pole. Her question is a query and the response received is a proposition. In fact, it is a correct conceptual proposition because of the shared net. Her younger brother Jim is listening. He believes Santa is a real person. Altho his information about the nature of Santa is incorrect, his net for thinking about Santa is adequate for his current purpose. Thus the question he hears is a query and the response received is a proposition. This is currently a false paraceptual proposition for Jim, but when he learns the adult net for Santa, he will be able to substitute a correct conceptual proposition. The answer his mother sent may have been less clear to her than the answer Jim received. Did she send him a conceptual answer to what for Jim was a paraceptual question?

The Chicken or the Egg: There are a number of well-known interrogatives that seem to pose questions, but whose attempted answers appear to be paradoxical. Let us focus on one of these, indicating why a question that is an instance of Z might be vague and then indicate some queries that could be intended by the question Z.

Z: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

One way to use Z to make a query is to focus on a specific chicken and a specific egg. Z could then be used to make any number of queries, and to know which query was intended, amounts to knowing which chicken and which egg is intended. Let us begin with some rather easy examples of this type, even though it is clear that none of these express the usual intent of Z. We can then use this strategy to interpret Z as a query about a specific chicken and a specific egg, in a way that might capture the usual intent of the Z.

On 4/22/89 there was an egg stuck in a carton in my refrigerator. Some chicken laid that egg. We could use Z to ask which of these came first. It is easy to answer this query. In fact, given any specific egg laid by any specific chicken we know that chicken came before that egg. Likewise given any specific chicken that hatched from a specific egg we know that egg came before that chicken. In general, given a specific chicken and specific egg, using Z to query which came first does not give rise to a paradox, altho it may be difficult to answer. The first chicken I saw as a young child clearly came before the egg mentioned above, but did it come before the first egg eaten by my cousin Karen? I do not have enough available information to answer this last query, but this use of Z does not suggest a paradox.

The reason Z seems to give rise to a paradox is straightforward. The chicken cannot come first because it must hatch from an egg. The egg cannot come first, since some chicken must have laid it. From this we see that the usual intent of Z is in reference to a special chicken and a special egg, namely the first chicken and the first chicken egg. While this is a key to why Z is vague, it does not provide an immediate clarification. For Z to be used as a query, it must be clear what is meant by the first chicken and by the first chicken egg.

Suppose that chickens developed as the result of domestication and breeding a red jungle fowl, as my encyclopedia suggests. Now suppose we start with a clear case F₁ of a fowl which is not a chicken but which is an ancestor of our modern chickens. Imagine tracing its descendants F₂, F₃, F4, …; until we come to some fowl F_n, which we clearly call a chicken. We may not be able to actually identify the first chicken because we do not have sufficient information about the past. Even if we could actually examine such fowls, we might not be able to identify the first chicken. If this sequence involves a gradual change from generation to generation, then the notion of the first chicken may be extremely vague. We might find our concept of the first chicken does not apply to any specific member of the sequence. However let us suppose that we could specify criteria that would enable us to identify the first chicken. We might not be able to actually tell which it was, but at least the concept would be clear.

Now let us turn to the concept of the first egg. The first egg in this specific sequence was the jungle fowl egg from which F₁ hatched. Clearly this egg came before all chickens, and so we know that it came before the first chicken, even if our concept of the first chicken was still vague. Clearly this is not the egg intended by Z, since for this question; by the first egg we mean the first chicken egg. The concept of the first chicken egg is just as vague in our routine net as the concept of the first chicken. In this case the question intended by Z is too vague to be used as a query, i.e. it is unclear what information is being requested. Thus the paradoxical analysis suggested above does not apply.

Suppose the meaning of the first chicken was not vague, that is in principle we could identify the first chicken as a specific fowl. Perhaps the first chicken was directly created without using an egg, in which case it clearly came before the first egg. Perhaps it was a mutation so different from its parents to recognize it as a chicken, while not recognizing either parent as a chicken. Even if this it not the case, we might be able to adopt conventional criteria that would distinguish a chicken from any other fowl, and thus give the phrase first chicken a clear reference. Which fowl is recognized as the first chicken will depend on convention, but this will not be crucial to our ability to use Z to formulate a query. We also need to clarify what we mean by a chicken egg. We might mean either (LC) or (GC) below.

(LC) An egg that is laid by a chicken

(GC) An egg that has the genetic components to develop into a chicken

In most cases, a specific egg is likely to satisfy one of these conditions if and only if it satisfies the other. This need not be the case. A current chicken might lay an egg that gives rise to a new variety of fowl that we decide not to classify as a chicken. My inclination is to use (GC) as my criteria for a chicken egg. Doing so, clearly the first egg came before the first chicken. If we use (LC) as our criteria then our instance of Z is used as a different query, and the answer would be that the chicken came first. The fact that instances of Z can be answered in different ways is not a paradox. Different instances of Z are different questions, some of which are queries and some of which are not. Of those that are queries, they do not all request the same information.

Note: That first cousins share a pair of grandparents is information about the relationship between concepts used in our public net for ordinary family relationships. Such information is conceptual, since it is independent of any state of affairs in the realm of families. Information such as ‘Bill and Jane are first cousins’ uses this net, but tells about a state of affairs that this net is intended to help us think about. Such information is paraceptual in relation to this net.

¨ Conceptual information is about concepts and relationships between concepts within some net.

¨ Paraceptual information presupposes some net, but is about some particular state of affairs that the net is intended to help access.

The concept of paraceptual includes what is often called empirical, but I will use the term empirical in a narrower manner that relates to verification. Specifically empirical information is paraceptual information that has been verified by careful systematic observation or study. Information about the wellbeing of a departed loved one that is obtained by consulting a medium is paraceptual, whether or not it happens to be correct. This would not be called empirical information in the sense that I am using this concept, nor in the sense normally used in scientific communities.