My bathroom sinks are made of faux<\/em> marble, which is to say that they are not made of marble: false marble is not marble. So faux<\/em> and 'false' function here as alienans<\/em> adjectives. Similar cases: false gold, <\/font>falsies<\/font><\/a>, false friend. But 'false' in 'false teeth' is not an alienans<\/em> adjective: false teeth are teeth just as an artificial hand is a hand. Artificial leather, however, is not leather.<\/font><\/p>\n What about 'epistemic' in 'epistemic possibility'? I'd say it is alienans<\/em>. I ask the secretary whether Professor Windbag is in his office. She says, "It's possible." Unbeknownst to both of us, however, old Windbag was cremated the night before. So one cannot validly infer 'It is possible that p' from 'It is epistemically possible that p.'<\/font><\/p>\n I saw a liberal on John Stossel's show the other night. She said more than once that obesity is contagious. When called on the absurdity of her assertion, she retreated to the claim that it is socially contagious. Socially<\/em> contagious? I pronounce my 'bullshit' upon that: 'socially' here functions as an alienans<\/em> adjective. What is socially contagious is not contagious strictly speaking.<\/font><\/p>\n Liberals want to make of obesity a public health problem. We ought not let them get away with it. I have explained before why it is not a public health problem, and I'm not in the mood to repeat myself. I'll just remind you that if we let the proponents of socialized medicine get their way, our liberty is near an end. Once the government controls every aspect of health care, they will be in a position to dictate your behavior in almost every particular: what you must eat, what you must not eat, whether and how much you should exercise, whether you will be allowed to engage in such risky activities as riding motorcycles and so on. And if high risk activities are allowed, then you can expect special taxes and restrictions galore.<\/font><\/p>\n So when I go on about language, it is not all just pedantry and scholarly nicety. Attention to language is a prerequisite for critical thinking. There is no semantic vehicle that some leftist will not try to hijack and pilot to a Left Coast destination; so sharpen your wits and be on guard.<\/font><\/p>\n For more on alienans <\/em>adjectives, see <\/font>Adjectives<\/font><\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My bathroom sinks are made of faux marble, which is to say that they are not made of marble: false marble is not marble. So faux and 'false' function here as alienans adjectives. Similar cases: false gold, falsies, false friend. But 'false' in 'false teeth' is not an alienans adjective: false teeth are teeth just … Continue reading “More Fun With Alienans<\/i> Adjectives and an Application”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives","category-leftism-and-political-correctness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}