Re: AAH

david l burkhead (david8@dax.cc.uakron.edu)
11 Jul 1996 20:13:00 GMT

In article <rfoyDuDwEz.DpC@netcom.com> rfoy@netcom.com (Richard Foy) writes:
>In article <4s1tlp$3qq@kira.cc.uakron.edu>,
>david l burkhead <david8@dax.cc.uakron.edu> wrote:

[ 8< ]

>> More "scientific" than any TV puff piece. A health care
>>professional with experience in the field probably knows more about it
>>than you or I.
>
>You are certainly knowledgeable you. But you have no idea what I have
>read on the subject. By the way did the hospital/clinics where the
>nurse worked provide services for underwater birth?

I don't care _what_ you read. If you, an EE, are going to claim
greater knowledge of the subject than an RN who has _worked_ in the
field, then you will simply destroy what little credibility you have
left.

As for the hospital/clinics crack, frankly at the time I knew her
she wasn't working in that particular field, serving instead as a head
nurse for a specialty clinic in another field entirely. She _had_
worked in the field.

>> Relevance? Human baby's kick their legs and wave their arms.
>>Most animals I've seen _also_ kick their legs. I don't have much
>>experience with chimps so I can't say offhand.
>
>Immediately after birth? If so your experience is different from my
>experience with farm animals when I was a kid?

I guess you didn't spend much time around those farm animals in
the interfal between birth and when they started _walking_. When I
saw them, they did a good bit of leg thrashing before they got up on
their feet. A narrow window, but within that window they certainly
did something that could be called "kicking."

>> However, it's up to the one's trying to claim that there's some
>>remarkable difference to show that the difference exists. Perhaps you
>>have data that baby chimps and other apes do _not_ kick their legs and
>>wave their arms as a common thing?
>
>No I don't have data. I am not trying to claim anything. I am only
>tryting to question what *appears* to me to be a knee jerk reaction
>against anything anyone says that is remotely supportive of sort sort
>of AAH.

So you don't have any data. So what's your point? Are you
saying that the statement _is_ remotely supportive of AAH? Yet, you
have no data for that? And if you're _not_ claiming it as support
then why did you bring it up in the first place. (_Karen_ never
claimed that it was support for aquatic anything.) As for a "knee
jerk" reaction, _you_ brought it up in response to statements about
the idea of an "instinctive" ability to swim. I merely pointed out
that it is utterly without value as evidence for any such thing. The
jerking knee has been your own, once again attempting to defend the
indefensible.

>> You see, it's up to those proposing the hypothesis to provide
>>evidence for the hypothesis. Okay, newborns kick their legs in water.
>>Well and good. But they _also_ kick their legs when _not_ in water.
>>Thus, leg kicking is a general newborn behavior. It is not something
>>special about their being in water. Thus, the "in water" part of the
>>claim is irrelevant and the kicking has no discernable connection to
>>being in water. The result is that "kicking" is not evidence of any
>>"instinctual swimming" in newborns.
>
>This is fallacious logic!

You are absolutely right. Any claim that infants kicking when in
water (when one considers that they also kick when not in water) is
evidence of aquatic _anything_ (or evidence of an "instinctual"
swimming ability--remember the topic of this thread?) is fallacious
logic.

-- 

David L. Burkhead                    "If I had eight hours to cut down

david8@dax.cc.uakron.edu             a tree, I'd spend seven sharpening

FAX:  330-253-4490                   my axe." Attributed to Abraham

SpaceCub                             Lincoln