Philosophy week 3

The discussions about Reality continued! Previous posts in this series:

part 1 - "The Velveteen Rabbit"

part 2 - The Big Muddy Monster

This week we considered the new spider species, Taczanowski waska.

I began by reading a section of Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature's Undead by Rebecca L. Johnson.

Side note: This is a sensational book! Here are all the species included

Chapter 1: A Fungus Among Us

Zombie Maker: Fungus, Entomophthora muscae
Zombie Victim: Housefly, Musca domestica
North America and Europe

Zombie Maker: Fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
Zombie Victim: Carpenter Ant, Camponotus leonardi
Southeast Asia


Chapter 2: The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out

Zombie Maker: Hairworm, Paragordius tricuspidatus
Zombie Victim: Cricket, Nemobius sylvestris
Europe

Zombie Maker: Guinea Worm, Dracunculus medinensis
Zombie Victim: Human, Homo sapiens
Africa


Chapter 3: Can We Eat the Babyitter?

Zombie Maker: Jewel Wasp, Ampulex compressa
Zombie Victim: Cockroach, Periplaneta americana
tropical parts of Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands

Zombie Maker: Parasitoid Wasp, Glyptapanteles
Zombie Victim: Moth Caterpillar, Thyrinteina leucocerae
North and South America


Chapter 4: Going Viral

Zombie Maker: Rabies Virus
Zombie Victim: Mammals
Every country except Australia and New Zealand


Chapter 5: Try Me, You'll Like Me

Zombie Maker: Roundworm, Myrmeconema neotropicum
Zombie Victim: Giant Gliding Ant, Cephalotes atratus
rain forests of Central and South America

Zombie Maker: Protozoan, Toxoplasma gondii
Zombie Victim: Rats and other warm-blooded animals
Everywhere cats are found

For this lesson, I read them the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis chapter (victim: carpenter ants). Then we reviewed Kings Play Chess On Fine Grains of Sand, also known as Linnaean classification.

It is easiest to explain this using our own species Homo sapiens!

Kingdom: Animals

Phylum: Vertebrates

Class: Mammals

To further explain Order: Primates
we like to play Primate Bingo



To further explain Family: Hominids
we like to play the Hunters and Gatherers Simulation Game



Genus: Homo

Species: sapiens

After that quick review, I read them a New York Times article from Mar 20:

'The Last of Us’ on Eight Legs (guest link)

Now, on to the Philosophy discussion:

Did Taczanowski waska exist before it was discovered?

AAR - Yes, it was alive before it was discovered, that one. If it wasn't, it would have to be just made. It was there before that second he found it.

FR - Yes. Things like that need lots of time to evolve. And that seems like it's been doing it for a while, playing dead. So yes I think it did.

Z - You can't. You can't prove it.

AAR - Unless there's footprints or something. But it's not heavy enough to make footprints.

CB - I don't think that it was real. You can't prove that it's there before it's been spotted or made. How do you know if it's there if no one ever saw it before he spotted it?

EF - Yes, it existed. It has to be made before someone finds it. Because if it's made after, well, if someone finds eggs, that's one way that you could. But if something already hatches and you find that, it has to be made before.

If we are sure that something exists because we have the evidence, was it real before we had the evidence?

CB - You can't, there's no way to prove that it's real if you don't have evidence before you found it.

Z - Yes, but, if you have evidence now and you didn't have evidence before, is it not real before?

FR is making the argument that that evolution takes time. How do we know that the rules of evolution are the same for this species?

CB - We don't have the evidence of that. We don't have a report of when it was actually here before they found it, and figured it out. We don't know when it came to Earth.

FR - Evolution takes time. Look at the simple things; those still took thousand of years to evolve. If they took years and years to evolve, what about this spider? It's a lot more difficult. Plus it's mimicking an organism that's been infected. That takes time to build a disguise like that for wildlife. It can't just be around for like 20 days or something. It had to be around for at least a few decades at least.

AAR - It can't just pop into nature. So many other creatures took so long to evolve. So this creature must have taken a long time to evolve too. It can't just go in just like that. It needs time to evolve those tentacles. It can't just see an organism dying and be like, oh that's a good idea and then tentacles pop out. It can't just do that.

Z - How would this species know that this fungus exists? It wouldn't know how to mimic it, if it didn't know that that fungus existed and what it looked like and what it did to the other spiders. (That's not evidence to me. I'm just arguing that.)

Here's the Wikipedia page for this new spider. From that page, "Arachnologist Nadine Dupérré subsequently located another specimen, collected in Bolivia in 1903, in the holdings of a museum in Germany."

So our evidence for its existence goes back to 1903. Did it exist before then? Can you explain in what way it existed before it was discovered?

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