Did you say Evolution doesn't teach man evolved from ape?

[Aron-Ra]

OK, lets take a look at one example. Take this one. You originally presented it to support your claim that Catarrhines are all monkeys. Yet, the phylogenetic tree they show, as I pointed out already, contradicts your other claim regarding the position of Propliopithecoidea.

As I have already explained above, you are mistaken. This site lists Propliopithecidae below both Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea, and within neither of them.

So, if you want to claim that you presented that particular link because the title of the page connotes that catarrhines are all monkeys, fine, but you cannot deny that it undermines one of the other issues that you have been hammering away at in this thread. Which is why I have written that at best, your links have provided ambivalent support.

Well, I can deny that actually, and I'm going to. You planted your goal post on the point basal anthropoids should not be considered monkeys, and one of the following pages of that site describes prosimians as "half-monkeys", implying of course that fully-simians would be fully-monkeys.

But you contradict yourself. You said your position in this debate would be wrong if the ancestor of Hominoidea turned out to be a monkey, and you told me you would accept the word of J.G. Fleagle over mine. Yet you didn't notice that he wrote one of the papers I cited which clarified that basal anthropoids -living prior to the divergence of Hominoids were most like specific species within New World monkeys.

And yet he does not consider humans to be monkeys. Odd that. Must be one of those traditionalists.

Exactly. I told you early on that I had noticed intentional strategic changes between Old World "monkeys" and Old World "primates". Now you're beginning to see it yourself. What Fleagle describes fits all the criteria to be a monkey, and a New World monkey at that, and one which he and many others consider basal to Catarrhini. It would be pointlessly paraphyletic to call it a non-monkey. But still he does, preferring to refer to it as a "Simiiform", "simian", or "anthropoid", trying very hard to call it what it is without admitting everything that it is a monkey.

Please do not engage in this little game. It reeks of the antics of the creationist.

Yes it does; your selective responses, dodging questions, accusing your opponant of your own faults when he doesn't share them, ignoring whatever you don't like, and immediately stooping to hostility when intellectual discourse fails you, -yes it seems very like the tactics of creationists doesn't it?

Yes – you appear to recognize your tactics fairly well.

Now you're just being childish. I haven't employed any of those tactics, and you know it. But you have employed all of them.

As far as dodging questions, if I don’t see them, I cannot dodge them. I do not always read every post in every thread – apparently you do, but I don’t have the time or desire to do this. I realize that this is a discussion board, not a place in which technical scientific issues are to be worked out. As such, I long ago discarded the notion that it would be fruitful to treat internet discussion board posts as roughly equivalent to scientific discourse/publications. I too often had lengthy, citation-supported mini-papers ignored or dismissed by discussion ‘opponents’ to justify continuing the practice. As has been the case in this thread. This discussion is not peer-reviewed. It will not be a point of discussion at the SSE meeting in Stony Brook. It will likely scroll away into oblivion in a few days. I do not feel the need to boost my ego by “winning” discussions and “proving” my points on some creationist-run discussion board. Some, it would seem, put way too much stock in these things. I have better things to do with my time than chase down red herring links.

Then ignore the links and just converse reasonably like I hoped you would in the first place. Because you've wasted far too much time on insults and insinuations already. None of it will ever apply to me, so give it up.

And yet the common public can tell the difference between a 'monkey' and an 'ape', most of them anyway. Of course, there is 'meaning' and then there is connotation. Not all terms possess identical meanings and connotations.

And yet we know what the common meaning for 'monkey' is. So when John Q. Public says "evolution teaches that men come from monkeys", we can translate that easily to understand him as saying Homonines descend from anthropoids, because that's obviously what he means.

Sure. Obviously.

Agreed. I think we've seen enough dictionary definitions and other layman sources to prove that point by now.

But even articles in the National Center for Biotechnology Information refer to humans as Old World monkeys.

Tradition. And that is all bad, remember?

It is not tradition, and not all tradition is bad if its defensible. However, you've still failed to show me why the fully-simian descendant of "half-monkeys and ancestor of both New World monkeys and Old World monkeys should not be considered a monkey itself. Neither have you any explanation for how such a thing should suddenly be considered a non-monkey once it becomes recognizeably ape.

1. As I already explained, it was not my intent to do so.

Then why tell me I'm wrong if you refuse to back that up, or allow me to defend myself against your insults and false accusations? -Which you misinterpreted as a paramount need to prove my point.

2. It is not my position that Hominoids are to be or should be excluded from any more-inclusive clade. In terms of ‘naming’, it is my position that if we are to use cladistic methodology to name extant organisms, in this case humans, there are more recent, less-inclusive clades which could be used (or older, more inclusive ones). The stem leading to the split between humans and chimps, for example. This would exclude Gorillina (depending on which scheme you prefer) but would be neither humans nor chimps. One could then say that humans and chimps are ______ , whatever that group would be called.

I support that too, and wish I knew a colloquial equivilent for it such as we have for the other clades we're talking about here. It seems to me that your whole and sole problem is a matter of interpretation and semantics. You know its a monkey, but you just don't want to call it one.

I dare you to go back through the past posts (particularly #90 & 91) to remind yourself of all the points and queries you refused to address.

Oh, you dare me, do you? Whatever…

You're so condescending, and hypocritical since you falsely accused me of the same thing.

Can't do it, huh? I'm not surprised since you already said you don't like to get bogged down in the "boring" details.

Can’t? No, won’t? Yes. It is true, I do not like to get bogged down in details on internet discussion boards in which the majority of participants are laymen. I find it too time consuming to be worthwhile. I used to, mind you, but my efforts were dismissed too often. I learned my lesson.

And now you're doing the same to me, -wasting my time, and dismissing my efforts without consideration.

Funny thing – I did some searches on variations of your name and I was unable to find any of your publications. I searched PubMed, Academic Search Premier, Biosis, and a couple others and darned if nothing came up. Google returned lots and lots of internet discussion board posts and the like, but nothing ‘official’ or professional. Surely, I am missing something, for a scientist of your caliber must have many many publications on this topic… But poor little me, I just a have a few, 2 of which have been cited by the Tree of Life project.
But what do I know…

Surprisingly, ... not nearly enough to be making the judgements you do. The only time my name appears on any scientific paper was when my work was cited twice on Mikeynov's own papers submitted for his Bachelor's in biology. Not bad for a student with no degrees as of yet. I'm surprised that you didn't know that about me the moment you Googled my name.

Oh, that pesky wikipedia!

"Because of their similarity to monkeys, apes such as chimpanzees and gibbons are sometimes incorrectly called monkeys. Also, a few monkey species have the word "ape" in their common name. Because they are not a single coherent group, monkeys do not have any particular traits that they all share and are not shared with the remaining group of simians, the apes."

Better get Aron-Ra hot ont hem to striaghten things out!

Good idea, especially since I have already listed numerous particular traits that all monkeys share, and can't find one not shared with "the remaining group of simians", the apes.

Rather than make this a personal thing. Can you see that there is disagreement in the scientific community on this issue compounded by how commonly monkey is used?

Interestingly, that has been one of my underlying points all along. I have not been the one insisting that my particular preferred definitions are THE correct ones. I KNOW that there is a great deal of disagreement on such things, as I have been the recipient of criticisms for my old group's proposals. But we did not take it personally. We did not dismiss the opinions of others as just plain wrong simply because they did not immediately adopt and agree to our proposals.

I never did that. And you did take this personally. You've been unnecessarily irritated and irritating since the onset of this discussion. Its too bad too. Because this could have been so much fun! I mean, here you are arguing that chimpanzees are not monkeys, but that they are humans, while I argue that chimpanzees aren't humans but that people are monkeys. When I told some of my co-workers what I was arguing about today, you should have seen the looks I got in response. This really could have been a hoot. But you took offense when none was intended, and got defensive in a really surly way right out of the gate. Now I finally find out why.

Allow me to refer you to Aron's first post in this thread:

"First off, SLP, not all monkeys are apes, but all apes are monkeys, and that includes humans."

Well, I guess I should have just bowed down and accepted this assertion without question! I didn't know who Aron was. I don't recall ever reading any of his posts before. Perhaps it is just that blithe dismissals without explanation are irritating to me.

I can still defend that claim more effectively than you can criticize it. I did explain my position in that very post. I guess you were already too irritated to see it.

 

[Aron-Ra]

This seems as though it is a critique of style over substance. My understanding is there are 3 possible ways to group canids. He explained 3 but the third group with the extinct dog like species he didn't number.

Extinct dog-like species would fall into his second grouping ("any of the wild canids who did not descend from Asiatic wolves"). My new theory, after reviewing Aron's response farther down, is that he was thinking 1) domestic dogs; 2) any member of the "dog family" (Canidae); or 3) any member of the dog family excluding wolves (and possibly foxes). These are two monophyletic meanings (1 and 2) and one polyphyletic meaning (3). Aron said he was thinking of two paraphyletic meanings and one monophyletic, so I could still be wrong.

Domestic dogs that aren’t related to wild dogs illustrates a paraphyletic group. Canidae excluding wolves is also a paraphyletic group. The monophyletic definition would have to consider wolves to be dogs. Similarly, the only possible monophyletic use of ‘monkeys’ would have to include basal anthropoids currently considered to be ancestral to both New World monkeys and Old World monkeys, and fully-simian descendants of prosimian “half-monkeys”, which for some strange reason aren't called monkeys just like wolves aren't called dogs.

Here is a clarification point. Monkey and dog are roughly equivalent generas of animals within the families of Primates and Canids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canidae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplorrhini

Well, "true dogs" (as the term is used by your first cite) would be a genus (Canis) in the Canid Family, but Aron's second definition of "dog" includes things in the dog family outside of the Canis genus (such as the list he gives in post 120 of African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), dholes (Cuon alpinus), raccoon dogs (Nictereutes procyonoides) and bush dogs (Speothos venaticus)). Actually, sorry, it's just occurred to me that you probably meant "taxa" (plural of taxon - any taxonomic grouping) instead of "genera" (plural of genus). Anyway, the difference between "dog", used in that sense, and "monkey", is that "dog" refers to a single monophyletic family,

That would be the family, Canidae, which includes all the above, as well as Hesperocyon coloradensis, Canus lupus, and many more.

whereas "monkey" refers to several different families that together form a group that is either paraphyletic (assuming apes evolved from something we'd call monkeys),

And assuming that apes aren't monkeys themselves. Otherwise, they would be monophyletic in this case.

or polyphyletic (assuming old-world monkeys and new-world monkeys evolved separately from something we might call lemuroids). Haplorrini is a monophyletic suborder, but it includes apes and tarsiers as well as monkeys. I could sum up this entire discussion by saying that Aron wants various colloquial terms like "monkey" and "fish" to be monophyletic, and they aren't.

They can be, and should always have been. For some weird reason which no one dares explain, scientists consider prosimians to be "half-monkeys," as in not fully monkeys 'yet’ (in the evolutionary sense). Yet their 'fully-simian' descendants have always been considered monkeys by the general public and common definition, while some scientists inexplicably refuse to call them by that name. Somehow, they can declare the ancestor of Old World monkeys to be very like specific species of New World monkeys, but even if it is a basal Catarrhine living after the divergence of Platyrrhines, it still seems verbotten to declare that to be a monkey itself –even though that is what it must certainly be, and that's what everyone but a primatologist would call it. The only way they would admit that the common ancestor of all monkeys was a monkey itself, is if it was all Greek to us.

Eosimias, the "Dawn monkey"
potential mother of all monkeys, including apes, including humans.

We know that "simian" means "monkey" in both Latin and Greek, and both apes and monkeys (even the basal ones) are collectively classified as 'simians', or 'Simiiforms' -which can be used in place of "anthropoid" whenever the mood suits. So why won't they admit in English that they're all monkeys? That they're all the same, both cladistically and colloquially?

"Anthropologists and primatologists have been among the last researchers to adopt phylogenetic methodology and taxonomy. As such, a number of important primate clade names remain paraphyletic."
--First Phylogenetic Nomenclature Meeting, Paris, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, July 6-9, 2004, Académie des Sciences de Paris.

If the word ‘monkey’ can continue to mean anything in the modern scheme of classification, it can only the colloquial equivilent of “Anthropoid.”

Actually that's a good question: How would you sum up the discussion so far Aron?

I’ll answer that after you submit your reply to post # 136.

If you restrict a discussion of dogs to one species of dog (canis lupus) when in fact there are more than one genera, that are not directly descended from the gray wolf, it seems myopic. Especially when you are asking what a dog is.

Agreed. But the context wasn't a discussion about dogs. It was about what constitutes a species, and whether a new species should still be considered "part of" the species from which it evolved. I said it shouldn't since species are defined as being genetically isolated from each other. To which Aron responded "But a new species of dog is still a dog". (See posts 89, 96 and 97). See the problem?

Not really, no. Even in the Linnaean perspective, the new species would still belong to the family, Canidae, and the genus, Canus as well. Would it not?

But if you'll notice the human genus homo is still nested within the haplorrhini suborder within the primate family. Just as the genus of canis is still within the canidae family.

Rght, and no one denies that monkeys and apes (including humans) are both haplorrhini. But you'll notice (at the bottom of your haplorrhini cite) that the family Hominidae (including humans) is not nested in the family Cercopithecidae (old-world monkeys). Aron has been doing a lot of arguing to the effect that they ought to be so nested, but the fact remains that they aren't.

Wrong. I’ve been arguing that both Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea are both together nested within Propliopithecoidea, a basal group of Catarrhines which are also commonly recognized as Old World monkeys in the literal sense. The fact remains that they are nested nested that way by a growing number of scientists adopting the cladistic interpretation, and I have already cited some sources holding that position.

"Aegyptopithecus zeuxis was a small primate, around 6 kg, with essentially apelike teeth, including broad flat incisors, low molars with somewhat bulbous cusps, and sexually dimorphic canines. These dental features are more similar to living apes than to Old World monkeys, but because the distinctive shearing molars of cercopithecoids evolved later, Aegyptopithecus probably represents the ancestral condition for all catarrhines."
--John Hawks, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin

The ape family is separate from all the monkey families, so humans aren't monkeys according to the Linnaean system. When someone like Aron tells people that humans are monkeys, that's the system people are going to assume he's using unless he specifies otherwise.

But even in that system, Cercopithecids and Hominoids are both believed to be descended from Propliocid monkeys like Aegyptopithecus, which “likely resembled modern-day New World monkeys”.

Aegyptopithecus

are often compared to Howler monkeys.

These in turn evolved from more basal monkeys like Apidium, “one of the very earliest known monkeys known,” and a potential ancestor of both Platyrrhini and Catarrhini, which includes more Old World monkeys than just Cercopithecids alone.

Apidium

The fact is that the ape family is a subset of a specific infraorder of monkeys that really are monkeys. And we are apparently inseparable from them. So humans are monkeys.

When I say "I don't care that you think your nomenclature is better", I'm not trying to say you have to impress me with your nomenclature, I'm saying I think it's off point. Aron keeps trying to make this an argument about whether cladistics is a better system, but this isn't about that. It's about whether it's reasonable or correct, given the system we have, to tell people that humans are monkeys or that humans are fish. You summed it up earlier yourself; it's about semantics.

Is it? Does that explain why traditional taxonomists insist on paraphyletic classification where those two words are used, but couldn’t care less about terms like ‘reptile’, which they’d gladly admit are inappropriate in classification for the same reason? Why do they insist on redefining what people have always known monkeys to be –to insist the common ancestor of both monkey groups somehow wasn’t a monkey itself? Why strategically switch Catarrhini = Old World monkeys for Catarrhini = Old World “primates”? Or Catarrhini = Old World monkeys -and apes -and humans? What’s the difference? Seriously!

Here's your semantics:

"Plesion Propliopithecoidea (for 35 Ma Catopithecus and 31 Ma Aegytopithecus) is treated as a catarrhine superfamily, while plesions Victoriapithecinae (for 22 Ma Victoriapithecus) and Proconsulinae (for 22 Ma Proconsul) are treated as cercopithecid and hominid subfamilies, respectively.
...This is an especially contentious issue for primate taxonomy for the very reason that our own species H. sapiens is a primate. The traditional view considers humans to be very different from all other forms of life. Thus, this view favors retaining the paraphyletic family Pongidae for apes (Simpson, 1945, 1963), in order that humans may remain as the only living primate in the family Hominidae. In contrast, the cladistic evidence from both DNA sequences (reviewed in Goodman, 1996) and morphology (Shoshani et al., 1996) demonstrate that the African apes (chimpanzees and gorillas) are more closely related to humans than to the Asiatic apes (orangutans and gibbons) and further that chimpanzees are the sister group of humans rather than of gorillas. Thus, the cladistic view favors merging the traditional Pongidae and Hominidae into a single monophyletic family in which the subordination of its subfamilies, tribes, subtribes, genera, and subgenera is meant to represent the series of clades that arose from progressively more recent common ancestors during evolutionary descent from the stem of the family to the present. In terms of this cladistic system, if rank equivalence is sought with other primate clades, the molecular evidence from DNA sequences favors a taxonomic classification that barely separates humans from chimpanzees, placing the two sister lineages either in the same subtribe (Goodman, 1996) or even in the same genus."
--Toward a Phylogenetic Classification of Primates Based on DNA Evidence Complemented by Fossil Evidence

Why not just admit that humans are nested within apes in exactly the same way that apes are nested within monkeys? I mean, you and I have figured out by now that humans didn’t descend from chimpanzees or gorillas, or anything else in the now-defunct Linnaean taxon of Pongidae. Yet we now accept that we did descend from apes, and in fact, we are apes right now -as ridiculously deceptive and misleading as some still think that sounds.

But eventually, those of us who’ve studied this have come to realize that although Australopithecus and Dryopithecus and the like weren’t ever pongids, they were still apes by every character description applicable to that clade. You’re one of those who eventually realized this, and accepted it despite the implication in the title of this thread. When you say today that "apes didn’t evolve from monkeys", you’re still limiting your interpretation of ‘monkey’ to members of the modern family of Cercopithecidae, and omitting all the fossil simiiforms. So its no different than when you used to say that "humans didn’t evolve from apes". But there is another, much older order of monkeys at the root of everything you know of as an ape or monkey now, and they were definitely monkeys also –according to every character description applicable to that clade.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Apes are grouped in Old World Monkeys.

Don’t you think if that were true that there would be some apes in the family Cercopithecidae where all the living old-world monkeys are? Instead we have great apes in Hominidae, old-world monkeys in Cercopithecidae, and never the twain shall meet. (At least as things now stand; admitting that there are those who disagree with the current system).

At least you admit there are those who disagree. The opposition is growing.

Artists' conceptions of Aegyptopithecus

Cercopithecoidea is either a sister clade to Propliopithecoidea, in which Hominoidea is nested, thus making apes a subset of Old Wold monkeys that are really recognized as such, or Cercopithecoidea is itself a subset of Propliopithecoidea which may soon gain acceptance as the clade of all Catarrhines, in which case, apes would still all be recognized as Old World monkeys.

 

[Lilandra]

Eosimias, the "Dawn monkey"
potential mother of all monkeys, including apes, including humans.

She looks like a monkey.

 

[Cirbryn]

Third, according to your second definition, domestic dogs aren’t dogs.

Well, that would actually be by your definition

Alright, to avoid further confusion, here’s the posting progression on this point (and may I just say that the threading system on CF sucks). Please point to where I claimed that domestic dogs aren’t dogs.

67) if you can’t show that descendants can’t evolve to become other than the Linnaean taxa of their ancestors, you have no argument. Would you admit that new species and new phyla have evolved from old ones? If so, then why not new families or orders?

89) Species? Yes. Phyla? No. …

But when these two groups [subspecies] diverge so much that they either cannot or will not interbreed anymore, (under natural circumstances) then they are declared to have become two different species.

Note that whenever this happens, both groups are still whatever they were before.

96) No, that's the point. They used to be the same species, but now they are different species. Ergo one or both is no longer the species it was before.

97) But a new species of dog is still a dog.

[Note: since we were talking about species I assumed you meant domestic dogs until you brought up members of the dog family in post 120.]

100) The point is that after evolving enough it wouldn’t still be a dog, unless you defined “dog” to include everything that evolves from dogs no matter what they look like.

102) Explain to me how a lineage of dogs could beget descendants who aren't dogs anymore.

107 See my response to Loudmouth above.
106 (to Loudmouth) From a Linnaean perspective they could be called dogs so long as they remained in the same species, which would depend on the amount of interbreeding they did. … From a colloquial perspective, … If a dog descendant took to the water and evolved to look like a seal, for instance, then it wouldn't be a dog anymore.

120 According to you, African wild dogs, dholes, raccoon dogs, and bush dogs were never dogs in the first place since they were never the same species as Canus lupus familiaris.

126 you started out talking about species. When I pointed out that a group that beomes a new species is no longer part of its old species, suddenly you switched to talking about colloquial terms.

133 Understand there are at least three applicable meanings for the word, "dog", (1) Canus lupus familiaris, (2) any of the wild canids who did not descend from Asiatic wolves.

and that was my point, because the various forms of wild dogs aren't descended from the same lineage as are domestic dogs. There are no wolves or jackals in the cape dog or bush dog family trees. What I was trying to show you is the only way domestic dogs and wild dogs can both be "dogs" is if the word 'dog' also includes wolves and jackals and fossil canids to the stem of that whole clade. I expect you to clarify your stance accordingly. The reason I do this is that paraphyletic terminology frequently (if not usually) presents paradoxes when you start looking at all the details. And that fact is important to my argument.

I hadn’t actually been considering African wild dogs and bush dogs to be dogs. I’d been thinking of domestic dogs up until you brought in those others in post 120. I don’t know if colloquially they’d be considered dogs or not. I doubt people would consider an ant lion to be a lion or a starfish to be a fish, so I don’t think they’d necessarily consider an African wild dog to be a dog. Supposing, however, that domestic dogs and African wild dogs were both considered dogs, but that wolves and jackals were not considered dogs; all that would mean would be that the term “dog” was polyphyletic (not paraphyletic).

In such a case, would I be justified in telling someone “actually, domestic dogs are dogs, but African wild dogs aren’t”? It would depend on the history of the colloquial term. If it was generally understood to refer to a particular taxon or taxa (Canis lupus familiaris in this case, or Drosophila in the case of “fruit fly&#8221, then that would be reasonable. Otherwise it wouldn’t. The reasonableness and correctness of telling people such things does not depend on whether the colloquial term is polyphyletic or paraphyletic. Nor does it depend on whether exact boundaries can be found for what constitutes a member of the colloquial group and what does not. If colloquial terms had to follow those rules they wouldn’t be colloquial.

“Monkey” is generally understood to refer to certain specific Linnaean families (such as Cercopithecidae) and not others (such as Hominidae). It’s therefore reasonable to tell someone a chimpanzee is not a monkey, and (for the same reason) incorrect to tell someone a human is a monkey.

Finally, all the discussion of “dogs” outside of Canis lupus merely supports the charge of goalpost shifting.

No it doesn't. I'm just reminding you of the colloquial nature of these names, expecting you to explain how you expect us to treat wild dogs in your chosen nomenclature. In other words, I want to make sure where your goal posts are.

I stated my position up-front, and I have stood by that stoically. I said I could convince you of the validity of my position, and prove that humans are monkeys. I expect to do that by your own honest admission. If by the end, you still think I'm trying to deceive you or trip you up with semantics, then I will have failed. So my goal posts can't move.

Yeah, see goalpost shifting doesn’t generally involve shifting your own goalposts. It involves shifting the other guy’s. My goal, from post 67, was to show that lineages can evolve out of (beyond the bounds of) at least one Linnaean taxon - that of species. I demonstrated that in post 96, but you came back in post 97 and moved my goal to one of showing that lineages can’t evolve out of a colloquial term like “dog”. So I did that in post 107 (assuming the colloquial term was roughly equivalent to a subspecies), and you came back and shifted my goal again in post 120 and 133 to one of showing that lineages can’t evolve out of a colloquial term that is equivalent to a Linnaean family.

This is way too much work for a simple point. The Linnaean system allows paraphyly. Either accept that statement or prove me wrong. If it allows paraphyly, then the possibility that apes may have evolved from what we’d call monkeys would not make apes monkeys. And if you want to try proving that Linnaean taxonomy does not allow paraphyly, please don’t try to do so by arguing why you think it shouldn’t. It either does or it does not.

And even that question is somewhat off topic, because if you were to demonstrate that paraphyly isn’t allowed, and also managed to show that the ancestor of apes would have been called a monkey, that still would leave the fact that all old-world monkeys are in family Cercopithecidae and all great apes are in family Hominidae. Despite your jaw-dropping claim to the contrary in post 120, no single creature can be in two Linnaean taxa of the same rank. We can’t be in both family Cercopithecidae and family Hominidae, nor can we be both in class Osterichthyes and class Mammalia. So all you would have managed to show after all that would be that Cercopithecidae ought to be reconfigured as a superfamily, or that Hominidae and Hylobatidae ought to be reconfigured as subfamilies. Until that was done you still wouldn’t be able to correctly claim that humans are monkeys, only that they ought to be considered such. I’ve got some disagreements with how things are grouped in the Linnaean system too, but you don’t see me pretending they aren’t really grouped the way they’re grouped.

So given all that, how exactly are you going to meet this stated goal of yours and prove that humans are monkeys?

I didn’t bring in the term “dog”, you did. Up to that point we were talking about species in general. If I claim a new species is different from the species from which it evolved, you don’t get to counter that claim by pointing out that a particular new species would still be in the same Family. That’s a common creationist trick, and it doesn’t work for them either.

Then you really don't understand what I'm saying at all. First of all, I'm not using any "tricks". Unlike any creationist who ever lived, I properly address every evidentiary challenge and answer every direct question systematically. In my mind, to do otherwise would be rude at the very least. But you've just sort of snipped and skipped over nearly all of my points and queries to make this accusation -which isn't going to stick. Snipping and ignoring every challenge you can neither concede nor consider is the staple tactic of creationists. So step out of your glass house before casting stones at me.

I don’t have the time to answer every point. I’m doing the best I can. I have a job and a wife and daughter and things I have to get done that are higher on my list than this. Also, I wouldn’t answer every point even if I did have the time, and I don’t think your doing so is such a good idea either. The main ideas, and the original thrust of the arguments tend to get buried and forgotten when both sides are nit-picking every little detail. My guess is that you were goalpost shifting because you couldn’t remember what my original goal was in the first place.

 

[Cirbryn]

Under the generally accepted nomenclature, it would be Canis something, not Canis lupus familiaris something.

I don't think so. Homo sapiens sapiens was accepted nomenclature long before the influence of cladistics. So was Homo sapiens neandertalensis, and we've known for a long time now that domestic dogs are descended from wolves. So whether you're cladist or not, that would still be popularly-accepted term.

So you’re saying you think that if dachshunds became they’re own species they’d be called Canis lupus familiaris dachshund under the Linnaean system?! That ain’t Linnaean. I thought you knew that and were just trying to slip in a nomenclature system you liked better. Canis lupus familiaris means genus Canis; species lupus; subspecies familiaris. There is no rank below subspecies for animals. (Botanists occasionally use “variety” as a rank below subspecies, but it’s not common). Species are distinguished by the amount of gene flow within them, so a mutant gene in one member of a species may eventually disseminate throughout the entire species. It would cross subspecies boundaries, but would be very unlikely to disseminate to a different species. Accordingly, if dachsunds became unable to interbreed with other members of species lupus, they would be assigned their own species; not just a separate subspecies or lower rank within species lupus. They’d be Canis dachshund, not Canis lupus familiaris dachshund. They would have evolved out of their taxon and established an entirely new taxon. Got it?

I don’t care that you think your nomenclature is better. What I care about is that you’re misleading people (particularly people without much biological background) by telling them things that are incorrect according to standard definitions, and by not bothering to explain that you aren’t using standard definitions.

But I have since the very beginning! I have repeatedly stated (1) that traditional Linnaean terminology is still the more popurlar, (2) that cladistic terminology is gaining acceptance, (3) that the phylocode of cladistic terminology is still being determined.

Don't you remember when I cited the following as proof of that?

"(1) Because of the many documented problems with instability and lack of comparability of ranks in the formal Linnaean system, we need to move to a rank-free phylogenetic classification system at all levels; (2) In such a system, not all hypothesized monophyletic groups need be named, but those that are named formally should be given unranked (but hierarchically nested) uninomials; (3) The least inclusive taxon, formally known as "species," should be treated in the same unranked manner. ...Biological classification should be a set of nested, named groups for internested clades at all levels. Not all clades need be named, but those that are should be named on the basis of evidence for monophyly."
--First Phylogenetic Nomenclature Meeting, Paris, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, July 6-9, 2004, Académie des Sciences de Paris.

Your quote, from post 118, was not directed to me, and doesn’t imply either directly or in context that Linnaean terminology is still the standard. I am glad to hear it from you here though. But when I say I care that you’re misleading people, I mean when you say things like “humans are monkeys” and imply this is a teaching of evolution. If, every time you said something like that, you were to go on and explain that you mean “monkey clade” rather than “monkey”, or that you mean “monkey” according to a non-standard classification, then I’d have much less of a problem with it.

You have no idea who you're playing with, and could not have misjudged me more if you tried. Or did you actually try? Because these harsh judgements seem ...labored?

Yeah, yeah. Big bounty-hunter looking guys standing in pentagrams with glowing red eyes and smoke coming out of their mouths always say things like “You have no idea who you’re playing with.” I’m not saying you’re trying to undermine acceptance of evolution. I’m saying you are doing so. When someone like Hovind says something to make evolution look ridiculous people can easily and correctly assume that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When you, an evolution advocate from way back, do the same thing it carries much more weight. Please think about it.

Now back to the point. So far, I have shown substantial backing for the idea that simiiforms, simians, and anthropoids are all synonemous with 'monkeys'. Further, I have shown that basal anthropoids prior to the divergence of Cercopiths, prior to the emergence of Hominoids, and even prior to the divergence of Platyrrhines -are all considered monkeys both in the public eye and according to the descriptions of scientists. If you're still not adequately convinced of this, let me know. I have also challenged you repeatedly to explain to me how "prohylobates", pre-hominoid monkeys such a Aegyptopithecus -would cease to be monkeys as they adopt more of the traits indicative of apes? And I have asked you several times to explain how you would identify a hypothetical maybe monkey if you discovered some seeminly primate species as-yet-unknown?

I thought SLP dealt just fine with your “substantial backing”. Are you claiming that the generally accepted standard is that all anthropoids are monkeys? Because if so it should be pretty difficult for anyone to find a source that says otherwise, right? Regarding the claim that ape ancestors would have been called monkeys, I don’t know enough at this point to have much of an opinion either way. For what it’s worth, this site claims that prohylobates was a basal cercopithecid that diverged from its more apelike ancestors. I also think that apes aren’t monkeys now regardless of what their ancestors may have been. I likewise think monkeys aren’t tarsiers, and tarsiers aren’t lemurs, and lemurs aren’t tree shrews. And coyotes aren’t wolves. And fungi aren’t animals. As for how monkeys could evolve into apes (if that’s what happened), I expect they simply picked up ape characteristics (no tail, chests that are wider side to side, 5 cusps on their molars, etc) over the course of evolution. Some monkeys have picked up some, but not all, of these characteristics as well. I’d identify a newly discovered monkey the same way they did so here, by identifying where it belonged on the family tree according to morphological characteristics (and genetics if I could get that data). If it was clearly unlike any known monkey, I might have a difficult time determining whether it was a monkey at all. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[SLP]

As I have already explained above, you are mistaken. This site lists Propliopithecidae below both Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea, and within neither of them.

OK. last post. Honest.


The physical arrangement of the branches of the phylogenetic trees at that site are irrelevant, and I should think - hope - that a systematist would realize at least that.

The fact of the matter is, and I am in no way mistaken, is that that page lists Propliopithecidae as a FAMILY within the SUPERFAMILY Cerecopithecoidea, as indicated by the title of the page and the nomenclature and the position of the family branch below the superfamily branch. It is NOT titled 'infraorder Catarrhini and several clades that are equivalent or even inversely subordinant despite their names'.

That is how those silly old traditionalists use them big fancy words - - the suffix -oidea refers to a Superfamily, super- meaning "above", and the suffix -idae refers to a FAMILY, which is below the rank of Superfamily. Even if they are employing an unorthodox branching system (which they are, probably due to formatting issues), it is obvious from the names alone that they do not consider Propliopithecids to represent the Superfamily within which one finds Catarrhines. Clearly to the contrary, from the nomenclature they use, it is - and very well should be - obvious that they consider the FAMILY Propliopithecidae to be within the superfamily cercopithecoidea (and apes and humans in the superfamily Hominoidea, which is at great odds with your preferred arrangement), or at most, a singular 'family' unto themselves not nested within either the cercopithecoidea or hominoidea (which would be very odd).

Indeed, a subheading for the page is:

Subordinated taxa


Sub- meaning below, that is, the listed taxa are below (within) the infraorder Catarrhini.

Simply because the word Propliopithecidae is below the others and the branches are all graphically 'equivalent' in no way - or should not anyway - indicates a particular phylogenetic relationship. If you bother to look around that site, ALL of the trees they provide are done the same (confusing) way.

Look here, for instance, where they list chimps as humans and indicate that the term Hominidae is equivalent to Pongidae. The tree they present there is also in an unconvential, each branch is equivalent fashion. This is even more clear here, where they list several genera and tribes and have each one branching off of a single vertical branch.

I am staggered that you will argue even so obvious a point. Another reason why I am done here. You simply will not yield a single point, even when obviously, blatantly wrong.


So call humans monkeys all you want. Keep using contradictory and otherwise ambivalent support. Nothing anyone can do or explain or point out is going to change your mind.

 

[SLP]

She looks like a monkey.

Therefore, all extant primates are monkeys?

Or is Eosimias a sarcopterygian fish?

 

[SLP]

You still have yet to properly address the following questions even after I specifically asked you to several times. ...You didn't. ...
This is an important point, and you ignored it. ...
This was another critical point, and you tried to dismiss it by implying that my links contradicted my other points. Even if they did, they didn't contradict this one, but you ignored that too....
But answer came there none.

Darn it all, I really should spend every waking second responding to each and every supposed point made by some dude on an internet discussion board. If I don, by golly, it must be because I all wrong and know it, not that I have other things more worthy of pursuit...

OK, I took that to be a student's paper. And I suppose the fact that it was a linguist invalidates the point, is that it?

No, it shows that you do not pay attention to detail and jump to conclusions.

Yes, you are. You describe Platyrrhines as "an outgroup of Catarrhines", and your illustrated phylogeny seems to back that traditional interpretation.

Ummm.... You've never done a phylogenetic analysis, have you?
You see, you have to have an outgroup in order to have something to 'measure' your ingroup against - a yardstick of sorts. In actual laboratory science, one tends not to include in an analysis that for which one possesses no data. I had sequence data for those included in the study and no others, hence, I did not use any non-primates as outgroups in the first part. For the gamma sequence, I did have data from a 'prosimian', galago, and rabbit, and so used them, and the ensuing branching arrangement was presented (the apparent 'grouping' of galago and rabbit is an artifact). The 'illustrated phylogeny', by which I assume you mean the phylogenetic tree, is what the actual data indicate. It is the branching order produced using the analytical techniques described. 'Tradition' has nothing to do with what the data indicate. There are multiple, competing, sometimes contradictory, often times confusings methods for 'naming' things. While the naming may be different, the underlying "assumption" is the same - that extant taxa shared, at some point, a common ancestry with just about every other extant taxon. IN the end, again, it is all just semantics, which is another reason I am done here.

oh - and since I did not create a 5-page, point by point examination and response of the post I am replying to, it surely means that I simply cannot respond to your unimpeachable points and am conceding defeat...

 

[Lilandra]

Therefore, all extant primates are monkeys?

Or is Eosimias a sarcopterygian fish?

Primates are modified sarcopterygian fish. Dogs are also but dogs aren't primates.

Is that a true statement? Doesn't it describe the system of evolutionary ancestry better?

I suppose a relevant question would be when it is a species becomes so derived that it is something completely different from its ancestry.

 

[SLP]

Primates are modified sarcopterygian fish. Dogs are also but dogs aren't primates.

Is that a true statement? Doesn't it describe the system of evolutionary ancestry better?

Better than what?

Primates are 'modified' s.fish, but I don't think it correct to call us just plain 's.fish'.

But keep one thing in mind - we call sarcopterygian fish sarcopterygian fish and not just "fish" because they are a particular type of fish. Calling humans "monkeys" is essentially the same as calling sarco. fish "fish." See what I mean? 'Monkey' refers to a specific kind of Primate. A very diverse kind, sure. Just like 'fish' is a rather vague term to use when talking about a particular type of fish. I think it is recognized that what we commonly call 'monkeys' and humans and other apes chare an ancestry.

Look at it this way - I assume you have children? If your child ran to you crying and said 'a bug bit me'. Would you automatically know what had bitten the child? Or would you need more information? Did it have wings? How big was it? What color was it? Was it a bee? A hornet? A mosquito? An ant? "Bug" doesn't tell you the answers.

Say someone finds a bone, and they say it is a 'monkey' bone. What does that tell you? Is it a tamarin bone? A guenon bone? If so, which one? DeBrazza's monkey? A chimp? A human? A gorilla?

'Monkey' tells us nothing. When I read an article, I want to know specifics. Details. If I pick up an article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and the author keeps talking about a 'monkey', and that is all, I would be a bit upset. First, that an article like that had made it past review, and then that it would be nearly impossible to know what the author was talking about.

Arguing about whther or not humans ARE monkeys is absurd, in that sense. Humans and monkeys shared an ancestry, that much is true. But saying that humans ARE monkeys is an unnecessary confusion factor. We might as well say all the things we call Primates are really humans, just with different features, since naming things is arbitrary. If the arbitrary method is universally applied, it is easier to understand and use, of course. Like our proposed age=rank system. It was essentuially arbitrary, but it can easily be applied universally and consistently.

I suppose a relevant question would be when it is a species becomes so derived that it is something completely different from its ancestry.

It would depend, I suppose, what you mean by "completely different". I suspect that "completely different" means different things to different people.

Is having a tail or not having a tail different enough? Quadrupedal v. bipedal? metatherian v. eutherian? Clawed v. nailed?

It is not as cut and dried as some try to make it out.

 

[Lilandra]

It's been brought up several times by you and SLP.

It is like looking at a book with a dark cover and thinking it is the Necronomicon or something w/o reading it.

He doesn't look like a guy that is worried about being picked on but still.

What do you guys look like? No one has mentioned it because it isn't relevant.

Yeah, yeah. Big bounty-hunter looking guys standing in pentagrams with glowing red eyes and smoke coming out of their mouths always say things like “You have no idea who you’re playing with.” I’m not saying you’re trying to undermine acceptance of evolution.

 

[Lilandra]

Better than what?

Better than strict binomial nomenclature. Is that the correct term? Evolutionary relationships are more descriptive and organic. They seem better suited to Biology.

Primates are 'modified' s.fish, but I don't think it correct to call us just plain 's.fish'.

I don't think cladistics advocates that.

But keep one thing in mind - we call sarcopterygian fish sarcopterygian fish and not just "fish" because they are a particular type of fish. Calling humans "monkeys" is essentially the same as calling sarco. fish "fish." See what I mean? 'Monkey' refers to a specific kind of Primate. A very diverse kind, sure. Just like 'fish' is a rather vague term to use when talking about a particular type of fish. I think it is recognized that what we commonly call 'monkeys' and humans and other apes chare an ancestry.

Specificity has its uses but so does generalization depending on the point a biologist is making.

Look at it this way - I assume you have children? If your child ran to you crying and said 'a bug bit me'. Would you automatically know what had bitten the child? Or would you need more information? Did it have wings? How big was it? What color was it? Was it a bee? A hornet? A mosquito? An ant? "Bug" doesn't tell you the answers.

In this situation specificity is necessary. But it is also correct to generalize in some situations. Like if you are teaching children the difference between a bug and an insect. Is it necessary to name every arachnid wolf spider, tarantula, black widow, brown recluse...etc. and then name every insect beetle, praying mantis, fly,etc.?

Say someone finds a bone, and they say it is a 'monkey' bone. What does that tell you? Is it a tamarin bone? A guenon bone? If so, which one? DeBrazza's monkey? A chimp? A human? A gorilla?

Monkey does get you in the ballpark. The term does exclude numerous other taxa. You can always narrow your focus. There is no boundary where you are forced to stop.

Arguing about whther or not humans ARE monkeys is absurd, in that sense. Humans and monkeys shared an ancestry, that much is true. But saying that humans ARE monkeys is an unnecessary confusion factor. We might as well say all the things we call Primates are really humans, just with different features, since naming things is arbitrary.

I agree calling all primates humans would be arbitrary since not all monkeys are derived from humans.

In reverse all humans are derived from monkeys.

If the arbitrary method is universally applied, it is easier to understand and use, of course.

No one advocates this.

Is having a tail or not having a tail different enough? Quadrupedal v. bipedal? metatherian v. eutherian? Clawed v. nailed?

It is not as cut and dried as some try to make it out.

I am not making out that it is cut and dried. Quite the opposite evolutionary relationships are organic and messy. Any effort to pigeon hole an organism neglects this aspect of biology IMO.

I am sorry if we are wasting your time. I find that conversing with people of different POVs gives me a fresh insight into a subject. Particularly when I don't agree with them. I would never have come to the conclusion of common ancestry if I didn't discuss the topic with others.

 

[Cirbryn]

It's been brought up several times by you and SLP.

It is like looking at a book with a dark cover and thinking it is the Necronomicon or something w/o reading it.

He doesn't look like a guy that is worried about being picked on but still.

What do you guys look like? No one has mentioned it because it isn't relevant.

It's just sort of a running joke I started in post 55: "Wow, that “ollie ollie” incantation works better than I thought. Summoned up this big scary bounty-hunter looking guy issuing challenges and deriding the foolish mortals still clinging to their outmoded Linnaean system. Hope I drew that pentagram right." Didn’t actually mean anything serious by it, and Aron actually seemed to appreciate the humor.

 

[Edx]

Hey Aron, would you accept saying that technically and practically we are fish and monkeys, but by the commen man's definitions, we arent?

Ed

 

[Aron-Ra]

Hey Aron, would you accept saying that technically and practically we are fish and monkeys, but by the commen man's definitions, we arent?

Yes. With common definitions, all goal posts may remain as mobile as need be.

Alright, to avoid further confusion, here’s the posting progression on this point (and may I just say that the threading system on CF sucks). Please point to where I claimed that domestic dogs aren’t dogs.

Its how I'm trying to perceive your logic. There are several species of wild dogs which don't have wolves as ancestors. Wild dogs are also older than domestic dogs. Hence, (I would think) they hold more claim to the name than domestic dogs. But for some reason, colloquial tradition has decided that jackals and wolves are not dogs. So if domestic dogs descend from wolves, they shouldn't be dogs either. But then, I'm forgetting that in your terminology, everything can be polyphyletic and paraphyletic, and nothing has to adhere to any precise definition.

I hadn’t actually been considering African wild dogs and bush dogs to be dogs. I’d been thinking of domestic dogs up until you brought in those others in post 120. I don’t know if colloquially they’d be considered dogs or not. I doubt people would consider an ant lion to be a lion or a starfish to be a fish, so I don’t think they’d necessarily consider an African wild dog to be a dog. Supposing, however, that domestic dogs and African wild dogs were both considered dogs, but that wolves and jackals were not considered dogs; all that would mean would be that the term “dog” was polyphyletic (not paraphyletic).

In such a case, would I be justified in telling someone “actually, domestic dogs are dogs, but African wild dogs aren’t”?

Since, as Edx brought up, colloquial terms have variable definitions enabling us to switch definitions and double-talk ourselves out of any goal-post placement, then yes; you could say that African wild dogs are and aren't dogs, and if a new species of them arises, perhaps with a different color pattern, or with different proportions, then you could arbitrarily decide that it was not a dog anymore -if you wanted to, and you could always change your mind and go back again because your terminology allows that. Mine doesn't. Canidae divides diverges into two clades, which may be colloquially recognized as foxes on one subset, and dogs in the other. Wolves, domestic dogs, and wild dogs of every kind that ever lived from the stem of that clade on -are all dogs, and always will be -even if they evolve into seals.

“Monkey” is generally understood to refer to certain specific Linnaean families (such as Cercopithecidae) and not others (such as Hominidae). It’s therefore reasonable to tell someone a chimpanzee is not a monkey, and (for the same reason) incorrect to tell someone a human is a monkey.

Cladistic nomenclature requires a lot of Linnaean terms to be redefined monophyletically, which in some cases actually means reverting back to the original, and still commonly understood traditional meanings. In which case, "monkey" can still be understood to be "any member of Anthropoidea", and it can still include the apes, just as most people think it does. But just as you consider us apes, (where most people don't) cladists also consider humans to be apes and monkeys in the same way.

Yeah, see goalpost shifting doesn’t generally involve shifting your own goalposts. It involves shifting the other guy’s.

Aah, I see. That would explain why you've told everyone else here that I am arguing for cladistic classification over the traditional 18th century concept, (which I am) but you've tried to corner me into arguing strictly within the Linnaean construct as you do below.

My goal, from post 67, was to show that lineages can evolve out of (beyond the bounds of) at least one Linnaean taxon - that of species.

Always go with your instincts. When you saw you say 'Linnaean', I knew I should have clarified that I am not talking about the Linnaean system. But I saw in your explanations to others in this thread that you evidently knew that already, so I let it go.

I demonstrated that in post 96, but you came back in post 97 and moved my goal to one of showing that lineages can’t evolve out of a colloquial term like “dog”. So I did that in post 107 (assuming the colloquial term was roughly equivalent to a subspecies), and you came back and shifted my goal again in post 120 and 133 to one of showing that lineages can’t evolve out of a colloquial term that is equivalent to a Linnaean family.

This is way too much work for a simple point. The Linnaean system allows paraphyly. Either accept that statement or prove me wrong. If it allows paraphyly, then the possibility that apes may have evolved from what we’d call monkeys would not make apes monkeys. And if you want to try proving that Linnaean taxonomy does not allow paraphyly, please don’t try to do so by arguing why you think it shouldn’t. It either does or it does not.

You're right. The out-dated Linnaean system does allow paraphyly. That's why that system is being replaced.

And even that question is somewhat off topic, because if you were to demonstrate that paraphyly isn’t allowed, and also managed to show that the ancestor of apes would have been called a monkey, that still would leave the fact that all old-world monkeys are in family Cercopithecidae and all great apes are in family Hominidae. Despite your jaw-dropping claim to the contrary in post 120, no single creature can be in two Linnaean taxa of the same rank. We can’t be in both family Cercopithecidae and family Hominidae, nor can we be both in class Osterichthyes and class Mammalia.

Yes we can be, the same way we are humans and apes. You yourself said we were, did you not? Cladistically, we are, certainly, but if you adhere to colloquial definitions, we're excluded from that group.

a. Any of various large, tailless Old World primates of the family Pongidae, including the chimpanzee, gorilla, gibbon, and orangutan.
b. A monkey.
c. A mimic or imitator.
d. Informal. A clumsy or boorish person.
--Dictionary.com

So if you like colloquial definitions, then I've already made my case, haven't I? And since Pongidae is a remnant of Linnaean taxonomy, then why do you believe humans are apes? By your system, we cant be. The colloquial definition doesn't include us, the Linnaean taxon doesn't include us, and you said its impossible to be in two different classes at the same time. How do you explain this?

Since you hold this position, and since you like colloquial defintions, you'll love this: Several dictionaries define "animal" as exclusively terrestrial, mammals only, "other than a human being." Get that? We can't be animals! Its impossible to be in two different taxa, right? Do you believe that humans are animals?

So all you would have managed to show after all that would be that Cercopithecidae ought to be reconfigured as a superfamily, or that Hominidae and Hylobatidae ought to be reconfigured as subfamilies. Until that was done you still wouldn’t be able to correctly claim that humans are monkeys, only that they ought to be considered such.

I guess you haven't yet read either of my most recent posts. But if you refer to SLP's preferred authority reference, John G. Fleagle, you'll see that in his taxonomy of extinct primates, Propliopithecoidea is a third option within Catarrhini. These are also 'Old World monkeys' in the literal sense, and since apes are perceived as nested within that group, then we can say that apes are monkeys.

I’ve got some disagreements with how things are grouped in the Linnaean system too, but you don’t see me pretending they aren’t really grouped the way they’re grouped. So given all that, how exactly are you going to meet this stated goal of yours and prove that humans are monkeys?

I was never talking about the Linnaean system in the first place. I was always only arguing from a cladistic perspective.

My guess is that you were goalpost shifting because you couldn’t remember what my original goal was in the first place.

You guess very very poorly. I don't think I ever knew your goal. It didn't matter. I mean to influence you to see the classification of life from a cladist perspective, and to realize (as I did) that monophyly is the only way to go, that all your 'ranks' should be decommissioned, and that just as humans are apes, (Hominoids) we are also monkeys, (anthropoids) and bony vertebrates, (Osterichthyes) and animals (Metazoa) all at the same time.

 

[Aron-Ra]

I thought SLP dealt just fine with your “substantial backing”.

You won't for long.

Are you claiming that the generally accepted standard is that all anthropoids are monkeys?

If, by generally-accepted, you mean what most English-speaking people think a monkey is? Yes, with the singular exception that they wish to exclude humans alone.

Because if so it should be pretty difficult for anyone to find a source that says otherwise, right?

Oh no, you can find plenty of them, because, (as I said) anthropologists and primatologists generally still don't accept cladistic taxonomy unless it adheres strictly to scientific terminology, and mentions none of the colloquial parallels to those terms.

Regarding the claim that ape ancestors would have been called monkeys, I don’t know enough at this point to have much of an opinion either way. For what it’s worth, this site claims that prohylobates was a basal cercopithecid that diverged from its more apelike ancestors.

This goes back to my analogy about language. Biological evolution has some interesting analogies to linguistic evolution. Imagine a society who speaks Latin. One group of them moves away, and over time, their language evolves into Spanish. The remaining group eventually evolves thier language into French, another Latin-based language. Then, another group runs off the other way and evolves thier language into Spanish. So that two different societies evolved the Spanish language twice. Is that really possible in your world?

Is it really possible for New World Monkeys and Old World monkeys to have shared a common ancestor that wasn't a monkey itself?

I also think that apes aren’t monkeys now regardless of what their ancestors may have been.

Well then, I gotta know what you think a monkey is?

I likewise think monkeys aren’t tarsiers, and tarsiers aren’t lemurs, and lemurs aren’t tree shrews.

True.

And coyotes aren’t wolves.

Actually, they are, both cladistically and traditionally. They're also known as "prairie wolves".

And fungi aren’t animals.

I don't believe anyone ever said they were.

As for how monkeys could evolve into apes (if that’s what happened), I expect they simply picked up ape characteristics (no tail, chests that are wider side to side, 5 cusps on their molars, etc) over the course of evolution. Some monkeys have picked up some, but not all, of these characteristics as well. I’d identify a newly discovered monkey the same way they did so here, by identifying where it belonged on the family tree according to morphological characteristics (and genetics if I could get that data). If it was clearly unlike any known monkey, I might have a difficult time determining whether it was a monkey at all. Nothing wrong with that.

No there isn't. But the point you missed was this: In your tally of its characteristics, you would have to list all the traits it possessed, and even estimate its evolutionary lineage based on them. Before you could determine whether it was a monkey or not, you would have to show a complete list of characters common to all monkeys without exception.

Be as detailed as you like. Does it have eukaryote cells with a single posterior flagellum? Is it bilaterally-symmetrical, with three germ layers, and framed on a skeleton of calcified bones rather than cartilage? -And so on. Does it have a spine? A skull? A jaw? Does it have five digits on each of its four limbs? If not, did its evolutionary ancestors ever have five digits on four limbs? Because as I said, whales, snakes, amphibaneans, and legless lizards are all still anthracosaurian (five-fingered) tetrapods (four limbed) because their current form is a modification of that design.

Then you'd have to establish whether it was a mammal. What kind of mammal? Placental, Eutheria. What kind of eutherian? Judging by its generalized skeletal features, its euachontoglire, and specifically archontid since it also also has a collar bone. What kind of archontid? You'd see its definitely primate since it has opposable thumbs, and fully enclosed orbits in the skull, etc. Now what kind of primate? The dry nose makes it a haplorhine primate. But what kind of Haplorhine primate? Well, you see it has two pectoral mammae, the male's genetalia is naked and pendulous, not thethered to their abdomens anymore, as they are on most other eutherians. Its lips are quite mobile and expressive, as they're no longer tethered to the underlying gum. It has completely forward-facing binocular eyes and trichromatic vision, and it has a well-developed caecum, but it has lost the ability to synthesize either vitamin D3 or vitamin C, and needs to supplement both of these in their diet or they'll succumb to a condition of malnutrition commonly known as scurvy. There are a few dozen other things you could list, but eventually you could positively identify it as an anthropoid, a monkey.

Now you have to know what kind of monkey, right? Wrong. Before you determine whether that is an Old World monkey or a New World monkey, you would have to admit that you have already identified it as a monkey. You don't need to know what kind of monkey it is to know that. It could be a living fossil for all you know. Perhaps its part of some tribe of Aegyptopithecines, or a long lost "dawn monkey", something who's descendants don't belong to either Platyrrhini or Catarrhini. But regardless which it is, or if it is nether, you would still already know that it is a monkey.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Better than what?

Primates are 'modified' s.fish, but I don't think it correct to call us just plain 's.fish'.

Never did I say "just plain fish".

If your child ran to you crying and said 'a bug bit me'. Would you automatically know what had bitten the child?

Probably not. Because "bug" is limited to only one line of biting insects. Some people think any insect can be a bug, but no arthropods other than insects can be. Kids have a tendancy to describe all kinds of things as "bugs", even spiders and worms.

Say someone finds a bone, and they say it is a 'monkey' bone. What does that tell you?

That they found a bone belonging to an anthropoid.

Is it a tamarin bone? A guenon bone? If so, which one? DeBrazza's monkey? A chimp? A human? A gorilla?

It could be anything but human. Admittedly the only way I could know that it is a non-human anthropoid is because people tend to isolate themselves from everything else; constantly comparing humans to apes, or pitting man against beast.

'Monkey' tells us nothing. When I read an article, I want to know specifics. Details. If I pick up an article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and the author keeps talking about a 'monkey', and that is all, I would be a bit upset. First, that an article like that had made it past review, and then that it would be nearly impossible to know what the author was talking about.

What if the article said "anthropoid" instead? Would it make any difference at all? Would you know then whether they were talking about a tamarin? A guenon? A DeBrazza's monkey? A chimp? A human? A gorilla?

Arguing about whther or not humans ARE monkeys is absurd, in that sense. Humans and monkeys shared an ancestry, that much is true. But saying that humans ARE monkeys is an unnecessary confusion factor.

But for some reason, its OK to say that humans are apes? Or even to say that chimpanzees are human?

We might as well say all the things we call Primates are really humans, just with different features, since naming things is arbitrary.

Isn't that what you've already done when you decided to call chimpanzees human? How is that not unnecessarily confusing?

It doesn't matter what you name something, if you're going to name it. But if that something already has a name, why should you want to re-name it? Why did you tell me before that New World monkeys weren't really monkeys, and were only called that by convenient tradition? Wouldn't the tradition imply that they already had a name? And that you're trying to change it?

 

[Lilandra]

Probably not. Because "bug" is limited to only one line of biting insects. Some people think any insect can be a bug, but no arthropods other than insects can be. Kids have a tendancy to describe all kinds of things as "bugs", even spiders and worms.

wait a sec, I thought spiders and insects were bugs in the colloquial sense. But spiders are not insects because insects are six legged bugs.

Also, I don't know the specifics but aren't spiders more closely related to crabs than six legged insects?

I'll go check it out.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Yeah, yeah. Big bounty-hunter looking guys standing in pentagrams with glowing red eyes and smoke coming out of their mouths always say things like “You have no idea who you’re playing with.” I’m not saying you’re trying to undermine acceptance of evolution. I’m saying you are doing so. When someone like Hovind says something to make evolution look ridiculous people can easily and correctly assume that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When you, an evolution advocate from way back, do the same thing it carries much more weight. Please think about it.

I'm not doing anything remotely like that. Imagine when Hovind talks about the differences between humans and apes? How can there be "missing links" between humans and apes if humans are apes? How can there be insurmountable macroevolutionary leaps between humans and animals if humans are animals? I've met many creationists in person who say to me, "men didn't come from monkeys". When I reply that men are monkeys, and go on to explain that, you can see the confusion and horror in their eyes as all their illusions crumble. I've asked many creationists online and in person the same question again and again and again. And none of them will answer it in any defensible way. "What is a monkey?" Because you really can't explain everything descriptive of all monkeys collectively without describing humans too. And I find that fact adds a helluva lot of strength to evolutionary theory.

When you're talking about talking animals, and giant invisible ghosts casting spells with incantations, then you have to be very careful not to use those words because the lack of substance behind them requires very careful wording to seduce those who don't give it enough thought. But I don't need to worry about that. I'll phrase it as silly as I want to and watch their growing stress when the antievolutionists begin to realize they still can't counter it no matter how harmless it sounded at first.

And as I said, its not arbitrary in the least. I'm only playing the hand I was dealt. Creationists themselves have determined what they think a monkey is, and they think that includes every anthropoid including or excluding apes. Cladistically, it appears they're right, except that we're in that bin too. So far from the ridicule they hoped for, they're now faced with the impossible challenge of proving they're not still monkeys right now.