Is a dead tree a tree?

[Birdjaguar]

But if enough trunk is still there, most people would call it a tree.

Tall stumps of trees that are left standing are also called "widow makers". But standing dead treees also bear that name.

What Is a Widowmaker in Forestry?

Widowmaker is a term used by loggers and woods workers to describe a hazardous condition involving trees and snags.

www.thoughtco.com

 

[Valka D'Ur]

@Gori the Grey Tree law can also be quite interesting in that if you remove a tree from someone's property, it could cost you quite a bit, and in some states that cost could double or triple, based on what I've read in the past at least. It can get quite expensive, and IIRC that is because it's very expensive to replant a fully grown tree, and is in some cases impossible.. or maybe in most cases? I can't remember. This seems to imply to me though that a university wouldn't get in the business of selling fully grown trees for people to replant, because the customer base would be quite small, or it might just not be feasible in the first place. I could be wrong of course, but I've read multiple tree law scenarios in the past, as they are interesting.. and the costs seem rather astronomical, way higher than you'd expect. Most people seem to buy smaller trees than then grow into something larger over time. But I'm ofc not a tree expert.



I get it! (now). It's just that the line between "actual tree" and "non-tree" seems to be the point of contention, so I tried to arrive at where exactly that line is drawn, from a purely botanical pov at least. The line seems to be "A tree is a tree until you remove enough of the trunk such that it can no longer be described as elongated". So basically, if you chop enough of it off such that it gets fairly close to being a tree stump, at which point it is no longer a tree under the botanical definition. A legal definition is probably different as well, and there might be other contexts where it differs as well. (Just trying to be comprehensive)

In regular language the botanical definition seems to fit fairly closely to what most people would consider a tree when casually discussing trees. If you chop enough of the tree off, it becomes a tree stump. But if enough trunk is still there, most people would call it a tree.

With the university scenario, I was thinking about the possibility of these hypothetical tree-traders wanting to do some sort of breeding or transplanting experiment. Ordinarily they'd use seeds or shoots, but you never know. There are probably some circumstances when they'd transplant a fully-grown tree, such as if they're going to put in a new road or trail or building and the tree is in the way. It would make sense to transplant the whole tree somewhere else in that case.

I think another point to consider whether a tree is a tree or not is if its roots are still in the ground or in a pot or wherever else it might be growing. Once you chop it down and strip off the branches, it's a log or a twig.

My dad was pruning the honeysuckle tree one day and accidentally discovered that some cats get high on it (not all cats react to catnip). He found my Gussy lying flat on his back in a box of honeysuckle twigs, all four paws waving vaguely in the air, with a dopey grin on his furry little face. That cat was absolutely stoned.

You do seem to be cursed to run against the most obnoxious people imaginable

She finally shut up about it, and later on I found that she'd dumped a HUGE number of OPs and shared memes and posts in both the groups we're part of (anyone doing that here or in most other FB groups would get whatever consequences are meted out for spam). I guess she thinks I trespassed on her FB turf by daring to have a different opinion, so now she's marking her "territory" in both groups. The bizarre thing is that politically we're mostly on the same side, and she's neither an admin nor a moderator of either group (and whoever does mod that particular group either hasn't noticed that ridiculous argument or chose to ignore it).

It was a bit weird, how she went from "you disagreed with me so that means you want women to stay in the kitchen and never accomplish anything worthwhile" (something I've never expressed anywhere in my life) to this:

Spoiler :

"OMFG, You remind me of an abusive man who needs to beat up someone just for the fun of it... why don't you come out from behind your cat picture and let us see the real you!"

And then a few minutes later she followed up with "Is that you Scott?"

I am not, and never have been, either a man or someone named Scott. Whoever this Scott person is, I'm inclined to feel a bit sorry for him, as long as he's not a stalker.

Tall stumps of trees that are left standing are also called "widow makers". But standing dead treees also bear that name.

What Is a Widowmaker in Forestry?

Widowmaker is a term used by loggers and woods workers to describe a hazardous condition involving trees and snags.

www.thoughtco.com

There will be lots of those around the province this summer.

And in the winter, skiers need to be careful of tree wells. Falling into one of those can get you dead of suffocation in not much time at all.

 

[Kyriakos]

Assuming the dead tree is the vector sum of those of tree and dead, then no. But thus it can become a tree again, if you add to it the vector "not dead" ^^

 

[EnglishEdward]

A dead tree remains a tree until it is chopped up and becomes timber, or is otherwise destroyed.

In much the same way a dead cow remains a cow until it is chopped up and beomes beef, or is otherwise destroyed.

 

[Angst]

skipped most of the thread for now, but this was interesting

Is a dead person a person?

so there's basically four ways to go about it here

one is the scientific. there's the biological way to define it, where a dead tree is definitely a tree. is a dead person a person? no. but a dead person is a body, which a person innately is. there's no real biological structure for what constitutes personhood at this point; there's questions of sapience and sentience, but it doesn't generally tend towards personhood

the other way is to look into basically the number of structural ways we define a tree in philosophy, as a phenomenon, as an object, as a stratification, as an idea, whatever, soandsoforth. it's then contextual to the specific way of thinking whether the two states (dead or alive) are the same (and here, too, personhood is largely ill-defined)

then there's a legal category which is similarly arbitrary but has specific contextual use (personhood is defined, trees are... not well defined i believe, but are as constituted in a few laws)

last is the poetic or that of the arts, and then it's all signifiers anyways, referring to a person rather than being the person itself, like how art references things by material induction while not being things.

in all cases, it's mostly agreed that some sort of personhood exists. it's just also all over the place what a person entails still, either given by a power structure, speculated forward, refered to, or being bickered over. so whether a dead person is also a person really depends on what a person is.

from that, ofc, we can also return to what a "tree" is, exactly, in order to similarly be able to define whether a dead tree is a tree. there's a number of answers there, and a lot of fun stuff going on

vsauce did a pretty good rundown on some of the problems of constitutions of objects/phenomena, although i'm a bit sad at his use of sources

 

[Angst]

extra post, for my own position. going by philosophy (which covers constitution of objects) i side with deleuzian ontology (from what i understand of it) and phenomenological epistemology (sometimes with some deleuze/guattari ideas sprinkled in, such as in the arts, where their theory of affect and becoming is quite useful sometimes, and does overlap with some ideas with phenomenology). how it applies here... idk too tired to think. may mull it over and look into my books and see whether i can make a proper formulation

 

[Valka D'Ur]

vsauce did a pretty good rundown on some of the problems of constitutions of objects/phenomena, although i'm a bit sad at his use of sources

Now I'm reminded of LucyDuke's threads from way back when, always wanting to know how many chairs, lamps, tables, and other stuff we own.

I'm also reminded of when we used to have a minimum 10-character requirement for posting, and some people would post a short word or smiley and then "10chars". Inevitably someone turned that into "10 chairs".

Which led to a post similar to this:



Those chairs are not trees, btw. Just to stay sort of on-topic.

 

[Kyriakos]

By dying, the person removed all personal defenses against being misunderstood. It was already a losing battle, but - as the ancient greek saying goes - "anyone can mine wood out of a fallen oak".

 

[Birdjaguar]

is a dead person a person? no. but a dead person is a body, which a person innately is.

So are you saying that a dead bird or a dead cat is not a bird or a cat, but just a body? Is a dead tree also just a body?

Isn't "personhood" just a way to make people some how intrisically different from all other living things that die? When living things die, there is certainly a loss of some unifying and collective processes that stop, but in reality, life goes on in that body as its many parts take on different tasks and some cells die but others live on regauardless of the previous shape of the once living body. I think we invented personhood for mostly selfish reasons before we understood what we now know of life and consciousness, etc.

 

[Angst]

So are you saying that a dead bird or a dead cat is not a bird or a cat, but just a body? Is a dead tree also just a body?

no, that was maybe unclear, i used the wrong word. maybe it would have been easier instead of body to say, like, a dead human body is still a human body.

reminder that this is from the vantage point of biology and other fields have other answers.

Isn't "personhood" just a way to make people some how intrisically different from all other living things that die? When living things die, there is certainly a loss of some unifying and collective processes that stop, but in reality, life goes on in that body as its many parts take on different tasks and some cells die but others live on regauardless of the previous shape of the once living body. I think we invented personhood for mostly selfish reasons before we understood what we now know of life and consciousness, etc.

kind of. from the perspective of the sciences, personhood is a mess. complex minded animals can have personalities, but it doesn't make them people. we still eat pigs and octopi. i don't know whether the feeling of personhood, and the application of it, is an invention or not. the issue is that's not really something we have real language for pointing at in any body. to me it's a feeling similar to your suggestion here. that it's a species-centric predisposition that will only really get challenged if we ever meet another species appx or higher than our level of intelligence. there's also the issue of personhood being removed from people during certain... social moments, let's call it that. in general, i lean away from biology if we are to describe personhood, our social structures are too complicated for most tools we have there at this point. (meaning yes i think personhood is largely a political/social category.)

the living processes that happen in our bodies after we die is actually quite well understood at this point, but yes, it also messed with our clear delineations of what forms are and aren't. that particular problem is what served me to the devil of deleuze on a silver platter.