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la djan cusku di'e > I am using the word "carnivore" in the sense not of an animal that eats > animal flesh, but in the sense of an animal that (with trivial exceptions) > eats nothing else. Mr Bird is carnivore only in some instances. If we say that a person is "vegetarian" if they will not eat meat, then someone can be vegetarian at a given time time, even though they have eaten meat before they became vegetarian. Similarly, Mr Bird can be carnivore in a given instance. > Thus there are carnivores and herbivores and animals that > eat both meat and plants, but there is nothing that is both a carnivore and > a herbivore, since "eats only meat" and "eats only plants" are mutually > exclusive. They are mutually exclusive when restricted to the same instance, yes. Just as "being asleep" and "being awake" are mutually exclusive when restricted to the same instance, but one entity can be both at different instances. > Yet if Paulie is an herbivore and Thorondor is a carnivore, then Mr. Bird > either has self-contradictory properties, or is neither a carnivore nor an > herbivore. (This is not the same as "Mr. Bird eats meat .e plants", which > is true.) Mr Bird is neither a carnivore nor a herbivore always and at every instance. It is sometimes one and sometimes the other. mu'o mi'e xorxes __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com