In my example it’s the botanists which make the mistake by widening the definition of “fruit” without double-checking whether that widening changes their understanding of “fruit salad” to become something different from what the cooks were saying.

Indeed, you made the thought experiment and build this error into it (aka Strawman). I corrected the conversation to show how to correctly apply widening and narrowing in regards to "fruit salads"

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I corrected the conversation to show how to correctly apply widening and narrowing in regards to “fruit salads”

What you should've done instead is apply it to Engels's widening of the term "authority" to mean things that don't fit into a fruit salad, any more.

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

What you should’ve done instead is apply it to Engels’s widening of the term “authority” to mean things that don’t fit into a fruit salad, any more.

Ok let me do it now since youre dense: Authority encompasses "granted authority". Granted is the qualifier. Authority is the category. Authority being defined as:

Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If something is granted it's not imposed. Those two things are mutually exclusive. If Engels was honest in his argument he'd have used "imposed authority" to characterise what anti-auths were criticising, not the general "authority".

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that’s true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago

You're almost there.