Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Test du canard" in French language version.
« Ladies and Gentlemen, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it? […] That's right, it's a duck - but this duck is a nuclear duck. And it's time the world started calling a duck a duck. »
« Blithe generalizations, binary thinking, and fear-mongering […] concomitant failure to make […] differentiations inherent in the duck test. »
« Blithe generalizations, binary thinking, and fear-mongering […] concomitant failure to make […] differentiations inherent in the duck test. »
« The principle of family resemblance relationships can be restated in terms of cue validity since the attributes most distributed among members of a category and least distributed among members of contrasting categories are, by definition, the most valid cues to membership in the category in question. »
« Thus, a hypothesis is plausible if it is both explanatory and of a character to recommend it for further examination (hence, testable, though untested), noting that plausibility comes in degrees. »
« Even if we assume that a particular manner of walking and talking is common to all ducks (a questionable assumption, perhaps - but then are all adulterers sleekly dressed?), these can only be plausible, not telltale, inductive signs of duckery; there may well be fellow-travelling geese, swans, or ballplayers II who acquired the relevant habits by osmosis or genetic predisposition. The conversion of 'Every duck Qs' to 'Every Qer is a duck' is as logically unsound as it is empirically natural. »
« When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. »
« I can't prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks — I am certainly going to assume that he is a duck. »
« I don't think that makes any difference. A door-opener for the Communist party is worse than a member of the Communist party. When someone walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, he is a duck. »
« We have a saying in the union: "If a fellow looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, the possibility is that he is a duck". That is the way with a CommunistIf the guy does everything that the party does, the prospects are very good that he is a party member or a fellow traveller. »
« Mr. Evjue looks like a capitalist, walks like a capitalist, and quacks in a voice entirely his own, sometimes like a capitalist, sometimes like the Delphic oracle, sometimes like the Mad Hatter — and always entertaining. »
« The doctrine of 'guilt by association' means that, if you go around with ducks, look like a duck, quack like a duck and swim like a duck, there is a reasonable ground to assume that you are a duck. »
« Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot. »
« So logically […] if she weighs the same as a duck she's made of wood […] and therefore […] a witch! »
« The evidence does not indicate you are a Communist duck, but there is reason to believe you are a very pink-meated fowl indeed. Birds of a feather flock together. »
« My basic hypothesis or premise was if it swims like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck. »
« Since it is not a practical necessity, this meticulous cultivation of knowledge that is shown in the complete naming of the avifauna represents an exercise satisfying the desire of man for intellectual activity. »
« We refer to families of properties, such that: 1) they tend (imperfectly) to co-occur in nature; 2) their co-occurrence is explained by inductively and explanatorily important mechanisms that (imperfectly) establish a sort of "homeostasis" between them; and 3) the homeostatic unity they (imperfectly) display is a causally and explanatorily important factor in the complex systems we study. »
« The improbability of coincidental similarity is proportional to the number of inde- pendent traits of similarity, and is, for n such characters, equal to 2n-1. »
« Grant that if something walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, we have good reason to believe that it's a duck, since its being a duck explains why its behaviour is duck-like. Grant also that duck is an Ellisian natural kind, and so has an essence E, which not only causally explains why ducks walk, swim and quack in the way that they do, but also explains, and so predicts, a range of other features of duck. (Ducks like eating corn, have webbed feet, breed with other ducks in suitable circumstances, and so on.)10 So, when faced with a suitably duck-like entity, I am warranted in believing that it is a duck — a member of a kind with essence E — by IBE: its being a member of the kind with that essence explains why it walks and swims and quacks in the way that it does. And I am then in a position to make a range of other predictions about my duck, since those predictions are licensed by the fact that my duck has essence E […] In the duck example just given, we are explaining merely why this duck-like entity manifests its duck-like features, rather than why all previously observed duck-like entities do. »
« Consider the following course of reasoning: It looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it waddles like a duck, therefore: It is a duck. This reasoning is clearly not deductively valid. (Mechanical "ducks" can do all those things as well.) Nor is it enthymematically valid. For any pre- misses we might add that actually manage to close the deductive gap fully and completely - "Whatever looks, quacks, and waddles like a duck will actually be a duck," for example - will simply not be true. And nothing that we can add by way of epistemically available truth will close the de- ductive gap. Such tenability as the argument has it obtains from a certain practical policy, namely: As long as no counterindications come to light, to treat as a duck anything that (sufficiently) behaves like one. And this is a praxis rather than a factual claim of some sort. We know full well that it is false to claim "Whatever looks, quacks, and waddles like a duck, will actually be a duck." But in ordinary circumstances (in the absence of visible counter indications) we feel free to implement the policy at issue with an inferential leap, not because in doing so we cannot possibly go wrong, but rather because we will generally go right. »
« Presumably such a judgment will be based on considerations such as which hypoth- esis is simpler, which is more plausible, which explains more, which is less ad hoc, and so forth. I do not wish to deny that there is a problem about explaining the exact nature of these considerations; I will not, however, say anything more about this problem. »
« If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck and it sounds like a duck, it's a Palestinian state. »
