The Cerberus analogy revisited

Remember Moreland’s and Craig’s Cerberus analogy for the Trinity? (background here, whole series here) Daniel Howard-Snyder objected: come on, that’s clearly three dogs with overlapping bodies, not one dog with three centers of consciousness or with three minds. And they don’t want to say that the Trinity is three overlapping gods, so ditch the analogy already. The discussion degenerated into pointing at pictures and saying “Clearly one turtle with two heads” vs. “No, clearly three turtles with overlapping bodies”. I sided with Dan, citing good old Eng and Chang, among other things.

Now I’ve learned of some unusual Siamese twins – ones so conjoined that people can refer to them as “the girl with two heads”. But pretty plainly, their friends and teachers think of them as two persons with overlapping bodies. See for yourself – a living, breathing human Cerberus (OK 2/3 of a Cerberus – and much nicer, I’d say).

The word “girl” may refer to an organism, or to a person. There’s arguably one organism here, but there are most assuredly two persons, two selves. A dude who married them would be a bigamist, not a monogamist with one wife with two minds or centers of consciousness. And their parents have two daughters.

Not so, it seems, here below – I assume there’s one self here, as well as one organism. (For the record, I’ll add that I would count zero goddesses here.)

Thus unto us is born is a new form of argument: argumentum ad videum. Or: modus iutubus. Or: reductio ad observum.

You can plainly see in this youtube clip that P.
Therefore, P.

Now philosophers can waste even more time on Youtube, trolling for support for their favorite theories. 😉