An Example Of Linguistic Imprecision

Some cases of linguistic imprecision are far more severe than others.  There is no such thing as your reason or my reason; there is the intellect of an individual mind and there are the objective, intrinsic, self-necessary laws of logic.  To sometimes speak as if reason is a part of the mind rather than something self-necessary and supremely transcendent that is grasped by the mind does not mean a person actually believes this, but if someone has never genuinely thought about the nature of reason at all or if they believe this error, then this is likely how they would talk.  As utterly trivial as the subject is by comparison, many scientific paradigms and correlations are spoken of with imprecision, and one example pertains to germ theory.

Much like how it is not supposed to be sugar that rots tooth enamel, but the acidic waste of the oral bacteria that feed on sugar left on teeth, rats, bats, mosquitoes, roaches, and the like do not carry diseases, not quite as directly as common descriptions might make it seem.  People frequently use phrases like "that species carries disease" without ever clarifying the indirectness of the way this would be the case.  On germ theory, such organisms would be carrying pathogens, like a specific kind of bacteria or virus, that can in turn cause disease in another creature.  In other words, they carry the microscopic agents that bring about a given disease, not necessarily the ailment itself, for the two are not conceptually identical.  How is this the case?  A thing is not that which it causes, and sickness is only a condition rather than a living thing in itself.

A disease is the infection or sickness that afflicts a creature, not a microorganism responsible for spreading it.  As such, a person who comes into physical contact with, say, a rat that bites them only contracts a particular disease if the applicable pathogens enter their body and overwhelm their immune system.  As long as certain bacteria were on somebody and they were still not sick, there would be no disease on or in them because of these microbes.  The pathogen is not the same as its corresponding disease.  If nothing on Earth had any infection or sickness of any kind, there could still be pathogens in nature with the hypothetical capacity for prompting sickness, but no living thing would actually have a disease.  A bacterial infection, for instance, is nothing more than a status on the afflicted's part.

If that condition is not active, disease is not present.  It is imprecise to say that certain animals carry diseases when disease that is triggered by pathogens could not exist without a compromised host.  Again, disease is only a condition on the part of whatever organism is suffering from it.  Someone could say that an animal carries disease as many people would and still understand all of this.  Using the more precise wording, which is more accurate to germ theory, is not a requirement to knowing these concepts (though no non-rationalist knows anything because they are in the grip of assumptions, and none of this is meant to pretend like scientific objects, causes, and effects can be known to exist beyond the perceptions of them).  Using the alternative phrases might still suggest that someone has not thought about their words carefully or accurately.