[FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Steve Smith]

This may be something of a "punt" but I tripped over an essay on BCS's 
OOO a few weeks ago and I've been wanting to introduce it into the 
conversation.  I wonder if the gap in the metaphysical fundament that we 
(don't) share might be bridged by some of BCS's ideas about "what means 
object anyway?"

https://www.academia.edu/73428704/Extruding_intentionality_from_the_metaphysical_flux

I think where I might get most bamboozled by talk of "there is something 
that it is *like* to *be* trampled dirt has to do with the boundaries of 
identity and object and the subject-object relation of affordances.   A 
subject perceives/experiences/exercises/relates-to the affordance of an 
object?   A pile of dirt has identity as a pile only insomuch as there 
is a subject (also an object in it's own right) which percieves/acts-on 
the pile of dirt *as if* it had a boundary and an identity and with some 
kind of affordance (e.g. trampleable?).   I don't think there is 
anything intrinsic in being a distribution of dirt-particles which has 
anything to do with trampling or trampleable...   but then the nature of 
a foot does not make for trample-ability alone either?   To trample 
requires a tramplee?   A thing to be trampled?  A state change in the 
tramplee from untrampled to trampled?

Or to repeat myself, perhaps I am barking up the wrong 
lexicon/ontology/cosmology here?   We are possibly (always and forever?) 
on the opposite sides of a looking glass?

woof!

  - Steve

On 2/17/23 9:11 AM, glen wrote:
> Interesting. I never claimed I can "feel what it is like to be 
> trampled dirt". I merely asserted there is something that it is like 
> to be trampled dirt. I have no sympathy or empathy for dirt 
> whatsoever, trampled or otherwise. I can't be like trampled dirt or 
> feel what it is like to be trampled dirt. (Soil, now, maybe that's a 
> different, more interesting idea. But we won't talk about soil or 
> mycelia because it's easier to rely on incredulity.) But the absence 
> of [sy|e]mpathy for some thing does *not* imply the absence of some 
> arbitrary property like "what it is like" to be that thing. I also 
> wouldn't claim that dirt "feels" anything. Why is "feeling" correlated 
> with "being" or qualia?
>
> More importantly, your examples of "mental stuff" simply don't carry 
> any water for me. "Occurring to me" is entirely a body thing to me. It 
> literally stops and redirects my behavior, my body. I don't see how 
> its any different from any other subtle thing like smelling coffee or 
> glimpsing movement in peripheral vision.
>
> Empathy-seeking as an example of "mental stuff"? Hm. For me, I 
> empathize with people I interact with. I don't think I can empathize 
> with some[one|thing] I haven't interacted with. Now, *imagining*, that 
> may be a useful foil. But, again, I can't imagine anything without 
> some imagining tools. Tool-less imagining doesn't exist for me. (And 
> I'm arrogant in thinking it doesn't exist for anyone else, either. 
> Those who *think* they can imagine without tools have been tricked, 
> brainwashed into believing in "pure mental stuff".)
>
> I've had trouble finding the research lately. But there's evidence 
> that when we imagine spinning, say, a ball around its axis, there's a 
> lot of overlap with the neural structures that fire in our brain as 
> when we're actually spinning a ball with our hand. That's body stuff. 
> Even if my "imagining" seems entirely within the bounds of my skull, 
> it's still body stuff. It's still tool-mediated, even if the mediation 
> occurs longitudinally, through time/training. I just have no idea what 
> you guys mean by "mental stuff".
>
>
> On 2/17/23 07:43, Steve Smith wrote:
>> As absurd as this whole conversation feels in some ways, I find it 
>> fascinating (and possibly useful).  At the very least it seems to be 
>> an extreme example of empathy-seeking.
>>
>> This is "me" doing "mental stuff".   I don't know how to separate 
>> "mental stuff" from "body stuff" except perhaps /en extrema/, /per 
>> exemplia/.   Imaginating on what it is like to be trampled-dirt would 
>> fit into my category of "doing mental stuff", whatever that actually 
>> means (beyond being able to label extreme examples of it?)
>>
>> Glen sez "there is something it is like to be trampled dirt" as if 
>> that actually means something and that any/all of us perhaps can 
>> experience that.   Try as I might I can't quite "feel what it is like 
>> to be trampled dirt".... however I do find that I can find within the 
>> things I'm more inclined to call "body stuff" that my "mental stuff" 
>> is willing to label (very loosely) as "being like trampled dirt".  
>> BUT I don't know that in that process I ever imagine I actually "feel 
>> like trampled dirt".
>>
>>   I could ramble forever (uncountable, not infiinite) on examples of 
>> what it is for *me* to "be like trampled dirt" ( a great deal of what 
>> feeds good poetry actually) and some here *might8 recognize some/many 
>> of my examples and end up "feeling like trampled dirt" more than they 
>> did before they read it. This would be what *I* call communication 
>> (which Glen insists does not actually exist?).   I'm possibly 
>> talking/thinking (mental stuff) into "feeling like trampled dirt" 
>> (body stuff) here.   I don't know that I can claim (imagine) that 
>> dirt is in any way communicating "what it is like to be trampled 
>> dirt" to me except perhaps simply by *being trampled dirt*.   
>> Observing dirt as it is trampled, or as it's configuration suggests 
>> "having been trampled" seems to be part of *my* strategy in trying to 
>> imagine "being trampled dirt"
>>
>> And it occurs to me (mental stuff, this 'occuring to") that the very 
>> description *as* "trampled" dirt is a projection of a living creature 
>> onto something with no obvious agency nor sensation?   To the extent 
>> that dirt is something that *most* creatures walk/run/stomp-about 
>> upon (at least dirt on the surface of a gravitational body), it is 
>> *all trampled*?   Of course, dirt on the surface of the moon (is it 
>> actually *dirt* if it's origins are not earthly?   Moon-dust, 
>> Moon-rock, Moon-gravel) is on the whole untrampled (with the 
>> exception of the small area where Apollo Astronauts placed their 
>> feet?) and maybe by extension where the landing-pads of the Lunar 
>> Lander's touched down and then by yet-more extension, every place a 
>> bit of man-made debris has struck or landed-on the surface?  Which 
>> leads us to the possibility that *all* moon-surface material is 
>> "trampled earth", being "trampled by meteors"?
>>
>> As I write this I "feel like moondust, trampled not only by 
>> meteorites/asteroids but also by cosmic rays"...
>>
>> What is the opposite-of/complement-to /reductio ad absurdum/ ? 
>> /ridiculum faciens nota /or more likely/ridiculum faciens usitata 
>> verberando sicut equus mortuus/
>>
>>
>> On 2/17/23 12:35 AM, ⛧ glen wrote:
>>> Doubling down on the incredulity fallacy? OK. Yes. There is 
>>> something it is like to be trampled dirt. I don't know what you mean 
>>> by "mental stuff", of course. I don't do any mental stuff as far as 
>>> I know. Everything I do is inherently "body stuff". Maybe that's 
>>> because I've experienced chronic pain my whole life. Maybe some of 
>>> you consistently live in a body free experience? I've only 
>>> experienced that a few times, e.g. running in a fasted state. And I 
>>> later suffered for that indulgent delusion.
>>>
>>> No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff". So you need a more 
>>> concrete question.
>>>
>>> On February 16, 2023 6:04:17 PM PST, Eric 
>>> Charles<eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>> "an account of the seemingly analogous position of panpsychism"
>>>>
>>>> What is that more than something people say?
>>>>
>>>> Do *you* experience the dirt at your feet as having a mental life? 
>>>> If so,
>>>> tell me about it: What is the dirt like when it seems to be doing 
>>>> mental
>>>> stuff? What kind of mental stuff is it doing?
>>>>
>>>> If not: Have you seen anyone who earnestly thinks the dirt is doing 
>>>> mental
>>>> stuff? If so, what were *they* like? How was that belief pervasive 
>>>> in their
>>>> adjustments to the world? Based on your experiences with that 
>>>> person, how
>>>> do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if you 
>>>> adopted
>>>> such a position?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <echarles at american.edu>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:27 PM glen<gepropella at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I don't grok the context well enough to equivocate on concepts 
>>>>> like "have"
>>>>> and "category of being". But in response to Nick's question: "What 
>>>>> is there
>>>>> that animals do that demands us to invent categories to explain their
>>>>> behavior?", my answer is "animals discretize the ambient muck". So if
>>>>> categorization is somehow fundamentally related to discretization, 
>>>>> then
>>>>> animals clearly categorize in that sense.
>>>>>
>>>>> I mean, all you have to do is consider the frequencies of light the
>>>>> animals' eyeballs do or don't see. That's two categories right 
>>>>> there, the
>>>>> light they do see and the light they don't. Unless there's some 
>>>>> sophistry
>>>>> hidden behind the question, the answer seems clear. Reflection on 
>>>>> what one
>>>>> does and does not categorize isn't necessary. I could even claim 
>>>>> my truck
>>>>> discretizes fluids ... those that make it seize up versus 
>>>>> lubricate it,
>>>>> those that it burns vs those that stop it cold. Etc. Maybe the 
>>>>> question is
>>>>> better formulated as "What makes one impute categories on 
>>>>> another?" Clearly
>>>>> my truck doesn't impute categories on squirrels.
>>>>>
>>>>> But Nick does follow that question with this "experience" 
>>>>> nonsense. So my
>>>>> guess is there *is* some sophistry behind the question, similar to 
>>>>> EricC's
>>>>> incredulous response to DaveW's question about phenomenological 
>>>>> composition
>>>>> of experience(s). What I find missing in Nick's (and EricC's) 
>>>>> distillation
>>>>> of experience monism is an account of the seemingly analogous 
>>>>> position of
>>>>> panpsychism. Were I a scholar, I might take such work on myself. 
>>>>> But I'm
>>>>> not and, hence, very much appreciate these distillations of dead 
>>>>> white
>>>>> men's metaphysics and will take what I can get. 8^D
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/16/23 09:22, Steve Smith wrote:
>>>>>> Might I offer some terminology reframing, or at least ask for some
>>>>> additional explication?
>>>>>>   1. I think "behaviours" would be all Nick's Martians *could* 
>>>>>> observe?
>>>>> They would be inferring "experiences" from observed behaviours?
>>>>>>   2. When we talk about "categories" here, are we talking about
>>>>> "categories of being"?  Ontologies, as it were?
>>>>>> Regarding ErisS' reflections... I *do* think that animals behave *as
>>>>> if* they "have categories", though I don't know what it even means 
>>>>> to say
>>>>> that they "have categories" in the way Aristotle and his 
>>>>> legacy-followers
>>>>> (e.g. us) do...   I would suggest/suspect that dogs and squirrels 
>>>>> are in no
>>>>> way aware of these "categories" and that to say that they do is a
>>>>> projection by (us) humans who have fabricated the (useful in myriad
>>>>> contexts) of a category/Category/ontology.   So in that sense they 
>>>>> do NOT
>>>>> *have* categories...   I think in this 
>>>>> conception/thought-experiment we
>>>>> assume that Martians *would* and would be looking to map their own
>>>>> ontologies onto the behaviour (and inferred  experiences and 
>>>>> judgements?)
>>>>> of Terran animals?
>>>>>> If I were to invert the subject/object relation, I would suggest 
>>>>>> that it
>>>>> is "affordances" not "experiences" (or animals' behaviours) we 
>>>>> want to
>>>>> categorize into ontologies?  It is what things are "good for" that 
>>>>> make
>>>>> them interesting/similar/different to living beings.   And "good 
>>>>> for" is
>>>>> conditionally contextualized.   My dog and cat both find squirrels 
>>>>> "good
>>>>> for" chasing, but so too for baby rabbits and skunks (once).
>>>>>> Or am I barking up the wrong set of reserved lexicons?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To segue (as I am wont to do), it feels like this discussion 
>>>>>> parallels
>>>>> the one about LLMs where we train the hell out of variations on 
>>>>> learning
>>>>> classifier systems until they are as good as (or better than) we 
>>>>> (humans)
>>>>> are at predicting the next token in a string of human-generated 
>>>>> tokens (or
>>>>> synthesizing a string of tokens which humans cannot distinguish 
>>>>> from a
>>>>> string generated by another human, in particular one with the 
>>>>> proverbial
>>>>> 10,000 hours of specialized training).   The fact that or 
>>>>> "ologies" tend to
>>>>> be recorded and organized as knowledge structures and in fact usually
>>>>> *propogated* (taught/learnt) by the same makes us want to believe 
>>>>> (some of
>>>>> us) that hidden inside these LLMs are precisely the same "ologies" we
>>>>> encode in our myriad textbooks and professional journal articles?
>>>>>> I think one of the questions that remains present within this 
>>>>>> group's
>>>>> continued 'gurgitations is whether the organizations we have 
>>>>> conjured are
>>>>> particularly special, or just one of an infinitude of superposed
>>>>> alternative formulations?   And whether some of those formulations 
>>>>> are
>>>>> acutely occult and/or abstract and whether the existing (accepted)
>>>>> formulations (e.g. Western Philosophy and Science, etc) are 
>>>>> uniquely (and
>>>>> exclusively or at least optimally) capable of capturing/describing 
>>>>> what is
>>>>> "really real" (nod to George Berkeley).
>>>>>> Some here (self included) may often suggest that such formulation 
>>>>>> is at
>>>>> best a coincidence of history and as well as it "covers" a 
>>>>> description of
>>>>> "reality", it is by circumstance and probably by abstract 
>>>>> conception ("all
>>>>> models are wrong...") incomplete and in error.  But nevertheless 
>>>>> still
>>>>> useful...
>>>>>> Maybe another way of reframing Nick's question (on a tangent) is 
>>>>>> to ask
>>>>> whether the Barsoomians had their own Aristotle to conceive of
>>>>> Categories?   Or did they train their telescopes on ancient Greece 
>>>>> and
>>>>> learn Latin Lip Reading and adopt one or more the Greek's 
>>>>> philosophical
>>>>> traditions?  And then, did the gas-balloon creatures floating in the
>>>>> atmosphere-substance of Jupiter observe the Martians' who had 
>>>>> observed the
>>>>> Greeks and thereby come up with their own Categories. Maybe it was 
>>>>> those
>>>>> creatures who beamed these abstractions straight into the neural 
>>>>> tissue of
>>>>> the Aristotelians and Platonists?   Do gas-balloon creatures even 
>>>>> have
>>>>> solids to be conceived of as Platonic?  And are they missing out 
>>>>> if they
>>>>> don't?  Do they have their own Edwin Abbot Abbot?   And what would 
>>>>> the
>>>>> Cheela<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg>  say?
>>>>>> My dog and the rock squirrels he chases want to know... so do the 
>>>>>> cholla
>>>>> cactus fruits/segments they hoard in their nests!
>>>>>> Mumble,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    - Steve
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 2/16/23 5:37 AM, Santafe wrote:
>>>>>>> It’s the tiniest and most idiosyncratic take on this question, but
>>>>> FWIW, here:
>>>>>>> https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1520752113
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I actually think that all of what Nick says below is a perfectly 
>>>>>>> good
>>>>> draft of a POV.
>>>>>>> As to whether animals “have” categories: Spend time with a dog.
>>>>> Doesn’t take very much time.  Their interest in conspecifics is 
>>>>> (ahem)
>>>>> categorically different from their interest in people, different 
>>>>> than to
>>>>> squirrels, different than to cats, different than to snakes.
>>>>>>> For me to even say that seems like cueing a narcissism of small
>>>>> differences, when overwhelmingly, their behavior is structured around
>>>>> categories, as is everyone else’s.  Squirrels don’t mistake acorns 
>>>>> for
>>>>> birds of prey.  Or for the tree limbs and house roofs one can jump 
>>>>> onto.
>>>>> Or for other squirrels.  It’s all categories.  Behavior is an 
>>>>> operation on
>>>>> categories.
>>>>>>> I found it interesting that you invoked “nouns” as a framework 
>>>>>>> that is
>>>>> helpful but sometimes obstructive.  One might just have said 
>>>>> “words”.  This
>>>>> is interesting to me already, because my syntactician friends will 
>>>>> tell you
>>>>> that a noun is not, as we were taught as children, a “word for a 
>>>>> person,
>>>>> place, or thing”, but rather a “word in a language that transforms 
>>>>> as nouns
>>>>> transform in that language”, which is a bit of an obfuscation, 
>>>>> since they
>>>>> do have in common that they are in some way “object-words”.  But 
>>>>> from the
>>>>> polysemy and synonymy perspective, we see that “meanings” cross the
>>>>> noun-verb syntactic distinction quite frequently for some categories.
>>>>> Eye/see, ear/hear, moon/shine, and stuff like that.  My typologist 
>>>>> friends
>>>>> tell me that is common but particular to some meanings much more than
>>>>> others.
>>>>>>> Another fun thing I was told by Ted Chiang a few months ago, 
>>>>>>> which I
>>>>> was amazed I had not heard from linguists, and still want to hold in
>>>>> reserve until I can check it further.  He says that languages without
>>>>> written forms do not have a word for “word”.  If true, that seems 
>>>>> very
>>>>> interesting and important.  If Chiang believes it to be true, it is
>>>>> probably already a strong enough regularity to be more-or-less 
>>>>> true, and
>>>>> thus still interesting and important.
>>>>>>> Eric
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Feb 15, 2023, at 1:19 PM,<thompnickson2 at gmail.com>   <
>>>>> thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>>>>> FWiW, I willmake every effort to arrive fed to Thuam by 10.30
>>>>> Mountain.  I want to hear the experts among you hold forth on WTF a
>>>>> cateogory actually IS.  I am thinking (duh) that a category is a 
>>>>> more or
>>>>> less diffuse node in a network of associations (signs, if you 
>>>>> must).  Hence
>>>>> they constitute a vast table of what goes with what, what is 
>>>>> predictable
>>>>> from what, etc.  This accommodates “family resemblance” quite 
>>>>> nicely.  Do
>>>>> I think animals have categories, in this sense, ABSOLUTELY EFFING 
>>>>> YES. Does
>>>>> this make me a (shudder) nominalist?  I hope not.
>>>>>>>> Words…nouns in particular… confuse this category business.  Words
>>>>> place constraints on how vague these nodes can be.   They impose 
>>>>> on the
>>>>> network constraints to which it is ill suited.  True, the more my
>>>>> associations with “horse” line up with your associations with 
>>>>> “horse”, the
>>>>> more true the horse seems.  Following Peirce, I would say that 
>>>>> where our
>>>>> nodes increasingly correspond with increasing shared experience, 
>>>>> we have
>>>>> evidence ot the (ultimate) truth of the nodes, their “reality” in 
>>>>> Peirce’s
>>>>> terms.  Here is where I am striving to hang on to Peirce’s realism.
>>>>>>>> The reason I want the geeks to participate tomorrow is that I keep
>>>>> thinking of a semantic webby thing that Steve devised for the 
>>>>> Institute
>>>>> about a decade ago.   Now a semantic web would be a kind of 
>>>>> metaphor for an
>>>>> associative web; don’t associate with other words in exactly the same
>>>>> manner in which experiences associate with other experiences.  
>>>>> Still, I
>>>>> think the metaphor is interesting.  Also, I am kind of 
>>>>> re-interested in my
>>>>> “authorial voice”, how much it operates like cbt.
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