[FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Nicholas Thompson]

Our family rule was, "Don't name anything  you aren't ready to take to the
vet."

On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 10:47 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> 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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