[FRIAM] Nick's Categories
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Fri Feb 17 16:26:09 EST 2023
On 2/17/23 11:39 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Our family rule was, "Don't name anything you aren't ready to take to
> the vet."
if by vet you mean "repairman" or "carwash/detailer" then I agree... I
anthropomorphize *some* vehicles and when I take them to the mechanic I
do it with a similar feeling that I take a pet to a vet. But then I
also have a certain kind of respect for a "pile of dirt" many here would
not. I suppose that I even consider many conformations of otherwise
inanimate/low-agency things to have a "life of their own", meager as it
might seem. I once had a pile of sand near the entrance to my house
which I put there for a project (so I *formed* the pile myself, taking
some level of responsibility for it).... by the time the project was
complete, there was still a "mound" of sand which I was *loathe* to move
(not just because I was lazy. It was just big enough to attract my dog
who *liked* to flop down on the top of it (all of 12" high?) and over
the space of about a year, the dog and mound had co-evolved to be more
like a *patch* of residually more sandy soil than the surrounding
adobe-silt-clay-sandy soil only barely/hardly taller than the surrounds.
I felt like that "pile" and the dog and the pair of them together were
an entity and I might even have named the pair if not for the fact I
would have had to be "willing to take the pair to the vet" but in fact,
I knew that would really confuse the vet if I did.... and most folks I
know are confused when I try to explain this... maybe it would be easier
if I would just give over and name the dog-sandpile complex? Oh... the
dog has since died and is buried nearby under a "pile of dirt" covered
in "a pile of rocks".... the rocks are there to keep the coyotes and
ravens and humans from "trampling" the gravesite?
I'm probably just muddying this mudpile of dirt by trampling through it
repeatedly?
>
> 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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