[FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Eric Charles]

I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff", of course.

Well... In this context, I mean whatever the "psyche" part of panpsychism
entails.

Given that I don't believe in disembodied minds, I'm with you 100% on
everything you do being "body stuff". Which, presumably, leads to the
empirical question of what types of bodies do "psyche", and where those
types of bodies can be found.

You say further that: No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff".

Well, now we have something to actually talk about then! Dave West,
unsurprisingly, stepped in strongly on the side of dirt having psyche in at
least a rudimentary form, I presume he would assert that you (Glen) do
mental stuff too. Dave also asserts that his belief in panpsychism
*does* affect
how he lives in the world. Exactly to the extent that his way of living in
the world is made different by the belief, panpsychism *is* more than just
something he says.

Steve's discussion about what it would feel like to be the bit of dirt
trampled beneath a particular foot is a bit of a tangent - potentially
interesting in its own right. His discussion of when he, personally, starts
to attribute identity - and potentially psyche - to clumps of inanimate
stuff seems directly on topic, especially as he too has listed some ways
his behaviors change when he becomes engaged in those habits.


<echarles at american.edu>


On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 2:36 AM ⛧ glen <gepropella at gmail.com> 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.
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> --
> glen ⛧
>
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