<div dir="ltr">Our family rule was, "Don't name anything you aren't ready to take to the vet."<br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 10:47 AM Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">This may be something of a "punt" but I tripped over an essay on BCS's <br>
OOO a few weeks ago and I've been wanting to introduce it into the <br>
conversation. I wonder if the gap in the metaphysical fundament that we <br>
(don't) share might be bridged by some of BCS's ideas about "what means <br>
object anyway?"<br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.academia.edu/73428704/Extruding_intentionality_from_the_metaphysical_flux" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.academia.edu/73428704/Extruding_intentionality_from_the_metaphysical_flux</a><br>
<br>
I think where I might get most bamboozled by talk of "there is something <br>
that it is *like* to *be* trampled dirt has to do with the boundaries of <br>
identity and object and the subject-object relation of affordances. A <br>
subject perceives/experiences/exercises/relates-to the affordance of an <br>
object? A pile of dirt has identity as a pile only insomuch as there <br>
is a subject (also an object in it's own right) which percieves/acts-on <br>
the pile of dirt *as if* it had a boundary and an identity and with some <br>
kind of affordance (e.g. trampleable?). I don't think there is <br>
anything intrinsic in being a distribution of dirt-particles which has <br>
anything to do with trampling or trampleable... but then the nature of <br>
a foot does not make for trample-ability alone either? To trample <br>
requires a tramplee? A thing to be trampled? A state change in the <br>
tramplee from untrampled to trampled?<br>
<br>
Or to repeat myself, perhaps I am barking up the wrong <br>
lexicon/ontology/cosmology here? We are possibly (always and forever?) <br>
on the opposite sides of a looking glass?<br>
<br>
woof!<br>
<br>
- Steve<br>
<br>
On 2/17/23 9:11 AM, glen wrote:<br>
> Interesting. I never claimed I can "feel what it is like to be <br>
> trampled dirt". I merely asserted there is something that it is like <br>
> to be trampled dirt. I have no sympathy or empathy for dirt <br>
> whatsoever, trampled or otherwise. I can't be like trampled dirt or <br>
> feel what it is like to be trampled dirt. (Soil, now, maybe that's a <br>
> different, more interesting idea. But we won't talk about soil or <br>
> mycelia because it's easier to rely on incredulity.) But the absence <br>
> of [sy|e]mpathy for some thing does *not* imply the absence of some <br>
> arbitrary property like "what it is like" to be that thing. I also <br>
> wouldn't claim that dirt "feels" anything. Why is "feeling" correlated <br>
> with "being" or qualia?<br>
><br>
> More importantly, your examples of "mental stuff" simply don't carry <br>
> any water for me. "Occurring to me" is entirely a body thing to me. It <br>
> literally stops and redirects my behavior, my body. I don't see how <br>
> its any different from any other subtle thing like smelling coffee or <br>
> glimpsing movement in peripheral vision.<br>
><br>
> Empathy-seeking as an example of "mental stuff"? Hm. For me, I <br>
> empathize with people I interact with. I don't think I can empathize <br>
> with some[one|thing] I haven't interacted with. Now, *imagining*, that <br>
> may be a useful foil. But, again, I can't imagine anything without <br>
> some imagining tools. Tool-less imagining doesn't exist for me. (And <br>
> I'm arrogant in thinking it doesn't exist for anyone else, either. <br>
> Those who *think* they can imagine without tools have been tricked, <br>
> brainwashed into believing in "pure mental stuff".)<br>
><br>
> I've had trouble finding the research lately. But there's evidence <br>
> that when we imagine spinning, say, a ball around its axis, there's a <br>
> lot of overlap with the neural structures that fire in our brain as <br>
> when we're actually spinning a ball with our hand. That's body stuff. <br>
> Even if my "imagining" seems entirely within the bounds of my skull, <br>
> it's still body stuff. It's still tool-mediated, even if the mediation <br>
> occurs longitudinally, through time/training. I just have no idea what <br>
> you guys mean by "mental stuff".<br>
><br>
><br>
> On 2/17/23 07:43, Steve Smith wrote:<br>
>> As absurd as this whole conversation feels in some ways, I find it <br>
>> fascinating (and possibly useful). At the very least it seems to be <br>
>> an extreme example of empathy-seeking.<br>
>><br>
>> This is "me" doing "mental stuff". I don't know how to separate <br>
>> "mental stuff" from "body stuff" except perhaps /en extrema/, /per <br>
>> exemplia/. Imaginating on what it is like to be trampled-dirt would <br>
>> fit into my category of "doing mental stuff", whatever that actually <br>
>> means (beyond being able to label extreme examples of it?)<br>
>><br>
>> Glen sez "there is something it is like to be trampled dirt" as if <br>
>> that actually means something and that any/all of us perhaps can <br>
>> experience that. Try as I might I can't quite "feel what it is like <br>
>> to be trampled dirt".... however I do find that I can find within the <br>
>> things I'm more inclined to call "body stuff" that my "mental stuff" <br>
>> is willing to label (very loosely) as "being like trampled dirt". <br>
>> BUT I don't know that in that process I ever imagine I actually "feel <br>
>> like trampled dirt".<br>
>><br>
>> I could ramble forever (uncountable, not infiinite) on examples of <br>
>> what it is for *me* to "be like trampled dirt" ( a great deal of what <br>
>> feeds good poetry actually) and some here *might8 recognize some/many <br>
>> of my examples and end up "feeling like trampled dirt" more than they <br>
>> did before they read it. This would be what *I* call communication <br>
>> (which Glen insists does not actually exist?). I'm possibly <br>
>> talking/thinking (mental stuff) into "feeling like trampled dirt" <br>
>> (body stuff) here. I don't know that I can claim (imagine) that <br>
>> dirt is in any way communicating "what it is like to be trampled <br>
>> dirt" to me except perhaps simply by *being trampled dirt*. <br>
>> Observing dirt as it is trampled, or as it's configuration suggests <br>
>> "having been trampled" seems to be part of *my* strategy in trying to <br>
>> imagine "being trampled dirt"<br>
>><br>
>> And it occurs to me (mental stuff, this 'occuring to") that the very <br>
>> description *as* "trampled" dirt is a projection of a living creature <br>
>> onto something with no obvious agency nor sensation? To the extent <br>
>> that dirt is something that *most* creatures walk/run/stomp-about <br>
>> upon (at least dirt on the surface of a gravitational body), it is <br>
>> *all trampled*? Of course, dirt on the surface of the moon (is it <br>
>> actually *dirt* if it's origins are not earthly? Moon-dust, <br>
>> Moon-rock, Moon-gravel) is on the whole untrampled (with the <br>
>> exception of the small area where Apollo Astronauts placed their <br>
>> feet?) and maybe by extension where the landing-pads of the Lunar <br>
>> Lander's touched down and then by yet-more extension, every place a <br>
>> bit of man-made debris has struck or landed-on the surface? Which <br>
>> leads us to the possibility that *all* moon-surface material is <br>
>> "trampled earth", being "trampled by meteors"?<br>
>><br>
>> As I write this I "feel like moondust, trampled not only by <br>
>> meteorites/asteroids but also by cosmic rays"...<br>
>><br>
>> What is the opposite-of/complement-to /reductio ad absurdum/ ? <br>
>> /ridiculum faciens nota /or more likely/ridiculum faciens usitata <br>
>> verberando sicut equus mortuus/<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> On 2/17/23 12:35 AM, \u26e7 glen wrote:<br>
>>> Doubling down on the incredulity fallacy? OK. Yes. There is <br>
>>> something it is like to be trampled dirt. I don't know what you mean <br>
>>> by "mental stuff", of course. I don't do any mental stuff as far as <br>
>>> I know. Everything I do is inherently "body stuff". Maybe that's <br>
>>> because I've experienced chronic pain my whole life. Maybe some of <br>
>>> you consistently live in a body free experience? I've only <br>
>>> experienced that a few times, e.g. running in a fasted state. And I <br>
>>> later suffered for that indulgent delusion.<br>
>>><br>
>>> No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff". So you need a more <br>
>>> concrete question.<br>
>>><br>
>>> On February 16, 2023 6:04:17 PM PST, Eric <br>
>>> Charles<<a href="mailto:eric.phillip.charles@gmail.com" target="_blank">eric.phillip.charles@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>>> "an account of the seemingly analogous position of panpsychism"<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> What is that more than something people say?<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> Do *you* experience the dirt at your feet as having a mental life? <br>
>>>> If so,<br>
>>>> tell me about it: What is the dirt like when it seems to be doing <br>
>>>> mental<br>
>>>> stuff? What kind of mental stuff is it doing?<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> If not: Have you seen anyone who earnestly thinks the dirt is doing <br>
>>>> mental<br>
>>>> stuff? If so, what were *they* like? How was that belief pervasive <br>
>>>> in their<br>
>>>> adjustments to the world? Based on your experiences with that <br>
>>>> person, how<br>
>>>> do you think your ways of acting in the world would change if you <br>
>>>> adopted<br>
>>>> such a position?<br>
>>>><br>
>>>><br>
>>>> <<a href="mailto:echarles@american.edu" target="_blank">echarles@american.edu</a>><br>
>>>><br>
>>>><br>
>>>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:27 PM glen<<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com" target="_blank">gepropella@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>>><br>
>>>>> I don't grok the context well enough to equivocate on concepts <br>
>>>>> like "have"<br>
>>>>> and "category of being". But in response to Nick's question: "What <br>
>>>>> is there<br>
>>>>> that animals do that demands us to invent categories to explain their<br>
>>>>> behavior?", my answer is "animals discretize the ambient muck". So if<br>
>>>>> categorization is somehow fundamentally related to discretization, <br>
>>>>> then<br>
>>>>> animals clearly categorize in that sense.<br>
>>>>><br>
>>>>> I mean, all you have to do is consider the frequencies of light the<br>
>>>>> animals' eyeballs do or don't see. That's two categories right <br>
>>>>> there, the<br>
>>>>> light they do see and the light they don't. Unless there's some <br>
>>>>> sophistry<br>
>>>>> hidden behind the question, the answer seems clear. Reflection on <br>
>>>>> what one<br>
>>>>> does and does not categorize isn't necessary. I could even claim <br>
>>>>> my truck<br>
>>>>> discretizes fluids ... those that make it seize up versus <br>
>>>>> lubricate it,<br>
>>>>> those that it burns vs those that stop it cold. Etc. Maybe the <br>
>>>>> question is<br>
>>>>> better formulated as "What makes one impute categories on <br>
>>>>> another?" Clearly<br>
>>>>> my truck doesn't impute categories on squirrels.<br>
>>>>><br>
>>>>> But Nick does follow that question with this "experience" <br>
>>>>> nonsense. So my<br>
>>>>> guess is there *is* some sophistry behind the question, similar to <br>
>>>>> EricC's<br>
>>>>> incredulous response to DaveW's question about phenomenological <br>
>>>>> composition<br>
>>>>> of experience(s). What I find missing in Nick's (and EricC's) <br>
>>>>> distillation<br>
>>>>> of experience monism is an account of the seemingly analogous <br>
>>>>> position of<br>
>>>>> panpsychism. Were I a scholar, I might take such work on myself. <br>
>>>>> But I'm<br>
>>>>> not and, hence, very much appreciate these distillations of dead <br>
>>>>> white<br>
>>>>> men's metaphysics and will take what I can get. 8^D<br>
>>>>><br>
>>>>> On 2/16/23 09:22, Steve Smith wrote:<br>
>>>>>> Might I offer some terminology reframing, or at least ask for some<br>
>>>>> additional explication?<br>
>>>>>> 1. I think "behaviours" would be all Nick's Martians *could* <br>
>>>>>> observe?<br>
>>>>> They would be inferring "experiences" from observed behaviours?<br>
>>>>>> 2. When we talk about "categories" here, are we talking about<br>
>>>>> "categories of being"? Ontologies, as it were?<br>
>>>>>> Regarding ErisS' reflections... I *do* think that animals behave *as<br>
>>>>> if* they "have categories", though I don't know what it even means <br>
>>>>> to say<br>
>>>>> that they "have categories" in the way Aristotle and his <br>
>>>>> legacy-followers<br>
>>>>> (e.g. us) do... I would suggest/suspect that dogs and squirrels <br>
>>>>> are in no<br>
>>>>> way aware of these "categories" and that to say that they do is a<br>
>>>>> projection by (us) humans who have fabricated the (useful in myriad<br>
>>>>> contexts) of a category/Category/ontology. So in that sense they <br>
>>>>> do NOT<br>
>>>>> *have* categories... I think in this <br>
>>>>> conception/thought-experiment we<br>
>>>>> assume that Martians *would* and would be looking to map their own<br>
>>>>> ontologies onto the behaviour (and inferred experiences and <br>
>>>>> judgements?)<br>
>>>>> of Terran animals?<br>
>>>>>> If I were to invert the subject/object relation, I would suggest <br>
>>>>>> that it<br>
>>>>> is "affordances" not "experiences" (or animals' behaviours) we <br>
>>>>> want to<br>
>>>>> categorize into ontologies? It is what things are "good for" that <br>
>>>>> make<br>
>>>>> them interesting/similar/different to living beings. And "good <br>
>>>>> for" is<br>
>>>>> conditionally contextualized. My dog and cat both find squirrels <br>
>>>>> "good<br>
>>>>> for" chasing, but so too for baby rabbits and skunks (once).<br>
>>>>>> Or am I barking up the wrong set of reserved lexicons?<br>
>>>>>><br>
>>>>>> To segue (as I am wont to do), it feels like this discussion <br>
>>>>>> parallels<br>
>>>>> the one about LLMs where we train the hell out of variations on <br>
>>>>> learning<br>
>>>>> classifier systems until they are as good as (or better than) we <br>
>>>>> (humans)<br>
>>>>> are at predicting the next token in a string of human-generated <br>
>>>>> tokens (or<br>
>>>>> synthesizing a string of tokens which humans cannot distinguish <br>
>>>>> from a<br>
>>>>> string generated by another human, in particular one with the <br>
>>>>> proverbial<br>
>>>>> 10,000 hours of specialized training). The fact that or <br>
>>>>> "ologies" tend to<br>
>>>>> be recorded and organized as knowledge structures and in fact usually<br>
>>>>> *propogated* (taught/learnt) by the same makes us want to believe <br>
>>>>> (some of<br>
>>>>> us) that hidden inside these LLMs are precisely the same "ologies" we<br>
>>>>> encode in our myriad textbooks and professional journal articles?<br>
>>>>>> I think one of the questions that remains present within this <br>
>>>>>> group's<br>
>>>>> continued 'gurgitations is whether the organizations we have <br>
>>>>> conjured are<br>
>>>>> particularly special, or just one of an infinitude of superposed<br>
>>>>> alternative formulations? And whether some of those formulations <br>
>>>>> are<br>
>>>>> acutely occult and/or abstract and whether the existing (accepted)<br>
>>>>> formulations (e.g. Western Philosophy and Science, etc) are <br>
>>>>> uniquely (and<br>
>>>>> exclusively or at least optimally) capable of capturing/describing <br>
>>>>> what is<br>
>>>>> "really real" (nod to George Berkeley).<br>
>>>>>> Some here (self included) may often suggest that such formulation <br>
>>>>>> is at<br>
>>>>> best a coincidence of history and as well as it "covers" a <br>
>>>>> description of<br>
>>>>> "reality", it is by circumstance and probably by abstract <br>
>>>>> conception ("all<br>
>>>>> models are wrong...") incomplete and in error. But nevertheless <br>
>>>>> still<br>
>>>>> useful...<br>
>>>>>> Maybe another way of reframing Nick's question (on a tangent) is <br>
>>>>>> to ask<br>
>>>>> whether the Barsoomians had their own Aristotle to conceive of<br>
>>>>> Categories? Or did they train their telescopes on ancient Greece <br>
>>>>> and<br>
>>>>> learn Latin Lip Reading and adopt one or more the Greek's <br>
>>>>> philosophical<br>
>>>>> traditions? And then, did the gas-balloon creatures floating in the<br>
>>>>> atmosphere-substance of Jupiter observe the Martians' who had <br>
>>>>> observed the<br>
>>>>> Greeks and thereby come up with their own Categories. Maybe it was <br>
>>>>> those<br>
>>>>> creatures who beamed these abstractions straight into the neural <br>
>>>>> tissue of<br>
>>>>> the Aristotelians and Platonists? Do gas-balloon creatures even <br>
>>>>> have<br>
>>>>> solids to be conceived of as Platonic? And are they missing out <br>
>>>>> if they<br>
>>>>> don't? Do they have their own Edwin Abbot Abbot? And what would <br>
>>>>> the<br>
>>>>> Cheela<<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg</a>> say?<br>
>>>>>> My dog and the rock squirrels he chases want to know... so do the <br>
>>>>>> cholla<br>
>>>>> cactus fruits/segments they hoard in their nests!<br>
>>>>>> Mumble,<br>
>>>>>><br>
>>>>>> - Steve<br>
>>>>>><br>
>>>>>> On 2/16/23 5:37 AM, Santafe wrote:<br>
>>>>>>> It\u2019s the tiniest and most idiosyncratic take on this question, but<br>
>>>>> FWIW, here:<br>
>>>>>>> <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1520752113" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1520752113</a><br>
>>>>>>><br>
>>>>>>> I actually think that all of what Nick says below is a perfectly <br>
>>>>>>> good<br>
>>>>> draft of a POV.<br>
>>>>>>> As to whether animals \u201chave\u201d categories: Spend time with a dog.<br>
>>>>> Doesn\u2019t take very much time. Their interest in conspecifics is <br>
>>>>> (ahem)<br>
>>>>> categorically different from their interest in people, different <br>
>>>>> than to<br>
>>>>> squirrels, different than to cats, different than to snakes.<br>
>>>>>>> For me to even say that seems like cueing a narcissism of small<br>
>>>>> differences, when overwhelmingly, their behavior is structured around<br>
>>>>> categories, as is everyone else\u2019s. Squirrels don\u2019t mistake acorns <br>
>>>>> for<br>
>>>>> birds of prey. Or for the tree limbs and house roofs one can jump <br>
>>>>> onto.<br>
>>>>> Or for other squirrels. It\u2019s all categories. Behavior is an <br>
>>>>> operation on<br>
>>>>> categories.<br>
>>>>>>> I found it interesting that you invoked \u201cnouns\u201d as a framework <br>
>>>>>>> that is<br>
>>>>> helpful but sometimes obstructive. One might just have said <br>
>>>>> \u201cwords\u201d. This<br>
>>>>> is interesting to me already, because my syntactician friends will <br>
>>>>> tell you<br>
>>>>> that a noun is not, as we were taught as children, a \u201cword for a <br>
>>>>> person,<br>
>>>>> place, or thing\u201d, but rather a \u201cword in a language that transforms <br>
>>>>> as nouns<br>
>>>>> transform in that language\u201d, which is a bit of an obfuscation, <br>
>>>>> since they<br>
>>>>> do have in common that they are in some way \u201cobject-words\u201d. But <br>
>>>>> from the<br>
>>>>> polysemy and synonymy perspective, we see that \u201cmeanings\u201d cross the<br>
>>>>> noun-verb syntactic distinction quite frequently for some categories.<br>
>>>>> Eye/see, ear/hear, moon/shine, and stuff like that. My typologist <br>
>>>>> friends<br>
>>>>> tell me that is common but particular to some meanings much more than<br>
>>>>> others.<br>
>>>>>>> Another fun thing I was told by Ted Chiang a few months ago, <br>
>>>>>>> which I<br>
>>>>> was amazed I had not heard from linguists, and still want to hold in<br>
>>>>> reserve until I can check it further. He says that languages without<br>
>>>>> written forms do not have a word for \u201cword\u201d. If true, that seems <br>
>>>>> very<br>
>>>>> interesting and important. If Chiang believes it to be true, it is<br>
>>>>> probably already a strong enough regularity to be more-or-less <br>
>>>>> true, and<br>
>>>>> thus still interesting and important.<br>
>>>>>>> Eric<br>
>>>>>>><br>
>>>>>>>> On Feb 15, 2023, at 1:19 PM,<<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com" target="_blank">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> <<br>
>>>>> <a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com" target="_blank">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>>>>>>> FWiW, I willmake every effort to arrive fed to Thuam by 10.30<br>
>>>>> Mountain. I want to hear the experts among you hold forth on WTF a<br>
>>>>> cateogory actually IS. I am thinking (duh) that a category is a <br>
>>>>> more or<br>
>>>>> less diffuse node in a network of associations (signs, if you <br>
>>>>> must). Hence<br>
>>>>> they constitute a vast table of what goes with what, what is <br>
>>>>> predictable<br>
>>>>> from what, etc. This accommodates \u201cfamily resemblance\u201d quite <br>
>>>>> nicely. Do<br>
>>>>> I think animals have categories, in this sense, ABSOLUTELY EFFING <br>
>>>>> YES. Does<br>
>>>>> this make me a (shudder) nominalist? I hope not.<br>
>>>>>>>> Words\u2026nouns in particular\u2026 confuse this category business. Words<br>
>>>>> place constraints on how vague these nodes can be. They impose <br>
>>>>> on the<br>
>>>>> network constraints to which it is ill suited. True, the more my<br>
>>>>> associations with \u201chorse\u201d line up with your associations with <br>
>>>>> \u201chorse\u201d, the<br>
>>>>> more true the horse seems. Following Peirce, I would say that <br>
>>>>> where our<br>
>>>>> nodes increasingly correspond with increasing shared experience, <br>
>>>>> we have<br>
>>>>> evidence ot the (ultimate) truth of the nodes, their \u201creality\u201d in <br>
>>>>> Peirce\u2019s<br>
>>>>> terms. Here is where I am striving to hang on to Peirce\u2019s realism.<br>
>>>>>>>> The reason I want the geeks to participate tomorrow is that I keep<br>
>>>>> thinking of a semantic webby thing that Steve devised for the <br>
>>>>> Institute<br>
>>>>> about a decade ago. Now a semantic web would be a kind of <br>
>>>>> metaphor for an<br>
>>>>> associative web; don\u2019t associate with other words in exactly the same<br>
>>>>> manner in which experiences associate with other experiences. <br>
>>>>> Still, I<br>
>>>>> think the metaphor is interesting. Also, I am kind of <br>
>>>>> re-interested in my<br>
>>>>> \u201cauthorial voice\u201d, how much it operates like cbt.<br>
><br>
><br>
<br>
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