Brings to mind the marriage vow “to have and to hold" > On Aug 24, 2021, at 9:52 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Spanish has two words, "haber" and "tener" that are usually translated into > English as "to have". The former is the auxiliary verb and the latter > denotes possession. > > --- > Frank C. Wimberly > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, > Santa Fe, NM 87505 > > 505 670-9918 > Santa Fe, NM > > On Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:48 AM David Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu > <mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote: > It’s the right kind of answer, Nick, and I don’t find it compelling. > > Put aside for a moment the use of “have” as an auxiliary verb. I can come up > with wonderful reasons why that is both informative and primordial, but I > also believe they are complete nonsense and only illustrate that there are no > good rules for reliable argument in this domain. > > Also, I don’t adopt the frame of using the past tense as a device to skew the > argument toward the conclusion you started with. (Now _there_ is a category > error: to start with a conclusion. Lawyer!) > > I think probably throughout Indo-European derived languages, “have” is used > to refer to inherent attributes. I have brown eyes. I have eyes at all. It > takes a surprisingly convoluted construction to assert that someone looking > at my face will find two brown eyes there, that doesn’t use “have” as the > verb of attribution. So that’s old, and it is something the language has > really committed to. I think you have to commit unnatural acts to argue that > that is a verb of action. > > Possession isn’t even a lot more action-y. I have two turntables and a > microphone. If nobody is trying to take them from me, it is not clear that I > am “doing” anything to “have” them. > > (btw, I am not a metaphor monist. I practice polysemy, like the Mormons. So > it seems completely natural that there can be multiple meanings, if there are > any meanings at all, and that distinct ones can use the same word because > they are somehow similar despite not being the self-same.) > > It seems to me as if the truest action usage of “have” is one that is not > nearly as baked into the language. If I have lunch, I eat lunch. If I have > a fit, I throw a tantrum. Many circumlocutions available to me. That also > could be quite idiosyncratic to small language branches. I think you would > never, in normal speech, say you “had” lunch in German. You would just say > you ate lunch. (Or in Italian or French either, for that matter.) These > kinds of usages do not seem to me to carry strong cognitive weight. > > So it seems to me that the semantic core of “have” is probably attribution. > The legal sense of ownership is probably metaphorical. It would not _at all_ > surprise me if the use both in the auxiliary (widespread in IE) and in the > deictic (French il y a, there is) are deep metaphors describing either the > ambient, or the ineluctable structure of time, with attributes. > > But, back to whether attribution is natural for emotions (or, as good as > anything else, and better than most): > > If I “have” a sunny disposition, that seems not far from having brown eyes. > Italian: Il ha un buon aspetto. > > If I am having a bad day, that is a little different from having brown eyes, > and perhaps closer to having a black eye. Not an essence that defines my > nature, but a condition I can be in, or “take on". To say, indeed, that I > parse that as a pattern I carry around (as an aspect of constitution or > condition) does not seem category-erroneous to me. > > Sure, there are patterns in my behavior: if I take a hot shower and the water > lands on my black eye, I will wince. If you say good morning and I am having > a bad day, I will growl at you. A Skinnerian can say that my wincing is all > there is to my black eye. But a physician would tell me to put ice on it, > and would use the color of the bruise to indicate which eye I should put the > ice on. > > These uses of having seem tied up, more closely than with anything else, with > uses of being, as SteveS mentioned. So the be/do dichotomy seems to > determine largely where the verb usages split. > > Of course, living is a process, played out on organized structures. Brains > probably look different in eeg and electrode arrays in one emotional > condition than in another, and they probably also have different > neurotransmitter profiles, and maybe other things. Even You probably don’t > want to refer to a neurotransmitter concentration as a “doing”; It is a > variable of state, like a black eye is a state of an eye. You might want to > refer to the brain action pattern as “doing”, but maybe only in the sense > that you refer to the existence of non-dead metabolism as “doing” — they are > both processes. To me, the common language seems to split the be and the do > on brevity, transience, isolation, or suddenness of an activity. I _am_ > surly, and I _do_ growl at you. > > If non-black English still preserved the habitual tense, as John McWhorter > claims black American English still does, we might be able to make a > different kind of a distinction, between the pattern or habit as a state, and > the event within it as an act. That might give an even better account of the > split in the common language. > > I also want to acknowledge Glen’s points about working through many frames in > a dynamical way. I can’t add anything, but I do agree. > > Eric > > >> On Aug 24, 2021, at 12:30 PM, <thompnicks...@gmail.com >> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> <thompnicks...@gmail.com >> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> Now wait a minute! This is the sort of question I am supposed to ask of >> you? A question to which the answer is so obvious to the recipient that he >> is in danger of not being able to locate it. >> >> Ok, so, their meanings obviously overlap. If you tell me you “had” a steak >> last night, I wont assume that it’s available for us to eat tonight: “had” >> is serving as a verb of action. The situation is further confused by the >> fact that both words are used as helper words, i.e, words that indicate the >> tense of another verb. To say that I “have” gone and that I “done” gone >> mean the same thing in different dialects >> >> In general the grammar of the two words is different. If you say I had >> something, I am sent looking for a property, possession or attribute. If >> you say I did something, I am sent looking for an action I performed. So, >> there is a vast inclination to make emotion words as a reference to >> something we carry inside, rather than a pattern in what we do. This seems >> to me like misdirection, a category error in Ryle’s terms. >> >> Does that help? >> >> Mumble, mumble, as steve would say. >> >> Nick >> Nick Thompson >> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> >> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ >> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,JZI_rTsnO4PMxifIK-1Pc4gAtSO08UfA4WqKjx73T4Ek3tY5Xl71BUdt3A807uKgEplYNDHINHuRjmL2qnv7SkO_J10fWv5jebCjhCravg,,&typo=1> >> >> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> >> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith >> Sent: Monday, August 23, 2021 4:23 PM >> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com >> <mailto:friam@redfish.com>> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions >> >> Nick, what’s the difference between having and doing? >> >> I once heard Ray Jackendoff give quite a nice talk on word categories. Of >> all of it, the one part I remember the most about is what he said about >> prepositions. Even after you are getting right most of the rest of word >> usage in a new language (or handling it well with a dumb, rule-based >> translator), you are still at sea in the prepositions. Their scopes are not >> completely arbitrary, but arbitrary in such large part that speakers >> essentially learn them nearly as a list of ad hoc applications. >> >> But when we are in a specialist domain, such as reference to the unpacking >> of the convention-term “emotion”, which we all know is a different >> specialist domain from car ownership or the consumption of lunch, we know >> that verbs are not on any a priori firmer ground than prepositions. Or it >> seems to me, we should expect that to be so. >> >> I am struck by how widespread it is in languages to use the same particle or >> other construction for possession and attribution. Both in concretes and in >> the abstractions that seemingly derive from them. SteveG will like this one >> from Chinese if I haven’t messed it up or misunderstood it: youde you, youde >> meiyou. Some have it, some don’t. >> >> Performance of an act, being configured in a state or condition, if we use >> passphrases rather than passwords, we can discriminate many categories. >> >> So when we use metaphors to expand the scope of reference and discourse (to >> eventually shed their metaphor status and become true polysemes once our >> familiarity in the new domain is such that, as novelists say, it “stands up >> and casts a shadow”), are some of the metaphors more obligatory than others? >> Are the psychologists sure they are right about which ones? Are they right? >> >> Eric >> >> >> >> >> >>> On Aug 24, 2021, at 3:06 AM, <thompnicks...@gmail.com >>> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> <thompnicks...@gmail.com >>> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh! >>> >>> How we seal ourselves in caves of nonsense! >>> >>> And emotion is not something we “have”; it’s something we do. Or, if you >>> prefer a dualist sensory metaphor, it’s a particular mode of feeling the >>> world. >>> >>> n >>> >>> Nick Thompson >>> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> >>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,7HSjAiYZs0TskSYM3z8t3I3vm7JNBV7OyZgHYp-6EjYczSSRW9xIT6typjL4CJpU_atJnKNr9galrl_vRQGGlXHYIX3WqoquVu8Bpe1ntqUc&typo=1> >>> >>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> >>> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp >>> Sent: Monday, August 23, 2021 6:04 AM >>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com >>> <mailto:friam@redfish.com>> >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Eternal questions >>> >>> The creators of the Aibo robot dog say it has ‘real emotions and instinct’. >>> This is obviously not true, it's just an illusion. >>> >>> But then, according to Daniel Dennett, human consciousness is just an >>> illusion. >>> https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/illusionism.pdf >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fase.tufts.edu%2fcogstud%2fdennett%2fpapers%2fillusionism.pdf&c=E,1,wZyzI4xcowqEH1XfK9Q39EPbwHxfV11-EVaCCROdnuFD-hDpoJBA6vqVkaGgbd-yOuYwvTupjP_Soz_obIbOZjgWkLMocfZEa2BpUqNsBKBy&typo=1> >>> >>> On Mon, 23 Aug 2021 at 09:18, Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net >>> <mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote: >>>> "In today’s AI universe, all the eternal questions (about intentionality, >>>> consciousness, free will, mind-body problem...) have become engineering >>>> problems", argues this Guardian article. >>>> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/10/dogs-inner-life-what-robot-pet-taught-me-about-consciousness-artificial-intelligence >>>> >>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.com%2fscience%2f2021%2faug%2f10%2fdogs-inner-life-what-robot-pet-taught-me-about-consciousness-artificial-intelligence&c=E,1,0zM4mCzKmbes0weZLeJCmVy6dAfDvfYxSyHKpvl-aa8-hwd84lMymcY9HHVsp4jXbWOCjmb3kQDLfcwUGjHCouKd8sNTTfFuQtv62vY-RfAsXg,,&typo=1> >>>> >>>> -J. >>>> >>>> - 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