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, <thompnicks...@gmail.com> > <thompnicks...@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. > > Rushing, > > Nick > > From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles > Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2023 10:29 AM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Thuram still happening? > > Well shoot..... that would do it.... Thank you! > > > > On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 12:28 PM Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Today is Wednesday, isn't it? >> >> --- >> Frank C. Wimberly >> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, >> Santa Fe, NM 87505 >> >> 505 670-9918 >> Santa Fe, NM >> >> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 10:19 AM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> Are the Thursday online meetings still happening? 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