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> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>
<thompnicks...@gmail.com> <mailto: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> <mailto: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>
<mailto: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>
<mailto:wimber...@gmail.com> wrote:
Today is Wednesday, isn't it?
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505
<https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,+%0D%0ASanta+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 10:19 AM Eric Charles<eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com>
<mailto:eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> wrote:
Are the Thursday online meetings still happening? I missed a few weeks due
to work piling up meetings on, but I'm trying to log in now, and it looks like
the meeting hasn't started.
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