3 ms·

I get the impression that philosophy of mind people neither have dogs nor ride horses seriously, as both are supremely complex relationships and conversations w

I get the impression that philosophy of mind people neither have dogs nor ride horses seriously, as both are supremely complex relationships and conversations without verbal language - as defined by being a way of communicating abstractions, counterfactuals, and non-present things. The dogs I've had all understood nonverbal and almost invisible cues, but the horse case would probably blow their minds. A ride is a conversation with another being that asks it to suspend its instincts as a literal prey animal, let a predator climb on its back, maintain this suspension of instinct, and then contact muscles, move each limb and bend its body in a precise way in response to microexpressions of the body that originate from intentions in the riders mind, both in and outside its natural habitat, and even trust you enough to blindly jump obstacles without any idea of what's on the other side of them if they are doing XC. Serious riders cultivate a sophisticated and rich sub-language for communicating with completely different beings - and one that transfers between them! Putting on shows is just a way to make money and support the habit, but it has almost nothing to do with the human art of communicating with other beings. When you reframe riding a horse as riding an alien, suddenly it's insanely cool that we can do these incredibly sophisticated things without language. I wish I could source it but there was an AI talk posted here where the speaker said, "language is a tool we evolved to act through others," and I think it was in the context of getting ML agents to develop ways to co-ordinate and scale. It's a rudimentary tool, but it is not the substrate or the real for anything other than perhaps the ego, which I believe is also an artifact of language. Language is not so much the scaffolding as it is a keyhole that provides a very narrow view of the world, and perhaps of the self, which I suspect is also an artifact of language. The notion of "I," is above the fold of language, whereas when you are working with another being without language, the "I," disappears, much like when we have other intense experiences like speeding on a motorcycle or tripping balls on a mismeasured dose of hallucinogens, not often at the same time. BJJ practitioners talk about similar ways of relating as well. Maybe it's just me, but as someone who spends much of their time cultivating skills outside the domain of language, I'd wonder if philosophers of mind need to get out more?

analog31 5y ago
I know it's qualitatively different, and not to make light of your comment... But I couldn't help amusing myself with the thought, that I have the same kind of relationship with my bicycle. A difference is that if I close my eyes while riding a horse, the horse probably won't kill me.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Riding a horse is a conversation of sorts. The horse has its own opinions on how fast it wants to go and what path it wants to take. It doesn't just blindly obey you, although you can make yourself "loud enough" to override it. Riding a donkey, on the other hand is completely different, as you just can't make yourself "loud enough" and must always settle for a compromise. You don't get that from a bicycle.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Is it possible to say that dogs and horses are creatures beyond any machine and to say that language grants human beings unique advantages and a unique flexibility?
- motohagiography 5y ago
  It is, and I think there was previously a general view that only humans have language that handles abstractions like counterfactuals and non-present objects, which was disproven by border collies searching for named objects. The "riding an alien," frame opens up the idea of other intelligences to ask the question of, is there an analogy where if let's say most humans and our language lacked the tools to communicate or reason together about things that were not there in the room with us, how would you communicate with those people? It's a bit like Plato's Cave, but imo, the answer is math. Language is not the substrate for cognition and the mind, math is. The way we communicate concepts to horses, interestingly, is via geometry. A horse has no concept of lines and circles, but by establishing a foundation of lines, circles and other figures, we build language with them by associating movements that express our intentions with those figures and points on them. The reason it's not just "training," and I would argue it's language, is because once you have established this geometric languge, a horse can determine your intentions from the ground, meters away, and not on its back. Modern olympic dressage in this sense is a kind of cargo cult that preserves some of these ideas and techniques, but in a weird ritual pagentry form, where the deeper art is something each individual practices. I'd speculate that humans have been doing math as long as we've been riding horses isn't a total coincidence. It makes one wonder what else geometry can be a vehicle for communicating, and what it might mean to encode intentions via geometry for us. It's worth re-watching the Ted Chiang / Denis Villeneuve movie Arrival and Amy Adams' characters' flashbacks in it for a really beautiful illustration of this.

analog31 5y ago

I know it's qualitatively different, and not to make light of your comment... But I couldn't help amusing myself with the thought, that I have the same kind of relationship with my bicycle. A difference is that if I close my eyes while riding a horse, the horse probably won't kill me.

marcosdumay 5y ago
Riding a horse is a conversation of sorts. The horse has its own opinions on how fast it wants to go and what path it wants to take. It doesn't just blindly obey you, although you can make yourself "loud enough" to override it. Riding a donkey, on the other hand is completely different, as you just can't make yourself "loud enough" and must always settle for a compromise. You don't get that from a bicycle.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Is it possible to say that dogs and horses are creatures beyond any machine and to say that language grants human beings unique advantages and a unique flexibility?

motohagiography 5y ago
It is, and I think there was previously a general view that only humans have language that handles abstractions like counterfactuals and non-present objects, which was disproven by border collies searching for named objects. The "riding an alien," frame opens up the idea of other intelligences to ask the question of, is there an analogy where if let's say most humans and our language lacked the tools to communicate or reason together about things that were not there in the room with us, how would you communicate with those people? It's a bit like Plato's Cave, but imo, the answer is math. Language is not the substrate for cognition and the mind, math is. The way we communicate concepts to horses, interestingly, is via geometry. A horse has no concept of lines and circles, but by establishing a foundation of lines, circles and other figures, we build language with them by associating movements that express our intentions with those figures and points on them. The reason it's not just "training," and I would argue it's language, is because once you have established this geometric languge, a horse can determine your intentions from the ground, meters away, and not on its back. Modern olympic dressage in this sense is a kind of cargo cult that preserves some of these ideas and techniques, but in a weird ritual pagentry form, where the deeper art is something each individual practices. I'd speculate that humans have been doing math as long as we've been riding horses isn't a total coincidence. It makes one wonder what else geometry can be a vehicle for communicating, and what it might mean to encode intentions via geometry for us. It's worth re-watching the Ted Chiang / Denis Villeneuve movie Arrival and Amy Adams' characters' flashbacks in it for a really beautiful illustration of this.