4 ms·

Do you believe in the existence of any noun words which serve as something other than a "useful label, loosely agreed to out of convenience"?

kelseyfrog 4mo ago
Like non-referential nouns?
- Edman274 4mo ago
  I'm not trying to be difficult, but could you give me an example?
  - kelseyfrog 4mo ago
    No worries, I'm trying to clarify the question. I don't have an ability to exhaustively test all words against this assertion. Nor do I have the kind of access memory to draw one if it exists. Sorry.
    - Edman274 4mo ago
      I guess my question or confusion is that if there exists no readily accessible, easily identifiable example of a noun which does actually serve as something more than "a useful label, agreed to out of convenience", then the critique appears to be stating a vacuous truth, because there are no entities for whom the critique would not apply.
      - kelseyfrog 4mo ago
        My point was more that we have words for things that don't exist, whose map gets mistaken for territory. Many of them appear very much like fundamental parts of reality, making appearance an untrustworthy instrument. Reversing cause and effect between reference and referent is something almost everyone does, no one notices, and is the source of endless confusion. We should strive to not confuse our model of the world with the world itself. Consciousness exists in our model of the world as much as red does.
        Edman274 4mo ago
        > words for things that don't exist This is rhetorically slippery, and feels like it is restating the thing that I asked to be demonstrated when I asked for example of the opposite. It feels like begging the question. In either case, the central thing that I was saying is that critiquing an article because it makes a claim about a specific word which also applies to an entire class of words makes that critique feel less informative. What I mean is that if there were an article that said "The Sun is not red" and the response was that redness is a concept of human minds, then I don't know if I would feel informed. If the comment is just limited to point that out, I guess I wanted to point out the limitation.
        kelseyfrog 4mo ago
        Where does red exist? In the property of the object or in the mind of the observer? Where does consciousness exist?
        Edman274 4mo ago
        > in the mind of the observer In the what of the observer? Are you accepting that minds exist but consciousness doesn't?
SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
"Car" is a good example of a label that's pretty strictly agreed to. If someone tells me they've developed a new car and then shows me a motorcycle, it's easy to prove that it's not a car, even though many of its engineering principles and functional components are identical to those in cars. With consciousness, on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any motorcycle-equivalent. Essentially everyone I've discussed the issue with (myself included) expects that any mind which runs on similar principles to ours or has similar thoughts to our thoughts is conscious.
- suddenlybananas 4mo ago
  You really don't have much experience in philosophy of language do you? It's notoriously hard to pin down the edges of such terms, even something like car or table. Is a Reliant Robin a car or a tricycle? If it's a car, why aren't other tricycles? What about a side-car of a motorcycle? What about an APC? What's the distinction between a flying car and a plane?
  - SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
    It's hard to pin down the edges of any term, but there exist things which are car-like and yet universally agreed not to be cars. That's what I claim doesn't exist for consciousness.
    - Edman274 4mo ago
      Describing something as "car-like" is begging the question. You are presupposing an objective definition for "car" in order to draw a distinction between things that are cars, and things that are almost cars. The reason such a thing doesn't exist for consciousness is that people believe that the offered definitions for consciousness are illegitimate. It would seem logically weird for me to accept that a term is "real" if it crosses some percentage of public acceptance of the definition, and not real otherwise. I would argue that using that heuristic would make it very obvious that computers are not conscious because it's a stance that practically everybody takes outside of hackernews.
- 4mo ago
ux266478 4mo ago
If we take the classical position that words point to real things in the world, "useful label, loosely agreed to out of convenience" is kind of just regurgitating the meaning of "word". The first half indicating the function, and the second half accounting for the fact we live in a world with a continuum of linguistic disparity. Now, this position isn't the only position. But a relational model of language for example takes his assertion to an even more extreme place, and suggests they don't function as labels at all.
dtj1123 4mo ago
Metre.
- Edman274 4mo ago
  A standardized unit of measure is almost definitionally a label of convenience, what? Why was there no concept of a meter until the 1790s? It was determined by a council of people, does that sound like a truth of the universe?
  - Tadpole9181 4mo ago
    This is being intentionally obtuse and you know it. A meter is the same anywhere in the universe. If it's not, it's not a meter. The defintion of "fat" changes based on any 3 people in the room. A handful of people would struggle to form a consensus on if all people, dogs, mice, worms, and/or bacteria are conscious.
    - Edman274 4mo ago
      If you take the strategy that you will create a definition, create a label for that definition, and then say that any deviations from the defintion that was chosen makes usage of the label incorrect, then yes, it's the same everywhere in the universe -- according to fiat, and I don't believe that that negates that it is a label, just that validity of usage of the label derives from the perceived authority of the labeller. God didn't come down from on high and say that a meter is the length light travels in 1/299792458th of the time for 9192631770 cycles of radiation of Cesium 133. People in rooms chose that it would be based on the circumference of the Earth with a line passing through Paris, France (how convenient), and if there were an academy in the 1790s that invented the concept of "fat", and "fat" means a BMI exceeding 30, then fat would be true everywhere in the universe too (BMI after all is defined as a ratio of height, measured in meters to weight, measured in kilograms, which are both fundamental SI units), and there would be no ambiguity. People are still coming up with definitions of consciousness and then those definitions end up being attacked by others who disagree with the foundation of the definition, which is - if you will recall - also what happened with the meter, over the course of centuries, until it was very recently redefined to be "unambiguous", but arbitrary. This was possible because few people had any particular emotional investment in the definition of a meter, and it is probable that consciousness will be eventually defined to mean that only humans can be conscious, which may be dissatisfying but would be true throughout the universe, like a meter. If the question then becomes "what defines a human" and "why a human", then I ask, why 1/299792458 of a second?

kelseyfrog 4mo ago

Like non-referential nouns?

Edman274 4mo ago
I'm not trying to be difficult, but could you give me an example?
- kelseyfrog 4mo ago
  No worries, I'm trying to clarify the question. I don't have an ability to exhaustively test all words against this assertion. Nor do I have the kind of access memory to draw one if it exists. Sorry.
  - Edman274 4mo ago
    I guess my question or confusion is that if there exists no readily accessible, easily identifiable example of a noun which does actually serve as something more than "a useful label, agreed to out of convenience", then the critique appears to be stating a vacuous truth, because there are no entities for whom the critique would not apply.
    - kelseyfrog 4mo ago
      My point was more that we have words for things that don't exist, whose map gets mistaken for territory. Many of them appear very much like fundamental parts of reality, making appearance an untrustworthy instrument. Reversing cause and effect between reference and referent is something almost everyone does, no one notices, and is the source of endless confusion. We should strive to not confuse our model of the world with the world itself. Consciousness exists in our model of the world as much as red does.
      - Edman274 4mo ago
        > words for things that don't exist This is rhetorically slippery, and feels like it is restating the thing that I asked to be demonstrated when I asked for example of the opposite. It feels like begging the question. In either case, the central thing that I was saying is that critiquing an article because it makes a claim about a specific word which also applies to an entire class of words makes that critique feel less informative. What I mean is that if there were an article that said "The Sun is not red" and the response was that redness is a concept of human minds, then I don't know if I would feel informed. If the comment is just limited to point that out, I guess I wanted to point out the limitation.
        kelseyfrog 4mo ago
        Where does red exist? In the property of the object or in the mind of the observer? Where does consciousness exist?
        Edman274 4mo ago
        > in the mind of the observer In the what of the observer? Are you accepting that minds exist but consciousness doesn't?

SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago

"Car" is a good example of a label that's pretty strictly agreed to. If someone tells me they've developed a new car and then shows me a motorcycle, it's easy to prove that it's not a car, even though many of its engineering principles and functional components are identical to those in cars. With consciousness, on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any motorcycle-equivalent. Essentially everyone I've discussed the issue with (myself included) expects that any mind which runs on similar principles to ours or has similar thoughts to our thoughts is conscious.

suddenlybananas 4mo ago
You really don't have much experience in philosophy of language do you? It's notoriously hard to pin down the edges of such terms, even something like car or table. Is a Reliant Robin a car or a tricycle? If it's a car, why aren't other tricycles? What about a side-car of a motorcycle? What about an APC? What's the distinction between a flying car and a plane?
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  It's hard to pin down the edges of any term, but there exist things which are car-like and yet universally agreed not to be cars. That's what I claim doesn't exist for consciousness.
  - Edman274 4mo ago
    Describing something as "car-like" is begging the question. You are presupposing an objective definition for "car" in order to draw a distinction between things that are cars, and things that are almost cars. The reason such a thing doesn't exist for consciousness is that people believe that the offered definitions for consciousness are illegitimate. It would seem logically weird for me to accept that a term is "real" if it crosses some percentage of public acceptance of the definition, and not real otherwise. I would argue that using that heuristic would make it very obvious that computers are not conscious because it's a stance that practically everybody takes outside of hackernews.
4mo ago

ux266478 4mo ago

If we take the classical position that words point to real things in the world, "useful label, loosely agreed to out of convenience" is kind of just regurgitating the meaning of "word". The first half indicating the function, and the second half accounting for the fact we live in a world with a continuum of linguistic disparity. Now, this position isn't the only position. But a relational model of language for example takes his assertion to an even more extreme place, and suggests they don't function as labels at all.

dtj1123 4mo ago

Metre.

Edman274 4mo ago
A standardized unit of measure is almost definitionally a label of convenience, what? Why was there no concept of a meter until the 1790s? It was determined by a council of people, does that sound like a truth of the universe?
- Tadpole9181 4mo ago
  This is being intentionally obtuse and you know it. A meter is the same anywhere in the universe. If it's not, it's not a meter. The defintion of "fat" changes based on any 3 people in the room. A handful of people would struggle to form a consensus on if all people, dogs, mice, worms, and/or bacteria are conscious.
  - Edman274 4mo ago
    If you take the strategy that you will create a definition, create a label for that definition, and then say that any deviations from the defintion that was chosen makes usage of the label incorrect, then yes, it's the same everywhere in the universe -- according to fiat, and I don't believe that that negates that it is a label, just that validity of usage of the label derives from the perceived authority of the labeller. God didn't come down from on high and say that a meter is the length light travels in 1/299792458th of the time for 9192631770 cycles of radiation of Cesium 133. People in rooms chose that it would be based on the circumference of the Earth with a line passing through Paris, France (how convenient), and if there were an academy in the 1790s that invented the concept of "fat", and "fat" means a BMI exceeding 30, then fat would be true everywhere in the universe too (BMI after all is defined as a ratio of height, measured in meters to weight, measured in kilograms, which are both fundamental SI units), and there would be no ambiguity. People are still coming up with definitions of consciousness and then those definitions end up being attacked by others who disagree with the foundation of the definition, which is - if you will recall - also what happened with the meter, over the course of centuries, until it was very recently redefined to be "unambiguous", but arbitrary. This was possible because few people had any particular emotional investment in the definition of a meter, and it is probable that consciousness will be eventually defined to mean that only humans can be conscious, which may be dissatisfying but would be true throughout the universe, like a meter. If the question then becomes "what defines a human" and "why a human", then I ask, why 1/299792458 of a second?