Re: PHILOSOPHY/TECH: place structures and metaphysical parsimony

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GRACKLE.STOCKBRIDGE.MA.US>]

lojbab cuske di'e

   Animals are of species, which presumes that people practice
   taxonomy.  I suspect that children do not, and in fact do the
   inverse (all 4-legged animals are "doggy" at first) when very
   young.

According to George Lakoff, ``Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What
Categories Reveal about the Mind'',

page 32

    The picture [Roger] Brown gives is that categorization, for a
    child, begins ``at the level of distinctive action,'' the level of
    flowers, and cats and dimes, and then proceeds upward to
    superordinate categores (like plant and animal) and downward to
    subordinate categores (like jonquil and siamese) by ``achievements
    of the imagination.''

page 33ff
    ...the basic-level (or generic) categories, which are in the
    middle of the taxonomic hierarchy, are learned first; then
    children work up the hierarchy generalizing, and down the
    hierarchy specialising.

Speaking of the level of genus, not species, the middle taxonomic
level, which is the level at which things are perceived holistically
as a single gestalt,

page 34

    Folk categories correspond to scientfic categories extremely
    accurately at this level, but not very accurately at other levels.

page 37

    [Brent] Berlin suggests that a given culture may under-utilize
    certain human capacities used in basic-level categorization, for
    example, the capacity for gestalt perception.  Thus, in urban
    cultures, people may treat the category tree as basic level.


lojbab cuske di'e

   ... All the discussion about color words has been colored in recent
   years by the model of color involving saturation, hue, etc. ... How
   would Aristotle fill in the places of a color with a place for hue
   and saturation?

He would learn how to speak in Lojban, which means he would have to
learn more than just a one-for-one substitution for classical Greek.
The same happens when I try to learn Russian, which distinguishes
among shades of blue.  There is no way to avoid learning new things
when you learn Lojban: you must learn that tenses are not a necessary
part of language, that logical `and' is different from English `and',
that spatials are a kind of tense, etc.

   ..if we devise a new model of color in the future which does not
   involve these concepts, how do we get rid of them from the
   language?

Change the place structure or else use up some of the remaining gismu
space and create a new gismu or else make a borrowing.  There will be
a period of confusion while some people use the old word and some the
new.  There really is no other solution.

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    Rattlesnake Mountain Road        bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725