This response is going to be extensive. I do this because writing down
my thoughts in detail helps me improve my understanding of the matter.
On 16 August 2011 15:00, Jonathan Jones <
eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 3:13 AM, tijlan <
jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 15 August 2011 23:35, Jonathan Jones <
eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Worse, if you adopt the axiom that a whole satisfies a property if any
>> >> subwhole does, the referents could also include rhinoceroses.
>> >
>> > No, it could not. While it is true that a brain is a mass of neurons,
>> > it is not true that a mass of neurons is a brain.
>>
>> A brain generally includes a mass of neurons + other stuff. It isn't
>> just a mass of neurons, so I wouldn't equate the two. Both statements
>> seem false to me.
>
> First, what "other stuff" are you referring to,
Notably glia (non-neuronal cells that protect neurons), as well as
cerebrospinal fluid, blood vessels, etc.
> and second, not being composed of /only/ something doesn't make it true.
> An ocean is not 100% water, but would you say it is false that an ocean is made of water?
Depends on what you mean by "X is made of Y ", which seems to me
fuzzier than "X is Y". The statement you mentioned is not so fuzzy, "a
brain IS a mass of neurons", which seems to exclude what isn't a mass
of neurons.
>> If the whole body rather than
>> particular organs can be said to viska AND satre AND pensi, the same
>> principle would allow us to say
>>
>> A rhinoceros is processing neural inputs and breathing.
>>
>> instead of
>>
>> A rhinoceros' brain is processing neural inputs and its lungs are
>> breathing.
>>
>> Function-wise at least, then, it would seem ok to think that a
>> rhinoceros 'does brain' as much as a brain 'does brain'. And, given
>> that "does X" and "is X" are often interchangeable interpretations of
>> a predicate in Lojban --
>
> No. A rhino can be said to be processing neural inputs, but this is pensi, not besna.
Neural input processes vary in sorts. In order to pensi, concepts must
be available, and not all neural inputs are readily concepts. Raw
neural inputs, electrical, are 0/1 information, and this can be
organized incrementally according to the so-called "working memory
capacity". Quantitative research for this has been done in the field
of information science and developmental psychology, one of the
notable studies being the model of hierarchical complexity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_Hierarchical_Complexity
Every stage represents a particular form of neural input process.
pensi is likely stage-4 onwards.
>> > While it is true that a rhinoceros has a brain, it is not true that a
>> > rhinoceros is a brain.
>>
>> The confusion of a part with a whole is common even in Lojban the
>> logical language. Consider this:
>>
>> mi viska gi'e satre gi'e pensi
>>
>> What exactly does "mi" refer to, such that all the connected bridi
>> mutually hold true for it? Is it a pair of eyes, an arm, a brain, the
>> whole body, or something else?
>
> The whole body. However, especially in this case, the whole is not equal to
> the sum of it's parts. The entity which is being referred to by {mi} is not
> merely a composite of eyes, arms, etc.
How would you delineate "the whole body"? I understand a physical body
of life as a spatial extent of a perceivedly-individual
self-sustaining system. That's more than just a bag of flesh.
Materials such as air, water, food, etc. that we usually perceive to
be 'external' to 'our own body' are actually essential parts of the
physical self-sustaining whole. Other physical factors that might
subjectively seem intangible, too, are often integral to something
being a working body of a creature, such as extreme water pressures
for deep sea fish. Conversely, something that's a "whole human body"
at a certain conditional lower pressure would cease to exist in a deep
sea without that certain pressure. The spatial extent of an organism,
a body, technically goes beyond the tissue coverings, the skins. A
reference to the stuffing inside the skins is not always a reference
to the entirety of a living body.
And when it comes to more-psychological beings such as humans,
metaphysical dimensions are involved. It's hard to equate "do" in
"prami do" or "do ckeji" as a mere collection of physical cells:
-- It's not always the case that people love you as a bag of flesh.
People can love you for what you do, for what you are as a
representation of an event, which again goes beyond the physical skin
boundary. I can say to love a singer not as a certain group of
mereologically (part-whole-ly) related cells but as a representation
of the event that a ('her') singing and a ('my') listening to it have
been possible in a certain way.
-- It's not always the case that the feeling of shame occurs due
only to physical reasons. Neurons partake in the creation of the
feeling of shame, but shameness is often a cultural mechanism, and the
subject of such a feeling is often a systemic terminal of a society,
which is supra-physical. "Someone feels ashamed" can often be
sociologically paraphrased as "a bit of the society is systemically
experiencing a controlling force".
> Further, eyes do not see. Eyes merely
> generate neural impulses in reaction to the stimulus of being bombarded by
> photons, which are then carried to a specific area of the brain, where the
> impulses are interpreted. Seeing is not possible without both eyes and
> brain. Similar arguments can be used for the other two examples.
Right, and that would further complicate our linguistic expressions if
we always had to avoid having a whole as a representation of a limited
number of its parts, for example "mi besna". It's paradoxical:
-- On one hand, according to your definition of the subject of
seeing, "mi" fits viska1 if it does not lack a pair of eyes plus a
brain. That is, something is a seer if it's *at least* a pair of eyes
and a brain.
-- On the other hand, you would disagree that "mi" (or a rhino) can
fit besna1 because you would consider "mi" (or a rhino) to be more
than a brain.
-- If you are to be consistent, you would apply that restriction to
other cases, so as to say that "mi" is a seer if it's *not more than*,
*exactly*, a pair of eyes plus a brain.
-- Likewise, "mi" would be a caresser if it's *not more than*,
*exactly*, something that does a caressing, such as an arm.
-- Then "mi viska gi'e satre" would likely be illogical, because
something which is exactly viska1 is not necessarily satre1.
You could solve this problem by allowing "mi" to be more than e.g. a
pair of eyes plus a brain in order to fit viska1. Now, why should
besna1 be excluded from that practice?
> The definition of besna is "x1 is a/the brain [body-part] of x2".
> "Often interchangable" is not "always interchangeable".
"is a/the brain" cannot be paraphrased as "does brain" with the same
semantics in English... that doesn't say enough about whether "besna"
itself could have such an interpretative aspect at all.
I said "function-wise". A lid has a function as well as it's an
object; "ko'a gacri" can be understood as "koha is a lid (for
something)" or "koha covers (something)". A brain has a function as
well as it's an object; I can understand "ko'a besna" as "koha is a
brain (of something)" or "koha [brain-VERB] (for something)".
Something besna something. The question is:
-- Would "a rhino", "you", etc. represent only the latter
"something", or only the former "something", or both?
To put it differently:
-- Would the word "you" fail to represent you if you became nothing
but a (living) besna1?
Imagine a world with super-advanced cybernetics that allows easy
transfer of brains between shells. The official definition assumes
that x2, the shell, is essential to the meaning of "brain", and I find
that to potentially be not the case.
>> zo'e matra
>> something 'is a motor'
>> something 'does motor'
>
> A motor is a thing. It is not a property, nor an event, nor any other
> abstract. It is a concrete, tangible object,
Physical concreteness is virtual. Humans perceive any such
concreteness because their physical observation occurs at such a
macroscopic scale that it ignores the emptiness that occupies
99.999...% of the space of every atom. What we usually perceive as an
impenetrable brick wall is actually almost completely empty. A wall
appears to be concrete not because it is essentially concrete but
because that's how the mind subjectively organizes information from
such perceptions as "my hand is blocked off right there", "I feel a
texture right there", "I see the color ending right there", etc. If we
could observe a brick wall, a motor, a brain etc. from within an atom,
we would be looking at not any 'concrete thing' but the event of
invisible wave-particles interacting with other wave-particles in
certain ways in vast space with no tangible boundary between 'a wall'
and 'a non-wall'. And if our observation even did not
quantum-mechanically misrepresent reality, what would be revealed is
utter emptiness. For more scientific insights into this:
'Queer Universe' by Richard Dawkins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APOxsp1VFw
'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
That a motor is 'a concrete, tangible object' is basically an
illusion. That isn't to say such a perception is useless. We life
forms wouldn't have evolved to this point if we didn't start falsely
perceiving boundaries of ranges of invisible waving particles that
would build up or destroy our self-sustaining systems, such as 'food'
and 'predators'. It has been evolutionally advantageous for us to not
just exist as
nu nejni
but also illusionally perceive
lo jai nejni
or
lo xamsi
then
lo na'e xamsi
then
lo xamgu na'e xamsi (e.g. lo cidja)
lo xlali na'e xamsi (e.g. lo bradi)
and so on. There is no fundamental concrete physical boundary between
anything, but our macroscopic cognition works to see virtual
demarcations in the sea of energy for the sake of experiencing
anything.
In other words, any experiential object is virtual. Whenever we say "a
motor is ..." or "a brain is ...", we are dealing with our own mental
tokens, virtual things. Beyond our cognition, there ultimately is not
'a' thing. Individuality is pragmatic, not essential. We should allow
ourselves to talk about 'things' in physical terms for the sake of
everyday conveninence, but I like to keep in mind that all 'things' in
the realm of the physical do fundamentally translate to one whole, one
flow, one shot, or nothing at all.
True, in "zo'e matra", "zo'e" -- that which stands for matra1, 'a
motor' -- is not a property or an event. But that's for linguistic
reasons, not for physical reasons. Physically speaking, there is
little difference between
-- Something is an electric motor in a car.
and
-- It is happening that magnetic fields and current-carrying
conductors can interact and generate force in a car.
> and so, like besna, is not
> something that can be "done", only something that can "be".
I didn't say a motor is something that can be done. The event of
"motor-ing" that I'm talking about, for the lack of a better word, is
not a relational se rinka / se gasnu / se zukte, but a non-relational
fasnu. Not something that is done, but something that happens.
To create a motor is to create a function, a state of functionality.
You cannot assemble pieces to collectively generate force without
installing the event of "the pieces can collectively generate force".
You said that "the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts", which
is true in a sense; something is a motor not because
zo'e pagbu
but because
nu matra
> Your argument is similar to saying that rational numbers are whole numbers.
> The set includes the subset, but the set does not necessarily include the set.
The relationship between sets is ontological; the relationship between
a brain and a body that I'm talking about is mereological. Different
logic.
On another note, numbers and sets are abstract, and are ironically
less fuzzier than 'concrete' physical stuff. I clearly understand that
the set of "nenri" and the set of "bartu" are different, but I don't
always clearly see which physical things cu nenri or bartu. Similarly,
we find a real triangle in the abstract but never in the concrete,
i.e. a material 'triangle' never *is* a triangle.
>> -- we have to consider whether or not that applies to "besna".
>> Depending on that semantic arrangement, we could have the following:
>>
>> lo besna cu besna .ije lo [rhinoceros] cu besna
>> A brain 'does brain'. And a rhinoceros 'does brain'.
>> A brain 'is a brain'. And a rhinoceros 'is a brain'.
>
> The first two are false because a brain is not something that can be "done".
I avoided to say "does *a* brain" for a reason. "brain" is not an
object of an action in this case, was what I meant. "brain" is the
subject or the theme of an occurrence. "brain" in "does brain"
indicates the type of event, was my intention. "does brain",
"brain-type-of happens".
> The fourth is false because a rhinoceros is not a brain, it is something of
> which a brain is a part of.
And the point was that a whole could represent its part where
expressions like "mi viska gi'e satre gi'e pensi" are allowed.
>> >> So with this meaning of {lo}, how would you unambiguously translate
>> >> "These brains are conscious", without the possibility of being
>> >> misunderstood as claiming that their component nerves are, nor electric
>> >> razors?
>> >>
>> >> I can only see {ro lo ti besna poi ro ke'a besna cu sanji}.
>> >
>> >
>> > {lo besna cu sanji} is the simplest way to put it.
>>
>> I suppose many would agree that {sanji} can predicate a rhinoceros too
>> or other danlu for that matter. We could have the following
>> simultaneous statements:
>>
>> lo besna cu sanji .ije lo danlu cu sanji
>>
>> Would you say this is false, confusing a part with a whole?
>
> I would say that I am a conscious animal who possesses a brain. The question
> was how would I say "these brains are conscious", not whether I believed
> such a statement to be truth.
And what you have presented now is the case where {lo besna cu sanji}
and {lo danlu cu sanji} would be both *linguistically* valid. And
that's at the risk of the fallacy of composition due to the supposed
mereological relationship between {lo besna} and {lo danlu}. That is:
While X constitutes Y,
lo sanji is sometimes X, sometimes Y.
And that's analogous to the rhino-brain example:
While X constitutes Y,
lo besna is sometimes X, sometimes Y.