Comment on Hedonium's semantic problem

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 02:41:52 GMT

Look, I think you've maybe forgotten that this conversation started when you took issue with this part of the article:

difference is that in all three of the first processes, the symbols in the brain correspond to objects in reality (or virtual reality).

To which Stuart replied:

If a human plays starcraft 2 and has a symbol for Protoss Carrier, does that mean the human's symbol is suddenly ungrounded?

And then you said:

If fictions can ground symbols, then what is wrong with having santa , the tooth fairy, and unicorns in your ontology?

And from here the conversation branched off. Several comments in, and you have now managed to divert this conversation into a discussion on philosophy of language, all the while entirely ignoring the fact that your stated concerns are irrelevant to your original contention. Let's take a look at each of your complaints:

An entity that is fat and jolly, etc, should, normatively be chosen as the referent of "Santa", and in the absence of any such, Santa has no referent.

You have now utterly divorced this conversation from the issue which first prompted it. The confusion here stems from the fact that the traditional tale of "Santa" tells of a physical man who physically exists at the physical North Pole. None of that applies to virtual reality, which was the part of the article you originally took umbrage at. Nor is it the case for Stuart's example of the Protoss Carrier in Starcraft 2. In these examples, objects in virtual reality/the computer model of the Protoss Carrier should "normatively be chosen as the referents" (as you phrased it) of the phrases "objects in virtual reality"/"the Protoss Carrier".

What I am saying is that such neural patterns are the referent of "neural other representing fat jolly man....", not referents of "Santa".

What is the referent of "Protoss Carrier", if not "computer-generated video game model of the Protoss Carrier"?

1. Breaks the rule that referents are picked out by senses.

Again, irrelevant to the original example.

1. Entails map/territory confusions.

Still irrelevant.

1. Blurs fiction/fact boundary.

Still irrelevant.

1. Inconsistent...sometimes "X" has referent X, sometimes it has referent "representation of X"

Still irrelevant, and you can easily tell from context besides.

Look, you've performed what is known as a conversational "bait-and-switch", wherein you present one idea for discussion, and when another engages you on that idea, you back out and start talking about something that seems maybe-a-little-bit-possibly-slightly-tangentially-related-if-you-don't-squint-at-it-too-hard. Stick to the topic at hand, please.

EDIT: And in fact, this entire confusion stems from your original use of the word "fiction". You've been implicitly been using the word with two meanings in mind, in an analogous fashion to how we've been using "Santa" that refer to different things:

1. Something which does not exist in physical reality except by being instantiated in some virtual representation or map, and makes no claim to exist in physical reality. This is the definition you used when first addressing Stuart.

2. Something which does not exist in physical reality except by being instantiated in some virtual representation or map, and is also claimed to exist in physical reality. This is the definition you began using when you first brought up Santa and unicorns, and it's the definition you've been using ever since.

In retrospect, I should have seen that and called you out on it immediately, but I didn't look too closely despite there being a nagging feeling that something strange was going on when I first read your comment. Let's keep words from being overloaded, neh? That's what happened with Santa, after all.

Discuss