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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Post Your Utility Function - Less Wrong
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How's that? You can write Newton's law of universal gravitation describing the orbit of the Earth around the Sun on a piece of paper located on the surface of a table standing in a house on the surface of the Earth. Where does this analogy break from your point of view?
"...but, you can't fold up the territory and put it in your glove compartment"
The "aboutness" relationship between the written version of Newton's law and the actual instances of it is something that lives in the map in your head.
IOW, the aboutness is not on the piece of paper. Nor does it exist in some supernatural link between the piece of paper and the objects acting in accordance with the expressed law.
Located on the planet Earth.
And this helps your position how?
Your head describes how your head rotates around the Sun.
No, your head is rotating around the Sun, and it contains a description relating the ideas of "head" and "Sun". You are confusing head 1 (the real head) with head 2 (the "head" pictured inside head 1), as well as Sun 1 (the real Sun) and Sun 2 (the "Sun" pictured inside head 1).
No, I'm not confusing them. They are different things. Yet the model simulates the real thing, which means the following (instead of magical aboutness): By examining the model it's possible to discover new properties of its real counterpart, that were not apparent when the model was being constructed, and that can't be observed directly (or it's just harder to do), yet can be computed from the model.
Indeed. Although more precisely, examining the model merely suggests or predicts these "new" (rather, previously undiscovered, unnoticed, or unobservable) properties.
That is what I mean by isomorphism between model and territory. The common usage of "about", however, projects an intention onto this isomorphism - a link that can only exist in the mind of the observer, not the similarity of shapes between one physical process and another.
Since agent's possible actions are one of the things in the territory captured by the model, it's possible to use the model to select an action leading to a preferable outcome, and to perform thus selected action, determining the territory to conform with the plan. The correspondence between the preferred state of the world in the mind and the real world is ensured by this mechanism for turning plans into actuality. Pathologies aside, or course.
I don't disagree with anything you've just said, but it does nothing to support the idea of an isomorphism inherently meaning that one thing is "about" another.
If I come across a near-spherical rock that resembles the moon, does this make the rock "about" the moon? If I find another rock that is shaped the same, does that mean it is about the moon? The first rock? Something else entirely?
The :"aboutness" of a thing can't be in the thing, and that applies equally to thermostats and humans.
The (external) aboutness of a thermostat's actions don't reside in the thermostat's map, and humans are deluded when they project that the (external) aboutness of their own actions actually resides within the same map they're using to decide those actions. It is merely a sometimes-useful (but often harmful) fiction.
Indeed. If this didn't work then there wouldn't be any practical point in modeling physics!
To the (unknowable*) extent that the portion of my map labelled "territory" is an accurate reflection of the relevant portion of the territory, do I get to say that my preferences are "about" the territory (implicitly including disclaimers like "as mediated by the map")?
* due at the very least to Matrix/simulation scenarios
You can say it all you want, it just won't make it true. ;-) Your preference is "about" your experience, just as the thermostat's heating and cooling preferences are "about" the temperature of its sensor, relative to its setting.
For there to be an "about", there has to be another observer, projecting a relationship of intention onto the two things. It's a self-applied mind projection -- a "strange loop" in your model -- to assert that you can make such statements about your own preferences, like a drawing of Escher wherein Escher is pictured, making the drawing. The whole thing only makes sense within the surface of the paper.
(Heck, it's probably a similar strange loop to make statements about one's self in general, but this probably doesn't lead to the same kind of confusion and behavioral problems that result from making assertions about one's preferences.... No, wait, actually, yes it does! Self-applied nominalizations, like "I'm bad at math" are an excellent example. Huh. I keep learning interesting new things in this discussion.)
That's one way of writing. Another is to edit what you intend to post before you click 'comment'.