This is a tangent, but the long discussion of poisons reminded me of my recent discovery of the (not surprising in retrospect) limitations in our knowledge. In Plato scholarship, there was for some time a controversy about Socrates' death scene in Phaedo; some scholars argued that death by hemlock is much more unpleasant than the peaceful scene Plato describes, so Plato either got it wrong or misrepresented it for some purpose. But more recent scholars mostly think that Plato probably did describe it accurately, with the alternate interpretation arising because quite a number of different things have been called "hemlock" over the years, some of which produce very unpleasant deaths, but at least one of which produces pretty much what Plato describes. It appears that one reason that there was ever a controversy is that we often don't know very much about how poisons cause deaths; once something is identified as poisonous, people just start avoiding it, so we don't tend to accumulate many further cases of death by that cause to observe.
It appears that one reason that there was ever a controversy is that we often don't know very much about how poisons cause deaths; once something is identified as poisonous, people just start avoiding it, so we don't tend to accumulate many further cases of death by that cause to observe.
Except, presumably, in cases where people deliberately use those poisons as means of execution, murder or warfare?
Is anyone else bothered by the apparent dichotomy into "natural" and "unnatural" categories? There's room for a matter of degree here - and that's probably all the argument ultimately needs - but the terminology is binary.
Suppose there is at least one utility function, and an agent who has it. Then all categories the agent ultimately finds useful are ipso facto "constructed [...] in an observable, testable way from categories themselves simple". Namely, from the categories "this agent" and "utility function". And (I think - objections welcome) you don't have to share this agent's values to construct it.
Is there any physical object or property that absolutely must be used (not merely recognizable in principle, but actually used) in the ontology of all conceivable rational beings, no matter their values? I doubt it. If that is the standard of "natural category" then all categories are unnatural. But if it is enough that the category be recognizable in principle, then (see the paragraph above) all categories are natural.
Today's post, Unnatural Categories was originally published on 24 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
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