Words as Hidden Inferences

It is a common misconception that you can define a word any way you like.

Incorrect. It is not a misconception. There are consequences of choosing to define a word that can lead to error if they are ignored, but that does not constrain the definition.

you can't logically classify Socrates as human until you observe him to be mortal.

Also incorrect. Mortality can be a trait possessed by all humans, yet not be needed to identify something as human. If Socrates meets all the necessary criteria for identification as human, we do not need to observe his mortality to conclude that he is mortal.

It is a trivial objection to say that the definition of human might not reflect the nature of the world. That is the case with all definitions: we can label concepts as we please, but it requires justification to assert that the concepts are present in reality.

Eliezer said: "Your brain doesn't treat words as logical definitions with no empirical consequences, and so neither should you. The mere act of creating a word can cause your mind to allocate a category, and thereby trigger unconscious inferences of similarity."

What alternative model would you propose? I'm not quite ready yet to stop using words that imperfectly place objects into categories. I'll keep the fact that categories are imperfect in mind.

I really don't mean this in a condescending way. I'm just not sure what new belief this line of reasoning is supposed to convey.

I think I would agree with Charlie Munger that more mistakes have been made from inferential ("run from the tiger") shortcuts than from the use of logic. Such shortcuts as proximity bias, following perceived leaders, doing things because people around us are doing them,loving similar-looking people and hating different-looking people, and similar errors are most likely caused by evolutionary hard-wiring, not by philosophical ponderings. I have dedicated a section of my blog to Munger here: http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=36218793&searchType=ALL&txtKeywords=&label

Now I reach in and I feel another egg-shaped object. ... So I say "blue"

Ah, an understandable mistake. Those of us paying attention know though that after all of those blue eggs the next egg almost certainly must be red.

Mathematics and probability theory are completely worthless. You never get out anything except what you put in!

On the other hand, some of us find it extremely useful to get out what we put it, even by mere logical reasoning.

I am distinct from my brain. My brain does a lot of stuff without consulting me at all.

JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION GET IN THE CAR!

the brain uses holistic processing to bypass the logical process of identifying say a face which is not near as effective

Aristotle needed Socrates. Maybe Plato was listening.

Anna

Reactions to 500lb stripy feline things jumping unexpectedly come from pre-verbal categorisations(the 'low road', in Daniel Goleman's terms), so have nothing to do with word definitions. The same is true for many highly emotionally charged categorisations (e.g. for a previous generation, person with skin colour different from mine....). Words themselves do get their meanings from networks of associations. The content of these networks can drift over time, for an individual as for a culture. Words change their meanings. A deliberate attempt to change the meaning of a word by introducing new associations (e.g. via the media) can be successful. Changes in the meanings of political labels, or the associations with a person's name, are good examples. Whether the direct amygdala circuit can be reprogramed is a different matter. Certainly not as easily as the neocortex. If you lived in the world of Calvin and Hobbes for six months, would you start to instinctively see large stripy feline things jumping out at you unexpectedly as an invitation to play ?

I suppose I should add, for those who are really stuck in maths or formal logic, that changing the definition of a symbol in a formal system is not the same thing as changing the meaning of a word in a language. In fact you can't, individually and as a decision of will, change the meaning of a word in a language. It either changes, as per my previous comment, or it doesn't.

The tiger, on the other hand, is a committed Platonist.

Our tendency to unconsciously draw inferences through inductive thought is a real problem.

The issue of word definitions is just a red herring.

We are very imprecise in this way because it is very rare that we split the sign into signified and signifier. If you know that a 'Tiger' thing can kill, it is perhaps best not to worry about the signification of the form and the entropy of its relations - its best to run.

I have created an exercise that goes with this post. Use it to solidify your knowledge of the material.

I was reading Nietzsche and found something striking. Compare this, from Eliezer:

But when a large yellow striped feline-shaped object leaps out at me from the shadows, I think, "Yikes! A tiger!" Not, "Hm... objects with the properties of largeness, yellowness, stripedness, and feline shape, have previously often possessed the properties 'hungry' and 'dangerous', and thus, although it is not logically necessary, it may be an empirically good guess that aaauuughhhh CRUNCH CRUNCH GULP."

and this, from Nietzsche:

Innumerable beings who made inferences in a way different from ours perished; for all that, their ways might have been truer, Those, for example, who did not know how to find often enough what is "equal" as regards both nourishment and hostile animals– those, in other words, who subsumed things too slowly and cautiously– were favored with a lesser probability of survival than those who guessed immediately upon encountering similar instances that they must be equal. [ . . . ] The course of logical ideas and inferences in our brain today corresponds to a process and a struggle among impulses that are, taken singly, very illogical and unjust. We generally experience only the result of this struggle because this primeval mechanism now runs its course so quickly and is so well concealed. (The Gay Science, Section 111)

Nietzsche doesn't have a modern grasp of how evolution works, but his intuitions on cognition were far sharper than any of his contemporaries. That's partially why I think he still has something to offer.

Otherwise Aristotelians would have starved, unable to conclude that an object was edible merely because it looked and felt like a banana.

I kind-of doubt that Aristotelians saw many banana-like objects edible or otherwise, anyway. ;-)

I think this is exciting. I'm going to start making my own words for groups of things. I'm a java/.net programmer so I'm used to object-oriented so it's natural for me to group things that may be used again!