I had exactly the same thought. I didn’t write the same comment, though, because:
1) He did say the genome is part of what makes a squirrel a good object, and 2) The genome is a very natural dividing line between “part of this squirrel” and “not part of this squirrel,” and natural dividing lines are useful!
A “good object” is in the eye of the beholder—indeed, you spend most of your comment beholding and talking about how you and your brain chunk up the world around you, and that all makes sense. But “in the perception of a particular human” is not the only way to judge what a good object is.
Identical twins share the same genome, but are usually considered separate objects for most purposes.
A genetic chimera has different genomes in different parts of its body, but is usually considered a single object for most purposes. (Often, you can’t tell the organism is a chimera on a casual inspection.)
I submit that “same genome” often coincides with the natural object boundary, but isn’t usually a good criterion for the boundary. The common genome is not a significant part of what makes a squirrel a good object.
I think the thing we usually care about is something more like “it acts like a single agent” or “the parts are approximately aligned towards the same goal”. (Notice these criteria suggest that when an organization acts in concert, we care more about the boundaries of the organization than the boundaries of the individuals within it; I think I endorse that implication.)
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia there doesn’t seem to be an accepted scientific definition of “organism”.
1: The natural abstraction thesis that a substantial part of what makes “good objects” don’t depend on the beholder (or at least a large class of beholders will agree on a large class of “good object”)
2: If something feels like a relatively basic part of my perception, then it hints at fundamental evolved algorithms, that are then likely to point at “good objects”. As an example, your eye cells have built in edge detectors that work a lot like the image processing algorithms humanity invented. I expect many nonhuman animals’s brains to categorize animals and edges similarly (e.g. there are center surround retinal ganglion cells in mice).
A central (get it?) example for me is a math thing: the definition of the boundary/interior/exterior of a topological set. I have some intuitions, built from my life of interacting with the world and from evolution, about what “boundary” should mean. Given some prompting about open sets, I was able to basically come up with the ‘official’ definition. I suspect that if/when alien civilizations exist, that they’ll have a very similar concept.
3: I agree there’s an important sense in which the genome matters. But for example: imagine a world where (non-human) animals were symbiotes, that only join/separate rarely, usually out of sight, and that have complicated genetic inheritance patterns; but otherwise usually looked and acted like our world’s animals.
I predict that in that world, humans and other animals would partition life into objects in a very similar way. Later, humans would realize the symbiote thing, and would perhaps add words for it; but it would have to be something kids were taught by their parents, or only learned when they were helping around the farm at 10 years old.
I had exactly the same thought. I didn’t write the same comment, though, because:
1) He did say the genome is part of what makes a squirrel a good object, and
2) The genome is a very natural dividing line between “part of this squirrel” and “not part of this squirrel,” and natural dividing lines are useful!
A “good object” is in the eye of the beholder—indeed, you spend most of your comment beholding and talking about how you and your brain chunk up the world around you, and that all makes sense. But “in the perception of a particular human” is not the only way to judge what a good object is.
Identical twins share the same genome, but are usually considered separate objects for most purposes.
A genetic chimera has different genomes in different parts of its body, but is usually considered a single object for most purposes. (Often, you can’t tell the organism is a chimera on a casual inspection.)
I submit that “same genome” often coincides with the natural object boundary, but isn’t usually a good criterion for the boundary. The common genome is not a significant part of what makes a squirrel a good object.
I think the thing we usually care about is something more like “it acts like a single agent” or “the parts are approximately aligned towards the same goal”. (Notice these criteria suggest that when an organization acts in concert, we care more about the boundaries of the organization than the boundaries of the individuals within it; I think I endorse that implication.)
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia there doesn’t seem to be an accepted scientific definition of “organism”.
Furthermore, the placenta and the amniotic sac are genetically the fetus’s, not the mother’s.
Well, I was taking for granted:
1: The natural abstraction thesis that a substantial part of what makes “good objects” don’t depend on the beholder (or at least a large class of beholders will agree on a large class of “good object”)
2: If something feels like a relatively basic part of my perception, then it hints at fundamental evolved algorithms, that are then likely to point at “good objects”. As an example, your eye cells have built in edge detectors that work a lot like the image processing algorithms humanity invented. I expect many nonhuman animals’s brains to categorize animals and edges similarly (e.g. there are center surround retinal ganglion cells in mice).
A central (get it?) example for me is a math thing: the definition of the boundary/interior/exterior of a topological set. I have some intuitions, built from my life of interacting with the world and from evolution, about what “boundary” should mean. Given some prompting about open sets, I was able to basically come up with the ‘official’ definition. I suspect that if/when alien civilizations exist, that they’ll have a very similar concept.
3: I agree there’s an important sense in which the genome matters. But for example: imagine a world where (non-human) animals were symbiotes, that only join/separate rarely, usually out of sight, and that have complicated genetic inheritance patterns; but otherwise usually looked and acted like our world’s animals.
I predict that in that world, humans and other animals would partition life into objects in a very similar way. Later, humans would realize the symbiote thing, and would perhaps add words for it; but it would have to be something kids were taught by their parents, or only learned when they were helping around the farm at 10 years old.