This is easiest for me to describe with visual thinking, so it might not makes sense to some people. I think of “attraction” (as in dynamical processes) as a verb. (I realize it’s gramatically a noun, but ontologically it’s a verb.) When I naively picture attraction it’s some stable convergent feature that patterns can’t help but be drawn to, even if accidentally; it’s teleological, or it’s causal, but I don’t picture both of them at the same time because my mind runs snapshots of the process going forward or backward, but not both simultaneously. A timeless view would be looking at the forward-causal and the backward-teleological chains as a distribution over space instead of sequential or superimposed time slices, so it doesn’t just look like a pattern is emerging over time going towards the future, or just a teleological chain reaching backwards from the future, but both intertwining. It’s way easier to see the complementary structure if I envision the process as a block and not a dynamical process. I’m not sure how to make it more clear, and I’m not sure if it’s really useful, but I’ve been playing around with ontology construction a lot and it just felt like a neat trick to me.
ETA: It’s also cognitively cheaper for me to visualize things as spatial configurations without any change over time, but I have to sacrifice the number of details I can put into the visualization in order to capture the overall structure.
Unrelatedly, if you reverse everything I said you can do the same thing with nouns.
I realize it’s gramatically a noun, but ontologically it’s a verb.
This isnonsense. The notion “verb” only makes sense gramatically. There is no such thing as “ontologically a verb” or “ontologically a noun”, etc. Not every language even uses these same categories or splits them the same way.
Please explain. Currently I find this very unlikely given that the idea doesn’t seem to make much sense in the first place, and the fact that Esperanto is a naturally-evolved mess due to Zamenhof’s original description being vastly underspecified.
Also a few nights ago I had the odd sensation of visualizing the set of common American candy bars as a superimposed image. Not the union of the candy bars, but being able to see all of them at the same time despite them being in the same visual space… there is no analogue of this in actual sight, so I’m not sure why my visual cortex would be able to do that. I can’t do it (at least not nearly as well or convincingly) right now. I really wanted to buy a Snickers bar. Anyway this allowed me to look at a lot of things spatially while retaining a lot of detail, but it wasn’t a dynamical process that I was visualizing, but a set of objects. This superimposed visualization thing seems pretty cool though; perhaps I can train it to see dynamical processes spatially represented in a small space with lots of details for each spatial representation of a time slice?
(Where each of the shaded rectangles is one of the candy bars.)
And, as to whether there’s an analogue of this in actual sight, of course there’s not (if I know what you mean), but that doesn’t mean that it’s an uncommon thing. Just look out into your room (or wherever you are), and imagine that something (such as a dog or something) is there. What’s the difference between the actual scene and the imagined scene? Well, the actual one is much more vivid, and the imagined is much less vivid. It’s not that you’re only seeing the real situation, and not seeing the imagined one; it’s simply that the real one is much more forceful to your mind than the imagined. The imagined one is “superimposed” over the other one; you can see both.
So is that how the candy bars were stacked on top of each other on your visual field?
I think of “attraction” (as in dynamical processes) as a verb. (I realize it’s gramatically a noun, but ontologically it’s a verb.)
For a simple English trick to get verbs that are unequivocally verbs, start your thought with “to.” So “to kick.” “To open.” “To attract.” Thinking of a noun as a noun is not as good an example :D
Yes, yes, not every thought that starts with “to” contains a verb, and not every verb is a thought that starts with “to.” It’s merely a useful way to think of verbs if they’re eluding me.
What is a timeless analysis of a verb?
This is easiest for me to describe with visual thinking, so it might not makes sense to some people. I think of “attraction” (as in dynamical processes) as a verb. (I realize it’s gramatically a noun, but ontologically it’s a verb.) When I naively picture attraction it’s some stable convergent feature that patterns can’t help but be drawn to, even if accidentally; it’s teleological, or it’s causal, but I don’t picture both of them at the same time because my mind runs snapshots of the process going forward or backward, but not both simultaneously. A timeless view would be looking at the forward-causal and the backward-teleological chains as a distribution over space instead of sequential or superimposed time slices, so it doesn’t just look like a pattern is emerging over time going towards the future, or just a teleological chain reaching backwards from the future, but both intertwining. It’s way easier to see the complementary structure if I envision the process as a block and not a dynamical process. I’m not sure how to make it more clear, and I’m not sure if it’s really useful, but I’ve been playing around with ontology construction a lot and it just felt like a neat trick to me.
ETA: It’s also cognitively cheaper for me to visualize things as spatial configurations without any change over time, but I have to sacrifice the number of details I can put into the visualization in order to capture the overall structure.
Unrelatedly, if you reverse everything I said you can do the same thing with nouns.
I don’t know about everybody else, but I’m totally confused.
I mean, if it’s visual, why don’t you just make us a picture or a video, instead of just relying on words (which aren’t very good for this purpose)?
This is nonsense. The notion “verb” only makes sense gramatically. There is no such thing as “ontologically a verb” or “ontologically a noun”, etc. Not every language even uses these same categories or splits them the same way.
Instead of jumping to such a reckless conclusion, why don’t you just ask him what he means by “ontologically a verb”?
Esperanto has ontological word classes. They’re surprisingly elegant, too.
Having said that, I agree on your main point—natural languages just don’t do that.
Please explain. Currently I find this very unlikely given that the idea doesn’t seem to make much sense in the first place, and the fact that Esperanto is a naturally-evolved mess due to Zamenhof’s original description being vastly underspecified.
Also a few nights ago I had the odd sensation of visualizing the set of common American candy bars as a superimposed image. Not the union of the candy bars, but being able to see all of them at the same time despite them being in the same visual space… there is no analogue of this in actual sight, so I’m not sure why my visual cortex would be able to do that. I can’t do it (at least not nearly as well or convincingly) right now. I really wanted to buy a Snickers bar. Anyway this allowed me to look at a lot of things spatially while retaining a lot of detail, but it wasn’t a dynamical process that I was visualizing, but a set of objects. This superimposed visualization thing seems pretty cool though; perhaps I can train it to see dynamical processes spatially represented in a small space with lots of details for each spatial representation of a time slice?
Or perhaps your diet is too strict.
Something like this?
(Where each of the shaded rectangles is one of the candy bars.)
And, as to whether there’s an analogue of this in actual sight, of course there’s not (if I know what you mean), but that doesn’t mean that it’s an uncommon thing. Just look out into your room (or wherever you are), and imagine that something (such as a dog or something) is there. What’s the difference between the actual scene and the imagined scene? Well, the actual one is much more vivid, and the imagined is much less vivid. It’s not that you’re only seeing the real situation, and not seeing the imagined one; it’s simply that the real one is much more forceful to your mind than the imagined. The imagined one is “superimposed” over the other one; you can see both.
So is that how the candy bars were stacked on top of each other on your visual field?
For a simple English trick to get verbs that are unequivocally verbs, start your thought with “to.” So “to kick.” “To open.” “To attract.” Thinking of a noun as a noun is not as good an example :D
To arms!
To hell and back!
To my dear friend and her new husband, on this happy day!
Yes, yes, not every thought that starts with “to” contains a verb, and not every verb is a thought that starts with “to.” It’s merely a useful way to think of verbs if they’re eluding me.