categories are useful insofar as they compress information by “carving reality at the joints”;
I think from context you’re saying ”...are only useful insofar...”. Is that what you’re saying? If so, I disagree with the claim. Compressing information is a key way in which categories are useful. Another key way in which categories are useful is compressing actions, so that you can in a convenient way decide and communicate about e.g. “I’m gonna climb that hill now”. More to the point, calling someone “he” is mixing these two things together: you’re both kinda-sorta claiming the person has XY chromosomes, is taller-on-average, has a penis, etc.; and also kinda-sorta saying “Let’s treat this person in ways that people tend to treat men”. “He” compresses the cluster, and also is a button you can push to treat people in that way. These two things are obviously connected, but they aren’t perfectly identical. Whether or not the actions you take make someone happy or sad is relevant.
Sorry, the 159-word version leaves out some detail. I agree that categories are often used to communicate action intentions.
The academic literature on signaling in nature mentions that certain prey animals have different alarm calls for terrestrial or aerial predators, which elicit for different evasive maneuvers: for example, vervet monkeys will climb trees when there’s a leopard or hide under bushes when there’s an eagle. This raises the philosophical question of what the different alarm calls “mean”: is a barking vervet making the denotative statement, “There is a leopard”, or is it a command, “Climb!”?
The thing is, whether you take the “statement” or the “command” interpretation (or decline the false dichotomy), there are the same functionalist criteria for when each alarm call makes sense, which have to do with the state of reality: the leopard being there “in the territory” is what makes the climbing action called for.
The same is true when we’re trying to make decisions to make people happy. Suppose I’m sad about being ugly, and want to be pretty instead. It wouldn’t be helping me to say, “Okay, let’s redefine the word ‘pretty’ such that it includes you”, because the original concept of “pretty” in my map was tracking features of the territory that I care about (about how people appraise and react to my appearance), which gets broken if you change the map without changing the territory.
I don’t think it’s plausible to posit an agent that wants to be categorized in a particular way in the map, without that category tracking something in the territory. Where would such a pathological preference come from?
If someone wants to be classified as ”… has XY chromosomes, is taller-on-average, has a penis...” and they aren’t that, then it’s a pathological preference, yeah. But categories aren’t just for describing territory, they’re also for coding actions. If a human says “Climb!” to another human, is that a claim about the territory? You can try to infer a claim about reality, like “There’s something in reality that makes it really valuable for you to climb right now, assuming you have the goals that I assume you have”.
If someone says “call me ‘he’ ”, it could be a pathological preference. Or it could be a preference to be treated by others with the male-role bundle of actions. That preference could be in conflict with others’ preferences, because others might only want to treat a person with the male-role bundle if that person ”… has XY chromosomes, is taller-on-average, has a penis...” . Probably it’s both, and they haven’t properly separated out their preferences / society hasn’t made it convenient for them to separate out their preferences / there’s a conflict about treatment that is preventing anyone from sorting out their preferences.
“Okay, let’s redefine the word ‘pretty’ such that it includes you” actually makes some sense. Specifically, it’s an appeal to anti-lookism. It’s of course confused, because ugliness is also an objective thing. And it’s a conflict, because most people want to treat ugly people differently than they treat pretty people, so the request to be treated like a pretty person is being refused.
If a human says “Climb!” to another human, is that a claim about the territory?
Can you add more context? Are you talking about an experienced fighter who has been cornered by enemies with a less-experienced friend? A personal trainer whose trainee has been taking a 5 minute break from rock climbing? Something else?
Any of them. My point is that “climb!” is kind of like a message about the territory, in that you can infer things from someone saying it, and in that it can be intended to communicate something about the territory, and can be part of a convention where “Climb!” means “There’s a bear!” or whatever; but still, “Climb!” is, besides being an imperative, a word that’s being used to bundle actions together. Actions are kinda part of the territory, but as actions they’re also sort of internal to the speaker (in the same way that a map is also part of the territory, but it’s also internal to the speaker) and so has some special status. Part of that special status is that your actions, and how you bundle your actions, is up to your choice, in a way that it’s not up to your choice whether there’s a biological male/female approximate-cluster-approximate-dichotomy, or whether 2+4=6 etc.
Suppose I’m sad about being ugly, and want to be pretty instead. It wouldn’t be helping me to say, “Okay, let’s redefine the word ‘pretty’ such that it includes you”, because the original concept of “pretty” in my map was tracking features of the territory that I care about (about how people appraise and react to my appearance), which gets broken if you change the map without changing the territory.
Yes, but also if people bully you for being ugly, maybe a ban on bullying is an effective action.
(Unpacking the metaphor: sometimes there are multiple reasons why a person wants to do X, and some of them cannot be helped by a certain kind of action, but some could be. Then it depends on how the person will feel about the partial success.)
I think from context you’re saying ”...are only useful insofar...”. Is that what you’re saying? If so, I disagree with the claim. Compressing information is a key way in which categories are useful. Another key way in which categories are useful is compressing actions, so that you can in a convenient way decide and communicate about e.g. “I’m gonna climb that hill now”. More to the point, calling someone “he” is mixing these two things together: you’re both kinda-sorta claiming the person has XY chromosomes, is taller-on-average, has a penis, etc.; and also kinda-sorta saying “Let’s treat this person in ways that people tend to treat men”. “He” compresses the cluster, and also is a button you can push to treat people in that way. These two things are obviously connected, but they aren’t perfectly identical. Whether or not the actions you take make someone happy or sad is relevant.
Sorry, the 159-word version leaves out some detail. I agree that categories are often used to communicate action intentions.
The academic literature on signaling in nature mentions that certain prey animals have different alarm calls for terrestrial or aerial predators, which elicit for different evasive maneuvers: for example, vervet monkeys will climb trees when there’s a leopard or hide under bushes when there’s an eagle. This raises the philosophical question of what the different alarm calls “mean”: is a barking vervet making the denotative statement, “There is a leopard”, or is it a command, “Climb!”?
The thing is, whether you take the “statement” or the “command” interpretation (or decline the false dichotomy), there are the same functionalist criteria for when each alarm call makes sense, which have to do with the state of reality: the leopard being there “in the territory” is what makes the climbing action called for.
The same is true when we’re trying to make decisions to make people happy. Suppose I’m sad about being ugly, and want to be pretty instead. It wouldn’t be helping me to say, “Okay, let’s redefine the word ‘pretty’ such that it includes you”, because the original concept of “pretty” in my map was tracking features of the territory that I care about (about how people appraise and react to my appearance), which gets broken if you change the map without changing the territory.
I don’t think it’s plausible to posit an agent that wants to be categorized in a particular way in the map, without that category tracking something in the territory. Where would such a pathological preference come from?
If someone wants to be classified as ”… has XY chromosomes, is taller-on-average, has a penis...” and they aren’t that, then it’s a pathological preference, yeah. But categories aren’t just for describing territory, they’re also for coding actions. If a human says “Climb!” to another human, is that a claim about the territory? You can try to infer a claim about reality, like “There’s something in reality that makes it really valuable for you to climb right now, assuming you have the goals that I assume you have”.
If someone says “call me ‘he’ ”, it could be a pathological preference. Or it could be a preference to be treated by others with the male-role bundle of actions. That preference could be in conflict with others’ preferences, because others might only want to treat a person with the male-role bundle if that person ”… has XY chromosomes, is taller-on-average, has a penis...” . Probably it’s both, and they haven’t properly separated out their preferences / society hasn’t made it convenient for them to separate out their preferences / there’s a conflict about treatment that is preventing anyone from sorting out their preferences.
“Okay, let’s redefine the word ‘pretty’ such that it includes you” actually makes some sense. Specifically, it’s an appeal to anti-lookism. It’s of course confused, because ugliness is also an objective thing. And it’s a conflict, because most people want to treat ugly people differently than they treat pretty people, so the request to be treated like a pretty person is being refused.
Can you add more context? Are you talking about an experienced fighter who has been cornered by enemies with a less-experienced friend? A personal trainer whose trainee has been taking a 5 minute break from rock climbing? Something else?
Any of them. My point is that “climb!” is kind of like a message about the territory, in that you can infer things from someone saying it, and in that it can be intended to communicate something about the territory, and can be part of a convention where “Climb!” means “There’s a bear!” or whatever; but still, “Climb!” is, besides being an imperative, a word that’s being used to bundle actions together. Actions are kinda part of the territory, but as actions they’re also sort of internal to the speaker (in the same way that a map is also part of the territory, but it’s also internal to the speaker) and so has some special status. Part of that special status is that your actions, and how you bundle your actions, is up to your choice, in a way that it’s not up to your choice whether there’s a biological male/female approximate-cluster-approximate-dichotomy, or whether 2+4=6 etc.
Yes, but also if people bully you for being ugly, maybe a ban on bullying is an effective action.
(Unpacking the metaphor: sometimes there are multiple reasons why a person wants to do X, and some of them cannot be helped by a certain kind of action, but some could be. Then it depends on how the person will feel about the partial success.)