[ExI] The Reality of Categories

[Lee Corbin]

Bryan writes


> Lee wrote:
>> Bryan writes
>> > It is my understanding that the physical system present in the
>> > universe could be defined via categorics,
>>
>> Not quite sure what you mean by that, a sort of program perhaps?
> 
> If we had the state of the universe at some moment, then we could
> classify groups of information.

It so happens that, taken literally, the author (of this book I keep 
promising to describe further) would object strenuously to the 
construction "if we *had* the state of the universe".  One can
only have certain impressions at best, and even there I don't
think I'm being careful enough.  Sorry if it emerges that I'm
being overly picky.

But "the map is not the territory" Korzybski would affirm, is
more than just a truism; it's a habit of thought.  He went so
far as to believe that its total internalization was necessary
to sanity!  :-)

> Admittedly this is risky since I am
> assuming we could access any such state or understand the format to
> parse it (perhaps this just adds to the strand of thought concerning
> action  in the other thread on cryonics and ultracold quantum action).

I'm tentatively sticking to the idea of the "things-in-themselves" 
"out there" fallling into natural categories. Stars---and I do not
mean our perceptions of them but the things in themselves---
are quite different nexi of the quantum fields that permeate all
of space from nearby regions where the fields seem to pretty
much cancel each other out.

Lee

>> > [On the other hand] Given meaning, our nonassignment
>> > would be meaningful in the 'bad' way.
>>
>> Yes, a marked failure on our part to find the real meaning
>> that had been there all along. BTW, what has this to do
>> with a realist's query about whether categories are "out
>> there"?
> 
> I was thinking of a correlation between categories and meaningful data
> structures.