[ExI] The Reality of Categories

[Russell Wallace]

On 7/16/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm a nominalist, in that I don't believe that categories have a
> separate ontological status. However, this is incidental to the
> question of whether evolved intelligent beings would recognise the
> same categories as we do. It's easy enough to imagine a very
> intelligent, very precise and pedantic being which does not regard
> anything as being the same thing unless it is *exactly* the same
> thing, which no physical object can be from moment to moment. What
> would you actually say to an alien who thought you were crazy to
> assert that the rock was the same rock as yesterday?


Say? But the very act of saying anything, presupposes that the listener can
understand that the words are part of the same utterance, spoken by the same
person. It's easy to imagine - indeed, to implement in a computer program -
a very precise and pedantic being which does not regard anything as being
the same thing unless it is *exactly* the same thing, but such a being could
not be intelligent; intelligence is the ability to solve (certain kinds of)
problems, which such a being could not do.

It is difficult
> to give a formal reason why a certain amount of vagueness should be
> allowed and another not, although there are practical reasons.
>

Successful problem-solving by programs of tractable length and run time
dictates said programs contain the concept of sameness (whether or not it be
labelled by the English word "same"); granted we can't formally calculate
from this the exact amount of vagueness that should be allowed, but in
principle it does provide a formal justification.
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