I claim aboutness to be a natural category (although I’m not perfectly sure it’s a sound argument)
It’s not.
First, the only way it can be one is if “natural category” has the reductionist meaning of “a category based on distinctions that humans are biased towards using as discriminators”, rather than “a category that ‘naturally’ exists in the territory”. (Categories are abstractions, not physical entities, after all.)
And second, even if you do use the reductionist meaning of “natural category”, then this does not in any way undermine the conclusion that “aboutness” is mind projection when you omit the entity mapping that aboutness from the description.
In other words, this argument appears to result in only one of two possibilities: either “aboutness” is not a natural category per the reductionist definition, and thus inherently a mind projection when the attribution source is omitted, or “aboutness” is a natural category per the reductionist definition… in which case the attribution source has to be a human brain (i.e., in another map).
Finally, if we entirely reject the reductionist definition of “natural category”, then “natural category” is itself an instance of the mind projection fallacy, since the description omits any definition of for whom the category is “natural”.
In short, QED: the argument is not sound. (I just didn’t want to bother typing all this if you were going to retreat to a claim this was never your argument.)
It’s not.
First, the only way it can be one is if “natural category” has the reductionist meaning of “a category based on distinctions that humans are biased towards using as discriminators”, rather than “a category that ‘naturally’ exists in the territory”. (Categories are abstractions, not physical entities, after all.)
And second, even if you do use the reductionist meaning of “natural category”, then this does not in any way undermine the conclusion that “aboutness” is mind projection when you omit the entity mapping that aboutness from the description.
In other words, this argument appears to result in only one of two possibilities: either “aboutness” is not a natural category per the reductionist definition, and thus inherently a mind projection when the attribution source is omitted, or “aboutness” is a natural category per the reductionist definition… in which case the attribution source has to be a human brain (i.e., in another map).
Finally, if we entirely reject the reductionist definition of “natural category”, then “natural category” is itself an instance of the mind projection fallacy, since the description omits any definition of for whom the category is “natural”.
In short, QED: the argument is not sound. (I just didn’t want to bother typing all this if you were going to retreat to a claim this was never your argument.)