Well, if this is just a disagreement over whether our typical uses of the word “about” are justified, then I’m satisfied with letting go of this thread; is that the case, or do you think there is a disagreement on our expectations for specific human thoughts and actions?
I suggest, by the way, that your novel backwards application of the Mind Projection Fallacy needs its own name so as not to get it confused with the usual one. (Eliezer’s MPF denotes the problem with exporting our mental/intentional concepts outside the sphere of human beings; you seem to be asserting that we imported the notion of preferences from the external world in the first place.)
you seem to be asserting that we imported the notion of preferences from the external world in the first place
No. I’m saying that the common ideas of “preference” and “about” are mind projection fallacies, in the original sense of the phrase (which Eliezer did not coin, btw, but which he does use correctly). Preference-ness and about-ness are qualities (like “sexiness”) that are attributed as intrinsic properties of the world, but to be properly specified must include the one doing the attribution.
IOW, for your preferences to be “about” the world, there must be someone who is making this attribution of aboutness, as the aboutness itself does not exist in the territory, any more than “sexiness” exists in the territory.
However, you cannot make this attribution, because the thing you think of as “the territory” is really only your model of the territory.
Well, if this is just a disagreement over whether our typical uses of the word “about” are justified, then I’m satisfied with letting go of this thread; is that the case, or do you think there is a disagreement on our expectations for specific human thoughts and actions?
This can be viewed as purely a Russellian argument about language levels, but the practical point I originally intended to make was that humans cannot actually make preferences about the actual territory because the only thing we can evaluate are our own experiences—which can be suspect. Inbuilt drives and biases are one source of experiences being suspect, but our own labeling of experiences is also suspect—labels are not only subject to random linkage, but are prone to spreading to related topics in time, space, or subject matter.
It is thus grossly delusional as a practical matter to assume that your preferences have anything to do with actual reality, as opposed to your emotionally-colored, recall-biased associations with imagined subsets of half-remembered experiences of events that occurred under entirely different conditions. (Plus, many preferences subtly lead to the recreation of circumstances that thwart the preference’s fulfillment—which calls into question precisely what “reality” that preference is about.)
Perhaps we could call our default thinking about such matters (i.e. preferences being about reality) “naive preferential realism”, by analogy to “naive moral realism”, as it is essentially the same error, applied to one’s own preferences rather than some absolute definition of good or evil.
This is pretty much what I meant by a semantic argument. If, as I’ve argued, my real preferences (as defined above) care about the projected future world (part of my map) and not just the projected future map (a sub-part of that map), then I see no difficulty with describing this by “I have preferences about the future territory”, as long as I remain aware that all the evaluation is happening within my map.
It is perhaps analogous to moral language in that when I talk about right and wrong, I keep in mind that these are patterns within my brain (analogous to those in other human brains) extrapolated from emotive desires, rather than objectively perceived entities. But with that understanding, right and wrong are still worth thinking about and discussing with others (although I need to be quite careful with my use of the terms when talking with a naive moral realist), since these are patterns that actually move me to act in certain ways, and to introspect in certain ways on my action and on the coherence of the patterns themselves.
In short, any theory of language levels or self-reference that ties you in Hofstadterian knots when discussing real, predictable human behavior (like the decision process for kin altruism) is problematic.
That said, I’m done with this thread. Thanks for an entertainingly slippery discussion!
ETA: To put it another way, learning about the Mind Projection Fallacy doesn’t mean you can never use the word “sexy” again; it just means that you should be aware of its context in the human mind, which will stop you from using it in certain novel but silly situations.
Well, if this is just a disagreement over whether our typical uses of the word “about” are justified, then I’m satisfied with letting go of this thread; is that the case, or do you think there is a disagreement on our expectations for specific human thoughts and actions?
I suggest, by the way, that your novel backwards application of the Mind Projection Fallacy needs its own name so as not to get it confused with the usual one. (Eliezer’s MPF denotes the problem with exporting our mental/intentional concepts outside the sphere of human beings; you seem to be asserting that we imported the notion of preferences from the external world in the first place.)
No. I’m saying that the common ideas of “preference” and “about” are mind projection fallacies, in the original sense of the phrase (which Eliezer did not coin, btw, but which he does use correctly). Preference-ness and about-ness are qualities (like “sexiness”) that are attributed as intrinsic properties of the world, but to be properly specified must include the one doing the attribution.
IOW, for your preferences to be “about” the world, there must be someone who is making this attribution of aboutness, as the aboutness itself does not exist in the territory, any more than “sexiness” exists in the territory.
However, you cannot make this attribution, because the thing you think of as “the territory” is really only your model of the territory.
This can be viewed as purely a Russellian argument about language levels, but the practical point I originally intended to make was that humans cannot actually make preferences about the actual territory because the only thing we can evaluate are our own experiences—which can be suspect. Inbuilt drives and biases are one source of experiences being suspect, but our own labeling of experiences is also suspect—labels are not only subject to random linkage, but are prone to spreading to related topics in time, space, or subject matter.
It is thus grossly delusional as a practical matter to assume that your preferences have anything to do with actual reality, as opposed to your emotionally-colored, recall-biased associations with imagined subsets of half-remembered experiences of events that occurred under entirely different conditions. (Plus, many preferences subtly lead to the recreation of circumstances that thwart the preference’s fulfillment—which calls into question precisely what “reality” that preference is about.)
Perhaps we could call our default thinking about such matters (i.e. preferences being about reality) “naive preferential realism”, by analogy to “naive moral realism”, as it is essentially the same error, applied to one’s own preferences rather than some absolute definition of good or evil.
This is pretty much what I meant by a semantic argument. If, as I’ve argued, my real preferences (as defined above) care about the projected future world (part of my map) and not just the projected future map (a sub-part of that map), then I see no difficulty with describing this by “I have preferences about the future territory”, as long as I remain aware that all the evaluation is happening within my map.
It is perhaps analogous to moral language in that when I talk about right and wrong, I keep in mind that these are patterns within my brain (analogous to those in other human brains) extrapolated from emotive desires, rather than objectively perceived entities. But with that understanding, right and wrong are still worth thinking about and discussing with others (although I need to be quite careful with my use of the terms when talking with a naive moral realist), since these are patterns that actually move me to act in certain ways, and to introspect in certain ways on my action and on the coherence of the patterns themselves.
In short, any theory of language levels or self-reference that ties you in Hofstadterian knots when discussing real, predictable human behavior (like the decision process for kin altruism) is problematic.
That said, I’m done with this thread. Thanks for an entertainingly slippery discussion!
ETA: To put it another way, learning about the Mind Projection Fallacy doesn’t mean you can never use the word “sexy” again; it just means that you should be aware of its context in the human mind, which will stop you from using it in certain novel but silly situations.