I find this hypothetical about neural fireplaces curious, because the ambiguity exists in real fireplaces, speculative fiction is not needed. Please excuse any inaccuracies in this brief history of fireplaces:
Wood-burning fireplaces
Gas-burning fireplaces
Central heating
Electric heaters
Decorative fireplaces (no heat)
The original fireplaces produced both heat and a decorative flame effect. With each new type of invention there was a question of what to do with our previous terms. We’ve ended up with “heaters” to refer to things that heat a room and “fireplace” to refer to things that have a decorative flame effect. Both of these things are slightly fuzzy natural categories in the sense of this post.
Except… maybe we should say that “decorative” is a privative adjective and so a “decorative fireplace” isn’t really a fireplace? For the sake of the thought experiment, let’s say that practical rural folk place a higher value on having a secondary heat source because it takes longer to restore electricity after a storm. Meanwhile snobby urbanites place a higher value on decorative flame effects because they value gaining status through conspicuous consumption.
I see that someone could say “well, it’s not a real fireplace, is it?” in order to signal that they share the values of practical rural folks. If they’re actually a snobby urbanite politician and they don’t actually have those practical rural values then they are being deceptive. That would be a deception about values, not about heat sources.
If a practical rural person says “well, it’s not a real fireplace, is it?”, then that could indeed be a true signal of their values. But my guess is the more restrictive meaning of fireplace came first. The causal diagram is something like:
Practical Rural Values → Categorize functional fireplaces separately to decorative fireplaces → Use the short word “fireplace” for functional fireplaces (for communication and signaling)
Not:
Practical Rural Values → Use the short word “fireplace” for functional fireplaces (for signaling) → Categorize functional fireplaces separately to decorative fireplaces
Because until practical rural folks have settled on a common meaning of “fireplace”, they can’t reliably use that meaning to signal their values to each other or to outsiders.
Except… maybe if it got caught up in the modern culture war there could be a flood of fireplace-related memes and then everyone would have very strong opinions about the best definition of “fireplace” a few months later for no real reason? Wow, that sure would suck for the CEO of Decorative Fireplaces Inc.
I find this hypothetical about neural fireplaces curious, because the ambiguity exists in real fireplaces, speculative fiction is not needed. Please excuse any inaccuracies in this brief history of fireplaces:
Wood-burning fireplaces
Gas-burning fireplaces
Central heating
Electric heaters
Decorative fireplaces (no heat)
The original fireplaces produced both heat and a decorative flame effect. With each new type of invention there was a question of what to do with our previous terms. We’ve ended up with “heaters” to refer to things that heat a room and “fireplace” to refer to things that have a decorative flame effect. Both of these things are slightly fuzzy natural categories in the sense of this post.
Except… maybe we should say that “decorative” is a privative adjective and so a “decorative fireplace” isn’t really a fireplace? For the sake of the thought experiment, let’s say that practical rural folk place a higher value on having a secondary heat source because it takes longer to restore electricity after a storm. Meanwhile snobby urbanites place a higher value on decorative flame effects because they value gaining status through conspicuous consumption.
I see that someone could say “well, it’s not a real fireplace, is it?” in order to signal that they share the values of practical rural folks. If they’re actually a snobby urbanite politician and they don’t actually have those practical rural values then they are being deceptive. That would be a deception about values, not about heat sources.
If a practical rural person says “well, it’s not a real fireplace, is it?”, then that could indeed be a true signal of their values. But my guess is the more restrictive meaning of fireplace came first. The causal diagram is something like:
Practical Rural Values → Categorize functional fireplaces separately to decorative fireplaces → Use the short word “fireplace” for functional fireplaces (for communication and signaling)
Not:
Practical Rural Values → Use the short word “fireplace” for functional fireplaces (for signaling) → Categorize functional fireplaces separately to decorative fireplaces
Because until practical rural folks have settled on a common meaning of “fireplace”, they can’t reliably use that meaning to signal their values to each other or to outsiders.
Except… maybe if it got caught up in the modern culture war there could be a flood of fireplace-related memes and then everyone would have very strong opinions about the best definition of “fireplace” a few months later for no real reason? Wow, that sure would suck for the CEO of Decorative Fireplaces Inc.
[Diogenes voice] This device provides both heat and decorative visual effects, therefore it’s a fireplace: