You’ve forgotten one important caveat in the phrase “And the way to carve reality at its joints, is to draw your boundaries around concentrations of unusually high probability density in Thingspace.”
The important caveat is : ‘boundaries around where concentrations of unusually high probability density lie, to the best of our knowledge and belief’ . All the imperfections in categorisation in existing languages come from that limitation.
Other problems in categorisation, like those of Antonio, in ‘Merchant of Venise’, or those of the founding fathers who wrote that it is ‘self evident that all men were created equal’ but at the same time were slave owners, do not come from language problems in categorisation, they would have acknowledged that Shylock or the slaves were human, but from different types of cognitive compromise.
Apart from that, it’s an intellectually satisfying approach, and you might, if you persevere, end up with a poor relation to an existing language. Why a poor relation ? because it would lack nuance, ambiguity, and redundance, which are the roots of poetry.
It would also lack words for the surprising but significant improbable phenomenon. Like genius, or albino. Then again, once you get around to saying you will have words for significant low hills of probability, the whole argument blows away.
Bon courage.
“The important caveat is : ‘boundaries around where concentrations of unusually high probability density lie, to the best of our knowledge and belief’ .”
I would call the above an instance of the Mind Projection Fallacy, as you seem to be assuming a probability density that is a property of the physical world, and which we are trying to ascertain. But probabilities are properties of our minds (or ideal, perfectly rational minds), not of the exterior world, and a probability distribution is simply an entity to describe our state of information; it is “the best of our knowledge and belief”.
You’ve forgotten one important caveat in the phrase “And the way to carve reality at its joints, is to draw your boundaries around concentrations of unusually high probability density in Thingspace.” The important caveat is : ‘boundaries around where concentrations of unusually high probability density lie, to the best of our knowledge and belief’ . All the imperfections in categorisation in existing languages come from that limitation. Other problems in categorisation, like those of Antonio, in ‘Merchant of Venise’, or those of the founding fathers who wrote that it is ‘self evident that all men were created equal’ but at the same time were slave owners, do not come from language problems in categorisation, they would have acknowledged that Shylock or the slaves were human, but from different types of cognitive compromise. Apart from that, it’s an intellectually satisfying approach, and you might, if you persevere, end up with a poor relation to an existing language. Why a poor relation ? because it would lack nuance, ambiguity, and redundance, which are the roots of poetry. It would also lack words for the surprising but significant improbable phenomenon. Like genius, or albino. Then again, once you get around to saying you will have words for significant low hills of probability, the whole argument blows away. Bon courage.
“The important caveat is : ‘boundaries around where concentrations of unusually high probability density lie, to the best of our knowledge and belief’ .”
I would call the above an instance of the Mind Projection Fallacy, as you seem to be assuming a probability density that is a property of the physical world, and which we are trying to ascertain. But probabilities are properties of our minds (or ideal, perfectly rational minds), not of the exterior world, and a probability distribution is simply an entity to describe our state of information; it is “the best of our knowledge and belief”.