This is the crux of the issue and it's important to clarify: what is the 'function' of the predicate? What work is it doing? This is the most delicate part of Sellars' argument: Sellars argues that it is not doing any work insofar as it is a predicate. Instead, it is only doing work insofar as it is a linguistic object (which just so happens to be, in this particular but entirely contingent case, a predicate). This is crucial to understand. The predicate qua predicate isn't doing any kind of job at all; in fact the only reason that it seems that it is doing any work is because it is a linguistic object. Putting it graphically might help, in terms of a hierarchy:

{Linguistic object(predicate)}

Where predicate is a 'species' of the genera 'lingustic object'. The work is being done by the fact of it's being a linguistic object, not by the fact of it being a predicate. The trick is to recognise that there are other linguistic objects than predicates, and that it is at this more general level where the work 'takes place'. Thus, boldface X, X is doing 'meaning work' by the fact of it's graphical difference, in it's capacity as a graphic object, and not because it does the work done by the predicate. This might seem a minor and even obscure difference, but the upshot is that it diffuses the tendency to abstract predicates as conceptual properties or metaphysical attributes. I quote Ray Brassier's gloss on this:

"The predicative role should not be reified and turned into an abstract entity called a “property” that exists independently of sentential contexts. Still less should the conceptual property supposedly expressed by the predicate be hypostatized and turned into an ontological attribute that exists not only independently of language — as conceptual properties are alleged to — but also independently of thought. As Sellars puts it, “The extralinguistic domain consists of objects, not facts. To put it bluntly, propositional form belongs only in the linguistic and conceptual orders” (Brassier, Nominalism, Naturalism, and Materialism).

@Banno I hope the above also clarifies why X being above Y does not indicate the predicate, but rather indicates the general function which the predicate contingently happens to fulfil. — StreetlightX

So, it is claimed that the predicate is not doing any work insofar as it is a predicate, but is instead only doing work insofar as it is a linguistic object.

These are my initial thoughts:

So, what is a predicate? Is it not a linguistic object or symbol denoting a particular meaning, or having a particular function? And, is it not its particularity which gives it meaning? We must understand that this linguistic object is, or functions as, in particular, a predicate, in order to understand the meaning. And as to whether it is a predicate or functions as a predicate - that's a difference which makes no difference. And as to whether it'll be used to denote a predicate or some other logical function, that is arbitrary.

I don't see how it's not the predicate as a predicate which really matters, one way or another. Yes, it's a linguistic object, but that doesn't tell me enough. I need to know its function, which, in this case, is as a predicate.

Another thing: I really don't get how 'X' above 'Y' is any different from 'Q(x,y)'. Or, how Jumblese is any different from predicate logic. Is it supposed to be? It looks a lot, at least to someone like me, like it's doing the same thing, and that the difference is only superficial.

Anyway, there's a lot to take in, and these are just my initial thoughts. I intend to revisit this when I have more time on my hands. I have to get ready to leave for work now.

So, what is a predicate? Is it not a linguistic object or symbol denoting a particular meaning, or having a particular function? And, is it not its particularity which gives it meaning? We must understand that this linguistic object is, or functions as, in particular, a predicate, in order to understand the meaning. — Sapientia

But the point is that this is exactly not the case. A predicate does not denote a particular meaning, and it is not its particularity which gives it meaning. It is only it's role as a linguistic object, concatenated with two other linguistic objects ('X' and 'Y') in a certain graphical manner and embedded in a larger network of rule-governed linguistic behaviour, that lends the expression - as a whole - meaning. Another way to put this is that on it's own, a predicate is meaningless: "Names are part of the natural order but only insofar as they are meaningless" (Brassier).

I really don't get how 'X' above 'Y' is any different from 'Q(x,y)'. — Sapientia

Sellars actually spends an entire section of the essay dealing with this. The question is not how they are different - Sellars' point is precisely that they are the same - but what 'X above Y' illustrates about Q(x,y). The basic point is that 'X above Y' illustrates that Q does not pick out a universal or name (Q) that X and Y share or are related by. The point of putting X above Y is to place the accent on the graphic relations between X and Y which is not obvious in the Q(X,Y) formulation, which, on it's own, looks to treat Q as a name for a fact and not a mere linguistic object concatenated to the left of 'X,Y'. In a slogan, Q looks like it is signifying and not occupying (a place), when in fact, it's the latter that allows it to play a role in meaning.

What matters, in other words, is the 'matter-of-factual' (graphic, inscriptual, physical) relations between X, Y and Q, which show but do not say, the relation between X and Y. Which is another way of saying that Q does not denote and does not signify. It is a physical pattern which we respond to in rule governed ways.

Yeah, thinking of language in terms of what it commits one to really is the key here. That said, I borrowed the vocabulary of commitment not from Sellars (who prefers to talk of 'uniformity of behaviour' and 'patterns of inference') but from Robert Brandom, who more or less takes Sellars' 'inferentialist semantics' and develops it. Brandom actually says that there are two modes of inference at work when using language, one of which is commitment and the other is entitlement. Saying things commits you to inferring or being able to say/do other things; and commitment in turn entitles you to saying/doing other things (If I am entitled to 'it is raining' then I am entitled to 'the streets are wet'; also, if you commit to 'it is raining', I am entitled to asking for reasons why you think so). It's a way of seeing language as a kind of contract that comes with rights (entitlements) and responsibilities (commitments). — StreetlightX

You cannot found epistemology on commitment alone. And, commitment doesn't even give us an approach to ontology. We've already learned the latter from the failings of religion, ontology cannot be supported by faith alone.

As a foundation for epistemology commitment is nothing more than an illusion. The claim of "commitment" is an attempt to negate the reality of freedom, i.e. free will, and this only enables the capacity of deception. To claim that saying "X" amounts to a particular commitment is ignorance of the possibility of deception. And to ignore the possibility of deception is to enable the power of deception.

A predicate does not denote a particular meaning, and it is not its particularity which gives it meaning. — StreetlightX

Then how would you get a particular commitment out of any particular instance of usage? The schema you present here is built on the category mistake of believing that something general, the predicate, may be reduced to something particular. But this is to deny the ambiguity of the generality of "the predicate", and to ignore the true reality that the true particularity of the predicate may only be derived from the individuality of the subject. In other words, any particular commitment implied by any instance of usage is purely personal, subjective, and cannot be properly represented as a general rule.

Another way to put this is that on it's own, a predicate is meaningless: — StreetlightX

Isn't that already covered in the concept of predication?

You tell me.

Yes it is.

Cool.

Or this, from
http://www.indigenouspeople.net/language.htm:

"The most commonly cited trait of American Indian languages is polysynthesis--the expression of complicated ideas within a single word containing many separate meaningful elements, or morphemes. The use of verbs with attached subject and object indicators (most often prefixes) is common; in many languages adverbial and other elements may also be attached to the verb, forming complex single-word sentences, like the Lakota (Siouan) wica-yuzaza-ma-ya-khiya-pi-kte, "you all will make me wash them," which includes the component morphemes them + wash + me + you + make + plural + future."

I have seen this elsewhere described as language with sentences but no words! Benjamin Whorf hypothesized that grammar reflected cognitive structure. Discredited today, but an interesting exercise trying to think as some Indians must have been accustomed to thinking!

OK, just to be clear, it is not just that predicates are dispensable that is important, it is why they are dispensable that matters. If the latter can't be grasped then neither can the significance of the former.

What matters, in other words, is the 'matter-of-factual' (graphic, inscriptual, physical) relations between X, Y and Q, which show but do not say, the relation between X and Y. Which is another way of saying that Q does not denote and does not signify. It is a physical pattern which we respond to in rule governed ways. — StreetlightX

I'm almost certain Quine mentions Church when he introduces "virtual classes" (I'd forgotten that's what he called them). What caught Quine's attention about Church's lambdas is that they're anonymous: if you write "(λx . x is red)(that apple)" you're doing something a little different from writing "red(that apple)" -- as Frege might have -- because in the lambda version there's no function called "red" at all. You just concatenate the indicated strings in the indicated way. (You can give functions names, as Lisp does, for convenience, but it's in essence just a kind of shorthand.) Pretty clear why this would be appealing to a nominalist: no temptation to hypostatize when you don't have a name to work with.

The argument is not that because we can dispense with predicates, they have no ontological standing. It's more along the lines of, given that we can dispense with predicates (as per demonstrated), what kind of ontology can we forge on this basis? The motivations for doing so are not internal to the argument; rather, the demonstration functions within a larger project in which the goal is to construct a naturalist ontology and with it, a naturalist theory of representation. One of the 'fallouts' of this desideratum is that such a theory must be a nominalist one, with respect to attributes like 'redness' or 'triangularity'. — StreetlightX

I see. But then we have another problem. In the passages, Sellars talks about inscriptions of the X above Y variety. How are we to interpret such inscriptions? Are they sentence tokens? If so, they must be instances of sentence types. And as soon as we admit types, then nominalism is out. So the problem is less with "redness" or "triangularity" and more with "Xness", "Yness" and "aboveness".

Notice that it won't do to just say that there are no types, just inscriptions that we are regularly disposed to react in a certain behavioristically specified way, since there must be a regularity for us to respond to. That is, there must be something that accounts for the similarity of the various X inscriptions, and this can't be just our behavior, as we are dispositionally inclined to regularly react to Xs because they are similar, not the other way around.

There's a particular asymmetry at work which I tried to detail here. — StreetlightX

I don't think that post responds to the concern I raised, which is connected to your reply quoted above. I thought there was an argument from the translation to the acceptability of nominalism. But now it seems that the argument is from nominalism to the acceptability of the language. Of course, then the problem is about how to even set up a nominalistically acceptable language; I don't think it can't be done, because talk of (e.g. sentence) types is unavoidable here.

I see. But then we have another problem. In the passages, Sellars talks about inscriptions of the X above Y variety. How are we to interpret such inscriptions? Are they sentence tokens? If so, they must be instances of sentence types. And as soon as we admit types, then nominalism is out. So the problem is less with "redness" or "triangularity" and more with "Xness", "Yness" and "aboveness". — Nagase

If I understand you correctly, this is something Sellars actually addresses pretty early on, with respect to Russell's presentation of the problem. Sellars grants that yes, "even the simplest sentence which is capable of truth or falsity must consist of more than expressions for particulars. It must also contain expressions which are not names of particulars, for example 'white' or 'to the north of'". But he continues: "Well, suppose that Russell is right and that we do need such words. Grammatically they are predicates. He has not shown that we need abstract singular terms. ' White,' yes, but not 'whiteness.' 'Resembles,' yes, but not 'resemblance.' We need expressions which are not names of particulars. Do we need expressions which are names of non-particulars?"

Similarly, with respect to your point, I think the rejoinder will be: we need 'sentences', yes, but not sentencehood; 'above', yes, but not above-ness. Having winnowed away what he calls abstract singular terms (anything which can have a suffix like '-ity,' ' -hood,' ' -ness,' ' -dom,' and '-cy'), the challenge is then to show that we can treat 'sentences' and 'above' in the nominalistic manner so outlined in the OP. That is, he answers the dangling question above in the negative: no, we don't need expressions which are names of non-particulars: we need expressions which are linguistic objects, which cannot in turn be treated as attributes with ontological standing. That types must be admitted is unavoidable, but - to put it cheekily - what kind of types?

So if there's a white dog, the dog's whiteness isn't a thing which the dog might be sharing with all other white dogs.

There's just dogs who have a range of hues. We call all the dogs in that group "white dogs." ?

Notice that it won't do to just say that there are no types, just inscriptions that we are regularly disposed to react in a certain behavioristically specified way, since there must be a regularity for us to respond to. That is, there must be something that accounts for the similarity of the various X inscriptions, and this can't be just our behavior, as we are dispositionally inclined to regularly react to Xs because they are similar, not the other way around. — Nagase

But language is a much messier affair than this. In a language such as English, there is a considerable range of sounds that count as a given phoneme. Not just anything, but also not all that sharply circumscribed because we change what will count based on context. There are allophones allowable when singing that would seem strange in everyday conversation. Toddlers utter sentences in which the prosody is right and just a couple of the phonemes are close to standard, and that counts. You use different allophones when whispering or screaming, and so on.

Paul Grice tells a story about an Oxford college that hired a new don they were very excited to get. The only trouble was he had a dog, and dogs were forbidden. So they held a meeting and "deemed" his dog a cat. Grice then wryly comments (this is all apropos his theory of meaning) that he suspects we do a lot more deeming than we realize.

That's one side: the requirement for regularity is not particularly strict, and is responsive to the project of communal living. On the other side: would natural regularity account for our behavior? Whence our disposition to respond similarly? There is still a logical leap in counting numerically distinct objects howsoever similar as "the same", as members of a class, tokens of a type, or exemplars of a property. We must still deem them the same.

I think it comes down to the nature of abstraction, and to what we ignore. A bee is attracted to a certain sort of flower, not to some one particular flower. Nature operates with types. But what does that mean? The bee must still sup from a particular flower rather than a type of flower. The particular flower has to have certain properties and the rest -- its exact height, position, blah blah blah -- are ignored. The required properties in turn must fall in some range, rather than having one specific value.

Sorry to ramble, but I find types thoroughly confounding.

Is there still a linguistic function for whiteness and other abstract particulars? Do they still have some mechanism? I get the intuition that a complete de-substantialisation of all abstract particulars is a bit too strong, but I'm not sure Sellars is actually doing that from what you've written.

If I've read you and SEP right on the Myth of the Given, this is some kind of functionalism about predicates. Their meaning is some learned thing - a web of applications and mutually conditioning 'forms of life' and constituent habits - and not given in a relation between an abstract particular and a predicate. Severing predicate from abstract particular could be done with two emphases, I think. One is where you say abstract particular has no bearing on anything and is somewhat of a transcendental illusion (where words are seen as things, briefly), and one is where the abstract particular is not a transcendental illusion but is somewhere between a summary of information and just a representative of an equivalence class over predications.

I'd be interested if much philosophy was actually possible under the first case, or what it would consist in. On the one hand we have a rejection of predetermined significance undermining aprioristic reasoning - everything is only ever everything ceteris paribus -, on the other we have a constantly generated historical a-priori which accompanies all use of language. It's as if most reasoning proceeded on the basis of a bait and switch between learned stuff summarised and internalised and really existent abstractions. But it looks like a real relation between these two is denied? Dunno. I imagine this is similar to @apokrisis's perspective in some ways.

You can't make a Frankenstein monster if you don't know how to turn up the intensity of the recessor coils. Does the person who makes that adjustment think intensity is an independent thing? Maybe sort of. Why is that a problem?

My inner nominalist keeps saying the problem is there's no such thing!

There are a lot of issues that bear a resemblance to this one: the debate in the social sciences over methodological individualism leaps to mind. The problem may not be so much with talking "as if" social groups have a kind of agency you know they really don't -- maybe that's just a harmless shorthand -- but with missing the mechanisms by which the actions of individuals add up to the "actions" of a group.

The suspicion, in a general way, would be that explanations that lean on abstractions in the wrong way are not explanations at all. What exactly happens when you turn up your recessor coils? They're more intense. Okay. More intense how? What does that actually mean? The answer better not be, now they have more intensity.

Is the "is" the essential element of predication? — Janus


I don't think so, at least not for Sellars. He often drops the copula entirely, preferring to use logical notation like 'Fa', or even alternative expressions like 'X stands for Y', 'X exemplifies Yness', or even 'X means Y'. He does note the specificities of each formulation (he leans on some but not others when trying to parse out both meaning and truth), but I don't think it's so relevant when talking about predicates as such. In fact I think the use of so many ways of expression is deliberately meant to show how widely applicable the strategy of 'dropping predicates' is meant to be.

If so, then are Sellar's examples 'bold X' and 'X above Y' really any different than if we drop the 'is' to express the same ideas, 'red apple' and 'X larger than Y' respectively? — Janus


Depends on what angle you want to look at it - for Sellars the answer is of course, no, they are not really any different at all, but you can only 'say' this if you recognize the essential continuity between bold X and red apple; and doing this in turn should lead one recognize the dispensibility of predicates. The key for Sellars is in understanding that subject-predicate couples do not stand for a relation between non-linguistic facts but between linguistic objects. 'X above Y' are two linguistic objects in a spatial relationship with each other, just and 'X larger than Y' contains three linguistic objects, 'X', 'larger than', and 'Y', in a triadic spatial relation to each other. — StreetlightX

Another thought I had is substituting the idea of relation for the idea of predication. So, a red apple would be a particular relational complex comprising the apple, the light and the percipient. There would be no universal predicate redness unifying all the different red apples, but merely a set of "family resemblances" or relations.

'Larger than' would not be a predicate but a relation between two things of different size. And 'largeness' would not be a universal predicate but a set of family resemblances between all the entities which are larger than some other entities or benchmark. Resemblance itself would not be a universal predicate, but would consist in a set of "family resemblances" between all the things which resemble one another.

Oh. wait...a regress seems to be looming...but...maybe it's not the individual ideas themselves that can save us from the regress but the total network of ideas with all their family relations and resemblances. :grin:

What exactly happens when you turn up your recessor coils? — Srap Tasmaner

You're saying the shorthand could lead to misconceptions. I don't have a degree in monsterology, but I assume it would be like asking what gets more humid when the relative humidity goes up. The partial pressure of water vapor gets higher I imagine. But what is pressure? Is there such a thing?

It's as if most reasoning proceeded on the basis of a bait and switch between learned stuff summarised and internalised and really existent abstractions. But it looks like a real relation between these two is denied? Dunno. I imagine this is similar to apokrisis's perspective in some ways. — fdrake

I am a meaning holist. So on the face of it, Sellars' move seems objectionably nominalist. It treats even wholes as always particular. But then it also look to says that wholes are not composed of general parts. So it may be a tactic for revealing the essential inversion that is at the heart of true holism.

Look at the parts and you discover the wholeness. Look at the whole and you discover the partness. Relations need relata, and conversely, relata need relations. Nominalist and Platonists both get it wrong to the degree that they can't give us a clear view of this reciprocal dynamic that maps the particular to the general, the general to the particular.

So what do I think about the reality of abstracta? I take the hierarchy theory view - as set out by Stan Salthe in particular. The abstract now becomes the regularities that persist, that become fixed, due to the semiotic effects of spatiotemporal scale.

So rather than abstracta being transcendent - either actually transcendent forms, as in Platonism, or transcendent constructs, as in nominalism - they are an immanent fact about a material world that has spatiotemporal scale, a world that is organised as a hierarchy of "cogent moments".

Salthe gives a simple model of how it works. Imagine a world of entities of similar size. Now imagine the same motifs or integrative processes being repeated freely at both smaller and larger sizes. We have our regular size blobs - the entities that are about the same size as us, and so they they look like other distinct things. But as these blobs grow larger and larger in relation to us, they begin to fill our field of view.

Eventually, a single blob is so large that it exceeds our vision and becomes the complete unchanging backdrop. It is everywhere at all times, so far as we are concerned. It is no longer particular, but completely general - simply due to spatiotemporal scale and the fact we are confined to a point of view concerning entities.

This creates the upper bound of a hierarchical world. Individuated particulars - even ones that are processes unfolding in space and time - eventually must turn into global generalities simply due to an unbounded growth that makes them too big to continue to be related to as individuated particulars.

So this is a model of how the abstract can, indeed must, arise in a world where entification is a thing, but also not an artificially bounded thing. If there is entification, it should freely be the case over all scales. As why not? And in that fact lies the corollary that scales of entification will eventually completely fill a point of view, crossing a relational event horizon so as to become a universalised property. A fact about the whole.

Then conversely, the same story applies when we look in the other direction - down towards the fractally shrinking scales of entification. Now the generic units that are composing existence are getting both smaller and more frantic. Their spatiotemporal integrative scale, or cogent moment, is becoming microscopic - from our point of view. Eventually it gets so small as to turn into a continuous blur, so far as we are concerned. It all gets too small for us to have a relation to it as a set of discrete elements.

So now we have a complementary realm of abstracta bounding our entified existence. Purely for immanent and natural reasons - the fact that we are observing things from a characteristic scale of entification - both largeness and smallness become the congealed bounds, the event horizons, which come to fix our existence.

We live within the holism of whatever is the spatiotemporal scale that is so large it completely fills our point of view. And also, we are supported by the solidity of the spatiotemporal scale that is so fast and busy that we can't slip between its cracks.

So the abstract is both emergent and real. And it lies in two complementary directions to the particularity or individuation we find all around us - at a similar enough scale of entification.

And of course this hierarchy theory story is Peircean.

The lower bound of reality is the fast/small scale of chance events or Tychism. The realm of the differences that no longer make a difference. The realm of the quantum indeed - when viewed from the distanced safety of the classical middlescale.

The upper bound of reality is the slow/large scale of inveterate habit, or the continuity of Synechism. Now difference is eliminated not by indifference or contingency, but by the growth of universal necessity. All other possibilities have been eliminated. We live within the one unbroken totality - as now general relativity aims to describe.

So to get back to meaning holism, my point is that nominalism vs Platonism is a very familiar dualistic battle. It seems one or other side needs to win.

Yet a pragmatist view - and Sellars is meant to be very close to Peirce, even if it seems to have come via Dewey - really ought to be able to home in on the reciprocality of parts and wholes. The point about local vs global, particular vs general, is that they are just the same thing - divided by an asymmetry of scale.

So ordinary language and predicate thinking wants to work from the bottom up, constructing holistic complexity from substantial parts. However we know that zoom in on the parts and they themselves will keep dissolving into further parts. It is only by keeping our proper distance - preserving the larger thing of the semiotic relation we have with them - that they will remain that solid blur protected by indifference. The predicate approach will function so long as we don't actually look down.

But equally, holism is suspect in its claims of being able to form its world from the top-down, just by the imposition of Platonic constraints of form and purpose. Zoom in on the wholeness and it will be revealed as in fact just another particular. We get the usual story of a totalising physical theory that instead explodes into an unbounded multiverse. Again, it is the semiotic relation that is the only thing holding everything together.

An accurate description of reality, a language that captures its structure in terms of particulars vs generals, has to learn how not to treat the global as a Platonic reality, but just an event horizon that - like a mirage - exists because we are maintaining a suitable distance from it.

So holism - of this kind - is irreducibly triadic. (Salthe did dub his model the basic triadic structure. His book on this - Evolving Hierarchical Systems - is essential reading.) We exist in world of stable objects - the medium-sized dry goods of a classical realm - because any instability is being regulated from both possible directions.

From below, the instability might grow more violent as the scale shrinks, but it also becomes so microscopic as to be indifferent - to us. The "partness" both increases and also ceases to matter.

And conversely, looking up, any instability disappears. Scale makes change too slow have an effect. For us, universal law becomes the rule - even though now this "wholeness" starts to look rather particular. It has become "everything that is the case". A singular totality that we can no longer rightfully decompose into predicate parts.

So when it comes to speech and its efforts to logically frame our experience of reality, we can see how it actually wants to target the critical instabilities of the world at our scales of interest. What gives us the most practical information is the distinctions that give names to the points where this instability~stability dynamic is poised right on its cusp.

Are we talking about a part or a whole? Well, what is most useful is to talk about entification which is right on the brink of going either way. As that is the kind of talk which gets at the actual deep structure of the world.

The relata are the stable elements, says reductionism. The relation is the instability, the potential transformation. But then conversely, all relata, all elements, are themselves not entities but processes, says holism. What is solid and eternal are the relations, the structure, the organisation.

Hmm. A contradiction or instead just complementary views? The same critical instability seen from opposite directions?

Sure we can dispense with predicates to emphasise one of the views. And then - which seems to be Sellars' intent - we discover the nominalism that can be found inside holism. Just as holism finds nominalism within itself when it does its own naming of abstracta, its own naming of absolute generalities.

Again, the art of language would be to be able to put a finger on the hinge points - the place where the interesting flips happen.

This horse is white. Whiteness is generic. Here we have put our finger on an instability that orientates us to the way the world really is in its game between what is necessary, what contingent, or what is general, what particular.

Entities both hang together and fall apart. Language - with a predicate syntax, yet also a sentential holism of interpretation - gets that.

Chomsky was at least right about the recursive hierarchical organisation of speech. The unit of comprehension is not the syntactic particle. It is already the irreducible thing of a semantic entity framed syntactically by an above and a below. It is a word phrase that is indifferent to finer distinction, and stabilised by the constraint of the larger meaning intended. The words are detailed or particular enough for ambiguity to be grammatically ignored, while the words are also bounded enough by the habits of whole sentence-making to count stably as a compositional semantic unit.

Zoom in or zoom out, and all this stability falls apart. But keep everything the right distance and it hangs together for long enough to achieve a pragmatic goal.

And that is meaning holism. The emergent stability which underpins entification.

But what is pressure? Is there such a thing? — frank

Pressure is a nice example because statistical mechanics was invented for just this purpose, and would be one of the prime examples of explaining how an aggregate entity -- some given volume of a gas -- behaves based on understanding how its constituents behave, the many individual gas molecules. Sociologists and economists dream of being able to pull off something like that! (Full disclosure: just started reading Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehavior.)

We're headed rapidly toward stuff I don't understand. If you ask next what kinetic energy is, and whether there really is such a thing, I'll be shrugging.

Do you just type really fast, or are you in fact an AI?

LOL. I'm sitting here thinking that I've just wasted most of my morning when I really do have real work to finish today.

just started reading Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehavior.) — Srap Tasmaner

Wow, that sounds fascinating.

Wow, that sounds fascinating — frank

Sarcasm?

LOL, no, it does sound fascinating. It sounds like it's over my head though. I hope you get a chance to post something about it.

Oh it's not technical at all. He's a far more accessible writer than Sellars, but then almost everyone is.

In that case I'll give it a shot. I have a long standing fascination with mass events. Simplistic narratives versus merging diverse agendas.

He's a far more accessible writer than Sellars, but then almost everyone is. — Srap Tasmaner

Man, I was just thinking the other day that I'd take an essay of Heidegger's over a page of Sellars anyday, stylistically speaking.

Also, you had me wondering when in the world Schelling wrote a book called 'Micromotives and Macrobehavior', but I figured it out eventually, lol.

With respect to isomorphism, he even distinguishes between a 'first-order' isomorphism (where word mirrors thing) and a 'second-order' isomorphism in which what are correlated are patterns in the causal order, which language itself is part of. This is why he qualifies linguistic objects as natural-linguistic objects — sx

Ah yeah, the 'second-order isomorphism' sounds pretty close to what I had in mind. One analogy that comes to mind is user interfaces. They don't provide a simple 1:1 graphical translation of the underlying program (which is kind of hard to imagine), but are more like higher-order subprograms that orient the user and structure their interaction with it. That they able to do this means that the 'patterns' of the UI, however different from the underlying program, are still highly correlated with it.

Or I think so, I don't really know much about compsci