A further off-the-cuff thought re the vagueness/open-endedness of words. *All words are generalisations. *Generalisations cover open-ended groups of individuals. *Generalisations are, strictly, fictions. The only reality is individuals. "There are no "humans/human race","cats", "dogs" only individual humans, cats, dogs etc. - Fido, Rover etc. *Generalisations cover what individual members of a group have in common, but A) they never fully define those common features, and B) individuals have distinctive differences.. so there is always scope to redefine and extend the generalisations.
*Even words for individuals are generalisations. *"Ben Goertzel" is a continuously changing reality. At 10.05 pm he will be different from 10.00pm, and so on. He is in fact many individuals. *Any statement about an individual, like "Ben Goertzel", is also vague and open-ended. *The only way to refer to and capture individuals with high (though not perfect) precision is with images. *A movie of Ben chatting from 10.00pm to 10.05pm will be subject to extremely few possible interpretations, compared with a verbal statement about him. ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
