What are the classes of mental action? How should we systematize our understanding of mental processes? If we decide there are certainly eight, but nine if you count dreaming, then we can argue about dreaming. But until we figure out the black and the white, there can be no gray.

Pluto is no longer considered a planet, but rather a dwarf planet. But there is still some dispute, is that right?

What are the classes of mental action? How should we systematize our understanding of mental processes? If we decide there are certainly eight, but nine if you count dreaming, then we can argue about dreaming. But until we figure out the black and the white, there can be no gray.

Pluto is no longer considered a planet, but rather a dwarf planet. But there is still some dispute, is that right?

---------- Post added at 12:26 AM ---------- Previous post was Yesterday at 11:25 PM ----------

Fido, are you saying that action is necessarily non-mental? Would the term process do instead? I'm okay with changing the wording if it helps the presentation of the question.

As far as natural domain/category placement there really is no black and white, it is all grey. It is the black and white that are artificially and arbitrarily manufactured to fit the needs and beliefs of category maker.

Why aren't black and white themselves categories?

or stars, asteroids, long, short, alive, dead, square, circle, animal, mineral etc. Why aren't all of these categories which only fit our needs, but are arbitrary and do not conform to any objective reality?

Black and white are categories with various subcategories amd supercatergoies embedded in them, so are stars, asteroids, long, short, etc...

Think of it this way, what people try to do with artificial categorization is make a binary system (black)/not black, in other words try and define it in a dictionary-like manner, BLACK adj. the presence of all color.... this is not a category, it is a defenition. The mind as far as the cognitive scientists can tell registers not a defenition but a sense of blackness with varying degrees of faithfulness to the blackness prototype that fall under other superheadings such as light and dark and sub headings pitch black or gun metal black, both types of black one meaning true black the other being a metalic gloss black. These overlap with other prototypes and their super and sub categories such as night, black (the race) etc...

What is a star or asteroid?, at what point does short become long? are we not paritally dead (dying) at the same time we are living? where does the term "he's dead to me" come from. is a square the angle, the shape, the tool, or the dufus? IS a circle perfectly round or do the ends just have to touch? they all conform to objective reality as language and categorization is simply our way of relating to reality, they just don't conform in a binary manner. The binary function is superimposed for ideological convenience

When i said it starts out grey, that was a metaphor for, it does not start as a defenition/binary concept, it starts out as a fuzzy prototype. The when i said the black and white are arbitraily superimposed, it was metaphor for we then define things to suit our needs, although when we speak and think that is not how we speak or think. The simple fact that we use metaphor, we transpose meaning and all the womnderful things we do with language show that categories cannot be strictly defined and confined, without retarding our ability to innovate and evolve.