Re: "schizophrenic" reference

[Vaughan Pratt <pratt@cs.stanford.edu>]

On 10/28/2010 7:34 PM, Tom Leinster wrote:
>
> I'm afraid I say this every time "schizophrenic" objects come up, but here
> I go again...
>
> Let's not use that word.

I have to agree with Tom here because to deny this would offend those 
upset by Holocaust deniers (which we all should be upset by).  This 
comes up repeatedly in the politics of global warming, where people 
complain on that basis about the use of the term "climate denier."

Sensitivity is chopping holes in the English language the way mad cow 
disease chops holes in the brain, obliging us to replace "he" by "he or 
she" (awkward) or "they" (ungrammatical), maintain an up-to-the-minute 
lexicon of who's allowed to call which groups by what names, keep track 
of which punishments are meted out to which groups for insulting which 
icons, and so on.

I'm not saying sensitivity should or shouldn't do this, I'm just 
pointing out that it's happening.  Nature does not judge BSE as good or 
bad, however badly done by its victims might feel.

This might not be the best time to advertise my paper "Communes via 
Yoneda, from an Elementary Perspective," Fundamenta Informaticae 123 
(2010) 1–16, DOI 10.3233/FI-2010-315, which (at long last) is the 
journal version of my CT'04 talk in Vancouver.  That's because I speak 
there about "the schizophrenic mind-body nature of Lewis's qualia" which 
I explicate in terms of the dual nature of the elements of the dualizing 
object and the states (functionals, open sets, dual points, intensive 
quantities) of the tensor unit as the dual of the dualizing object in 
*-autonomous categories, and the generalization thereof via profunctors 
to commune categories.  The "schizophrenia" is analyzed in terms of the 
two kinds of entities belonging to the same homsets.  All rubbish of 
course, but hopefully to emerge from that status at some point.

Vaughan


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