Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:42:32 -0400 To: fis@listas.unizar.es From: Ted Goranson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
Welcome Robin. You can do little better than to engage John Collier on this. I usually agree with him. But in this message, I will try to color some of his references a bit differently.
Before we start, you should know that there are several communities here, and you may as well get used to the fact that members from different groups talk past each other. So when you meet each of us virtually, you probably should get an intro as to their basic views.
I interpret the agenda of FIS as having a particular challenge. I believe we have need of and are close to a new science, that refactors basic abstractions. And that emergent design and information will be the levers into this new collection of mechanisms. I think it will be intellectually disruptive. I think it will resolve several vexing problems in science and greatly better our state. In this, I am not alone.
Others here have a more tempered view. Some come from the semiotic side and apply those notions to physics and chemistry. They are a particularly articulate group.
Another rather substantial group I will call the statistical machinists who go the other way in terms of basic abstractions from physics carried over to all phenomenon. They at least have good arithmetic, and that's not be taken lightly.
You may think of these groups as revolutionaries, neopeirceans and anentropists. While we are pretty levelheaded and generous here - guided by the example of our kind host and moderator Pedro - we do tend to stick to our own religions.
Now, John said:
The most Wittgensteinian approach to intentionality is, in my opinion, in Situations and Attitudes by Jon Barwise and John Perry. I think it is flawed, as it does not properly incorporate standard logic (this is a problem that Jerry Fodor harps on, a bit excessively perhaps, and to the wrong effect, but basically he is right).
(snip)
There is a nice, accessible account of Barwise and Perry in Keith Devlin, Information and Logic.
John is right about Barwise and Perry, at least initially. But you have to place that in perspective: 25 years ago, when situation theory was cooked up to deal with a fairly quaint and now forgotten linguistic problem. Situation theory in later years under Barwise was used as the basis for a rather clever axiomatic approach to formalizing abstraction mechanisms. This would hardly be characterized as Wittgensteinian, and by this I think you both mean the middle period.
Perry and Israel have stuck with the original notion as John noted. Devlin's book doesn't merely describe Barwise and Perry, but rationalizes them in a more general domain of formal reasoning.
As it happens, next week I will be with Devlin. You may have gotten the impression that situation theory does not "properly incorporate standard logic." This is incorrect in many uses of the system. Many workers, including Devlin with Rosenberg, Barwise in later work, myself with Cardier, and Ginzburg and Sag, work with the system as if it were fully "standard logic" plus an axiomatic basis and workable calculus to include context or alternatively, draw intention.
Next week with a colleague I am presenting a paper describing an "emergent situation theory" that empowers agent systems with just the sorts of abstractions the revolutionaries here might appreciate to create the emergent behaviors we observe in the world. This mechanism allows agents to build "narratives" from the bottom up and seemingly addresses some of the more vexing problems of the FIS agenda.
Of course John is on solid ground as well with his approach which by his vocation needs to be more respectful of the past than mine.
On this, here you will find two different viewpoints. Some will argue that what they present is the correct, best, even the only way. Figuratively, God must have imagined it so.
I'm with the other camp who believes that all this is a matter of modeling. You choose your abstractions and circumspectly invent your logics to suit what you wish to accomplish and what needs you have of understanding the world.
Welcome again. - Ted Goranson -- __________ Ted Goranson Sirius-Beta _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
