On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:14 PM, glen e. p. ropella < [email protected]> wrote:
> Thus spake Russ Abbott circa 12/01/09 04:18 PM: > > No doubt both are important. The symbols (and formalisms) keep us honest. > > The concepts, though, are what the symbols are about. By themselves they > are > > not about anything. > > I disagree. I think the emphasis on concepts is a peculiar form of > anthropocentrism (or, at worst, narcissism ;-). An explicit and eminent > objective in both math and science is to make processes explicit so that > those processes can be argued about, falsified, justified, repeated, and > taught. > > ... > > "concepts is a peculiar form of anthropocentrism" is a very interesting point. You raise the issue of consciousness and in particular what it means to have concepts. Are you saying that having concepts is limited to humans? Perhaps it is. If that's the case, do you expect to find symbols generated elsewhere in the universe through non-conscious processes? You might point to DNA as an example. It's digital, but is it symbolic? Are symbols being manipulated? Perhaps--although that seems a stretch. But even if one grants that symbols are being manipulated in the use of DNA, I think it would be hard to make the case that the symbols are being used referentially the way we use our symbols. And that seems to me to be a basic point. If symbols are used referentially how are their referents associated with them? That's the symbol grounding problem again. >From that perspective, the symbols (as a tool for externalizing the > internal) are way more important than the concepts. > > ... > > You say that you disagree, but what you are saying is very much what I said -- but you seem to be taking it negatively We use symbols to externalize concepts. (In fact I wrote a paper to that effect: "If a tree casts a shadow is it telling the time?<http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/images/6/66/If_a_tree_casts_a_shadow_is_it_telling_the_time.pdf>") I agree. The concepts come before the symbols in that case. The symbols help us be clear and keep us honest about our concepts. I don't understand why you say you disagree with that. Symbols by themselves have no meaning. I'm not sure if you are agreeing about that or not. And in order for something to have meaning, it must have meaning in the mind of a conceptualizing being.
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