Howard, I think your first point is based on a misreading. Anti-psychologism does not assert that there can be logic and computation that is independent of physical implementation. What it asserts is that logic and semiotic can (and should) be studied generically apart from the way it is realized in any particular physical medium (such as a human brain), so that we do not confuse qualities of the medium with qualities of the process. Psychology, as the study of how cognition works in specific types of organisms (such as humans), simply is not general enough to reveal what is basic about semiosis.
gary f. From: Howard Pattee [mailto:hpat...@roadrunner.com] Sent: 6-Sep-14 8:59 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; 'Peirce List' Subject: RE: [biosemiotics:6635] Re: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions Pattees comments on NP Chapters 1 and 2. At 04:36 PM 9/3/2014, Frederik wrote: FS: Charting how brains or psyches implement aspects of that chain [of reasoning], however important this is, does not change the importance of P's insistence that logic in the broad sense should be studied independently of how it may be realized in any particular physical medium, be it in minds, machines or elsewhere. HP: I agree it is important to understand why antipsychologism works. That is, why there can be logic and computation that is independent of physical implementation. Some Artificial Life people even think life itself can be independent of physical implementation ( I have argued <https://www.academia.edu/3075569/Artificial_Life_Needs_a_Real_Epistemology> otherwise <https://www.academia.edu/3075569/Artificial_Life_Needs_a_Real_Epistemology> ). There are many proofs of different implementations computational equivalence (e.g. Turing equivalence <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine_equivalents> ) and conjectures of different physical embodiments (e.g., Church-Turing Thesis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis> ) which work insofar as their logic is formal (i.e., syntactical and symbolic). But that is an extremely limited type of semiotic activity. On the other hand, the evidence for the psychological basis of much of creative semiotic activity, especially in mathematics and physics is so strong, that I think an exclusive claim for antipsychologism is unsupportable. FS: McCulloch recapitulates how Peirce's theory of propositions prompted him early on to make a theory of how those propositions are processed by psychological states - giving him the idea that neuronal interactions correspond to propositional events. This is a nice theory, fitting Peirce's idea that all in semiotics and logic should be conceived of as the ongoing analyses of the basic phenomenon which is the chain of reasoning. HP: I think some history here is relevant. The early attempts at AI actually followed this Peirce/McCulloch strategy of isolating intelligence from its physical embodiment. McCulloch and Pitts <http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~coquand/AUTOMATA/mcp.pdf> famous paper speculating that neural nets can be modeled by propositional logic was influential in early AI. However, the history of AI <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence> shows that the choice of physical implementation is crucial for most behaviors that we call intelligent and especially for any evolvable system. One reason is that creativity and evolution depend on heritable variation and memory of error, and the consequences of error cannot be isolated from the physical implementation in which error occurs. Memory of mistakes is a primary source of invention, and logical thinking does not tolerate mistakes or contradiction. This early logic-based AI is now called GOFAI <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOFAI> (Good Old-Fashioned AI). Today, that approach has been largely replaced by a broader more material view, often called embodied cognition <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition> (see link). Frederik suggests that, the Dicisign doctrine appears as an important, on some points radical, version of Andy Clarks Extended Mind hypothesis (NP p. 9), but I don't see how that version could be implementation-independent or antipsychological. My argument is for complementary models. Peircean antipsychologism is only one extreme side of the problem. Historically, it appears to be a reaction to the other extreme side of psychologism. Both are incomplete models. There is much evidence of creative thought in mathematics and physics arising from the unconscious prepared mind by epiphanies where there is no discernible logic or chain of reasoning. They are what Poincaré sees as, combinations which present themselves to the mind in a kind of sudden illumination after a somewhat prolonged period of unconscious work . . . but those only which are interesting find their way into the field of consciousness. . . A few only are harmonious, and consequently at once useful and beautiful, Peirce calls this unconscious activity abduction; but how can it be brain-independent? The dynamics of artificial concurrent distributed networks is nothing like a chain of reasoning. It is more like a social consensus or very complex quorum sensing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing> . In any case, we are a long way from knowing what coding strategies the brain has evolved, even in simple animals. One problem I see (along with William James) is that a logical temperament, like Peirces, can always imagine a statistical consensus decision ex post facto as a logical syllogism with a conclusion as if from a chain of reasoning, as Peirce has done with the frogs nervous system (NP p, 6). Of course, because it is a metaphor this view is logically irrefutable. Most of what we all see as immediate reasoning is only a rationalization of our convictions established over years of experience. The evidence so far leads me to think embodied cognition is most important. Hans Moravec: Encoded in the large, highly evolved sensory and motor portions of the human brain is a billion years of experience about the nature of the world and how to survive in it. The deliberate process we call reasoning is, I believe, the thinnest veneer of human thought, effective only because it is supported by this much older and much more powerful, though usually unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge. [my italics] Howard
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