Ozzie, lists,
Ozzie wrote:
Sung ~ I was very interested in your comments and attachment. Thanks for
posting it. I have one question and one comment.
Question: Does your attached exhibit demonstrate that scientists/thinkers
universally use signs, or that humans, animals, plants, matter, etc. all
use signs?
Sung:
A good question. What I meant to say with the table was that all those
fields in the first column can be viewed as categories since they fit the
category diagram consisting of nodes A, B, and C and mappings f, g, and h.
To me the mathematical category satisfying the diagram is synonymous with
the irreducible triadic relation (ITR), which I think Peirce identified
with the sign and the mind (metaphorically ?). The question mark, because I
believe that the sign and the mind embody ITR but I am not sure whether I
am ready to assert that all processes embodying ITR are signs and minds.
Ozzie:
Comment: Regarding the quote you posted ("How can we tell the difference
between what we *would like* to be true and what *is* actually true ? The
answer is *science *...."), I do not see how we can demonstrate that any
individual, including the most dedicated scientist, seeks knowledge/truth
independent of all other things. Those who seek truth receive an emotional
reward when they believe they find it -- and that reward, which is certain,
will at the margin distract them from truth, which is uncertain. Therefore
Aristotle (like all other humans) abducted hypotheses about things he
didn't understand and leaped to unfounded conclusions. Some scientists
claim discoveries they know to be untrue, either for acclaim or money.
So I would say that truth emerges not from "science," but as the outcome of
a competitive process among thinkers, where each thinker tries to out-do
all others for whatever emotional/personal rewards that provides. In a
competitive setting, revealing the biases and shortcuts taken by
predecessors is emotionally rewarding, and new insights emerge because the
thinker is forced to avoid the pitfalls he/she uncovered when reviewing the
work of others. Leaping to unfounded conclusions or fabricating evidence
is minimized because thinkers hope to avoid later embarrassment,
humiliation, etc.
Knowledge, like a species, evolves not because individual members directly
intend that result. Each member maximizes his/her own particular
advantage, and the product of that competitive mechanism is truth (or
survival of the species). I do not see how we can accurately perceive the
truth-seeking process independent of the environment where it occurs.
Sung:
I agree. I think most of what you say above can be accommodated in the word
"science", an objective and social (in contrast to individual) intellectual
activity through which the human mind can reach truth or true beliefs.
Taking into account your criticisms, I am inclined to define the three
mappings in the emotion-cognition-credition" triad thus:
f g
Emotion -----> Cognition -----> Belief
| ^
| |
|_______________________|
h
f = Emotion affects Knowledge.
g = Knowledge affects Belief.
h = Belief affects Emotion.
- f = Knowing affects Feeling.
- g = Belief affects Knowing.
- h = Belief affects Feeling.
All the best.
Sung
On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 10:20 PM, Ozzie <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sung ~
> I was very interested in your comments and attachment. Thanks for posting
> it. I have one question and one comment.
>
> Question: Does your attached exhibit demonstrate that scientists/thinkers
> universally use signs, or that humans, animals, plants, matter, etc. all
> use signs?
>
> Comment: Regarding the quote you posted ("How can we tell the difference
> between what we *would like* to be true and what *is* actually true ?
> The answer is *science *...."), I do not see how we can demonstrate that
> any individual, including the most dedicated scientist, seeks
> knowledge/truth independent of all other things. Those who seek truth
> receive an emotional reward when they believe they find it -- and that
> reward, which is certain, will at the margin distract them from truth,
> which is uncertain. Therefore Aristotle (like all other humans) abducted
> hypotheses about things he didn't understand and leaped to unfounded
> conclusions. Some scientists claim discoveries they know to be untrue,
> either for acclaim or money.
>
> So I would say that truth emerges not from "science," but as the outcome
> of a competitive process among thinkers, where each thinker tries to out-do
> all others for whatever emotional/personal rewards that provides. In a
> competitive setting, revealing the biases and shortcuts taken by
> predecessors is emotionally rewarding, and new insights emerge because the
> thinker is forced to avoid the pitfalls he/she uncovered when reviewing the
> work of others. Leaping to unfounded conclusions or fabricating evidence
> is minimized because thinkers hope to avoid later embarrassment,
> humiliation, etc.
>
> Knowledge, like a species, evolves not because individual members directly
> intend that result. Each member maximizes his/her own particular
> advantage, and the product of that competitive mechanism is truth (or
> survival of the species). I do not see how we can accurately perceive the
> truth-seeking process independent of the environment where it occurs.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom Wyrick
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 8, 2015, at 6:41 PM, Sungchul Ji <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> In CP 1.1 reproduced as (070514-1) in the biosemiotics post dated 7/5/2014
> (see Attachment below), Peirce predicted the existence of “simple concepts
> applicable to every subject”. In the same post, I proposed that one of the
> possible “simple concepts applicable to every subject” that Peirce was
> referring to may be Peirce’s own concept of “irreducible triadicity” which
> I alternatively called the “irreducible triadic relation’ (ITR). To
> [biosemiotics:8730] dated 6/30/2015, I attached a table entitled “The
> universality of ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation)” applying ITR to 13
> different subjects, ranging from (i) quantum mechanics to (ii) enzymology,
> (iii) gnergetics (study of the information-energy driving all
> self-organizations), (iv) semiotics, (v) category theory, (vi)
> metaphysics, and to (vii) religions.
>
>
> The purpose of this post is to expand the 6/30/2015 table to include one
> more item, i.e., Psychology, in the form of the emotion-cognition-belief
> triad (or the emotion-cognition-credition triad as referred to by H.-F.
> Angel and his coworkers; see References [10, 11, 12]). This new triad is
> shown in Row 9 in the table attached to this post entitled “The university
> of ITR”, and this new entry is similar to the rest of the triads in the
> table in the sense that it is a member of the ur-category, the category to
> which all categories belong. In addition, the ECC
> (emotion-cognition-credition) triad may share special similarities with the
> triads in Rows 2, 3, and 5.
>
>
> The idea to apply the ITR concept to the emotion-cogntion-belief triad was
> stimulated by the following quotations (with the key words highlighted by
> me) from M. Shermers’s book, “The Believing Brain” (see Reference [13]
> given below the table):
>
>
>
>
>
> “. . . What I *want to* *believe* based on *emotions *and what I
> *should (070815-1) believe *based on *evidence* do not
> always coincide. I’m a skeptic not
> because I do not want to *believe*, but because I want to *know*. How
> can we tell the difference between what we *would like* to be true and
> what *is* actually true ? . . . The answer is *science*. We live in the
> Age
> of Science, in which *beliefs* are supposed to be *grounded* in
> rock-solid
> evidence and *empirical data*. . . . .” [13, p. 2]
>
>
>
> “. . . scientists are people too, no less subject to the whims of *emotion
> * (070815-2)
>
> and the pull of *cognitive *biases to shape and reinforce *beliefs*.”
> [13, P. 6].
>
>
>
>
> I am assuming that a significant part of the meanings of these two quotes
> can be captured with what I came to refer to as the
> “emotion-cognition-credition” (ECC) triad that I first learned about in the
> 2014 Credition Conference held in Graz, Austria. One significance of the
> ECC triad may be that it underlies all human actions and decision makings,
> including all common human behaviors as well as uncommon behaviors such as
> self-immolations and suicide bombings.
>
>
>
> If you have any questions or comments, let me know.
>
>
>
> All the best.
>
>
>
>
>
> Sung
>
>
>
> ______________________Attachement____________________
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
>
> *> Subject: Burgin’s Fundamental Triads as Peirceasn Signs.*
>
> *> From: "Sungchul Ji" <[email protected] <[email protected]>>*
>
> *> Date: Sat, July 5, 2014 5:33 pm*
>
> *> To: [email protected] <[email protected]>*
>
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >
>
> > Stephen R on the Peirce list cited Peirce as saying:
>
> >
>
> > "The undertaking which this volume inaugurates is to (070514-1)
>
> > make a philosophy like that of Aristotle, that is to say, to
>
> > outline a theory so comprehensive that, for a long time to
>
> > come, the entire work of human reason, in philosophy of
>
> > every school and kind, in mathematics, in psychology,
>
> > in physical science, in history, in sociology, and in
>
> > whatever other department there may be, shall appear
>
> > as the filling up of its details. The first step toward
>
> > this is to find simple concepts applicable to every
>
> > subject." CP 1.1
>
> >
>
> > At least one of the potential "simple concepts" that Peirce is referring
>
> > to above may turn out to be his concept of "irreducible triadicity"
>
> > embedded in the following quote that Jon recently posted and further
>
> > explained in Figure 1 and (070514-4):
>
> >
>
> > “Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic. (070514-2)
>
> > A definition of a sign will be given which no more
>
> > refers to human thought than does the definition of
>
> > a line as the place which a particle occupies, part
>
> > by part, during a lapse of time. Namely, a sign is
>
> > something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant
>
> > sign determined or created by it, into the same sort
>
> > of correspondence with something, C, its object, as
>
> > that in which itself stands to C. It is from this
>
> > definition, together with a definition of “formal”,
>
> > that I deduce mathematically the principles of logic.
>
> > I also make a historical review of all the definitions
>
> > and conceptions of logic, and show, not merely that my
>
> > definition is no novelty, but that my non-psychological
>
> > conception of logic has virtually been quite generally
>
> > held, though not generally recognized.” (NEM 4, 20–21).
>
> >
>
> > a b
>
> > C --------> A --------> B
>
> > | ^
>
> > | |
>
> > |______________________|
>
> > c
>
> >
>
> > Figure 1. A diagrammatic representation of the principle of irreducible
>
> > triadicity as applied to the definition of a sign. A = sign; B =
>
> > interpretant; and C = object. a = the sign-object relation (which can
> be
>
> > iconic, indexical or symbolic); b = the sign-interpretant relation (which
>
> > can be rheme, dicisign or argument); c = the object-interpretant relation
>
> > (which is lacking in Peircean semiotics but may be provided by
>
> > microsemiotics [1] or biosemiotics (e.g., [2, 3, 4]).
>
> >
>
> > “A is determined by C and determines B in such away (070514-3)
>
> > that C is indirectly determined by B.”
>
> >
> --
> Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
>
> Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
> Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
> Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
> Rutgers University
> Piscataway, N.J. 08855
> 732-445-4701
>
> www.conformon.net
>
> <Universality of ITR_table_07082015.docx>
>
>
> -----------------------------
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>
>
>
>
>
--
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701
www.conformon.net
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