Kirsti, List:
A few controversial comments are interlaced within your text.
(But first, I would like to point CSP students to an important paper
on the current state of modern logics. “13 Questions about universal
logic”. Study of the 13 questions asked in this paper serves to
compare the past to the present in seeking to understand just what the
many many “logics” of today is all about.)
www.jyb-logic.org/ [1]UNIVERSALLOGIC13-BSL-SEPT.PDF
<Universallogic13-bsl-sept.pdf>
On Apr 8, 2016, at 1:27 PM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:
Jerry, list,
My comments are inserted.
Jerry LR Chandler kirjoitti 8.4.2016 03:28:
List, Kirsti:
On Apr 7, 2016, at 3:15 AM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:
But let me first ask you some questions, to help me formulate my
answer.
1) You concentrate on chemical symbols. - How about chemical
reactions?
JLRC: My interest for several decades has been on the
antecedent-consequent relation between a mutation and the change in
an
organism. How does it happen?
KiM: Well, well. Antecedent-consequent pair belongs to the realm of
logical inferences. CSP, brilliantly, summarized it as an IF - THEN
relation. The IF part consist in ALL presuppositions, facts as well as
fancy. Current, common beliefs forming the major part of
presuppositions. A considerable part of common beliefs being, at any
particular time, out of reach of (current) criticism.
The relation between antecedent-consequence and “IF-THEN”
terminology in logic is substantially richer than this.
Historically, "antecedent-consequent” is pre-Aristotelian and lies
at the root of most but not all Western logics. The critical issue is
the nature of a “symbolic” relation between some prior symbols (in
a sentence) and the consequences (as a conclusion or a conjecture or a
belief or some form of closure; some termination of the sentence.
Before one can speak of “IF-THEN”, one must first introduce the
notion of logical terms as well as notion of necessity or an analogous
percept.
(I am skeptical that CSP introduced the material conditional into
logic, but this fact can be checked out. Areader may have the answer
to this historical question.)
What you are really asking is to connect all kinds of locical
inferences (including abduction) to all too simplistic cause -
effect sequence. - I do not believe you truly mean to ask that.
I meant to state exactly what I stated. I am skeptical that the
following discussion will alter your beliefs, but I will offer you
options to consider, alternatives to ponder, concepts outside your
percepts. (CSP’s notion of logic is significantly narrower that
modern logics. See the reference given at the top of this message.)
I agree with you that a biological cause-effect sequence includes a
large numbers of pre-suppositions.
But, your dis-belief appears to arise from philosophy, not from
science.
My belief arises directly from the experimental methods used to
quantify experiments in our laboratory. The essential philosophical
argument that serves as a base is that of reproducibility of
experiments. In other words, a properly designed experiment provides
the consistency, the completeness and the decidability necessary to
draw certain local conclusions.
If… then relations.
IF an experiment can be reproduced consistently, THEN the consequences
are natural consequences.
Thus, the critical scientific method is to form the material
antecedent conditions such that the same consequences result.
The analogous common belief is cooking / food preparation.
If.. then…
(Roughly speaking) IF one starts with the same ingredients and use the
same recipe, THEn the same results obtain.
The conclusions from both biological and chemical experiments are
ALWAYS local conclusions, LOCAL DENOTATIONS OF FACTS OF MEASUREMENT.
The _CONNOTATIONS_ of such experimentations are subject to
philosophical conjectures, connotations subject to the values of the
philosopher. This is a “difference that makes as different”
between “X” and “Y”.
From decades of first hand experience, CSP understood how to conduct
experiments, to evaluate the meaning of them and based both his
philosophy of inquiry and logic upon these experiences.
_The tri-triads of Qualisigns, Sinsigns, Legisigns, Icons, Indices,
Symbols, Rhema, Dicisigns and Arguments can be viewed as a
chemical-based rhetoric for a consistent evaluation of experimental
antecedent-consequent relations among relative terms expressed in
consistent, complete, decidable and well-organized propositions. _
Pragmatism: What happens, happens.
Temporality: The experimentalist proposes, mother nature disposes.
Natural Inquiry: A question asked in the antecedent conditions is in
the form of the initial conditions of the experiment, the consequences
are the terminal conditions of the experiment, Mother Nature’s
answer to the question asked.
No elaborate mathematical or logical theory is essential for doing
either ordinary chemical or biological experimentation. This is a fact
that is not true for physics.
What you do in posing your question, is (FIRST) singling out A
mutation, when you should be stating your question in terms of ANY
mutation, or ALL mutations, or SOME mutations/ MAJORITY of
mutations. Then (SECONDLY) you single out an organism. - That won't
do, as you very well know. - Some mutations may be such, that they
can be reasonably sigled out, although all I know & appreciate of
genetics today, questions even that. Even the concept of isolating A
gene. -It is all about ordinality and sequential order.
Your analysis is basically correct, in so far as it goes.
The underlying philosophy of molecular biology that guides the design
and conduct of the experiment is that genes serve as source of
internal information _AS WELL AS_ hereditary factors.
(By the way, it is this duality of function of DNA as a singular
source of both antecedent of internal information and consequence of
external information that puzzles philosophers.) The method used to
measure the specific gene involved a bacterial strain of E.coli that
was constrained in one particular attribute. A mutation was known to
remove the constraint. Thus, the measurement was a count of number of
organisms in which the constraint was removed.
Our experiments showed a direct PROPORTIONAL relationship between the
amount of mutagen added to the culture and the number of mutations
observed (after the mutations expressed themselves). The calculations
estimated that the probability of a single molecule causing a mutation
under these particular experiments conditions was about one in ten to
the minus 17 th power. (1 x 10 ^17).
The experiments were done in the Fall of 1971 in Freiburg, Germany.
And I have been thinking about the mathematical, physical and chemical
consequences ever since!
As is well illustrated in CPS's cyclical arithmetics. - But, in
order to truly get the mental knack of it, one has to actually
perform, with a pack of playing cards at least some of the actual
operations CSP recommends (eg. for several thousands of times, as I
have done in my pasttime). - I heartily recommend!
The causal process for inducing mutations is a path from the
pre-mutational state to the post-mutational state. I described these
results as a sequence of probabilities in a paper (1983.) in a
biomedical journal.
Not only have most surprising facts about cyclicity been revealed to
my mind & thoughts, but also, by carefully planned and tested,
seemingly trifle, modifications in the rules of playing my favourite
patience (learned when a child), but also the mysteries of
probability have become a kind of second nature in my thus acquired
habits of thought. (no statistical tests can any longer fool me, let
alone pooling them together in an utterly confused way). These
revelations I do take as empirically proven facts. There are very
few biological experiments repeated over thousands of times with
such indisputable results. - Partly from economical reasons, mental
& manual experimentation comes cheap, compared with ... Just as CSP
points out in order to defend philosophy and to open public purses
for giving philosophers their due funding.
No organism is possible without a proper living environment, as you
also very well know. Any change in any organism & environment acts
as part of their future changes. Some changes are reversible, at
least seemingly so, some are most clearly not.
I concur.
With any prosesses, time is involved. But time has many facets.
Between any past and future, there is the present, which does not
wait to be captured. - It is a moment instantaneously passed
through. - In order to handle with it, you need mathematical tools
of thought. And not just any theory of limits, but both
mathematically & logically valid theory of continuity, with change.
- One may be presented as the inside, while the other may be
presnted as the outside, the main point being that they continuously
change into each other, as pictured in the stripe of Moebius as well
as the bottle of Klein.
Of course time is involved. The question is how does time influence
the icons and indices and symbolic calculations?
This leads to TWO categories of chemical and biological experiments:
1. Start with a fixed population of known count and end all counting
at some future time. The duration of the experiment is from T(0) to
T(n) for all members of the population.
2. Start with a fixed population and measure results at discrete
temporal intervals. ((T(0), T(1), T(2), … (T(n)).
The first method give a single consequence from the antecedent
conditions.
The second method gives a temporal sequence of consequences.
A priori, neither method 1 or 2 assumes continuity of either time or
matter.
A very interesting example of the role of time in biological
experimental is the case of “Controlled Clinical Trials” for
vaccines and pharmaceuticals. Very, very elaborate methods are being
developed which ANY philosopher of biology should very very carefully
study BECAUSE they illuminate the extremely difficulty in determining
cause - effect relationships in living systems.
Still, both diagrams depict just one aspect on the nature of
continuity with change. -
Which is only the point real troubles start.
I guess this did not help at all.
Nor does this, I assume:
Any statements CSP proposed on identity, are and remain embedded in
his philosophy. Triadicity & triadic thinking were his Grand Ideas,
he tested all his life, succesfully, for that matter. Triadic
thinking was to him THE method of inventing methods (for any kinds
of research).
I agree that the nature of the philosophy of identity and the logic of
the particular are stressed by CSP. His emphasis on these two
primitive terms appear to emerge directly from his training as a
chemist and as an experimentalist. Roughly speaking, physicists, do
not hold these two points of views to be of primary importance.
For natural philosophers, evaluation of CSP's philosophy of triadicity
is an issue of the consistency of his philosophy with nature.
In general, the meaning of triadicity is extremely controversial and
is widely ignored in the general scientific community. Mathematics
uses the notion of a function without constraints on counts.
The logic of Whitehead and Russell uses the notion of propositional
functions (rather than triadicity) in an attempt to bridge the gap
between count and continuity. Of course, they also failed.
Cheers
Jerry
What is to be done? was his way of posing scientific questions. -
Not that I think I have answered your questions in any proper way,
but neither did you, stricly speaking, answer mine.
With sequences of questions and answers, questions deserve much more
attention than is usually given.
Well, well, this is enough for tonight.
Cheers,
Kirsti
Which is what you'll have to do. And have been doing, with success.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.jyb-logic.org/
