Mike - I think you are not alone in not understanding Jerry's post. His
comments on the 9 semiosic relations, which are triadic relations and not
triads, was in my view, bizarre and had nothing to do with Peirce's analysis
of their nature.
With regard to your comment below on names, which are symbols - since human
thought is primarily via symbols - then, in a way, such symbols are the
'instantiation' of the thought. I'm not sure what you mean by 'necessary
signs'..unless you mean the non-symbolic iconic and indexical relations.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Bergman
To: Jerry LR Chandler ; Peirce List
Cc: Frederik Stjernfelt
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2017 10:42 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's "Mindset" from
AI perspective
Hi Jerry,
Thanks for your comments, though I did not honestly understand what you were
trying to tell me from the perspective of trans-disciplinarity. I'd like to
better understand what this perspective means from your own perspective.
I take ideas and all generals to be real, including the idea of concepts to
represent ideas. I think this is supported by Peirce. I also take the fictional
to be real, but not actual. But I also take all names and labels to be
indexicals, about which they refer. This is also Peirce's view, I believe.
Indexes can be analyzed, but not reasoned over via inference.
Peirce's arguments against nominalism were, I think, undercut by his
prissiness about terminology. He invested too much into the label. But,
whatever.
My key point in my "strong assertion" is that it is the underlying realness
that is the appropriate focus in our quest for truth. Names and labels are
merely pointers, though with perhaps some informational value. Again, in the
sem Web, those who see it this way call it "things, not strings". That is the
sense to which I "concurred".
It was clear that Peirce lived through words (okay, right, actually symbols),
especially given his thousands of hours spent on definitions. I think his
metaphysics were definitely on the side of realism, but his love of words (I
suspect a stimulus for his sign interests in part) caused him to take pride in
nomen. There is maybe a little irony there.
The logic of realism that I have found closest to my own experience and
thinking is Peirce's pragmatism. Like many scientists, I worship at the altar
of the scientific method.
I probably should have better defined "mindset" from my perspective. Peirce
maintained that what we know is based on what we believe, which is fed by
information. I think this insight is forceful. Mindset is perhaps the ultimate
of Thirdness with respect to thought, also an ultimate of Thirdness, and it is
comprised of the universe of beliefs held by the agent. Some may be believed
more strongly than others, and thus win out when there are conflicts for what
we perceive.
One needs to try to "live" within the ideas of Firstness, Secondness and
Thirdness (note I used different predicates) in order to find the processes and
belief that then allow them to contribute some different sets of beliefs and
processes to a revised mindset. I believe we can learn to think with different
perspectives, and Peirce's universal categories are a powerful lens.
All thinking and reasoning is symbolic. By virtue of thinking at all, we have
already proceeded through the other necessary signs.
Like I said in the article, I don't know if Peirce would necessarily buy
everything I was saying or not, here or in my article. But, in the true sense
of Thirdness, there is a process underlying pragmatic thinking that is much
deserving of inspection.
Thanks, Mike
On 2/8/2017 11:31 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
List, Mike:
Your essay is framed in the context of “AI” (computations), a very wide
framework indeed! Nothing is excluded from AI is it?
I will be only slightly more focal in responding to your call for comments.
You write in your article:
"Concepts attempt to embody ideas, and while it is useful to express those
concepts with clear, precise and correct terminology, it is the idea that is
real, not the label. In Peirce’s worldview, the label is only an index. I
concur."
My questions emerge from considerations of your essay from the perspective
of trans-disciplinarity (multiple symbol systems). I will make four relevant
comments before coming to the questions about your essay.
1. The three triads of CSP,
qualisign, sinsign, legisign;
icon, index, symbol;
rhema, dicisign, argument,
can be, in my opinion, a “recipe” for realism; that is, the logical
association of antecedent observations (Qualisigns with logical consequences
(legisigns)) What I find exceedingly curious about the (strange) words of this
table is that only the last word, “argument” is used in logic. The other eight
words are merely dictionary words. Clearly, some similarity with 21 st Century
AI exists in these three 19th Century triads.
2. I strongly suspect that CSP arranged these words in such a manner that
his meaning very loosely corresponded with his understanding of chemical ‘proof
of structures’ (graph theory) as it existed in the second half of the 19th
Century. I had earlier posts on some chemical aspects of the meanings in
selected subsets of the terms. And, I have posted critical comments on
non-chemical interpretations of the meaning of these three triads, for example,
that proposed by Frederik Stjernfelt.
3. Yet, CSP’s “mindset” is such that he asserts that the eight semantic
objects are NECESSARY to form an argument. It is as if the three triads are an
antecedent to the concept of induction and modality. This approach to
generating conclusions (scientific knowledge) has not been widely accepted. I
further note that the eight words do not denote mathematical concepts. One
wonders why CSP’s three triads have not been adopted.
4. Five of these nine terms are introduced from CSP’s “mindset”, whatever
that may have been.
Returning to your very strong assertion, it is unclear to me what you are
concurring with. More specifically, how does your essay relate the the logics
of realism?
For example, consider an index of species.
Is it real?
Or, ideal?
Allow me to rephrase this extremely convoluted issue that is related to
several perplex disciplines. In what sense is a "mindset" illative of
representational competencies? Is an individual mindset generated and
maintained by the knowledge of the symbol systems that one knows?
Cheers
jerry
On Feb 7, 2017, at 11:29 PM, Mike Bergman <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi List,
I thought perhaps some on the list might be interested in my latest
article on Peirce and knowledge representation:
http://www.mkbergman.com/2020/being-informed-by-peirce/
Thanks! (and feel free to also give me comments offline).
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