Mike, List: I read your linked article and the earlier one that it referenced, and found them very interesting, especially the whole notion of "mindset." My first introduction to Peirce's thought was a doctoral dissertation that used it to identify and explicate a distinctively Lutheran way of thinking, which appealed to me not only because I am a Lutheran myself, but also because I have long desired to identify and explicate the distinctive way of thinking that we engineers employ in doing our jobs. My series of articles on "The Logic of Ingenuity" was the outcome, and the final installment (Part 4, "Beyond Engineering") is now scheduled to appear next month.
However, I disagree with a couple of things that you mentioned in your last message. MB: 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. While Peirce certainly held Ideas to be real--"the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not in anybody's Actually thinking them, saves their Reality" (CP 6.455; 1908)--his position was not that *all *generals are real, only that *some *of them are. CSP: Consequently, *some *general objects are real. (Of course, nobody ever thought that *all* generals were real; but the scholastics used to assume that generals were real when they had hardly any, or quite no, experiential evidence to support their assumption; and their fault lay just there, and not in holding that generals could be real.) (CP 5.430; 1905) Peirce also made a sharp distinction between the real and the fictional. CSP: That is *real *which has such and such characters, whether anybody thinks it to have those characters or not. At any rate, that is the sense in which the pragmaticist uses the word. (CP 5.430; 1905) CSP: For the *fictive *is that whose characters depend upon what characters somebody attributes to it; and the story is, of course, the mere creation of the poet's thought. Nevertheless, once he has imagined Scherherazade and made her young, beautiful, and endowed with a gift of spinning stories, it becomes a real fact that so he has imagined her, which fact he cannot destroy by pretending or thinking that he imagined her to be otherwise. (CP 5.152; 1903) Perhaps all you meant is what Peirce says in that last sentence--the fictional is not *itself *real, because it depends entirely on what characters its author attributes to it; but the fact that the fictional has the characters that the author attributed to them is real from that time forward. MB: 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 certainly came to see all *proper *names as indexes, and I think that there is merit in exploring your suggestion that "all names and labels" are, as well. Would you (or anyone else) care to elaborate on that? Perhaps you could begin by saying more about that last sentence. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 9:42 PM, Mike Bergman <[email protected]> wrote: > 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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