Gary F, list
I think that Peirce's semiosic infrastructure is basically
non-linear and, as I've said before, as such, it operates as a
complex adaptive system.
The fact that he has three modal categories - rather than only one ,
ie, only Secondness, which would produce only indexical linearity -
means that the system in discussion has the ability for abductive
novelty [Firstness] which would break through the straight-jacket of
Secondness.
And note -the system has the capacity for not one mode of thought
but for diverse modes of thought [Thirdness]. That is, there are
three modes of Thirdness. The genuine Thirdness enables the system to
anticipate/imagine the future without risk-taking; it's pure 'thought'
without the risks of actualization.
Thirdness in a mode of Secondness [3-2] enables the system to
connect to multiple indexical sites of actual existent information,
so that the system can gather current data, evaluate it - and make
a choice about its next actions. Thirdness in a mode of Firstness
[3-1] enables the system to make a choice that will be common
[iconic] to others.[Induction] ..and thus increase the power of that
set of individuals. I think the power of three modes of thought
cannot be underestimated.
Note: a system operating only within Secondness - which is what the
mechanical science of the 18th, 19th century assumed - introduces
novelty only by pure accident. But Peirce's abduction - or rather,
more accurately, as Gary F points out, 'retroduction' does not
operate simply by chance. It can but it also has the capacity for
introducing novelty via Mind - where the inductive observations of
the world lead the Mind to develop a hypothesis and 'best response'
that explains and deals with this observed data.
Edwina
On Sat 13/06/20 5:21 PM , [email protected] sent:
John S, list,
If I may, John, I would propose a modification to your Figure 4 in
http://jfsowa.com/talks/escw.pdf [1]:
This diagram indicates, at every level, a linear process beginning
with perception and ending with action. But in living organisms (as
explained in my book and a dozen or two sources that I quote), this
process is one of the nonlinear mental/semiotic processes I mentioned
in my post as being characteristic of life; in the book I frequently
refer to it as “ practiception [2]”. Here is one example from the
neuropsychological literature, referring to human as well as other
organisms with brains:
[[ Work on embodied cognition calls into question the idea that
there is a sequential flow of processing whose stages neatly
correspond to perceiving, thinking, and acting. When we engage the
world in daily behaviour, we often do not do it by first passively
taking in lots of information, then making a full plan, then
implementing the plan courtesy of some sequence of motor commands.
Instead, sensing, thinking, and acting conspire, overlap, and start
to merge together as whole perceptuo-motor systems engage the world.
] —Andy Clark (2015, 249) ]
If it’s the process of scientific inquiry we are considering,
Peirce does analyze it in terms of a sequence, but in his usual
analysis it begins with abduction (or retroduction) and ends with
induction, which consists in testing the predictions deduced from the
hypothesis against real-time (and reiterated) observations or
measurements.
Peirce also seems to say, in a passage that Robert quoted, that
reasoning proceeds sequentially from perception to action: “The
elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of
perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and
whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be
arrested as unauthorized by reason” (EP2:241). But the idea of
sequence here is based on the idea that exits necessarily come after
entrances, which is misleading if we are talking about embodied
cognition as we understand it today. I would not claim that Peirce
explicitly stated, or fully understood, this nonlinearity of
cognition, but I did suggest in my post that he anticipated it,
especially in his late analysis of semiosis. Backing up that
hypothesis would take more quotation and explanation than I will
venture in this post. But I think I could give an example of
communicating an idea which would illustrate the nonlinearity or
recursiveness of the process, if that is needed.
Gary f.
From: John F. Sowa
Sent: 12-Jun-20 17:23
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Communicating an Idea (was commens and
commons)
Gary F, Edwina, Jon AS, List,
I am delighted to read about GF's applications of Peirce's writings
to the issues that Edwina copied: "the continuity between the
processes of semiosis and those of life
itself" and "the recursive and nonlinear nature of those processes".
In 2006, I wrote an article on "Peirce's contributions to the 21st
century", which summarized a few of the many ways in which Peirce not
only anticipated, but frequently *improved upon* his successors:
http:/jfsowa.com/pubs/csp21st.pdf .
Some of the writings by Susan Haack, John Deely, Terry Deacon, and
Frederick Stjernfelt influenced that article. In the 14 years since
then, I have found many more examples. Last week, I presented a talk
(virtually) at the European Semantic Web Conference in which I
emphasized ways in which Peirce's work can help guide the future
developments. Following is an extended version of the slides I
presented: http://jfsowa.com/talks/escw.pdf [3] .
Links:
------
[1] http://jfsowa.com/talks/escw.pdf
[2] http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/mdl.htm#prxcpt
[3] http://jfsowa.com/talks/escw.pdf
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