Sorry, one major error: in the 4th paragraph beginning, "For example," I wrote "those non-constraints on matter which Peirce calls 'habits'." The "non-" shouldn't be there. GR
>>> Gary Richmond 12/11/11 3:05 PM >>> Peter, Gary F., Jon, List, I'm sorry it took a little while to respond to your message, Peter--the end of the college term and personal matters took over (and continue to dominate my time)--which succinctly clarified your position. I agree with you that "the analogy [re: Peirce/Turing] is that Peirce articulated a model of the mind which [. . .] is tacitly presupposed by much of IA research." I hope we can discuss this model on the list, if not this December, perhaps in the new year when the holidays have passed and we, hopefully, all have a bit more time. As to this Peircean model of mind, I would like to note in passing (for now) that it seems to me that the self-same model of mind presupposing IA research also influenced certain biosemioticians (for example, Eliseo Fernandez, Soren Brier, and Terrence Deacon), this essentially semiotic model being employed in their respective theories of emergence. For example, Fernandez argues that a top-down semiotic theory is needed to complement the bottom up one of dominant biological theory, and Brier that triadic semiotic theory complements and completes the dyadic code semiotics of traditional scientific theory. Similarly, Deacon argues in Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, that a robust theory of emergence will be frustrated until it rids itself of its residual quasi-homuncular notions (while some biosemioticians simply ignore anything smacking of 'teleology') and begins to deeply consider those non-constraints on matter which Peirce calls 'habits'. The sub-title of Deacon's new book, Incomplete Nature--again, highly recommended--might more accurately be given as "How Mind Emerged from CONSTRAINTS on Matter," the very Peircean Chapter 6 taking this up explicitly. But, again, that's a discussion for another day. I'm pleased to learn, Gary F., that you're reading Incomplete Nature and are interested in our discussing it on list. I've sent copies as holiday gifts to several friends, two of whom are members of peirce-l, and I'm hoping that they too will want to participate in a discussion of some of the themes of what I consider to be a most important work. Kalevi Kull, one of the founders of biosemiotics, wrote that Incomplete Nature demonstrates how some systems can be "alive and meaning making" (I'm not sure, yet, whether or not he's overstating the case to say that with this inquiry "the crux of life--and meaning--is solved" so that with it "the twenty-first century can now really start"). On the related theme taken up in your second paragraph, you wrote: PS: Engelbart's work - what I have read of it - deals primarily with the machine side of the equation, and while Peirce anticipated some of what Engelbart said, my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind complements Engelbart's work. I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen years ago, and he had never heard of Peirce before, but was not at all dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by the way, that Engelbart's chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - was to augment group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much like that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his projected book on the subject. GR: I met Engelbart about 5 or 6 year after you did, Peter, at the 9th ICCS conference held at Stanford in 2001 (I was to attend all the subsequent conferences through 2007). Several Peirce-influenced researchers were involved in the conference: mathematicians, including Rudolf Wille (Formal Concept Analysis) and Karl Erich Wolff, several logicians, such as Joachim Hereth Correia (a principal contributor to the recent strict mathematical proof of Peirce's 'reduction thesis') and including specialists in Peirce's Existential Graphs (EGs) such as Frithjof Dau, and, of course, a large group, which included my good friends Aldo de Moor, Harry Delugah, and Simon Polovina, centered around the work of the logician John Sowa, the inventor of Conceptual Graphs (CGs) which transmutes Peirce's EGs for contemporary, especially electronic uses. I fondly remember having lunch with several of those just mentioned, including Engelbart, which definitely left me with a sense that he'd come to know Peirce's model of mind fairly well in those years since you'd met him, and agree with you that he definitely felt it complemented his own work in IA. (Btw, several Peirce-influenced scholars--such as Terrence Deacon, Frederik Stjernfelt, Kelly Parker, Christopher Hookway and myself included--were invited speakers at subsequent ICCS conferences and, for a time at least, ICCS had, in part, a decidedly Peircean flavor.) You concluded: PS: Engelbart's work - what I have read of it - deals primarily with the machine side of the equation, and while Peirce anticipated some of what Engelbart said, my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind complements Engelbart's work. I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen years ago, and he had never heard of Peirce before, but was not at all dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by the way, that Engelbart's chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - was to augment group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much like that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his projected book on the subject. GR: I don't believe he did finish that projected book, the only one I know by him (there are several about him) being Boosting Our Collective IQ, a collection of several key essays on the bootstrapping idea. For a few years I was on the ba-unrev list centered around Engelbart's ongoing research at the Doug Engelbar Institute he founded with his daughter, now based at SRI. http://www.dougengelbart.org/ While "the machine side of the equation" was certainly represented (for example, in the discussions of dynamic knowledge repositories, or DKRs), there was, as I recall, considerable discussion of his work in Collective IQ and CoDIAK (acronym for how a group of people co- or *concurrently develop, integrate, and apply their knowledge* to some end, goal, typically a project they share an interest in, strategically 'bootstrapping' it to accelerate movement towards their goal). I haven't kept up with Engelbart's work in recent years, but I think you are correct in seeing it as "reflecting an understanding of IA very much like that articulated by Joe." Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** >>> "Skagestad, Peter" 12/04/11 11:29 AM >>> Gary, Just a couple of comments. In my view Peirce and Turing play analogous roles in some respects but not in others. Turing directly influenced the evolution of AI and articulated - whether in jest or in earnest - the computational model of the mind later embraced and abandoned by Putnam, articulated but never fully embraced by Fodor, and later advocated by Haugeland, Dennett, and Pinker, among others. Peirce had no influence on the evolution of IA (although he has influenced AI); the analogy is that Peirce articulated a model of the mind which I have argued is tacitly presupposed by much of IA research. Engelbart's work - what I have read of it - deals primarily with the machine side of the equation, and while Peirce anticipated some of what Engelbart said, my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind complements Engelbart's work. I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen years ago, and he had never heard of Peirce before, but was not at all dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by the way, that Engelbart's chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - was to augment group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much like that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his projected book on the subject. Cheers, Peter ________________________________________ From: Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu] Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 7:16 PM To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU; Skagestad, Peter Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION Peter, list, I began my paper, "Trikonic Inter-Enterprise Architectonic," http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonic_architectonic.pdf thus: Peter Skagestad in “'The Mind's Machines: The Turing Machine, the Memex, and the Personal Computer” considers the history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in relation to Intelligence Augmentation (IA) and concludes that the American scientist, logician and philosopher, Charles S. Peirce, provided a theoretical basis for IA analogous to Turing’s for AI. Besides being keenly interested in the possibility of the evolution of human consciousness as such, Peirce seems even to have anticipated Doug Engelbart’s notion of the co-evolution of man and machine. In another paper on ‘virtuality’ as a central concept in Peirce’s pragmatism Skagestad goes so far as to suggest that “in Peirce's thought . . . we find the most promising philosophical framework available for the understanding and advancement of the project of augmenting human intellect through the development and use of virtual technologies” [GR: a footnote here place reads: Skagestad notes, however, that for Peirce “reasoning in the fullest sense of the word could not be represented by an algorithm, but involved observation and experimentation as essential ingredients"]. I have very much looked forward to this particular slow read. As you may or may not know, I have been much influenced by especially those three papers of yours on Arisbe to which you referred. Before I comment further, is there anything in the above passage which you would say needs correction or where you yourself have somewhat modified your position? Best, Gary R. Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** >>> "Skagestad, Peter" 12/03/11 11:56 AM >>> I am now opening the slow read of Joe Ransdell’s paper ‘The Relevance of Peircean Semiotic to Computational Intelligence Augmentation’, the final paper in this slow read series. I realize that Steven’s slow read is still in progress, but we have had overlapping reads before. Since we are conducting these reads to commemorate Joe, I will open with some personal reminiscences. In the fall of 1994, I bought the first modem for my home computer, a Macintosh SE-30. At about the same time I received a hand-written snail-mail letter from my erstwhile mentor the psychologist Donald Campbell, who had just returned from Germany, where he had met with Alfred Lange, who told him about an online discussion group devoted to Peirce’s philosophy. Campbell was not himself very interested in Peirce, but he knew I was, and so passed the information along. And so I logged on to Peirce-L. My connection was very primitive. I used a dial-up connection to U Mass Lowell’s antiquated VAX computer, which I had to access in terminal-emulation mode, whereby my Macintosh mimicked a dumb terminal for the VAX, which ran the VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system and VMS Mail (later replaced with the somewhat more user-friendly DECmail). It was extremely awkward to use, but it was free. I had never met Joe Ransdell before * I only ever met him face to face once * although we knew of each other’s work. Joe immediately caught on to my difficulties in navigating VMS, and coached me patiently in the technical side of things offline, while constantly prodding and encouraging my participation in the online discussion. While never leaving one in doubt of his own opinions, Joe consistently stimulated and nurtured an open and critical, yet at the same time nonjudgmental exchange of ideas and opinions. The intellectual environment Joe created was an invaluable aid to me in developing my ideas on intelligence augmentation and the relevance of Peircean semiotic thereto. Now to the paper, available on the Arisbe site at http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/ia.htm. It is the longest paper in the slow read * 30 single-spaced pages plus notes * and December tends to be a short month, as many listers will no doubt be too busy with other things to pay much attention to Peirce-L in the final week or so of the month. My feeling is that we will probably only be able to hit the high points, but we will see how it goes. Since this is the last slow read in the series, we can also go on into January, should there be sufficient interest. I should add that the paper generated considerable discussion on the list when Joe first posted it about a decade ago; I do not know how many current listers were around at the time, but I believe both Gary Richmond and Jon Awbrey took active part in the discussion. As I see it, the paper falls into four parts. The first part * roughly one fourth of the paper * sets out the concept of computational intelligence augmentation as articulated in three published papers of mine, along with some reservations/revisions of Joe’s. The second part adumbrates the Peircean/Deweyan conception of inquiry, the third part examines Ginsparg’s publication system as a model of intelligence augmentation, and the fourth part examines the role of peer review in inquiry, sharply distinguishing editorially commissioned review from what Joe understands proper peer review to consist in. Personally, I shall naturally have most to say about the first part. This does not mean that I think the list discussion ought to focus on this part, at the expense of the other parts. This is decidedly not my view. But given the attention Joe devotes to my work, I think the most valuable contribution I personally can make here is commenting on, and engaging in discussion on, what Joe has to say about my work. I am not here going to rehash Joe’s admirable and scrupulously fair recapitulation of my writings on intelligence augmentation * although people may, of course, want to raise questions/comments about this or that point in his recapitulation. What I propose to do in this initial post is make a few introductory comments on intelligence augmentation, offer my take on Joe’s differences with my articulation, and then propose a few questions for list discussion * in full awareness that other listers may find other questions to pose that may be as worthy or worthier of discussion. JR: “Peter Skagestad * philosopher and Peirce scholar * identifies two distinct programming visions that have animated research into computationally based intelligence which he labels, respectively, as: “Artificial Intelligence” or “AI” and “Intelligence Augmentation” or “AI”. The aim of the present paper is, first, to describe the distinction between these two type of computational intelligence research for the benefit of those who might not be accustomed to recognizing these as co-ordinate parts of it, and then, second, to draw attention to a special sort of Intelligence Augmentation (IA) research which seems to me to warrant special emphasis and description, both vbeause of its potential importance and because Skagestad”s account of the distinctive features of IA research does not seem to me to capture the most salient characteristics of this special part of it, perhaps because it may not have occurred to him that it is distinctive enough to require special attention in order to be recognized for what it is.” PS: I’ll return to what I may have paid insufficient attention to and why. First a little history. As far as I know, the concept of intelligence augmentation was first articulated by Doug Engelbart in his classic 1962 “Framework” report, where it denotes the use of computers (or other artifacts) to augment human intellect by creating human-computer systems whose behavior is more intelligent than that of the unaided human. Engelbart acknowledges an affinity with the concept of “intelligence amplification,” earlier articulated by the cyberneticist W.R. Ashby. Based on my reading of Ashby, however, his concept of intelligence amplification is broader and encompasses both AI and Engelbart’s intelligence augmentation. Finally, the term “intelligence amplification” was later embraced by the computer scientist Frederic Brook, who used it much in the same sense as Engelbart’s “intelligence augmentation,” and who, to the best of my knowledge, was the first to use the abbreviation “IA” and explicitly contrast it with “AI”. Now, my thesis, advanced in three papers cited by Joe and available at Arisbe, was that IA, as understood by Engelbart, presupposes a conception of the mind as being exosomatically embodied, and that such a conception, unbeknownst to Engelbart, had been articulated by Peirce, and summarized in his dictum “all thought is in signs.” Joe does not disagree with this, but does not think I go quite far enough: JR: “In developing Skagestad’s conception further in the direction indicated I also ground this in Peirce’s dictum, but I do so by making explicit a different (but complementary) implication of the same Peircean dictum, namely that all thought is dialogical. (JR’s emphasis)” PS: A footnote indicates that I agree with this, which I do, but I want to raise the question whether this implication is actually ever made explicit by Peirce himself. Signs presuppose interpretation, and interpretation presupposes interpreters, which is made very explicit by Josiah Royce in his most Peircean writings, but did Peirce himself make this explicit? I am not saying he did not, but I am curious about references. Joe goes on to make some valuable observations about the evolution of IA that I had not made, to wit, that a great deal of what we now recognize as IA, notably word processing, came about rather serendipitously, because programmers needed to document their work and wanted to do so without taking their hands off the keyboard. I have no argument with that. I made the point that the emergence of the personal computer was not a given consequence of the invention of the microprocessor, but also required a particular vision of what computers were for. In so doing I was simply rejecting technological determinism, not advancing any monocausal thesis of my own. I move on to what I take to be Joe’s most important reservation to my treatment of IA: JR: “I do not think that Skagestad has succeeded so far in identifying precisely enough what it is that is fundamental in the IA tradition that runs through Douglas Engelbart, J.C.R. Licklider, Ivan Sutherland, Ted Nelson, Alan Kaye, * Tim Berners-Lee* That is, I do not find any place where Skagestad describes IA in a way that seems to capture what the various facets of it to which he appeals have in common. * My own hunch * and it is a little more than that, but it seems worth mentioning in a suggestive spirit here * is that the key to the identity of what Skagestad characterizes as the IA tradition in computational research lies in the conception of interactive computing*” PS: I do not totally agree with Joe here. I gladly admit that I never tried to identify what was fundamental to the IA tradition, believing that job to have been already done by Engelbart. But interactive computing, while essential to IA, has been endemic to computing of all kinds during the past forty years. I played chess games with the MIT computer as early as 1973; it was interactive, it had time sharing, but there was nothing about it that specifically related to IA. I would agree that collaborative computing is central to IA: more of that later. Those are my initial thoughts on pages 1-8 of Joe’s paper. Some of it was admittedly fast, as much of it is Joe’s recapitulation and as I see it unproblematic exegesis of my papers. But others should feel free to revisit any details I have skipped which may merit closer attention. I will sit back now and let others weigh in. Peter Skagestad --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. 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