[peirce-l] Re: Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop

[Gary Richmond]

Auke van Breemen wrote: By now we have: knowledge management knowledge reperesentation   Gary, could you give me a clue about how conceptualization fits in? I mean with this the way in which we individually or collaboratively make our vague and indistinct ideas clear. So, not the facilitation of collaborative progress or the social side, but the conceptual side. The Nonagon may serve as an example of what I mean. if knowledge representation overlaps with knowledge management, it is tempting to assume that it also overlaps with conceptualization. Auke, In your previous post, after quoting Peirce to the effect that "the essential function of a sign is to render inefficient relations efficient, -- not to set them into action, but to establish a habit or general rule whereby they will act on occasion." you wrote: [AvB] . . .the construction of the sign involves the execution of self control. I think it is here that Claudio's Nonagons may play a healty role. In EE one puts the vaguely defined 'knowledge system'. . . a nonagon would establishes the habit of addressing the different aspects that have to be taken into account. But I agree withe skeptics that the way in which to proceed with the Nonagons is [not? GR] althougether[altogether? GR] clear. It mediates between what is and what might become only in a very loose way. I have found aspects of Claudio Guerri's work very attractive from the design standpoint, and it is also quite possible that for some the nonagon offers "hints and suggestions" as to important habits we ought to establish, especially "the habit of addressing the different aspects that have to be taken into account" in, for example, design projects. But I would have to include myself--and this will hardly come as news to Claudio since he and I have discussed this both on and off list--among those who find his nonagonic relationships all too "vaguely defined" so that it is "not altogether clear" to me exactly how to use the nonagon in such projects. Perhaps that may even prove to be part of its power--that it only offers "hints and suggestions."  (Btw, I believe I have made it clear here and elsewhere that except for these reservations about the nonagon, I have the deepest respect for Claudio and his brilliantly creative design sensibilities and work generally.) My biggest complaint with 9-adic structures concerns their being used at all to provide a theoretical basis for anything except Peirce's 10-adic classification of signs. I have not been convinced of the theoretical soundness of basing other structures on Peirce's 9-adic arrangement. Again, 3x3x3 seems to me inappropriately applied to anything but the construction of the 10-adic classification of signs. The 9-adic is but a preliminary albeit necessary abstraction which Peirce devises to analyze the trichotomic semeiotic relations possible categorially & combinatorially as regards the three essential components of sign activity as he conceives it--3 possible for the object, 3 for the sign itself, 3 for the interpretant. Peirce himself quite explicitly states this just before his presentation of the classification: 2.254. The three trichotomies of Signs result together in dividing Signs into TEN CLASSES OF SIGNS, of which numerous subdivisions have to be considered. The ten classes are as follows: My position continues to be that 3x3x3  is illegitimately commandeered for other philosophical purposes (except, perhaps, in the vague "suggestive" way already mentioned, a value which it apparently has for some). I have objected to this conscripting of the 9-adic for other purposes. See, for example my 2005 ICCS paper http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonic.htm where I comment that a complete trichotomic analysis . . . <>. . .strongly supports the notion that the 9-adic diagram presents only the types of relationships possible for yet to be embodied sign classes. In a word, the nine sign "parametric" choices do not themselves represent embodied signs, whereas the ten classes do.[GR, Outline of trikonic, p 6] You further comment that the nonagon as you've analyzed it [AvB] . . .would probably need other methods as a complement like maybe the trikons of Gary R or the proto signs of Sarbo and Farkas or still something I do not know of. As some on the list may know, I have also found Sarbo's  "proto-signs" problematic in part for reasons not unrelated to the above analysis.. In a recent paper, "Natural Grammar," Sarbo comments that "We gladly acknowledge that the term proto-sign has been suggested by Gary Richmond," but does not note that I coined this term while expressing exasperation at their referring to the elements of their own dyadic and, in fact, wholly Boolean structure as if they were actual, embodied signs. As I see it, there is also something quite arbitrary  in the way in which Sarbo and Farkas attempt to connect the (selected) Boolean operators in their 9-fold schema. As to my own work developing Peirce's applied science of trichotomic diagrammatically, perhaps this year's ICCS paper ("trikonic analysis-synthesis and Critical Common Sense on the Web") that I am presenting  in Aalborg, Denmark this summer will address some of your concerns (I'll ask Joe to put it on Arisbe upon its publication.) But I find your question concerning "conceptualization" rather vague, at least as you've expressed it in your message. On the other hand, it IS a very big question, so that even after hearing Joseph Goguen's invited talk in Kassel, Germany last year on "What Is a Concept?" I was left with an unsettling sense that these sorts of issues will never be entirely addressed to anyone's complete satisfaction. But if you could frame your question a bit more precisely, I will certainly try to respond as best I can. Gary --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com