Terry, list
1]That's an excellent point -
You wrote: "Perhaps “our knowledge base” isn’t either learned
or innate (per exclusive disjunction), but both learned and innate.
Don’t Peirce’s categories establish the innate semiosic
predispositions, capabilities, capacities, or potentiality for the
acquisition (“learning”) of what we come to believe and claim to
know? Aren’t those semiosic predispositions the necessary initial
conditions of cognate awareness and cognitive consciousness?"
Yes, of course. I see what you mean. His categories are indeed
'innate semiosic predispositions'...and are indeed necessary initial
conditions. Exactly.
And that's where mathematics comes in - to outline the nature of
these categories, which we then use to examine the phaneron.
2] Yes - I agree that we are born into a societal set of beliefs.
Not merely within our society but within our immediate family.
[I don't agree with the belief of 'white male supremacy', by the
way. I think that beliefs are tied to economic realities - and for
the western agricultural and industrial society, the male was, due to
physical strength, the 'economic provider'. As for 'white' , ie, the
skin colour of Europe - the rise of Europe was due, in my view, to
the FACT that the European ecological biome [its regular rainfall,
rich arable soil, plethora of domesticated animals and plants, mild
climate] meant that its population base exploded and required
constant technological innovation to provide sustenance. Nothing to
do with 'race' or belief; it's the population size. And that is due
to the ecology.
3] Yes, nice comments about graphs - and of course, they are
semiosic functions.
Edwina
On Sun 25/07/21 11:15 AM , Terry L Rankin rankin.te...@hotmail.com
sent:
Edwina & list,
1] I am against linguistic determinism [the so-called Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis] but consider that our knowledge base is not innate but
learned.
Perhaps “our knowledge base” isn’t either learned or innate
(per exclusive disjunction), but both learned and innate. Don’t
Peirce’s categories establish the innate semiosic predispositions,
capabilities, capacities, or potentiality for the acquisition
(“learning”) of what we come to believe and claim to know?
Aren’t those semiosic predispositions the necessary initial
conditions of cognate awareness and cognitive consciousness?
Doesn’t life experience and reflection supply the precipitating and
sufficient semiosic conditions for learning – i.e., for “coming to
believe” or “claiming to know?”
2] Only people with a lack of self-esteem and psychological
resources think they need an identity from an institution outside
them, and outside their being human, like culture, ethnicity, or
nation
Whether I want or need “an identity from an institution outside
myself” or not, I am given one from the moment of birth by the
civilization, culture, society, and family I’m born into. Much of
life’s struggle is to discover and abide in one’s individual and
personal identity both within oneself and as distinct from and related
to the identities we’re born into, is it not? It seems to me we can
no more entirely separate ourselves from our identity with the
species we belong to and the civilizations, cultures, societies,
etc. by which we are identified, for better or worse, than we can
divorce the stardust and evolutionary primordial soup from which we
emerged. And much of that struggle, at our best, is to establish
harmonious relational resonance across, among, and between cultural,
social, and other divides and divisions in spite of those differences
– by respecting and accepting them with understanding and empathy.
Perhaps this is what is meant by “mutual enrichment?” If we
(western civilization) had chosen to learn from the wisdom of the
indigenous peoples and tribes of Turtle Island, for instance,
instead of genocidally wiping them out in the name of God, Manifest
Destiny, and White Male Supremacy as opposed to four (and still
counting) cycles of Industrial Revolution for profit, a strong case
can be made, I think, that our odds of survival as a terrestrial
vertebrate species would be much improved over their current state.
3] Graphs are not meant to translate from one language to another!!
They are, in my view, meant only to show relationships. Period.
I doubt that “translat(ion) from one language to another” is the
essential purpose or value of conceptual graphs, any more than
geometry is the essential purpose or value of in relation to algebras
and calculi as the “meaning” of maths. For me, it’s the same
‘meaning, purpose, and value’ of the relationships per se as
they’re expressed in visually iconic imagery as opposed to
arbitrarily symbolic formulations. Bayesian formulae and their
statistical graphs have the same probabilistic analytic meaning,
epistemic purpose, and practical value, bu
