[peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
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
[peirce-l] “The Relevance Of Peircean Semiotic To Computational Intelligence Augmentation”
Peter, Peircers, ... How exciting to return to this topic ! Seeing as how this falls within my chief area of interest for the past several decades I would like to archive the full discussions at the old Arisbe-Dev List and also at the Inquiry List that I've been using to collect my musements on cabbages and kings, et alia, both of which lists Elijah Wright set up and currently maintains. So if no one has any objection, I will just go ahead and do that? Regards, Jon CC: Arisbe, Inquiry, Peirce List -- facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol profile: http://knol.google.com/k/Jon-Awbrey# oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey polmic: www.policymic.com/profiles/1110/Jon-Awbrey - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Re: [peirce-l] “The Relevance Of Peircean Semiotic To Computational Intelligence Augmentation”
I personally have no objection. Peter From: Jon Awbrey [jawb...@att.net] Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 1:26 PM To: Skagestad, Peter; Arisbe List; Inquiry List Cc: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Subject: “The Relevance Of Peircean Semiotic To Computational Intelligence Augmentation” Peter, Peircers, ... How exciting to return to this topic ! Seeing as how this falls within my chief area of interest for the past several decades I would like to archive the full discussions at the old Arisbe-Dev List and also at the Inquiry List that I've been using to collect my musements on cabbages and kings, et alia, both of which lists Elijah Wright set up and currently maintains. So if no one has any objection, I will just go ahead and do that? Regards, Jon CC: Arisbe, Inquiry, Peirce List -- facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol profile: http://knol.google.com/k/Jon-Awbrey# oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey polmic: www.policymic.com/profiles/1110/Jon-Awbrey - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
Peter, re the question you raise here ...
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.
CP 4.551 (the 1906 “Prolegomena”):
[[[ Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be
declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least
two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these
two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless
be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not
merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical
evolution of thought should be dialogic. ]]]
I think that comes pretty close to JR’s statement.
Gary F.
www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce
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[peirce-l] TITLES OF POSTS
List, Gary and I have a request to people replying in a slow read: that people please do not change the titles of posts replying _in_ the slow read. The single automatic Re: is good (don't delete it!) but please change nothing else - the letter case, the wording, etc., of the post's title. The previous slow read did get splintered via post titles. Our request is for the sake of _most simply and easily_ keeping together the posts that belong in the slow-read thread, not only in current archives, but also in people's email programs when they sort by email title, and in currently unknown future archives. We can't count on every store of thread posts having the power to make all the proper thread connections independently of post titles. Best regards, Ben Udell and Gary Richmond - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic
Ben, list, Thanks for this interesting and, personally, highly valuable post. Just one point for now regarding the relationship between mathematics and reality. You quote Peirce (from CP 5.567): CSP: The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. His hypotheses are creatures of his own imagination; but he discovers in them relations which surprise him sometimes. A metaphysician may hold that this very forcing upon the mathematician's acceptance of propositions for which he was not prepared, proves, or even constitutes, a mode of being independent of the mathematician's thought, and so a _reality_. And comment: BU: Hence a metaphysician, and I'd say especially one with a pragmaticist view, would indeed say that mathematics is about the real, the real defined as that which is independently of particular minds or gatherings of minds but would be discovered by enough investigation. For my part, I'd say that it's the real in that very aspect for which the transformative imagination is the cognitive access - the mathematical sense. Insofar as mathematics far precedes metaphysics, Gary Richmond suggests a _metaphysica utens_ (I talked to him the other day) in the case of those pure mathematicians who think that they're studying something real, something objective and discoverable. He's discussed _metaphyica utens_ on peirce-l in the past. GR: I'm not sure I've discussed *metaphysica utens* on the list, although it is possible as I've been thinking about it for some time. I am, however, certain that I have written here not infrequently on the distinction between *logica utens* and *logica docens* (==logic as semeiotic, for Peirce), and a while back I extrapolated from that distinction to a possible one distinguishing Peirce's science of metaphysics (*metaphysica docens*) from our ordinary sense of reality preceding metaphysical investigation, a *metaphysical utens*. Although it certainly applies to mathematics in the way in which you argued in your post, I was thinking much more generally. Of, if I was reflecting on this in relation to any particular scientific fields, it was principally about those sandwiched between mathematics and metaphysics. At the Semiotic Society of America conference this past October I revisited that possible distinction as a way of responding to a presentation by Anthony Kreider, On Peirce and the Relations Between Logic and Metaphysics. Kreider argued that since Peirce makes numerous metaphysical assumptions before he tackles logic as semeiotic, that metaphysics should be placed before logic in the classification of sciences. In the Q A I remarked that since Peirce maintains that we necessarily enter inquiry *in media res*, that our as yet uncriticized (or not fully analyzed and criticized) notions of reasoning and reality are always already with us until they've been clarified and corrected through our inquiries, our logical inquiries necessarily preceding our metaphysical ones (if we're not to botch the metaphysical ones for lack of a rigorous logic). But, again, this argument applies as well to mathematics at least in the sense of CP 2.778 which you also quoted in your message: CSP: Fallacies in pure mathematics have gone undetected for many centuries. It is to ideal states of things alone -- or to real things as ideally conceived, always more or less departing from the reality -- that deduction applies. 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 *** *** *** *** Benjamin Udell 12/02/11 4:31 PM Gary F., list, You're welcome! You wrote: Abstraction (in the sense above) obviously has its uses in the process of learning from experience, but not to the degree that it can *replace* experience. My guess is that this is the same issue that Irving and others have been dealing with in this thread with regard to “formalism”, but not being a mathematician, i don't always follow their idiom. I'm not a mathematician either, and Irving can correct me if he wants to plow through my prose, but I agree that the issue is related. There's a related issue of model theorists and semanticists, versus proof theorists, who are more like formalists. Model theorists and semanticists see formal languages as being _about_ subject matters which are 'models' for the formalism. Somebody once told me that when I say that, in a deduction, the premisses validly imply the conclusions, that's proof-theoretic in perspective, but when I say that, in a deduction, if the premisses are true then the conclusion is true, that's model-theoretic in perspective. Peirce is usually classed on the model theorist/semanticist side, and Goedel's aim is said to have been to show that mathematics can't be regarded as pure formalism, a show about nothing. Proof theorists and formalists are more inclined to see math as
[peirce-l] UNSUBSCRIBE PIERCE PLEASE
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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
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic
Gary, Ben, Steven, List: With regard to alternative interpretations of Steven's philosophy, a few further comments appear to be called for. Ben, while I admire your faithfulness to Peircean text, I do think that we must constantly keep in mine that between 100 and 150 years have past sense CSP wrote. During this time, the sciences and mathematics have created new meaning for many.many, many terms that CSP used. Knowledge of the history of science becomes a key element in interpreting CSP views. Experience. One way to get a handle on what Joe is saying about experience and the empirical is Peirce's emphasis on mathematics as experimentation on diagrams. The result of this in Peircean discussions on peirce-l that I've noticed, is an avoidance of the phrase 'empirical science.' Special sciences (physical, chemical, biological, human/social) involve reliance on _special_ classes of experience, _special_ experiments, to study _special_ classes of positive phenomena. The title of the book _The Mathematical Experience_ is entirely congenial to the Peircean outlook. Cenoscopic philosophy, in Peirce's view, deals with positive phenomena in general, not by special classes. I once found Peirce discussing what he meant by positive but unfortunately I didn't make a note of it. I don't recall Peirce anywhere saying that mathematics studies 'hypothetical phenomena' or something like that. But he does see experimentation and experience in mathamatics, in its study - there are all kinds of things in mathematics that one cannot make do whatever one wishes. The archaic term special sciences has little if any meaning in the structure of science today. I wonder what you are seeking to communicate by repeating the notion of special in this context? As regards Peirce's use of the word 'object,' one could call it a fancy word for 'thing.' The modern usage of object, either mathematical or philosophical, is, in my opinion, remote from the notion of thing. In the modern sciences a thing is marked by its properties - categorized in terms of the systems of units and measured in terms the same system of units. CSP refers to these as qualisigns and, if the reference is specific, to sinsign (inferring indexical representation.) It's a semi-technical term for 'thing' and indicates that one is speaking at least somewhat formally, while the word 'thing' indicates a minimum of formality of reference. 'Object' can refer to anything that one can think of, anything that one can discuss. It can be a countable object or it can be stuff (a term which some philosophers embraced at some time during the 20th Century). It can fictive, like Prince Hamlet. It's a very bare conception - hard to say how it differs from _ens_. While this listing is useful, it misses the basic point. That is, a philosophical object or a mathematical object does not carry the notion of necessity of measurable properties - such as mass, volume, length, density and so forth. When CSP, in his primitive triad, wrote of Things - Representation - Form, he did not include the term 'object' as it fails the representational quality. Thus I think Gary wrote a very perceptive analysis of the original posting. Cheers Jerry - Original Message - From: Gary Fuhrman To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 11:51 AM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic Steven, i had to read through your post three times before venturing a reply, because i couldn't believe that you would actually interpret JR's paper -- and the most straightforward part of it, at that -- as saying the opposite of what it really says. But further reading of both your post and JR's paper forces that conclusion. It seems that when you describe your approach as “rigorous”, what you mean is that it gives you a license to bend any text to your own preconceived purpose; and your reading of JR's text carries out that program recursively by ascribing that very idea to JR's text. JR himself, on the other hand, says that “there is experience when and only when one finds oneself in a confrontation with something other than oneself and one's ideas that has the power to do something to one if one is not doing right by it.” (Notice the inclusion of the idea of “right” here.) This i take to be a paraphrase of Peirce's concept of the “outward clash” or reaction between ego and non-ego, i.e. Secondness, as the essential characteristic of “experience” in the context of scientific inquiry. There are many statements of this crucial idea in Peirce, perhaps the most well-known occurring in his second Harvard Lecture, “On Phenomenology” (EP2:150-55; see also CP 1.431, from The Logic of Mathematics, c. 1896). This is the “paradigm of experience” that JR sets out in his paper to “disentangle ... from certain other
