[peirce-l] Fwd: Peirce Society: Minutes of the 2011-12 Business Meeting
List, I'm forwarding the Minutes of the Business Meeting Charles Sanders Peirce Society 5 April 2012 prepared by Robert Lane with Bob's permission. List members might want to look at, in particular, Section 3: On behalf of Kees de Waal, Bob Lane presented the following report from the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society and Section 5: André De Tienne delivered the following report on the Peirce Edition Project. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** - 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---BeginMessage--- Dear Members of the Charles S. Peirce Society, The minutes of the Society's 2011-12 business meeting, held on April 5 in Seattle, Washington (USA), are now online at the Society's website: http://www.peircesociety.org/minutes/minutes-2012-04-05.html Best regards, Bob -- Robert Lane, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy Editor, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society Department of English and Philosophy University of West Georgia Carrollton, GA 30118 678 839 4745 rl...@westga.edu http://www.westga.edu/~rlane - 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 ---End Message---
Re: [peirce-l] The Pragmatic Cosmos
Leo, Jon, List, * Although there's a great deal more to be said about the relations of ethics, esthetic (Peirce's spelling for the theoretical science), and logic as semeiotic, a quick and dirty response to your comment that It's interesting that logic depends upon ethics and, in turn, aesthetics when dependence is itself a logical relation is that (as previously discussed on the list in a related context) all the sciences of discovery--that is, all the pure or theoretical sciences--preceding logic as semeiotic (logica docens) in Peirce's classification of the sciences, all these sciences quasi-necessary employ a logica utens (the ordinary logic of any normal thinking person). These sciences are, of course, theoretical mathematics, phenomenology, esthetics and ethics. Once a logica docens is developed, however, it may be employed *retrospectively*, as it were, in consideration of the sciences preceding it. * For my own part, I tend--as perhaps Jon does as well--to see esthetic/ethics/logic as semeiotic as being in genuine tricategorial relation so that they *inform* each other in interesting ways. Trichotomic vector theory, then, does not demand that one necessarily always follow the order: 1ns (esthetic), then 2ns (ethics), then 3ns (logic). One may also look at the three involutionally (logic involves ethics which, in turn, involves esthetic) or, even, according to the vector of representation (logic shows esthetic to be in that particular relation to ethics which Peirce holds them to be in). But only a very few scholars have taken up tricategorial vector relations. Indeed, R. J. Parmentier and I are the only folk I know of who have published work on possible paths of movement (vectors) through a genuine trichotomic relation which does *not* follow the Hegelian order: 1ns then 2ns then 3ns. Indeed, with a few exceptions, there appears at present to be relatively little interest in Peirce's categories generally speaking. Given the way they pervade his scientific and philosophical work, and considering how highly he valued their discovery, this has always struck me as quite odd. * Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Leo 03/27/12 4:23 AM Nice. It's interesting that logic depends upon ethics and, in turn, aesthetics when dependence is itself a logical relation. Rather hard to get one's head around. On 3/26/2012 9:48 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote: Peircers, I found the figure I used to draw to explain that pragmatic ordering of the normative sciences -- Re: The Pragmatic Cosmos At: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-October/000879.html o-o | | |o| | / \ | | / \ | | / \ | |o---o| | /| Logic |\ | | / | | \ | | / | | \ | |o---o| | /| | Ethic | |\ | | / | | | | \ | | / | | | | \ | |o---o| | /| | Aesthetic | |\ | | / | | | | | | \ | | / | | | | | | \ | |o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o| | | o-o Figure 1. The Pragmatic Cosmos Here is the Figure that goes with this description of the Pragmatic Cosmos, or the pragmatically ordered normative sciences: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Logic. The arrangement is best viewed as a planar projection of a solid geometric configuration, as three cylinders on concentric circular bases, all subtending an overarching cone. This way of viewing the situation brings into focus the two independent or orthogonal order relations that exist among the normative sciences. In regard to their bases, logic is a special case of ethics and aesthetics, and ethics is a special case of aesthetics, understanding these concepts in their broadest senses. In respect of their altitudes, logic exercises a critical perspective on ethics and aesthetics, and ethics exercises a critical perspective on aesthetics. - 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
Re: [peirce-l] Peirce-L's ends
Cathy, Stephen, List--In reflecting on Cathy's good questions and Stephen's thoughtful 'first response', I thought immediately of Joe's remarks which pretty much constitute the peirce-l forum page, some of them seemingly directed precisely to Cathy's questions. See: http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm It isn't necessary to read all that Joe wrote there, but I find that every time I scroll down that page that I find some paragraph heading or two that suggest subject matter on list-related issues I want to reflect more on at that given time, and I begin a new dialogue with Joe (reading through the whole page once is also very highly recommended). But I think Cathy's questions really do need our reflection, both apart from and in the context of Joe's goals and purposes for this forum. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Stephen C. Rose 03/26/12 9:42 AM What is currently working well on the list? What, if anything, could be improved? If we should promote it, it would help to have a paragraph with succinct directions that all could use. I have been very impressed with the quality of posts and the civility here. What are our goals with this list? I have assumed the goal was/is to help all be more clear about Peirce and his contributions and to suggest to a wide audience the relevance of Peirce now and in the future. Would it be right to say it is a community of inquiry? If so, how is the inquiry going? Yes but not to the exclusion of a wider goal It goes well when contributions add to the general sense of Peirce's relevance and the means of expressing it. If it is not right to see the goal of the list as primarily a community of inquiry, what goals does it have? And how might they be best realized? The main goal would be to keep the flame alive and add fuel to it. I think this is being realized. For example the recent Deacon interchange led me to the PDF which shows that Deacon did indeed study Pierce. I intend to do what I can to spread some of his insights. Such posts as Gene's most recent will appeal to a a wider audience than this list. I see this list as a force in the effort to move beyond the binary of Dawkins-speak and religion-speak to a Peirce-informed worldview. The goal would thus be articulating and spreading the relevance of Peirce. The means are are the same with the Web where this gets done. *ShortFormContent at Blogger* On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 2:35 AM, Catherine Legg wrote: Hello all! Some stimulating discussions at the SAAP regarding this list have encouraged me to start a thread not with any particular goal in mind, but to see where it might lead. What I’m interested to pursue is of the nature of a “check-in” regarding this list. As a loosely affiliated group of Peirce enthusiasts, are we getting the most out of the list that we could be? What is currently working well on the list? What, if anything, could be improved? What are our goals with this list? Would it be right to say it is a community of inquiry? If so, how is the inquiry going? If it is not right to see the goal of the list as primarily a community of inquiry, what goals does it have? And how might they be best realized? Sharp observers may spot a certain encouragement towards communal critical self-reflection in the above. Cheers everyone, Cathy Catherine Legg Senior Lecturer, Philosophy Programme University of Waikato Private Bag 3105 3240, Hamilton, New Zealand *http://waikato.academia.edu/CathyLegg* - 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 - 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 - 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] Book Review: Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism
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 -- Gary Richmond Humanities Department Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College--City University of New York - 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] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction
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 -- Gary Richmond Humanities Department Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College--City University of New York - 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] C.S. Peirce • Objective Logic
Jon, It would be helpful if you'd add some context to a message which is entirely a quotation. Best, Gary On 3/9/12, Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net wrote: o~o~o~o~o~o Note 2 o~o~o~o~o~o Objective Logic (cont.) The first question, then, which I have to ask is: Supposing such a thing to be true, what is the kind of proof which I ought to demand to satisfy me of its truth? Am I simply to go through the actual process of development of symbols with my own thoughts, which are symbols, and am I to find in the sense of necessity and evidence of the following of one thought upon another an adequate assurance that the course followed is the necessary line of thought's development? That is the way the question has usually been put, hitherto, both by Hegelians and by Anti-Hegelians. But even if I were to find that the sequence of conceptions in Hegel's logic carried my mind irresistibly along its current, that would not suffice to convince me of its universal validity. Nor, on the other hand, does the mere fact that I do not find a single step of Hegel's logic, or any substitute for it that I have met with, either convincing or persuasive, give me any assurance whatever that there is no such life- history. It seems to me natural to suppose that it would be far easier satisfactorily to answer the question of whether there is such a thing than to find out what particular form that life-history would take if it were a reality; and not only natural to suppose so, but made as certain by solid reasons as any such anticipation in regard to proofs could well be. — Charles S. Peirce, “Minute Logic” (1902), CP 2.112 o~o~o~o~o~o academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ - 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 -- Gary Richmond Humanities Department Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College--City University of New York - 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
[peirce-l] Fwd: Peirce Society: Program and Business Meeting Agenda
Robert Lane rl...@westga.edu 3/5/2012 4:58 PM Dear Members and Friends of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Below is the program for our upcoming meeting, as well as the agenda for the subsequent business meeting. The program and agenda are also available at the Peirce Society's website: http://www.peircesociety.org/agenda-2012-04-05.html I hope to see you in Seattle! Best regards, Robert Lane Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society *** Meeting of the Charles S. Peirce Society 7-9:00 p.m., Thursday April 5, 2012 Westin Seattle Seattle, Washington, USA Program Chair: Robert Lane (University of West Georgia) Presidential Address: Risto Hilpinen (University of Miami), “Types, Tokens, and Words” Jean-Marie Chevalier (Collège de France), “Peirce’s Critique of the First Critique: A Leibnizian False Start” (Winner of the 2011-12 Peirce Society Essay Contest) Business Meeting Agenda 1. Approval of minutes of the 2011 meeting (Risto Hilpinen) [http://www.peircesociety.org/minutes/minutes-2011-04-21.html] 2. Report from the Executive Committee (Risto Hilpinen) 3. Report from the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 4. Financial statement (Robert Lane) 5. Report from the Peirce Edition Project 6. Report from the Nominating Committee and election of new officers (Rosa Mayorga) 7. New business 8. Adjournment (Risto Hilpinen) -- Robert Lane, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy Editor, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society Department of English and Philosophy University of West Georgia Carrollton, GA 30118 678 839 4745 rl...@westga.edu http://www.westga.edu/~rlane - 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] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction
Jon, All, Jon, I'm glad my post was for a helpful summary for you in the matter of at least Peirce's changing views of the three inference patterns in relation to the categories. Just a brief comment on your 'Subject' line. Ben and I would like to encourage you and everyone here to follow Joe Ransdell's advice when changing a subject line (and I think it was quite proper for you to change this one, Jon) that after the change that one adds was, [whatever the former Subject was] including enough of the former Subject line for identicatory purposes. This will be helpful in any number of ways for use of whatever archive or folder may end up containing these posts in the future. Best, Gary and Ben On 3/2/12, Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net wrote: Thanks, Gary, this is a very helpful summary. Jon cc: Arisbe, Inquiry, Peirce List Gary Richmond wrote: Cathy, Stephen, list, Cathy, you wrote: I don't see how one might interpret induction as secondness though.Though a *misplaced* induction may well lead to the secondness of surprise due to error. And yet that's exactly how Peirce saw it for most of his career (with the brief lapse mentioned in my earlier post and commented on by him in the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism). There he wrote: Abduction, or the suggestion of an explanatory theory, is inference through an Icon, and is thus connected with Firstness; Induction, or trying how things will act, is inference through an Index, and is thus connected with Secondness; Deduction, or recognition of the relations of general ideas, is inference through a Symbol, and is thus connected with Thirdness. . . [My] connection of Abduction with Firstness, Induction with Secondness, and Deduction with Thirdness was confirmed by my finding no essential subdivisions of Abduction; that Inducion split, at once, into the Sampling of Collections, and the Sampling of Qualities. . . (*Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism*, Turrisi, ed. 276-7). Shortly after this he comments on his brief period of confusion in the matter. [In] the book called *Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University*, while I stated the rationale of induction pretty well, I confused Abduction with the Second kind of Induction, that is the induction of qualities. Subsequently, writing in the seventh volume of the Monist, sensible of the error of that book but not quite understanding in what it consisted I stated the rationale of Induction in a manner more suitable to Abduction, and still later in lectures here in Cambridge I represented Induction to be connected with the third category and Deduction with the Second [op. cit, 277]. [You can also read the entire deleted section by googling At the time I first published this division of inference and 'Peirce'.] So, as he sees he, for those few years Peirce was confused about these categorial associations. In that sensePeirce is certainly at least partially at fault in creating a confusion in the minds of many a thinker about the categorial associations of the three inference patterns. Still, he continues in that section by stating: At present [that is, in 1903] I am somewhat disposed to revert to my original opinion yet adds that he will leave the question undecided. Still, after 1903 he never associates deduction with anything but thirdness, nor induction with anything but 2ns. I myself have never been able to think of deduction as anything but thirdness, nor induction as anything but 2ns, and I think that I mainly have stuck to that way of thinking because when, in methodeutic, Peirce employs the three categories together in consideration of a complete inquiry--as he does, for example, very late in life in *The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God* in the section the CP editors titled The Three Stages of Inquiry [CP 6.468 - 6.473; also, EP 2:440 - 442]--he *explicitly* associates abduction (here, 'retroduction' of the hypothesis) with 1ns, deduction (of the retroduction's implications for the purposes of devising tests of it) with 3ns, and induction (as the inductive testing once devised) with 2ns. But again, as these particular categorial associations apparently proved confusing even for Peirce, constituting one of the very few tricategorial matters in which he changed his mind (and, then, back again!), I too will at least try to leave the question undecided (for now). Best, Gary -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ -- Gary Richmond Humanities Department Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College--City University of New York
Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction
Jonathan, list, I think your point is well taken, Jonathan. Best, Gary On 3/2/12, Jonathan DeVore devor...@umich.edu wrote: Dear List, It might be useful to bear in mind that we don't have to think about 3rdnss, 2ndnss, 1stnss in an all-or-nothing fashion. Peirce might have us recall that these elements will be differently prominent according to the phenomenon under consideration--without being mutually exclusive. So while 3rdnss is prominent and predominant in deduction, there is also an element of compulsion by which one is forced to a particular conclusion. That compulsive element could be thought of as the 2ndness of deduction--which is put to good use by the predominantly mediated character of deduction: i.e., it serves as the sheriff to the court (of law). Best, Jonathan Quoting Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net: Thanks, Gary, this is a very helpful summary. Jon cc: Arisbe, Inquiry, Peirce List Gary Richmond wrote: Cathy, Stephen, list, Cathy, you wrote: I don't see how one might interpret induction as secondness though.Though a *misplaced* induction may well lead to the secondness of surprise due to error. And yet that's exactly how Peirce saw it for most of his career (with the brief lapse mentioned in my earlier post and commented on by him in the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism). There he wrote: Abduction, or the suggestion of an explanatory theory, is inference through an Icon, and is thus connected with Firstness; Induction, or trying how things will act, is inference through an Index, and is thus connected with Secondness; Deduction, or recognition of the relations of general ideas, is inference through a Symbol, and is thus connected with Thirdness. . . [My] connection of Abduction with Firstness, Induction with Secondness, and Deduction with Thirdness was confirmed by my finding no essential subdivisions of Abduction; that Inducion split, at once, into the Sampling of Collections, and the Sampling of Qualities. . . (*Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism*, Turrisi, ed. 276-7). Shortly after this he comments on his brief period of confusion in the matter. [In] the book called *Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University*, while I stated the rationale of induction pretty well, I confused Abduction with the Second kind of Induction, that is the induction of qualities. Subsequently, writing in the seventh volume of the Monist, sensible of the error of that book but not quite understanding in what it consisted I stated the rationale of Induction in a manner more suitable to Abduction, and still later in lectures here in Cambridge I represented Induction to be connected with the third category and Deduction with the Second [op. cit, 277]. [You can also read the entire deleted section by googling At the time I first published this division of inference and 'Peirce'.] So, as he sees he, for those few years Peirce was confused about these categorial associations. In that sensePeirce is certainly at least partially at fault in creating a confusion in the minds of many a thinker about the categorial associations of the three inference patterns. Still, he continues in that section by stating: At present [that is, in 1903] I am somewhat disposed to revert to my original opinion yet adds that he will leave the question undecided. Still, after 1903 he never associates deduction with anything but thirdness, nor induction with anything but 2ns. I myself have never been able to think of deduction as anything but thirdness, nor induction as anything but 2ns, and I think that I mainly have stuck to that way of thinking because when, in methodeutic, Peirce employs the three categories together in consideration of a complete inquiry--as he does, for example, very late in life in *The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God* in the section the CP editors titled The Three Stages of Inquiry [CP 6.468 - 6.473; also, EP 2:440 - 442]--he *explicitly* associates abduction (here, 'retroduction' of the hypothesis) with 1ns, deduction (of the retroduction's implications for the purposes of devising tests of it) with 3ns, and induction (as the inductive testing once devised) with 2ns. But again, as these particular categorial associations apparently proved confusing even for Peirce, constituting one of the very few tricategorial matters in which he changed his mind (and, then, back again!), I too will at least try to leave the question undecided (for now). Best, Gary -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com
Re: [peirce-l] A new dissertation on Walker Percy and Charles Peirce
I would tend to agree with you, Stephen. Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Stephen C. Rose 02/24/12 10:24 PM *‘Belief. Truth. Values. These are **relative things’ ” (LR 113). Percy, however, believes in absolutes.* The above from the dissertation speaks volumes to me. Percy's Catholicism can hardly be perceived as transcendent because it is based on supposition. Peirce believed (I think) that such transcendence as he knew was demonstrable, provable. The only way transcendence can be understood going forward is as something accessible within the immanent frame, in everyday life. I believe the new paradigm will come by taking one word of the above - values - and suggesting that there are indeed ontological values and that these are willed. Precisely for this reason they can be proved to be the engine of such progress as we have in history. I think the words above contain impossibility of Percy's position. His Catholicism is a belief which to him may be true. The only thing that breaks into the transcendent and absolute are willed values. Such as come to life in the experience of those who achieve a measure of justice in the world, of love in their lives, of life beyond the binary. Percy understood the problem but not the answer. Peirce understood both. *ShortFormContent at Blogger* On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 6:28 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote: Kenneth, Thanks, very interesting. Here's a slightly shorter link, with out the search operation: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/**cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=** 1079context=english_disssei-**redir=1 Regards, Jon Kenneth Ketner wrote: digitally available at http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/**cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=** 1079context=english_disssei-**redir=1#search=%22semeiotic%** 20religion%22 -- academia: http://independent.academia.**edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/**inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/**Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:**Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.**com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ --**--** - 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 - 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 - 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] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition
Cathy, list, When I first read your remark suggesting that the birth, growth and development of new hypostatic abstractions should be in the position of 3ns rather than argumentative proof of the validity of the mathematics as I had earlier abduced, I thought this might be another case of the kind of difficulty in assigning the terms of 2ns and 3ns in genuine triadic relations which had Peirce, albeit for a very short time in his career, associating 3ns with induction (while before and after that time he put deduction in the place of 3ns as necessary reasoning--I have discussed this several times before on the list and so will now only refer those interested to the passage, deleted from the 1903 Harvard Lectures--276-7 in Patricia Turrisi's edition--where Peirce discusses that categorial matter). I think his revision of his revision to his original position may have been brought about by the clarification resulting from thinking of abduction/deduction/induction beyond critical logic (where they are first analyzed as distinct patterns of inference), then in methodeutic where a complete inquiry--in which hypothesis formation is 1ns, the deduction of the implications of the hypothesis for testing is 3ns, and, finally, the actual inductive testing is 2ns--provides a kind of whetstone for categorial thinking about these three. (Yet, even in that 1903 passage he remarks that he will leave the question open.) Be that as it may, I am beginning to think that you are clearly on to something and that that transforming of a predicate into a relation which we call hypostatic abstraction certainly ought to be in the place of 3ns. Re-reading parts of Jay Zeman's famous and fine article on hypostatic abstraction further strengthened that opinion. See: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/jzeman/peirce_on_abstraction.htm Zeman writes: It is hypostatic or subjectal abstraction that Peirce is interested in; a hint as to why he is interested in it is given in his allusions in these passages to mathematical reasoning [. . .] Jaakko Hintikka has done us the great service of bringing to our attention and tying to contemporary experience one of Peirce's central observations about necessary—which is to say mathematical—reasoning: this is that nontrivial deductive reasoning, even in areas where explicit postulates are employed, always considers something not implied in the conceptions so far gained [in the particular course of reasoning in question], which neither the definition of the object of research nor anything yet known about could of themselves suggest, although they give room for it. As is well known, Peirce calls this kind of reasoning theorematic (in contrast to corollarial reasoning) because it introduces novel elements into the reasoning process in the form of icons, which are then 'experimented upon in imagination.' Zeman quotes Hintikka to the effect that Peirce himself seems to have considered a vindication of the concept of abstraction as the most important application of his discovery [of the theorematic/corollarial distinction] and then remarks that Peirce would indeed have agreed that the light shed on necessary reasoning by this distinction helps greatly to illuminate the role of abstraction. . . See, also: EP2:394 where Peirce comments that it is hypostatic abstraction that leads to the generalizality of a predicate and, of course, what is general is 3ns. In short, I think you are quite right Cathy to have suggested that correction of my categorial assignments. As Peirce notes near the end of the Additament to the Neglected Argument, hypothetic abstraction concerns itself with that which necessarily would be *if* certain conditions were established (EP2:450). Best, Gary On 2/21/12, Catherine Legg cl...@waikato.ac.nz wrote: Gary wrote: For the moment I am seeing these three as forming a genuine tricategorial relationship, which I'd diagram in my trikonic way, thus: Theoretical mathematics: (1ns) mathematical hypothesis formation (creative abduction--that piece of mathematics) | (3ns) argumentative proof (of the validity of the mathematics) (2ns) the mathematics itself [...] Wouldn't argumentative proof be the 2ness, and the 3ness would be something like the birth, growth and development of new hypostatic abstractions? Cheers, Cathy - 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 -- Gary Richmond Humanities Department Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College--City University of New York - You are receiving this message because you
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Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** - 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---BeginMessage--- fyi _ Nathan Houser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Senior Fellow, Institute for American Thought Indiana University at Indianapolis -Original Message- From: OrcsWeb Webteam [mailto:webt...@orcsweb.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:55 AM To: Houser, Nathan R. Subject: OrcsWeb Maintenance Notification - February 2012 - Security Patches Nathan Houser, In response to Microsoft's latest security patch releases; we will be patching Windows servers on Saturday, February 18th. The standard patching will be performed between 3:00AM and 8:00AM EST (GMT -5). During this time your site or server will experience a brief period of downtime while the server is rebooted. Let us know if you have any questions. Thank you, Your Webteam OrcsWeb Managed Hosting Solutions Remarkable Service. Remarkable Support. www.orcsweb.com - 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 ---End Message---
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
it not for the list and, in particular, Joe's pointing to de Tienne's work, I might never have come upon it, have never read and reflected on it. Continuing, Stephen also wrote: SR: [. . . ] I feel it is the job of Peirceans to define a way ahead beyond the current straitjacket [. . . ] theologically and generally, I think Peirce is absolutely essential to explaining a way beyond nominalism and to opening the door to the appropriation of religion as post-institutional spirituality. Also to the introduction of a general appropriation of ethical values [. . .] in a world where [these have (GR] proved seriously wanting. Maybe academic Peirce folk could fill the void in the ranks of our public intellectuals. GR: Now that's some challenge! I won't remark on the 'theological' aspect of the question, since it has historically 'gotten me into trouble' here, not to mention that even a brief reflection on it (or the problem of nominalism, or the ethical question) would make an already long post even longer. I will only suggest, again, that much as did the late Arnold Shepperson, and as many have expressed here and in print, I too have benefited immensely now for well over a decade from seeing this Peirce forum and Arisbe as essential intellectual resources. I will always be grateful to Joe Ransdell for creating both on the Peircean and democratic principles that he did. For me the list offers a kind of intellectual 'hope' that we can discuss matters philosophical here as peers. Because Peirce posited cenoscopic--that is, philosophy--as a science anyone of sound mind might enter into, I personally consider everyone on this list my peer in philosophy. Still, when one considers its several branches, I know that there are some here far more competent than I in some of these branches, and I look to them for enlightenment. Meanwhile, challenges to my own thinking only help to sharpen it. I would like to conclude by quoting a passage from Deacon's chapter in *Incomplete Nature* titled Work, a passage which, I think, suggests just how great the challenge is to especially creative intellectuals today in even conveying their thinking to others. TD: [T]hat which is involved in discovering how best to communicate ideas that are counterintuitive or alien or otherwise go against received wisdom, is particularly difficult work [. . .] This suggest that the sources or resistance that are the focus of the work to be done also include many tendencies not generally considered by physicists and engineers; for example, tendencies of thought that contribute to the difficulty of changing opinions or beliefs (Deacon, 331). 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 01/29/12 3:35 PM List, I am a little surprised at the lack of follow-up from the list to Steve's suggestions, below. I do not personally have any opinion regarding the prospect of Peirceans forming a new generation of public intellectuals, but this is a theme that I recall being raised on the list in the past, and generating lively discussion. Anyhow, this slow read has gone on somewhat longer than intended or expected, and it is clear that the focus of discussion on the list has moved beyond it, which is fine. I shall attempt to wrap it up with a fairly quick overview of the last few pages of Joe’s paper. A peer is someone who is to be treated as an equal, and who is to be respected both because s/he is an equal and because s/he has a perspective that is different from mine and therefore of value to me as an inquirer. Joe specifically grounds this conception in Peirce’s work, as follows: JR: “Peirce describes the coordination of the perspectives of the individual inquirers, which assumes an equal respect for each such perspective as having its own role to play in providing the composite substance of the date being reconciled in the coordination in a striking passage in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”: [Quoting Peirce] One man may investigate the velocity of light by studying the transit of Venus and the aberration of the stars; another by the oppositions of Mars and the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites; a third by the method of Fizeau; a fourth by that of Foucault; a fifth by the motions of the curves of Lissajoux; a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and a ninth, may follow the different method of comparing the measures of statical and dynamical electricity. They may at first obtain different results, but, as each perfects his method and his processes, the results are found to move steadily together toward a destined center. So with all scientific research. Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside themselves to one and the same conclusion. (Collected Papers, 5.407)” PS: I take Joe here to be * correctly * inferring from Peirce that the larger and, more
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
Jon, List, This is a great idea, Jon. Please nominate me for this topic. Best, Gary On 1/18/12, Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net wrote: Looks interesting ... I created a topic for Peirce — http://www.researchgate.net/topic/Charles_Sanders_Peirce/ I can nominate any other curators who will serve if nominated ... Jon -- facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ - 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 -- Gary Richmond Humanities Department Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College--City University of New York - 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] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic
Gary,
You're correct that Deacon doesn't deal with the cosmological question
of the origin of life in Incomplete Science, in The Symbolic Species,
nor in any of his papers that I know of (see a list of them at
http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/users/terrence-w-deacon), and I didn't
mean to imply that he does. The question remains of considerable
interest to me, however, and I brought it up solely because every
emergentist I know of almost by necessity proceeds without asking from
whence came the original ground upon which emergence builds. But, again,
even Peirce saw that question as a pre-scientific one.
I also certainly didn't mean to suggest, by commenting that what can
be 'built up' or 'emerge' or 'evolve' occurs in a systemic context (as
the result of the reciprocal relations within a system--and as the
system), that the not-yet-organized represents a system. And I most
assuredly agree with you that a species and its Umwelt have to
co-evolve, such a basic notion in biosemiotics that I didn't expect
that my admittedly loose language could be misinterpreted by you of all
people. However, I'll have to be much more careful in expressing myself
in such matters as we approach a discussion of Deacon's book--tossing
off emails on this topic will surely not do, and so I appreciate your
criticism.
As to teleodynamics and morphodynamics, I'll wait to comment until
after you've responded to Jason's post, which I hope you will. If/when
you do, please consider changing the Subject of this thread to reflect
the new direction in which this discussion is going. Meanwhile I agree
with your comment:
GF: The whole idea of emergence and self-organization is that one kind
of process (e.g. teleodynamics) can arise from interactions of
lower-level processes (e.g. morphodynamics) even though no teleodynamic
process has ever happened before, so there is no teleodynamic context at
that point (though it will evolve from then on ... and the way it
evolves will change the situation, so that the spontaneous emergence of
a *new* teleodynamic process may be precluded in that environment -- as
has very likely happened on this planet).
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
718 482-5700
```
IF POSSIBLE PLEASE CC messages to: gary.richm...@gmail.com
Gary Fuhrman g...@gnusystems.ca 1/12/2012 11:24 AM
Gary,
GR: [[ Still, the question remains: whence the greater system?
Sometimes this strikes me as one of those chicken or egg conundrums (I
see Deacon wrestling with this too, but in an entirely different way).
So, what can be 'built up' or 'emerge' or 'evolve' occurs in a systemic
context (as the result of the reciprocal relations within a system--and
as the system) and within an Umwelt. ]]
GF: I don't think Deacon really deals with the cosmological question of
the origin of matter and energy, if that's what you're asking here; he
just takes them as the original ground on which emergence built, so to
speak, without asking where that ground came from. He also takes
evolution to be emergent, in other words he doesn't trace it all the way
back to the original nothing as Peirce does. But i don't think Peirce
would refer to the not-yet-organized as a system -- anyway i know i
wouldn't, because to me a system is organized by definition.
The term context is also problematic in this ... um, context. The
whole idea of emergence and self-organization is that one kind of
process (e.g. teleodynamics) can arise from interactions of lower-level
processes (e.g. morphodynamics) even though no teleodynamic process has
ever happened before, so there is no teleodynamic context at that point
(though it will evolve from then on ... and the way it evolves will
change the situation, so that the spontaneous emergence of a *new*
teleodynamic process may be precluded in that environment -- as has very
likely happened on this planet). Also it seems to me that a species and
its Umwelt have to co-evolve, so that the species develops not *within*
but *with* its Umwelt. -- But maybe i'm reading something into your
utterance that's not what you intended.
Gary F.
} Everything is always becoming something other than what it was
becoming. [Floyd Merrell] {
www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce
-Original Message-
Sent: January-11-12 1:58 PM
Gary,
I think that you're right in suggesting that it's probably not a good
idea to mix creation myths and the like--even Peirce's non-scientific
early cosmological musings--with emergent or evolutionary theory. I
would suggest, however, that such ideas do have semiotic and
metaphysical significance for Peirce (say, as much as Big Bang theory
has in the physical theories of some). Nonetheless, I would tend to
agree with this statement:
GF: Top-down causation, like Aristotelian formal cause, consists in the
constraints imposed
Re: [peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic
Gary,
I think that you're right in suggesting that it's probably not a good
idea to mix creation myths and the like--even Peirce's non-scientific
early cosmological musings--with emergent or evolutionary theory. I
would suggest, however, that such ideas do have semiotic and
metaphysical significance for Peirce (say, as much as Big Bang theory
has in the physical theories of some). Nonetheless, I would tend to
agree with this statement:
GF: Top-down causation, like Aristotelian formal cause, consists in the
constraints imposed by an emergent system on the processes it has
emerged from (and still depends on for its existence). For instance, the
self-organization of the brain emerges from the constant chaotic “firing”
of individual neurons, yet it organizes itself by imposing constraints
on them, and it's the latter part of this circle that is “top-down”.
This is indeed “from the whole to the parts” but not in the sense where
the “whole” is the world of possibilities and actualities are parts.
GR: Still, the question remains: whence the greater system? Sometimes
this strikes me as one of those chicken or egg conundrums (I see
Deacon wrestling with this too, but in an entirely different way). So,
what can be 'built up' or 'emerge' or 'evolve' occurs in a systemic
context (as the result of the reciprocal relations within a system--and
as the system) and within an Umwelt. In any event, I'll look forward to
your further thoughts regarding the connection between Thirdness and
reciprocality.
As to your thoughts as to an approach for reflecting on Deacon's book in
the forum, I think your ideas are excellent. So let's continue to toss
this around a bit and see what we list members come up with. You and I
seem in agreement that *Incomplete Science* represents some
extraordinary research with implications for semiotics generally, and
reaching, perhaps, even beyond biosemiotics. My own sense is that I'll
be studying and reflecting on this book for many years to come.
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700
*** *** *** ***
Gary Fuhrman 01/11/12 7:50 AM
Gary,
I've been wondering myself how to approach Deacon's book on this list
and was hoping you would have the answers. :-) All i can suggest is a
post or two that would explain why the book would be worth reading --
perhaps introducing some of Deacon's most crucial innovations, such as
the concepts of orthograde and contragrade change -- and then proceed
directly to the explicitly semiotic aspects of the book. Certainly we
can't do some kind of slow read that would cover his whole account of
emergence, so i would suggest that we cut directly to the semiotic chase
and then deal with questions as they arise, rather than build the whole
theory from the ground up as the book does. I think Deacon's theory fits
into a line of thinking that will be familiar to some members of the
list -- people like John Collier -- but fills in some of the gaps in
earlier versions of the story. Those to whom it's all new will just have
to read the book in order to follow what we're saying about it, if
they're interested.
For now, just one comment on this:
GR: [[ There are places in Peirce (for example, near the conclusion of
the 1898 Cambridge Lectures (the so-called cosmological lectures)
where he argues (the 'blackboard' analogy) that there is a vague general
character (the blackboard) out of which the three categories emerge.
This is 'top-down' thinking in Deacon's and Fernandez's terms (and
'top-down' causality too==from the whole to the parts; categorially,
from thirdness to firstness). So, the world of possibilities within
that vague generality, so to speak. ]]
If everything emerges out of this vagueness, then it would be the “top”
in some schemas — like the Ein Sof in Kabbalah, the supernal out of
which everything emanates — but i think “top-down” in Dneuroscience of circular
causality, is just the opposite, where the
primal is the bottom or ground, while the top is the highest emergent
level. Top-down causation, like Aristotelian formal cause, consists in
the constraints imposed by an emergent system on the processes it has
emerged from (and still depends on for its existence). For instance, the
self-organization of the brain emerges from the constant chaotic “firing”
of individual neurons, yet it organizes itself by imposing constraints
on them, and it's the latter part of this circle that is “top-down”.
This is indeed “from the whole to the parts” but not in the sense where
the “whole” is the world of possibilities and actualities are parts.
More later when i've clarified (for myself) the connection between
Thirdness and reciprocality.
Gary F.
} No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise. [the Mock Turtle] {
www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce
-Original Message-
Sent: January-10-12 1:52 PM
Gary, List,
Gary F. wrote
Re: [peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic, was, [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote
Kirsti, You wrote: KM: I did not understand that you were talking about biological processes. - To that, I have no comments. GR: Actually, that brief discussion--near the end of my post--was meant as a mere problematic in light of the possible extension of the semiotic ideas we were discussing to biosemiotics, while most of the message--and all the of the ones preceding it in the thread--concerned the human-logical-social semiotic. KM: I was only trying to convey my thoughts on on this special case of your trichotomics, as it seemed to me on reading your post. - As far I can see, there were not helpful. // I was apparently mistaken in some basic issues. - So, please, leave my comments as worthy of no concern. GR: I personally, as I noted, but apparently didn't adequately convey, thought your remarks *were* helpful. They certainly were helpful to me in getting me thinking not only about the possibly of overloading a diagram, but also about the language I was using (quasi-utterer finally preferred to utter, perhaps even before the biosemiotic extension). Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Määttänen Kirsti 01/11/12 4:15 PM Gary, I did not understand that you were talking about biological processes. - To that, I have no comments. I was only trying to convey my thoughts on on this special case of your trichotomics, as it seemed to me on reading your post. - As far I can see, there were not helpful. I was apparently mistaken in some basic issues. - So, please, leave my comments as worthy of no concern. Best, Kirsti On 9.1.2012, at 21.58, Gary Richmond wrote: Kirsti, List, I hope you are feeling much better when you read this, Kirsti. You wrote: KM: I've never thought the concept of 'ground' in Gestalt theory is, or could be, the same or even nearly the same as in Peirce's philosophy. GR: I agree with and never meant to imply that you might think that the two concepts of ground were the same or even nearly the same. Perhaps I meant simply to suggest that since in a philosophical analysis we are free to use 'ground' in the vernacular sense, or as it is used in psychology, or in a Peircean sense, that we--including myself, of course!--need to be especially careful not to conflate concepts when the language used to express them is similar or even identical (and as there may indeed be ways in which their meanings overlap to some extent--certainly the etymology of the 3 usages of 'ground' just mentioned is the *earthy* one!) Again, this seems especially important when we imagine that a term such as 'ground' as used in psychology may be useful in philosophy, as you wrote. So I hope we are in agreement here. KM: Anyway, I look forward to reading your thoughts on Zeman. GR: This has already been posted, I believe in the same message to which you're responding, namely, that of 1/6/12, KR: Then, to your trichotomics. - I think there still are some problems. GR: No doubt! As Peirce wrote, his categories and trichotomies are meant mainly to be suggestive, heuristic if you will. Although it is certainly possible to diagram a trichotomy wholly *incorrectly*, yet even when *correct*, there could never be a single trichotomic diagram which could approach its subject--its object--in any more than a schematic way. In any event, diagram observation--trikonic or otherwise--is ultimately more a social matter (a scientific tool for the community to use) than it is an individual one, while I am quite certain from my own experience, that diagram creation and observation benefits the individual's understanding too. As for the philosophical or scientific community, through our critical commonsense we affirm, or correct, or further develop the diagram. So, again, the trichotomies individuals set forth, even Peirce's, are meant to be reflected upon, corrected, developed. Peirce himself modified any number richotomies he himself devised, a (very) few even radically. For example, on this list we once discussed how for most of his logical career he saw deduction (as necessary thinking) in the place of thirdness, and induction at 2ns. But for a (very) few years he reversed those categorial positions, returning to his original analysis late in the 19th century, and staying with it until his death (you can read about this reversal, then reversal of the reversal, in the Turrisi edition of the 1905 Harvard Lectures, 276-277). Still, there are trichotomies which, once posited, Peirce didn't change at all (for one simple example, rheme/dicent/argument). And this is the case not only for tricategorial *elements*, but as regards certain vectorial *paths* throughgiven trichotomies. For example, moving for a moment into metaphysics, he stated once for all the categorial path of biological evolution such that chance
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
Peter, List, Thanks for this post, and especially for your intriguing questions. I also am not familiar with arXiv beyond Joe's discussion of it, so I haven't much to say about Ginsparg's system as such. I am, however, attending a dinner party this Saturday with a colleague-friend, the physicist Alan Wolf, who, as I recall, was a colleague of Ginsparg at Los Alamos 'way back when' . A mathematical physicist now at Cooper-Union, Wolf was one of the founders of mathematical chaos theory. I hope he can give me some insider 'dope' on Gisparg and arXiv, at least as it is used in his field. Indeed, I hope I'll have more to say when we discuss the last 1/4 of Joe's paper, since, as you wrote, The remainder of Joe’s paper contains an interesting in-depth examination of the concepts of a peer and of peer review, which I hope will stimulate a good bit of discussion. I do too. Now, to the very short responses to your questions. PS:1. Is the above a fair and adequate discussion of the Ginsparg system? Is there anything important left out? GR: I think yours is a fair and adequate discussion of arXiv. After all, as Joe commented, the system is really quite simple. For one, there is no special sophistication or novelty involved in the programming. It would seem that the principal novelty is to require an Abstract both of the papers sent to reviewed as well as another Abstract of the reviewer's response. I may be that it's been widely used (see my response to your question 3, below) in part because of its simplicity. PS: 2. What have the effects of the system been on prepublication review? Does it function as intended and as Joe describes it, or has it had unintended side effects? GR: Again, my best bet here is to ask Alan your questions. I hope that picking his brain on this might be helpful, even if only anecdotally. PS: 3. Joe wrote this about ten years ago, while arXiv had been in existence for only ten years. What is the standing of the system within the scientific community today? GR: Again, Alan might be of aid here. The Wikipedia article on the topic does note these suggestive facts, however: On 3 October 2008, arXiv.org passed the half-million article milestone, with roughly five thousand new e-prints added every month.The preprint archive turned 20 years old on 14 August 2011 and cites these sources of this information. ^ Online Scientific Repository Hits Milestone - With 500,000 Articles, arXiv Established as Vital Library Resource ^ Ginsparg, Paul (2011). It was twenty years ago today ... arXiv:1108.2700 PS: 4. Joe very explicitly contrasts the prepublication discussion facilitated by Ginsparg’s system with the kind of informal listserver-based discussion that may be exemplified by our discussions on peirce-l. How important is this contrast? What virtues of Ginsparg’s system are/can be/should be embodied in informal, interdisciplinary discussions such as ours? GR: Peter, these last are, for me, exceedingly interesting questions, and I imagine I'll have a few things to offer in response to them. I hope several here will. But I'm going to postpone discussing them until after you've posted your remarks on the conclusion of Joe's paper, that part of it centering on peer-review; I think my answer must include a reflection on Joe's reflection as to what constitutes a peer. 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 01/01/12 12:54 PM Happy New Year, everyone! Resuming the slow read of Joe Ransdell’s “The Relevance of Peircean Semiotic to Computational Intelligence Augmentation,” we now move on to the description of the physicist Paul Ginsparg’s publication system, technically known as “arXiv” and pronounced like “archive”. This description takes up roughly the third quarter of Joe’s paper, pages 15 to 22. Ginsparg’s system is presented as an example of computerized intelligence augmentation in that it provides an automated mechanism for improving scientific communication, thus augmenting the collective intelligence of the research community utilizing it, originally the community of physicists. I should begin by making it clear that I personally know next to nothing about the Ginsparg system (Joe’s preferred designation), and very little about contemporary communication in the sciences. But I am confident that there is ample expertise on both counts among the listers. I shall simply present Joe’s account of the Ginsparg system and rely on others to take the lead in discussion. Having previously discussed the role, in inquiry, of norms governing “serious assertion”, Joe introduces the Ginsparg system as a system providing support for those norms: JR: “The interest in Ginsparg’s work does not lie * in any special sophistication or novelty involved in the programming, considered simply as computer programming, but rather in the way the programming
[peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic, was, [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote
Kirsti, List, Thanks for your interesting response, Kirsti. I want to comment later in the week on several topics you discussed, most especially the concept of 'Ground'. While I'm finding the list discussion of 'ground' in Gestalt theory intriguing, I want to consider Peirce's quite different (as I see it) notion in the light of Jay Zeman's thoughtful analysis of the concept. At the moment my time is constrained because the Winter college term (in which I'm teaching as well as planning a faculty development seminar) began this week, so please see this more as a 'promissory note' for the Peircean 'ground' discussion which I intend to get to later in the week. Firstly, thanks for your affirmation of my approach to tricategorial analysis through trikonic diagrams. I hope that this diagrammatic approach will prove valuable when we begin a discussion of Deacon's important book, *Incomplete Nature*, especially as emergence and other evolutionary themes seem to me to lend themselves to such analysis. As regards the present thread on the reciprocity of the social and logical principles, reflecting on your remark regarding triadic thinking in consideration of logical-social reciprocity got me, as you know, imagining that what first appears to be a kind of dual relation--(1) social being and (2) logical thinking--turns out to be a tri-categorial one, a trichotomy. However, I think that your criticism of the diagram I provided is correct, essentially that it suffers from trying to convey too much information in a single figure, over-loading it, so to speak. True, it was meant to be a mere preliminary schematic, very abstractly diagramming the possible semiotic relations in consideration of the human socio-logical (not to be confused with the sociological science, btw). In any event, you're comments suggested to me that at least 2--and perhaps 3--diagrams will be needed to explicate the relations we've been considering, at least one for the 'utterer' and another for the 'interpreter'. So, one of the two or more proposed diagrams might look like this, Relata of the socio-logical sign relation in human semiosis (from the standpoint of the utterer of the sign): Utterer (1ns) | Intended meaning of the sign (3ns) Semiotic interaction (2ns, in the sense that signs are both uttered interpreted) A second diagram would show this relationship from the standpoint of the interpreter. Perhaps a third diagram--probably of a different character--may be needed to show the relationship of the two. My principal point now is that your comments suggested to me that what may first appear to be a dyadic relationship may turn out to be a triadic one. Further, the dialogical relationship is, for Peirce, a trichotomic one [see also, thinking always proceeds in the form of a dialogue CP 4.6; and, especially, every evolution of thought should be a dialogic CP 4.551).] Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Määttänen Kirsti 01/02/12 5:12 PM Gary, list, To me, your trichotomics is a fruitful approach. I don't see any basic disagreement between our views. To comment your provisional diagram: It may be better to take the case with the utterer as the first separately from taking the interpreter as the first. Putting both in the same position in the same diagram I find a bit confusing. Perhaps making a diagram for both as separate cases (though interrelated, of course) might be better. It may well be the case that Peirce did not use the concept of Ground in his later writings. Still, I can't see any grounds for he abandoning it. - But if you, or anyone else in the list, knows of some explicit critical comments by Peirce on the concept, I would be most grateful to know. Peirce's work during his life presented such a wealth of approaches, so many of them worked up to details. As I see it, he did not have time to come back to many, many of the issues taken up earlier. The triad with Ground as the first in the triad may well be one of the issues he did not take up in his late writings Still, I have given the concept a lot of thought. And studied it in practice, taking it into use and trying it out. - As I view it, it has a quite definite place in the architecture of Peirce's system. Gestalt theory, with its idea of figure and (its) ground were (within its limited scope) after something similar to what Peirce meant with his concept of the Ground. But it just amounts to claiming that for every figure there is a background which makes it possible for anyone to see the figure. - And this not a trivial matter! - It is a most important philosophical matter. You, and most listers probably know the concern Wittgenstein gave to the duck/rabbit picture. One of the examples of being unable to see both simultaneously, either the one of the other figure just vanishes, when one - or the other - takes
[peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic, was, Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote
Jerry, Kirsti, List, For now I'll comment on just one of your questions, Jerry, that concerning 'the social principle'. Since there are several possible approaches to an answer to it--some of them, for example, might emphasize critical common sense, others, synechism or agapism, etc.--perhaps an in depth answer would require a longish monograph, even a book-length treatment (I know of no such monograph). But, for a brief answer, there's no need to search further than the articles from which the two phrases being considered were extracted. For example, the latter, the Illustrations of the Logic of Science article (Item 9 in EP1) continues, a very few paragraphs after the passage concluding Logic is rooted in the social principle, with this remark relating to what Peirce has just referred to as the unlimited community.. CSP: It may seem strange that I should put forward three sentiments, namely, interest in an indefinite community, recognition of the possibility of this interest being made supreme, and hope in the unlimited continuance off intellectual activity as indispensable requirements of logic. Yet, when we consider that logic depends on a mere struggle to escape doubt, which, as it terminates in action, must begin in emotion, and that, furthermore, the only cause of our planting ourselves on reason is that other methods of escaping doubt fail on account of the social impulse, why should we wonder to find social sentiment presupposed in reasoning? [EP1:150] And these three--emotion, action, and logic--themselves clearly represent a trichotomy, I think you would agree, Kirsti, one in which the interest in an unlimited community is supported by and grounded in the necessary other two sentiments. A further reflection on Peirce seeing these sentiments as pretty much the same as that famous trio of Charity, Faith, and Hope would take us, perhaps, rather far afield. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Jerry LR Chandler 01/01/12 10:04 PM Gary, Kristi, List: First, Best Wishes to All for a Productive and Creative 2012! I am equally puzzled by the two sentences: the social principle is rooted intrinsically in logic and, logic is rooted in the social principle. How do other list readers interpret the singular the social principle? Perhaps this phrase is in common usage in the social sciences? If so, what is the usage? To me, the symmetry of the two sentences is common sense from the perspective of the essence of human communication, both linguistically and abstractly, is culturally derived. Perhaps I am looking at these sentences too narrowly? As for the two sentences to be rooted in each other, I can only comment that most trees have only one set of roots although exceptions are well-known. :-) Cheers Jerry On Jan 1, 2012, at 2:53 PM, Gary Richmond wrote: Kirsti, List, I meant to answer your thoughtful and stimulating post earlier, but end of the year (and end of the college term), plus personal matters, not to mention a 9 day holiday break to Charleston, SC with no internet access, prevented me from doing so until I returned to NYC. Of course we both agree (and I would tend to assume--or, at least hope)--that most everyone here would agree that there is no circular reasoning involved in Peirce's commenting both that the social principle is rooted intrinsically in logic and, nine years later, that logic is rooted in the social principle. You commented further: KM: Within triadic reasoning it is possible and reasonable to make a claim that two (or even more) are rooted in each other. What changes is what is taken as the first. - The concept of Ground is to my mind what is needed here. - You can take one or the other as the first, as the ground upon which you view the other. - You then get a different view. You take a different perspective on the same state of things. // Nothing more. They are both rooted in each other. GR: I would suggest that a triadic (or, more specifically, in Peirce's sense of categorial triadicity, *trichotomic*) analysis of this issue, namely, the reciprocity of the logical the social principles, requires no less than three categorial elements (the two so far considered being necessary but not sufficient), a point you make near the conclusion of your message as I understand you. So, this trichotomic relation might be diagrammed in this way (these are just my first thoughts and, so, may need some revision as I reflect further on the matter):: Relata of the socio-logical sign relation: Possible sign utterer *or* interpreter (1ns) | Intended meaning/interpretation of the sign (3ns) Semiotic interaction (2ns, in the sense that signs are both uttered *and* (sometimes) interpreted) Ground is, for me, a somewhat problematic concept
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
Steven, Gene, Ben, Peter, List, IA as contributing to the possibility of actual intelligence augmentation is a mere goal of such visionary thinkers as Engelbart, Technology is a tool that can be used wisely or poorly, as several have already noted. My friends who teach in some of the better educated countries in Europe do not seem to have as much of a problem with new technologies as is being expressed in this thread. The book is itself the result of a new technology of the time, the printing press, and its dissemination to many in especially the 19th and 20th centuries was the result of the further advancement of that and other, related technologies. Pre-computer/internet reading of books resulted in a very well educated European population, but that did not keep Europe from falling into two disastrous, finally, world wars. The total dumbing down of, for example, the American population, I mean, the American education system, also pre-dates computers. The 1%, it appears, benefits from a dumbed-down population, the better to manipulate it through, admittedly, especially the television media (think Fox news). That vast wasteland of idiotic television programming was also a conscious decision by corporate interests in the interest of making big profits. The principles and practices of a hunter-gather society (which Gene has so beautifully articulated in his books and articles) is nothing that we are going to regain as desirable as it might seem to want to do so. It ain't gonna happen. Meanwhile, many of us on this list enjoy our technological advances (I especially am fond of modern plumbing), use the web rather well for research purposes, enjoy flying to international conferences, etc., etc.--and regret that some of these 'conveniences' are paid for at a cost which, in a vaguely poetic way, I sometimes make equivalent to the suffering of much of the population of Africa. The point for me is NOT to stop using these tools, but to try to find ways to make educational, political-economic, infra-structural, and other changes in the interest of benefiting individuals and society. I would think that Peirce would have celebrated the new technologies, possibly have contributed to them; but he would have deplored their misuse. On that point, at least, I think we are all in agreement. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Steven Ericsson-Zenith 12/16/11 4:24 PM I must say that I share Eugene's concern. It seems to me that modern computing technology is less Intelligence Augmentation and more a poorly contrived manipulation of intelligence, not all of which has a beneficial effect and none of the effects of which are well understood. Indeed, when I compare the intellectual efforts of the period before the distraction of computing technology, in which the book was the prevailing means of intelligence, with the intellectual efforts since, there is a distinct and lamentable dumbing down. Fewer thinkers read with any depth and more thinkers use superficial Internet search to make arguments and draw conclusions. Longer term thinking projects are discouraged in favor of a culture of short term guesswork based, feeble conceptions and short attention spans to be found on the Internet. Where metaphysical fantasy had once been sensibly rejected, scientific fantasy now prevails. Better data has been usurped by more elaborate fictional effects visualized in contemporary media, deceiving us into a broad acceptance of nonsense and a distortion of our existential conceptions. With respect, Steven -- Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith Institute for Advanced Science Engineering On Dec 16, 2011, at 12:18 PM, Eugene Halton wrote: Ben Udell asked: ...So, my question, which I find I have trouble posing clearly, is, granting that IA involves an extension of mind in its abilities/competences as well as its cognitions, does it much extend volition and feeling (including emotion)? In my view it clearly does, as does AI. The question for me is to what end? Clearly improved computation can serve scientific advance and human well-being. But the opposite is also true. Human cognition occurs in embodiment and involves that embodiment, regardless of the logic of the cognition. A pure intention to change direction while walking, though unacted upon, will show up in the track sign, because it gets subtly muscularized in the act of simply thinking it. Consider too what Peirce stated about the nominalist outlook that dominates modern mind and culture and science: The nominalist Weltanschauung has become incorporated into what I will venture to call the very flesh and blood of the average modern mind, CP 5.61. So what if that nominalist Weltanschauung has as its telos the progressive
Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
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
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
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
Re: [peirce-l] Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semioic
is grasped in the belief are the same thing, and they are equivalent to the fact that the believer can act effectively, given certain material or environmental conditions, in the bringing about of some desired end. . . (Some Leading Ideas. . ., 10.) This seems to me to express, in one way, the very essence of Peirce's pragmatism. I would, then, be interested in the change in Peirce's thinking about the relationship of truth and reality which Hookway sees as Peirce's mature view. Finally, I'd also be interested in discussing at some point Joe's (and Peirce's) 'utterer' and 'object' relation, but this is already getting to be a longish post, so I'll just leave it at that for now. Again, apologies for my delay in responding; and, of course, feel under no obligation to respond to this post sent well after the scheduled discussion (although we clearly agree that there's no harm in over-lapping discussions here). Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** Houser, Nathan R. 10/29/11 10:03 PM I will be traveling without email access for four days starting early tomorrow morning and during this time the forum will move on to a new slow read article. Some Leading Ideas did not stimulate much discussion, perhaps because the em-cee did not try hard enough to generate interest, but I think it was also because JR's main concern, at least one of his main concerns, was to demonstrate that Peirce's general semiotic could provide a unifying theoretical basis for a wide range of disciplines (and also, of course, for the major part of Peirce's own thought). This was not widely accepted in 1976, when JR wrote this paper, and he was one of a small group of early Peirceans to take this up. Joe was one of the most astute and effective champions of Peirce's general semiotic and his work played an important part in winning wide acceptance of the view he was promoting in Some Leading Ideas. When we look at this early paper now, in 2011, it seems mainly to be a review of what is already widely accepted, but that was not the case in 1976. If you reflect more on this paper and new ideas come to mind, we can of course carry on a bit into November, but I encourage you to move on to the new slow read paper as soon as it is introduced. Nathan _ Nathan Houser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Senior Fellow, Institute for American Thought Indiana University at Indianapolis - 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 - 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] “Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semiotic”
Nathan is still having posting problems and has asked me to forward this response to Jon's message. Gary Richmond Reply to Jon Awbrey, 2 Oct. 2011: Jon, Let me make a quick reply and later when I have more time I'll go back to Joe's paper to see if he may have had something like what you say in mind. I suppose a lot depends on precisely what Joe meant by directly concerned with semiotic when he wrote that 90% of Peirce's philosophical output was directly concerned with semiotic. And also on how much he was limiting the scope of his claim by his qualifying reference to Peirce's philosophical output. It would seem that to be directly concerned with semiotic is to be about semiotic, not just involved with sign usage. We wouldn't normally say, for example, that in completing one's tax return one is directly concerned with mathematics. I certainly think it is plausible to regard all of Peirce's writings about normative logic as semiotic works (I do not include the mathematical theory of relations in normative logic) but it seems to me that the rationale for Peirce's classification of the sciences precludes counting writings about phenomenology, esthetics, and ethics as belonging to semiotic proper, and this goes as well for the sciences that come after logic, including his metaphysical writings. Since mathematics, psychology, and physics are not philosophical sciences, presumably Joe was not including Peirce's considerable contributions in those areas. Having said this, I nevertheless agree that a great deal of Peirce's philosophical output does, at least in part, deal directly with semiotic but I believe it is considerably less that 90%. I suspect this is in part because I do not believe that the bulk of Peirce's metaphysical writings can correctly be said to be directly concerned with semiotic. But, as I said, when I get more time I'll look at this question more carefully with more consideration of the breakdown between works on philosophy and works in other sciences and I'll see if I can get a better sense of how Joe defended, or would have defended, his claim. Perhaps there has been relevant discussion in earlier slow reads. Let me encourage everyone who still has something to say about the slow read let by Sally Ness to keep it going as long as the spirit moves. No reason why we can't overlap for a time. Nathan _ Nathan Houser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Senior Fellow, Institute for American Thought Indiana University at Indianapolis Jon Awbrey 10/02/11 7:44 PM NH = Nathan Houser NH: JR began this paper by pointing out that Peirce conceived of semiotics as a foundational theory capable of unifying sub-theories dealing with communication, meaning, and inference. This may call for some discussion. He then claims that 90% of Peirce's prodigious philosophical output is directly concerned with semiotic. This is an odd claim in a way since it does not seem to be straightforwardly true. How can we make sense of it? From my sense of Peirce's work, I would have say that I agree with the claim that Joe makes on this point, even if I can't say whether it would be for any of the same reasons he had in mind. Understanding Peirce's pragmatism depends on understanding sign relations, triadic relations, and relations in general, all of which forms the conceptual framework of his theory of inquiry and his theory of signs. Regards, Jon -- facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache policy mic: www.policymic.com/profile/show?id=1110 inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1 oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User: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 - 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: Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process
Jerry, List, I glad you've found this slow read instructive even if, perhaps, in a negative sense. Still, I think that we who are philosophers here would like to imagine that we too are doing science in Peirce's sense of cenoscopy. Your characterizing your 'idiosyncratic' approach as apparently the only scientific approach to interpreting Peirce in this forum is disturbing. In fact, I hope I've misunderstood you as it would seem to be a rather contemptuous thing to imply. So, please do prove me wrong here. On the other hand, I have found your 'chemical' approach to Peirce similarly instructive. Thanks, for example, for your concise presentation of the role of indexing in the formal indexical symbol systems you refer to which, no doubt, have great analytical value. However, I don't think I'm quite ready to give up on philosophy as it is practiced in this forum (what you consider to be the mere surfaces of philosophy). So, while in your strictly formal sense the indexical symbol systems are self-referential, in Peirce's semeiotic more broadly considered, indices certainly need not be so. And Peirce's idea of the teleology of semiosis implies the very evolution of signs themselves, including indices [biological analog: when certain dinosaurs evolved into birds, much of what could be (that is, could have been) indicated had, and even structurally and forever--changed]. So, while in your strictly formal sense, the indexical symbols can be composed into icons and iconic representations of qualisigns, in Peirce's different, in being much more inclusive, semeiotic sense involving the logic by which the categories are themselves generated (see The Logic of Mathematics), in that sense they are not composed butinvolved (semiotic 3ns involves 2ns involves 1ns). So, while in your strictly formal sense, the indexical symbol systems can operate with a logical grammar that differs from the usual utterances of the spoken language where the indexing plays a trivial role, in philosophy, the usual utterances of the spoken language will suffice even as a logica docens come into being to critically reflect on them (pragmatism being, in one sense, but critical commonsensism). And, as Joe (and Peirce) argue, indexing hardly plays a trivial role in language use, but is as essential as the two other categorial roles in semiosis (so, also, in semeiotic science). You wrote: [JC] From my idiosyncratic perspective, the indexical symbol systems are constructed to communicate with symbols, utterances (sounds) being a secondary mode of expressing the meaning. Thus, the empirical content of indexical symbol systems can be used to construct logics that a ostensive with nature. This is to be contrasted with the alphabetic systems that intrinsically focus on the telic choices of the utterer, the personal emotional choices of the individual.) It is my sense that you concern yourself, Jerry, with a strictly formal and analytical logical system. Meanwhile we speaking, listening, reading, writing, thinking and feeling humans are involved in a semiotic process which can be seen to be (at least potentially) continuously changing, growing, evolving. So, I don't think your perspective is so much idiosyncratic as it is exceedingly narrow (and I've no doubt that there's some good professional reason for that, but it's hardly good reason to denounce what goes on here as superficial). You concluded: [JC]: CSP's teleologic perspective was extremely wide and used the concepts of logic is all three of the trivium, not merely the grammar of the relative pronoun. I would find it hard to imagine that even one person here would disagree with you about that. So perhaps you aren't as idiosyncratic as you think you are? And perhaps it is not so much our having superficial discussions here as it is your attempting to narrow the range of those discussions (to narrow is not necessarily to deepen). I would also remind you of Peirce's motto: Do not block the way of inquiry. And of Jesus': Judge not lest ye be judged. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York ``` 718 482-5700 Jerry LR Chandler jerry_lr_chand...@me.com 8/14/2011 5:40 PM Gary R., List: Thank you for your efforts in this slow read. It is instructive. I am rather reluctant to comment as history dictates that my scientific approach to reading C S Peirce are idiosyncratic with respect to the surfaces of philosophy which are used to base these discussions and which, in my opinion, do not cohere with the mathematical, chemical and empirical roots of his thinking. My principle purpose of this post is to point to the role of indexing in the indexical symbol systems. In these symbol systems, the presupposition is that the composition of messages (signs of all ilk
Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process
I also agree with Peter. Is it possible that we all (that is, all who participated in this discussion of falsifiability fallibilism) are in agreement? If that is indeed so, it might represent a kind of first here! Best, Gary Steven Ericsson-Zenith ste...@semeiosis.org 8/5/2011 2:22 PM I agree with Peter. Steven On Aug 5, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Skagestad, Peter wrote: Gary, I agree that falsifiability entails the fallibility of scientific knowledge. But the fallibilty of perceptual judgements, which is affirmed by both Peirce and Popper, appears to me to be an independent conclusion, not entailed by the falsifiability of hypotheses. Peter - 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: Is Peirce a Phenomenologist? part 5
Addendum: for those who might be wondering what the content of category theory might be, please take a look at either of the relevant PowerPoint shows on Arisbe, say, this one: http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonicb.ppt Because trikonic also represents an 'art' (an applied, or, as Peirce puts it, 'practical' science), one ought skip over those trikons representing tricategorial relations in semeiotic, but not, for example, those in pure mathematics. But, in a word, much, and most everything, can be tricategorially analyzed. GR Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York 718 482-5700 Gary Richmond richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu 7/18/2011 10:40 PM Gary F, list, Just a quick response to one point in your post. Re: Phenomenology: phaneroscopy (firstness) | category theory (thirdness) iconoscopy (secondness) You commented: GF: But for JR, at least in the paper we are slow-reading, category theory is really all there is to Peircean phenomenology. My own study. . . differs from Gary's in taking “phaneroscopy” to be synonymous with “phenomenology” rather than a part of it, but agrees with Gary's trichotomy in taking phaneroscopy to be different from and prior to category theory. //The crux of the matter here is that “generalization” can easily be seen as part of logic or semiotic, but “observation” of the Phaneron must be seen as prior to Logic in order for the latter to be “founded” on Phaneroscopy. Category theory is a logical extension of the phaneroscopic analysis which identifies Peirce's triad of categories as elements of the phaneron. GR: I can see category theory as a logical extension of the phaneroscopic analysis which identifies Peirce's triad of categories as elements of the phaneron as long as if by 'logical' one means here a logica utens, our ordinary logic prior to the normative reflection on it in semeiotic. I do not see how we can get to the myriad trichotomies in logic as semeiotic if they are not analyzed prior to the first branch of semeiotic, viz., theoretical grammar. So, to offer just the briefest outline of Phenomenology as I presently see it: !ns. Phaneroscopy--considered here not as the entire science but as the first of three branches of phenomenology--offers something akin to a Gestalt of the phaneron, that is, the observation of the whole of whatever is present to the mind, to some individual scientist. In some sense this must meld into the work of the second branch of phenomenology. 2ns. In iconoscopy, the second branch, this same phenomenologist. recognizing three universes of experiences in the phaneron, both distinguishes 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns within the phaneron, but now begins to associate various experiential elements with one or another of the three categories. So, for example, imagine that you are phaneroscopically observing a natural scene--you're focused, say, on the sky, when, suddenly, a large flock of geese appear across the sky. Now your experience of some blue color (the sky blue) is seen as a firstness, the interruption of the geese is noted to be a secondness, and the thought of either or both of these--that hue of blue or the contrast which the flock of geese bring--is recognized as a thirdness, etc. (note: there is not yet a genuine trichotomy here). This association of the various elements of ones experience with one or another of the categories (again, the act of an individual phenomenologist employing his logica utens) may, indeed, represent a kind of generalization from the total experienced phaneron as such. Yet, this is not enough to prepare for the trichotomies of semeiotic. 3ns. Therefore, such essential trichotomic relations as will next be considered, first as the normative sciences (themselves forming a tricategorial whole), but especially in consideration of the very many trichotomic relations analyzed in logic as semeiotic (beginning with the object/sign/interpretant trichotomy straight through the process of a complete inquiry==abduction of an hypothesis, deduction of its implications for testing, induction considered as the actual experimental testing of the hypothesis) require, in my opinion, a third division of phenomenology, namely, category theory. While this science also needs logic in order to generalize at all, it is, again, but a logica utens, not yet the logica docens of the normative semeiotic science which is to follow in the classification of the sciences. Later, precisely in logic as semeiotic, a logica docens will be employed to correct errors, for example, in the initial explication of trichotomic relations as represented by category theory. Nevertheless, as I see it, category theory is decidedly not a branch of logic as semeiotic. Thus, again, I cannot at all agree with Joe's position that category theory is part of the normative science of semeiotic. Now, what gives me pause here is that, as far as I can tell
