Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

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 importantly, the more diverse the pool of inquirers is,
the greater confidence we can have that any consensus they reach is one
to which they have been carried “by a force outside themselves”.  What
is of the very essence of scientific research, then, is undermined by
the formation of scientific elites which decide who does or does not
qualify as a peer and allowed to participate in peer review of
scientific communications:
JR: “When only some members of a research community are actually treated
as having a right to provide input into the theoretical reconciliation
that is constantly being constructed in the ongoing course of inquiry,
the community of inquirers shrinks, in effect, to the size of those so
privileged, and the properties of the subject-matter that are
effectively being accessed and taken duly into account for purposes of
arriving at an understanding of the subject-matter are correspondingly
diminished *”
PS: Peer review through editorial selection of reviewers, then, is
really pseudo-peer review, in contrast to Ginsparg’s system, which comes
closer to realizing peer review in the proper sense of the term. Joe
goes on to emphasize that what he is criticizing is the existing system;
he does not mean to impugn editors functioning within the system, who
need have no elitist intent and who may in fact exercise excellent
judgment in their selection of reviewers. But what is elitist,
authoritarian, and limiting is the very system whereby reviewers are
selected by editors, who are of course themselves selected by people in
positions of authority:
JR: “There is no doubt but what many editors do in fact have good
judgment, and that their selection of reviewers can be counted on to be
reasonably just. But inasmuch as the opinion of the reviewers is
actually operative in publication process only via the confidence the
editor places in them, and it is the editor who selects them to begin
with, there is no getting around the fact that this is an elitist system
in which the editors, who must themselves be peers of the readers of
their journals, are functioning as Orwellian peers, peers more perish
than the peers whom they nominally serve.”
PS: The adjective “Orwellian” here is of course a reference to Animal
Farm, George Orwell’s satire of Soviet communism, where “all animals are
equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Joe goes on for
three more pages enlarging on the themes covered above, but I think all
the main points have been covered, so I shall stop here.  Again, I wish 
had some probing, provocative questions to put out there, but I don’t.
The floor is open to questions, comments, objections, amplifications,
etc.
 Cheers,
Peter



________
From: Stephen C. Rose [stever...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 11:57 AM
To: Skagestad, Peter
Cc: PEIRCE-L@listserv.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Thanks Peter. You have answered the question I think. But I feel
comments on this ending part might be useful:

> The impression I have is that Peirce might be quite iconoclastic
regarding the vetting all of claims to truth, not to mention the
proliferation of specialization and its sequestration under the
umbrellas of academia and professions.

If the answer to this is yes, I feel it is the job of Peirceans to
define a way ahead beyond the current straitjacket. My efforts are
entirely beyond it. because I claim no expertise and only (perhaps) an
intuitive and imperfect understanding. But 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 generally in a world where the
Aristotelian framework of values (which Aristotle actually did not
possess, opting instead for characteristics such as "honor") has proved
seriously wanting. Maybe academic Peirce folk could fill the void in the
ranks of our public intellectuals.

ShortFormContent at Blogger



On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Skagestad, Peter > wrote:
Steve, list,

I am not aware that Peirce said anything explicitly about peer review,
although he certainly said things that are relevant to it - more of that
when we move on to the next segment of Joe's paper. But of course
academic disdciplines barely existed in Peirce's day, and they certainly
were not institutionalized the way they are today. Thus Perirce could
hold a degree in chemistry, spernd most of his professional life as
astronomer, while taking time out to teach lo

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Dear Steven,

No, your observation is not redundant, and it is very much to the point. 
Familiarity may generate trust, which in turn facilitates discussion. Also, if 
your discussion partners are restricted to those who share your assumptions and 
your interests, you can probe more deeply into narrowly defined problems, 
without being distracted by irrelevancies. So, there is a natural tendency 
towards the formation of intellectual circles of like-minded thinkers, who end 
up talking only to each other. I cannot speak to the extent to which this is 
true in the sciences, but I am certainly familiar with this phenomenon in 
philosophy. Drawing on Peirce's account of inquiry, Joe is reminding us that 
the expected effect of this tendency is a progressive narrowing of the pool of 
discussants in any given research area, and a consequent loss of efficiency and 
effectiveness in the process of inquiry. Though Joe does not make this 
explicit, it seems to me that what he is describing is what Imre Lakatos called 
"degenerative research programmes", where the participants end up discussing 
only problems arising within the research programme itself. BTW, while Lakatos 
presented his ideas as a further development of Karl Popper's ideas, I have 
long thought that Lakatos is better understood as supplementing and improving 
on the work of Thomas Kuhn: Whereas Kuhn gives a detailed description of how a 
scientific revolution unfolds, Lakatos provides the account, missing in Kuhn, 
of why there is a need for a revolution in the first place.

Now, I tend to agree with you that it is unrealistic to expect any fundamental 
change in academic standard operating procedures anytime soon. Joe certainly 
thought of the internet as a promising engine of change, which also seems 
reasonable to me, although I am not sure how sanguine he was about how much 
could be accomplished how soon. I would be interested in hearing other 
perspectives on this. But Joe's advocacy for the institutionalization of a 
Peircean inquiry model was of course ambitious, which I personally think is all 
to the good, irrespective of how realistic those ambitions may or may not be. 
But I do not think we are in any disagreement over any of this.

Enough for now.

Peter


From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [stevenzen...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2012 9:10 PM
To: Skagestad, Peter; PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Dear Peter,

Maybe I missed this in earlier comments, so forgive me if the observation is 
redundant.

As you suggest below, in several hard science disciplines it is a common 
practice only to invite papers from known peers and their students, often drawn 
from a relatively closed community. Within their focus such groups can be very 
effective since they ignore extraneous challenges and minimize unproductive 
disruption. Papers that come from outside this community face difficulty. The 
simple reason is that familiarity is trust.

At times individuals with a common secondary agenda, often lifestyle or 
religious but not always, select a collection of individuals that share this 
agenda for "peer review." For example, creationists that put together 
conferences on Darwin.

Interested outsiders that complain about these issues are often marginalized. 
This is not the case generally if it is plain that the outsider brings their 
own authority, i.e.. it is plain that they are on the same page and have an 
affirming contribution to offer. Again, familiarity is trust and the social 
mechanisms that overcome this are those established by convention; association 
with a degree and/or institution of repute. I think we have to recognize that 
this natural social dynamics at work.

Peirce is advocating a social ideal. One that requires the intellectual 
community to rescind habits of institutionalization and in the first case above 
should, perhaps, be allowed in the cause of progress (while recalling its ill 
effect as characterized in Smolin's "Trouble with Physics").

It seems that "coordination of the perspectives of the individual inquirers, 
which assumes an equal respect" is a little "hippy" of Peirce, rather like 
arguing in favor of "world peace." It's a noble advocacy, we all want it and 
the advocacy must continue, but no one expects things to change anytime soon or 
for the desired result to ultimately be possible, for reasons that Peirceans, 
familiar with Peirce's ideas of habit, should understand well.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info







On Jan 29, 2012, at 12:34 PM, Skagestad, Peter wrote:

> List,
>
> I am a little surprised at the lack of follow-up from the list to Ste

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Jon Awbrey]

Peircers,

There have been some related developments occurring in the mathematical 
community lately.
It is beyond my powers to summarize the issues, so here are just a couple of 
recent links
that may serve to give onlookers a hint of what's afoot:

http://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/publishers-wars/
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/whats-wrong-with-electronic-journals/

Regards,

Jon

--

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/

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 11:57 AM
To: Skagestad, Peter
Cc: PEIRCE-L@listserv.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Thanks Peter. You have answered the question I think. But I feel comments on 
this ending part might be useful:

> The impression I have is that Peirce might be quite iconoclastic regarding 
> the vetting all of claims to truth, not to mention the proliferation of 
> specialization and its sequestration under the umbrellas of academia and 
> professions.

If the answer to this is yes, I feel it is the job of Peirceans to define a way 
ahead beyond the current straitjacket. My efforts are entirely beyond it. 
because I claim no expertise and only (perhaps) an intuitive and imperfect 
understanding. But 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 generally in a world 
where the Aristotelian framework of values (which Aristotle actually did not 
possess, opting instead for characteristics such as "honor") has proved 
seriously wanting. Maybe academic Peirce folk could fill the void in the ranks 
of our public intellectuals.

ShortFormContent at Blogger<http://shortformcontent.blogspot.com/>



On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Skagestad, Peter 
mailto:peter_skages...@uml.edu>> wrote:
Steve, list,

I am not aware that Peirce said anything explicitly about peer review, although 
he certainly said things that are relevant to it - more of that when we move on 
to the next segment of Joe's paper. But of course academic disdciplines barely 
existed in Peirce's day, and they certainly were not institutionalized the way 
they are today. Thus Perirce could hold a degree in chemistry, spernd most of 
his professional life as astronomer, while taking time out to teach logic at 
Johns Hopkins, a combination that is hardly imaginable today.

Does anyone else have any light to shed on Steve's question?

Cheers,
Peter

From: Stephen C. Rose [stever...@gmail.com<mailto:stever...@gmail.com>]
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2012 5:19 PM
To: Skagestad, Peter
Cc: PEIRCE-L@listserv.iupui.edu<mailto:PEIRCE-L@listserv.iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Did Peirce ever say anything relevant to the issue of peer review? As for 
example implying a division between disciplines, in which ordinary persons 
would have no relevant contribution to make, and areas where anyone of ordinary 
capacities might be seen to have a valuable contribution to make? The 
impression I have is that Peirce might be quite iconoclastic regarding the 
vetting all of claims to truth, not to mention the proliferation of 
specialization and its sequestration under the umbrellas of academia and 
professions.

ShortFormContent at Blogger<http://shortformcontent.blogspot.com/>



On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Skagestad, Peter 
mailto:peter_skages...@uml.edu><mailto:peter_skages...@uml.edu<mailto:peter_skages...@uml.edu>>>
 wrote:
List,

After a bit of a hiatus I am returning to the slow read of Joe’s paper. I said 
earlier that, while I count myself quite knowledgeable about the topics covered 
in the first part of the paper, I know next to nothing about contemporary 
scientific communication, which is the focus at least of the second half. It 
has occurred to me, however, that in the interest of full disclosure I should 
mention that I am currently in my third career as a textbook editor, meaning 
that I routinely commission and interpret reviews of manuscripts. These reviews 
are no doubt very different from prepublication reviews of scientific papers – 
my manuscripts are reviewed less for truth claims than for coverage, 
organization, accessibility, and the like – but the listers should be aware 
that this is what I do for a living.

We resume on page 19 of the version posted at Arisbe. Having described 
Ginsparg’s publication system (arXiv), Joe counters the criticism that the 
system lacks peer review, not by questioning the fundamental importance of peer 
review to scientific communication, but by challenging the concept of peer 
review as currently understood, i.e. prepublication review by editorially 
selected reviewers:

JR: [my] view is … that what has come to be called “peer review” is not peer 
review proper but rather a crippled form of it which is not only of limited 
value at best as a critical control principle but is also a subversion of the 
peer principle that underlies the practice of authentic peer review. Why? 
Because it treats peer review as a system of elite control, which is directly 
contrary to t

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Stephen C. Rose]

Thanks Peter. You have answered the question I think. But I feel comments
on this ending part might be useful:

> The impression I have is that Peirce might be quite iconoclastic
regarding the vetting all of claims to truth, not to mention the
proliferation of specialization and its sequestration under the umbrellas
of academia and professions.

If the answer to this is yes, I feel it is the job of Peirceans to define a
way ahead beyond the current straitjacket. My efforts are entirely beyond
it. because I claim no expertise and only (perhaps) an intuitive and
imperfect understanding. But 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 generally in a world where the Aristotelian framework of
values (which Aristotle actually did not possess, opting instead for
characteristics such as "honor") has proved seriously wanting. Maybe
academic Peirce folk could fill the void in the ranks of our public
intellectuals.

*ShortFormContent at Blogger* <http://shortformcontent.blogspot.com/>



On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Skagestad, Peter
wrote:

> Steve, list,
>
> I am not aware that Peirce said anything explicitly about peer review,
> although he certainly said things that are relevant to it - more of that
> when we move on to the next segment of Joe's paper. But of course academic
> disdciplines barely existed in Peirce's day, and they certainly were not
> institutionalized the way they are today. Thus Perirce could hold a degree
> in chemistry, spernd most of his professional life as astronomer, while
> taking time out to teach logic at Johns Hopkins, a combination that is
> hardly imaginable today.
>
> Does anyone else have any light to shed on Steve's question?
>
> Cheers,
> Peter
> 
> From: Stephen C. Rose [stever...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2012 5:19 PM
> To: Skagestad, Peter
> Cc: PEIRCE-L@listserv.iupui.edu
> Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
> COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
>
> Did Peirce ever say anything relevant to the issue of peer review? As for
> example implying a division between disciplines, in which ordinary persons
> would have no relevant contribution to make, and areas where anyone of
> ordinary capacities might be seen to have a valuable contribution to make?
> The impression I have is that Peirce might be quite iconoclastic regarding
> the vetting all of claims to truth, not to mention the proliferation of
> specialization and its sequestration under the umbrellas of academia and
> professions.
>
> ShortFormContent at Blogger<http://shortformcontent.blogspot.com/>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Skagestad, Peter  <mailto:peter_skages...@uml.edu>> wrote:
> List,
>
> After a bit of a hiatus I am returning to the slow read of Joe’s paper. I
> said earlier that, while I count myself quite knowledgeable about the
> topics covered in the first part of the paper, I know next to nothing about
> contemporary scientific communication, which is the focus at least of the
> second half. It has occurred to me, however, that in the interest of full
> disclosure I should mention that I am currently in my third career as a
> textbook editor, meaning that I routinely commission and interpret reviews
> of manuscripts. These reviews are no doubt very different from
> prepublication reviews of scientific papers – my manuscripts are reviewed
> less for truth claims than for coverage, organization, accessibility, and
> the like – but the listers should be aware that this is what I do for a
> living.
>
> We resume on page 19 of the version posted at Arisbe. Having described
> Ginsparg’s publication system (arXiv), Joe counters the criticism that the
> system lacks peer review, not by questioning the fundamental importance of
> peer review to scientific communication, but by challenging the concept of
> peer review as currently understood, i.e. prepublication review by
> editorially selected reviewers:
>
> JR: [my] view is … that what has come to be called “peer review” is not
> peer review proper but rather a crippled form of it which is not only of
> limited value at best as a critical control principle but is also a
> subversion of the peer principle that underlies the practice of authentic
> peer review. Why? Because it treats peer review as a system of elite
> control, which is directly contrary to the conception of a peer.”
>
> PS: Initially, Joe notes, he thought this use of the term “peer review” to
> refer to review by editori

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Steve, list,

I am not aware that Peirce said anything explicitly about peer review, although 
he certainly said things that are relevant to it - more of that when we move on 
to the next segment of Joe's paper. But of course academic disdciplines barely 
existed in Peirce's day, and they certainly were not institutionalized the way 
they are today. Thus Perirce could hold a degree in chemistry, spernd most of 
his professional life as astronomer, while taking time out to teach logic at 
Johns Hopkins, a combination that is hardly imaginable today.

Does anyone else have any light to shed on Steve's question?

Cheers,
Peter

From: Stephen C. Rose [stever...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2012 5:19 PM
To: Skagestad, Peter
Cc: PEIRCE-L@listserv.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Did Peirce ever say anything relevant to the issue of peer review? As for 
example implying a division between disciplines, in which ordinary persons 
would have no relevant contribution to make, and areas where anyone of ordinary 
capacities might be seen to have a valuable contribution to make? The 
impression I have is that Peirce might be quite iconoclastic regarding the 
vetting all of claims to truth, not to mention the proliferation of 
specialization and its sequestration under the umbrellas of academia and 
professions.

ShortFormContent at Blogger<http://shortformcontent.blogspot.com/>



On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Skagestad, Peter 
mailto:peter_skages...@uml.edu>> wrote:
List,

After a bit of a hiatus I am returning to the slow read of Joe’s paper. I said 
earlier that, while I count myself quite knowledgeable about the topics covered 
in the first part of the paper, I know next to nothing about contemporary 
scientific communication, which is the focus at least of the second half. It 
has occurred to me, however, that in the interest of full disclosure I should 
mention that I am currently in my third career as a textbook editor, meaning 
that I routinely commission and interpret reviews of manuscripts. These reviews 
are no doubt very different from prepublication reviews of scientific papers – 
my manuscripts are reviewed less for truth claims than for coverage, 
organization, accessibility, and the like – but the listers should be aware 
that this is what I do for a living.

We resume on page 19 of the version posted at Arisbe. Having described 
Ginsparg’s publication system (arXiv), Joe counters the criticism that the 
system lacks peer review, not by questioning the fundamental importance of peer 
review to scientific communication, but by challenging the concept of peer 
review as currently understood, i.e. prepublication review by editorially 
selected reviewers:

JR: [my] view is … that what has come to be called “peer review” is not peer 
review proper but rather a crippled form of it which is not only of limited 
value at best as a critical control principle but is also a subversion of the 
peer principle that underlies the practice of authentic peer review. Why? 
Because it treats peer review as a system of elite control, which is directly 
contrary to the conception of a peer.”

PS: Initially, Joe notes, he thought this use of the term “peer review” to 
refer to review by editorially selected reviewers was a purely verbal matter, 
which was best left undisturbed, especially as both defenders and opponents of 
the practice shared the same usage. But this, he had later come to see, was a 
mistake. By accepting the conventional usage of “peer review” and by rejecting 
peer review so understood, the advocates of the Ginsparg system were in effect 
undermining the radical potential of the system and contributing go rendering 
it innocuous:

JR: “[Since] it is respect for the peer principle that lies at the basis of the 
critical control of research communication generally, [the rejection of peer 
review] was a rhetorical mistake that has enable the success of those who deny 
the significance of the success of the Ginsparg system by denying that it has 
the status which it actually does have as a venue for primary publication. With 
this status denied, what actually takes place in the Ginsparg system can be and 
now commonly is in fact dismissed as being no different in kind from what 
happens on any bulletin board, listserver based forum or discussion group, chat 
line, or any other informal medium not regarded as important enough to the 
hegemony of legitimacy claimed by the editorially controlled journal to be a 
challenge to it.”

PS: So, Ginsparg’s system, in Joe’s view, differs substantially from informal 
online discussion groups by incorporating its form of peer review, facilitated 
by the use of abstracts, which enables it to play the role previously played by 
scientific journals, while at the same time its egalitarianism poses a seriou

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Stephen C. Rose]

Did Peirce ever say anything relevant to the issue of peer review? As for
example implying a division between disciplines, in which ordinary persons
would have no relevant contribution to make, and areas where anyone of
ordinary capacities might be seen to have a valuable contribution to make?
The impression I have is that Peirce might be quite iconoclastic regarding
the vetting all of claims to truth, not to mention the proliferation of
specialization and its sequestration under the umbrellas of academia and
professions.

*ShortFormContent at Blogger* 



On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Skagestad, Peter
wrote:

>  List,
>
>
>
> After a bit of a hiatus I am returning to the slow read of Joe’s paper. I
> said earlier that, while I count myself quite knowledgeable about the
> topics covered in the first part of the paper, I know next to nothing about
> contemporary scientific communication, which is the focus at least of the
> second half. It has occurred to me, however, that in the interest of full
> disclosure I should mention that I am currently in my third career as a
> textbook editor, meaning that I routinely commission and interpret reviews
> of manuscripts. These reviews are no doubt very different from
> prepublication reviews of scientific papers – my manuscripts are reviewed
> less for truth claims than for coverage, organization, accessibility, and
> the like – but the listers should be aware that this is what I do for a
> living. ** 
>
> ** **
>
> We resume on page 19 of the version posted at Arisbe. Having described
> Ginsparg’s publication system (arXiv), Joe counters the criticism that the
> system lacks peer review, not by questioning the fundamental importance of
> peer review to scientific communication, but by challenging the concept of
> peer review as currently understood, i.e. prepublication review by
> editorially selected reviewers:
>
> ** **
>
> JR: [my] view is … that what has come to be called “peer review” is not
> peer review proper but rather a crippled form of it which is not only of
> limited value at best as a critical control principle but is also a
> subversion of the peer principle that underlies the practice of authentic
> peer review. Why? Because it treats peer review as a system of elite
> control, which is directly contrary to the conception of a peer.”
>
> ** **
>
> PS: Initially, Joe notes, he thought this use of the term “peer review” to
> refer to review by editorially selected reviewers was a purely verbal
> matter, which was best left undisturbed, especially as both defenders and
> opponents of the practice shared the same usage. But this, he had later
> come to see, was a mistake. By accepting the conventional usage of “peer
> review” and by rejecting peer review so understood, the advocates of the
> Ginsparg system were in effect undermining the radical potential of the
> system and contributing go rendering it innocuous:
>
> ** **
>
> JR: “[Since] it is respect for the peer principle that lies at the basis
> of the critical control of research communication generally, [the rejection
> of peer review] was a rhetorical mistake that has enable the success of
> those who deny the significance of the success of the Ginsparg system by
> denying that it has the status which it actually does have as a venue for
> primary publication. With this status denied, what actually takes place in
> the Ginsparg system can be and now commonly is in fact dismissed as being
> no different in kind from what happens on any bulletin board, listserver
> based forum or discussion group, chat line, or any other informal medium
> not regarded as important enough to the hegemony of legitimacy claimed by
> the editorially controlled journal to be a challenge to it.”
>
> ** **
>
> PS: So, Ginsparg’s system, in Joe’s view, differs substantially from
> informal online discussion groups by incorporating its form of peer review,
> facilitated by the use of abstracts, which enables it to play the role
> previously played by scientific journals, while at the same time its
> egalitarianism poses a serious challenge to the elitism of the scientific
> establishment. This challenge, however, has been blunted by the failure of
> both the system’s advocates and the defenders of the status quo to
> recognize the role of peer review in the system and the consequent failure
> of both sides to distinguish the Ginsparg system from informal forums which
> pose no threat to the status quo. What is needed, in Joe’s view, is a new
> understanding of “peer review”, starting with a new understanding of the
> term “peer”:
>
> ** **
>
> JR: “A research peer … is a *presumptive* equal, not someone who has been
> demonstrated to be *de facto* equal in this or that respect but rather
> someone who is regarded, presumptively, as someone whose informed opinion
> about the subject-matter of research is to be taken as seriously as one’s
> own opinion is ins

[peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

List,

After a bit of a hiatus I am returning to the slow read of Joe’s paper. I said 
earlier that, while I count myself quite knowledgeable about the topics covered 
in the first part of the paper, I know next to nothing about contemporary 
scientific communication, which is the focus at least of the second half. It 
has occurred to me, however, that in the interest of full disclosure I should 
mention that I am currently in my third career as a textbook editor, meaning 
that I routinely commission and interpret reviews of manuscripts. These reviews 
are no doubt very different from prepublication reviews of scientific papers – 
my manuscripts are reviewed less for truth claims than for coverage, 
organization, accessibility, and the like – but the listers should be aware 
that this is what I do for a living.

We resume on page 19 of the version posted at Arisbe. Having described 
Ginsparg’s publication system (arXiv), Joe counters the criticism that the 
system lacks peer review, not by questioning the fundamental importance of peer 
review to scientific communication, but by challenging the concept of peer 
review as currently understood, i.e. prepublication review by editorially 
selected reviewers:

JR: [my] view is … that what has come to be called “peer review” is not peer 
review proper but rather a crippled form of it which is not only of limited 
value at best as a critical control principle but is also a subversion of the 
peer principle that underlies the practice of authentic peer review. Why? 
Because it treats peer review as a system of elite control, which is directly 
contrary to the conception of a peer.”

PS: Initially, Joe notes, he thought this use of the term “peer review” to 
refer to review by editorially selected reviewers was a purely verbal matter, 
which was best left undisturbed, especially as both defenders and opponents of 
the practice shared the same usage. But this, he had later come to see, was a 
mistake. By accepting the conventional usage of “peer review” and by rejecting 
peer review so understood, the advocates of the Ginsparg system were in effect 
undermining the radical potential of the system and contributing go rendering 
it innocuous:

JR: “[Since] it is respect for the peer principle that lies at the basis of the 
critical control of research communication generally, [the rejection of peer 
review] was a rhetorical mistake that has enable the success of those who deny 
the significance of the success of the Ginsparg system by denying that it has 
the status which it actually does have as a venue for primary publication. With 
this status denied, what actually takes place in the Ginsparg system can be and 
now commonly is in fact dismissed as being no different in kind from what 
happens on any bulletin board, listserver based forum or discussion group, chat 
line, or any other informal medium not regarded as important enough to the 
hegemony of legitimacy claimed by the editorially controlled journal to be a 
challenge to it.”

PS: So, Ginsparg’s system, in Joe’s view, differs substantially from informal 
online discussion groups by incorporating its form of peer review, facilitated 
by the use of abstracts, which enables it to play the role previously played by 
scientific journals, while at the same time its egalitarianism poses a serious 
challenge to the elitism of the scientific establishment. This challenge, 
however, has been blunted by the failure of both the system’s advocates and the 
defenders of the status quo to recognize the role of peer review in the system 
and the consequent failure of both sides to distinguish the Ginsparg system 
from informal forums which pose no threat to the status quo. What is needed, in 
Joe’s view, is a new understanding of “peer review”, starting with a new 
understanding of the term “peer”:

JR: “A research peer … is a presumptive equal, not someone who has been 
demonstrated to be de facto equal in this or that respect but rather someone 
who is regarded, presumptively, as someone whose informed opinion about the 
subject-matter of research is to be taken as seriously as one’s own opinion is 
insofar as that depends on the status of the researcher, as distinct from its 
dependence on the justification provided by the researcher for the claim. A 
peer is someone whose disagreement with one’s own view requires to be explained 
… a non-peer is someone whose opinion about the matter in question makes no 
difference to you…”

PS: I pause here to note that Joe is here defining “peer” in terms of how a 
person is to be treated; your peer is a person you regard in a particular way 
and treat in a particular way. Joe not going to go into the question of how a 
person comes to qualify as your peer, not because the question is not 
important, but because it is too big a question to do it justice in this 
context. Joe goes on to define “peer review” as follows:

JR: ”Peer review proper, then, is what occurs in the inquiry proc

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

Jon, List,

This is a great idea, Jon. Please nominate me for this topic.

Best,

Gary

On 1/18/12, Jon Awbrey  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

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Jon Awbrey]

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/

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Thanks. I have not had a chance to read it yet, but it certainly looks relevant.

Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 6:05 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

I saw this too, Gary, and sent it directly to Peter via my Times subscription 
earlier today. Quite an interesting piece. I've only begun exploring some of 
the tools mentioned, such as ResearchGate, although I haven't had time to link 
to any of my work yet. Are folk here using these new resources? 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  01/17/12 5:47 PM >>>
Here's something directly relevant to this paper that i just spotted in the New 
York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/open-science-challenges-journal-tradition-with-web-collaboration.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

Gary F.

-Original Message-
Sent: January-17-12 10:33 AM

Just a note to let everybody know that I am alive and well and I have not 
forgotten about this slow read. I have been away and otherwise engaged two 
weekends in a row, which has put me somewhat behind. I should get back on track 
in the next few days.

Cheers,
Peter

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

I saw this too, Gary, and sent it directly to Peter via my Times subscription 
earlier today. Quite an interesting piece. I've only begun exploring some of 
the tools mentioned, such as ResearchGate, although I haven't had time to link 
to any of my work yet. Are folk here using these new resources? 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  01/17/12 5:47 PM >>>
Here's something directly relevant to this paper that i just spotted in the New 
York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/open-science-challenges-journal-tradition-with-web-collaboration.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

Gary F.

-Original Message-
Sent: January-17-12 10:33 AM

Just a note to let everybody know that I am alive and well and I have not 
forgotten about this slow read. I have been away and otherwise engaged two 
weekends in a row, which has put me somewhat behind. I should get back on track 
in the next few days.

Cheers,
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 
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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

Here's something directly relevant to this paper that i just spotted in the New 
York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/open-science-challenges-journal-tradition-with-web-collaboration.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

Gary F.

-Original Message-
Sent: January-17-12 10:33 AM

Just a note to let everybody know that I am alive and well and I have not 
forgotten about this slow read. I have been away and otherwise engaged two 
weekends in a row, which has put me somewhat behind. I should get back on track 
in the next few days.

Cheers,
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 
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message.  To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Just a note to let everybody know that I am alive and well and I have not 
forgotten about this slow read. I have been away and otherwise engaged two 
weekends in a row, which has put me somewhat behind. I should get back on track 
in the next few days.

Cheers,
Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2012 4:00 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

PS I should have noted that the concise Wikipedia article on arXiv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv , the first foot-noted link being to
the arxiv itself  http://arxiv.org/ is fascinating and, probably,
essential reading on the Gisnparg system. GR

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> Gary Richmond  01/06/12 3:45 PM >>>
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 G

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf
of Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 11:07 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Listers,

Although this slow read has spun off some interesting side discussions,
there has been no activity in the slow read itself since I posted the
segment below. I am going to attribute this inactivity to the busyness
of the season, rather than to any lack of general interest. I am
therefore going to break now for the holidays and move on to the second
half of Joe's paper in the first week of January.

Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf
of Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 3:15 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

I want to move on to what I see as the second main part of Joe’s paper,
covering pages 8-14. I do not intend to rush anyone or stifle
discussion, so anyone who wants to pursue extant themes should feel free
to do so, but I also want to enable us to progress towards what I take
to be the heart of Joe’s paper.
Having ascertained that thinking is inherently dialogic and
communicational in nature, Joe posits that “the development of
intelligence is at least in part a matter of the development of critical
control practices that conform go communicational norms which make
discourse more efficient and effective relative to whatever ends it may
have.”
This perspective sets the task for IA as follows:
JR: “The sort of Intelligence Augmentation I am chiefly concerned with,
then, is that which would be achieved by devising mechanisms and
programs that would increase the effectiveness of the communicational
norms which encourage successful inquiry as these have developed in
research traditions whose ancestral forms sometimes go back more than
two and a half millennia ago* The project of development of any
computational devices that could be helpful in this would qualify as a
contribution to IA research of this special kind.”
PS: So, the type of IA that Joe is interested in is not the kind that
augments individual intelligence, but the kind that augments the
collective intelligence exhibited by processes of inquiry within
research traditions. Here, as noted earlier, Joe’s concern is close to
Engelbart’s project of “Boosting Collective IQ”. Now, Joe goes on to
delineate a Peircean/Deweyan account of inquiry, in which he finds a
central feature to be the claim of a finding or a discovery, a claim
which is expected to be found persuasive by the community, and which
therefore places the claimant under certain obligations. Joe also
characterizes a claim of this kind as a “serious assertion”, also known
as “primary publication:
JR: “ For present purposes, let me characterize serious assertion as
obtaining whenever the person making the assertion takes full
responsibility for making a claim which, taken seriously by the others
in the research community, will put upon them the obligation to take
what has been claimed seriously enough to allow themselves to be
persuaded to the conclusion which the claimant has already come to, if
the claimant has actually made the case for it in the claim in a way
that is found to be rationally persuasive. (Found to be so by whom? By
each member of the given research community taken distributively, i.e.
taken one by one, as distinct from the membership regarded as a
collectively constituted individual. The research community is not to be
regarded as a collective entity.)”
PS: I take the parenthetical comment here to be especially Peircean: The
community of inquirers is not a democracy, where majority rules; its
goal is ultimate unanimity, which means that each dissenting voice must
be allowed to be heard and must be allowed weight, and taken seriously
by the claimant and the other participants. Dialogic or communicational
intelligence is augmented by the development and enforcement of
communicational norms which enable this give-and-take to happen
efficiently and effectively.
This is so far rather abstract, and, and no doubt Joe is setting the
stage for his presentation of the Ginsparg publication system as a
paradigm case of the type of IA he is concerned with, which I would
suggest we move on to as soon as feasible. In the process he has two
pages on “nonserious assertion” , to set it off from serious assertion,
which are well worth reading, but which I am not going to go into unless
there is a special interest in discussing them.
Having touched what I take to be the high points in pages 8 to 14, I am
going to pause for comments and discussion. And please, if I have
skipped important points, please do not hesi

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

not lie * in any special
sophistication or novelty involved in the programming, considered simply
as computer programming, but rather in the way the programming was
developed as material support for communication governed by certain
controlling norms believed to be conducive to the furtherance of inquiry
in the fields it was originally intended to serve.”

This is how the system works:

JR: “If one wants to make a claim to a research result to one’s research
peers in the field in question, one writes up the claim and the basis
for it, considered as a conclusion, in the form commonly understood to
be dictated by whatever would be required for purposes of testing or
replication, whether that involves an appeal to a priori reasoning, as
in the case of mathematical proof claims, or to observational or
experimental procedures. * The act of depositing is understood by the
research community to whom it is addressed as a serious assertion, i.e.
as an act of primary publication, and if it meets certain minimal
conditions (e.g. includes specification for replicability of results) it
may actually be recognized as being such.”

PS: Along with the paper one posts an abstract, usually containing key
terms, which is automatically distributed to all users who have
indicated an interest in the subfield which the paper belongs to.
Interested readers can then download the entire paper by clicking on a
link, and if they disagree with something, they can post a reply, also
accompanied by an abstract.

PS: As I understand Joe, this system serves the legitimate functions of
prepublication circulation and discussion, which a generation ago was
done with photocopying and snail mail, while escaping the elitism
imposed by the constraints of that system, in that only a select few
would receive the paper preprints, whereas the electronic preprint is
available to anyone who is interested.  At the same time, the
requirement of accompanying all communication with abstracts prevents
the communication from turning into informal discussion that would allow
or encourage nonserious assertions:

JR: “But it is important to understand that the arrangement is not
conducive to the kind of informal discussion typical of, say, a
listserver based forum or an organized discussion group or among the
members of a special project team, or a “bulletin board” or “news” group
discussion, * Inappropriate responses might well be made and deposited
in the archive * there is nothing which precludes this * but the system
is designed to discourage that by making it necessary to deposit an
abstract if one wants others in the field to know that one has made a
reply. This helps to insure in practice a kind of formality which is of
the essence of what I am calling “primary publication”.

PS: Joe goes on for the next few pages * pp. 17-19 * to compare the
Ginsparg system to the prepublication peer review previously based on
paper copies distributed to a select in-group, noting the anti-elitism
and anti-authoritarianism introduced by the Ginsparg system. He goes on
to claim that the system has for this reason been met with increasingly
hardened resistance from the scientific establishment, resistance which
has effectively silenced the Ginsparg system as a reform movement. 

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. But I think we have enough to
chew on for the moment, so I will pause here and just throw out a few
questions:

1. Is the above a fair and adequate discussion of the Ginsparg system?
Is there anything important left out?
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?
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?
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?

These are just a few questions that come to my mind. I am, sure others
will have their own questions to add.

Cheers,
Peter 



From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf
of Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 11:07 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Listers,

Although this slow read has spun off some interesting side discussions,
there has been no activity in the slow read itself since I posted the
segment below. I am 

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

 left out?
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?
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?
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?

These are just a few questions that come to my mind. I am, sure others will 
have their own questions to add.

Cheers,
Peter 



From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 11:07 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Listers,

Although this slow read has spun off some interesting side discussions, there 
has been no activity in the slow read itself since I posted the segment below. 
I am going to attribute this inactivity to the busyness of the season, rather 
than to any lack of general interest. I am therefore going to break now for the 
holidays and move on to the second half of Joe's paper in the first week of 
January.

Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 3:15 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

I want to move on to what I see as the second main part of Joe’s paper, 
covering pages 8-14. I do not intend to rush anyone or stifle discussion, so 
anyone who wants to pursue extant themes should feel free to do so, but I also 
want to enable us to progress towards what I take to be the heart of Joe’s 
paper.
Having ascertained that thinking is inherently dialogic and communicational in 
nature, Joe posits that “the development of intelligence is at least in part a 
matter of the development of critical control practices that conform go 
communicational norms which make discourse more efficient and effective 
relative to whatever ends it may have.”
This perspective sets the task for IA as follows:
JR: “The sort of Intelligence Augmentation I am chiefly concerned with, then, 
is that which would be achieved by devising mechanisms and programs that would 
increase the effectiveness of the communicational norms which encourage 
successful inquiry as these have developed in research traditions whose 
ancestral forms sometimes go back more than two and a half millennia ago… The 
project of development of any computational devices that could be helpful in 
this would qualify as a contribution to IA research of this special kind.”
PS: So, the type of IA that Joe is interested in is not the kind that augments 
individual intelligence, but the kind that augments the collective intelligence 
exhibited by processes of inquiry within research traditions. Here, as noted 
earlier, Joe’s concern is close to Engelbart’s project of “Boosting Collective 
IQ”. Now, Joe goes on to delineate a Peircean/Deweyan account of inquiry, in 
which he finds a central feature to be the claim of a finding or a discovery, a 
claim which is expected to be found persuasive by the community, and which 
therefore places the claimant under certain obligations. Joe also characterizes 
a claim of this kind as a “serious assertion”, also known as “primary 
publication:
JR: “ For present purposes, let me characterize serious assertion as obtaining 
whenever the person making the assertion takes full responsibility for making a 
claim which, taken seriously by the others in the research community, will put 
upon them the obligation to take what has been claimed seriously enough to 
allow themselves to be persuaded to the conclusion which the claimant has 
already come to, if the claimant has actually made the case for it in the claim 
in a way that is found to be rationally persuasive. (Found to be so by whom? By 
each member of the given research community taken distributively, i.e. taken 
one by one, as distinct from the membership regarded as a collectively 
constituted individual. The research community is not to be regarded as a 
collective entity.)”
PS: I take the parenthetical comment here to be especially Peircean: The 
community of inquirers is not a democracy, where majority rules; its goal is 
ultimate unanimity, which means that each dissenting voice must be allowed to 
be 

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Listers,

Although this slow read has spun off some interesting side discussions, there 
has been no activity in the slow read itself since I posted the segment below. 
I am going to attribute this inactivity to the busyness of the season, rather 
than to any lack of general interest. I am therefore going to break now for the 
holidays and move on to the second half of Joe's paper in the first week of 
January.

Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 3:15 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

I want to move on to what I see as the second main part of Joe’s paper, 
covering pages 8-14. I do not intend to rush anyone or stifle discussion, so 
anyone who wants to pursue extant themes should feel free to do so, but I also 
want to enable us to progress towards what I take to be the heart of Joe’s 
paper.
Having ascertained that thinking is inherently dialogic and communicational in 
nature, Joe posits that “the development of intelligence is at least in part a 
matter of the development of critical control practices that conform go 
communicational norms which make discourse more efficient and effective 
relative to whatever ends it may have.”
This perspective sets the task for IA as follows:
JR: “The sort of Intelligence Augmentation I am chiefly concerned with, then, 
is that which would be achieved by devising mechanisms and programs that would 
increase the effectiveness of the communicational norms which encourage 
successful inquiry as these have developed in research traditions whose 
ancestral forms sometimes go back more than two and a half millennia ago… The 
project of development of any computational devices that could be helpful in 
this would qualify as a contribution to IA research of this special kind.”
PS: So, the type of IA that Joe is interested in is not the kind that augments 
individual intelligence, but the kind that augments the collective intelligence 
exhibited by processes of inquiry within research traditions. Here, as noted 
earlier, Joe’s concern is close to Engelbart’s project of “Boosting Collective 
IQ”. Now, Joe goes on to delineate a Peircean/Deweyan account of inquiry, in 
which he finds a central feature to be the claim of a finding or a discovery, a 
claim which is expected to be found persuasive by the community, and which 
therefore places the claimant under certain obligations. Joe also characterizes 
a claim of this kind as a “serious assertion”, also known as “primary 
publication:
JR: “ For present purposes, let me characterize serious assertion as obtaining 
whenever the person making the assertion takes full responsibility for making a 
claim which, taken seriously by the others in the research community, will put 
upon them the obligation to take what has been claimed seriously enough to 
allow themselves to be persuaded to the conclusion which the claimant has 
already come to, if the claimant has actually made the case for it in the claim 
in a way that is found to be rationally persuasive. (Found to be so by whom? By 
each member of the given research community taken distributively, i.e. taken 
one by one, as distinct from the membership regarded as a collectively 
constituted individual. The research community is not to be regarded as a 
collective entity.)”
PS: I take the parenthetical comment here to be especially Peircean: The 
community of inquirers is not a democracy, where majority rules; its goal is 
ultimate unanimity, which means that each dissenting voice must be allowed to 
be heard and must be allowed weight, and taken seriously by the claimant and 
the other participants. Dialogic or communicational intelligence is augmented 
by the development and enforcement of communicational norms which enable this 
give-and-take to happen efficiently and effectively.
This is so far rather abstract, and, and no doubt Joe is setting the stage for 
his presentation of the Ginsparg publication system as a paradigm case of the 
type of IA he is concerned with, which I would suggest we move on to as soon as 
feasible. In the process he has two pages on “nonserious assertion” , to set it 
off from serious assertion, which are well worth reading, but which I am not 
going to go into unless there is a special interest in discussing them.
Having touched what I take to be the high points in pages 8 to 14, I am going 
to pause for comments and discussion. And please, if I have skipped important 
points, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Cheers,
Peter




From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 9:29 

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

I want to move on to what I see as the second main part of Joe’s paper, 
covering pages 8-14. I do not intend to rush anyone or stifle discussion, so 
anyone who wants to pursue extant themes should feel free to do so, but I also 
want to enable us to progress towards what I take to be the heart of Joe’s 
paper.
Having ascertained that thinking is inherently dialogic and communicational in 
nature, Joe posits that “the development of intelligence is at least in part a 
matter of the development of critical control practices that conform go 
communicational norms which make discourse more efficient and effective 
relative to whatever ends it may have.” 
This perspective sets the task for IA as follows:
JR: “The sort of Intelligence Augmentation I am chiefly concerned with, then, 
is that which would be achieved by devising mechanisms and programs that would 
increase the effectiveness of the communicational norms which encourage 
successful inquiry as these have developed in research traditions whose 
ancestral forms sometimes go back more than two and a half millennia ago… The 
project of development of any computational devices that could be helpful in 
this would qualify as a contribution to IA research of this special kind.”
PS: So, the type of IA that Joe is interested in is not the kind that augments 
individual intelligence, but the kind that augments the collective intelligence 
exhibited by processes of inquiry within research traditions. Here, as noted 
earlier, Joe’s concern is close to Engelbart’s project of “Boosting Collective 
IQ”. Now, Joe goes on to delineate a Peircean/Deweyan account of inquiry, in 
which he finds a central feature to be the claim of a finding or a discovery, a 
claim which is expected to be found persuasive by the community, and which 
therefore places the claimant under certain obligations. Joe also characterizes 
a claim of this kind as a “serious assertion”, also known as “primary 
publication:
JR: “ For present purposes, let me characterize serious assertion as obtaining 
whenever the person making the assertion takes full responsibility for making a 
claim which, taken seriously by the others in the research community, will put 
upon them the obligation to take what has been claimed seriously enough to 
allow themselves to be persuaded to the conclusion which the claimant has 
already come to, if the claimant has actually made the case for it in the claim 
in a way that is found to be rationally persuasive. (Found to be so by whom? By 
each member of the given research community taken distributively, i.e. taken 
one by one, as distinct from the membership regarded as a collectively 
constituted individual. The research community is not to be regarded as a 
collective entity.)”
PS: I take the parenthetical comment here to be especially Peircean: The 
community of inquirers is not a democracy, where majority rules; its goal is 
ultimate unanimity, which means that each dissenting voice must be allowed to 
be heard and must be allowed weight, and taken seriously by the claimant and 
the other participants. Dialogic or communicational intelligence is augmented 
by the development and enforcement of communicational norms which enable this 
give-and-take to happen efficiently and effectively. 
This is so far rather abstract, and, and no doubt Joe is setting the stage for 
his presentation of the Ginsparg publication system as a paradigm case of the 
type of IA he is concerned with, which I would suggest we move on to as soon as 
feasible. In the process he has two pages on “nonserious assertion” , to set it 
off from serious assertion, which are well worth reading, but which I am not 
going to go into unless there is a special interest in discussing them.
Having touched what I take to be the high points in pages 8 to 14, I am going 
to pause for comments and discussion. And please, if I have skipped important 
points, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Cheers,
Peter




From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Skagestad, Peter [peter_skages...@uml.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 9:29 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Thank you, Gary. This is definitely the direction in which I would like the 
conversation to go. There are, however, some housekeeping tasks I need to 
attend to, and hope to be able to do so this afternoon.

Cheers,
Peter


From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Fuhrman [g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 7:39 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

I'd like to bring this conversation a little closer to the aspect of IA that 
Joe Ransdell devoted

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Thank you, Gary. This is definitely the direction in which I would like the 
conversation to go. There are, however, some housekeeping tasks I need to 
attend to, and hope to be able to do so this afternoon.

Cheers,
Peter


From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Fuhrman [g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 7:39 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

I'd like to bring this conversation a little closer to the aspect of IA that 
Joe Ransdell devoted most of his paper to, namely the process of genuine peer 
review that is facilitated by Ginsparg's innovation in physics, which amounts 
to cutting the gatekeepers out of the publication process, and thus 
democratizing it.

Gary mentioned "flying to international conferences" as one of the benefits of 
technology generally. Personally i would very much like to see an alternative 
to air travel -- which is, after all, a major contributor to climate change -- 
in the form of a system that would allow conferencing over the internet, for 
groups of (say) a dozen peers who could all meet (i.e. see and hear each other) 
without leaving home, and without any special equipment beyond their laptops. 
Surely the software and hardware to do this can't be far away, if it doesn't 
exist in cycberspace already. Conferences usually have to "break into groups" 
(or break for lunch) in order to have really good, productive conversations 
anyway.

I think genuine dialogue among peers (in Joe's sense) takes place all the time 
on peirce-l, but there are definite advantages to doing it in "real time", and 
i think those advantages can be realized without having to move our bodies 
thousands of air miles. I'm sure it would augment the intellligence of the 
participants.

Gary F.

} Real time is the wheel reinventing itself. [gnox] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce



-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: December-16-11 5:52 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: 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

-
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L 
listserv. 

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

I have to say that I share all the concerns expressed by Eugene, Steven, and 
Gary, and have several concerns of my own. What I absolutely did not foresee 
fifteen years ago is how the corporate world would be able to co-opt the 
internet, not just for purposes of sales and marketing, but also for the 
purpose of shifting burdens from organizations to its employees and customers, 
under the label of "self-service". Personal, networked computing initially 
seemed liberating and subversive of authority, but has not in my opinion proven 
so. But this probably falls under the rubric of venting. I do want to move on 
to the body of Joe's paper and hope to be back online later today for that 
purpose.

Cheers,
Peter


From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 5:51 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: 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 Scien

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Ben,



OK, so my claim was that interactive and personal computing might not have 
happened without the IA research programme, and your view is that it probably 
would have happened anyway. I am not sure there is a genuine disagreement here; 
at any rate we are concerned with counterfactuals, which can neither be proven 
nor disproven. Let me content myself with the observation that, as a matter of 
historical fact, interactive and personal computing, while having several 
roots, resulted in part from an explicit and well articulated programme of IA 
research.



I think you are absolutely right, by the way, that constant practice is more 
important than formal training. I very quickly forget any computer feature that 
I do not regularly use.



Moving on,

Peter




From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 1:17 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Peter, list,

Thanks for your response.

The augmentationist vision itself in its essence does not seem a conceptually 
difficult one. In the 1970s I had some amateur notion of it though I knew 
nothing of practical developments in IA. Without the initial government funding 
and without the early time-sharing?  I'd guess maybe ten years' delay for 
email, word processors, personal computers, etc. That would be my current bet 
if it were possible to bet on such things.  Economic and cultural factors via 
entrepreneurs etc. soon enough would have come into powerful play, just as such 
factors came into play against such things via IBM and its particular agenda 
earlier.  Maybe it's just me, watching too many Jetsons cartoons when I was a 
kid, expecting tsunamis of progress (and in some ways we got The Simpsons 
instead, which I think is the point of the latter's theme song's resemblance to 
the former's). I'd agree that the Internet might have developed quite 
differently, and with less built-in freedom.

You wrote,
> PS: I think this is absolutely true, and I just want to add that Engelbart's 
> particular vision of IA has largely failed to materialize, due to the general 
> unwillingness of corporations to provide training for their employees
I think that the common lack of skills in using the augmentations is not due 
mainly to insufficient training programs offered by employers, but instead due 
first of all to the nature of the beast. I've know plenty of people who did 
take employer-offered courses but soon forgot most of it because they didn't 
put it quickly to use, and this is because
(A) most people get bored easily with such things, as we already know,
(B) no amount of training is a substitute for habitual exploration when it 
comes to using computer programs, and that is something that should be but 
never is drummed in in every common computer application training course (in 
fact the courses should be structured whenever possible (after an elementary 
level of rote learning of procedures), to engrain practices of exploration and 
of trying things out) and
(C) workplace pressures urgently favor getting work done as soon as possible, 
"quick and dirty."
It's the old "busy reader" problem, mutatis mutandis a user, this time one who 
is interested only when too busy to absorb much. The problem is, that one 
doesn't really want to deal with figuring out a more efficient way to do things 
with an application except when one is actually confronted by work to be done, 
but that's also when one doesn't have extra time to find a more efficient way 
using advanced features.  For my part, I didn't like to do the same tedious 
work twice, and I found that the best short cut was the trek through the 
"mountains" (advanced features), and I simply concealed from my superiors that 
it was for such purposes that I was taking a little extra time.  Except in the 
case of one very helpful boss, it was only after I started showing and 
explaining the results, that they started to appreciate its practicality.  But 
I had almost no success in convincing co-workers to use my "great secret," the 
"key" for which they kept asking me - but which was not some magical little set 
of series of key strokes or menu item clicks but instead resisting to some 
extent the boredom, work pressures, and temptations to chat, and practicing 
curiosity, exploration, front-loading (i.e., the "mountain trek"), etc., so 
that one would have an easier time in dealing with the problems that arose 
every day.  I.e., grasping that, unlike a typewriter, a computer was always a 
learning experience, pleasant and otherwise. Well, that was all ten and more 
years ago, maybe some things have changed.

I just googled 

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

I'd like to bring this conversation a little closer to the aspect of IA that 
Joe Ransdell devoted most of his paper to, namely the process of genuine peer 
review that is facilitated by Ginsparg's innovation in physics, which amounts 
to cutting the gatekeepers out of the publication process, and thus 
democratizing it. 

Gary mentioned "flying to international conferences" as one of the benefits of 
technology generally. Personally i would very much like to see an alternative 
to air travel -- which is, after all, a major contributor to climate change -- 
in the form of a system that would allow conferencing over the internet, for 
groups of (say) a dozen peers who could all meet (i.e. see and hear each other) 
without leaving home, and without any special equipment beyond their laptops. 
Surely the software and hardware to do this can't be far away, if it doesn't 
exist in cycberspace already. Conferences usually have to "break into groups" 
(or break for lunch) in order to have really good, productive conversations 
anyway. 

I think genuine dialogue among peers (in Joe's sense) takes place all the time 
on peirce-l, but there are definite advantages to doing it in "real time", and 
i think those advantages can be realized without having to move our bodies 
thousands of air miles. I'm sure it would augment the intellligence of the 
participants.

Gary F.

} Real time is the wheel reinventing itself. [gnox] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce



-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: December-16-11 5:52 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: 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

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

chauung 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 absorption of human purpose to the nominalist, materialist telos 
> of alienated purpose, incorporated as the machine: a mythic expansive 
> projection of the automatic that would define the universe itself as a vast 
> machine, earlier a ticking clock, now a calculating computer?
> 
>Then one might expect the very flesh and blood of the average modern 
> mind to progressively take on characteristics of the schizoid machine. As 
> Lewis Mumford put it, "The new attitude toward time and space infected the 
> workshop and the counting house, the army and the city. The tempo became 
> faster, the magnitudes became greater; conceptually, modern culture launched 
> itself into space and gave itself over to movement. What Max Weber called the 
> 'romanticism of numbers' grew naturally out of this interest. In timekeeping, 
> in trading, in fighting, men counted numbers, and finally, as the habit grew, 
> only numbers counted" (Technics and Civilization, 1934, p. 22). Technique 
> outstrips purposive conduct.
> 
>"Intelligence augmentation" is not necessarily the same as the 
> augmentation of intelligence, because, at least as I understand it, the term 
> means technical means, and not the growth of purpose. An ever increasing 
> plethora of devices pour ever more information in today, but for the bulk of 
> people, the likely result is what I term "brain suck." One example: Children 
> in the US between 8 and 18 now watch an average of 7 hours 38 minutes of 
> screens per day, 7 days per week. That does not count school time. Some 
> fragment of the information is probably augmenting intelligence, but the 
> overwhelming bulk of it is augmenting the very flesh and blood of their minds 
> by the moral equivalent of embedding emotional computer "cookies" to know 
> marketed commodities and to desire new commodities permanently.
> 
>The schizoid machine Weltanschauung works optimally by conditioning 
> though augmenting pleasure, as though sensation were emotion, especially in a 
> society that can redefine the purely commercial process benignly as 
> "intelligence augmentation."
> 
>    Gene Halton
> 
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On 
> Behalf Of Skagestad, Peter
> Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 9:20 AM
> To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
> Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
> COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Thank you for your comments, which I have been chewing on. I wish I had some 
> insightful responses, but this is all I come up with.
> 
> You wrote:
> "I find it very hard to believe that the second computer revolution could 
> have very easily failed to take place soon enough after the first one, given 
> the potential market, though as you say below, you were mainly concerned (and 
> I agree with you) to reject a monocausal technological determinism."
> 
> PS: We are in the realm of speculation here, and I cannot claim to be an 
> economic historian, but I do not believe the evolution of either interactive 
> or personal computing was market-driven. When you read, for instance, the 
> Licklider biography "The Dream Machine" (I forget the author's name), you 
> find Licklider knocking his head against the wall trying to persuade IBM to 
> provide time-sharing, the first major breakthrough in interactive computing. 
> Eventually there emerged entrepreneurs - notably Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and 
> Mitch Kapor - who recognized the market potential of the new technology. But 
> by then networking, word-processing, email, and GUIs had already been 
> developed, mostly by government-funded researchers guided by the 
> augmentationist vision. What would have happened if Licklider, Engelbart, and 
> Sutherland had not been guided by this vision, or if they had not obtained 
> government funding? I think the answer is that we simply do not know.
> 
> This may be the place to add that, when I wrote "Thinking With Machines" and 
> "The Mind's Machines", I did not yet recognize Sutherland's significance. 
> Bush, Licklider, and Engelbart were the theoreticians and advocates for IA, 
> but arguably - and in fact argued by Howard Rheingold - Sutherland's 
> "Sketchpad" was the single most important technological breakthrough. I was 
> privately rebuked by Arthur Burks for this omissio

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Steven Ericsson-Zenith]

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 absorption of human purpose to the nominalist, materialist telos 
> of alienated purpose, incorporated as the machine: a mythic expansive 
> projection of the automatic that would define the universe itself as a vast 
> machine, earlier a ticking clock, now a calculating computer?
> 
>Then one might expect the very flesh and blood of the average modern 
> mind to progressively take on characteristics of the schizoid machine. As 
> Lewis Mumford put it, "The new attitude toward time and space infected the 
> workshop and the counting house, the army and the city. The tempo became 
> faster, the magnitudes became greater; conceptually, modern culture launched 
> itself into space and gave itself over to movement. What Max Weber called the 
> 'romanticism of numbers' grew naturally out of this interest. In timekeeping, 
> in trading, in fighting, men counted numbers, and finally, as the habit grew, 
> only numbers counted" (Technics and Civilization, 1934, p. 22). Technique 
> outstrips purposive conduct.
> 
>"Intelligence augmentation" is not necessarily the same as the 
> augmentation of intelligence, because, at least as I understand it, the term 
> means technical means, and not the growth of purpose. An ever increasing 
> plethora of devices pour ever more information in today, but for the bulk of 
> people, the likely result is what I term "brain suck." One example: Children 
> in the US between 8 and 18 now watch an average of 7 hours 38 minutes of 
> screens per day, 7 days per week. That does not count school time. Some 
> fragment of the information is probably augmenting intelligence, but the 
> overwhelming bulk of it is augmenting the very flesh and blood of their minds 
> by the moral equivalent of embedding emotional computer "cookies" to know 
> marketed commodities and to desire new commodities permanently.
> 
>The schizoid machine Weltanschauung works optimally by conditioning 
> though augmenting pleasure, as though sensation were emotion, especially in a 
> society that can redefine the purely commercial process benignly as 
> "intelligence augmentation."
> 
>        Gene Halton
> 
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: C S Peirce discussion

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Eugene Halton]

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 absorption of human purpose to the nominalist, materialist telos of 
alienated purpose, incorporated as the machine: a mythic expansive projection 
of the automatic that would define the universe itself as a vast machine, 
earlier a ticking clock, now a calculating computer?

Then one might expect the very flesh and blood of the average modern 
mind to progressively take on characteristics of the schizoid machine. As Lewis 
Mumford put it, "The new attitude toward time and space infected the workshop 
and the counting house, the army and the city. The tempo became faster, the 
magnitudes became greater; conceptually, modern culture launched itself into 
space and gave itself over to movement. What Max Weber called the 'romanticism 
of numbers' grew naturally out of this interest. In timekeeping, in trading, in 
fighting, men counted numbers, and finally, as the habit grew, only numbers 
counted" (Technics and Civilization, 1934, p. 22). Technique outstrips 
purposive conduct.

"Intelligence augmentation" is not necessarily the same as the 
augmentation of intelligence, because, at least as I understand it, the term 
means technical means, and not the growth of purpose. An ever increasing 
plethora of devices pour ever more information in today, but for the bulk of 
people, the likely result is what I term "brain suck." One example: Children in 
the US between 8 and 18 now watch an average of 7 hours 38 minutes of screens 
per day, 7 days per week. That does not count school time. Some fragment of the 
information is probably augmenting intelligence, but the overwhelming bulk of 
it is augmenting the very flesh and blood of their minds by the moral 
equivalent of embedding emotional computer "cookies" to know marketed 
commodities and to desire new commodities permanently.

The schizoid machine Weltanschauung works optimally by conditioning 
though augmenting pleasure, as though sensation were emotion, especially in a 
society that can redefine the purely commercial process benignly as 
"intelligence augmentation."

Gene Halton



-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Skagestad, Peter
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 9:20 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Ben,

Thank you for your comments, which I have been chewing on. I wish I had some 
insightful responses, but this is all I come up with.

You wrote:
"I find it very hard to believe that the second computer revolution could have 
very easily failed to take place soon enough after the first one, given the 
potential market, though as you say below, you were mainly concerned (and I 
agree with you) to reject a monocausal technological determinism."

PS: We are in the realm of speculation here, and I cannot claim to be an 
economic historian, but I do not believe the evolution of either interactive or 
personal computing was market-driven. When you read, for instance, the 
Licklider biography "The Dream Machine" (I forget the author's name), you find 
Licklider knocking his head against the wall trying to persuade IBM to provide 
time-sharing, the first major breakthrough in interactive computing. Eventually 
there emerged entrepreneurs - notably Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mitch Kapor - 
who recognized the market potential of the new technology. But by then 
networking, word-processing, email, and GUIs had already been developed, mostly 
by government-funded researchers guided by the augmentationist vision. What 
would have happened if Licklider, Engelbart, and Sutherland had not been guided 
by this vision, or if they had not obtaine

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Benjamin Udell]

Peter, list,

Thanks for your response. 

The augmentationist vision itself in its essence does not seem a conceptually 
difficult one. In the 1970s I had some amateur notion of it though I knew 
nothing of practical developments in IA. Without the initial government funding 
and without the early time-sharing?  I'd guess maybe ten years' delay for 
email, word processors, personal computers, etc. That would be my current bet 
if it were possible to bet on such things.  Economic and cultural factors via 
entrepreneurs etc. soon enough would have come into powerful play, just as such 
factors came into play against such things via IBM and its particular agenda 
earlier.  Maybe it's just me, watching too many Jetsons cartoons when I was a 
kid, expecting tsunamis of progress (and in some ways we got The Simpsons 
instead, which I think is the point of the latter's theme song's resemblance to 
the former's). I'd agree that the Internet might have developed quite 
differently, and with less built-in freedom.

You wrote, 
  > PS: I think this is absolutely true, and I just want to add that 
Engelbart's particular vision of IA has largely failed to materialize, due to 
the general unwillingness of corporations to provide training for their 
employees
I think that the common lack of skills in using the augmentations is not due 
mainly to insufficient training programs offered by employers, but instead due 
first of all to the nature of the beast. I've know plenty of people who did 
take employer-offered courses but soon forgot most of it because they didn't 
put it quickly to use, and this is because 
(A) most people get bored easily with such things, as we already know, 
(B) no amount of training is a substitute for habitual exploration when it 
comes to using computer programs, and that is something that should be but 
never is drummed in in every common computer application training course (in 
fact the courses should be structured whenever possible (after an elementary 
level of rote learning of procedures), to engrain practices of exploration and 
of trying things out) and 
(C) workplace pressures urgently favor getting work done as soon as possible, 
"quick and dirty." 
It's the old "busy reader" problem, mutatis mutandis a user, this time one who 
is interested only when too busy to absorb much. The problem is, that one 
doesn't really want to deal with figuring out a more efficient way to do things 
with an application except when one is actually confronted by work to be done, 
but that's also when one doesn't have extra time to find a more efficient way 
using advanced features.  For my part, I didn't like to do the same tedious 
work twice, and I found that the best short cut was the trek through the 
"mountains" (advanced features), and I simply concealed from my superiors that 
it was for such purposes that I was taking a little extra time.  Except in the 
case of one very helpful boss, it was only after I started showing and 
explaining the results, that they started to appreciate its practicality.  But 
I had almost no success in convincing co-workers to use my "great secret," the 
"key" for which they kept asking me - but which was not some magical little set 
of series of key strokes or menu item clicks but instead resisting to some 
extent the boredom, work pressures, and temptations to chat, and practicing 
curiosity, exploration, front-loading (i.e., the "mountain trek"), etc., so 
that one would have an easier time in dealing with the problems that arose 
every day.  I.e., grasping that, unlike a typewriter, a computer was always a 
learning experience, pleasant and otherwise. Well, that was all ten and more 
years ago, maybe some things have changed.

I just googled on "intelligence augmentation" "affectivity" and found little. I 
found more with "intelligence augmentation" "emotion". It looks like a subject 
more of the future than of the past!

Best, Ben

- Original Message -
From: Skagestad, Peter
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Ben,

Thank you for your comments, which I have been chewing on. I wish I had some 
insightful responses, but this is all I come up with.

You wrote:
"I find it very hard to believe that the second computer revolution could have 
very easily failed to take place soon enough after the first one, given the 
potential market, though as you say below, you were mainly concerned (and I 
agree with you) to reject a monocausal technological determinism."

PS: We are in the realm of speculation here, and I cannot claim to be an 
economic historian, but I do not believe the evolution of either interactive or 
personal computing

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Gary,

This may, as you note, be tangential to the present discussion, but it is 
ceertainly of intrinsic interest, and I hope to find time to catch up on this 
literature in the not too distant future.

Peter

From: Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 2:26 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU; Skagestad, Peter
Subject: RE: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Peter, Ben, List,

Thanks for your response, Peter. I look forward to your introducing the
next section of Joe's paper.

I'm afraid I tend to translate everything into biosemiotic notions these
days, something which I'm sure occasionally may seem off topic
(although there is always some at least tenuous connection, I think).
However, in the present IA/biosemiotic case, I believe that the
connection is pretty clear and strong. Peirce's theory of mind informs
or parallels IA research in the work of  Ransdell, Engelbart and,
perhaps, Ted Nelson (he was working on theory of teaching and learning
at that time I met him at a conference in Borovets, Bulgaria in 2002).
At the same time, it informs the work of certain biosemioticians such as
Brier and Duncan.

Just yesterday I read in the latest number of *Transactions* (Summer
2011, Vol 47, No. 3) in a review by Kelly Parker of Volume 8 of the
*Writings* and referring to a comment by Nathan Houser, the editor of
the chronological edition of Peirce's writings, a remark taken from his
"informative and fascinating" introduction to this volume:

KP: ". . . it is worth noting Houser's remark that Peirce's account of
agapasm [. . . ] as evolution influenced by habit and a tendency toward
generalizing purpose, is yet to be philosophically appreciated and "may
one day be understood to be the greatest contribution of Peirce's
*Monist* series" (xcvi). One indeed may hope so, as we continue under a
bombardment of books that frustratingly try to comprehend cultural
realities such as education and ethics under narrowly biological
concepts of evolution."

To summarize what I've recently been suggesting in this thread and the
one Nathan Houser led, this semiotical view of mind in a universe seen
as "perfused with signs" in light of  the remarkable advances of
biosemiotic theory in the past decade, all this tends towards the
possibility of the development of a non-reductive theory of emergence
(such as Terrence Duncan's proposes in *Incomplete Nature*). Again, the
result would involve  top-down (semiotic) and bottom-up (naturalistic)
theory meeting in an evolutionary TOE having the potential for
catalyzing the  co-evolution of human consciousness and computational
technology within the context of this enriched understanding of
emergence.

In any event, if you--or anyone on the list--do have any interest in
biosemiotic seen from a Peircean perspective, Peter, I can think of no
better place to start than most any one of the several admirably clear,
succinct, thoughtful, and readable  papers by Eliseo Fernández to be
found at the Arisbe site.
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/aboutcsp.htm#Fernandez

Now, having said all this, I will try to refrain from discussing even
Peircean influenced biosemiotic notions until the new year to allow for
the more fully relevant discussion suggested by your initial post and
Ben's recent one.

Best,

Gary


Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> "Skagestad, Peter"  12/13/11 3:42 PM >>>
Gary,

Thank you for those thoughtful and informative comments. I was
interested to hear of your interactions with Engelbart, and that I may
have sparked an interest in Peirce on his part. Generally, though, I do
not see anything that requires any direct comment from me, except to
note that I am woefully ignorant of biosemiotics.

It has been quiet so far, but I assume everybody is busy, and I am
actually having a slightly crazy week myself, so I will give it another
couple of days before moving on to the next section of Joe's paper.

All the best,
Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf
of Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 3:20 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: 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 i

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Stephen C. Rose]

rue, and my disagreement with Joe here may be purely
> verbal; i.e. by “interactive” he probably meant to include the
> collaborative aspect.
>
> Finally, you raise this question:
>
> “Thinking, actively cogitating, is even less pure cognition than are
> looking (in order to see) and listening (in order to hear). The idea of
> reasoning, as _deliberate_ self-controlled inference, evokes the idea not
> only of active ability/competence (or able and competent doings themselves)
> but also of active willing. While ability/competence implies an end for
> which one cares to act, aside from the end's being in question, active
> willing implies an end for which one cares to contest, in a contest over
> what ends will prevail.  (Ironically "competent" comes from a word meaning
> "competing" but the connotation of the competitive has been lost by the
> word "competent" in English, a loss partly enabled, I suspect, by the
> difference in stress location and consequent vowel pronunciation.)
>
> 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)?  Well, certainly it extends the reach of people's wills and
> feelings. But how mental is it if its processes are chiefly competential
> and cognitive? Are they such? Or are volitional and affective processes,
> not merely secondarily as needed for competence and cognition, in there
> even in the programming, not usually recognized?”
>
> PS: It is a very interesting question. I confess that I never thought
> beyond the purely cognitive aspect of mind, and I have no new insights
> regarding volitional or affective processes at this point. But anything
> listers have to add on this will be welcomed.
>
> That is my two-cents’ worth for now. My plan is to move on to the next
> part of Joe’s paper tonight or tomorrow.
>
> All the best,
> Peter
>
>
>
>
> 
> From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf
> of Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 2:59 PM
> To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
> Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
> COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION
>
> Peter, list,
>
> This slow read is quiet enough that I might as well send some minor
> comments that might provide a little to chew on, I don't know. But before
> those, let me first of all thank you for leading the slow read and for your
> heart-warming reminiscences of Joe.
>
> The second computer revolution - inevitable after the first?
> Joe quotes you:
> In the sixties computers were huge, expensive machines usable only by an
> initiated elite; the idea of turning these machines into personal
> information-management tools that would be generally affordable and usable
> without special training was advocated only by a fringe of visionaries and
> was regarded as bizarre not only by the general public, but also by the
> mainstream of the electronics industry. The second computer revolution
> obviously could not have taken place without the first one preceding it,
> but the first computer revolution could very easily have taken place
> without being followed by the second one.
> I find it very hard to believe that the second computer revolution could
> have very easily failed to take place soon enough after the first one,
> given the potential market, though as you say below, you were mainly
> concerned (and I agree with you) to reject a monocausal technological
> determinism. I know almost nothing about computer programming, but I was a
> Word and PowerPoint "guru" for some years. It's just that I think that some
> relevantly able people would soon enough have recognized the teremendous
> potential for personal computers. As the 1990s wore on, companies ended up
> stocking their cubicles with computers although most users never heard of,
> much less learned to use, more than 1/10 of the power of such programs as
> Word and PowerPoint, and workplace pressures tend to lock people into
> short-sighted views of the value of developing skills on word processors,
> spreadsheets, etc. ("quick and dirty" is the motto). Well, "1/10" is just
> my subjective impression, but whatever the vague fraction, it was small but
> enough to make the companies' investment worthwhile. (And probably the
> added value per added "power" doesn't equal one and involves diminishing
> returns, especially in terms of empowering collaboration beyond
> interaction). Well, all of that, ev

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

word "competent" in English, a loss partly 
enabled, I suspect, by the difference in stress location and consequent vowel 
pronunciation.) 
 
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)?  
Well, certainly it extends the reach of people's wills and feelings. But how 
mental is it if its processes are chiefly competential and cognitive? Are they 
such? Or are volitional and affective processes, not merely secondarily as 
needed for competence and cognition, in there even in the programming, not 
usually recognized?”
 
PS: It is a very interesting question. I confess that I never thought beyond 
the purely cognitive aspect of mind, and I have no new insights regarding 
volitional or affective processes at this point. But anything listers have to 
add on this will be welcomed.

That is my two-cents’ worth for now. My plan is to move on to the next part of 
Joe’s paper tonight or tomorrow.

All the best,
Peter
 
 



From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 2:59 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Peter, list,

This slow read is quiet enough that I might as well send some minor comments 
that might provide a little to chew on, I don't know. But before those, let me 
first of all thank you for leading the slow read and for your heart-warming 
reminiscences of Joe.

The second computer revolution - inevitable after the first?
Joe quotes you:
In the sixties computers were huge, expensive machines usable only by an 
initiated elite; the idea of turning these machines into personal 
information-management tools that would be generally affordable and usable 
without special training was advocated only by a fringe of visionaries and was 
regarded as bizarre not only by the general public, but also by the mainstream 
of the electronics industry. The second computer revolution obviously could not 
have taken place without the first one preceding it, but the first computer 
revolution could very easily have taken place without being followed by the 
second one.
I find it very hard to believe that the second computer revolution could have 
very easily failed to take place soon enough after the first one, given the 
potential market, though as you say below, you were mainly concerned (and I 
agree with you) to reject a monocausal technological determinism. I know almost 
nothing about computer programming, but I was a Word and PowerPoint "guru" for 
some years. It's just that I think that some relevantly able people would soon 
enough have recognized the teremendous potential for personal computers. As the 
1990s wore on, companies ended up stocking their cubicles with computers 
although most users never heard of, much less learned to use, more than 1/10 of 
the power of such programs as Word and PowerPoint, and workplace pressures tend 
to lock people into short-sighted views of the value of developing skills on 
word processors, spreadsheets, etc. ("quick and dirty" is the motto). Well, 
"1/10" is just my subjective impression, but whatever the vague fraction, it 
was small but enough to make the companies' investment worthwhile. (And 
probably the added value per added "power" doesn't equal one and involves 
diminishing returns, especially in terms of empowering collaboration beyond 
interaction). Well, all of that, even the point about the continuing though 
shrunken need for special skills, is a quibble. The second revolution was not 
destined but only enabled by previous technology and was brought about by 
people seeing the potential. As you say below:
I made the point that the emergence of the personal computer was not a given 
consequence of the invention of the microprocessor, but also required a 
particular vision of what computers were for. In so doing I was simply 
rejecting technological determinism, not advancing any monocausal thesis of my 
own.
Interactive or collaborative.
You wrote,
PS: I do not totally agree with Joe here. I gladly admit that I never tried to 
identify what was fundamental to the IA tradition, believing that job to have 
been already done by Engelbart. But interactive computing, while essential to 
IA, has been endemic to computing of all kinds during the past forty years. I 
played chess games with the MIT computer as early as 1973; it was interactive, 
it had time sharing, but there was nothing about it that specifically related 
to IA. I would agree that collaborative computing is central to IA: more of 
that later.
Looking over Joe's paper, I'd guess that he was

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

Peter, Ben, List,

Thanks for your response, Peter. I look forward to your introducing the
next section of Joe's paper.

I'm afraid I tend to translate everything into biosemiotic notions these
days, something which I'm sure occasionally may seem off topic 
(although there is always some at least tenuous connection, I think).
However, in the present IA/biosemiotic case, I believe that the
connection is pretty clear and strong. Peirce's theory of mind informs
or parallels IA research in the work of  Ransdell, Engelbart and,
perhaps, Ted Nelson (he was working on theory of teaching and learning
at that time I met him at a conference in Borovets, Bulgaria in 2002).
At the same time, it informs the work of certain biosemioticians such as
Brier and Duncan.

Just yesterday I read in the latest number of *Transactions* (Summer
2011, Vol 47, No. 3) in a review by Kelly Parker of Volume 8 of the
*Writings* and referring to a comment by Nathan Houser, the editor of
the chronological edition of Peirce's writings, a remark taken from his
"informative and fascinating" introduction to this volume:

KP: ". . . it is worth noting Houser's remark that Peirce's account of
agapasm [. . . ] as evolution influenced by habit and a tendency toward
generalizing purpose, is yet to be philosophically appreciated and "may
one day be understood to be the greatest contribution of Peirce's
*Monist* series" (xcvi). One indeed may hope so, as we continue under a
bombardment of books that frustratingly try to comprehend cultural
realities such as education and ethics under narrowly biological
concepts of evolution."

To summarize what I've recently been suggesting in this thread and the
one Nathan Houser led, this semiotical view of mind in a universe seen
as "perfused with signs" in light of  the remarkable advances of
biosemiotic theory in the past decade, all this tends towards the
possibility of the development of a non-reductive theory of emergence 
(such as Terrence Duncan's proposes in *Incomplete Nature*). Again, the
result would involve  top-down (semiotic) and bottom-up (naturalistic)
theory meeting in an evolutionary TOE having the potential for
catalyzing the  co-evolution of human consciousness and computational
technology within the context of this enriched understanding of
emergence.

In any event, if you--or anyone on the list--do have any interest in
biosemiotic seen from a Peircean perspective, Peter, I can think of no
better place to start than most any one of the several admirably clear,
succinct, thoughtful, and readable  papers by Eliseo Fernández to be
found at the Arisbe site.
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/aboutcsp.htm#Fernandez

Now, having said all this, I will try to refrain from discussing even
Peircean influenced biosemiotic notions until the new year to allow for
the more fully relevant discussion suggested by your initial post and
Ben's recent one. 

Best,

Gary


Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> "Skagestad, Peter"  12/13/11 3:42 PM >>>
Gary,

Thank you for those thoughtful and informative comments. I was
interested to hear of your interactions with Engelbart, and that I may
have sparked an interest in Peirce on his part. Generally, though, I do
not see anything that requires any direct comment from me, except to
note that I am woefully ignorant of biosemiotics.

It has been quiet so far, but I assume everybody is busy, and I am
actually having a slightly crazy week myself, so I will give it another
couple of days before moving on to the next section of Joe's paper.

All the best,
Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf
of Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 3:20 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: 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, ho

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Benjamin Udell]

ifacts in which thought resides as a dispositional power. The power is 
signification, which is the power of the sign to generate interpretants of 
itself. Thinking is semiosis, and semiosis is the action of a sign. The sign 
actualizes itself as a sign in generating an interpretant, which is itself a 
further sign of the same thing, which, actualized as a sign, generates a 
further interpretant, and so on. As Skagestad construes the import of this -- 
correctly, I believe -- the development of thinking can take the form of 
development of the material media of thinking, which means such things as the 
development of instruments and media of expression, such as notational systems, 
or means and media of inscription such as books and writing instruments, 
languages considered as material entities like written inscriptions and sounds, 
physical instruments of observation such as test tubes, microscopes, particle 
accelerators, and so forth. 
Thinking, actively cogitating, is even less pure cognition than are looking (in 
order to see) and listening (in order to hear). The idea of reasoning, as 
_deliberate_ self-controlled inference, evokes the idea not only of active 
ability/competence (or able and competent doings themselves) but also of active 
willing. While ability/competence implies an end for which one cares to act, 
aside from the end's being in question, active willing implies an end for which 
one cares to contest, in a contest over what ends will prevail.  (Ironically 
"competent" comes from a word meaning "competing" but the connotation of the 
competitive has been lost by the word "competent" in English, a loss partly 
enabled, I suspect, by the difference in stress location and consequent vowel 
pronunciation.) 

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)?  
Well, certainly it extends the reach of people's wills and feelings. But how 
mental is it if its processes are chiefly competential and cognitive? Are they 
such? Or are volitional and affective processes, not merely secondarily as 
needed for competence and cognition, in there even in the programming, not 
usually recognized?

Best, Ben


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Skagestad, Peter
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 11:43 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

I am now opening the slow read of Joe Ransdell’s paper ‘The Relevance of 
Peircean Semiotic to Computational Intelligence Augmentation’, the final paper 
in this slow read series. I realize that Steven’s slow read is still in 
progress, but we have had overlapping reads before.

Since we are conducting these reads to commemorate Joe, I will open with some 
personal reminiscences. In the fall of 1994, I bought the first modem for my 
home computer, a Macintosh SE-30. At about the same time I received a 
hand-written snail-mail letter from my erstwhile mentor the psychologist Donald 
Campbell, who had just returned from Germany, where he had met with Alfred 
Lange, who told him about an online discussion group devoted to Peirce’s 
philosophy. Campbell was not himself very interested in Peirce, but he knew I 
was, and so passed the information along. And so I logged on to Peirce-L. 

My connection was very primitive. I used a dial-up connection to U Mass 
Lowell’s antiquated VAX computer, which I had to access in terminal-emulation 
mode, whereby my Macintosh mimicked a dumb terminal for the VAX, which ran the 
VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system and VMS Mail (later replaced with 
the somewhat more user-friendly DECmail). It was extremely awkward to use, but 
it was free. 

I had never met Joe Ransdell before – I only ever met him face to face once – 
although we knew of each other’s work. Joe immediately caught on to my 
difficulties in navigating VMS, and coached me patiently in the technical side 
of things offline, while constantly prodding and encouraging my participation 
in the online discussion. While never leaving one in doubt of his own opinions, 
Joe consistently stimulated and nurtured an open and critical, yet at the same 
time nonjudgmental exchange of ideas and opinions. The intellectual environment 
Joe created was an invaluable aid to me in developing my ideas on intelligence 
augmentation and the relevance of Peircean semiotic thereto.

Now to the paper, available on the Arisbe site at 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/ia.htm. It is the 
longest paper in the slow read – 30 single-spaced pages plus notes – and 
December tends to be a short month, as many listers will no doubt be too busy 
with other things to pay much attention to Peirce-L in the final week or so of 
the month. My feeling is that we 

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Gary,

Thank you for those thoughtful and informative comments. I was interested to 
hear of your interactions with Engelbart, and that I may have sparked an 
interest in Peirce on his part. Generally, though, I do not see anything that 
requires any direct comment from me, except to note that I am woefully ignorant 
of biosemiotics.

It has been quiet so far, but I assume everybody is busy, and I am actually 
having a slightly crazy week myself, so I will give it another couple of days 
before moving on to the next section of Joe's paper.

All the best,
Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 3:20 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: 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 mat

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

speakers at
subsequent ICCS conferences and, for a time at least, ICCS had, in part,
a decidedly Peircean flavor.)

You concluded:

PS: Engelbart's work - what I have read of it - deals primarily with the
machine side of the equation, and while Peirce anticipated some of what
Engelbart said, my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind
complements Engelbart's work. I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen
years ago, and he had never heard of Peirce before, but was not at all
dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by the way, that Engelbart's
chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - was to augment
group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much like
that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his
projected book on the subject.

GR: I don't believe he did finish that projected book, the only one I
know by him (there are several about him) being Boosting Our Collective
IQ, a collection of several key essays on the bootstrapping idea. For a
few years I was on the ba-unrev list centered around Engelbart's ongoing
research at the Doug Engelbar Institute he founded with his daughter,
now based at SRI. http://www.dougengelbart.org/ While "the machine side
of the equation" was certainly represented (for example, in the
discussions of dynamic knowledge repositories, or DKRs), there was, as I
recall, considerable discussion of his work in Collective IQ and CoDIAK
(acronym for how a group of people co- or *concurrently develop,
integrate, and apply their knowledge* to some end, goal, typically a 
project they share an interest in, strategically 'bootstrapping' it to
accelerate movement towards their goal).

I haven't kept up with Engelbart's work in recent years, but I think you
are correct in seeing it as "reflecting an understanding of IA very much
like that articulated by Joe."

Best,

Gary


Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> "Skagestad, Peter"  12/04/11 11:29 AM >>>
Gary,

Just a couple of comments. In my view Peirce and Turing play analogous
roles in some respects but not in others. Turing directly influenced the
evolution of AI and articulated - whether in jest or in earnest - the
computational model of the mind later embraced and abandoned by Putnam,
articulated but never fully embraced by Fodor, and later advocated by
Haugeland, Dennett, and Pinker, among others. Peirce had no influence on
the evolution of IA (although he has influenced AI); the analogy is that
Peirce articulated a model of the mind which I have argued is tacitly
presupposed by much of IA research.

Engelbart's work - what I have read of it - deals primarily with the
machine side of the equation, and while Peirce anticipated some of what
Engelbart said, my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind
complements Engelbart's work. I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen
years ago, and he had never heard of Peirce before, but was not at all
dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by the way, that Engelbart's
chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - was to augment
group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much like
that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his
projected book on the subject.

Cheers,
Peter


From: Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 7:16 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU; Skagestad, Peter
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Peter, list,

I began my paper, "Trikonic Inter-Enterprise Architectonic,"
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonic_architectonic.pdf
thus:

Peter Skagestad in “'The Mind's Machines: The Turing Machine, the Memex,
and the Personal Computer” considers the history of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) in relation to Intelligence Augmentation (IA) and
concludes that the American scientist, logician and philosopher, Charles
S. Peirce, provided a theoretical basis for IA analogous to Turing’s for
AI. Besides being keenly interested in the possibility of the evolution
of human consciousness as such, Peirce seems even to have anticipated
Doug Engelbart’s notion of the co-evolution of man and machine. In
another paper on ‘virtuality’ as a central concept in Peirce’s
pragmatism Skagestad goes so far as to suggest that “in Peirce's thought
. . . we find the most promising philosophical framework available for
the understanding and advancement of the project of augmenting human
intellect through the development and use of virtual technologies”  [GR:
a footnote here place reads: Skagestad notes, however, that for Peirce
“reasoning in the fullest sense of the word could not be

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

Engelbart said, my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind
complements Engelbart's work. I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen
years ago, and he had never heard of Peirce before, but was not at all
dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by the way, that Engelbart's
chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - was to augment
group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much like
that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his
projected book on the subject.

GR: I don't believe he did finish that projected book, the only one I
know by him (there are several about him) being Boosting Our Collective
IQ, a collection of several key essays on the bootstrapping idea. For a
few years I was on the ba-unrev list centered around Engelbart's ongoing
research at the Doug Engelbar Institute he founded with his daughter,
now based at SRI. http://www.dougengelbart.org/ While "the machine side
of the equation" was certainly represented (for example, in the
discussions of dynamic knowledge repositories, or DKRs), there was, as I
recall, considerable discussion of his work in Collective IQ and CoDIAK
(acronym for how a group of people co- or *concurrently develop,
integrate, and apply their knowledge* to some end, goal, typically a 
project they share an interest in, strategically 'bootstrapping' it to
accelerate movement towards their goal).

I haven't kept up with Engelbart's work in recent years, but I think you
are correct in seeing it as "reflecting an understanding of IA very much
like that articulated by Joe."

Best,

Gary


Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> "Skagestad, Peter"  12/04/11 11:29 AM >>>
Gary,

Just a couple of comments. In my view Peirce and Turing play analogous
roles in some respects but not in others. Turing directly influenced the
evolution of AI and articulated - whether in jest or in earnest - the
computational model of the mind later embraced and abandoned by Putnam,
articulated but never fully embraced by Fodor, and later advocated by
Haugeland, Dennett, and Pinker, among others. Peirce had no influence on
the evolution of IA (although he has influenced AI); the analogy is that
Peirce articulated a model of the mind which I have argued is tacitly
presupposed by much of IA research.

Engelbart's work - what I have read of it - deals primarily with the
machine side of the equation, and while Peirce anticipated some of what
Engelbart said, my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind
complements Engelbart's work. I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen
years ago, and he had never heard of Peirce before, but was not at all
dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by the way, that Engelbart's
chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - was to augment
group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much like
that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his
projected book on the subject.

Cheers,
Peter


From: Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 7:16 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU; Skagestad, Peter
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Peter, list,

I began my paper, "Trikonic Inter-Enterprise Architectonic,"
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonic_architectonic.pdf
thus:

Peter Skagestad in “'The Mind's Machines: The Turing Machine, the Memex,
and the Personal Computer” considers the history of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) in relation to Intelligence Augmentation (IA) and
concludes that the American scientist, logician and philosopher, Charles
S. Peirce, provided a theoretical basis for IA analogous to Turing’s for
AI. Besides being keenly interested in the possibility of the evolution
of human consciousness as such, Peirce seems even to have anticipated
Doug Engelbart’s notion of the co-evolution of man and machine. In
another paper on ‘virtuality’ as a central concept in Peirce’s
pragmatism Skagestad goes so far as to suggest that “in Peirce's thought
. . . we find the most promising philosophical framework available for
the understanding and advancement of the project of augmenting human
intellect through the development and use of virtual technologies”  [GR:
a footnote here place reads: Skagestad notes, however, that for Peirce
“reasoning in the fullest sense of the word could not be represented
by an algorithm, but involved observation and experimentation as
essential ingredients"].

I have very much looked forward to this particular slow read. As you may
or may not know, I have been much influenced by especially those three
papers of yours on Arisbe t

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Gary,

Just a couple of comments. In my view Peirce and Turing play analogous roles in 
some respects but not in others. Turing directly influenced the evolution of AI 
and articulated - whether in jest or in earnest - the computational model of 
the mind later embraced and abandoned by Putnam, articulated but never fully 
embraced by Fodor, and later advocated by Haugeland, Dennett, and Pinker, among 
others. Peirce had no influence on the evolution of IA (although he has 
influenced AI); the analogy is that Peirce articulated a model of the mind 
which I have argued is tacitly presupposed by much of IA research.

Engelbart's work - what I have read of it - deals primarily with the machine 
side of the equation, and while Peirce anticipated some of what Engelbart said, 
my chief claim is that Peirce's model of the mind complements Engelbart's work. 
I discussed this with Engelbart fifteen years ago, and he had never heard of 
Peirce before, but was not at all dismissive of my claim. It is interesting, by 
the way, that Engelbart's chief interest at that time - mid-nineteen-nineties - 
was to augment group intelligence, reflecting an understanding of IA very much 
like that articulated by Joe. I do not know whether he ever completed his 
projected book on the subject.

Cheers,
Peter


From: Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 7:16 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU; Skagestad, Peter
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Peter, list,

I began my paper, "Trikonic Inter-Enterprise Architectonic,"
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonic_architectonic.pdf
thus:

Peter Skagestad in “'The Mind's Machines: The Turing Machine, the Memex,
and the Personal Computer” considers the history of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) in relation to Intelligence Augmentation (IA) and
concludes that the American scientist, logician and philosopher, Charles
S. Peirce, provided a theoretical basis for IA analogous to Turing’s for
AI. Besides being keenly interested in the possibility of the evolution
of human consciousness as such, Peirce seems even to have anticipated
Doug Engelbart’s notion of the co-evolution of man and machine. In
another paper on ‘virtuality’ as a central concept in Peirce’s
pragmatism Skagestad goes so far as to suggest that “in Peirce's thought
. . . we find the most promising philosophical framework available for
the understanding and advancement of the project of augmenting human
intellect through the development and use of virtual technologies”  [GR:
a footnote here place reads: Skagestad notes, however, that for Peirce
“reasoning in the fullest sense of the word could not be represented
by an algorithm, but involved observation and experimentation as
essential ingredients"].

I have very much looked forward to this particular slow read. As you may
or may not know, I have been much influenced by especially those three
papers of yours on Arisbe to which you referred. Before I comment
further, is there anything in the above passage which you would say
needs correction or where you yourself have somewhat modified your
position?

Best,

Gary R.


Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> "Skagestad, Peter"  12/03/11 11:56 AM >>>
I am now opening the slow read of Joe Ransdell’s paper ‘The Relevance of
Peircean Semiotic to Computational Intelligence Augmentation’, the final
paper in this slow read series. I realize that Steven’s slow read is
still in progress, but we have had overlapping reads before.

Since we are conducting these reads to commemorate Joe, I will open with
some personal reminiscences. In the fall of 1994, I bought the first
modem for my home computer, a Macintosh SE-30. At about the same time I
received a hand-written snail-mail letter from my erstwhile mentor the
psychologist Donald Campbell, who had just returned from Germany, where
he had met with Alfred Lange, who told him about an online discussion
group devoted to Peirce’s philosophy. Campbell was not himself very
interested in Peirce, but he knew I was, and so passed the information
along. And so I logged on to Peirce-L.

My connection was very primitive. I used a dial-up connection to U Mass
Lowell’s antiquated VAX computer, which I had to access in
terminal-emulation mode, whereby my Macintosh mimicked a dumb terminal
for the VAX, which ran the VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system
and VMS Mail (later replaced with the somewhat more user-friendly
DECmail). It was extremely awkward to use, but it was free.

I had never met Joe Ransdell before * I only ever met him face to face
once * although we knew of each other’s work. Joe immediately caught on
to my dif

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

Gary,



Yes, I agree; that is explicit enough. Thanks for digging this up.



Peter


From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Fuhrman [g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 5:19 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Peter, re the question you raise here ...

JR: “In developing Skagestad’s conception further in the direction indicated I 
also ground this in Peirce’s dictum, but I do so by making explicit a different 
(but complementary) implication of the same Peircean dictum, namely that all 
thought is dialogical. (JR’s emphasis)”

PS: A footnote indicates that I agree with this, which I do, but I want to 
raise the question whether this implication is actually ever made explicit by 
Peirce himself. Signs presuppose interpretation, and interpretation presupposes 
interpreters, which is made very explicit by Josiah Royce in his most Peircean 
writings, but did Peirce himself make this explicit? I am not saying he did 
not, but I am curious about references.

CP 4.551 (the 1906 “Prolegomena”):
[[[ Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be 
declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least 
two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these 
two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless 
be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not 
merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical 
evolution of thought should be dialogic. ]]]

I think that comes pretty close to JR’s statement.

Gary F.

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm<http://www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm> }{ gnoxic 
studies: Peirce


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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Richmond]

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 Peirc

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

Peter, re the question you raise here ...

 

JR: “In developing Skagestad’s conception further in the direction indicated I 
also ground this in Peirce’s dictum, but I do so by making explicit a different 
(but complementary) implication of the same Peircean dictum, namely that all 
thought is dialogical. (JR’s emphasis)”

 

PS: A footnote indicates that I agree with this, which I do, but I want to 
raise the question whether this implication is actually ever made explicit by 
Peirce himself. Signs presuppose interpretation, and interpretation presupposes 
interpreters, which is made very explicit by Josiah Royce in his most Peircean 
writings, but did Peirce himself make this explicit? I am not saying he did 
not, but I am curious about references.

 

CP 4.551 (the 1906 “Prolegomena”):

[[[ Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be 
declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least 
two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these 
two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless 
be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not 
merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical 
evolution of thought should be dialogic. ]]]

 

I think that comes pretty close to JR’s statement.

 

Gary F.

 

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

 

 


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You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L 
listserv.  To remove yourself from this list, send a message to 
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[peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Skagestad, Peter]

I am now opening the slow read of Joe Ransdell’s paper ‘The Relevance of 
Peircean Semiotic to Computational Intelligence Augmentation’, the final paper 
in this slow read series. I realize that Steven’s slow read is still in 
progress, but we have had overlapping reads before.

Since we are conducting these reads to commemorate Joe, I will open with some 
personal reminiscences. In the fall of 1994, I bought the first modem for my 
home computer, a Macintosh SE-30. At about the same time I received a 
hand-written snail-mail letter from my erstwhile mentor the psychologist Donald 
Campbell, who had just returned from Germany, where he had met with Alfred 
Lange, who told him about an online discussion group devoted to Peirce’s 
philosophy. Campbell was not himself very interested in Peirce, but he knew I 
was, and so passed the information along. And so I logged on to Peirce-L.

My connection was very primitive. I used a dial-up connection to U Mass 
Lowell’s antiquated VAX computer, which I had to access in terminal-emulation 
mode, whereby my Macintosh mimicked a dumb terminal for the VAX, which ran the 
VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system and VMS Mail (later replaced with 
the somewhat more user-friendly DECmail). It was extremely awkward to use, but 
it was free.

I had never met Joe Ransdell before – I only ever met him face to face once – 
although we knew of each other’s work. Joe immediately caught on to my 
difficulties in navigating VMS, and coached me patiently in the technical side 
of things offline, while constantly prodding and encouraging my participation 
in the online discussion. While never leaving one in doubt of his own opinions, 
Joe consistently stimulated and nurtured an open and critical, yet at the same 
time nonjudgmental exchange of ideas and opinions. The intellectual environment 
Joe created was an invaluable aid to me in developing my ideas on intelligence 
augmentation and the relevance of Peircean semiotic thereto.

Now to the paper, available on the Arisbe site at 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/ia.htm. It is the 
longest paper in the slow read – 30 single-spaced pages plus notes – and 
December tends to be a short month, as many listers will no doubt be too busy 
with other things to pay much attention to Peirce-L in the final week or so of 
the month. My feeling is that we will probably only be able to hit the high 
points, but we will see how it goes. Since this is the last slow read in the 
series, we can also go on into January, should there be sufficient interest. I 
should add that the paper generated considerable discussion on the list when 
Joe first posted it about a decade ago; I do not know how many current listers 
were around at the time, but I believe both Gary Richmond and Jon Awbrey took 
active part in the discussion.

As I see it, the paper falls into four parts. The first part – roughly one 
fourth of the paper – sets out the concept of computational intelligence 
augmentation as articulated in three published papers of mine, along with some 
reservations/revisions of Joe’s. The second part adumbrates the 
Peircean/Deweyan conception of inquiry, the third part examines Ginsparg’s 
publication system as a model of intelligence augmentation, and the fourth part 
examines the role of peer review in inquiry, sharply distinguishing editorially 
commissioned review from what Joe understands proper peer review to consist in.

Personally, I shall naturally have most to say about the first part. This does 
not mean that I think the list discussion ought to focus on this part, at the 
expense of the other parts. This is decidedly not my view. But given the 
attention Joe devotes to my work, I think the most valuable contribution I 
personally can make here is commenting on, and engaging in discussion on, what 
Joe has to say about my work.

I am not here going to rehash Joe’s admirable and scrupulously fair 
recapitulation of my writings on intelligence augmentation – although people 
may, of course, want to raise questions/comments about this or that point in 
his recapitulation. What I propose to do in this initial post is make a few 
introductory comments on intelligence augmentation, offer my take on Joe’s 
differences with my articulation, and then propose a few questions for list 
discussion – in full awareness that other listers may find other questions to 
pose that may be as worthy or worthier of discussion.

JR: “Peter Skagestad – philosopher and Peirce scholar – identifies two distinct 
programming visions that have animated research into computationally based 
intelligence which he labels, respectively, as: “Artificial Intelligence” or 
“AI” and “Intelligence Augmentation” or “AI”. The aim of the present paper is, 
first, to describe the distinction between these two type of computational 
intelligence research for the benefit of those who might not be accustomed to 
recognizing these as co-ordinate parts of it, and t