----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Identity & Teridentity
From: John Collier <ag659[…]ncf.ca>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 01:03:31 -0500
X-Message-Number: 1

Cathy, I will try to answer this question, and give some
idea of what my answer would be to your previous
question about how a Quinean reduction of relations would
go.

At 07:13 PM 26/11/2002, Cathy wrote:
>On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, John Collier wrote:
>
> > As I see it, there are two issues. One is whether representation
> > and some other things involve triadic relations. The other
> > is whether there are irreducibly triadic relations. They
> > are not the same issue. So far, I find in Peirce the first
> > issue made quite convincingly in the affirmative. I have not
> > found the second case to be made convincingly at all
> > by either side.
>
>But if one were to establish that representation involves *irreducibly*
>triadic relations, wouldn't one have established the second point, since
>representational relations (to state the obvious) are relations?

Sure. But relations can be triadic and reducible. (E.g., Peirce
refers to between as a degenerate triadic relation, which
presumably can be reduced to dyads -- though it seems
that this is not entirely clear.)

Also, there is the issue of what in what sense we mean reduction
here. If we take Peirce at his word, and being a Third depends
on the world, and not on logic alone, the a logical analysis of
a triadic relation into dyadic relations might not imply real
world reducibility (and that could mean more than one thing).

You are probably familiar with the notion of type/type
versus token/token reduction in debates about the identity
theory of mind. One could have a token/token reduction
without a type/type reduction (or at least they are not
the same issue. Which one is relevant to the reduction
of representational relations isn't obvious, but it seems
that to the extent that representation is the essence of
the mental, that the two issues go hand in hand. I am
not sure that they do, but Elliott Sober raised similar
objections to the reduction of biological function as
the objections Fodor makes to type/type mental
reduction. This would allow function to be irreducible,
and would allow the extension of Thirds into biology.
Cristophe might find this of interest. Then, perhaps
we can extend it further, if the original arguments
are sound. Personally, I think that the tokens aren't
reducible for either function or representation, and
that the type issue is a red herring, artefact
of our means of representing things, and involves a
misplaced concreteness concerning generals. (I don't
deny the reality of natural classes, just that they are
concrete.)

In any case, I suspect that unless there are irreducible
tokens of representation, then representation can be
triadic but reducible (like betweenness). I find the fact
that representation is triadic interesting whether or not
it is reducible. But I think it isn't, because I think every
instance of representation is non-reducible.

Now, as I understand it, Quine's assumption of extensionality
of logic means that all types are nominal, and have no existence
over and above the collection of instances (signs of types,
and ideas of types are also instances, but can't be identified
with the collection of the instances in the extension of the sign
or idea, or in the intension, which is also a collection of
individual -- possible this time). My view of the non-reducibility
of representations would apply to the signs or ideas, not to
the extensions, so I see discussion of the types as more
or less irrelevant. Others are more inclined to give types
some sort of reality over and above the instances (Armstrong
is a good example). If a metaphysical argument is to be robust,
it would be best if it were to apply across various metaphysical
positions, and this seems to me to require token irreducibility of
at least some relations in this case. It would be better if
it did not depend on issues of the metaphysics of logic
or of types that are highly debatable. Quine's approach
is the more conservative. I think it does not rule out
irreducible representations (and he also adopts a sort of
holism about representation), but it allows reduciblity or
analyzability of relations in the purely logical sense
that has to do with extensions alone. The extensional
approach to logic is also the most conservative, since
it requires what any other approach will require,
but less than any other except maybe a really pure
Platonism. Whether more is required needs additional
argument, not, e.g., stipulation. It might well be useful
to assume more to get on with various jobs, though. This
usefulness itself is a sort of abductive reason to accept
the assumption. Perhaps that is the best we should
expect, but to discuss this would take me too far afield.

In any case, unless
Quine is deeply incoherent, we have in him a position
that allows reduction of all complex relations to dyadic
relations by identifying the complex relations with structures
of dyadic relations on a token-token basis (i.e,, extensionally).
Yet he does not see representation to be reducible (this
is part of the point of the rejection of the analytic/synthetic
distinction -- one cannot separate form and content
unequivocally). So I maintain that issues 1 and 2 are
not the same issue. On some metaphysics, they may be
the same issue. On Quine's metaphysics, though, one
can have a structure dyadically composed of only dyadic
relations which is not reducible. And I suppose that even
in this, we will find that representation always involves
structures that are triadic, like betweenness. For example,
Montague's pragmatics, taken up by Kaplan and Perry
(though the latter gave up the idea later) are triadic,
involving the composition of a function from context
and sign to intensions, and from intensions to extension,
so we have a three place relation between sign, context
and extension. I am not saying this is an adequate semantics,
I am just giving it as an example of a triadic but decomposable
version. In my paper on information dynamics and semiosis
(which you have read), I argued that this approach, if fully
carried out, actually eliminates meaning rather than accounting
for it. Quine suggests the elimination of meaning, though he
retains what he calls the ersatz, vegetarian version, in Word and
Object. This ersatz version is still holistic, though, even if it is
behavioristic. The issues do not line up as simply as they
might appear on first glance. In the book Cliff and I
are doing on reduction in complex systems we have
found it necessary to distinguish three varieties of
reduction that are often conflated. (The conflation
is implied by the Logical Empricist approach, mostly
by the assumption of a non-equivocal analytic-synthetic
distinction, or something that implies that condition.)

I think I had better stop there, or I will be writing a book.

John




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Identity & Teridentity
From: "Seth Sharpless" <seth.sharpless[…]colorado.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 01:06:04 -0700
X-Message-Number: 2

J: So "Gold => Metal" is read "The predicate Metal is
'contained in' the subject Gold".

S: OK, but from that, one may infer that "a is metal" follows
of necessity from "a is gold."

J: "A. The fact that i, j, k are identical
is contained in
B. The fact that i=j, i=k, j=k."

S: So again, one may infer that the proposition that
i, j,k are identical follows of necessity from i =j, i=k, j=k.
Indeed, and isn't that what everybody has been assuming
Peirce meant? Leibniz seems a long way around to
make this discovery.

J: (Referring to CP4.311)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peirce is making a point about operational structure that is closely
related to the pragmatic maxim. In themselves, as monadic elements
of a group, all of the group elements are in the first instance alike.
Still, in the second instance, they can be recognized as distinct from
one another "by their effects", that is to say, by the way that they
act on one another. This refers to the "regular representations" of
group elemnts acting on the group itself. See the following etude:

http://www.altheim.com/cs/difflogic.html

The version of Leibniz's principle of indiscernibility to
which Peirce is alluding in this connection, I am guessing,
is the one that says: "No two monads can be exactly alike".
And the objection that Peirce is really making is to the
logical necessity for it. So, my guess is that Peirce
is talking about a symmetry principle, something akin
to an equivalence or an invariance principle, say,
like all reference frames or POV's are alike,
but that does not diminish the diversity
of phenomena or the potential for truth
one little bit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

S: If I understand you, I think your comment is fair. The
CP1.456 quote is the most troublesome.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CP1.456 (1896) Two drops of water retain each its identity
and opposition to the other no matter in what or in how
many respects they are alike. Even could they
interpenetrate one another like optical images
(which are also individual), they would nevertheless
react, though perhaps not at that moment,
and by virtue of that reaction would retain their
identities.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

S: Because this_quote seems to say that two entities could
be indiscernible in ALL respects (even spatial) at time t,
and yet, non-identical at time t, because they could interact
at time t+1.

S: Problem: What could be the possible practical effects of
swapping image one and image two at time t, when they
are coincident and completely indistinguishable? And if
there are none, then how can we say that the images "retain
their identities" when they are indistinguishable from each
other?

S: Further, how can we distinguish practically between the
case in which one image gives way to two from the case
in which there are always two images, the two just being
coincident at one time?

S: Of course, there is a certain _intensional_ simplicity in
assuming that there are two entities which retain their
identities throughout. That constraint would limit the
range of "possible worlds," so to speak (since we are
falling back on Leibniz). That would put the criteria of
identity back in the intensional fold (where I think it
belongs).

S: Thank you for your courteous reply. I am sorry that
I don't have time to read your paper, and I will not be
able to respond until after the holidays.
Seth




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: Clark Goble <Clark.Goble[…]attbi.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 03:01:47 -0700
X-Message-Number: 3

___ Martin ___
| Whereas Western rationality has been on the side of the sign,
| Neo-Platonist thought was on the side of the image or the
| symbol. This seems to be the case, in fact, for all forms of
| hermetic thinking (Eco has written on this in Interpretation
| and Overinterpretation and in The Limits of Interpretation)
| whether Kabbalah, the doctrine of signatures (see Foucault's
| the Order of Things -- first chapter), artes memoriae (Bruno,
| Camillo -- see the works of F. Yates, M. Carruthers, L. Bolzoni,
| P. Rossi on memory and mnemonic systems), the medical theories
| of Paracelsus, etc etc.
___

Thanks for the comments, but I'm not sure this Eco-like view really
fits. For one the unique form of neo-Platonism espoused by Bruno was a
big influence in Spinoza and Leibniz, but they clearly were
Rationalists. So they don't really fit the Renaissance model at all.
It is true that, in the case of Leibnize the "presentation" of other
monads is somewhat "holistic." (Meaning that they aren't presented
just as a sign or word, but with a kind of "excess" to use the language
of 20th century phenomenology) However this presentation really can't
be called an image, per se. Indeed Leibniz was a strong objector to
the traditional view of representation by image. (The basic view that
was found amongst the Greeks and utilized by the Stoics, Aristotileans,
and Platonists)

Now Leibniz does come close to the idealism of Berkeley or the
neo-Platonists in that this presentation is akin to purely apprehending
the forms. It is just that in this case the forms are forms in the
sense of Leibniz' unique conception of monads. They differ in many
significant ways from the forms of say Plotinus or Plato. Further the
perception of these forms is often clouded in a way similar to
Plotinus, but with a few significant differences.

This is a Peirce list so I don't want to discuss Leibniz' philosophy
too much. It does, I think, offer a very interesting revision of many
Renaissance views. (i.e. Bruno's reconception of matter, the move in
the Renaissance towards materialistic spirits, etc.) It offers them in
a rather more philosophically rigorous fashion than many of the main
Renaissance figures achieved.

Going back to the neo-Platonists, while "image" as a metaphor is apt,
it is also important to keep in mind other forms of neo-Platonism which
were much more textual or in terms of signs. Kabbalism is the obvious
example. It is worth noting that Yates downplays the Kabbalistic
influence on Bruno, probably because it contradicts her "image" view of
the Renaissance and the Art of Memory. Eco is a little better on this
regard. And indeed Eco often interprets the Hermetic movements in
terms of textuality and hermeneutics. In _Semiotics and the Philosophy
of Language_ he even ties Kabbalism and Derrida's philosophy together.
Elsewhere he discusses Kabbalism and Hermeticism in terms of unlimited
semiosis and thus signs and thirdness.

___ Martin ___
| What they seem to have in common with what, at one point, was
| also called sensual or primitive thinking is the breaking down
| of the principle of non contradiction: there is no difference
| between the symbol and what it stands for.
___

Yes. It is the true icon. And Leibniz makes repetition and thus
iconity the basis of matter. Further ideas within the monad of other
monads are iconic due to his principle of pre-established harmony.

Moving to Peirce, I think Derrida points out how repetition is the
basis for communication, language and semiotics in general. (Which is
not to deny thirdness, but merely show how thirdness of a certain sort
requires secondness -- which Peirce also points out in his famous 10
categories) This is well argued in _On Grammatology_.

Where thirdness proper enters in is due to rational thought. It has
the interpreter. In Platonism and neo-Platonism this is the play of
the Logos.

___ Martin ___
| The Catholic dogma of transubstantiation is another example: the host
| is both a piece of bread and the body of Christ.
___

It was the attempt to explain this that led to some of Leibniz' work on
repetition and how monads are one with their body. Of course he hedged
things in his discussions somewhat, since he was worried about heresy.
(Especially considering how similar some of his views on monads and
matter were to Bruno)

___ Martin ___
| For in firstness there can be no principle of non contradiction;
| and although signs and representation belongs to thirdness there
| is an element of firstness in them, which has to do with feeling,
| quality, possibility.
___

I think this would, for Leibniz, be due to the fact that monads are
windowless. There is no causal relations with other monads. All
things have a pre-establish harmony due to God. Thus even as the world
is experienced, it is experience purely within the simple monad. Yet
within this unity the other monads are represented (secondness) and
apperception of them is always a perception of them as things
(thirdness). You don't just have the feeling, you have the feeling of
something.

All of this was, of course, adopted and heavily modified by Whitehead
in his process thought. However I more want to just stick with Leibniz
and Peirce.

Where I think Peirce differs significantly from Leibniz is over the
pre-established harmony. He instead favors his doctrine of Immediate
Perception and how that relates to relations.

...the doctrine of Immediate Perception whcih which is
upheld by Reid, Kant, and all dualists who understand the true
nature of dualism, and the denial of which led Cartesians to
the utterly absurd theory of divine assistance upon which the
preestablished harmony of Leibniz is but a slight improvement.
Every philosopher who denies the doctrine of Immediate
Perception, -including idealists of every stripe,-by that denial
cuts off possiblity of ever cognizing a relation. Nor will he
better his position by declaring that all relations are
illusive appearances, since it is not merely true knowledge of
them that he has cut off but every mode of cognitive
representation of them. (Peirce, "On Phenomenology", _The
Essential Peirce_, 155)

Put an other way, monads shouldn't be windowless. However this then
means that the dualism (secondness) of the sort Leibniz allows must be
denied.

___ Martin ___
| Of iconicity, Joe Ransdell wrote: "the relationship of the
| icon proper and its object, just insofar as it is its object,
| must be one of identity;
___

Which, as we see from the above quote, moves us inexorably towards the
problems of phenomenlogy that Husserl dealt with. If the Outside
intrudes to the Inside of our "mind" or at least consciousness in what
way does it retain its unity. And what are the objects of
consciousness?

I think that it is here that Leibniz attempts to adopt a kind of middle
ground between a naive direct realism and idealism. I think that
Peirce does this as well although I'm once again not sure of the unity
of secondness. The relationship logically entails a kind of unity and
thus firstness of a sort.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 06:50:26 EST
X-Message-Number: 4

Clark.Goble wrote:
Quoting Martin,

___ Martin ___
| Of iconicity, Joe Ransdell wrote: "the relationship of the
| icon proper and its object, just insofar as it is its object,
| must be one of identity;
___

Saying, about this,

----quote------------
Which, as we see from the above quote, moves us inexorably towards the
problems of phenomenlogy that Husserl dealt with. If the Outside intrudes to
the Inside of our "mind" or at least consciousness in what way does it retain
its unity. And what are the objects of consciousness?
----end quote--------

If I am following this, then it seems to me that the question here is just
the sort of thing with which traditional versions of the act-object
distinction were designed to deal. In a broad sense, I think that every
variety of realism requires some version of the distinction between act and
object of mind, say, act and object of perception. But it is apparently very
easy to become confused about the distinction and to mis-take one version for
another, so that related discussions easily end up talking at cross purposes.

If we hold to immediate perception, then that is to say that the object of
perception is just some ordinary thing(s) in the world, animal, vegetable or
mineral, and not some representation of such --there is no intermediate
object, such as sense-data or qualia, or felt qualities or what have you
--more precisely, such talk tends toward a confusion of what is perceived
with the how of its being perceived, the way in which it is perceived, etc.
What one wants to say about special objects is better thought of as some
mis-fired description of the character of the perceiving.

This perspective makes it doubtful to think that according to the approach of
imme-diate perception, the object "intrudes to the Inside of our 'mind' " as
you put the matter. Differing perceptions can of course be equally
perceptions of the same object(s), and recognozably so, though differing in
many and various ways. To borrow the Aristotelian language, these differing
perceptions are all equally "actuali-zations" of potentialities of the
object, though, to look at the matter pragmatically, this is not to say that
there is no better and worse amongst the variety. Looking at things, thus
fallibilistically, we avoid the excesses of neo-Platonism.

If, as Joe has it, an icon must be identical with its object, then a
perception, the act, is not an icon --as I see the matter.

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: martin lefebvre <lefebvre[…]vax2.concordia.ca>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 08:30:45 -0500
X-Message-Number: 5

>
>
>Going back to the neo-Platonists, while "image" as a metaphor is
>apt, it is also important to keep in mind other forms of
>neo-Platonism which were much more textual or in terms of signs.
>Kabbalism is the obvious example. It is worth noting that Yates
>downplays the Kabbalistic influence on Bruno, probably because it
>contradicts her "image" view of the Renaissance and the Art of
>Memory. Eco is a little better on this regard. And indeed Eco
>often interprets the Hermetic movements in terms of textuality and
>hermeneutics. In _Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language_ he even
>ties Kabbalism and Derrida's philosophy together. Elsewhere he
>discusses Kabbalism and Hermeticism in terms of unlimited semiosis
>and thus signs and thirdness.
>


What I mean, rather quickly, with the term "image" is precisely the
idea of "ONE" -- which may be text/linguistic-based (text read as
image) and hermeneutical. (Eidos, which means Form, also means
Image...). When Eco -- who, in my mind, is not a very inspired reader
of Peirce -- reads Hermeticism in terms of unlimited semiosis, it
seems to me that he's trying to explain practices of interpretation
based on the idea of "ONE". It is not surprizing that Eco was, for
the longest time, opposed to the idea of iconicity (which he did not
consider to be a valid semiotic type and tried to explain away as
being founded on convention).

A few other things:

I'm not sure I see the connection between repetition and sameness. In
fact sameness conceived as repetition seems already to be on the side
of secondness (it requires two things -- one repeating the other;
whereas sameness requires identity, quality).

Thirdness doesn't require an interpreter -- it requires
interpretation (it requires an interpretant which may or may not
involve a person/interpreter).

According to the New List, objects of consciousness possess
firstness, secondness and thirdness. We can represent them on the
ground of firstness, secondness or thirdness. This will lead Peirce
to the icon, index, symbol triad.


Martin Lefebvre

------------------------------
Dr. Martin Lefebvre
Associate Professor
Director, Graduate Programme in Film Studies

Editor RECHERCHES SEMIOTIQUES/
SEMIOTIC INQUIRY

Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
Concordia University
FB 319
1455 de Maisonneuve, West
Montreal (Quebec), Canada
H3G 1M8

tel. (514) 848-4676/FAX. (514) 848-4255
------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 07:54:40 EST
X-Message-Number: 6

Martin & list,

As you see, I am going backward on this thread. But I thought your posting
quite fascinating. I've picked out a passage which I would like to ask about.

You wrote

---quote-------------
Now Peirce is not a hermetic thinker. He's a rationalist (in the broad sense
of the term). And yet, he offers what, to my knowledge, is the only model of
representation able to bridge the gap between the two great traditions of
representation. For in first-ness there can be no principle of non
contradiction; and although signs and repre-sentation belongs to thirdness
there is an element of firstness in them, which has to do with feeling,
quality, possibility. This, in fact, is the bedrock for representation.
----end quote-------

I am wondering in the first place about what it means to say here that
firstness is the "bedrock of representation." Is this a matter of firstness
latching on to reality in some sense, --say, that we can not doubt that we
are aware of something, or that we are able to identify what we are aware of?
It is not that I am inclined to dispute what you say, but I wonder what is at
stake in the claim.

Perhaps it is a matter of our being aware in some indefinite way and thus
coming into a position to become aware in some more definite way? In that
case it would not be a matter of a "bedrock" of identification of that of
which one is aware, and perhaps not even a bedrock of there being something
of which one is aware --in the sense that we say, "Well, I thought I heard
something, but I guess it was just my imagination"? I can perhaps imagine
that in talking of the firstness of a symbol, that this might be a matter of
some inkling of how it might be applied in a new way --a feeling, we might
say, an inarticulate hunch, the possibility of formulating a useful
hypothesis of some sort. We seem to be in the vicinity of abduction. Yet
abduction has a good deal of uncertainty to it, and so I wonder again about
what you may have in mind regarding "bedrock."

Can you say a bit more about the theme of the passage on which I comment here?

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Reductions Among Relations
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 09:12:40 -0500
X-Message-Number: 7

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

RAR. Note 15

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Compositional Analysis of Relations (cont.)

Let us now look at a way of defining the relational composition of
2-adic relations by using the set-theoretic operational resources
of intersections, projections, and tacit extensions. To be more
specific, we will define the relational composition of a couple
of 2-adic relations in terms of their separate tacit extensions
to 3-adic relations, followed by the set intersection of these
tacit extensions, and then the projection of this intersection,
tantamount to the maximal 3-adic relation that is consistent
with the 'prima facie' 2-adic relational data, into a third
2-adic relation, the computed composition of the first two.

I usually think of this definition of composition as "Tarski's Trick",
because I learned it from a paper of Ulam that attributes it to Tarski,
but I would not be terribly surprised suddenly to recognize it in Peirce,
DeMorgan, or even Newton, for that matter.

| Ulam, S.M. & Bednarek, A.R.,
|"On the Theory of Relational Structures and Schemata for Parallel Computation",
| in Ulam & Bednarek (eds.), 'ABA', pp. 477-508, report dated 1977.
|
| Ulam, F. & Bednarek, A.R. (eds.),
|'Analogies Between Analogies:
| The Mathematical Reports of S.M. Ulam and his Los Alamos Collaborators',
| University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990.

We begin with a pair of 2-adic relations G, H c X x Y.

o-------------------------------------------------o
| |
| o o |
| |\ |\ |
| | \ | \ |
| | \ | \ |
| | \ | \ |
| | \ | \ |
| | \ | \ |
| | * \ | * \ |
| X * Y X * Y |
| \ * | \ * | |
| \ G | \ H | |
| \ | \ | |
| \ | \ | |
| \ | \ | |
| \ | \ | |
| \| \| |
| o o |
| |
o-------------------------------------------------o
Figure 5. Dyadic Relations G, H c X x Y

Mark that H is not exactly the same H that we had before,
because this H is presented in the same plane X x Y as G.
Whether you view isomorphic things to be the same things
or not, you still have to specify the exact isomorphisms
that are needed to transform any given representation of
a thing into a required representation of the same thing.
Let us imagine that we have done this, and say how later:

o-------------------------------------------------o
| |
| o o |
| |\ /| |
| | \ / | |
| | \ / | |
| | \ / | |
| | \ / | |
| | \ / | |
| | * \ / * | |
| X * Y Y * Z |
| \ * | | * / |
| \ G | | H'/ |
| \ | | / |
| \ | | / |
| \ | | / |
| \ | | / |
| \| |/ |
| o o |
| |
o-------------------------------------------------o
Figure 6. Dyadic Relations G c X x Y and H' c Y x Z

To be continued ...

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Identity & Teridentity
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:20:18 -0500
X-Message-Number: 8

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

I&T. Note 36

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

J = Jon Awbrey
S = Seth Sharpless

J: So "Gold => Metal" is read
"The predicate Metal
is 'contained in'
the subject Gold".

S: OK, but from that, one may infer that
"x is metal" follows of necessity from "x is gold".

I would not infer that, not in the context of these readings, because I do not
know for sure what all of the various writers and readers involved might mean
by "necessity" -- I mean, there sits Leibniz, contemplator, overseer, surveyor
of all possible worlds ... no, let's not go there, just yet -- for the moment,
Leibniz has called this a "true universal affirmative categorical proposition",
and I think that I will just stick with that until I have read some more of
his actual text into the record.

J: A. The fact that i, j, k are identical
is contained in
B. The fact that i = j, i = k, j = k.

S: So again, one may infer that the proposition that i, j, k are identical
follows of necessity from i = j, i = k, j = k. Indeed, and isn't that
what everybody has been assuming Peirce meant? Leibniz seems a long
way around to make this discovery.

No, maybe this is just me, but I would be very
careful about throwing any extra ingredients
like 'anagke' into this soup just yet, or
we might incite 'anarche' and end up
in 'anagkaion'.

All I have at present is that the
simple predicate "I_3 (x, y, z)" is
contained in essence in the compound
subject "I(i, j) & I(j, k) & I(i, k)".

Indeed, I worry some about the "simple"
as that is a technical term in Leibniz,
and the last "I(i, k)" looks redundant,
but then again ...

Maybe this is just me, again, but I consider it a "necessity", practically speaking,
to read Leibniz in order to have a clue what Leibniz meant by "indiscernibility" --
which you invited in, or "composite", "contained in", "individual", "simple",
and so on, all of which terms Peirce is using and wrestling with in all of
their possible Leibnizian senses in his basic technical papers from the
"continental divide" year of 1870 onwards.

This is just the way that I show my respect, indeed, my sympathy,
to any writer, by reading what they write before I criticize it,
instead of using my criticism as an excuse not to read it,
as seems to be the fashion of late.

Lucky for us, Peirce did not derive his knowledge of Leibniz or
his insights about comprehension, extension, or their synthesis
as information from Russell's Leibniz or from Quine's rendering
of these notions. I take it as a lesson.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:27:24 EST
X-Message-Number: 9

Martin & list,

Another fascinating passage, Martin. Here with reference to your theme of
word vs. image. I am reminded of the concept of "people of the book," which
would seem to imply, in some substantial degree, going by the words and not
the image. We have the famous biblical prohibition of making graven images or
of substituting some sensual image for divinity. All of this connects with
iconoclasm, of course, but also the better and worse among iconoclasts.
Sometimes, looking back at history, we cannot help but think that the
breakers of images had some good and worthy grounds for what they did. There
seems much historical evidence, in any case, of dangers connected with the
domination of image over substance.

You wrote:

----quote--------------
What I mean, rather quickly, with the term "image" is precisely the idea of
"ONE" -- which may be text/linguistic-based (text read as image) and
hermeneutical. (Eidos, which means Form, also means Image...). When Eco --
who, in my mind, is not a very inspired reader of Peirce -- reads Hermeticism
in terms of unlimited semiosis, it
seems to me that he's trying to explain practices of interpretation based on
the idea of "ONE". It is not surprizing that Eco was, for the longest time,
opposed to the idea of iconicity (which he did not consider to be a valid
semiotic type and tried to explain away as being founded on convention).
---- End quote-------------

Very interesting that Eco changed his mind about the status of icons. I'd be
inter-ested to know more about this. You fail to make clear the connection
suggested between doubts about iconicity and "practices of interpretation
based on the one."

I've been quite intent, myself, on fostering practices of interpretation
based on the many, so to speak. This is based on the incompleteness and
imperfection of what-ever theory or perspective we may consult as a basis of
interpretation. It may be thought that Leibniz is a pluralist, in view of the
multiplicity of monads, but since the monades are all coordinated by the
pre-established harmony, it seems that their perspectives (whether with or
without benefit of "windows") are not quite independent of each other. It is
not that Leibniz does not want to accomodate the possibility of error, of
course, or the diversity of opinions or perspectives, but given the way he
goes about this, we may doubt of the success. Genuine outward clash seems to
be missing. Matter, if I recall the phrase correctly, is a "well founded
illusion," -- well founded, since our perceptions of the world mirror the
states of the monads.

Leibniz is no doubt important in connection with Peirce, since we might
plausibly take the view that the modern focus on continuity begins with
Leibniz. This was certainly a topic which greatly interested him. But the
idea of the pre-established harmony seems to imply too much continuity, in
some sense; though we appreciate that errors and lack of clarity in the
perceptions of the monads must be part of the greater plan. This too evokes
doubts. With his empiricism, it seems that Peirce was trying, to save the
idea of continuity from its (a priori) rationalist defenders. THis brings us
back to the interesting question of how continuity may fit into an empiricist
philosophy.

Thanks again for your stimulating postings, Martin.

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: William Thomas Sherman <gunjones1[…]earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 07:33:34 -0800
X-Message-Number: 10

"According to the New List, objects of consciousness possess
firstness, secondness and thirdness. We can represent them on the
ground of firstness, secondness or thirdness. This will lead Peirce
to the icon, index, symbol triad."

Thank you Martin for bringing a clarity to this much belabored topic, and
allowing Peirce the due dignity of actually making sense.

William



--
William Thomas Sherman
1604 NW 70th St.
Seattle, WA 98117
206-784-1132
gunjones1[…]earthlink.net

http://www.angelfire.com/d20/htfh

"In the senses is deception and illusion, in the understanding is the source
of truth." ~ Xenophanes



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neo Platonism
From: "Armando Sercovich" <cispec[…]com4.com.ar>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:48:12 -0300
X-Message-Number: 11

Dear Martin,

You Wrote:

"When Eco -- who, in my mind, is not a very inspired reader
of Peirce -- reads Hermeticism in terms of unlimited semiosis, it
seems to me that he's trying to explain practices of interpretation
based on the idea of "ONE". It is not surprizing that Eco was, for
the longest time, opposed to the idea of iconicity (which he did not
consider to be a valid semiotic type and tried to explain away as
being founded on convention)."

I agree with that view, but would add that other reason of the Eco's

proximity to Hermogene and linguistic conventionalism has been the
influence of Saussure.

"I'm not sure I see the connection between repetition and sameness. In
fact sameness conceived as repetition seems already to be on the side
of secondness (it requires two things -- one repeating the other;
whereas sameness requires identity, quality)."

Yes, one repeating the other in some aspect or respect: *three things (I think).

Best regards,

Armando Sercovich
CISPEC


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Identity & Teridentity
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:00:25 -0500
X-Message-Number: 12

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Okay, I do find a few uses of "necessary",
in a mathemtical sense, in the last notes
on Leibniz (1679) that I sent:

http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04369.html
http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04371.html

So that will help a little to get his sense,
though I still suspect that there will be
many different senses to watch out for.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: Inna Semetsky <innasense[…]mac.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 08:51:41 -0800 (PST)
X-Message-Number: 13

It is easy to confuse Platonism and neo-platonism, especially with the concept of "One" or "All". The point is that "All" of Plotinus, e.g., by nature is multiple, therefore in neo-platonism one=many (monism=pluralism, in contem.terms). Platonic eideas are not totally out of this world for neo-platonists. The movement is double, from above to below and from below to above, and not reduced to one-way emanation. In this way, yes--peirce would be in neo-platonist camp, metaphysically speaking, in his (and other pragmatists) positing complex relation between the whole and its parts, as well as universals and particulars.
inna

On Thursday, Nov 28, 2002, at 00:30AM, martin lefebvre <lefebvre[…]vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: SV: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: "Torkild Leo Thellefsen" <tlt[…]mail1.stofanet.dk>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 18:06:53 +0100
X-Message-Number: 14

Hi Peder Voetmann,

Are you still on the list

Best wishes

Torkild

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Inna Semetsky [mailto:innasense[…]mac.com]
Sendt: 27. november 2002 17:52
Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism

It is easy to confuse Platonism and neo-platonism, especially with the
concept of "One" or "All". The point is that "All" of Plotinus, e.g., by
nature is multiple, therefore in neo-platonism one=many
(monism=pluralism, in contem.terms). Platonic eideas are not totally out
of this world for neo-platonists. The movement is double, from above to
below and from below to above, and not reduced to one-way emanation. In
this way, yes--peirce would be in neo-platonist camp, metaphysically
speaking, in his (and other pragmatists) positing complex relation
between the whole and its parts, as well as universals and particulars.
inna

On Thursday, Nov 28, 2002, at 00:30AM, martin lefebvre
<lefebvre[…]vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Reductions Among Relations
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 13:00:13 -0500
X-Message-Number: 15

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

RAR. Note 16

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Compositional Analysis of Relations (cont.)

We continue with the trick already in progress,
whereby Ulam reports Tarski as defining the
relational composition P o Q of two 2-adic
relations P, Q c X x X as in this way:

Definition. P o Q = Proj_13 (P x X |^| X x Q).

To get this drift of this definition, one needs
to understand that it's written within a school
of thought that holds that all 2-adic relations
are, "without loss of generality", covered well
enough, "for all practical purposes", under the
aegis of subsets of a suitable cartesian square,
and thus of the form L c X x X. So, if one has
started out with a 2-adic relation of the shape
L c U x V, one merely lets X = U |_| V, trading
in the initial L for a new L c X x X as need be.

Proj_13 is just the projection of the cartesian
cube X x X x X on the space of shape X x X that
is spanned by the first and the third domains,
but since they now have the same names and the
same contents it is necessary to distinguish
them by numbering their relational places.

Finally, the notation of the cartesian product sign "x"
is abused, or extended, depending on your point of view,
to signify a couple of other "products" with respect to
a 2-adic relation L c X x X and a subset W c X, like so:

Definition. L x W = {<x, y, z> in X^3 : <x, y> in L and z in W}.

Definition. W x L = {<x, y, z> in X^3 : x in W and <y, z> in L}.

Applying these definitions to the case P, Q c X x X, the two 2-adic relations
whose relational composition P o Q c X x X is about to be defined, one finds:

P x X = {<x, y, z> in X^3 : <x, y> in P and z in X},

X x Q = {<x, y, z> in X^3 : x in X and <y, z> in Q}.

I hope it is clear that these are just
the appropriate special cases of the
tacit extensions already defined.

P x X = TE_12_3 (P),

X x Q = TE_23_1 (Q).

In sum, or product, then, the expression

Proj_13 (P x X |^| X x Q)

is the same thing as

Proj_13 (TE_12_3 (P) |^| TE_23_1 (Q)),

which is generalized -- though, with respect to
one's school of thought, perhaps inessentially so --
by the form from my school that I give as follows:

Definition. P o Q = Proj_XZ (TE_XY_Z (P) |^| TE_YZ_X (Q)).

The snapshots are in the developer ...

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: PAPER ON IA AND COMMUNICATIONAL NORMS
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:57:46 -0600
X-Message-Number: 16



i am attaching a nearly but not quite complete draft of a paper which I have
been struggling with since I came back from the Sao Paulo trip. I think I
have finally found the conceptual glitches that were holding me up and which
kept me from distributing it earlier, as I originally intended to do. It
is for the proceedings volume for one of the two conferences I attended and
contributed to there, namely, the one organized by Joao Queiroz and Ricardo
Gudwin under the description Workshop on Computational Intelligence and
Semiotic. This was a highly successful conference, in my opinion.

My invitation there had been primarily to a Conference or Seminar organized
by Lucia Santaella for the benefit of the flourishing school of Peirce
Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC/SP) which she has
developed during the past twenty years -- thanks to Lucia's work, Sao Paulo
is now the best place in the world to go to study Peirce if you want to be
in the center of a lively enthusiasm for it and well-informed understanding
of it, in my opinion -- for which I prepared a quite different kind of
paper, concerned with the nature of the artwork as, in my opinion, it should
be regarded from a semiotical point of view. Joao is a former student of
Lucia's who, in collaboration with Ricardo (Richard) Gudwin from UNICAMP
(another Brazilian university), is industriously building up a Peircean
presence in the Faculty of Technology and Digital media there at PUC/SP.
(Joao is also responsible for the very well-conceived Digital Encyclopedia
of Peirce which is under development on-line and already contains many fine
entries. You will find reference to it and to its present content on the
Arisbe website and i urge you to consider contacting Joao and contributing
to it. It is an excellent venue because of the flexibility of the
Encyclopedia rationale and will become of increasing importance as it
continues to be filled out.)

I had a vague idea of doing something on networking for Joao's seminar, but
then it occurred to me at nearly the last minute that it would afford an
opportunity for me to take advantage of work that Peter Skagestad has been
doing in recent years in relating Peirce to the Intelligence Augmentation
movement that exists in parallel with the Artificial Intelligence movement.
I realized, belatedly, that this was the conceptual platform I should use to
relate Peirce to what I have learned over the past few years about the
problems involved in taking advantage of the opportunities opened up by the
internet and the Web by adding something to what Peter had already been
saying about the potentialities of Intelligence Augmentation and how Peirce
provides a rationale for that.

Those of you who have been on the list for several years will recall that I
have now and again attempted to convey something of what is going on on the
internet in connection with the attempt to move scientific and scholarly
work on-line, as far as feasible, and it is really quite extraordinarily
interesting to see how the establishment reaction to the opportunities the
internet offers has managed to throttle this establishment-threatening
development thus far. My interest in this has not been so much from a zeal
to reform as it has been from the belief that it would be in the application
of Peirce's ideas to that that I would learn what Peirce was all about in a
way that i hadn't understood before, and this is my first attempt to try to
exploit what i learned about all that for the purpose of applying his ideas
there.

The paper in progress I am distributing as an attachment here will explain
some things about this, and if you are interested in this sort of thing I
urge you to begin by reading the papers by Peter Skagestad which are already
available at Arisbe on this topic, as background for what I am doing. You
will find the references to his papers in my paper in the footnotes. My
reason for making it available now, though there are still some finishing
touches required to complete it (and some minor sylishtic improvements
needed), is both that I want to get some critical feedback and I also want
to give Peter a chance to correct any misimpression i may be giving about
what he has done thus far before i finish it. I am sure I have not read all
he has done on this, but his interests and mine seem to differ enough for it
to be legitimate to present my intgerests as a kind of supplement to his as
well as being based on some basic distinctions he draws. But i am not sure
that I handle this justly from his point of view and hope to get some
feedback from him on this, too.

It is in Word format and is available as an attachment to the present
message. I will make the finished version available as soon as i finish it
and get it off to Joao for the proceedings volume.
I hope also to generate some discussion here which will give me -- and Andre
DeTienne, too, who was also at Sao Paulo as a contributor to the same
conferences -- a chance to say more about, first, Joao's and Ricardo's
projects there, and then about Lucia Santaella's conference and the
conference papers there. Although my paper for Lucia's seminar is
reasonably finished -- the proceedings volume has already been published, in
effect -- it seems best to give a little lead time on that and not confuse
things by distributing a copy of that paper at the same time. There are
some interesting things that came up in that connection as well, especially
some things I learned from a paper by Andre on Peirce's conception of
personal identify, which has some bearing perhaps on the identity topic that
is still under discussion here. But later on that.

Joe Ransdell

ATTACHED PAPER: Ransdell - "The Relevance of Peircean Semiotic

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: Clark Goble <Clark.Goble[…]attbi.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:06:14 -0700
X-Message-Number: 17

___ Howard ___
| In a broad sense, I think that every variety of realism
| requires some version of the distinction between act and
| object of mind, say, act and object of perception.
| [. . .]
| If, as Joe has it, an icon must be identical with its object,
| then a perception, the act, is not an icon --as I see the
| matter.
___

The problem is that Leibniz has acts as simply the moving from one
state in the monad to an other state. Thus the distinction between an
act of perceiving and the simple change of the given is blurred.

In my post last night though I was discussing the objects of perception
and not necessarily perceiving itself. The objects of perception are
the pure representation of other monads. He wishes to make monads that
are far away "unclear" but the basic idea is the same. The distinction
is that technically the monad perceived in the mind is only pure
correlation to the other monads as viewed externally. That is where
the windowless nature of the monads comes in. It is both one of the
strengths of Leibniz but also a weakness, as I think Peirce points out.

In a sense I believe that Leibniz wishes to hold a pure mechanistic
approach. Thus he denies (or ignores) many aspects of Peircean
thirdness. Of course many would say that much of philosophy overlooks a
lot of thirdness.

On the other hand since we move from one state of affairs to a new
state of affairs one could argue that this is a kind of thirdness.
Leibniz' appetition could perhaps be considered the act. However
understandably many will find the very "mechanistic" nature of
perception in Leibniz to be unable to deal with the texture and
"feeling" of perceiving.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: Clark Goble <Clark.Goble[…]attbi.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:18:32 -0700
X-Message-Number: 18


___ Martin ___
| I'm not sure I see the connection between repetition and sameness.
| In fact sameness conceived as repetition seems already to be on
| the side of secondness (it requires two things -- one repeating
| the other; whereas sameness requires identity, quality).
___

For it to be a repetition there must be something that is the same
otherwise it is not a repetition of the same. Thus repetition involves
a kind of paradox. On the one hand it can't be a pure repetition or it
would be unity and identity, as you mention. On the other hand our
notion of repetition requires that it be the same.

Allow me to quote Derrida to get at the point I'm trying to communicate
so poorly.

A sign is never an event, if by event we mean an
irreplaceable and irreversible empirical particular.
A sign which would take place but "once" would not
be a sign, a purely idiomatic sign would not be a
sign. A signifier (in general) must be formally
recognizable in spite of, and through, the
diversity of empirical characteristics which modify
it. It must remain the *same*, and be able to be
repeated as such, despite and across the deformations
which the so-called empirical even necessarily make
it undergo. (Derrida, "Speech and Phenomena")

This gets us back to the platonic discussion. After all the basic
approach of all platonists is to say that the difference in repetition
is illusion and that it is the same direct perception of some ideal
form. I suspect that this paradox may be why Husserl moves from a kind
of direct realism to something nearly platonic.

___ Martin ___
| Thirdness doesn't require an interpreter -- it requires
| interpretation (it requires an interpretant which may or
| may not involve a person/interpreter).
___

Sorry, I was speaking in the context of Leibniz where change occurs as
the correlate of either passive or active force within monads. Thus
all interpretants are monads for him. The monad may not be what we'd
call an interpreter, since all reality reduces to monads except for God.




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: martin lefebvre <lefebvre[…]vax2.concordia.ca>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:05:00 -0500
X-Message-Number: 19

Howard,

I coudln't agree more with you regarding iconophilia and iconoclasm.
To my mind, this is one of the most important debates in semiotics
(as well as religion, for that matter).

Martin

------------------------------
Dr. Martin Lefebvre
Associate Professor
Director, Graduate Programme in Film Studies

Editor RECHERCHES SEMIOTIQUES/
SEMIOTIC INQUIRY

Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
Concordia University
FB 319
1455 de Maisonneuve, West
Montreal (Quebec), Canada
H3G 1M8

tel. (514) 848-4676/FAX. (514) 848-4255
------------------------------

>Martin & list,
>
>Another fascinating passage, Martin. Here with reference to your theme of
>word vs. image. I am reminded of the concept of "people of the book," which
>would seem to imply, in some substantial degree, going by the words and not
>the image. We have the famous biblical prohibition of making graven images or
>of substituting some sensual image for divinity. All of this connects with
>iconoclasm, of course, but also the better and worse among iconoclasts.
>Sometimes, looking back at history, we cannot help but think that the
>breakers of images had some good and worthy grounds for what they did. There
>seems much historical evidence, in any case, of dangers connected with the
>domination of image over substance.
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:36:27 EST
X-Message-Number: 20

Clark & list,

Clark Goble wrote

----quote-------------
The problem is that Leibniz has acts as simply the moving from one state in
the monad to an other state. Thus the distinction between an act of
perceiving and the simple change of the given is blurred.
---end quote---------

I think this is right. The monad is simply unwinding its internal program, as
it were,
where each monad has a program, set in pre-established harmony with all the
others. So, there is no genuine causal interaction among the monads. A
remarkable implication of this is that each accident (of apparent
interaction) must be part of the pre-established harmony. Also, of course,
there must be a "sufficient reason" why it is so and not otherwise. Thus
Leibniz is backed into his famous corner. This is the best of all possible
worlds and ....

You continue:

-----quote-------
In my post last night though I was discussing the objects of perception and
not necessarily perceiving itself. The objects of perception are the pure
representation of other monads. He wishes to make monads that are far away
"unclear" but the basic idea is the same. The distinction is that technically
the monad perceived in the mind is only pure correlation to the other monads
as viewed externally. That is where
the windowless nature of the monads comes in. It is both one of the strengths
of Leibniz but also a weakness, as I think Peirce points out.
----end quote----

Formally, the distinction between act and object of perception is preserved
in the Monadology, but the correlation, depends on an overall plan for the
world which is given and set in motion by a higher power who must plan all
that will ever happen,
including each detail of every correlation of mirroring. I see a kind of
formal beauty in Leibniz' system but nothing I can easily see as an advantage
or strength. Though the distinction is formally preserved, it is emptied of
its usual meaning, as found in various versions of realism.

Finally, you say,

---quote-----------
In a sense I believe that Leibniz wishes to hold a pure mechanistic approach.
Thus he denies (or ignores) many aspects of Peircean thirdness. Of course
many would say that much of philosophy overlooks a lot of thirdness.

On the other hand since we move from one state of affairs to a new state of
affairs one could argue that this is a kind of thirdness. Leibniz' appetition
could perhaps be considered the act. However understandably many will find
the very "mechanistic" nature of perception in Leibniz to be unable to deal
with the texture and "feeling" of perceiving.
----end quote---------

It strikes me as a kind of panpsychistic simulation of a mechanistic
philosophy. What seems to be missing, in the first place, is not thirdness
(certainly not thirdness as law), it is more that genuine secondness and
firstness are missing,
from a Peircean perspective --or so it strikes me, in replying to what you
say here.

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neo Platonism
From: martin lefebvre <lefebvre[…]vax2.concordia.ca>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:40:20 -0500
X-Message-Number: 21

Dear Armando,


>
>"I'm not sure I see the connection between repetition and sameness. In
>fact sameness conceived as repetition seems already to be on the side
>of secondness (it requires two things -- one repeating the other;
>whereas sameness requires identity, quality)."
>
>Yes, one repeating the other in some aspect or respect: *three
>things (I think).
>
>Best regards,
>
>Armando Sercovich
>CISPEC
>


You're right, I should've said that repetition requires AT LEAST two
things. One thing is for sure, though: resemblance requires three --
which is also how one can understand Wittgenstein's family
resemblance and it's relation to continuity (a Peircean reading of
which is quite enlightening).

best,

Martin

------------------------------
Dr. Martin Lefebvre
Associate Professor
Director, Graduate Programme in Film Studies

Editor RECHERCHES SEMIOTIQUES/
SEMIOTIC INQUIRY

Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
Concordia University
FB 319
1455 de Maisonneuve, West
Montreal (Quebec), Canada
H3G 1M8

tel. (514) 848-4676/FAX. (514) 848-4255
------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Triadic relation without mind ?
From: Clark Goble <Clark.Goble[…]attbi.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:44:06 -0700
X-Message-Number: 22

___ Christophe ___
| Could it be possible to know if Peirce has explicited somewhere
| the applicability of his triadic approach to non human life ?
___

I believe that he is often characterized as a panpsychic because of how
the triadic relation works. While not as extreme a panpsychic as say
Whitehead, the nature of interpretants which can be non-human would
seem to imply it.

The following quote follows Inna's comment on neo-Platonism and its
applicability to Peirce.

It thus appears that all knowledge comes to us by observation.
A part is forced upon us from without and seems to result
from Nature's mind; a part comes from the depths of the mind
as seen from within, which by an egotistic anacoluthon we call
*our* mind. (Peirce, "Of Reasoning in General", _The Essential
Peirce_, 24)

Now "Nature's mind" can be seen as akin to the place of God or the
neo-Platonic One and thus not a particular non-human interpretant.
However I think the way he moves implies that nature is compound, much
as Inna pointed out exists in Plotinus.

Probably a good place to read up on this is in his "On Phenomenology"
which I'd quoted yesterday. Around page 151-154 he discusses gravity
in connection to the above. In speaking of gravity, for instance, he
moves very much in the direction of Scholastic realism. And scholastic
realism, especially of the neo-Platonic sort, was always in danger of
coming too close to both panpsychism and pantheism.


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Subject: Re: McGinn on Popper
From: "Peter Brawley" <peter.brawley[…]artfulsoftware.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:48:21 -0800
X-Message-Number: 23



Charles,

I enjoyed your excellent survey of Popper, and your analysis of McGinn's
paper, and in the latter I find just two trouble spots.

One concerns Popper's account of positive and negative facts. Apart from
the problem that distinctions between facts and theories can't be
complete (eg Duhem, Quine, methodologic underdetermination &c), Popper's
treatment of logical relations between theories and what he called
"basic statements" had problems. For example in section 28 of "The Logic
of Scientific Discovery" (LScD) he held that "a basic statement must
have a logical form such that its negation cannot be a basic statement
in its turn" and that "basic statements have the form of singular
existential statements...", not of singular non-existence statements,
thus disallowing statements like "there was no raven in spacetime region
k'. Disallowing negative facts makes for many problems in any account of
how evidence bears on theories. IMO it is part of a much larger problem
in Popper--his accounts of theory testing were too often pre-modern in
their emphasis on confrontations between theories and instances, and too
often failed to take into account modern methods of experimental
verification and falsification (methods his LScD had helped propel
forward, eg through its influence on Fisher).

The second trouble I have is your remark that McGinn ...

distorts the role of conjectures or guesses in
Popper's thesis when he says that "it is absurd to
suggest that basic high school science consists
of mere guesses that no one has managed to refute."

You go on to say that Popper acknowledged that facts have a role in
theory building. Yes, but Popper is also on record that knowledge is
guesswork, eg in the introduction to "Conjectures and Refutations":

"The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many
authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the
origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may
legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the
racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the
knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if
possible from God: these are the (often unconscious)
metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified
question, 'How can we hope to detect error?' may be said
to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and
certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin
or of purity should not be confounded with questions of
validity, or of truth. This view may be said to be as old
as Xenophanes. Xenophanes knew that our knowledge is
guesswork, opinion - doxa rather than episteme - as shown
by his verses [quoted on p. 31 above]. Yet the traditional
question of the authoritative sources of knowledge is
repeated even today - and very often by positivists and by
other philosophers who believe themselves to be in revolt
against authority."

This view does not quite allow for what McGinn described in the
sentences leading up to his remark about high school science:

"...two other questionable Popperian theses. One is
that science does not consist of established facts but
of tentative conjectures. This is exaggerated and partial
at best: some of science is as solid as the plainest
statement of fact, such as that London is the capital of
England. It is not a tentative conjecture that water
consists of H2O molecules or that, at sea level, it boils
at 100 degrees centigrade: these are hard facts, if
anything is."

I agree that Peirce's account of these & related issues was stronger
than Popper's.

PB




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Subject: Re: Paper On Intelligence Amplification & Communicational Norms
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 15:50:32 -0500
X-Message-Number: 24

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

hi joe, the paper at the archive is all in hex code,
and i fear that the digest version may come out the
same way -- do you have a txt version than can be
attached in-line? thanks, jon.

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: PAPER ON IA AND COMMUNICATIONAL NORMS (ASCII)
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 16:06:31 -0600
X-Message-Number: 25

ASCII VERSION

THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC
TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[OMITTED HERE FOR LACK OF SPACE. CLICK HERE FOR HTML VERSION ]


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Intelligence Amp/Aug & Communicational Norms
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 18:06:39 -0500
X-Message-Number: 26

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Joe,

Re:

JR: Whether Skagestad was the first to distinguish explicitly between
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligence Augmentation (IA) in
just these terms, treating it as a formal distinction, I do not know.
The distinction itself can be said to have existed in some sense as
far back as 1962 (if not earlier) when the idea of computationally based
intelligence augmentation was first described as "intelligence augmentation"
by Douglas Engelbart.

Actually, when you said "IA", I thought that you
meant "intelligence amplification", as that was
the term of wide currentsy used by W. Ross Ashby
in his 'Introduction to Cybernetics' (1956), and
explicitly as an alternative to AI was emphasized
by Hao Wang from early on.

| 14/7. 'Amplifying Intelligence'. ... In S.13/8 we saw that selection can be amplified.
| Now "problem solving" is largely, perhaps entirely, a matter of appropriate selection.
| Take, for instance, any popular book of problems and puzzles. Almost every one can
| be reduced to the form: out of a certain set, indicate one element. ... It is,
| in fact, difficult to think of a problem, either playful or serious, that does
| not ultimately require and appropriate selection as necessary and sufficient
| for its solution.
|
| It is also clear that many of the tests used for measuring "intelligence" are scored
| essentially according to the candidate's power of appropriate selection. ... Thus
| it is not impossible that what is commonly referred to as "intellectual power" may
| be equivalent to "power of appropriate selection". Indeed, if a taliking Black Box
| were to show high power of appropriate selection in such matters -- so that, when
| given difficult problems it persistently gave correct answers -- we could hardly
| deny that it was showing the 'behavioral' equivalent of "high intelligence".
|
| If this is so, and as we know that power of selection can be amplified,
| it seems to follow that intellectual power, like physical power, can be
| amplified. Let no one say that it cannot be done, for the gene-patterns
| do it every time they form a brain that grows up to be something better
| than the gene-pattern could have specified in detail. What is new is
| that we can now do it synthetically, consciously, deliberately.
|
| W. Ross Ashby,
|'An Introduction to Cybernetics',
| Chapman & Hall, London, UK, 1956,
| Methuen & Company, London, UK, 1964,
| Section 14/7, Page 272.
|
| http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03159.html

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Intelligence Amp/Aug & Communicational Norms
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 20:19:36 -0600
X-Message-Number: 27

Thanks, Jon, for the reference. In his 1993 paper, "Thinking with
Machines", Peter has the following to say about Ashby's idea:

=================QUOTE FROM SKAGESTAD, 1993===================
Finally, in his 1962 report Engelbart formulated a detailed conceptual
framework for developing new technologies to "augment" the human intellect.
He also accepted the cyberneticist William Ross Ashby's term "intelligence
amplification", but with a caveat. In his Design for a Brain (1952), Ashby
had introduced the term "amplification" -- apparently in the sense of
leverage -- specifically with the example of knowing how to use a dictionary
as opposed to knowing the meanings of a number of words.(13) But the word is
used differently in his classic 1956 paper 'Design for an
Intelligence-Amplifier'. Ashby here presented a possibility proof of a
machine that would solve problems its creators were incapable of solving.
This machine would amplify human intelligence the way human physical power
is amplified by the steam engine, and unlike the way it was earlier
amplified by the lever or cog and pulley.(14) This analogy, along with its
companion contrast, blurs the distinction between intelligence amplification
and artificial intelligence. The steam engine, while human-made, is an
independent source of power, unlike the lever which augments the human power
exerted on it. (Of course human energy may be expended on shovelling coal
into the steam engine, but that is not the only, or most important, energy
which the steam engine transforms.) Without going into the details of
Ashby's usage, Engelbart stresses (with Ashby) that his objective is not to
increase our native intelligence, but to augment the human being with means
for organizing experience and solving problems so that an intelligent system
results in which the human being is the central component (possibly in
contrast with Ashby, whose intelligence-amplifier was conceived of as a
free-standing system).
===================END QUOTE=================

Joe






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