[NOTE: This record of what has been posted to PEIRCE-L
has been modified by omission of redundant quotations in
the messages. both for legibility and to save space.
-- Joseph Ransdell, PEIRCE-L manager/owner]

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 05:50:15 EST
X-Message-Number: 1

Joe & list,

By way of a preliminary answer to the argument based on Hobbes, I want to
offer the following from Emerson's "Fate" (1860). Though there is no
reference to Hobbes, I cannot help but think that something of Hobbes'
Leviathan figures in the background of the following passage.

-----Quote Emerson------------
Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we dreaded. Every pot made by
any human potter or brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy,
lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. But the Marquis
of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton bethought themselves, that, where was power,
was not devil, but was God; that it must be availed of, and not by any means
let off and wasted. Could he lift pots and roofs and houses so handily? he
was the workman they were in search of. He could be used to lift away, chain,
and compel other devils, far more reluctant and dangerous, namely, cubic
miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance of water, machinery, and the
labors of all men in the world; and time he shall lengthen, and shorten space.

It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. The opinion of
the million was the terror of the world, and it was attempted, either to
dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of
society,-a layer of soldiers; over that, a layer of lords; and a king on the
top; with clamps and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. But, sometimes,
the religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, and rive every
mountain laid on top of it. The Fultons and Watts of politics, believing in
unity, saw that it was a power, and, by satisfying it, (as justice satisfies
everybody,) through a different disposition of society,-grouping it on a
level, instead of piling it into a mountain,-they have contrived to make of
his terror the most harmless and energetic form of a State.
----end quote--------------------

It is not that I am advocating an Emersonian brand of politics here. I don't
regard Emerson as a thinker focused on politics, and that is part of the
appeal of his works. It is more that what does not get done at a more basic
level of our thought and interaction gets piled on the agencies of politics,
and the politicians try their best to provide a patch to the defects, however
temporary or transparently inadequate. But I do agree with the point made
here, in general terms, that there are distinctive "dispositions of society,"
of a more democratic sort, which tend to tame and control the forces of mass
opinion. Hobbes, in contrast, warned against democracy and believed in
absolute monarchy -as the only way to provide the peace and security which
all men desire. But this kind of unifying only makes the collective more
aggressive against outsiders, since most, or in the extreme all, internal
differences are suppressed. So, the general point is that this strictly
hierarchical conception of unity, in Hobbes, is pretty obviously inadequate
for the modern world.

Though Hobbes' political thought was favored at the time of the English Civil
War, the later settlement, following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was a
vast improvement in making the powers of the King subject to that of
Parliament. In his Introduction to a 1962 edition of Hobbes' Leviathan,
Michael Oakeshott (who we would not expect to be an entirely unsympathetic
commentator on Hobbes), gives us a peek back into the times in which Hobbes
lived and the problems which concerned him:

Though the Puritans had considerable influence at Oxford, when Hobbes studied
there, Oakeshott says,

----quote Oakeshott------------
Hobbes had little sympathy for the religion of the Puritans and less for
their politics. Also, like many others at this time, he lived in daily dread
of the Church of Rome which he regarded as an organized conspiracy against
the temporal power supported by superstition and sharp practice. The
overriding need of every sensible man, he thought, was for peace and
security. Yet the ravings of the individual conscience and the sinister
authority of Rome were constantly blinding men to what there real interests
were. Civil war, the worst calamity that can befall a society, whence proceed
"slaughter, solitude and the want of all things," was upon them. How could
this disastrous drift be halted? This was Hobbes worry.
-----end quote-------------------

It seems obvious that our times are not exactly the same as those in which
Hobbes lived, and we have to secularize the religious themes, in some degree,
in order to understand what the problems of Hobbes' times were. We have to
understand that politics was predominantly religious in form in Hobbes'
times. We are looking back to the great religious wars of the West. Civil War
was upon them, but the sides in the conflict are somewhat obscure to us,
because we take for granted that political authority is not bound and guided
by religious convictions and conflicts. In the U.S., at least, we insist upon
the strict separation of church and state.

If we secularize the images of the two sides in the conflict, then what we
get is an opposition between a party bent on ideological unity and a party of
diverse dissent. The solution which Hobbes presents is to insist on unity but
to subordinate religion to the absolute civil authority of the King. In
contrast to this, the resolution of 1688, following the Glorious Revolution,
was to place ultimate authority in Parliament, thus giving greater place to
the diversity and pluralism of opinion and confession which the Puritans
sought. While Hobbes was a materialist (though not unfavorable to the harsh
politics of Cromwell) Locke had a deep and significant Puritan background. It
is worth mentioning in this connection the etymology of the word
"Parliament," which has to do with speech, of course. (Consider: "Parla
l'italiano?" "Parle vous Francis?"). Thinking back to the passage from
Emerson here, it seems obvious that we often do better to subject our genuine
common problems (and mere difference in views is not automatically a problem)
to open discussion and inquiry, instead of waiting on the authority of
elected bodies to do this for us. This reflects the democratic idea of
organizing society by "grouping it on a level, instead of piling it into a
mountain." (Much the same policy recommends itself to any specialized
scientific or scholarly discipline -so that parti-cipants are better
distinguished by their genuine contributions instead of being given a place
in the sun by reference to their connections and positions.)

A further quotation from Oakeshott casts some light on the character of
Hobbes' argument:

----quote-------------
Hobbes' demonstration of the necessity for an absolute sovereign depended
upon a crude kind of psychology culled from Thucydides. This in turn was
underpinned by a mechanical theory which was only loosely connected with it.
Men, Hobbes argued, are really machines moved to and fro by two basic
motions-the desire for power and the fear of death. The desire for power
leads to the state of nature where the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short." Civilization is based on the fear of death. For men are
lead by this overwhelming fear to construct a commonwealth, Leviathan, which
is an artificial machine for the enforcement of social rules and for the
provision of security against sudden death. "For covenants without the sword
are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all." The threat of civil
war and a possible relapse into the state of nature is ever present unless
men, in constructing Leviathan, follow the logic of the geometer and
institute an absolute monarch to keep the peace with a rule of iron.
----end quote--------------

It mattered not so much to Hobbes whether the sovereign was Cromwell or a
king. What matter to him was that the power of the sovereign must be
absolute, with no possibility of appeal to religion as an alternative
authority. In contrast to all this, we attempt to limit the power of the
state and institute religious freedom, along with a separation of state and
church. The diversity of opinion and viewpoint in a modern pluralistic
society contributes to the quality of the discussions and inquires which
arise from the interaction of the diverse sources. We not only have a
"parliament" as a political institution for decision making, we have in
addition, and great diversity of other forums where related discussions and
inquiries can be conducted.

If we are presently faced with the thread of terrorism, based on the idea of
theocracy and religious monoculture, then this by no means argues that we
must fall back into something like Hobbes' position in order to deal with the
problem. Of course there is no guarantee that we will accomplish all that we
wish to accomplish regardless of what means we select. But the means selected
must be reasonably adjusted to our overall goals and values. If we were to
fall back to Hobbes' conception of political organization, then I think that
the terrorists will have won the conflict in significant degree. Which
position is more similar to an absolute dualism of good and evil? For Hobbes,
it seems any opposition to the Leviathan must be evil.

Whatever the plausibility, then, of continuing to struggle and fight, by all
and any means, fair or foul, when cycles of aggressiveness threaten to engulf
us, it is clear that there always is some genuine alternative of more
measured response. Our modern civilization is based on just this idea.
Victory is not an end in itself to be sought without regard to the means
employed, and lack of scruple in conflict does not make for a just peace.

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

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

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 07:59:10 -0600
X-Message-Number: 2

Howard:

Apart from some disagreements about the interpretation of Hobbes, I don't
have any particular disagreement with what you are saying otherwise. I do
want to make it clear, though, that it has little relevance to the point I
was making about Hobbes' theory about why government is needed, which is
that it is not simply a matter of people having desires, be it for power or
anything else, that makes the state of nature into a state of war, but a
very fundamental problem, as pressing now as ever, about trust and distrust.
I don't think the problem impresses you as a real one since you never
actually refer to it; but rather than trying to restate it again let me just
say that it is the kind of problem game theorists try to find ingenious
solutions to, not the kind of problem that is to be solved by educating
people to be less aggressive, or to sublimate their aggressive tendencies,
however valuable that may be.

Though it is not particularly relevant to anything I had in mind in
introducing Hobbes into the discussion to begin with, I should also say that
in order to understand the relationship of Hobbes to Locke in respect to the
nature and problems of government, it is important to understand that
Hobbes' argument about the need for government is not an argument for
monarchical or even oligarchical government, but simply an argument about
the need for government, which is to say that it is about the rationale of
justification for government, including democratic government. In terms of
"sovereignty", the Sovereign is not a person but an office. Nominally, at
least, the people are the Sovereign in a democracy (this must of course be
actualized via representative offices that enable decision-making). Hobbes
preference for non-democratic government is based on further considerations
concerning what form he thinks will actually work best in practice, but that
is not what is at stake in the parts of the Leviathan and his other work
which are of primary philosophical interest. When Hobbes is merely written
off as a man of his times, those times being gone, as Oakeshott seems to be
doing, Hobbes' value as a thinker is being obscured.

Joe Ransdell

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

Subject: Re: Relevance of Peircean Semiotic to Computational Intelligence Augmentation
From: "Peter Skagestad" <Peter_Skagestad[…]uml.edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 08:44:02 -0800
X-Message-Number: 3

Jon, Joe, et al.,

I have not yet had a chance to read Joe's paper, and so cannot comment on it
yet. For now, thanks to Joe for the detailed attention paid to my paper.
However, since I downloaded this message from a different computer from the one
I most often use, I want to make one comment on it while I have it before me -
speak of exosomatic constraints on communication!

Whatever I may have said about the exosomatic-endosomatic distinction in 1996 or
earlier (and I would have to look this up to refresh my memory), at least in my
Transactions paper in 1999 I made it clear that I am not attributing an
endosomatic-exosomatic dichotomy to Peirce. As I put it, "You find the mind
where there are inkstands or other means of expressing thoughts, paper or other
vehicles for preserving and conveying thoughts, and of course brains capable,
through the intermediaries of eyes and hands or the equivalent, of interacting
with external tools and media." (Peirce's Inkstand as an External Embodiment of
Mind, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. XXXV, no. 3 (1999), p.
553.)

More later,
Peter

Subject: Re: Intelligence Amp/Aug & Communicational Norms
From: "Peter Skagestad" <Peter_Skagestad[…]uml.edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 09:04:45 -0800
X-Message-Number: 4

Jon Awbrey wrote:
>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
> JR: Turing regarded the human being as essentially indistinguishable from a machine;
> Bush regarded the human being as essentially a machine user, and sought to construct
> symbol-manipulation machines that would be "thinking machines" in the sense of machines
> to think with, not machines that think. While Bush's vision has served as the inspiration
> for a vast industry that is rapidly transforming our culture and society, Turing's vision
> has become the governing paradigm of the research program known as artificial intelligence
> (AI), and indeed for the entire interdisciplinary field known as cognitive science. So
> pervasive is the influence of this paradigm that one frequently hears it said that the
> computational model is the only comprehensive and fully articulated model of the mind
> available. There is, however, a different model of the mind available-one which,
> while not articulated by Bush, is fully supportive of the research program Bush
> initiated, the program today known as "intelligence augmentation" (IA).
>
> JR: The model I have in mind is one which was articulated in the nineteenth century
> by Charles Peirce, and which has recently been advocated by James Fetzer as
> the semiotic model of the mind.
>
> Joe,
>
> Science fiction aside, I detect the beginnings of a false oppostition here,
> maybe one you do not intend, but I am learning what a careless reader can
> do with a careless statement, even one that is obviously a retrospective
> rhetorical meta-commentary.

PS: Since Joe is simply quoting me here, I suppose I am being charged with
carelessness. I am sure I make careless statements from time to time, but I would
be curious to know what particular carelessness I committed here.
>
> Turing, or rather let us speak of the field of recursive function theory generally,
> does not "regard the human being as essentially indistinguishable from a machine".

PS: While Turing's major achievement no doubt was his contribution to the theory of
recursive functions, Turing also made statements which have little if anything to
do with that theory; cf. the "Turing test" described in his 1950 paper "Computing
Machinery and Intelligence", Mind 59 (263), pp. 433-460, cited in my paper.

> Its main thrust has been to present several models of "effective description",
> somewhat surprisingly discovering that all of those yet proposed have turned
> out to be equivalent in the class of computable functions that they capture.
>
> Mathematical models do not say what they are about.
> People may see some image or likeness of reality in them,
> but all sensible people and especially all sensible math
> folk already recognize that reality is inexhaustible.
>
> So computational models are meant to capture what mindful people do
> only in so far as mindful people do what is effectively describable.
> The model itself does not say, cannot say, how big a proportion of
> the whole human reality the effectively describable portion may be.
>
> The notion of effective description is almost the same idea as that
> of the pragmatic maxim, and I do not think that it would be good to
> draw any hard and fast lines that might lend themselves to obscuring
> this connection.
>
> The reason that any of this business has much importance to us is this:
> the relationship between the effectively describable and the teachable.
>
> So the heart of the question is rather ancient: Whether virtue can be taught.
>
> Jon Awbrey

PS: This all sounds reasonable enough, but is this what Turing actually said?

>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber Peter_Skagestad[…]uml.edu
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to: leave-peirce-l-39103J[…]lyris.ttu.edu


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

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: William Thomas Sherman <gunjones1[…]earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 06:36:36 -0800
X-Message-Number: 5

Howard,

Though this may sound a somewhat curious comment, I want to express my gratitude
for your last post as providing an unusual insight into British history and
British character, as viewed through your presentation of Hobbes. You managed to
crystallize certain thoughts and understandings on the subject which were before
somewhat vague and hazy. This was especially helpful to me as I am presently
working on a book pertaining to the (American) Revolutionary War in the South.

With respect to the issue of centralized versus democratic focus of power, the
American Revolution provides an interesting example. WIthout a centralizing power
under a strong figure like Washington, the American colonists could not have
lasted long enough militarily to have defeated Great Britain. At the same time the
cause of liberty and independence bespoke individual prerogative and provincial
self government which were often antipathetical and at great odds with the efforts
of the Continental army. It was the genius of many of the better American
political and military leaders of that time to have found ways to reconcile the
two interests while at the same time finding themselves having to fight a literal
war. Those seeking to find out how centralized and local authority can be most
optimally reconciled will find no better practical example then in the efforts of
these figures, such as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Greene, and a number of
others. In this regard, it is particularly interesting to examine those instances
where when there was conflict between central and local authority how often the
wisdom and inspiration of a leader dedicated to higher, i.e.. ideal, principle
made all the difference in getting through what were otherwise very trying and
fairly impossible circumstances.

As for solving social problems, domestic or international, in general, this can
only be achieved inasmuch as people desire truth and honesty toward truth in the
first place. Without such desire, we are like people running around with their
heads cut off. The challenging question then becomes how do we get people to
desire truth and honesty?

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: Peircean Semiotic & Intelligence Augmentation
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 09:42:03 -0500
X-Message-Number: 6

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

JA = Jon Awbrey
PS = Peter Skagestad

JA: Science fiction aside, I detect the beginnings of a false oppostition here,
maybe one you do not intend, but I am learning what a careless reader can
do with a careless statement, even one that is obviously a retrospective
rhetorical meta-commentary.

PS: Since Joe is simply quoting me here, I suppose I am being charged
with carelessness. I am sure I make careless statements from time
to time, but I would be curious to know what particular carelessness
I committed here.

Peter, that was actually more in the nature of (something that probably should have
been left) an aside on an incidental issue that has been pre-occupying me more and
more of late, with respect to understanding what has gone wrong with the reception
of Peirce, as it seems to me more and more in recent years, but maybe I just wasn't
paying attention to it before. No specific charges were being laid, and at any rate
it has to do with the sort of miscues that "take two to tangle". The specifics that
I had in mind, only as examples of a general phenomenon, were recent discussions of
Murphey's Peirce and some the uses that people have been making of some of Peirce's
late retrospections. I will try to explain this more coherently later, but am being
shephered off to be somewhere else at the moment.

To be continued ...

Jon Awbrey

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

Subject: Re: Peircean Semiotic & Intelligence Augmentation
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 11:28:52 -0500
X-Message-Number: 7

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

JA = Jon Awbrey
PS = Peter Skagestad

It appears that some of my later messages on this topic,
that corrected the earlier attributions, may not have
been distributed, so here is a more complete excerpt
from Joe's paper:

Correcting and contextualizing the attributions:

| In any case, Skagestad himself draws three preliminary conclusions
| from his historical account of the difference of the two visions:
|
| First, the Turing machine and the Memex each provided an indispensable
| piece of the technology that has become known as the personal computer,
| which we may today opt to conceptualize either as a personal Turing
| machine or as a computerized Memex;
|
| Second, the two constructs are not rivals in the sense of offering
| conflicting solutions to the same problem; Bush and Turing were
| attacking entirely different problems, and so their respective
| solutions do not directly conflict with each other; but:
|
| Third, the two constructs embody different conceptions of
| the human mind in general and of human-machine interaction
| in particular.
|
| He continues, saying:
|
| | Turing regarded the human being as essentially indistinguishable
| | from a machine; Bush regarded the human being as essentially a
| | machine user, and sought to construct symbol-manipulation machines
| | that would be "thinking machines" in the sense of machines to think
| | with, not machines that think. While Bush's vision has served as
| | the inspiration for a vast industry that is rapidly transforming
| | our culture and society, Turing's vision has become the governing
| | paradigm of the research program known as artificial intelligence
| | (AI), and indeed for the entire interdisciplinary field known as
| | cognitive science. So pervasive is the influence of this paradigm
| | that one frequently hears it said that the computational model is the
| | only comprehensive and fully articulated model of the mind available.
| | There is, however, a different model of the mind available -- one
| | which, while not articulated by Bush, is fully supportive of the
| | research program Bush initiated, the program today known as
| | "intelligence augmentation" (IA). The model I have in mind
| | is one which was articulated in the nineteenth century by
| | Charles Peirce, and which has recently been advocated by
| | James Fetzer as the semiotic model of the mind.
|
| To summarize to this point, Skagestad's basic argument is to the
| effect that computational intelligence research (CI research) has thus
| far worked chiefly from two distinctive visions of what might be achieved --
| AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IA (Intelligence Augmentation) -- which are
| capable of being regarded as complementary rather than exclusive alternatives
| of CI development, but which may tend to be at odds with one another because of
| the importantly different conceptions of mentality which lie at their respective
| bases. Skagestad's primary aim thus far, though, has not been to encourage
| research development in which they are capable of being mutually supportive,
| though he is doubtless in favor of this, but rather to make clear that the
| second paradigm for research into computational intelligence is conceptually
| independent of the first, such that what we refer to as if it were one thing,
| the computer, is in reality two importantly different things at once: on
| the one hand, an algorithm-embodying mechanism capable of mimicking mentality
| functionally to an extent yet to be determined; on the other, an instrument
| for coordinating factors variously involved in human intelligence insofar
| as these can be supported mechanistically in such a way as to augment
| human intelligence instead.
|
| Joseph Ransdell,
|"The Relevance of Peircean Semiotic to Computational Intelligence Augmentation"

JA: Science fiction aside, I detect the beginnings of a false oppostition here,
maybe one you do not intend, but I am learning what a careless reader can
do with a careless statement, even one that is obviously a retrospective
rhetorical meta-commentary.

PS: Since Joe is simply quoting me here, I suppose I am being charged
with carelessness. I am sure I make careless statements from time
to time, but I would be curious to know what particular carelessness
I committed here.

Putting aside for another day the problematic of technical angels
who foolishly tread on the shakey grounds of self-popularization,
I still have the sense that Joe was adducing your statement, with
some due criticism, of course, in at least partial support of some
thesis of his own, so I don't know what to make of the disclaimers
I am reading, if they are meant to go beyond correcting the record,
or to say something else.

JA: Turing, or rather let us speak of the field of recursive function theory generally,
does not "regard the human being as essentially indistinguishable from a machine".

PS: While Turing's major achievement no doubt was his contribution to the
theory of recursive functions, Turing also made statements which have
little if anything to do with that theory; cf. the "Turing test"
described in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence",
Mind 59 (263), pp. 433-460, cited in my paper.

It has been 15 or 20 years since I last looked at that paper,
and if Turing said something as silly as that I am sure that
I would have taken it as a hyberbolic metaphor or something.

I'll look Turing's paper again, but for now I think that I can safely speak
from a general knowledge of how mathematical folk regard their own models
in approximating the infinite, and from a practical experience of what
computability theory or recursive function theory is all about.

JA: Its main thrust has been to present several models of "effective description",
somewhat surprisingly discovering that all of those yet proposed have turned
out to be equivalent in the class of computable functions that they capture.

JA: Mathematical models do not say what they are about.
People may see some image or likeness of reality in them,
but all sensible people and especially all sensible math
folk already recognize that reality is inexhaustible.

JA: So computational models are meant to capture what mindful people do
only in so far as mindful people do what is effectively describable.
The model itself does not say, cannot say, how big a proportion of
the whole human reality the effectively describable portion may be.

JA: The notion of effective description is almost the same idea as that
of the pragmatic maxim, and I do not think that it would be good to
draw any hard and fast lines that might lend themselves to obscuring
this connection.

JA: The reason that any of this business has much importance to us is this:
the relationship between the effectively describable and the teachable.

JA: So the heart of the question is rather ancient: Whether virtue can be taught.

PS: This all sounds reasonable enough, but is this what Turing actually said?

That's what I personally get from the field in general --
somewhere in 1985-1986 or so I can remember realizing
that the Turing Test was really just the contemporary
avatar of Plato's problem about defining the true nature
of the philosopher, the statesman, and the sophist, and
that he undertakes beginning with the 'Sophist' dialogue.
It's always possible to go back and read the basic texts
more closely, but I think that it would be more useful to
form a sense of what the whole discipline is really about,
as it is understood by a wide variety of user/theorists.

Jon Awbrey

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

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 15:41:01 EST
X-Message-Number: 8

Joe & list,

This is a corrected version of my earlier posting of today with reference to
Hobbes.
I found an error in my attribution of the quoted passages about Hobbes, from
the Oakeshott edition I mentioned. Though the Hobbes text was edited by
Oakeshott, the Introduction to the volume was in fact written by Richard S.
Peters of London University, and I have changed the attribution below
accordingly. Sorry for the oversight.

Regarding the technical game-theoretic version of the related problems, I
would simply say that though there is always a problem of trust, this can be
overcome in repeated interactions, say, with regard to the practical dilemma
of the iterated prisoner's dilemma. This is one of the ways in which various
kinds or elements of propinquity enter into the formation of community. In
spite of our difficulties in knowing who to trust and who not to trust, via
repeated interactions, given that we are able to identify the same partner in
interaction, we come to know by experience to whom it is more plausible to
extend trust. Such processes are involved in building up any communities or
society generally, and they also enter into international relations. The
point helps explain why I have over the years been so emphatic on the list,
about the need to identify participants from one occasion to the next. To put
the point in common-sense terms, the problems of trust and distrust are
solved in the practical way that judgments of character are made. This is not
to question the need of government, of course. But where we have no common
authority of this sort, the point is that the situation need not, in spite of
that, degenerate into the Hobbesian
state of nature. Building of trust can go on without a common accepted
authority or government.

By way of a preliminary answer to the argument based on Hobbes, I want to
offer the following from Emerson's "Fate" (1860). Though there is no
reference to Hobbes, I cannot help but think that something of Hobbes'
Leviathan figures in the background of the following passage.

-----Quote Emerson------------
Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we dreaded. Every pot made by
any human potter or brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy,
lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. But the Marquis
of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton bethought themselves, that, where was power,
was not devil, but was God; that it must be availed of, and not by any means
let off and wasted. Could he lift pots and roofs and houses so handily? he
was the workman they were in search of. He could be used to lift away, chain,
and compel other devils, far more reluctant and dangerous, namely, cubic
miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance of water, machinery, and the
labors of all men in the world; and time he shall lengthen, and shorten space.

It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. The opinion of
the million was the terror of the world, and it was attempted, either to
dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of
society,-a layer of soldiers; over that, a layer of lords; and a king on the
top; with clamps and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. But, sometimes,
the religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, and rive every
mountain laid on top of it. The Fultons and Watts of politics, believing in
unity, saw that it was a power, and, by satisfying it, (as justice satisfies
everybody,) through a different disposition of society,-grouping it on a
level, instead of piling it into a mountain,-they have contrived to make of
his terror the most harmless and energetic form of a State.
----end quote--------------------

It is not that I am advocating an Emersonian brand of politics here. I don't
regard Emerson as a thinker focused on politics, and that is part of the
appeal of his works. It is more that what does not get done at a more basic
level of our thought and interaction gets piled on the agencies of politics,
and the politicians try their best to provide a patch to the defects, however
temporary or transparently inadequate. But I do agree with the point made
here, in general terms, that there are distinctive "dispositions of society,"
of a more democratic sort, which tend to tame and control the forces of mass
opinion. Hobbes, in contrast, warned against democracy and believed in
absolute monarchy -as the only way to provide the peace and security which
all men desire. But this kind of unifying only makes the collective more
aggressive against outsiders, since most, or in the extreme all, internal
differences are suppressed. So, the general point is that this strictly
hierarchical conception of unity, in Hobbes, is pretty obviously inadequate
for the modern world.

Though Hobbes' political thought was favored at the time of the English Civil
War, the later settlement, following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was a
vast improvement in making the powers of the King subject to that of
Parliament. In his Introduction to a 1962 edition of Hobbes' Leviathan,
edited by Michael Oakeshott (who we would not expect to be an entirely
unsympathetic commentator on Hobbes), Richard S. Peters gives us a peek back
into the times in which Hobbes lived and the problems which concerned him:

Though the Puritans had considerable influence at Oxford, when Hobbes studied
there, Peters says,

----quote Peters------------
Hobbes had little sympathy for the religion of the Puritans and less for
their politics. Also, like many others at this time, he lived in daily dread
of the Church of Rome which he regarded as an organized conspiracy against
the temporal power supported by superstition and sharp practice. The
overriding need of every sensible man, he thought, was for peace and
security. Yet the ravings of the individual conscience and the sinister
authority of Rome were constantly blinding men to what there real interests
were. Civil war, the worst calamity that can befall a society, whence proceed
"slaughter, solitude and the want of all things," was upon them. How could
this disastrous drift be halted? This was Hobbes worry.
-----end quote-------------------

It seems obvious that our times are not exactly the same as those in which
Hobbes lived, and we have to secularize the religious themes, in some degree,
in order to understand what the problems of Hobbes' times were. We have to
understand that politics was predominantly religious in form in Hobbes'
times. We are looking back to the great religious wars of the West. Civil War
was upon them, but the sides in the conflict are somewhat obscure to us,
because we take for granted that political authority is not bound and guided
by religious convictions and conflicts. In the U.S., at least, we insist upon
the strict separation of church and state.

If we secularize the images of the two sides in the conflict, then what we
get is an opposition between a party bent on ideological unity and a party of
diverse dissent. The solution which Hobbes presents is to insist on unity but
to subordinate religion to the absolute civil authority of the King. In
contrast to this, the resolution of 1688, following the Glorious Revolution,
was to place ultimate authority in Parliament, thus giving greater place to
the diversity and pluralism of opinion and confession which the Puritans
sought. While Hobbes was a materialist (though not unfavorable to the harsh
politics of Cromwell) Locke had a deep and significant Puritan background. It
is worth mentioning in this connection the etymology of the word
"Parliament," which has to do with speech, of course. (Consider: "Parla
l'italiano?" "Parle vous Francis?"). Thinking back to the passage from
Emerson here, it seems obvious that we often do better to subject our genuine
common problems (and mere difference in views is not automatically a problem)
to open discussion and inquiry, instead of waiting on the authority of
elected bodies to do this for us. This reflects the democratic idea of
organizing society by "grouping it on a level, instead of piling it into a
mountain." (Much the same policy recommends itself to any specialized
scientific or scholarly discipline -so that parti-cipants are better
distinguished by their genuine contributions instead of being given a place
in the sun by reference to their connections and positions.)

A further quotation from the Introduction to the Oakeshott edition of the
Leviathan casts some light on the character of Hobbes' argument:

----quote-------------
Hobbes' demonstration of the necessity for an absolute sovereign depended
upon a crude kind of psychology culled from Thucydides. This in turn was
underpinned by a mechanical theory which was only loosely connected with it.
Men, Hobbes argued, are really machines moved to and fro by two basic
motions-the desire for power and the fear of death. The desire for power
leads to the state of nature where the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short." Civilization is based on the fear of death. For men are
lead by this overwhelming fear to construct a commonwealth, Leviathan, which
is an artificial machine for the enforcement of social rules and for the
provision of security against sudden death. "For covenants without the sword
are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all." The threat of civil
war and a possible relapse into the state of nature is ever present unless
men, in constructing Leviathan, follow the logic of the geometer and
institute an absolute monarch to keep the peace with a rule of iron.
----end quote--------------

It mattered not so much to Hobbes whether the sovereign was Cromwell or a
king. What matter to him was that the power of the sovereign must be
absolute, with no possibility of appeal to religion as an alternative
authority. In contrast to all this, we attempt to limit the power of the
state and institute religious freedom, along with a separation of state and
church. The diversity of opinion and viewpoint in a modern pluralistic
society contributes to the quality of the discussions and inquires which
arise from the interaction of the diverse sources. We not only have a
"parliament" as a poli-tical institution for decision making, we have in
addition, and great diversity of other forums where related discussions and
inquiries can be conducted.

If we are presently faced with the thread of terrorism, based on the idea of
theocracy and religious monoculture, then this by no means argues that we
must fall back into something like Hobbes' position in order to deal with the
problem. Of course there is no guarantee that we will accomplish all that we
wish to accomplish regardless of what means we select. But the means selected
must be reasonably adjusted to our overall goals and values. If we were to
fall back to Hobbes' conception of political organization, then I think that
the terrorists will have won the conflict in significant degree. Which
position is more similar to an absolute dualism of good and evil? For Hobbes,
it seems any opposition to the Leviathan must be evil.

Whatever the plausibility, then, of continuing to struggle and fight, by all
and any means, fair or foul, when cycles of aggressiveness threaten to engulf
us, it is clear that there always is some genuine alternative of more
measured response. Our modern civilization is based on just this idea.
Victory is not an end in itself to be sought without regard to the means
employed, and lack of scruple in conflict does not make for a just peace.

Howard

H. G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

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

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 15:43:49 -0600
X-Message-Number: 9

HOward:

I must say, again, that whoever you are arguing against in connection with
Hobbes' theory of government it is not me, since I was not advocating a
Hobbesian position, but only pointing out that one is not understanding
Hobbes fully if one thinks that what is important in his political
philosophy is his preference for monarchical rule. Peters' account seems to
me to be mistaken and not responsive to the subtleties of Hobbes' view. In
any case, we are apparently interested in Hobbes for different reasons.
Thus the passage from Emerson is interesting but seems to me to have no
special bearing on my reason for introducing Hobbes into the discussion, or
at least it is going right past me without me seeing it. Anyway, I don't
want to get sidetracked into that at this point. There will be other
occasions to pursue what I thought relevant in Hobbes, which has to do with
the role of presumption, but I am afraid that if we try to pursue it further
on the present basis our differing concerns will tend to send us off in
contrary directions for no good reason. As regards whether the Hobbesian
problem of distrust can be resolved by recourse to some consideration
discovered in recent reflection on the prisoner's dilemma, I will mull that
over, for the time being, at least, rather than trying work it through here.

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

Subject: Fwd: [ba-unrev-talk] Doug Engelbart's 1968 demo video
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 17:56:47 -0500
X-Message-Number: 10

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

link of potential interest:

http://www.bootstrap.org/lists/ba-unrev-talk/0211/msg00021.html

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

Subject: Re: PAPER ON IA AND COMMUNICATIONAL NORMS
From: "cthorne/Creath Thorn" <csthorne[…]ultra.ccp.com>
Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 02:21:56 GMT
X-Message-Number: 11

Joe, and list:
Your post about IA and its limitations is quite interesting. Generally, I
think we all believe that heuristics make us smart_and that the cleverest of
us that devise new heuristics that make us even smarter. Since software can
be the ultimate heuristic device, its use through IA should make us very
intelligent, indeed. But as you point out, things sometimes don_t work out
that way.
I have been reading today William Calvin_s A Brain for All Seasons, in
which this apposite comment appears: [He is writing while researching in
Africa] _Africans who get good educations and are encountered in their roles
as pilots, professors, and neurosurgeons show that the biological basis is
there for doing the things that the Out of Africa peoples do so well, around
the rest of the world. Within Africa, raised one way without much
western-style education and then forced to deal with a technological culture
in order to support their families, they may not show those strengths. . . .
I worry that much of the world could become like that, a world where most of
us will not have the education to know how things work_that we will become
trapped in a world where you have to wait for someone knowledgeable to tell
you what to do next and are thus unable to undertake initiatives on your
own._ 172-73. I think as machines become more intelligent that these issues
will become much more obvious.
More generally, I wonder , as machines become more intelligent, if we
will not simply cede certain intellectual activities to machines, retaining
others for ourselves. As a result, intelligence might then come to be
thought of as a cluster of rather distinct activities and simply lose the
more generalized meaning it currently carries.


Joe, you have convinced me that your use of the term _exosomatic_ is
appropriate, particularly in light of its evocation of Popper_s papers. I
also agree that Peirce_s continued fascination with classification of the
sciences and his division into the physical and psychical is fundamental.
But to what extent has Peirce allowed an analogue to Cartesian dualism to
creep back into his system when he makes such distinctions?
Peirce does distinguish dynamical action from sign-activity. _All
dynamical action. . . physical or psychical, either takes place between two
subjexts . . . or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs.
But by _semiosis_ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is
. . . a cooperation of three subjects._ 5.484. But I cannot reconcile this
passage with Peirce_s cosmology or his account of the development of
physical law. Further, that lurking phrase _physical or psychical_ in the
quotation above suggests that the boundaries may not be as firm as they look
on first glance. Is semiotic activity taking place in the world we study as
_physical_?
Creath Thorne

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END OF DIGEST 12-01-02