SUO: Re: Policy On Substitutions
Jon Awbrey wrote:
>
> In the "Story of A and B", the "object ontology" (OO) is very simple:
> it consists of the two objects A and B, and thus, in one perspective,
> could be represented by a lattice or a partially-ordered-set (poset),
> that is, the order that is generated by a set {A, B} of two elements:
>
> | {A,B}
> | o
> | / \
> | {A} o o {B}
> | \ /
> | o
> | ø
>
> In the highly restrained language that A and B are allowed to use in order
> to talk about "what there is to talk about" in their universe of discourse
> X = {A, B}, they have only the set of four signs S = {"A", "B", "i", "u"}
> in what we are calling their "syntactic domain", consisting of the signs
> that can appear in either of two roles in their associated sign relations,
> as "initial signs" in the relational domain S, or as "interpretant signs"
> in the relational domain I, which is identical as a set to S in this case.
>
> Each interpreter, A or B, induces a "semiotic equivalence relation" (SER),
> also called a "semiotic partition" (SEP), on their common syntactic domain
> S = I = {"A", "B", "i", "u"}.
>
> For interpreter A, the SEP is given by {{"A", "i"}, {"B", "u"}}.
> For interpreter B, the SEP is given by {{"A", "u"}, {"B", "i"}}.
>
> This may seem like such an easy thing to contemplate, but it's the very sort of
> lesson that Tarzan has to learn before he can get out of the Jungle -- the jury
> is still out, of course, on whether that was really all that much of good thing.
>
> The point that I have been struggling to make, and not just for the sake of this
> absurdly impoverished case, but for what it suggests about the general situation,
> is that each of these SEP's or SER's, each in its own concretely distinctive but
> abstractly isomorphic way, "mimics" the structure of the bare objective ontology
> that they share in common between them.
>
> | For Interpreter A:
> |
> | {{"A","i"},{"B","u"}}
> | o
> | / \
> | {{"A","i"}} o o {{"B","u"}}
> | \ /
> | o
> | ø
>
> | For Interpreter B:
> |
> | {{"A","u"},{"B","i"}}
> | o
> | / \
> | {{"A","u"}} o o {{"B","i"}}
> | \ /
> | o
> | ø
>
> In summary, I think that the basic strategy that is illustrated here
> is very typical -- arch-typical? proto-typical? -- of how we manage
> to recover the structures of the ontological object domains of major
> interest in our world by messing about with the data, the signs, the
> texts, the theories, and so on, that we constellate round about them.
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To Continue:
By way of an apotropaic gesture -- if this comic-book
picture of Mandrake the Magician flashes through your
mind then I will be vouchsafed that you yourself were
raised on the very same "Culture" as me -- let me try
to avert a potential misunderstanding that I am aware
from my sadder-but-wiser experience is very likely to
arise, if it is not nipped in the bud, in this era of
a prevalent "reductive reflex" (RR) that has risen to
shadow the minds of men -- and, yes, that is just men,
for the mane part, as the margins bear extra wit here.
When I aver something like: 'The form, the pattern, the shape, or the structure
of the "object ontology" (OO) is reconstructed or reconstituted in the structure
of the "semiotic equivalence classes" (SEC's)', I am decidedly not trying to say
that the objects are "nothing but" classes of signs. Of course, even that would
be multiplying entities too much for the dyed-in-the-shear-absence-of-wool breed
of nominal thinkers, since the concept of a class or a set is not yet immaculate
enough for them, still, I would not want to say even that much unless perhaps to
contemplate its possible sense in the case of abstract, ideal, formal or logical
or mathematical objects, like numbers and their ilk.
As it happens, this issue, and the whole diverse variety of
mis-sundry-standings that devolve from it, marks a critical
point in the intellectual history of pragmatic thinking, as
it comprises in fact one of the most divisive of all of the
several significant cleavings that separated a mathematical
rationalist and a platonic realist like Peirce, the founder,
from the more radical empiricism and social conventionalism
of the followers, Dewey, James, Mead, & so on down the line.
The reason why any of this, which will no doubt seem like a "tempest in a teapot"
to anybody who appears to be perfectly content to live outside the pragmatic way
of thinking, does indeed have a bearing on topics of more immediate interest to
the lion's share of us here and now -- well, that is another one of those tales
that Suorazad has promised to tell me another day.
Until Then,
Jon Awbrey
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