Re: SUO: Contenuous Au Courants
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>Pat Hayes wrote:
> >
> > John Sowa:
> >
> > > > I would agree. And in fact, I think that the distinction
> > > > between the terms "continuant" and "occurrent" can be quite
> > > > nicely defined in Whitehead's terms: A continuant is something
> > > > that we can recognize at multiple encounters. An occurrent is
> > > > something that does not have enough distinctive characteristics
> > > > that we can be sure whether another encounter is with "the same"
> > > > or "a similar" entity.
> >
> > Robert Meersman:
> >
> > > ### a most enlightening definition I must say. But in it,
> > > and in fact in all of the above, who are these "we" and "I"
> > > who do the recognizing and identifying ... I tried to observe
> > > before that all of semantics constitutes an agreement among
> > > cognitive agents
> >
> > Im afraid I disagree, and moreover think that this view is profoundly
> > misleading (please don't quote Peircian chapter and verse in response.)
> > Here's why, in brief: it confuses *semantic* issues with
>*epistemic* issues;
> > it assumes that meaning is ultimately concerned with what 'we'
>(or maybe 'they')
> > can know, and how they come to know it.
>
>Pat, Robert, ...
>
>Sorry to "but in", but Robert did issue the imperative to "But in it" --
>
>I would need your personal definitions of "epistemic" and "semantic"
I am using them in a rough-and-ready philosophical way to refer
respectively to issues concerned with knowledge, and issues concerned
with meaning. (I do not propose to get any further involved in
meta-gaming about exactly what we mean by every word we use, etc.; if
you don't know what Im talking about, just forget about it.)
>to have much hope of coming to any kind of an understanding here,
>whether "consensus" or "dissensus", and whether we count ourselves
>to constitute "cognitive" agents or just "behavioral" agents, but
>let me wade in anyway, swimmingly or not.
>
>I think that I would say, if I dare to try and think it through
>in my own words -- well, not of necessity neologisms or anything,
>but I am guessing that you probably know what I mean, or, well,
>at least, that you will probably behave insofar as if you did --
>that a typically pragmatic POV specifically does not say that:
>
>| Meaning is ultimately concerned with
>| what 'we' (or maybe 'they') can know,
>| and how they come to know it.
>
>What appears to be true from this practical point of view
>could be expressed, I think, just a little more like this:
>
>| Meaning is mediately concerned with
>| what 'we' (or maybe 'they') can know,
>| and how they come to know it.
>
>So I think that you were in deed very close,
>as close as mediately and ultimately can be.
Alas, as I have no idea what 'mediately' means; and as I inserted
'ultimately' more for emphasis than for content, allow me to
retrospectively withdraw it and simply say:
Meaning is concerned with what 'we' can know, ....
>And per your request, I will spare you for now
>the many places where so-&-so said it to be so.
>
> > I think this is deeply and profoundly ass-backwards,
> > since until we have some reasonably clear account ...
>
>Excuse the "but in", again, but in this sentence,
>I just wonder, do you even hear yourself saying:
>"until 'we' have some reasonably clear account ..."
>(emphasis mine)?
Yes, of course. So what? One can always get lost in these infinite
recursions of meta-discussion, but here I think the appropriate
person to cite is not Peirce but Charles Dodgson. The 'we' I was
referring to was the people who might be trying to create an ontology
or theory of meaning. One uses language to communicate about the
process of communicating, of course; but it does not follow that the
most appropriate place to start studying is the language one uses to
state the study in.
> > of what it is that we (or they) are knowing, it is both
> > premature and rather hopeless to try to think about how
> > it is that it (whatever it is) can be known.
>
> > Meaning is not reducible to agency;
> > rather, agency presumes meaning.
>
>Okay, I concur here, in spite of the circumstance
>that my concurrence might be taken to weaken your
>argument -- but never mind that -- still, I think
>that "we" should try to remember what the role of
>these admittedly hypostatic agents is meant to be.
>They are agents of experience, interpretation, or
>observation, however you, in the role of their --
>dare I say -- "agent", their "director", their --
>dare I say -- "representation", wish to cast them,
>and thus to cast them clean out of the play is to
>toss out the empirical baby with the hypostatical
>bath-water.
Im afraid I don't agree. Apply your reasoning to, say, physics.
Physics is done by physicists, and they argue with one another in
language, just like all the other agents swarming over the globe. But
it doesnt follow that one cannot understand physics without invoking
agency, or that the subject-matter of physics is irreducibly triadic
or cannot be begun without worrying about the pragmatics of usage of
physics-signs, etc.
>So there just has to be somother way.
>
> > > (e.g. two persons who agree they are pointing at the same occurrent;
> > > or one agent who agrees with himself that he is looking at an instance
> > > of the same continuant after a while, etc etc. Is this too trivial
> > > to mention, or am I too obtuse, in hypothesizing that we include
> > > these cognitive agents, AND perhaps the procedure by which they
> > > arrive at their agreements, AND the contexts that must restrict
> > > or qualify these agreements, as first-class citizens in any
> > > ontological design process?
> >
> > That is not too trivial by any means, but I think it is
> > a very bad methodology. How will the project get started?
> > You need to 'include' a theory of agency, etc., into the ontology.
>
>Yes, I accept this "theory-ladelled" character of experience:
>so you do have an "(implicit) grammar of experience" ((I)GOE)
>that informs your every experience even as you are having it,
>but do you really have to have already utterly formalized it,
>in effect, to render your IGOE an EGOE, in order just to have
>an experience? I think not!
Well, in fact I think so (for the argument in its essentials see the
idea of a 'language of thought' esp. by Jerry Fodor), but in any case
that is beside the point. Who said that we are talking about
*experience* ? The ontologies we write are not *about* experiences
(well, maybe some of them are, but not mine).
>
> > Now, how does one include anything in an ontology?
> > One writes axioms about it (or them) with the intention
> > of representing in those axioms enough information about
> > the things in question that relevant questions can be
> > answered by drawing conclusions from those axioms.
>
>You can form a deductive image of inquiry, method, science, whatever,
>but will that image be complete, effective, faithful, and unwarped?
I'm not suggesting making an image of anything. The axioms in the
ontology are not an image of scientific enquiry: they are a
description in a formal language. If this isnt what you think
ontology-writing ought to be, take up that issue somewhere else.
>It is useful, up to a point, to make 2-dim images of solid realities,
>but do we really want to confound them?
>
> > So the proposal amounts to begin by writing an axiomatic theory
> > of cognitive agents, procedures by which they arrive at agreements,
> > and contexts in which they perform. Now, how will you get started
> > on writing those axioms? This is where we came in, of ocurse, but
> > doesnt that seem like a rather bad place to *start*?
>
>Can you start any other place?
Yes.
Pat Hayes
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