SUO: Re: Building Ontologies Through Signs And Inquiries (BOTSAI)
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JA = Jon Awbrey
JM = Jean-Marc Orliaguet
JS = John Sowa
Jean-Marc,
I am prepending the record of our discussions so far on the other thread,
as there are many unanswered questions here that I do not want to forget.
JA, quoting CSP:
| Now, Gentlemen, it behooves me, at the outset of this course,
| to confess to you that in this respect I stand before you an
| Aristotelian and a scientific man, condemning with the whole
| strength of conviction the Hellenic tendency to mingle
| Philosophy and Practice.
|
| There are sciences, of course, many of whose results are almost immediately
| applicable to human life, such as physiology and chemistry. But the true
| scientific investigator completely loses sight of the utility of what he
| is about. It never enters his mind. Do you think that the physiologist
| who cuts up a dog reflects while doing so, that he may be saving a human
| life? Nonsense. If he did, it would spoil him for a scientific man;
| and 'then' the vivisection would become a crime. However, in physiology
| and in chemistry, the man whose brain is occupied with utilities, though
| he will not do much for science, may do a great deal for human life.
| But in philosophy, touching as it does upon matterswhich are, and
| ought to be, sacred to us, the investigator who does not stand
| aloof from all intent to make practical applications, will not
| only obstruct the advance of the pure science, but what is
| infinitely worse, he will endanger his own moral integrity
| and that of his readers.
|
| CSP, RATLOT, page 107.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|'Reasoning and the Logic of Things',
|'The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898',
| Edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner, Introduction
| by Kenneth Laine Ketner and Hilary Putnam,
| Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992.
JA, in his own write:
| How does one convey an idealization?
| One strikes a pose, one acts it out
| on the appropriate stage, one draws
| down on a muse of fire and declaims
| it in a prologue that is blissfully
| free of all subtle admixtures, that
| displacid concreteness of real life.
|
| Works for me.
What I was trying to convey here is one of the ways that
we commonly portray an abstract ideal, or perhaps a more
realistic facet, but still a partial aspect of our total,
if there is a total -- how would I know -- human reality.
But let us hearken to the prological bit of another player:
| Actors, taught not to let any embarrassment show
| on their faces, put on a mask. I will do the same.
| So far, I have been a spectator in this theatre which
| is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage,
| and I come forward masked.
|
| René Descartes, 'Praeambula', CSM 1, page 2.
|
| René Descartes, 'The Philosophical Writings of Descartes', Volume 1,
| Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch,
| Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1985.
JM: Does the Aristotelian scientific man, by fear of mingling Philosophy and Practice,
also refrain from comparing a posteriori conceptions with those found a priori?
I think that you are confusing the actor with the character, the mask with the terror.
JM, quoting CSP:
| DIVISION OF TRIADIC RELATIONS [= CP 2.233]
|
| The principles and analogies of Phenomenology enable us to describe,
| in a distant way, what the divisions of triadic relations must be.
| But until we have met with the different kinds 'a posteriori',
| and have in that way been led to recognize their importance,
| the 'a priori' descriptions mean little; not nothing at
| all, but little. Even after we seem to identify the
| varieties called for 'a priori' with varieties which
| the experience of reflexion leads us to think important,
| no slight labour is required to make sure that the divisions
| we have found 'a posteriori' are precisely those that have been
| predicted 'a priori'. In most cases, we find that they are not
| precisely identical, owing to the narrowness of our reflexional
| experience. It is only after much further arduous analysis
| that we are able finally to place in the system the
| conceptions to which experience has led us.
I think that you should read this carefully.
Perhaps you omitted to do so while cutting
and pasting? At any rate, much of how you
speak of Peirce's Categories appears to me
to fly in the face of what it clearly says.
It's not just you. I have been encouraging
people to look at lots of concrete examples --
Peirce's Three Wise Acts, Dewey's Rainy Day,
Cathy Legg's Missing the Bus, to test their
abstract conceits on these, still no takers.
JA, finishing out the Paragraph:
| In the case of triadic relations, no part of this work has,
| as yet, been satisfactorily performed, except in some measure
| for the most important class of triadic relations, those of signs,
| or representamens, to their objects and interpretants.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 2.233
JA: Let me try to start afresh, and say what I am hoping to achieve here.
I aveiled myself of the opportunity provided by John Sowa's paper on
"Signs, Processes, and Language Games" to return once again to the
problems of abductive reasoning in the carrying out of inquiry.
JS: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm
JA: The pertinence of the topic of inquiry itself to this Ontogoogly Working Group --
where we strive to bring Logos to bear on Ontos, and mostly discover how little
we really know about the bonds among the borne on, the bearing, and the bearer,
is that inquiry is the short name for the process by which ontologies, that is,
systems of concepts and symbols regarding "what is, what may be, what must be",
come into being, change, develop, grow, thrive, and either evolve or pass away,
as the case may be.
JA: I am just trying to make some progress on those questions.
JA: In order to make any headway in this direction I have to reign in my aims a bit.
Take mathematics, for instance. Mathematics is a vast field of human endeavor,
but a 4-function e-calculator is an extremely handy tool to have, and it has
its place in the enterprise. Looking back, I can remember a time when we
had no such devices, and I think with a certain fondness on my first,
that revived my childhood interest in number theory and allowed me
to pick up mathematics as an experimental craft once again.
JA: When it comes to inquiry, my current intentions are very similar,
if not a bit of 1-downsmanship -- I would be happy to construct
a 3-function e-calculator, so long as the functions are the
least bit able to carry out the 3 ductions: ab-, de-, in-.
JA: In order to do that, it is necessary to put aside
the lion's share of our capacity for subtlety and
see if we can pick out "routine" or "routinizable"
factors of the larger ductions in all their glory.
JA: So that is what I am trying to do.
JM: Remember that there are only two kinds of people:
those who put things into various categories and
those who don't.
JA: And I always thought that it was the 'sui generis' versus the 'gui senilis' --
JM: Each new division obtained from a previous division
adds more determination to the conception being analysed.
It is done by selecting at each new generation an essential
aspect pertaining to the conception, in order to list the
three ways in which a genuinely triadic idea can degenerate
(if the conception involves three objects), or the two ways
in which a genuinely dyadic relation can degenerate (if the
conception involves only two objects). Because of this,
once an essential aspect has been selected there is no
way to get back to a less determinate conception (e.g.
from abduction to arguments to symbols to signs to
triadic relations) without making a logical mistake
if one does not redefine all the terms by making
explicit the essential criteria that are driving
the divisions. The major problem in that case
is that Peirce over a timespan of 40 years
used his universal categories to define
and generate most of his conceptions ...
JA: No, he did not.
JA: Universal positive categories are just not generative enough to do that.
JM: In themselves they are not sufficient to generate anything but pure conceptions,
but they can be combined to generate a multitude of more complex conceptions.
Any degenerate category, for example, is a combination of ideas, since
nothing is degenerate by itself. All degenerate categories obtained by
successive subdivisions, the categories of categories of categories ...
are the shades in our conceptions ("Only as the division proceeds, the
subdivisions become harder and harder to discern." 5.72). Abduction
is a firstness of thirdness (argument) of thirdness (symbol) of
thirdness (sign) ...
If that sort of talk helps you do inquiry when you really need to, well, okay.
But it just doesn't help me get out of the Predicaments that I find myself in.
So far it is still just positivism. It has no logic in it yet, no negativity.
JM: Dyadic divisions are not strictly speaking combination of conceptions
since the idea of a combination involves a third element, but they can
be divided in some way by forming a catena, in a purely reactional way,
i.e. when two things react, one is more active that the other (to kill
and to be killed are different). Take the one is most active and it
will subdivide again ....
JM: Category the first cannot degenerate into subcategories, but it can be
a part involved in a more complex comception, e.g. the firstness of
a degenerate secondness or the firstness of degenerate thirdness.
JM: The three types of arguments (abduction, deduction, induction) are obtained,
as you write below, by considering the three ways in which the premise of
the argument form a representation of the conclusion. This is an essential
determination in the conception of an argument because just every argument
has a set of premise and a conclusion which are logically related. In L75,
written in 1902, 35 years after "the New List", Peirce links again the three
types of arguments to the three categories (in no special listing order):
JM, citing CSP:
| I shall then come to the important question of the
| classification of arguments. My paper of April 1867
| on this subject divides arguments into deductions,
| inductions, abductions (my present name, which will
| be defended), and mixed arguments. I consider this
| to be the key of logic. In the following month,
| May 1867, I correctly defined the three kinds
| of simple arguments in terms of the categories.
JM: In my opinion, there is no doubt that abduction is linked to firstness,
deduction to secondness and induction, to thirdness, as long as one considers
the following essential determination: "what is the mode of being of the premise
in relation to the conclusion?"
JM: You may divide arguments again in your own manner and thereby redefine
'abduction' by selecting another essential determination of arguments
to find out that abduction is of a thirdness type, but unfortunely by
seeing what you wrote below you chose exactly the same determination
as Peirce did in 1867.
JA: I have settled on nothing. I am merely trying to trace, as carefully as I can,
the intellectual trajectories of this or that planetary light in the night sky,
or is it a firefly in the wind? I will puzzle it out from further observation.
JA: You used the word "essential" six times in the above remarks.
Can you tell me what you mean by it?
JM: Because it is essential that the detemination be done on an essential character.
If you choose an accidental character, your divisions will be imperfect. To create
a division of cars, will you choose as a first criterium the number of channels on
the radio? no you won't, because a radio is not an essential character in a car,
but wheels are ...
You are talking about Aristotle's theory of definition?
JM: The same with the division of arguments: you start by being very general, i.e.
you first consider triadic relations, in general, then you consider those that
are genuinely triadic (signs), then you consider those where the relation Sign,
object Mind is genuine, i.e. you leave aside "degenerate signs" such as the index
and the icons, then you ask yourself: how does the interpretant represents the
relation between the sign and the object? "The argument is a representamen which
does not leave the interpretant to be determined as it may by the person to whom the
symbol is addressed, but separately represents what is the interpreting representation
that it is intended to determine. This interpreting representation is, of course, the
conclusion" (CP 5.76), then you ask: "how does the representamen represents the conclusion
of the argument?" Does it suggest it (abduction), does it impose it (deduction) or does it
give a provisional conclusion subject to modifications in an indefinite future (induction)?"
This is a very 'a priori' way of proceeding. I used to do a lot of that. It grew tire-some.
And in the end "the rubber has to meet the road" -- we talk like that in De Troit -- so why
put it off? -- do some road-testing as you go. Who knows, it might even prevent an accident.
JA: What exactly do these categorical remarks and these essential classifications do for you?
What function do they serve in your thinking? Do they lend a hand to inquiry into things
apart from themselves or do they merely munch on their selves with a self-satisfied grin?
Will they help me chip out a 3-duction e-calculator in aide of even the simplest inquiry?
JA: That is the sort of stuff that I worry about these days.
JM: If you do see the categories where they are to be found, i.e. right in front of your face,
then they are useful, but if you don't, they are useless, although you can still impress
your friends by making them believe that you understand what you are talking about.
I never have 'that' problem.
Jon Awbrey
P.S. Does the new SemioCom have an archive? I lost track of it.
J.A.
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