SUO: Re: Sign Relations & Communication
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Continuation Infra:
JA = Jon Awbrey
SR = Seth Russell
SR: I assume we are trying to map (as accurately as possible)
from your mind to my mind and that the column you refer to
as 'Interpretant' is in yours and my minds respectively.
The column you label 'Object' is in the objective reality
we both share ... assuming of course we both believe
in (have faith in) such a shared objective reality.
The sign column is the easiest ... it is just the
strings (like this one) that we throw at each other
in some kind of interaction such as this dialogue.
Am I groking you correctly on these points?
JA: I wanted to pick a "real" example, one that came from
the ongoing context, so of course I'm now stuck with
a very tough natural language nut to chew. But I will
persist as far as I can, at various point abstracting to
revelant levels of features and waving my hands at other
details. No mind-melds are allowed -- we will have to do
this the way it's done on this earthly sphere.
JA: The Interpretant role is, in principle, extremely far-ranging. It can encompass
everything that you put in the public Sign role, plus the whole wide world of
"affections and impressions of the soul" that Aristotle called "pathemata",
plus the vast repertory of actions and steps that one executes or performs
in one's own particular "interpretive dance" to the music of the notes in
the Sign domain, plus all of the redolent motives and motifs that make up
one's "general conditional disposition to act", indeed, one's very Self.
But it will not be possible to discuss very much of that, and what we do
will only get treated in this context to the extent that it actually gets
written out in words, and so it all comes round to the sort of signlike
stuff that might well have already been included in the Sign column in
the first place.
SR: I agree that the Interpretant column is problematic were we to restrain
our domain of discourse to humans. However, were we to change our domain
of discourse to computers, then perhaps we can make some headway. Were we
to talk primarialy about Human<->Computer and Computer<->Computer dialogue,
would you not agree that the Interpretant column for the Computer's role can
be found by what resides in the computer's memory ?? <--- really I need a
direct answer to that question.
JA: Way too fast! I was in the middle of plodding my way through a standard sort
of proposal for a formal semantics, exhibiting all of its inhibitory features,
and then I was preparing to incrementally manifest the sign relational way out
from behind the screen just in time to save the day with a proper click of the
heels and the earnest wish to return to Ithaca, Penelope, and Telemachus again.
But that is several other stories ...
JA: The first thing to get clear about is that the distinctive content of the
three relational domains is a secondary issue. There is no sense to look
for distinctive essences that will tell you just from looking at an item
which column it belongs to. Indeed, it is perfectly sensible to think
about a sign relation L c OxSxI which has all three sets O, S, I equal
so far as sets go, that is, with O = S = I. That is slightly unusual,
but it is very common to contemplate sign relations for which S = I,
for example, with S = I = M c A*, where M is a formal language over
an alphabet A. In such a setting one could say that a word x in M,
amounting to an element of both S and I, is "virtually" in a computer
memory, speaking in the usual loose-lisp sort of way, to mean that x
has been parsed by the duly appointed parser, has left a record of its
parsing in the form of a parse graph, or other style of data structure,
and has delivered the virtual acceptor that is virtually emulated by the
computer in question into a virtual state of the virtually accepting kind.
Ultimately, then, for the sake of maximal realism, if you like that sort of
thing, one would like to be able to replace the formally characterized sets
O, S, I with three domains that constitute the state spaces of real systems,
always, of course, at the appropriate level of abstraction -- nobody ever gets
all that real if you really wanna think about it in the strictest possible terms.
SR: Now if I can impose upon you for just a moment to examine one of my
mentographs (say for example 1). Let me explain what this graph means.
That graph is just a picture drawn so that a human could understand
it of what goes in your Interpertant column should such reside inside
a computer's memory. By this I mean that every labeled arrow in the
diagram translates directly to a record contained in the computer's
data base. There is substantually no interpretation necessary from
the graph to the database ... one can write the database directly
by just reading off the arrows in the graph.
SR: [1] http://robustai.net/mentography/AnnBobYouI.gif
SR: Can you see that?
I am heartily in favor of graphical and graph-theoretical forms of representation,
and I have made something of a study of it for many years, but these graphs just
escape me, as they seem to complicate what is simple instead of eliciting the
inner simplicity that may lie obscured in apparent complexity. Let's return
to my initial presentation of these two sign relations in tabular form, and
see if it is possible to reconcile the information that is inherent in the
many splintered genre of representation.
Table 1. Sign Relation of Interpreter A
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
| Object | Sign | Interpretant |
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
| A | "A" | "A" |
| A | "A" | "i" |
| A | "i" | "A" |
| A | "i" | "i" |
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
| B | "B" | "B" |
| B | "B" | "u" |
| B | "u" | "B" |
| B | "u" | "u" |
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
Table 2. Sign Relation of Interpreter B
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
| Object | Sign | Interpretant |
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
| A | "A" | "A" |
| A | "A" | "u" |
| A | "u" | "A" |
| A | "u" | "u" |
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
| B | "B" | "B" |
| B | "B" | "i" |
| B | "i" | "B" |
| B | "i" | "i" |
o---------------o---------------o---------------o
Another style of graphical picture can be given by letting the fact that
Interpreter J employs a triple of the form <x, y, z> be depicted like so:
| y
| /
| x o--J
| \
| z
Then the sixteen triples of the above two tables
could be arranged around shared objects like so:
|
| "i" "i"
| o o o o
| | \ / |
| "A" o--A A A--o "A"
| "A" o \ | / o "A"
| \ o o o /
| A--o A o--B
| / o o o \
| "A" o / | \ o "A"
| "A" o--B B B--o "A"
| | / \ |
| o o o o
| "u" "u"
|
| "i" "i"
| o o o o
| | \ / |
| "B" o--B B B--o "B"
| "B" o \ | / o "B"
| \ o o o /
| B--o B o--A
| / o o o \
| "B" o / | \ o "B"
| "B" o--A A A--o "B"
| | / \ |
| o o o o
| "u" "u"
|
Time to watch Angel & Buffy ...
Jon Awbrey
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