SUO: Re: Ontology, Epistemology, Semiotics
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Richard,
I am sensitive to the fact that people of many faiths on this issue are
at this moment screaming and tearing their hair out at the very idea that
it might be raised here again, present company included. I am going to go
take a 3-ple strength tylenol and maybe, if you really want to know, I will
collect some links to previous expositions, and put them on the ONT list.
Jon Awbrey
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Richard Cooper wrote:
>
> Jon Awbrey wrote:
> > Richard,
> >
> > Peirce was a relational thinker, as distinguished
> > from people who favor absolute terms above all else.
> >
> > The term "thirdness" refers to those properties of both
> > empirical phenomena and formal structures that can only
> > be modeled in any adequate way by means of 3-adic relations.
>
> There are no such formal structures, IMHO. John McCarthy's
> paper "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions", which
> provides the mathematical concept behind the first Lisp
> interpreters, indicates that any function, of any arity,
> can be modeled by a decomposition of the same mapping
> into dyadic and monadic functions.
>
> In formal logic, the concept of an event E7 (in which multiple
> participants play a role) can be modeled as a set of dyads
> with with any detail expressions S[i] designating participants
> can be related dyadically. So there is no formal need for arities
> greater than 2. The unifying event E7 is the "thing" that ties
> all the participants together.
>
> So I don't feel enlightened by this explanation. Certainly
> a triadic (or quadratic, or ..) relation is more intuitively
> expressive than a bunch of line items in a unifying event, but
> it is still not formally necessary. Therefore Thirdness is
> not necessarily defined by describing it as a triadic function.
>
> But beyond formality, if Thirdness can be used to explain
> both animate agents and inanimate processes, then Thirdness
> is a poorly defined concept, whether relational or individual.
>
> The way its being explained in this thread so far, Thirdness
> is merely a nonterminal connector that is familiar (and therefore
> acceptable) to Peirceans, but which isn't any fundamental idea.
>
> The concept of relativity (not just as in physics, but as in
> art, drama, engineering, and nearly every other modern disciple)
> where the observer plays a role in the world, and is included
> in the model, needs no Thirdness as an explanation IMHO. Most
> people agree that animate agents drive some forces in the real
> world, but how is that related to ontologies?
>
> I could use some deeper explanations about Thirdness, including
> how it's manifested in specific examples of situation descriptions.
>
> Rich
>
> >I think he used a quality word like
> > "thirdness" as yet
> > another sop to those who are imbued with thinking in
> > essences, but I believe,
> > just looking at the mess that's been made of this concession
> > since his time,
> > that it'd probably be best to save it for special occasions,
> > among friends
> > and folks who won't take it amiss, and begin to emphasize the
> > explanatory
> > power of the 3-adic relations, in all their extensional
> > glory, themselves.
> >
> > Jon Awbrey
> >
> > o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
> >
> > Richard Cooper wrote:
> > >
> > > John Sowa wrote:
> > >
> > > <snip/>
> > >
> > > > But there is a strong similarity, which has raised many
> > > > controversies among biologists. As "objective" scientists,
> > > > they want to formulate their theories purely in terms
> > > > of efficient causes. But biological systems are very
> > > > difficult to explain without using words like "purpose".
> > > >
> > > > Any biologist who said "the purpose of the urinary system
> > > > is to excrete liquid wastes" would be banished as giving
> > > > ammunition to the creationists who are trying to use biology
> > > > to prove the existence of God the Creator who is the Grand
> > > > Designer of the Universe.
> > >
> > > This indicates that the biologist had her own agenda (purpose)
> > > in making the statement.
> > >
> > > > And that is why Peirce introduced his category of Thirdness.
> > > > Every instance of purpose or intention is an instance of
> > > > Thirdness, but there are things like biological functions,
> > > > which are also instances of Thirdness without implying the
> > > > existence of some being who had that explicit purpose.
> > >
> > > <snip/>
> > >
> > > I suppose a creationist would say that Thirdness is just a
> > > political ploy to deny a creator's purpose, using Victorian
> > > elipticisms to deny the one who had the purpose, while
> > > maintaining that there exists a purpose.
> > >
> > > Similary, a darwinist would say that biological functioning
> > > is the "purpose" of a process - evolution - which "optimizes"
> > > the cross product of environment and agency to obtain maximum
> > > "energy" gain at minimum "loss".
> > >
> > > Aren't all these some sort of Thirdness? Isn't Thirdness
> > > therefore some kind of abstraction that isn't well defined?
> > > How can Thirdness be distinguished from its complement
> > > ~Thirdness?
> > >
> > > It would be interesting to define Thirdness in terms of agents
> > > that could be animated versus agents that could be processes
> > > like evolution. Where would the concept of "process" stop
> > > in supporting the abstraction of "Thirdness"?
> > >
> > > Rich
> >
> > o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
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