SUO: Re: Sign Relations
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Josiane Caron-Pargue wrote:
>
> Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 10:24:02 -0400 [Jon Awbrey wrote:]
> >
> > To specifics. The paragraph that you quote is
> > a very tricky one. If taken at its ebb it can
> > lead on to a form of nominalistic reductionism,
> > which is why I deliberately mention the analogy
> > to perspective drawing (Desargues vs. Descartes),
> > as if to say, watch out! a 2-dim representation
> > of a 3-dim reality can be useful if read right,
> > but it is never the whole picture.
> >
> > At 23:40 13/05/2001 -0400, vous avez écrit:
> >
> > [Josiane Caron-Pargue wrote:]
> > >
> > > This because it seems to me that it fits to examples I already found in
> > > problem solving and that I try to modelize. (I already try to tell you
> > > about that). The two alternative ways are marked with interjections
> > > (for example: oh).
> > >
> > > It is the problem of decontextualization.
> >
> > Sorry, I did not understand the references
> > to interjection and to decontextualization.
> >
> > Jon Awbrey
>
> Hi Jon,
>
> In fact I quoted this paragraph for a double reason.
> I try to clarify without refering to Peirce terminology
> what made me react. In fact I am not sure to understand
> eveything you said in the two paragraph 'in the first version ...'
> and 'in the second version ...' I think that it is good but that
> is also a sort of reductionism.
Yes, it can become that if one is not careful and flexible.
Here is my attitude. I think that a kind of "heuristically"
nominal or reductive position is actually a good way to start,
and I imagine that this is probably what Ockham, as a sensible
person, was probably driving at. And I have seen nothing yet
in his original writings that would contradict this opinion,
though I have not read but a small taste of what he wrote.
But if one refuses, on principle, to admit of any abstract
entities at all, no matter what, then one has contracted
for a degenre of "dogmatic" nominalism and reductionism,
and this makes it all but impossible to do mathematics
or almost anything at all beyond "nominal thinking",
to pose the rather pointed pun. One of the features
that saves my perspective, analogous to projective
or descriptive geometry, from falling into this pit
is the appreciation of Cartesian Rationalism, which
is one of the aesthetic attitudes that Peirce shared
with Descartes -- and so it must be the one true view! --
whose consequences in this context are that no completed
sample of signs, in any significant equivalence relation
among signs alone, is going to exhaust the senses of the
object to which all of these signs point. This, indeed,
if you recall, was the Big Issue that Chomsky took with
Skinner, way back when, with the very first shots that
were fired in the Cognitive Revolution. Ah, Madeleine!
> - First at informational content - or more exactly
> propositional - a sign defines a class of elements.
> At the enunciative level (I refer to Culioli's formal
> approach, which certainly I simplify by convenience -
> this because I do not know how to express it in Peirce's
> terminology) this class defines the notional domain composed
> of both inside and outside. The operation of determination
> introduce a partition of the domain in interior and exterior
> and boundary, and the choice of one of these parts.
We probably should pause here and see if we are using any
of these words the same way. I do not know Culioli's work.
The term "determination" I am presently in the middle of
trying understand as a "term of art" in Peirce's usage.
It seems to be key to the concept of "information" that
he was already expositing in lectures at Harvard in 1865!
Here are some links that I strung out along these lines:
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04784.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04785.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04786.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04787.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04791.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04794.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04795.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04796.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04797.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04798.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04802.html
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg04814.html
So you can let me know if your usage fits in with this line.
The concept of a "partition", in this formal context of ideas,
is synonymous with the idea of an "equivalence relation" (ER),
for example:
1. A "pragmatic equivalence relation" (PER), say, as induced
by an application of the "pragmatic maxim" to a motley
collection of signs and concepts, which require to be
tested for their potential meaning or lack thereof.
2. A "referential equivalence relation" (RER), being a set of signs
that all denote the same objects for a given interpretive agent.
3. A "semiotic equivalence relation" (SER), which is constituted
by the arcs of transition that a given interpreter actually or
potentially knows or makes from signs to their interpretant signs --
the verbs "know" and "make" mark a competence/performance distinction.
The terms "boundary", "exterior", "interior" are likely to be a bit
fixed in my mind to the definitions that they are given in topology:
a. A point x in the space X is on the "boundary" of a set Y c X
iff every open set U containing x intersects both Y and X-Y.
b. A point x in X is in the "exterior" of a set Y c X
iff some open set U containing x is contained in X-Y.
c. A point x in X is in the "interior" of a set Y c X
iff some open set U containing x is contained in Y.
I hope that I remember this right --
there may be fine points I forget.
This kind of stuff makes me tired,
so I will break until later today.
Jon Awbrey
> So the object which corresponds to the sign (representamen) can
> at the enunciative level be expressed in connection with the inside
> or in connection with the outside, or both, or neither of them in
> case of detachability introducing a distance toward the domain.
>
> So there are two forms of outsides: exterior into the notional domain,
> and detached exterior outside notional domain. If it is stabilized the
> passage from detached outside toward interior could be considered as
> a reduction of dimension. Then the boundary constitutes the projection
> of detached exterior.
>
> - On the other hand, in verbal protocols of problem solving
> I differentiated automatic versus controled treatment, particularly
> in case of storage in LTM memory. The case of controled treatment
> corresponds either in sudden discovery of elements or properties -
> cf Gestalt - or in the recognition of this element in another context,
> or still in its possible recognition in every context - i.e. the complete
> decontextualisation of the same element.
>
> Each step of this process is marked with interjections
> in the verbal protocol. Furthermore, I now work more
> in semiotics so as to characterize the context more
> completely than I already do. To model this process
> of contextualisation and decontextualisation, in my
> protocols, is of an obliged step.
>
> Due to discussing about Peirce, I was brought to
> formulate a little better - at least for me! - the
> phenomena of contextualization and decontextualization
> which seem to me to appear from the analysis of the
> verbal protocols.
>
> I think that there is a level where interior and exterior
> could be considered as two classes of context, and the
> domain as the abstract or decontextualized class.
>
> I thought it is possible to formulate these things in terms of
> Peirce terminology, I tried to do it, but I am not clear with this.
>
> You can ask me some more details. But this could stay obscure
> without working on protocols from the begining of the analysis.
>
> Otherwise I know very the problem of perspective for children drawing.
> My PHD dissertation concerned the drawing of cube.
>
> I have to leave now.
> Josiane
>
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> Josiane Caron-Pargue
> UMR CNRS 6096 "Langage et Cognition" (LACO)
> Université de Poitiers
> Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société (MSHS)
> 99, Avenue du Recteur Pineau
> 86022 Poitiers cedex
> Tél.: 05 49 45 46 23 (Bureau)
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> e-mail : josiane.caron@mshs.univ-poitiers.fr
>
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