ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Stan Salthe wrote (SS):
Howard Pattee wrote (HP):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
HP: So, to restate my main question:
Does Peircean inquiry strictly separate the
logical syntax of signs from the semantics
of observation?
SS: Perhaps I could clarify things a bit by noting that o-s-i
involves an elision concerning i.
JA: I did not understand that last sentence.
SS: I mean that in much semiotic literature 'interpretant' is used as
though it just pops up as a mate for the object by way of the sign.
Or, indeed, that a sign (as if it were "out there" prior to some
semiosis) links an object with an interpretant. That is, the
system by which object and interpretant are linked via some
(actually co-constructed) sign is left completely implicit.
I have found this unworkable for myself because, for me,
a SI (your SOI) can be of many kinds, not just some
human system.
I am not sure if I read the literature that you are talking about.
Off the cuff, I would say that I do not believe that the sorts of
features you mention are obligatory attributes of sign relations,
but more like optional accessories that can happen in some cases.
SS: Therefore the SI needs to be stated up front.
If you are saying that the whole sign relation L c OxSxI is the thing,
in other words, the sine qua non of sensible discourse about signs,
then I think that I would agree.
SS: One SI may interact with an object quite differently than another does,
and the signs used in mediating these interactions will be different.
Put (more importantly) another way, the mediation is not done by the
sign, but by the SI, which helped to create the sign.
I guess I could say that the sign relation L c OxSxI
is the "medium" of whatever "mediation" is going on.
SS: So, the SI is responsible for both the formalisms and the measurements.
JA: I believe that Nature, the ever pressent object reality,
has its share of responsibility for our impressions and
perforce must be assigned a part in the cosmic dialogue.
SS: Yes, but, because each SI will individuate during its development
from vague beginnings, each one will have modified Nature's mode of
impressions in its own way, and its signs will have its signature.
In those varieties of sign relation where Nature is the object,
a modified impression is but another form of interpretant sign.
SS: I Note that this also relates to Howard's
"Are Peircean rules of inquiry formal?"
They appear to be formal and therefore
to apply universally for all inquiry
conditions, like "laws of inquiry".
It seems that we have yet to converge on a sufficiently congruous collection
of connotations for the term "formal". I am hopeful that the fragment from
Peirce that I posted under the heading of "Logic As Semiosis" will go toward
explaining his sense of "formal" as "quasi-necessary", and also clarify the
distinction that he observes between "logical" and "mathematical" reasoning.
SS: How, then, do the unique conditions of a specific observer or system under study
enter the formal inquiry? How is this different from normal physicist's inquiry?
Again, this question strikes me as a strangely familiar inquiry,
being one of the main tasks of my inquiry into inquiry to tackle.
I will let you know what I come up with. But I have already come
to the conclusion that we cannot approach such complex and subtle
questions without much more adequate conceptual and computational
frameworks to support our effort. So I have been working on that.
Another thought. I just recognized that the type of question being asked here
is closely related to a standard question in pragmatic hermeneutics, as to the
status of the interpreter vis a vis the interpretant, in deed, as it stands in
regard to the entire sign relation in question. Peirce's answer, which I take
to be a critical insight, is that the full sign relation is the primary entity
of our study, its bearing on interpretants being the next in importance, while
the agent of the interpretive activity is what such agents proto-typically are,
a hypostatic abstraction hypothesized to explain the phenomena of experience.
SS: I would say most obviously in the interpretants it constructs, or,
in more standard science talk, in the interpretations. However, it
also comes in (as Uexküll urged), in the construction of the signs
themselves (example: as organisms we would ignore ultraviolet
sensations, while bees would be most impressed by them).
HP: When we want to use a formal symbol system to model a physical system we have
to assign observable qualities to some of the otherwise meaningless symbols
and then provide initial conditions for them by measurement.
SS: Here is where ultraviolet or some other medium would be chosen.
HP: If you do not make a strict distinction between the formal rule-system that
represent universal, inexorable laws and the initial conditions which may be
different for every observer, the model no longer makes sense. To survive,
inquiring physicists (bacteria and all living systems) want to know what
they cannot influence and what they can change.
SS: But what would be fixed and unchangeable can differ between kinds of observers
as well as the initial conditions -- these latter of which, however, will also
differ between instances.
I tried to explain my take on the cut between "boundary" and "interior"
once before on the Complexity List -- maybe it is time to revisit the
runes of that debacle and to see if I can find some way to revise it.
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Subj: Hit And Run Question On Functional Boundaries
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 14:46:16 -0500
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: VCU Complexity Research Group <COMPLEXITY-L@VENUS.VCU.EDU>
David Keirsey wrote (DK):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
DK: I was looking for the parallel concept of the material reduction of "boundary",
since the concept "part" has traction both in functional and structural reasoning.
(The reason this struck me, my father of course *refuses* to acknowledge the lexical
word "part" as applicable to "function" -- Rosen and we are of course using the
reductionistic nonsense phrase of "functional part" -- bad, bad!)
DK: But the reason I was asking, I haven't seen anything pushing (abusing?!) this metaphor.
You guys obviously haven't either, and find no use for the metaphor. My initial guess
would be a "functor" would be an example of a "functional boundary", but thanks anyway.
JA: I sense that I may be wandering into a discussion
that started long before I was paying attention,
but some of the terms that you are using here
stir up some old thoughts of mine, so here:
JA: Let's say that I'm pursuing a "functional style" of programming,
and so I am interested in "abstract objects" called "functions",
but a specialized mutation called "recursive partial functions",
and being a practical sort of person, I want more than anything
to be able to "implement" them in the form of computer programs
that really, really run. And so now I am forced to think about
two distinct domains, one "objective", in the sense of being my
object or objective that is there independently of what I think
to do about it, the other "syntactic", in the sense that I have
to stick signs together in just the right ways to make anything
of interest to me or anybody happen at all. That is the set-up.
Now, on the syntactic side of things, I can speak of a function
as having components, specifically, the components that I break
it into, and build it back out of, to dangle a few prepositions,
and I can speak of the function as having a boundary, in regard
to the circumstance that, being recursive, since computable, it
has "arbitred", "boundary", "exceptional", "initial" conditions,
on those "parts" of the domain of definition where the function
values demand to be set by separate fiat, over and above accord
with the generic part of the functional domain, regime, or rule.
Now, all of this may just be me, having no justification in the
nature of the abstract object itself, that is, in that function
that I am trying to compute, but may just be the artifact of my
particular way of going about it. So that is what came to mind
as I read what you wrote. Is there a bearing on what you think?
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