ONT Re: Inquiry Into Interpretants
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Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
Howard Pattee wrote (HP):
Albert Einstein wrote (AE):
Charles Sanders Peirce wrote (CSP):
| I think we need to reflect upon the circumstance that every word
| implies some proposition or, what is the same thing, every word,
| concept, symbol has an equivalent term -- or one which has become
| identified with it, -- in short, has an 'interpretant'.
|
| Consider, what a word or symbol is; it is a sort
| of representation. Now a representation is something
| which stands for something. ... A thing cannot stand for
| something without standing 'to' something 'for' that something.
| Now, what is this that a word stands 'to'? Is it a person?
|
| We usually say that the word 'homme' stands to a Frenchman for 'man'.
| It would be a little more precise to say that it stands 'to' the
| Frenchman's mind -- to his memory. It is still more accurate
| to say that it addresses a particular remembrance or image
| in that memory. And what 'image', what remembrance?
| Plainly, the one which is the mental equivalent of
| the word 'homme' -- in short, its interpretant.
| Whatever a word addresses then or 'stands to',
| is its interpretant or identified symbol. ...
|
| The interpretant of a term, then, and that which it stands to
| are identical. Hence, since it is of the very essence of a symbol
| that it should stand 'to' something, every symbol -- every word and
| every 'conception' -- must have an interpretant -- or what is the
| same thing, must have information or implication. (CE 1, 466-467).
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Chronological Edition', Volume 1, pages 466-467.
HP: I have a short attention span, so your postings are
way ahead of me. So I'll start with Peirce's words.
I understand why any epistemic process is triadic,
object/observer/action, or system/measurement/symbol, or
symbol/interpreter/control, or symbol/interpreter/meaning, etc.,
but I don't understand Peirce's requirement for interpretant sign.
JA: Here is a passage from Peirce that is decisive in clearing up
the relationship between the interpreter and the interpretant,
and, not by coincidence, has some bearing on the placement of
concepts as symbols, as their principal aspects are refracted
across the spectrum of sign modalities.
CSP: | I think we need to reflect upon the circumstance that every word
| implies some proposition or, what is the same thing, every word,
| concept, symbol has an equivalent term -- or one which has become
| identified with it, -- in short, has an 'interpretant' ...
HP: I'm stuck with the decisive clearing up right here.
Why need any word imply some proposition? What
kind of proposition could a single word imply?
If I had to express it in contemporary terms I think that it would be
something like the idea that any term, of the type that Peirce is talking
about in this particular context, can be interpreted as a logical predicate.
Once again, I fear that a large part of the problem may be that
I have selected here only a few sample passages, ones that strike
me as marking especially critical transition points in Peirce's
reasoning, clipping them from much longer articles and even whole
series of lectures through which he was gradually developing his
argument and laying out the terminology that it took to convey it.
I will try to make up the lack as well as I can, but must ultimately
refer you to the source that I cited, namely, Lecture 7 of Peirce's
1866 Lowell Lectures, not to mention the whole lecture series itself:
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|"The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis",
| Lowell Institute Lectures of 1866, pages 357-504 in
|'Chronological Edition', Volume 1.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
| 'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition',
| 'Volume 1: 1857-1866',
| 'Volume 2: 1867-1871',
| 'Volume 3: 1872-1878',
| 'Volume 4: 1879-1884',
| 'Volume 5: 1884-1886',
| 'Volume 6: 1886–1890',
| and still counting ...
| 30-50 volumes expected!
|
| Peirce Edition Project,
| Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982-????
|
| http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/web/index.htm
| http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/web/desc/desc.htm
| http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/web/writings/crit.htm
Perhaps it will help to back up a paragraph and pick up some of the context:
| Now, ladies and gentlemen, as it is true that every increase
| of our knowledge is an increase in the information of a term --
| that is, is an addition to the number of terms equivalent to
| that term -- so it is also true that the first step in the
| knowledge of a thing, the first framing of a term, is also
| the origin of the information of that term because it gives
| the first term equivalent to that term. I here announce the
| great and fundamental secret of the logic of science. There
| is no term, properly so called, which is entirely destitute
| of information, of equivalent terms. The moment an expression
| acquires sufficient comprehension to determine its extension,
| it already has more than enough to do so.
When I read this, from my present perspective, what I get is that Peirce is
pointing out that meaning is more a matter of "semantic equivalence classes"
of syntactic entities than the individual items in these classes themselves.
I take this to be a remarkable anticipation of an insightful idea that one
does not hear again until well until the 20th Century. Beside all this,
if you read the whole bit, you find that Peirce is developing a theory
of information, from sheer force of logical analysis, in which the
qualitative and quantitative aspect of information are ab initio
better integrated than one will ever see again, even today.
CSP: | Consider, what a word or symbol is; it is a sort of representation.
| Now a representation is something which stands for something. ...
HP: This vague metaphor has never been disputed (and cannot be disproved).
The only real problem is what are the actual forms of "representation"
(there are many) and what actual processes explain the metaphor "stands for"?
If I said that it stood on two feet, now that would be a metaphor,
but the way in which the phrase "stands for" is a metaphor here
is the way in which all language is metaphorical. Or do you
make it a practice to blow a whistle and call "time out"
every time you substitute a number in an equation?
SP: | A thing cannot stand for something without standing 'to' something 'for'
| that something. Now, what is this that a word stands 'to'? Is it a person?
HP: This sounds to me like Peirce is trying to derive empirical facts analytically,
but he is trapped with linguistic forms [like Maxwell was with the "ether"].
He is trying to tell us how he thinks about words, not how brains actually
process words. One problem is that "standing for" has been a misleading
metaphor that has persisted in spite of contrary evidence right up through
old-fashioned rule-based AI. An alternative, more empirical view is that
brains are semi-autonomous associative networks where nothing is standing
still, let alone "standing for", or "standing to". In this view, words are
only triggers that alter or bias the brain's continuous neuronal dynamics.
What sort of study is Peirce engaged in here?
Is it neuroscience? Is it psychology? No.
It is neither of those. It is logic.
Just what is logic, anyway?
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theorem really dead?
Good question, Yes, and No.
I guess if you thought that Peirce was engaged in one of the descriptive sciences,
like neuroscience or psychology, then you might be justified in thinking that he
was "trying to derive empirical facts analytically", but that is not his aim.
Indeed, Peirce's arrow is aimed in an opposite or an orthogonal direction,
seeking to analyze empirical facts for the sake of their bearing on the
normative science of logic.
Empirical facts? Yes, the facts of experience.
Perhaps "empirical", in our times, has come to mean the sort of enterprise
that begins with some such protocol as "Round up twenty sophomores from the
subject pool and issue them No. 2 pencils", or "Lobby Congress for funds to
build a SuperConducting SuperCollider", or something in between, but to my
way of thinking "empirical" still means "Having reference to experience".
And what is experience?
Well, it could be something like this. I had an experience a couple of days ago
that I can describe to you by saying that I looked up into the night sky and saw
the slim crescent of the setting Moon just over the line of trees that border my
back yard, or I had an experience yesterday that I can describe to you by saying
that I spent the better part of my coffee break thinking about the sound and the
meaning of Shakespeare's Sonnet 107. Stuff like that, the stuff that experience
is made on.
But, of course, our experiences are hardly ever what you might call self-explanatory.
And some do not explain themselves no matter how far we stretch them out on the rack
of our extenuating interrogations. There is very little in my immediate experience
of seeing the Moon set that might explain the nature of its light or its trajectory.
There is very little in my parsing experience of the Sonnet that might explain how
it is that anything means anything to me at all. So what? It's not like we have
anything else to go on, is it? Nothing but that arrangement to encounter further
and fancier experiences that we call voluntary conduct, like walking and talking
and thinking and rounding up fresh volunteers and lobbying legislatures and so on.
And if we ask, how should we arrange our affairs so as to have the kinds
of experiences that might lead us to an explanation of the surprises and
a resolution of the problems that are so manifestly ingredients of these
experiences, well, would you say that there are better and worse answers
to that? Or not?
I guess all I see Peirce doing is trying to understand experience
and trying to figure out generally successful ways of doing that.
In order to highlight what Peirce is up to, let us
consider the observations of another keen student
of ordinary experience and everyday thinking:
HP, quoting AE:
| The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
| It is for this reason that the critical thinking of the physicist cannot possibly
| be restricted to the examination of concepts of his own special field. He cannot
| proceed without considering critically a much more difficult problem, the problem
| of analyzing the nature of everyday thinking.
|
| Einstein, "Physics and Reality", 1936.
HP quoting AE:
| What, precisely, is 'thinking'? When, at the reception of sense impressions,
| memory-pictures emerge, this is not yet 'thinking'. And when such pictures form
| series, each member of which calls forth another, this too is not 'thinking'. When,
| however, a certain image turns up in many such series, then -- precisely through such
| return -- it becomes an ordering element for such a series, in that it connects series
| that are in themselves unconnected. Such an element becomes an instrument, a concept.
| I think that the transition from free association or 'dreaming' to thinking is
| characterized by the more or less dominating role which the concept plays in it.
| It is by no means necessary that the concept must be connected with sensorily
| cognizable and reproducible sign (word); but when this is the case,
| thinking becomes, by means of that fact, communicable.
|
| Einstein, "Autobiographical Notes", 1944.
I see no mention of the 20 odd sophomores and No. 2 pencils,
so I guess the Old Boy is just blowing smoke rings around
his armchair, trying to derive experience from analysis,
with all this pretense of reporting his thoughts and
telling us that concepts are the tools of his trade.
CSP: | We usually say that the word 'homme' stands to a Frenchman for 'man'.
| It would be a little more precise to say that it stands 'to' the
| Frenchman's mind -- to his memory. It is still more accurate
| to say that it addresses a particular remembrance or image
| in that memory. And what 'image', what remembrance?
| Plainly, the one which is the mental equivalent of
| the word 'homme' -- in short, its interpretant.
| Whatever a word addresses then or 'stands to',
| is its interpretant or identified symbol. ...
HP: I'm not sure why a Frenchman's mind needs to enter this problem.
In any case, if you said the word "man" to me my brain would go
into action along many lines of inquiry. First, the brain never
"sees" an isolated word. There is no "identified symbol" in my
brain that is the "mental equivalent" of the word "man". Brains
must be embedded in a body, in an environment, in a context, in
a situation. If they are not, they don't work [as in sensory
deprivation]. I don't see how Peirce could isolate or identify
an "interpretant sign". I see only a context-dependent stream
of images which is only the small conscious part of a vast network
of trial and error associations that are continuously being updated
by the embedded brain.
AE: | What, precisely, is 'thinking'? When, at the reception of sense impressions,
| memory-pictures emerge, this is not yet 'thinking'. And when such pictures form
| series, each member of which calls forth another, this too is not 'thinking'. When,
| however, a certain image turns up in many such series, then -- precisely through such
| return -- it becomes an ordering element for such a series, in that it connects series
| that are in themselves unconnected. Such an element becomes an instrument, a concept.
| I think that the transition from free association or 'dreaming' to thinking is
| characterized by the more or less dominating role which the concept plays in it.
| It is by no means necessary that the concept must be connected with sensorily
| cognizable and reproducible sign (word); but when this is the case,
| thinking becomes, by means of that fact, communicable.
|
| Einstein, "Autobiographical Notes", 1944.
CSP: | The interpretant of a term, then, and that which it stands to are identical.
| Hence, since it is of the very essence of a symbol that it should stand 'to'
| something, every symbol -- every word and every 'conception' -- must have
| an interpretant -- or what is the same thing, must have information or
| implication. (CE 1, 466-467).
HP: The first sentence simply defines the identity of "interpretant" and "standing to".
The last sentence says that having information is the "same thing" as having an
interpretant. So avoiding his proliferation of unconventional words and phrases,
what is Peirce trying to say other than that symbols can be related (in some
unspecified way) to "information" in the brain?
Do objects have effects? Do signs have effects?
Do objects and signs conjointly determine effects?
Do objects and signs conjointly determine effects that themselves have effects?
Do objects and signs conjointly determine effects that themselves have effects
in such a way that these effects have effects in more or less the same fashion?
If they do, then those effects are called "interpretant signs". There is no
requirement that they be "deterministically" determined, mental, or unique.
Jon Awbrey
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