ONT Re: Inquiry Into Information
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Howard Pattee wrote (HP):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
JA, quoting CSP:
| All these principles must as principles be universal.
| Hence they are as follows: --
| All things, forms, symbols are symbolizable.
|
| CSP, CE 1, pages 281-282.
HP: Peirce's discussions and these principles
have to do with relations among symbols
and how the mind manipulates symbols.
This is of interest to logicians, but
until Peirce says more about how symbols
come to refer to real objects, I can see
why these principles are of little interest
to the scientist.
JA, transposing HP into another key:
| Einsteins' discussions and these principles
| have to do with relations among pointer-readings
| and how the experimenter manipulates pointer-readings.
| This is of interest to instrument-makers-&-readers, but
| until Einstein says more about how pointer-readings
| come to refer to absolute space and time, I can see
| why these principles are of little interest
| to the scientist.
JA: Strangely enough, I have actually read some old -- and some not so old --
commentaries on Einstein's "principles of relativity" that say just this.
HP: I think I have failed to make my point.
There is nothing at all strange here.
What you intended by this transpose
as a counter-example appears to
make my point instead ...
My composition was not intended to be a counterpoint.
The variation was intended to recapitulate the theme.
HP: (Except Einstein's relations were among images, not "pointer readings."
The image of the special theory was riding on a photon, the image of
the general theory was free-fall in a gravitational field.) It is
historical fact that until there was experimental evidence that
the logical consequents of Einstein's imagination were the
images of the observed consequents of nature's laws,
few scientists paid much attention. That is the
Hertzian and the empiricist's point.
We are talking about two different phases.
Einstein's precocious fantasy would have
gone the way of a billion others like it
were it not for the mathematical systems
that Riemann and others had charted out
a half-century before. The phrase about
"pointer-readings" is a direct quote from
the ways that physicists and others talked
about the new pictures of physics, in both
relativity and quantum mechanics, that put
the interpreter back into the picture after
many years of absence from the framed part
of the scene.
JA: I have already stated this many times before, but let me just try to emphasize again:
Peirce eventually settles on the word "sign" for the genus of what all he is talking
about here -- and I stick with his usage simply out of my instinctive abhorrence for
excessively long words -- but the genus of signs ranges through the full spectrum of
signals and significations, including all of the impressions of the sense organs and
all of the data of measurement, not just the usual suspects of conceptual, graphic,
and linguistic signs. Symbols are just the species of signs that prevail in logic.
HP: Again, I don't think I'm getting through about what Hertz's condition entails.
Thanks to your postings I think I understand Peirce's broad use of sign that includes
all signals, sense impressions, observations, concepts, pictures, and the data of measurements.
But all conceivable Peircean "signs" would correspond only to Hertzian "images" (only the far
right side of the diptych). Hertz would include all signs along with the images and symbols
that "... we form for ourselves ..." Signs do not pre-exist in matter. Signs and images
are formed in the mind of the observer from interactions with matter (i.e., stimuli,
sense impressions, observation, measurement, all experience).
I can make no sense of this. There are signs before me on this screen.
A person looking over my shoulder could see them there. By some magic,
tokens of them will appear in a medium of your acquaintance, and many
other people will each receive their own peculiar impressions of them.
If you want to say that these signs impress the boundaries of our minds,
and are received into their mysterious interiors, I think that I could
understand that. The whole point of employing moderately abstactable
sign relations is so that we can make sense of the forms, patterns,
and structures embodied in these sorts of activities without being
forced to worry over what are, for many purposes, the irrelevant
details of where exactly their bodies lie.
JA: The last time I checked, things, forms, and symbols all reside in the real world.
HP: This may be where our differences begin. It is essential in biology and physics
to distinguish the symbol vehicle from the symbol function or meaning. The symbol
vehicle can be described as a physical system. By contrast, the symbol meaning is
not usefully described as a physical system, although there must exist a physical
realization of the interpretation process. For example, a molecule of DNA as
a symbol vehicle can be described in as much physical and chemical detail as
computational power and patience allow. On the other hand, DNA as a symbol
or text has no more to do with physical laws than a computer program. More
precisely, no amount of physical description however correct and detailed
can replace the functional description.
You have just described the formal aspect of semiosis.
It is a facet of the facts with which I am acquainted.
HP: The same situation occurs in physics for the process of measurement.
A measuring instrument can be described physically with as much detail as
any physical system. However, no amount of correct and detailed physical description
of a measuring instrument can perform or replace an actual measurement (von Neumann has
explained this in detail). The relevant analog is humor. No amount of explanation can
make you laugh at a joke. In fact, detailed description destroys the humor. One theory
is that humor requires a violation of Hertz's condition -- that the consequent of your
internal mental image is unexpectedly not your image of the consequent of the joke's
external text.
It only Hertz when I laugh.
JA: As for Hertz's picture of a modeling relation,
I am still waiting for clarification of many
troubling questions that I asked about your
sketch of it.
HP: I think specific examples may help clarify Hertz's highly compressed sentence.
I'll try to think up some more. Examples might also help me clarify Peirce.
I have a few.
Jon Awbrey
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