ONT Re: Aristotle's Approximation
Just to move this a step further, let me say that much of the work you are
doing on these lists is an attempt to align yours and others' mental
affections around some basic semeia in the domain of inquiry. That this
work is necessary is a strong indication that the statement
| the mental affections themselves,
| of which these words are primarily signs (semeia),
| are the same for the whole of mankind,
is absolutely the reverse of the real case. To get all manner of mental
affections even in the most rudimentary alignment is the subject of
never-ending, arduous, and massive work effort, which is really only now
beginning to be addressed in earnest. This is exactly why I am staying
tuned to these channels.
Best regards,
Doug
mcdavid@us.ibm.com
Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu> on 09/23/2001 05:36:47 PM
To: Douglas McDavid/Boulder/IBM@IBMUS
cc: Arisbe <arisbe@stderr.org>, Generic Ontology Group
<ontology@ieee.org>, Organization Complexity Autonomy
<oca@cc.newcastle.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Aristotle's Approximation
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Douglas McDavid wrote:
>
> Jon --
>
> I almost wrote this in response to your previous post,
> but now I will quickly weigh in on constancy of mental
> affection. In my opinion, Aristotle got this dead wrong.
Yes, Sue and I also questioned assumption in our papers, because
it seems clear that our applications to education and technology,
culture and society require us to to leave open the possibilities
of real development and true diversity in and among the agents of
interpretation. Given the burgeoning complexity of sign relations
in the general case -- "Of triadic Being the multitude of forms is
so terrific that I have usually shrunk from the task of enumerating
them" said Peirce -- it was probably wise of Aristotle to start out
in something like this way, but that was yesterday, and we imagine
ourselves to be big kids now. However, I am now in the middle of
re-examining this whole question, so stay tuned to this channel.
> In fact, I would say that with respect to the same object, or external
sign,
> each observation, even by the same person, will render a different mental
> affection, however slightly or subtly variant. This is why I proposed
> in all seriousness my suggestion of irreducible octadicity some weeks
> ago on the SUO list. Situational and purposeful factors have as
> much to do with the relationship between the observed and its
> mental representation as does the observed itself.
>
[ snip ]