ONT Re: Normative Sciences
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> Subj: Building Ontologies Through Signs And Inquiries (BOTSAI)
> Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 20:20:01 -0400
> From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
> To: Grande Divine Semio Comedy <gdsemiocom@univ-perp.fr>,
> Ontology <ontology@ieee.org>
>
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> Expectation, Satisfaction, Disappointment
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> Compare & Contrast:
>
> Exhibit 1
>
> | Reasoning and Expectation
> |
> | But since you propose to study logic, you have more or less faith
> | in reasoning, as affording knowledge of the truth. Now reasoning
> | is a very different thing indeed from the percept, or even from
> | perceptual facts. For reasoning is essentially a voluntary act,
> | over which we exercise control. If it were not so, logic would
> | be of no use at all. For logic is, in the main, criticism of
> | reasoning as good or bad. Now it is idle so to criticize
> | an operation which is beyond all control, correction,
> | or improvement. (CP 2.144).
> |
> | You have, therefore, to inquire, first, in what sense you have
> | any faith in reasoning, seeing that its conclusions cannot in
> | the least resemble the percepts, upon which alone implicit
> | reliance is warranted. Conclusions of reasoning can little
> | resemble even the 'perceptual facts'. For besides being
> | involuntary, these latter are strictly memories of what
> | has taken place in the recent past, while all conclusions
> | of reasoning partake of the general nature of expectations
> | of the future. What two things can be more disparate than
> | a memory and an expectation? (CP 2.145).
> |
> | ...
> |
> | The second branch of the question, when you have decided in what
> | your faith in reasoning consists, will inquire just what it is
> | that justifies that faith. The stimulation of doubt about things
> | indubitable or not really doubted is no more wholesome than is
> | any other humbug; yet the precise specification of the evidence
> | for an undoubted truth often in logic throws a brilliant light
> | in one direction or in another, now pointing to a corrected
> | formulation of the proposition, now to a better comprehension
> | of its relations to other truths, again to some valuable
> | distinctions, etc. (CP 2.147).
> |
> | As to the former branch of this question, it will be found
> | upon consideration that it is precisely the analogy of an
> | inferential conclusion to an expectation which furnishes the
> | key to the matter. An expectation is a habit of imagining.
> | A habit is not an affection of consciousness; it is a general
> | law of action, such that on a certain general kind of occasion
> | a man will be more or less apt to act in a certain general way.
> | An imagination is an affection of consciousness which can be
> | directly compared with a percept in some special feature, and
> | be pronounced to accord or disaccord with it. Suppose for
> | example that I slip a cent into a slot, and expect on pulling
> | a knob to see a little cake of chocolate appear. My expectation
> | consists in, or at least involves, such a habit that when I think
> | of pulling the knob, I imagine I see a chocolate coming into view.
> | When the perceptual chocolate comes into view, my imagination of it
> | is a feeling of such a nature that the percept can be compared with
> | it as to size, shape, the nature of the wrapper, the color, taste,
> | flavor, hardness and grain of what is within. Of course, every
> | expectation is a matter of inference. What an inference is we
> | shall soon see more exactly than we need just now to consider.
> | For our present purpose it is sufficient to say that the
> | inferential process involves the formation of a habit.
> | For it produces a belief, or opinion; and a genuine
> | belief, or opinion, is something on which a man is
> | prepared to act, and is therefore, in a general sense,
> | a habit. A belief need not be conscious. (CP 2.148).
> |
> | Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 2.144-148.
>
> Exhibit 2
>
> | The Experience of Satisfaction
> |
> | The filling of the nuclear neurones in Psi has as its
> | consequence an effort to discharge, an impetus which is
> | released along motor pathways. Experience shows that the
> | first path to be followed is that leading to 'internal change'
> | (e.g., emotional expression, screaming, or vascular innervation).
> | But, as we showed at the beginning of the discussion, no discharge
> | of this kind can bring about any relief of tension, because endogenous
> | stimuli continue to be received in spite of it and the Psi-tension is
> | re-established. Here a removal of the stimulus can only be effected
> | by an intervention which will temporarily stop the release of quantity
> | (Q-eta) in the interior of the body, and an intervention of this kind
> | requires an alteration in the external world (e.g., the supply of
> | nourishment or the proximity of the sexual object), and this, as
> | a "specific action", can only be brought about in particular ways.
> | At early stages the human organism is incapable of achieving this
> | specific action. It is brought about by extraneous help, when the
> | attention of an experienced person has been drawn to the child's
> | condition by a discharge taking place along the path of internal
> | change [e.g., by the child's screaming]. This path of discharge
> | thus acquires an extremely important secondary function -- viz.,
> | of bringing about an understanding with other people; and the
> | original helplessness of human beings is thus the primal source
> | of all moral motives.
> |
> | When the extraneous helper has carried out the specific action in
> | the external world on behalf of the helpless subject, the latter
> | is in a position, by means of reflex contrivances, immediately
> | to perform what is necessary in the interior of his body in
> | order to remove the endogenous stimulus. This total event
> | then constitutes an "experience of satisfaction", which
> | has the most momentous consequences in the functional
> | development of the individual.
> |
> | ...
> |
> | Thus the experience of satisfaction leads to a facilitation between
> | the two memory-images [of the object wished-for and of the reflex
> | movement] and the nuclear neurones which had been cathected during
> | the state of urgency. (No doubt, during [the actual course of]
> | the discharge brought about by the satisfaction, the quantity
> | (Q-eta) flows out of the memory-images as well.) Now, when
> | the state of urgency or wishing re-appears, the cathexis
> | will pass also to the two memories and will activate
> | 'them'. And in all probability the memory-image of
> | the object will be the first to experience this
> | wishful activation.
> |
> | I have no doubt that the wishful activation will in the first
> | instance produce something similar to a perception -- namely,
> | a hallucination. And if this leads to the performance of the
> | reflex action, disappointment will inevitably follow.
> |
> | SF, "Project", pages 379-381.
> |
> | Sigmund Freud,
> |"Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1895),
> | pages 347-445 in 'The Origins of Psycho-Analysis:
> | Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes: 1887-1902',
> | ed. by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris,
> | trans. by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey,
> | intro. by Ernst Kris, Basic Books, New York, NY, 1954.
>
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