ONT Re: What Is Information That A Sign May Bear It? -- Discussion
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WIS Discussion. Note 6
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FK = Frances Catherine Kelly
JA = Jon Awbrey
Re: WIS Discussion 5. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05299.html
In: WIS. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd19.html#04317
Cf: Sign Relations. http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11187.html
FK: Thanks for your kind response to my questions.
FK: My third question was:
Since signs are 3-adic, how in a logical relation can
they be reduced to and identified as being only 2-adic?
FK: Your short reply was:
JA: I'm not sure that I'm reading your intent here.
There are of course "degenerate" sign relations,
as with icons and indices, but that doesn't seem
to be what you are asking about, is it?
FK: My response is:
My intent here was not on degeneracy but to better understand your
suggestion that when the mind reduces the information in a sign to
its most basic logical form, then some kind of grammatic syntax is
made that essentially ignores one of the three categories of that
sign.
I have the feeling that we may be working from different terminologies
as well as different definitions of many concepts, so let me take some
time to see if we can find a common core of ideas.
I was not aware of suggesting that "when the mind reduces the information
in a sign to its basic logical form, then some kind of grammatic syntax is
made that essentially ignores one of the three categories of that sign".
Let me move on to the next sentence:
FK: The third category that is eliminated (or fused?) with the
"sign-form" or representamen is presummed by me to be the
"sign-object" of the sign, which leaves the "sign-effect"
or interpretant in tact.
Hmmm, now that I've read that five times, I can almost figure out
a way to interpret it that might correspond to something I said,
but I hesitate to take the risk of confusing things further.
My little example was intended to illustrate a basic type of pragmatic
situation which is just barely rich enough to give some sense to the
notion that a sign conveys information, in other words, reduces our
uncertainty about either one of two things: (1) What is true of
an object or a state of affairs, or (2) What we ought to do in
order to achieve some objective or outcome that we desire.
When you look at the situation this way, then all three dimensions of
the sign relation are filled out in a genuine (non-degenerate) way.
The object domain consists of the objects that we are uncertain
how best to describe, or the objectives that we are uncertain
how best to achieve. The sign domain consists of all the
various signs, natural or customized, that we need to be
concerned with in a given setting. The interpretant
domain could well be all the same signs as before,
only considered in the role of followers thereon.
I take Peirce's set-up for this "situation of uncertainty" to be
more general in principle -- though of course he did not get to
develop it fully -- than the typical way in which contemporary
versions of information theory often get applied, because here
there is a reduction of the object domain to a "source" which
is fully "message-like" in its character, as if the signs
were only informing one about what signs will flow from
the source next. Thus, the object domain does not have
that quality of "radical otherness" that we generally
find in our encounters with Nature, Others, and all
the vastening variety of truly significant sources.
The impoverishment of information theory in this
fashion has nothing necessary about it, however,
it has simply served as one convenient way of
reducing the difficulties of a potentially
very complex subject to the level of what
we have been able to handle, at any rate,
so far.
I will have to take a break here,
and get back to the rest tomorrow.
Jon Awbrey
FK: Since any group of signs that is identified (or teridentified?) as
a relation must be a dyadic duality in structure with two poles, then
such a sign state cannot be 3-adic and be a relation at the same instance.
For a relation to be a sign or "sign-situation" however it must be tridential
and trichotic. Seemingly, a relation must be identified to be a relation, and
identity hence means a third category added to the two poles. My own feeling
here is that any identified relation will be a "virtual" duality in that one
pole will be the ground (sign-form/sign-object) and the other pole will be
the agent (sign-effect or interpretant?) who identifies the relation.
This implied dyadicity constructed from and existing as an explicit
trichotomy is presented as a polarity (ground+agent) merely to
make the relation seem dyadic. Your suggestion on how the
pure information born of a raw sign is handled logically
in mind as a dyad of course may mean something else.
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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