SUO: Re: What the hell was CSP talking about?
John F. Sowa wrote:
>
> Jon and Doug,
>
> Peirce insisted that his "non-psychological" theory of logic
> (and signs in general) applies to "any scientific intelligence",
> by which he meant "any intelligence capable of learning from
> experience". In his writings, he gave frequent examples of
> intelligence in dogs and parrots, and he was very interested in
> the primitive computer-like things of his day, including Babbage's
> machines, and various mechanical things for solving logic problems.
> In fact, he was the first person to observe that electrical circuits
> could be used to represent logical AND and OR, and he suggested
> electricity as a better mechanism for supporting logic machines.
>
> I agree with Jon's points:
>
> DM> > My (limited) reading of Peirce has led me
> > > to the conclusion that he is talking about
> > > the mechanism of cognition.
>
> JA> This is a possible application of pragmatic sign theory
> > but it does not constitute a necessary limitation on it.
> > If you read the material that I have cited on this score,
> > I think that you will notice the characterization of logic
> > as "formal semiotic" and the emphasis that Peirce lays on
> > what he calls his "non-psychological" conception of logic.
>
> DM> > The interpretant is an inside-the-mind thing, ...
>
> JA> This is a "can be", but not a "must be" of the theory.
>
> DM> > The sign is a representation of some outside-the-mind thing,
> >
> JA> Again, maybe, maybe not.
>
> DM> > Jon seems to be talking about triads where all three
> > > parts of a triad are external representations. Sowa
> > > seems to support the conclusion that Peirce is talking
> > > about thought, where Awbrey seems to be saying that he
> > > is talking about representation.
>
> I agree with Jon on this point. Signs can be in the mind, but
> the triadic representation relation can support "mind-like"
> relationships in a wide range of media. In another of
> Peirce's examples, he suggested "crystals and bees".
>
> JA> One of the features of this formal approach, or what we
> > would more often today refer to as an "abstract" theory,
> > is that all of these worries about the moment to moment
> > locations of objects, signs, interpretants are entirely
> > incidental to the "form", id est, the isomorphism class,
> > pattern, shape, or structure of the whole sign relation.
> > The in-or-out of your mind question is an "accidental",
> > a secondary characteristic that gets "abstracted out"
> > of the "formal" question, which is all that is really
> > and truly of the "essence" here.
>
> In Section 6.6 of my KR book, I show how Peirce's non-psychological
> semeiotic can be used to analyze and resolve several of the troubling
> mind-body issues that plague discussions of "artificial intelligence":
> John Searle's Chinese room example, the talk about symbolic vs.
> imagelike reasoning, subsymbolic processes in neural nets, and the
> discussions of phenomenology by Hubert Dreyfus and Terry Winograd.
>
> In fact, I say that instead of "artififical intelligence", a more
> accurate term for what we are trying to do with computers would be
> "computational semiotic". Using that term would immediately dispense
> with the tons of verbiage about whether computers can "really" think.
> Instead, it would focus the discussion on what kinds of signs are used
> at various stages of the process and how they are related to one another.
>
> John Sowa
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John,
Yes, I think that this would be a healthy and a productive step.
And, of course, the only thing that we would have to guard against --
well, not the only thing -- is the degeneration of meaning that will
almost inevitably begin to threaten the project, both from within and
from without, whenever people become tempted to take these fine and
beautiful words, "form", "structure", "isomorphism", and so on, and
attach the tail of an anionic "-ist" at the end, in a vain attempt
to reduce the complexity and uncertainty of the world by labeling
those who speak of it, reducing the whole objective issue,
or so they think, to a matter of picking sides.
Perhaps "isomorphism" is safest in this respect,
since the sibylant barbarism of "isomorphismist"
may act to retard the obliteratures of the mold.
Jon Awbrey
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