SUO: Re: Plea for Relements
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Tom,
My memory has grown fuzzy on this one, but I seem to recall
that that the very same metaphor was used a few years back by
Zenon Pylyshyn in his thesis about "cognitive impenetrability".
In many ways this was just a popularization of standard theorems
in the theory of computability or recursive function theory, all
to the effect that deciding when two programs, even if they are
written in the "same" language, whatever that means, compute the
same function -- the function being analogous to the denotative
object of the semiotic sign that is the code of the program --
is undecidable. That will no doubt remind you of Quine's
"Radical Indeterminacy Of Translation" (RIOT), another
popularization of a venerable idea.
Still it moves, and we are forced to track it as best we can,
however intractable the orbit may be in absolute geneatrices.
So satisficing methods of approximation are called for, in order
to order the codes in rough and ready equivalence clases -- but
what sorts of equivalence classes? That's the next question.
Quine seems to be suggesting some kind of morphological homology -- every now
and then a nominal thinker will accidentally start talking like a real thinker,
and when they do it is always in terms of some vast hypostatic abstraction like:
"uniformity of resultant patterns overlying a chaotic subjective diversity of connections"
Echoes of Kant ring in my ears, but never mind that now.
At any rate, there are many other types of equivalence relations that come to mind.
One of my favorites would be "pragmatic equivalence relations" (PER's).
And for the definition of PER's I refer you to a maxim of Peirce:
| Consider what effects that might conceivably
| have practical bearings you conceive the
| objects of your conception to have. Then,
| your conception of those effects is the
| whole of your conception of the object.
|
| C.S. 'The Maxim of Pragmatism', CP 5.438
| http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg00645.html
Jon Awbrey
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Tom Johnston wrote:
>
> John:
>
> sorry for being so cryptic. I did not mean "solipsism" in the full
> philosophical sense. Instead, my question was aimed at this remark:
>
JA: we can see that a logically more fundamental notion is the relativized
> > membership relation p in^j q, where we say that p in^j q if the judge j
> > judges the element p to fall in the set q (or to fall under the sign q).
>
> I think that a passage of Quine's was in the back of my mind (surprise!).
> Here it is:
>
> | The uniformity that unites us in communication and belief is a uniformity
> | of resultant patterns overlying a chaotic subjective diversity of connections
> | between words and experiences. Uniformity comes where it matters socially;
> | hence rather in point of intersubjectively conspicuous circumstances of
> | utterance than in point of privately conspicuous ones ...
> |
> | Different persons growing up in the same language are like different
> | bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants.
> | The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine
> | form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike".
> | ('Word and Object', p.8, Chapter 1, section 2).
>
> So this logically fundamental notion describes the twigs and branches.
> Somehow we develop "a uniformity of resultant patterns" that enables us
> to communicate well enough to have greater survival value socially than
> we do individually. I wonder how (as do psycholinguists, cognitive
> scientists and all of us). That's all my question alluded to.
> As such, it probably wasn't very relevant.
>
> Tom
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