Dear Jon, list Thanks for a great McCulloch quote. You are right that many of these issues have been discussed before, but this is no reason to be tired or resigned like you sound in your intro to that quote. It is a human condition that most important issues have been discussed before. This should not prevent us from carrying on.
McCulloch recapitulates how Peirce's theory of propositions prompted him early on to make a theory of how those propositions are processed by psychological states - giving him the idea that neuronal interactions correspond to propositional events. This is a nice theory, fitting Peirce's idea that all in semiotics and logic should be conceived of as the ongoing analyses of the basic phenomenon which is the chain of reasoning. Charting how brains or psyches implement aspects of that chain, however important this is, does not change the importance of P's insistence that logic in the broad sense should be studied independently of how it may be realized in any particular physical medium, be it in minds, machines or elsewhere. Best F > Gary, > > This "knee-jerk view" of logic and thought is one of many places where Peirce > makes interesting suggestions worth pursuing but where the pursuit almost > immediately runs into a host of problems. These issues have been discussed, > here and elsewhere, many times before, and I cannot begin to sum it all up at > this time, but here is one hint from a modern fore-runner with a deep > knowledge of Peirce's work and its potential applications to AI, cognitive > science, and neuroscience: > > http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/11/15/what-weve-got-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate-6/ > > Excerpt from Warren S. McCulloch, > “What Is a Number, that a Man May Know It, and a Man, that He May Know a > Number?” (1960) > > <quote> > > Please remember that we are not now concerned with the physics and chemistry, > the anatomy and physiology, of man. They are my daily business. They do not > contribute to the logic of our problem. Despite Ramon Lull’s combinatorial > analysis of logic and all of his followers, including Leibniz with his > universal characteristic and his persistent effort to build logical computing > machines, from the death of William of Ockham logic decayed. There were, of > course, teachers of logic. The forms of the syllogism and the logic of > classes were taught, and we shall use some of their devices, but there was a > general recognition of their inadequacy to the problems in hand. […] The > difficulty is that they had no knowledge of the logic of relations, and > almost none of the logic of propositions. These logics really began in the > latter part of the last century with Charles Peirce as their great pioneer. > As with most pioneers, many of the trails he blazed were not followed for a > score of years. For example, he discovered the amphecks — that is, “not both > … and …” and “neither … nor …”, which Sheffer rediscovered and are called by > his name for them, “stroke functions”. > > It was Peirce who broke the ice with his logic of relatives, from which > springs the pitiful beginnings of our logic of relations of two and more than > two arguments. So completely had the traditional Aristotelian logic been lost > that Peirce remarks that when he wrote the Century Dictionary he was so > confused concerning abduction, or apagoge, and induction that he wrote > nonsense. Thus Aristotelian logic, like the skeleton of Tom Paine, was lost > to us from the world it had engendered. Peirce had to go back to Duns Scotus > to start again the realistic logic of science. Pragmatism took hold, despite > its misinterpretation by William James. The world was ripe for it. Frege, > Peano, Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, followed by a host of lesser lights, > but sparked by many a strange character like Schroeder, Sheffer, Gödel, and > company, gave us a working logic of propositions. By the time I had sunk my > teeth into these questions, the Polish school was well on its way to glory. > > In 1923 I gave up the attempt to write a logic of transitive verbs and began > to see what I could do with the logic of propositions. My object, as a > psychologist, was to invent a kind of least psychic event, or “psychon”, that > would have the following properties: First, it was to be so simple an event > that it either happened or else it did not happen. Second, it was to happen > only if its bound cause had happened — shades of Duns Scotus! — that is, it > was to imply its temporal antecedent. Third, it was to propose this to > subsequent psychons. Fourth, these were to be compounded to produce the > equivalents of more complicated propositions concerning their antecedents. > > In 1929 it dawned on me that these events might be regarded as the > all-or-none impulses of neurons, combined by convergence upon the next neuron > to yield complexes of propositional events. (McCulloch 1965, 7–9). > > </quote> > > Warren S. McCulloch, “What Is a Number, that a Man May Know It, and a Man, > that He May Know a Number?”, Ninth Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, General > Semantics Bulletin, Numbers 26 and 27, Institute of General Semantics, > Lakeville, CT, 1961, pp. 7–18. Reprinted in Embodiments of Mind, MIT Press, > Cambridge, MA, 1965, pp. 1–18. Online. > > Regards, > > Jon > > Gary Fuhrman wrote: >> For those who haven't yet obtained the book or read the introduction, I'd >> like to present here a quotation from Peirce which shows that long before he >> developed the famous ten classes of signs (diagram EP2:296), he was already >> thinking (as Frederik put it yesterday) that "the main phenomenon is >> reasoning, the chain of arguments - and the whole of the semiotic machinery >> is developed to understand the physiology of reasoning - so icons, rhemes, >> etc. refer to specific aspects of the chain of reasoning." For Peirce, this >> "physiology of reasoning" extends from the formal syllogism all the way down >> to the most primitive forms of cognition, and NP p.5-6 quotes this example >> from 1883: >> The cognition of a rule is not necessarily conscious, but is of the nature >> of a habit, acquired or congenital. The cognition of a case is of the >> general nature of a sensation; that is to say, it is something which comes >> up into present consciousness. The cognition of a result is of the nature of >> a decision to act in a particular way on a given occasion. In point of fact, >> a syllogism in Barbara virtually takes place when we irritate the foot of a >> decapitated frog. The connection between the afferent and efferent nerve, >> whatever it may be, constitutes a nervous habit, a rule of action, which is >> the physiological analogue of the major premiss. The disturbance of the >> ganglionic equilibrium, owing to the irritation, is the physiological form >> of that which, psychologically considered, is a sensation; and, logically >> considered, is the occurrence of a case. The explosion through the efferent >> nerve is the physiological form of that which psychologically is a volition, >> and logically the inference of a result. When we pass from the lowest to the >> highest forms of inervation, the physiological equivalents escape our >> observation; but, psychologically, we still have, first, habit--which in its >> highest form is understanding, and which corresponds to the major premiss of >> Barbara; we have, second, feeling, or present consciousness, corresponding >> to the minor premiss of Barbara; and we have, third, volition, corresponding >> to the conclusion of the same mode of syllogism. Although these analogies, >> like all very broad generalizations, may seem very fanciful at first sight, >> yet the more the reader reflects upon them the more profoundly true I am >> confident they will appear. They give a significance to the ancient system >> of formal logic which no other can at all share. ("A Theory of Probable >> Inference", 1883, 2.711 ) > > -- > > academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey > my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ > inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ > isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA > oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey > facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu > . 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