Re: Frederik Stjernfelt
At: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13886
Frederik,
Yes, the orthogonality or independence of descriptive and normative sciences is noted by McCulloch
in his opening lines. The thing that struck me like a lightning synapse when I first read that
passage, long time passing, was the fact that he set the logical arrow opposite to the causal arrow,
invoking the shade of Duns Scotus and bound causes, which I looked up once or twice but didn't
exactly get clear about, but anyway it sets the mind to thinking that there is nothing terribly
automatic or straightforward about the relation of logical consequence and temporal sequence.
Realizing that possibility opens up a much wider field, and I dare say a more realistic field of
investigation.
Et sic deinceps ...
Jon
Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
> 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 )
>>
--
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