Dear Frederik, lists,
You wrote,
>> [BU] The 'novel' aspect has sometimes been called psychological.
> [FS] Why? - and by whom?
I think de Wulf or some other (neo-)scholastic did. I think it's been
said by others too, but I admit that I've forgotten, it's been so many
years. I guess they just didn't know what else to call it. The deductive
conclusion doesn't really say something new, instead it merely
elucidates what's already in the premisses. But, if it's worth deducing,
then it seems to say something new. Categorical syllogisms are ways to
ensure a modicum of such novelty. As Peirce put it, deduction "merely
gives a new aspect to the premisses." I don't want to call that new
aspect entirely psychological, or entirely subjective, or whatever, but
it seems partly subjective in some sense, likewise as nontriviality,
verisimilitude, and natural simplicity seem. The general character of
these semi- or quasi-subjective aspects seems a philosophical subject to
me. But I can't see how to rule out that psychology may have something
to say about them too. I think that they matter because it's hard to see
why a mind would reason if there were no hope of its conclusions having
any of those aspects.
I'm feeling a hankering to let you get back to discussing your book!
Best, Ben
On 9/10/2014 2:30 PM, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
Dear Ben, lists -
I've gone back and read Howard's post "RE: [biosemiotics:6635] Re:
[PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions" Sat, 06 Sep 2014 20:59:06 -0400
https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2014-09/msg00124.html .
I just don't see much psychologism in Howard's views, even though he
claims that psychologism has its place and seems to regard himself as
at least partly psychologistic. He doesn't claim that psychology
establishes the validity of a deductive inference or the ampliative
character of a non-deductive inference (its conclusion's claiming
something that its premisses do not claim). That would be psychologism.
Agreed. Very often I find myself agreeing with Howard in the detail
while we may seem opposed in the headlines (which are less important,
of course)
Instead mostly Howard focuses on heuristics, creativity in inference,
etc., as the place for psychological understanding of inference. I
just wouldn't call that psychologism. It's not the traditional
meaning of the word 'psychologism.'
Certainly not. I do not think Howard suffers from psychologism.
Inferential statistics is a field that focuses on induction. I don't
think that there will be such a field focusing on abductive inference
except for the special sciences themselves; they are where abductive
hypothetical explanations are explicitly formalized (key heuristical
guesses in the processes of more general classes of research are
often not made explicit at all). So, for example, chemistry is the
place to learn the particulars of plausible chemical hypothesis
generation. Deductions _/from/ _ hypotheses - those are mathematical.
The methodeutical level, the selection and strategizing of hypotheses
for testability and actual testing, is complex and not strictly
abductive. The special science concerned with mind or intelligent
behavior is psychology, and it does seem to be the most general place
for the riddles of _/how/ _ one generates cogent guesses, plausible
hypotheses, etc., which generation is heavily context-dependent,
belief-laden, etc., thus lending itself more to idioscopic study than
to cenoscopic or mathematical study.
Still, I think the disctinction holds here as well: what holds for
abduction in any possible reasoning mind - and what holds for it in
the particular human implementations of it.
In "Logical Machines" Peirce wrote: "Every reasoning machine, that is
to say, every machine, has two inherent impotencies. In the first
place, it is destitute of all originality, of all initiative. It
cannot find its own problems; it cannot feed itself. It cannot direct
itself between different possible procedures." (I should note that
Peirce here does not use the word "reasoning" in the sense that he
gives it elsewhere, that of conscious deliberate inference.)
I prefer Peirce's description in terms of "self-control". Not every
single phase of reasoning needs to be self-controlled, but
self-control must act as a gatekeeper now and then in the process …
But the issue of computer intelligence vs. human intelligence I would
guess is orthogonal to the distinction between logic and psychology.
Computers and human beings are two different instantiations of logical
structure, the former (until now) deficient as related to the latter
in certain respects (creativity) while superior in others (speed,
precision, etc.).
Of course now there are computer programs that learn. These of course
are not mere implementations of propositional logic. So far I've hard
of no computer programs that do creative mathematics. What general
way would there be for a computer program to recognize that a
deductive result is surprising or nontivial? There could be specific
algorithms of course, that would work up to a point. The traditional
categorical syllogisms are ways to ensure a modicum of seeming
novelty in a valid deduction.
But my book is not or only marginally about propositional logic. It is
about the physiology, meaning, reference and semiotic instantiation of
propositions (which may appear, btw, in other speech acts than
assertions …).
I'm not aware of any general useful mathematization of the new aspect
or the nontrivial aspect which a worthwhile deduction's conclusion
brings to its premisses, aspects in whose universal absence no mind
would bother with deduction.
Right - the interesting deductions are those P called "theorematic"
because in some sense creative - I discuss those in ch. 11.
The 'novel' aspect has sometimes been called psychological.
Why? - and by whom?
Peirce expected there to be no way to quantify verisimilitude in the
sense of the likeness of the inductive conclusion to the sample data,
the sense in which the conclusion seems a more veteran version of the
sample, the opposite of seeming novel. Now, I'm not saying that
nontriviality, novelty, and verisimilitude are, like Peirce's version
of natural simplicity, forms of appeal to inborn instinct.
Instinct plays some role, cf. our discussions about abduction - but it
far from exhausts the versions of abductions accessible to the human
mind …
They seem forms of appeal to something that has come to be called
'intuition' - not in Peirce's sense of 'intuition', but rather in a
loosened sense of 'instinct' - developable but not necessarily inborn
in a particular form attuned to idiosocopic nature. I don't know what
Peirce would have thought of this, but I would not rule out that
psychology in Peirce's broad sense, also called by him psychognosy,
may have something essential to contribute to the understanding, for
example, of the "aspectual" or perspectival nontriviality or 'depth'
(in the sense of the diametrical opposite of triviality) that guides
pure mathematical research. One might further note that each of these
seemingly psychological aspects seems to _/compensate/ _ for the
formal character of its respective mode of inference. I don't think
there's any psychologism in my views.
Probably not. I think the psychology of mathematical invention in
human beings is fascinating, and it might provide material for the
purely logical (or semiotic) study of mathematical reasoning as such.
In other words, I'm granting as much of Howard's claims as I can
understand of them (he obviously knows a great deal more about things
like AI than I do), and arguing that they're not psychologistic, and
that Howard may be mistaken in regarding himself as having tendency
properly called 'psychologistic'. We may be arguing over words, as
Jon Awbrey worries.
But it is good to discover when we do that so we can turn to arguing
over concepts instead …
In his above-cited post, Howard says, "The evidence so far leads me
to think embodied cognition is most important." I'd say, important
for what? There are different objectives of research, different
guiding research interests, especially across classes of research
that differ vastly in scope, and various people value objectives
variously.
Frederik is pursuing the very idea of application of cenoscopic
semiotics to biology. This requires him to discuss semiotics at a
very cenoscopic level, more general in scope than reflects the usual
interests of biologists. The development and application of some of
mathematical analysis to physics requires some pure-mathematical work
and understanding of mathematical analysis more general in scope than
reflects the usual interests of physicists. A better example might be
work in theoretical statistics for the purpose of application in
special sciences. Where these examples that I've offered seem to fall
shortest is that they don't reflect complications arising from the
reflexivity involved in philosophy and psychology, complications that
vaguely seem to me to be playing a role in the present discussion.
Best
F
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