Sung ~
I was very interested in your comments and attachment. Thanks for posting it.
I have one question and one comment.
Question: Does your attached exhibit demonstrate that scientists/thinkers
universally use signs, or that humans, animals, plants, matter, etc. all use
signs?
Comment: Regarding the quote you posted ("How can we tell the difference
between what we would like to be true and what is actually true ? The answer
is science ...."), I do not see how we can demonstrate that any individual,
including the most dedicated scientist, seeks knowledge/truth independent of
all other things. Those who seek truth receive an emotional reward when they
believe they find it -- and that reward, which is certain, will at the margin
distract them from truth, which is uncertain. Therefore Aristotle (like all
other humans) abducted hypotheses about things he didn't understand and leaped
to unfounded conclusions. Some scientists claim discoveries they know to be
untrue, either for acclaim or money.
So I would say that truth emerges not from "science," but as the outcome of a
competitive process among thinkers, where each thinker tries to out-do all
others for whatever emotional/personal rewards that provides. In a competitive
setting, revealing the biases and shortcuts taken by predecessors is
emotionally rewarding, and new insights emerge because the thinker is forced to
avoid the pitfalls he/she uncovered when reviewing the work of others. Leaping
to unfounded conclusions or fabricating evidence is minimized because thinkers
hope to avoid later embarrassment, humiliation, etc.
Knowledge, like a species, evolves not because individual members directly
intend that result. Each member maximizes his/her own particular advantage,
and the product of that competitive mechanism is truth (or survival of the
species). I do not see how we can accurately perceive the truth-seeking
process independent of the environment where it occurs.
Regards,
Tom Wyrick
> On Jul 8, 2015, at 6:41 PM, Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> In CP 1.1 reproduced as (070514-1) in the biosemiotics post dated 7/5/2014
> (see Attachment below), Peirce predicted the existence of “simple concepts
> applicable to every subject”. In the same post, I proposed that one of the
> possible “simple concepts applicable to every subject” that Peirce was
> referring to may be Peirce’s own concept of “irreducible triadicity” which I
> alternatively called the “irreducible triadic relation’ (ITR). To
> [biosemiotics:8730] dated 6/30/2015, I attached a table entitled “The
> universality of ITR (Irreducible Triadic Relation)” applying ITR to 13
> different subjects, ranging from (i) quantum mechanics to (ii) enzymology,
> (iii) gnergetics (study of the information-energy driving all
> self-organizations), (iv) semiotics, (v) category theory, (vi) metaphysics,
> and to (vii) religions.
>
> The purpose of this post is to expand the 6/30/2015 table to include one more
> item, i.e., Psychology, in the form of the emotion-cognition-belief triad (or
> the emotion-cognition-credition triad as referred to by H.-F. Angel and his
> coworkers; see References [10, 11, 12]). This new triad is shown in Row 9 in
> the table attached to this post entitled “The university of ITR”, and this
> new entry is similar to the rest of the triads in the table in the sense that
> it is a member of the ur-category, the category to which all categories
> belong. In addition, the ECC (emotion-cognition-credition) triad may share
> special similarities with the triads in Rows 2, 3, and 5.
>
> The idea to apply the ITR concept to the emotion-cogntion-belief triad was
> stimulated by the following quotations (with the key words highlighted by me)
> from M. Shermers’s book, “The Believing Brain” (see Reference [13] given
> below the table):
>
>
> “. . . What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should
> (070815-1)
> believe based on evidence do not always coincide. I’m a skeptic not
> because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How
> can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and
> what is actually true ? . . . The answer is science. We live in the Age
> of Science, in which beliefs are supposed to be grounded in rock-solid
> evidence and empirical data. . . . .” [13, p. 2]
>
> “. . . scientists are people too, no less subject to the whims of emotion
> (070815-2)
> and the pull of cognitive biases to shape and reinforce beliefs.” [13, P. 6].
>
>
> I am assuming that a significant part of the meanings of these two quotes can
> be captured with what I came to refer to as the “emotion-cognition-credition”
> (ECC) triad that I first learned about in the 2014 Credition Conference held
> in Graz, Austria. One significance of the ECC triad may be that it underlies
> all human actions and decision makings, including all common human behaviors
> as well as uncommon behaviors such as self-immolations and suicide bombings.
>
> If you have any questions or comments, let me know.
>
> All the best.
>
>
> Sung
>
> ______________________Attachement____________________
>
>
> --------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> > Subject: Burgin’s Fundamental Triads as Peirceasn Signs.
> > From: "Sungchul Ji" <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>
> > Date: Sat, July 5, 2014 5:33 pm
> > To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Stephen R on the Peirce list cited Peirce as saying:
> >
> > "The undertaking which this volume inaugurates is to (070514-1)
> > make a philosophy like that of Aristotle, that is to say, to
> > outline a theory so comprehensive that, for a long time to
> > come, the entire work of human reason, in philosophy of
> > every school and kind, in mathematics, in psychology,
> > in physical science, in history, in sociology, and in
> > whatever other department there may be, shall appear
> > as the filling up of its details. The first step toward
> > this is to find simple concepts applicable to every
> > subject." CP 1.1
> >
> > At least one of the potential "simple concepts" that Peirce is referring
> > to above may turn out to be his concept of "irreducible triadicity"
> > embedded in the following quote that Jon recently posted and further
> > explained in Figure 1 and (070514-4):
> >
> > “Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic. (070514-2)
> > A definition of a sign will be given which no more
> > refers to human thought than does the definition of
> > a line as the place which a particle occupies, part
> > by part, during a lapse of time. Namely, a sign is
> > something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant
> > sign determined or created by it, into the same sort
> > of correspondence with something, C, its object, as
> > that in which itself stands to C. It is from this
> > definition, together with a definition of “formal”,
> > that I deduce mathematically the principles of logic.
> > I also make a historical review of all the definitions
> > and conceptions of logic, and show, not merely that my
> > definition is no novelty, but that my non-psychological
> > conception of logic has virtually been quite generally
> > held, though not generally recognized.” (NEM 4, 20–21).
> >
> > a b
> > C --------> A --------> B
> > | ^
> > | |
> > |______________________|
> > c
> >
> > Figure 1. A diagrammatic representation of the principle of irreducible
> > triadicity as applied to the definition of a sign. A = sign; B =
> > interpretant; and C = object. a = the sign-object relation (which can be
> > iconic, indexical or symbolic); b = the sign-interpretant relation (which
> > can be rheme, dicisign or argument); c = the object-interpretant relation
> > (which is lacking in Peircean semiotics but may be provided by
> > microsemiotics [1] or biosemiotics (e.g., [2, 3, 4]).
> >
> > “A is determined by C and determines B in such away (070514-3)
> > that C is indirectly determined by B.”
> >
> --
> Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
>
> Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
> Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
> Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
> Rutgers University
> Piscataway, N.J. 08855
> 732-445-4701
>
> www.conformon.net
> <Universality of ITR_table_07082015.docx>
>
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