Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7379] Re: Natural Propositions and continuity

[Sungchul Ji]

(For undistorted Figure 1, see the attached.)

Gary R wrote:

"So, in a sense, can-be's (1ns) may become would-be's   (110714-1)
(3ns) if the conditions were to come into existence,
and in that case, if they do they are realized in
actual lawful existence, in the lawfulness which,
seemingly, contra what you just wrote (" But existing
individuals and processes are not possibilities - P
over and over refers to the irreducibility of individual
existence or "haecceity" ")"


I am just wondering if you are all saying the same thing about Peircean
categories (which are  represented as a diagram in Figure 1),  prescinding
different aspects of a complex concept using different "words".  I
strongly believe that "words" are not the only or even the best way to
convey complex information.  To express any complex ideas such as Peircean
categories, it may be mandatory to use a combination of "words" and
"diagrams", the latter involving algebraic equations, tables, experimental
traces, etc, i.e., a combination of iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs.

To me the Peircean categories are a mathematical category and hence cannot
be defined or discussed isolated from one another, no matter how
exhaustively detailed  your argument may be expressed in "words".


 f g
  Firstness  --->  Secondness  --->  Thirdness
(possibility)  (actuality)  (habit,law)
 |   ^
 |   |
 |___|
h

Figure 1.  Peircean categories as a mathematical category.
f= natural process; g = mental process; h = information flow or indirect
causality (e.g., genetics).  The arrows mean “determined” directly or
indirectly, “leads to”, etc.

With all the best.

Sung
___
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


> Frederik, lists,
>
> I agree with your contention "that P's strong interest in mathematical
> continuity is, in the end, metaphysically motivated. He wanted a
> mathematical tool to describe the reality of thirdness." Paul Forster
> takes
> this "strong interest" up from the standpoint of pragmatism, highlighting,
> as do you, Peirce's arguments against psychologism and nominalism, most
> especially in consideration of the philosophy of science (NP, 106).
>
> What I am unclear about concerns what you wrote immediately before the
> sentence I just quoted:
>
> Against actual existence, then there are Possibilities, to P falling in
> two
> groups - mere possibilities, firstnesses, which are vague - and real
> possibilities, thirdnesses, which are general. Generality is often
> identified with continuity.
>
>
> But thirdnesses, especially as habits and laws (natural and man made) by
> definition and in fact *mediate* between firstnesses and secondnesses.
> What
> is general, habitual, lawful, sometimes--indeed quite often enough in
> nature--will be realized in the actual world, say, as a new species. So,
> in
> a sense, *can-be's* (1ns) may become *would-be's* (3ns) if the conditions
> were to come into existence, and in that case, if they do they are
> *realized* in actual lawful existence, in the lawfulness which, seemingly,
> contra what you just wrote (" But existing individuals and processes are
> not possibilities - P over and over refers to the irreducibility of
> individual existence or "haecceity" "). So, what I'm saying is that
> thirdnesses most certainly do figure in, for example, all processes, such
> as those we find in any organism.
>
> So, thirdness is not* just *a form of possibility, for certain generals
> (laws) are active in existent nature. New processes and structures
> evolutionarily may come into being but, when they do, that which would-be
> is now functioning through processes and the like. But, perhaps this is
> too
> obvious to mention?
>
> Best,
>
> Gary R
>
>
> *Gary Richmond*
> *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
> *Communication Studies*
> *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
> *C 745*
> *718 482-5690*
>
> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 4:51 PM, Frederik Stjernfelt 
> wrote:
>
>>
>>  Den 06/11/2014 kl. 17.11 skrev Jeffrey Brian Downard <
>> jeffrey.down...@nau.edu>
>> :
>> Dear Jeff, lists,
>>
>>  I do not think this P-quote deals with the reduction of individuals to
>> generalities. It deals with the status of *possibilities* - it is
>> pertaining to possibilities he claims the absence of distinction of
>> individuals (cf. the apple pie again: the recipe does not distinguish
>> between different particular cakes realized from it).  But existing
>> individuals and processes are not possibilities - P over and over refers
>> to
>> the irreducibility of individual existence or "haecc

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7373] Natural Propositions

[Howard Pattee]

At 03:51 PM 11/6/2014, Frederik wrote:


Dear Howard, list
This is where our ways part.


HP: I'm not sure why. My 25 words was just trying 
to sound like a nominalist. It is not my view, as 
the other 700 words tried to explain.


Suppose I agree to be a realist about iron, 
baking pies, round objects, etc., but prefer a 
nominalistic view of Schrödinger's wavefunction. 
That is, I assume Ockham's parsimonious attitude 
that the wavefunction is just the minimum 
subjective degrees of belief I need to predict 
the probability of an event. (This is sometimes 
called 
Quantum 
Bayesianism.)


Do our ways still part?

Howard



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7373] Natural Propositions

[Frederik Stjernfelt]

Dear Howard, lists -

I am not sure. Much of the yet unresolved discussion of QM have to do with 
deciding which ontological commitments come with the Schrödinger equation. As 
far as I have understood, there is no scientific agreement about this (unlike 
basic knowledge about iron and cakes etc.). Copenhagen intepretation, Everett 
interpretation, Penrose interpretation and others. As long as this is the case, 
one interpretation is as good as the other - so in this case you're right about 
the undecided plurality of positions - until further notice, that is.
But this is not generalizable to the idea that all scientific knowledge is 
subject to the same ambiguity.

Best
F


Den 07/11/2014 kl. 14.49 skrev Howard Pattee 
mailto:hpat...@roadrunner.com>>
:

At 03:51 PM 11/6/2014, Frederik wrote:

Dear Howard, list
This is where our ways part.

HP: I'm not sure why. My 25 words was just trying to sound like a nominalist. 
It is not my view, as the other 700 words tried to explain.

Suppose I agree to be a realist about iron, baking pies, round objects, etc., 
but prefer a nominalistic view of Schrödinger's wavefunction. That is, I assume 
Ockham's parsimonious attitude that the wavefunction is just the minimum 
subjective degrees of belief I need to predict the probability of an event. 
(This is sometimes called Quantum 
 
Bayesianism.)

Do our ways still part?

Howard


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[PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions, Chapter 5 : Ventral-Dorsal split

[Mara Woods]

Hello everyone,

Now we move on to the heart of Chapter 5: that the ventral-dorsal split of
the visual perception system corresponds to the double function of the
Dicisign. Recall that, according to Stjernfelt, this similarity between the
syntax of the Dicisign and that of the functions of these two streams of
visual processing is due to the brain's need to pick out relevant objects
from the perceptual field and attribute useful properties to them that
accurately describe the object in terms of the organism's needs. Indeed,
this need for truth from the environment seems to be echoed in the senses
of hearing, touch and smell (NP p. 128); the insights from the dual
processing of vision provided by Hurford and Stjernfelt are likely
applicable to the other senses as well.

According to the description provided in Chapter 5, the dorsal stream
consists in quick, general processing of entities picked up from the
perceptual field. Both Peirce and Stjernfelt see the entity's structure and
constancy as providing the means by which the perceiver can pick up its
uniqueness from the perceptual field. The picking up of the entity by the
dorsal stream is what corresponds to the Subject of a Dicisign, a reference
to the "that something there".

With an unidentified mechanism, the dorsal stream hands off markers of such
entities to the ventral stream for intensive processing. The ventral stream
consists in slower, more detailed, conscious processing guided by
attention. This stream provides Predicates to the Subject.

It's unclear whether the predicates are immediately attributed to the
subject in synchronized parallel processing, filling in the marker from the
dorsal stream, or if another mechanism joins them.I would expect the
processes to be more or less parallel since some high priority, second
order predicates like DANGER should be expected to result in the dorsal
stream intensifying the task of picking up additional objects from the
environment to know where to run away from.

Indeed, the means by which indexes in different modalities are attributed
to the same Subject entity by human cognition -- binding -- is an active
area of research,. Stjernfelt's proposal is that different immediate
objects (in different modalities, or in the same modality through time) are
given through the indexes of perception and attributed to the dynamic
object, the entity itself. Implied here is that co-location of the
Subject's brute and immediate objecthood and the spatial location of its
predicates is what binds them together, forming the copula of this
naturalized Dicisign.

Stjernfelt suspects that the binding process will be related to action
planning in response to the percept. After all, the meaning of a
proposition is in what actions it tends to cause.Now, since complex animals
like humans do attribute predicates from different modalities to the same
subject, does the binding function occurs first in the separate modalities
and then are connected by an additional mechanism in the case of more these
advanced, multimodal Dicisigns? Or would we find that these processes are
all parallel and their temporal co-location brings them together to refer
to the same subject?

It seems that multiple types of binding can occur: 1) the monomodal
connection of predicate properties to the subject, 2) multimodal connection
of predicate properties to the subject (perhaps like addition in logic?),
and 3) the connection of the entire Dicisign to some internal sign of a
need in the organism implying an action. Might we expect to find these
binding actions to be processed in different locations at more or less the
same time so that their "findings" could influence each other, prioritizing
further processing and pick-ups in a timely manner?

Mara

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[PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7388] Natural Propositions, Chapter 5 : Ventral-Dorsal split

[Gary Richmond]

Mara, lists,

Thanks for this good summary of Hurford's hypothesis and Frederik's use of
it to further his dicisign argument. Still struggling to understand the
hypothesis itself, which has some problems and clearly needs some
modification if it is to be of much use in biosemiotics, Frederik offering
the dicisign doctrine of Peirce as an alternative to Hurford's Fregean
analysis, I've been looking at some of the literature available online.

First there is Frederik's own recent paper in Cognitive Semiotics Volume 7,
Issue 1 (May 2014)

Dicisigns and cognition: The logical interpretation of the ventral-dorsal
split in animal perception

Abstract

The paper is a critical investigation of the linguist James Hurford's bold
proposal that animal cognition conforms to basic logical structure -
particularly striking in the ventral-dorsal split of visual perception. The
overall argument is that dorsal processing of visual information isolates
the subject of a simple, perceptual proposition, while ventral processing
addresses the corresponding predicate aspect - the two indicating and
categorizing the object of perception, respectively. The paper investigates
some of the problems in Hurford's interpretation - particularly his refusal
of animal proto-language to have anything corresponding to constants or
proper names and his idea that all such propositions must be monovalent
only (and thus not addressing relations). As an alternative to Hurford's
psychological interpretation of Frege for his logical basis, Peirce's
theory of propositions - so-called "Dicisigns" - is proposed.
There's nothing new in the Abstract for those who have read NP, but as it
presents such a concise summary of it that I thought I'd include it here.
Unfortunately there is no free access to the paper itself. However,
Hurford's paper and critical commentary on it, as well as Hurford's
response to this commentary (all of which Frederik draws upon in NP), are
available online. Below you'll find links to all this material. .

The Neural Basis of  Predicate-Argument Structure
James R Hurford,
Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit,
 
Linguistics Department, University of Edinburgh

`The Neural Basis of Predicate-Argument Structure''



([Hurford's] *Note: *In *Behavioral and Brain Sciences* 23(6), 2003. Where
this online version differs from the print version, the print version is
the ``authoritative'' version.) Here are peer commentaries
 on this target
article. And here is my response
 to those commentaries.

I've copied the Abstract of and Introduction to Hurword's response to his
critical commentators, comments which expose some of the problems with
Hurford's hypothesis which Frederik identifies and attempts to develop
solutions to via the dicisign doctrine.

ABSTRACT

It is necessary to distinguish among representations caused directly by
perception, representations of past perceptions in long-term memory, the
representations underlying linguistic utterances, and the surface
phonological and grammatical structures of sentences. The target article
dealt essentially with predicate-argument structure at the first of these
levels of representation. Discussion of commentaries mainly involved
distinguishing among various applications of the term `predicate',
clarifying the assumed relationship between classical FOPL and language,
clarifying the status of unique individuals as conceived by humans, and
addressing the issues of motion-perception, binding between object-percepts
and predicate-percepts, and target-driven versus stimulus-driven attention.
1. INTRODUCTION: THE CENTRAL CLAIM

The central claim in the target article was that there is a correlation
between a fundamental characteristic of any serious formal logical scheme
for representing thought and a feature of neural architecture in higher
mammals. Every logical scheme has at its heart an asymmetry between two
types of term, usually called `predicates' and `arguments'. Predicates and
arguments are essentially different in two ways, namely in their semantics
(how they relate to the world), and in their syntax (how they relate to
each other in the formal scheme). In basic logic, arguments denote
individual entities, whereas (1-place) predicates denote classes or
properties; and the syntax of logic puts predicates outside of (but tied
to) the brackets which enclose arguments (though of course other, similarly
asymmetric, notations are conceivable). This asymmetry, I argued in the
target article, finds a parallel in the separation between the ventral and
dorsal streams identified in the visual perception systems of higher
mammals (and to a lesser extent in their auditory systems).

Note that the above summary of the central claim makes no mention of
language. 

[PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7387] Re: Natural Propositions

[Howard Pattee]

At 09:08 AM 11/7/2014, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:

I am not sure. Much of the yet unresolved 
discussion of QM have to do with deciding which 
ontological commitments come with the 
Schrödinger equation. As far as I have 
understood, there is no scientific agreement about this. . .


HP: That is true, and you mention several 
"unnatural" epistemologies; but there is general 
agreement that QM cannot be interpreted by 
Peircean Realism. In fact, most teachers of 
QM  struggle with the intuitively realist 
perspectives of introductory students. In 
teaching QM, Realism blocks the path of inquiry.



FS: . . .(unlike basic knowledge about iron and cakes etc.)


HP: This assumption appears to beg the general 
question. Is there agreement about how "basic knowledge" relates to reality?


FS: But this [QM ambiguity] is not generalizable 
to the idea that all scientific knowledge is subject to the same ambiguity.


HP: I'm not sure what you are implying. Are you 
agreeing with me that different types of 
knowledge benefit from different epistemologies? 
Or do you only mean that ambiguities in classical 
models are different ambiguities from those in 
QM? (I assume you don't mean there are no 
ambiguities or that Peirce has spoken, the case is closed.)


Howard


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