Re: [PEIRCE-L] To put an end to the false debate on the classification of signs
Robert, List, Whilst taking note of Edwina's comment, thank you for this, this is what I meant, allowing that my use of 'mind' is individual based, hence what is being discussed is the pooled product of minds. The components of what we are talking about are in relation to what we are talking about. 'Pooled' is my dialect for Peirce's 'fused'. I would describe the concepts as getting fused but that's just me. Intersecting allusions by speakers and listeners together, build up signification. Is the predestinate interpretant, the hypothesis that we converge towards when inference has increased and falsification has decreased? Michael On 2020-05-18 23:00, robert marty wrote: I am sorry but if you are begining with " If commens means the sum at any time of whatever everybody happens to come up with,..." I am obliged, on Peirce's list to give the floor to peirce on this subject : " There is the Intentional Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the utterer; the Effectual Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the interpreter; and the Communicational Interpretant, or say the Cominterpretant, which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place. This mind may be called the commens. It consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer and interpreter, at the outset, in order that the sign in question should fulfill its function. This I proceed to explain.No object can be denoted unless it be put into relation to the object of the commens. A man, tramping along a weary and solitary road, meets an individual of strange mien, who says, "There was a fire in Megara." If this should happen in the Middle United States, there might very likely be some village in the neighborhood called Megara. Or it may refer to one of the ancient cities of Megara, or to some romance. And the time is wholly indefinite. In short,nothing at all is conveyed, until the person addressed asks, "Where?"—"Oh about half a mile along there" to whence he came. "And when?" "As I passed." Now an item of information has been conveyed, because it has been stated relatively to a well-understood common experience. Thus the Form conveyed is always a determination of the dynamical object of the commind. By the way, the dynamical object does not mean something out of the mind. It means something forced upon the mind in perception, but including more than perception reveals. It is an object of actual Experience." (EP p.478) Best regards Robert Le lun. 18 mai 2020 à 23:44, a écrit : Jerry R., List, To act means to get on with life. If commens means the sum at any time of whatever everybody happens to come up with, we can each develop whatever aims we want, at any time, as we go along. From your wording here do you seem to be allowing for this. I therefore don't quite get why you earlier remarked you didn't believe what I took most of the others as edging towards (which I tried to expand on - as far as I understood - in my response of a few minutes ago). Michael M., linguist, UK On 2020-05-18 21:25, Jerry Rhee wrote: Dear Cecile, list, Why not? I mean, isn’t belief supposedly _that_ upon which one is prepared to act? What, then, is _that_ belief? Let us take our situation, then. We have utterers and interpreters (and presumably a commens somewhere). And if we take Peirce at his word, then the only moral evil is not to have an ultimate aim. So where is it? What is our ultimate aim? From what I see, that aim is nebulous. And since we are all Peirceans and we have continued to investigate such things, then it must be Peirce’s intention for us to argue over such things until we come to an agreement. But that end comes at the end, not at the beginning. Best, Jerry R - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] To put an end to the false debate on the classification of signs
Jerry, it's clear to me the passage quoted is coming from the realm of interpreting. The speaker might plan to engage others' reflexes but I think the speaker also on engaging their intellectual interpreting; it's for us each to override or complement our reflexes with our interpreting, adding lots of other information, and then choose what to make of it. Is this what you meant? I'm still working on "predestinate" per se. I thought of pragmatism/pragmaticism as alow-key thing we do all the time in living. Michael On 2020-05-18 22:39, Jerry Rhee wrote: Dear Michael, list, Here is an example of “system of sensing”: _Hegseth, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump who ran for a Minnesota Senate seat in 2012, has previously urged "healthy people" to "HAVE SOME COURAGE" and attempt to contract the coronavirus IN ORDER TO build "herd immunity." _ _ _ _"The governor can say the state is closed, but if WE THE PEOPLE say the state is open, then ultimately there's not a lot you can do if every business steps out," Hegseth said while surrounded by protesters outside Atilis Gym on Monday. _ _ _ _"That's pretty much the definition of responsible civil disobedience."_ So what do _you_ propose as the prescription from Pragmatism, the “feedback from the final interpretant situation into the emotional and motor reflexes”? From where I stand, it all appears vague. I mean, what in the world is PREDESTINATE opinion, as some have raised? Best, Jerry R On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 4:27 PM wrote: List, Whilst there can be an infinite amount of interpreting by a potentially limitless community, final interpretant isn't this. Alongside descriptions by for example Donna Williams, a writer on neurology, the immediate interpretant corresponds to the pure perception part of colour, shape, space, sounds, scent etc, and the dynamical one is the emotional and motor reflexes ensuing either "automatically" or by habit (fright, delight, retraction from danger) - Donna calls these two combined the "system of sensing"; while the final interpretant comprises those concepts one is used to adding, or freshly figures out, namely the meaning or signification - Donna's "system of interpretation". When one is unwell or is in delayed development, these occur in sequence or the latter one(s) don't readily happen. In addition, there is feedback from the final interpretant situation into the emotional and motor reflexes, e.g one decides it is horrible or realises it is dangerous or recognises a thing one likes; this might follow by a split second or, if a thing is new to one, longer. The same set of processes occur when the concretes are imagined and even when they are fairly abstract. This is because imagination is the laboratory or workshop atop our shoulders. Memory outputs into imagination and so we can feel, analyse and discuss our memories. The central nervous system (CNS) handles the symbolism in the sensory epistemology arising from physical reality, and there can be infinite layers of symbols of symbols. Words allude, and when several of these intersect, we can have a meaning. This is why reifying (which I see as taking "literally literally") doesn't work. Any comments welcome. Michael Mitchell - linguist - UK - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] To put an end to the false debate on the classification of signs
Jerry R., List, To act means to get on with life. If commens means the sum at any time of whatever everybody happens to come up with, we can each develop whatever aims we want, at any time, as we go along. From your wording here do you seem to be allowing for this. I therefore don't quite get why you earlier remarked you didn't believe what I took most of the others as edging towards (which I tried to expand on - as far as I understood - in my response of a few minutes ago). Michael M., linguist, UK On 2020-05-18 21:25, Jerry Rhee wrote: Dear Cecile, list, Why not? I mean, isn’t belief supposedly _that_ upon which one is prepared to act? What, then, is _that_ belief? Let us take our situation, then. We have utterers and interpreters (and presumably a commens somewhere). And if we take Peirce at his word, then the only moral evil is not to have an ultimate aim. So where is it? What is our ultimate aim? From what I see, that aim is nebulous. And since we are all Peirceans and we have continued to investigate such things, then it must be Peirce’s intention for us to argue over such things until we come to an agreement. But that end comes at the end, not at the beginning. Best, Jerry R On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:04 PM Cécile Menieu-Cosculluela wrote: Why not? I thought it did sound very interesting indeed... - DE: "Jerry Rhee" À: "Helmut Raulien" CC: "Gary Fuhrman" , "peirce-l" ENVOYÉ: Lundi 18 Mai 2020 21:18:19 OBJET: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] To put an end to the false debate on the classification of signs Dear Helmut, list, What an interesting observation. _meh_.. I don’t believe it. With best wishes, Jerry R - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] To put an end to the false debate on the classification of signs
List, Whilst there can be an infinite amount of interpreting by a potentially limitless community, final interpretant isn't this. Alongside descriptions by for example Donna Williams, a writer on neurology, the immediate interpretant corresponds to the pure perception part of colour, shape, space, sounds, scent etc, and the dynamical one is the emotional and motor reflexes ensuing either "automatically" or by habit (fright, delight, retraction from danger) - Donna calls these two combined the "system of sensing"; while the final interpretant comprises those concepts one is used to adding, or freshly figures out, namely the meaning or signification - Donna's "system of interpretation". When one is unwell or is in delayed development, these occur in sequence or the latter one(s) don't readily happen. In addition, there is feedback from the final interpretant situation into the emotional and motor reflexes, e.g one decides it is horrible or realises it is dangerous or recognises a thing one likes; this might follow by a split second or, if a thing is new to one, longer. The same set of processes occur when the concretes are imagined and even when they are fairly abstract. This is because imagination is the laboratory or workshop atop our shoulders. Memory outputs into imagination and so we can feel, analyse and discuss our memories. The central nervous system (CNS) handles the symbolism in the sensory epistemology arising from physical reality, and there can be infinite layers of symbols of symbols. Words allude, and when several of these intersect, we can have a meaning. This is why reifying (which I see as taking "literally literally") doesn't work. Any comments welcome. Michael Mitchell - linguist - UK On 2020-05-18 21:04, Cécile Menieu-Cosculluela wrote: Why not? I thought it did sound very interesting indeed - DE: "Jerry Rhee" À: "Helmut Raulien" CC: "Gary Fuhrman" , "peirce-l" ENVOYÉ: Lundi 18 Mai 2020 21:18:19 OBJET: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] To put an end to the false debate on the classification of signs Dear Helmut, list, What an interesting observation. _meh_.. I don’t believe it. With best wishes, Jerry R On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 1:25 PM Helmut Raulien wrote: List do I understand it correctly, that the paradoxon here is, that the final interpretant is the first element in logical order, but the last in temporal order? In this case I would propose a solution attempt like this: The truth works as a motive, a quest for it, although it is not yet achieved. People (animals, organisms, molecules?) have a feeling, intuition, instinct, internalised law or axiom, that everything has or would have a true representation. This final interpretant, though not realised, does nevertheless do its work for the sign this way here and now. Best, Helmut 18. Mai 2020 um 17:18 Uhr g...@gnusystems.ca wrote: Robert, is it your intention to argue that communication cannot “succeed” _at all_ unless the interpretant of the sign is completely determinate, and identically so for all communicants? Would you likewise say that knowledge is not actual, or real, unless it is absolute and unquestionable? Gary f. FROM: robert marty SENT: 18-May-20 03:25 TO: Jon Alan Schmidt CC: Peirce-L SUBJECT: Re: [PEIRCE-L] To put an end to the false debate on the classification of signs Jon Alan, List I repeat this debate with you and it leads me to ask you a preliminary question that I should have asked you on September 22, 2018, but I probably did not have very clear ideas 18 months ago. Here it is: what you say this: " The DESTINATE Interpretant is what the Sign is destined to signify at the end of infinite inquiry by an infinite community; i.e., the Final Interpretant"? Because this quote troubles me a little: " In that second part, I call "truth" the PREDESTINATE opinion,17 by which I ought to have meant that which would ultimately prevail if investigation were carried sufficiently far in that particular direction." (The Essential Peirce A Sketch of Logical Critics p.457) It seems to me in complete fact that if this were the case the whole of humanity would be doomed to wait until the end of eternity to succeed in its first communication. Unless an immanent power deposits it in all minds at the moment of the perception of the sign? Should we read "predestinate"? Because there's a perception, isn't there? You will not be able to escape the chronology until the end of time: the signs that actually occur in social life must be taken care of by the theory of signs, shaped to be subjected to analysis, debated ... Etc... Otherwise what are we doing here? Best regards, Robert - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe
Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Methodology (was To put an end to the false debate...
List, Jerry Chandler's contribution today at 2.54 hours in "To put an end" is an ideal example of what you three (and I) are talking about; focus is merely post by post, and all members are (I assume) pitching in to help all the other members at each instant. Jerry cited chemistry. (Linguistics is more similar to chemistry than some imagine.) Likewise when we are helping people grapple with Robert's arguments we can tentatively suggest examples rather than demand them of someone who hasn't got them yet. All of our understanding is partial (varying uniquely per individual) and no morally inferior for that. This then is the constructive complement to apparent puristic vigilantism - which I always assumed wasn't intended. A small piece of work on notations and special terms is valuable because it is just that - and I hope the "apparent purists" won't claim it as any kind of be-all or end-all, however much we can admire degrees of soundness in it. Statements and counterstatements are, in substance, questions, though we sometimes forget that! Categories are indeed categories, but they are often relatively relative. Peirce drew his drawings on flat paper; but I expect he saw four or five dimensions at once. To me all things are "in" both visible and invisible "spectrums", are on inclining intersecting "planes" carrying changing shades of "colour" . . . Like Auke I'm heavily into continuums (but that's just me). Diagrams which we are often sent resemble crystals; clay is crystalline, as is freezing water growing across our panes; so are RNA / DNA. A wonderful ramification tree was circulated. What is in the conceptual is so often mirrored in nature. This is why the conceptual is just as concrete as the material. Imagination (at all levels) is the laboratory atop our shoulders. Spontaneous collaboration enhances the results of each. I assure all list members that the work of all of you cheers me up no end (that you all "take an interest" and don't "dumb down" what is around me) in these ghastly times. I think Kant's synthetic a priori reflects the epistemological / neurological fact that one fairly easily perceives five of something; on top of which elaborations are done mentally as well as by additional layers of perception (e.g two fives). Did Russell and Black have opposite views of which "came first", logic and maths? I'm plotting a series of posts - in very slow time - in which I shall with your permission spring on you a phenomenon, idea or scheme, shall fossick in Commens and in previous List posts etc for some (perhaps) proper words, and shall ask you to further "peirceanise" it! My posts shall be essentially phrased in question (enquiry) format. Michael Mitchell linguist - UK On 2020-05-17 14:31, Edwina Taborsky wrote: John and Auke I think Auke has made a key comment - which is not merely the method of discussion and analysis, but the focus. As he noted, there can be two areas to focus on: Area 1] Peirce's text can be read as inspiration for semiotic research. In this case semiosis is the dynamical object, or some aspect of it Area 2] But they [Peirce's texts] also can be used to decide debates. In this case Peirce's presumed view on semiosis is the dynamical object These are two very different areas of research - BOTH of which legitimately rest within the framework of the Peircean corpus of work. A problem, as I see it, is that this list is indifferent to the first area - and indeed, some on the list seem to consider that such interests are secondary areas of semiosis [setting up a notion of purity vs impurity re Peirce]. . And the vigilante focus on what is the correct interpretation of the Texts leads to emotional assertions of 'correct' vs 'incorrect' [too many occurrences to offer as examples]. I wonder if the 'solution' is - and here we might bring in Methodology- but could the solution be the Market approach - which accepts both areas and leaves the forum open to discussions by the population - with the Moderator remaining strictly neutral - ie, Let the Market Decide - knowing that a Market is dynamic and never fully conclusive. And, the population itself must acknowledge that the Market is open to both areas. And the Method of Argumentation is not Who Grabs the Consumer Fast and Most [ ie with the loudest voice and most prolific goods from The Text] but is also highly sensitive to what is going on in the rest of the world. This brings in Area 1- where research in other fields which use the conceptual infrastructure of Peircean semiosis [without the text!] can inform the textual analysis of Area 2. Edwina On Sun 17/05/20 8:13 AM , a.bree...@chello.nl sent: John, I agree with your broadening up the seeming dichotomy to an open ended diversity. But I suggest to go all the way; also within a science we find different angles on the same subjectmatter. Semiotics not being excluded. But, I think there is a second
[PEIRCE-L] Constellation of formal languages and the logic of time (was Charity
List, Hopefully a pause for breath is a kind of "outcome" that isn't final. It always struck me a constellation of overlapping / intermeshing formal languages would perform the very function Joe describes. Taking "methodology" to mean "method" I'm sure instances of lack of method (rather than just method) need to be critiqued on their own terms on a case by case basis. Sharing insights in to "the universe and everything" isn't suited to be turned into a blame game. Given I am (as yet) on the back foot in scholarly methods I treasure copious quotations. We must of course pick up where we see a conclusion as not following well enough. The value to all readers is in the exercise and the exposition by all participants, not just the initiator. Time (an enthusiasm of CSP) is on our side; in it reason, prudence, perseverence and judgment can flourish: these are not zero-sum games. When I attend a seminar room (informal ones) I always hear questions like "when you said such & such would the Big Bang theory / Punctuated Equilibrium theory be an example of that?" I've often seen eminent featured speakers carry off "being stumped" with honest aplomb. It doesn't matter who brought the universe in with them - I always find it there. I hope it's permissible for any list member to pitch in at any point and not only those whose names are at the start of the post. In 1 st century Aramaic speaking society the quality of questions was considered a great enhancement and not a detraction. Newman's degrees of inference require that we each see what weight we provisionally wish to give across a range of hypothetical ideas / concepts / notions. This is not dried or (often) even cut. Tentative is another vital quality. To impute tentativeness when it apparently wasn't projected can be tactful. Given that logic is huge and our idea of infinity has to be (as I see it) an approximation to an approximation, can a notation be developed for paradox? In The nature of mathematics (1933) Max Black cites L E J Brouwer's demonstrating that excessive attempts are made to impose an excluded middle when unwarranted. What we should be doing IMO is not so much "agreeing to differ" as leaving our ideas on the table for continued evaluation (at everybody's leisure). If we don't want to agree do we have to say more than "I shall think about it" or even just stay momentarily silent? The logic of time is that now is not forever. I haven't responded, yet. Here's to all our yets! Additionally, I heartily recommend visual and spatial thinking to all. P.S I'd love it if participants can translate the above into your favourite notations / technical terminology. Michael Mitchell former translator, UK On 2020-05-16 3:43, joseph simpson wrote: All: This is a very sad outcome. The tension between formal language (mathematics) and informal language can become quite strong and polarizing. It seems to me that a key challenge, for the list, is providing enough common context to create a common collection of semantic values. The vast array of existing material associated with C. S. Peirce may make the development of a common context almost impossible. Given this set of conditions, it appears that formal language would be the natural mechanism used to evaluate any proposed collection of informal, common semantic values. In any case, I was just beginning to enjoy the real world, pragmatic examples that were beginning to appear on the list. Take care, be good to yourself and have fun, Joe On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 12:46 AM John F. Sowa wrote: Gary R, As Mike said, please stop. GR>To be perfectly clear, in my estimation this horrible 'harangue' began about a year ago, shortly after John Sowa joined the list and began harassing Jon Alan Schmidt, not on any _substance_ of any of his post, but on his _methodology_. Thank you for providing more evidence of your blanket condemnations. I had subscribed to Peirce-L when Joe Ransdell was running it. But I lost the connection when I switched from one email service to another. And I picked it up again quite a few years ago. I never harrassed Jon. On the contrary, I pointed out errors that were caused by his methodology. Peirce was an outstanding logician and mathematician, and Jon did not have the background to interpret certain passages correctly. But Jon would never admit that there might be an interpretation that was different from his own. I apologize for trying to correct Jon's errors. I promise that I won't do that again. End of story. John -- Joe Simpson “REASONABLE PEOPLE ADAPT THEMSELVES TO THE WORLD. UNREASONABLE PEOPLE ATTEMPT TO ADAPT THE WORLD TO THEMSELVES. ALL PROGRESS, THEREFORE, DEPENDS ON UNREASONABLE PEOPLE.” George Bernard Shaw Git Hub link: https://github.com/jjs0sbw Research Gate link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joseph_Simpson3 YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/jjs0sbw Web Site: https://systemsconcept.org/
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Charity (was Categories and...
List (and Jon), On 2020-05-14 20:50, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote: John, List: JFS: The principle of charity in philosophy does *not* require the listener/reader to assume that the statements by the speaker/author are true. Where have I claimed otherwise? Specific examples, please. JFS: For the arguments I objected to, I showed that a charitable interpretation of what Peirce wrote led to a conclusion that was different from a charitable interpretation of what you wrote. Different readers can and often do disagree about what constitutes a charitable interpretation of someone else's writings. Naturally, a _different_ interpretation of what Peirce wrote leads to a different conclusion, and the burden is then to _support _one's own interpretation (or refute someone else's) with arguments. That is one reason why the secondary literature has become so extensive. Often one can't quite "refute" something, we have to have both-and. But degrees of inference mean that stronger and weaker arguments speak for themselves and continue to do so. JAS: We (supposedly) agree that it is inappropriate to make sweeping judgments about who is (or is not) capable of understanding Peirce's writings and discussing them intelligently. We (apparently) disagree about who among us has been guilty of doing exactly that. JFS: I never said that you were incapable of understanding Peirce. It is not about me individually, it is about "sweeping judgments" like the following. JFS [1]: You cannot understand anything Peirce wrote unless you repeat the kind of disciplined testing that he did in developing and revising his theories. JFS [2]: As Peirce said, it's indeed wonderful that different people have very different ways of thinking. But in order to understand any of them, we must recognize their background in order to understand how and why they came to their conclusions. While certain kinds of experiences and familiarity with Peirce's biography are certainly _helpful _for understanding his writings, absolute statements like these set an unreasonably high bar that no one has the authority to impose on others. Rather than dismissing someone else's interpretations because of _who_ is giving them, the appropriate response when there is disagreement is to make a better argument. I'm tolerated for not being an insider to notations and special terms, so, as JAS says here, those who don't happen to cite context extensively should be tolerated also. I'm inexpert in almost everything but I harness my "vision thing" to contextualise; I'm glad of the lifetime's work others have put into the notations and the terminology. JFS: A list moderator has a right to admonish participants about making inappropriate statements. But a moderator has an obligation to quote the statement(s) explicitly and state exactly why they are inappropriate. Gary R. did [3] exactly that regarding Edwina's [4] comments [5] that theorizing is "an irrelevant exercise" undertaken only by people who "prefer the isolation and comfort of what [she calls] 'the seminar room' ... far, far, far from the real empirical objective world." It did strike me that comment was somewhat adrift, but I didn't join in. When I attend an informal seminar these days, I bring the universe in with me (and don't always pipe up). JFS: But Gary R made a blanket statement about my ability to interpret Peirce without stating a single example where my statement was wrong or inappropriate. He also made a blanket statement that your arguments were superior to mine. Where has Gary R. made any such "blanket statements"? Specific examples, please. JFS: On several occasions, he said that he agreed with you and not with me. But he never explained why any particular point I made was wrong. Presumably he agreed not only with my conclusions, but also with the reasoning behind them, which I had already presented. Merely saying that one agrees with someone else does not impose an obligation to restate that person's arguments. This is indeed a very fair point, especially when facilitated by hyperlinks and / or explicit pointers to time and date. ... Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [6] - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [7] - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Charity (was Categories and...
List, Henceforth I'll address only "List" because while I am often implying dialogue with a particular member, I wouldn't want others to not join in. Firstly (and this is just me) I love the Squid style because it challenges me to use my x-ray eyes on all the conceptual layers, and to compare chalk and cheese (this can be done at home, but not simplisticly). Likewise the Sidestep is an enjoyable challenge but I will say several things about this. It does give rise to difficult situations but I want to show how we can deal with them. i - The person using this in a specific instance is doing so in this specific instance (no matter if he "always" does it). ii- Our repertoire of responses (and not just the person with their name listed at the beginning) is wide; we can introduce an analogy; we can - for day or two - wind down our own interventions in the debate over a highly specific point whilst leaving it to others (which oughtn't to mean just the one "sparring partner") to take it where they want to; I mustn't try to import an ethos from "forums" or "blog comments" but, in some I've seen, it doesn't matter if no-one takes me up on a point, or if a new person butts in, or if their argument is inadequate. Here obviously argument is supreme so we ought to help each other out - as imaginatively as we can - because any particular participant might have limited energy and time. If a person repeatedly "won't" admit they sidestep, we could humorously comment on a case by case basis always as far from ad hominem as we can muster. Treating it on a case by case basis. That's merely an idea of mine. As arguments like all entities in imagination, are concrete so it is they have life of their own without imputing one of us to having "animated" them. Likewise selectivity: if a person has rejected the whole unjustifiably, can we not state this as brefly as poss and point back to some sections we posted before. If they reject it again we can state it again more briefly still. Anyone else with a bright idea, can surely pitch in, and help out. It can be difficult to remember a staement is a question so perhaps we should use actual question marks more often so as to reinforce the impression of openness. And CSP was surely at home with paradox (as am I). My life history made me interested in the interface between psychology, epistemology and intuitive logic. My impression was logic includes 3ns: anyone comment on that please? Gary, I should have been more explicit, I wasn't meaning to reinforce any accusations against you that had been on weak grounds, I was simply trying to sum up the recent inferences. Michael Mitchell former translator, UK On 2020-05-14 14:53, Edwina Taborsky wrote: Michael - thanks again for your comments, but I feel that on this list, there is indeed a Wimbledon atmosphere. That is - the view seems to be that there are valid/correct/true interpretations of Peirce - and invalid/incorrect/untrue ones. But is this necessarily the problem?? I don't think that a resolution to this view would be one that promotes the relativism of 'diversity' - where 'all views are acceptable. I think that evaluation of interpretations of Peirce is both valid and necessary- and yes -it has to be asserted that some are more valid and accurate and truthful than others. So - Wimbledon does exist! I think the problems on the list aren't a drive to 'the truth' or even diversity of views - for - really, there is a strong rejection of diversity not simply in interpretations but above all in focus...It would be nice for more diversity - not in views but in focus - ie, moving Peirce into examining the real world in areas such as AI, physics, biology - but that's not what I see as the problem. I think a key problem is 'method' of argumentation. If we take as 'given' that the agenda/focus is to show an accurate analysis of Peirce - then, how does one's Argument develop this? Is it enough to prove the veracity of one's interpretation of Peirce by a massive cloud of quotations lifted from his texts? That - after all, is one method [aka, the Squid Method]. It certainly exhausts the reader into silence but - is it in itself proof? It certainly seems reasonable; after all - quotations-are-quotations, so to speak. But- is this an actual argument and does this method include understanding? Another method is what I might call The SideStep - where someone's post is rebutted with 'Peirce never used that word'- and thus, the whole argument is dismissed as invalid...when the word [used in its natural sense] is merely a synonym for the Peircean argument. Other methods include of course, Selectivity, where the other person's argument is dismissed by selecting one small part of it as 'problematic' and thus, the whole argument is thrown out. And so on... These are hardly methods unique to this list but are found wherever mankind gets together to argue and debate. We aren't pure
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Charity (was Categories and...
John, Gary, I get from your account here that you had a specific critique of a result, on one occasion, of Jon's applying of his method. Also that a similar situation has recurred before. But that doesn't mean that there is a flaw in his overall method per se. I'm inferring this from recent comments by participants to this topic. I think both you and JAS should carry on in your underlying methods as such. Please can you provide hyperlinks from the archive, or similar exact reference, so that list members can continue to benefit from your arguments in each case, given these are held on server specially for our continued reference. In natural language we point out, say, "method of JAS" and then again, "result from instance of application by JAS of method of JAS". The string of items in the latter phrase constitute context of occurrence but not a watertight causal string. Now the method of JAS is to pull elements from diverse contexts within CSP's oeuvre, and then list members express differences in view regarding the intermeshing of the charitable interpretations of the diverse elements. But what is wrong with several such viewpoints? They add to each other and don't detract. None of them has to knock out the others, as if it was the Wimbledon Tournament. Would to do so, be excessive application of excluded middle or non-contradiction? Slightly too binary? While we have a class of instances and while such a class is a universal, and a concrete in CSP's terms (because generalities are observed in the imagination), that doesn't provide us with a rule as to either the quality of argument in each instance within the class, nor the range of applications of the original points (of CSP) cited. I suspect, since CSP was inclined to talk about "the universe and everything", his points do interrelate (in his own mind), but since he himself struggled in expression, everlasting discussion is essential. This is the path of research to not block, I think. To produce variant interpretations, neither is blocking nor needs blocking, by appearing - unintendedly - to impugn methods within the huge range of methods needed. Gary, I would value if you could add a hyperlink or some equally effective exact reference in cases like the last few so that we can study more easily the quality of points being made all round. I think you started to say the same as me about John's response to JAS, but then appeared (against your intention) to do the same towards him by you not providing detail. Practical suggestion to all please: Can we add next to or below, if giving such a hyperlink, the author as well as time and date. This might obviate copying of entire posts when having difficulty focussing on which is the core section at any time. (But some have already been chopping up quoted messages nicely though.) For me this means I've got to make future changes to my clipboard methods. I'd also like to offer the thought that meditations offered are at best slightly tentative, but that only instances of fallacies need actual refuting. And that CSP liked Ockham because he argued well in a generally defective ambit. Please would everybody including Gary, pick these worded arguments of mine to pieces. Michael Mitchell former translator U.K. On 2020-05-14 5:09, John F. Sowa wrote: Jon, The principle of charity in philosophy does *not* require the listener/reader to assume that the statements by the speaker/author are true. ... "it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject's sayings." I have never claimed that any of your statements were meaningless or irrational. What I criticized was the strength and methods of the argument. For the arguments I objected to, I showed that a charitable interpretation of what Peirce wrote led to a conclusion that was different from a charitable interpretation of what you wrote. JAS> We (supposedly) agree that it is inappropriate to make sweeping judgments about who is (or is not) capable of understanding Peirce's writings and discussing them intelligently. We (apparently) disagree about who among us has been guilty of doing exactly that. I never said that you were incapable of understanding Peirce. But I did criticize your method of stringing together multiple quotations from different contexts. I did not claim that was irrational. But I did say that the some of the critical quotations were taken out of contexts where charity toward Peirce would give them a different interpretation. JAS> On the contrary, Gary R. is consistently an exemplary model of the "generosity of attitude" that he advocates as List moderator. No. A list moderator has a right to admonish participants about making inappropriate statements. But a moderator has an obligation to quote the statement(s) explicitly and state exactly why they are inappropriate. But Gary R made a blanket statement about my ability to
[PEIRCE-L] Down with Hume and Hegel (was: "generosity of attitude")
John, Jon, Edwina, Gary, Robert et al, The way "all these issues" is mentioned, implies this is a periodic happening and you've evidently survived them all so I am reassured. I for one don't see any principle except in things. Thus I was pleased to know of Peirce as a chemist, coastal surveyor and linguist. Qualities and dynamics superpose themselves like layers; then we have the situation where the whole of the sciences seems like the part and vice versa; leading to the almost mindblowing "topology" rightly needed in our diagrams. (I'm told Windelband and Rickert distinguished between individuating and non-individuating sciences, with various branches of biology spread in between.) Continual reminders to cite examples surely needn't be taken as demeaning, as long as one is not implying theoretical work being done is short of intrinsic value: but it loses its value TO us without examples, if we haven't a secret untalked-of stock of them, triggered by terminology or notations. Example giving was done to good effect yesterday over the street cry. Didn't Peirce point out theory needs metaphor or other concretes to make sense - i.e metaphor, an imagined relation (in the laboratory atop our shoulders), is itself a concrete. One can have signs of signs. Halliday cites Shannon and Wheeler as referring to matter as a special case of meaning. While extreme materialists make claims for "what", a more realistic answer could be "where" (in some sense) and "is" (in some sense), also "how conveying". Speculative work on dimensions and the quantum is no less concrete. Deductive experimenting is sometimes touted as the only component of science whereas induction and abduction (similar territory to Newman's "notions") has always been equally vital for hypothesis-forming (and usually around 200 years prior). The force of deduction is more specific than that of induction. Words allude, but we get meaning from words when several of the allusions intersect. Hence meanings in Peircean theoretical terms and notations are easier to convey when accompanied by illustrations. The public currently seem to be taught to idealise, nominalise and reify altogether, hence superficial and misguided evaluations deplored by John. Hegel seems to have insisted on an ineluctable monolith as the only reality, and I get the impression mimetics is usually portrayed similarly. Extreme materialists disallow tentative hypotheses. By contrast Gilson described methodical realism, while Popper proposed propensity fields (which I call "happening places"). Newman extolled "degrees of" inference, which is how partial knowledge can be made highly useful. I wish to ask whether, when we are discussing the interrelation between theory and concretes, we have been idealising / reifying / nominalising the very components in our discussion, after the habit of Ockham, Hume and Hegel; and whether double checking this will improve the present generosity discussion. Who was urging the dehegelising of Peirce only this morning (I can't organise my e-mails)? What do list members think regarding this? Please add Peirce's terms / notations to points I've mentioned. Michael Mitchell ex-translator U.K. - - - On 2020-05-13 19:17, John F. Sowa wrote: Jon , ... And since Gary R takes your side in all these issues ... Some are more inclined toward and adept at abstract theory, others prefer to pursue concrete applications, and others (like Peirce himself) can do both. But the point I was making is that if you want to understand Peirce, you must read his writings as coming from someone who spent a lifetime doing both. Unfortunately, the various collections (CP, W, and NEM) ... emphasize the results of his thinking, but they skip the details about his practice. Examples: His father taught him Greek, Latin, and mathematics from early childhood. He was doing chemistry experiments from the age of 8, and he worked his way through the kinds of experiments a college student would be doing. He read his brother's logic textbook, cover to cover, when he was 12. And he published a pioneering book in astronomy in his first full-time job at the Harvard observatory. None of us can redo our early childhood experience. But when we read any theoretical statement by Peirce, we must remember his background, his criteria for evidence, and his 60+ years of empirical/critical methods As Peirce said, it's indeed wonderful that different people have very different ways of thinking. But in order to understand any of them, we must recognize their background in order to understand how and why they came to their conclusions. Otherwise, the evaluation is incomplete or superficial at best, misguided or false at worst John - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE,
"re: re" [PEIRCE-L] Peirce-L Forum principle of beautiful principles
I always dread when the "spectre" of a "row" appears to appear. As a rejoicing spatial thinker, please can I offer not only some ground but several "ways out", "ways through" and "ways over". I don't understand the notations very well, but I intuitively follow chunks of the descriptive prose. This is a beautiful and vital area. Any contributor has a finite piece of mental energy at any moment. In inviting a range of examples be offered, we are surely inviting everybody else as well. Also, we should not be afraid to ask, "is it a bird? is it a plane?" because in objective terms this neither shows us up as stupid for asking nor does it show up a thread starter for not happening to go that way in a single post. In 1 st century Aramaic speaking society the way to display intellectual calibre was in question-asking not in answer-giving. Universities should set papers in which one gets a mark docked for every sentence that doesn't end in a question mark. In our sort of context, even closed questions are open. When a post is styled as a statement, it is still a question. And if individuals should be seen to, as policy, not give examples, please can we work with that and compensate, jointly and collectively. In my young day I tried to get into Saussure and now I understand why I couldn't. I was right about that even when I was uninformed and incapable. Intuition and logic make an infallible team. Children know the unity subsisting among metaphysics, epistemology, logic, aesthetics and ethics. The usages of the word "square". Education is to collectively renew, as we go. I'd love to see more paraphrasing (anything worth saying can be said your way in addition to everybody else's), metaphor, and analogy (partial metaphor). This is not instead of anything, this is extra, and extras can surely come from anybody. We must boldly go into "Yes Jim but not as we know it" territory in our concepts about concepts about concepts, knowing this doesn't take us away from concretes (even when a particular individual doesn't mention some), it can keep us just as near, and let's not feel it's not the done thing for someone - anyone - to throw in some concretes, and if they are "wrong" concretes we can fill in the gaps in our discussion, rather than regard it as having been "pooped". I had work in general translating (foreign languages) for some years. I am slow and small of contributing, but I don't consider myself disqualified. I imagined members were contributing or not, on "pragmatic" grounds rather than feeling too overawed to do so. Surely propositions in a thread starter act as invitation, implicitly. Now the ground: this reminds me of when Duns debated with the followers of Aquinas as between equivocity of analogy and analogy of equivocity. The chicken and the egg (of theory and concretes) "are" the same, in a strangely familiar way. The "opposite" of theory isn't pragmatics, but concretes. Concretes are living theory, and theory is the spirit of concretes. It's amazing how Peirce could use words like this without becoming a mystic as so many (sadly) did. As a beginner I see Peirce-like territory in Husserl, Gilson, Young, Aristotle, and the dry humour of Stanley Jevons. A yardstick of mine is Newman's degrees of inference. (Edwina, I had a thought about an inverse relationship between fallibility and inference.) I hold with multi-theory hypothesis and multi-hypothesis theory. Nature is logic having a ball. Poetry (such as Pope's) is highly Peircean. We can free ourselves from reifying & nominalising kinds of mimetics / dialectic. My colleagues used to comment not only that I was a great theorist (though untrained) but that my vocabulary was very concrete. We ourselves, uniquely interacting week by week, are a lattice pastry, a shimmering crystal. We shouldn't forget to be like those twins, or couples, that finish each other's statements. The "full" performance can't be pinned on one individual. The enabling of location is a thing we should all pitch in & do. Lattice-pastry as diagram of continual fisticuffs & bust-up over "leanings". Enjoyment can take many forms: not excluding sparse pure pursuance. I hope my views don't come over as patronising to professionals, and apologies for my spiral style of discourse. The very nicest thread titles are those many we've had with a slightly surprising combination of vocabulary. Pragmatics = theory + concretes? Thus it is the whole lot, as well as being diagrammed as a section of it. Nice topology! If it could be demonstrated by a range of members that the "focus" (great to have) of the List, in and around (more than "on") pure theory (which pragmatics very much embraces), is being MADE TO "block" examination of its illustration(s), I would be concerned. We can't have the meaning without the texts OR the texts without the meaning. Rhetoric isn't an add-on.
Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time
All, I often read that space is distinct from time, Then we have in the slit experiment a hint that there are things we can see "sometimes". This gave me the idea that time (where we always "are") is an extrusion, and dimensions other than time are an intrusion. (Three of the latter, we are equipped to "know") Michael Mitchell amateur philosopher Home-self-schooling catcher upper On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 1:56 AM Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote: Jon, List, Consider what Peirce says about his cosmological conception of time in a letter to Christine Ladd-Franklin. For the sake of clarity, I'll separate and number the points he makes. 1. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years has been to develop my cosmology. This theory is that the evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things in the infinite future. 2. The state of things in the infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and absence of all spontaneity. 3. Between these, we have on our side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. 4. As to the part of time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by contraries. 8.316 Focusing on the points made in 3 and 4, how might we understand the contrast being made between our side of things, and the part of time that is on the further side of eternity? A helpful approach, I think, is to start with a mathematical diagram. What kind of diagram might we use to clarify the hyperbolic evolution from the infinite past to the infinite future? Using this diagram, what is the contrast between our side of things and the further side of eternity? --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 - From: Jeffrey Brian Downard Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2020 11:37:06 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time Hello Jon, List, At the beginning of the post, you note that Peirce engaged in "mathematical, phenomenological, semeiotic, and metaphysical" inquiries concerning time. Do you have any suggestions about how we might tease out the different threads? Each seems to involve somewhat different methods. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Intuitionistic Existential Graphs - and Brouwer
All, There is an inspiring passage on Brouwer in a book I picked up (serendipitously) by Max Black. He connects the same sort of issues to Gödel. Heisenberg and Schrodinger are also in the same territory. (The problem of the cat, we are rarely told, continues no longer than a moment until the situation becomes clear, thus placing the "many worlds" idea in proportion rather.) Shannon, Wheeler and Halliday considered matter a special case of information. I wonder if that is why we get to hear so much about waves (which can be information carriers), from the latest scientific discoverers. It seems there are two kinds of probability: probable occurrence (contingency), and probable knowledge. In regard to the first Gould and Taleb have shown us so much. In regard to the second, the same two insist to a rare degree that we use better logic than is habitual among the public. In relation to Zadeh and Haack reference below this reminds me of J H Newman's "assent to degrees of inference" which is psychologically more accurate than Locke's "degrees of assent". According to Knowles, Anselm translated "necessarius" as probable, demonstrable or admissible, not as "compelling". Hence necessity and contingency are rather near to each other, on a kind of spectrum or continuum, as I have suspected for some time. (That is why it is wrongful to insist on creating rows about "the existence of god". From our dimensions we would scarcely see a god anyway, hence a healthy atheistic agnosticism barring personal factors. In the mind of a god from where a revelation might - if at all - come from, the wording assumes necessity. The need for individual initiative, as well as the scale, cause the evident inactivity of same.) (Anselm utterly spoiled the matter with his utterly fallacious "ontological" "argument".) were reluctant to use Brower's logic because it made many legitimate theorems more difficult to prove - only in the sense that relativity and quantum science make Newton more difficult to prove. It saddens me terribly, that depopularisers cynically maintain that recent scientific discoveries prove the lack of veracity of testimony, or the lack of value of the attributes of their smaller fellow human beings (an out-and-out moral relativism with themselves at the top of the pecking order). The above arise from fortuitously encountered reading matter. Michael Mitchell amateur philosopher On Thu, Sep 5, 2019 at 1:46 PM John F. Sowa wrote: Intuitionistic logic was founded by the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer. He objected to "nonconstructive" proofs by contradiction. Many mathematicians have been sympathetic, but they were reluctant to use Brower's logic because it made many legitimate theorems more difficult to prove. For more info, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism/ Re EGs: Peirce's diagrammatic reasoning, which begins with diagrams and reasons about them is by its very nature constructive. However, Peirce's rules of inference also allow proofs by contradiction. The idea of making EGs intuitionistic would enforce constraints on the rules of inference to prohibit the options that are nonconstructive. That could be considered as a kind of three-valued logic with True, False, and Not provable. But that's different from True, False, and Unknown -- or the fuzzy versions with a continuous range of values. Susan Haack strongly objected to Zadeh's idea of a continuum of truth values. But it would be more appropriate to consider the fuzzy values as degrees of confidence or belief. - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: On-line Symp. on RL's Peirce on Realism & Idealis - chimps
On 2019-07-19 21:33, John F Sowa wrote: ... 5. But human language is not perfect. Franz de Waal, for example, said that chimpanzees understand human intentions more clearly than most humans -- primarily because they are not deceived by language. ... This is often not the case, for example with those people with a neurological condition whose "body language" comes over different, and who have learned to choose their words. I think for example the 7% rule decreed by the erstwhile "NLP specialists" is a bad one, which has led to far less listening throughout society. (Sadly a wide vocabulary can be regarded by certain professionals as pathological. I know of such things through acquaintanceship & observation merely.) I think however this does NOT conflict with your well constructed and deep point John AT ALL. The sort of things chimps are onto is probably rather oriented to tea-time (writing that just gave me an appetite). Have chimpanzees been observed, mixing with the neurodiverse by any chance? Thank you so much everyone for the stimulating debates (a suitable paraphrase for "provoking"?) Michael Mitchell amateur philosopher (U.K.) - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] semiotics everywhere but they don't know it
Keeping your fellows company helps maintain morale. I multitask on a minute-by-minute basis and on a week by week and month by month basis. Most tasks I don't finish at once, I just progress them to the next point at which they don't unravel while I take a break from it. Most people are probably like that but the next person (if there is one) always has a different time schedule in mind. However, there are some people that need to see a thing right through, otherwise they get confused, or they don't have space to leave half finished tasks piled up, or this is required in the job. I am lucky that I don't (quite) need to work at the moment. I am finding my memory gets better and better and I feel more and more relaxed. Space to pile half-finished tasks up for a while, helps, since I have got some. I also increasingly write notes and keep those in specified places for future reference. Canny coaches and OTs know how to teach people these skills. Since my coach showed me I have flair for spatial thinking, both in concretes and conceptually, I capitalise on that in a big way. Most people are only trained serially which is heavy going. I remember phone numbers half visually and half auditorily, and grouped in five-three-three digits. If people are hassling you for the sake of hassling you, that's bad. Ideally you should be able to make some people wait a short and appropriate amount of time for you to attend to something else of equal priority. There are happy mediums and good manners all round, in shops, etc. If we tell ourselves no-one is really trying to be mean and we admire our own achieving, we can acquire more poise even when rushed off our feet. This world is based on put-downs so no wonder everyone is cracking up. Personality is about discretion and initiative, not image. If we take small chunks at a time, we can glow in achievement which is terrific for our own morale. How and why "scientific studies" are organised is a separate subject. On 2018-11-02 8:14, Stephen Jarosek wrote: Has anyone else observed how so many scientific "studies" actually relate to semiotics? I periodically stick my head into the Science-reddit forum for the latest science news, and often the studies that are cited are just exercises in semiotic analysis. They must think it's all in the genes or something. They need to be enlightened... we need to work harder to spread the semiotic message far and wide! Take for example, an arbitrary sample from today's schedule: *Merely desiring to alter your personality is not enough, and may backfire unless you take concrete action to change, suggests a new study. Failing to support one's goals with concrete action appears to backfire, leading to personality drift in the opposite direction to what was desired. ... *'Heavy' multitasking may cramp your memory - A decade of data reveals that heavy multitaskers have reduced memory, Stanford psychologist says. Although he also adds that it is still too soon to determine cause and effect. ... *As small Iowa towns continue to lose population, a strong social infrastructure - rather than economic or physical factors - determines whether residents report greater quality of life, according to new research. The above are all semiotics 1:001 https://www.reddit.com/r/science/ sj - 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
RE: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] DNA - The key to life, the universe and everything?
All, It's not just us that adapt to prevailing or partly prevailing thinking, "ideally" they will get used to our thinking freshly, as many societies have done many times fortunately. In practice logical interconnectedness doesn't necessarily happen. Tolerant societies recognise that our thinking is no more a threat than anyone else's (unless it is of course!) Personally I'm not a package dealer so all the tribes can count me out. Thanks Stephen for the primers. I'll try & throw in well-worn phrases as much as I can! Michael On 2018-10-31 11:53, Stephen Jarosek wrote: "And more tribal, but with groupthink this sweeping, the tribes are currently confined principally to two... Left versus Right." Lest there be any ambiguity, perhaps I should add... we should think about this. Think about the things that we assume as given, that we accept at face value. That are completely in error. The political correctness that projects its own sexism, its own racism, its own bigotries while masquerading its moral superiority. Groupthink on steroids, and it ain't pretty. We just assume it to be true and that becomes the end of the discussion. We are in it, and we can't see it, like a fish that will never understand water. An objective, valueless logos? Far from it, not even close. -Original Message- From: Stephen Jarosek [mailto:sjaro...@iinet.net.au] Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 11:36 AM To: 'Helmut Raulien' Cc: tabor...@primus.ca; 'Peirce List' Subject: RE: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] DNA - The key to life, the universe and everything? Helmut, I think the distinction that you are making is alluded to in the distinction between mythos and logos. I do not accept that a "factual culture" (logos) is favorably inclined to objectivity. You raise an interesting point regarding cultural narratives and the freedom to believe or not believe. The problem, though, is a variation on what Jesper Hoffmeyer describes as scaffolding. The freedom to believe or not believe will be interconnected with other narratives in the culture, and will have to be logically consistent with all interconnected narratives, assuming that said believer is sane (schizophrenia is about not being fully connected with cultural narratives). Sane disagreement with one narrative, for example, will be disagreement IN ACCORDANCE WITH HOW THAT CULTURE ASSUMES REALITY TO HOLD TRUE. The world of logical facts is not actually value-free. Gary's post that he posted just before yours was nicely timed (Disinformation, dystopia and post-reality in social media: A semiotic-cognitive perspective). Godlessness, absence of belief, creates different kinds of pressures for knowing how to be. What we are witnessing with the rise of social media is increasing groupthink. NOT QUESTIONING our culture, not connecting with its mythos, masquerades as objectivity and absence of belief... but when we don't question our culture, we accept its groupthink and we become slaves to groupthink's values... social approval, popularity. Contemporary groupthink seems safely sterile... everyone has access to goods, medical care, etc, everyone is friendly with everyone, and so on. But as safe and as comfortable and friendly as it all appears, behind it all is a kind of groupthink and a compulsion to belong to it. The baby-boomer collective that we see in contemporary materialism, labels and appearances, huge shopping complexes, architectures that all look the same, and the relentless media/marketing that reminds us of our "needs". Hoffmeyer's scaffolding. Seems harmless and value-free. The reflexive, immediate rewards of social approval inspire more conformity/groupthink... the increase in habituation (thirdness) confines people to assumptions (narratives) that are difficult to break out of. Hence the hostilities on social media. Our logos creates the illusion that our culture is value-free. It's not. The need for connection is still there, and a meaningless culture will seek meaning through other avenues... more compulsive, more reflexive, more habitual, more rigid, less questioning and less free. And more tribal, but with groupthink this sweeping, the tribes are currently confined principally to two... Left versus Right. Gary's link relates: https://content.iospress.com/articles/education-for-information/efi180209?fbclid=IwAR1f_XKsqHnHA_3C9eFYUxxmtXBDpV5H0fliXLqqXKEZ1ZjBvjL9N43Y_uI sj From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de] Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2018 9:27 PM To: sjaro...@iinet.net.au Cc: tabor...@primus.ca; 'Peirce List' Subject: Aw: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] DNA - The key to life, the universe and everything? Stephen, Edwina, list, I think that there is a distinction between culture and civilization: Culture is the way of life by a population, or of a, how ever, delimited group of organisms: Either, tautologically, delimited by some certain aspect of way of life, or by other boundaries such as nation (whatever nation might mean). In any case, "culture"
Re: [PEIRCE-L] DNA - The key to life, the universe and everything?
My name is Michael Mitchell and I've just joined this fascinating list, as a complete beginner to philosophy in my sixties - apart from gazing "blankly" into "space" all my life of course! This is the first time I've attempted to reply, I used my "reply to" icon so I hope it has worked all right. Here are my musings on paras 5-12: The door to consciousness is in the cusp of the not yet a memory and the no longer a plan. This door is in the ineffable but somehow very concrete here and now (specific coordinates in the space-time continuum). The self has a door which is locatable - where the atoms of our bodies are. What dimensions the "remainder" of our selves are "in", may be partly science in the future, partly not science, I don't know. In my experience of specific learning differences I gained the following insights intuitions inklings etc. The very good article on allostasis and some of your points leave out the additional factors that our bodily construction plus any other unique factors in our personalities also help shape our interactions with other people and things. For example, some people like to use peripheral vision, need to be given more time, need things and people to be louder or quieter, etc. Also, it's not only in one's young day that one learns new tricks, one can carry on learning life long as I do with gusto daily. It becomes more deliberate - with self-talk - but is no less effective for that. A Mr Matthew (I think) cited a "natural process of selection" in the 1830s but by that may have meant something like "survival of the survivors" in the contingent world as well as any obvious individual viability issues. Stephen Jay Gould highlighted what he detected as an intermittent stepping up in diversification. What this does for memetics and mimetics I don't know - perhaps not much - after all, animals have a central nervous system and we share in mammalian biology and instincts are like bundles of a number of reflexes combined. Now we add not only the level of calculation of certain mammals (and more) but individual personality. On a good day psychology is a science and there are perceptive branches of it. Genetic drift regulates diversification and a sort of homogenisation, simulataneously. I don't know that the meme as "selfish gene" itself causes entropy, I think it is neutral. The moral (which relates to morale) interplays and it is the balance of those that increases or decreases entropy. (The universe will continue to expand even when the morally beneficial opposite to the nasty chaos kind of entropy applies, just to make it more complex.) I agree with your point about incorrect imitation. I have always been suspicious about alleging desire was a bad thing. Best wishes all. Michael Mitchell On 2018-10-29 13:32, Stephen Jarosek wrote: Members, The Peirce list has been relatively quiet over the past few days. Perhaps this is an opportune moment to introduce a different kind of exploratory perspective. My thinking sprawls across several disciplines and experiences, and so people often have trouble following where I’m coming from. Let’s see if we can distill everything into a few short lines, in one place, to explore why the DNA molecule might perhaps provide the key to life, the universe and everything. ... 5) Quantum mechanics and nonlocality. Is the self nonlocal? I have reason to suggest that it is. The local self, by contrast, is an assumption, an illusion based on the fact that all experience can only ever take place in a localized context; 6) At least in the context of epigenetic theory, it is widely accepted that experience changes DNA (which genes are expressed); 7) At least in the context of Darwinian natural selection, it is now widely accepted that experience wires the neuroplastic brain; 8) The previous two points (6 and 7), however, suffer from the shortcomings of the Darwinian paradigm, which is inconsistent with entropy. The notion of "adaptive traits" is particularly problematic in this regard. Neural plasticity is not merely an incidental "adaptive trait", but absolutely fundamental to the way that single cells, such as neurons, make choices from their ecosystems. This is more effectively interpreted through the Peircean-biosemiotic paradigm (I believe the term "scaffolding" applies. Systems theorists use the word "autopoiesis"); 9) Neural plasticity and cellular autopoiesis (self-organization) relate to systems theory. If experiences wire the brain, it then follows that experiences are contingent on the body with which they are apprehended. In the context of human culture, human experiences are apprehended by male and female bodies. Our outline sets the stage for properly understanding sex differences and gender roles in culture. Particularly within the context of evolution, the cultural known and the unknown. Here is a web article that nudges
