AA = Azamat Abdoullaev
JA = Jon Awbrey (01)
Earlier comments tagged by author.
Current comments are not indented. (02)
AA: Jon, too many distortions. See below. (03)
AA: The nature of signs and symbols and significations,
their definition, elements, and types, was mainly
established by Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. (04)
AA: According to these classic sources, significance is a relationship
between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they
signify (intend, express, or mean), where one term necessarily
causes something else to come to the mind. Distinguishing
natural signs and conventional signs, the traditional theory
of signs sets the following threefold partition of things: (05)
AA: 1. There are things that are just things, not any sign at all; (06)
AA: 2. There are things that are also signs of other things
(as natural signs of the physical world and mental
signs of the mind); (07)
AA: 3. There are things that are always signs, as languages
(natural and artificial) and other cultural nonverbal
symbols, as documents, money, ceremonies, and rites. (08)
See the following papers for relevant passages from Aristotle and others: (09)
1. http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
2. http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm
3. http://org.sagepub.com/content/8/2/269.abstract (010)
I think it's fair to say that Aristotle put forward a triadic model
of the sign relation, though I don't suppose we can credit him with
seizing the thistle of triadic irreducibility in its fullest flower.
Descartes most definitely came down on the side of dyadic relations
between objects and signs, and this was compatible with his general
idea that all relations of more than two domains can be handled two
at a time. (011)
JA: One of the occupational hazards of the working ontologist
seems to be the Fallacy Of Misplaced Essences (FOME) -- (012)
AA: According to Whitehead, there is only the "Fallacy of Misplaced
Concretness" when one mistakes an abstract model for a physical
(concrete) reality, as when somebody creates ideas/leaves in
a dream having nothing to do with reality. (013)
JA: I was going to call this the Fundamental Ontological Error (FOE)
by virtue of its analogy to the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
in social psychology, but the opportunity to invoke both Vonnegut
and Whitehead in a single acronym was way too tempting to pass up. (014)
AA: That's another confusion. The psychological fact that the mental
attitude, mentality, outlook, or mindset may affect our decision and
judgment of situations, behavior and cultural events is a common thing.
That's why we need ontological science. (015)
AA: In this trivial way one can create the Fundamental Psychological
Attribution Error, the Fundamental Logical Attribution Error, the
Fundamental Mathematical Attribution Error, etc. (016)
JA: In the case of sign relations, as defined by Peirce's best definitions,
we have to remember that there is no ontology to being objects, signs,
or interpretant signs. (017)
All joking aside, I am simply calling attention to the fact that people often
look for causes and essences at the wrong level of a complex structural system.
Fundamental Attribution Bias (FAB) or Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
studies
tell us that people tend to attribute causality to individual agents even when
it
can be shown through experimental arrangements that systematic situational
factors
are really the effective ones. (018)
The analogous bias in semiotics leads people to seek "essential" or
ontological distinctions between objects and signs where none exist,
while the nature of the process lies in the system of relationships. (019)
AA: Semantics as logics is committed to ontology.
You need ontological axioms, rules and
assumptions for 3 things at least: (020)
AA: 1. to know what semantics is about;
2. to formulate semantic assumptions and rules;
3. to classify the types of significance or meaning or interpretation
and their relata, be it designation, representation, reference,
connotation or denotation; be it mathematical interpretation,
factual interpretation, or pragmatic interpretation. (021)
JA: There may be an ontology of whole sign relations, but there is
no "essence" that distinguishes the "accidents" of being in the
role of an object, a sign, or an interpretant sign, respectively. (022)
AA: Strictly speaking, "the sign relations" is
just syntactic relationships between signs. (023)
No, syntax has to do with grammatical relationships between
component signs and composite signs, all within a sign domain. (024)
AA: Just try the idea that the relationship of sign and the thing signified
could/must be reduced to the relationship of cause and effect, and that
the whole of world is a an infinite symbolism. (025)
Here you are suggesting a causal-dyadic model of sign action.
That is something that many have tried before, but there are
good reasons for considering more complex, information-based
models of the sign relation. (026)
Jon Awbrey (027)
-- (028)
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