RC wrote: "So a
familiar sign S represents another sign S2 in one
agent’s mind, yet can
represent only S itself in another agent’s mind, while
simultaneously
representing S3 (money, a document …) to still another
agent?"
ASHA: A sign points out
to something else, while a symbol takes place and
stands for something else.The
nature of meaning relationship (or signification) lies
in the sorts of things
acting as signs (or symbols) and the sorts of things
to be referred
(signified).
RC] I like the simplicity
of that concept, but CSP, JFS and JA all claim that a
sign can stand for
ITSELF, i.e., the “interpretant” of a sign CAN be
ITSELF, or it CAN
be another sign, or it can be nothing, nada, zip,
null, or nil. I GUESS
that means the interpretant of a sign with nil interpretant must
actually be MISINTERPRETED to be itself. I think a sign with ITSELF as
its own
interpretant would necessarily be an infinitely
recurring circle unless
controlled in depth by the interpretER.
ASHA: The power of words,
used by human minds, is in the double capacity to
point out and stand for
another thing. Again, there are verbal symbols and
nonverbal symbols, as vocal
signs and nonvocal signs. Among the nonverbal symbols
are money, ceremonies,
seals, titles, etc.
RC] Money
can have a lot of different TYPEs of
interpretants, I suppose? Seals,
titles, and various other forms are less flexible
than money, so let me first
explore the way in which money can have
interpretants.
The many interpretants of
money must be selected by each InterpretER based on
the associated markets and
the instantaneous value system of the InterpretER. With an exchange
as flexible as
today’s various money based trading system, money
indexes a lot of
desireable things. Does that mean money has many,
many interpretants over
the set of all interpretER’s dreams of acquisition?
Or do you contend that
the interpretANT of money is money ITSELF? That
position leaves any
concept of “fungability” completely up to the
InterpretER, but
generally all InterpretERs agree that more money is better than less
money, therefore
leaving the interpretant of money unrepresented in any
objective sense, but
known to be ordered by value.
RC] Likewise, documents
can have interpretANTs
to themselves, which I certainly
DON’T UNDERSTAND as desireable, or to the things they
describe, but that
description is based on the mind of the interpretER
who read the document. It makes
me think of a book which, when read, states “this book
is a book”
in a circularity that is doomed to eternal recursion
by an obsessive-compulsive
interpretER.
As a
representation of true meaning,
that is a lot hard to swallow.
RC] objectivity has
not been introduced yet in the
sequence of definitions of this Peircean exploration.
Which is another
point: do Peirceans even believe in objectivity? All
InterpretERs
would have to file the same
InterpretANT
for any
objective Sign to qualify, but what if they erred, and
the Sign doesn’t
mean what they think it means – consider the
physicists who preached
“ether” in the 19th century as what light
travels
through before AE proved that there was no need even
for ether?
RC: "Another
interesting aspect of your answer is that you use the
word “thing”
as the most general of all thingish words like object,
plurality, stuff,
material …; is that your mental image of the word
“thing”, as
the most abstract of all objects?
ASHA: Yes, Thing refers
to the Universal Class ofall sorts of entities,
implying the universal property
of all entities, whereas Nothing refers to the Null
Class .
RC] That sounds very reasonable
and
well reasoned.
RC: Can a
“thing” include an action, method, plan, history of
the
foregoing?"
ASHA: In the broad sense,
it is a substance, state, change, process as far as "
every sign is also a
thing, for what is not a thing is nothing at all".
RC] Then either we have
to enumerate all possible things (which is feasible
only in small universes for
most applications) or we have to enumerate groups
which together, enumerate all
things in some form of closure. In either case we
ultimately have to
enumerate all Things (and perhaps many or all groups
in the lattice above those
Things) if we want to represent them. The enumeration
of all Thing
instances is therefore potentially a management issue
of major
considerations. Yet I never hear of any enumeration,
ordering, comparison,
or identification methods from the Peirceans. I
wonder what methods they
use to deal with large universes of Things, such as
the seven billion humans on
the planet. I suppose a sparse representation is the
easiest.
In NL, words are the
signs of ideas and images, thoughts and feelings,
while the mental
signs are the similitudes of things.
RC] agreed.
The beauty of machines
consists in that they don't require the mental signs
(ideas and images) as
the medium whereby symbols (physical signals) could
signify the real things.
RC] Yes, and
that is very well stated, thank you for the effort you
must have put into that
email!
-Rich
Azamat Abdoullaev
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday,
August 16, 2010 12:20 AM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] Triadic Sign Relations
Hi Azamat,
You wrote:
"That confuses me no end if Peirceans can’t
tie the theory to some commonly understood reality for
me. Is there a
more fruitful description that explains the language
used and chosen for that
representation?"
Rich,
The nature of signs and symbols and
significations,
their definition, elements, and types, was mainly
established by Aristotle,
Augustine, and Aquinas.
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:
- There are things that are
just things, not any sign at all;
- There are things that are
also signs of other things (as natural signs of the
physical world and mental signs of the mind);
- There are things that are
always signs, as languages (natural and artificial)
and other cultural nonverbal symbols, as documents,
money, ceremonies, and rites. see a brief but
comprehensive account, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign
Azamat Abdoullaev
Thanks for your view on
this; it helps me compare and contrast my own
theoretical understanding with
yours.
So a familiar sign S
represents another sign S2 in one agent’s mind, yet
can represent only S
itself in another agent’s mind, while simultaneously
representing S3
(money, a document …) to still another agent?
Another interesting
aspect of your answer is that you use the word
“thing” as the most
general of all thingish words like object,
plurality, stuff, material …;
is that your mental image of the word “thing”, as
the most abstract
of all objects?
Can a “thing”
include an action, method, plan, history of the
foregoing?
Thanks for the
stimulating viewpoint,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT
EnglishLogicKernel
DOT com
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