Pat:
If I understand you, the crux of your question is embodied in
this statement:
>Now, on such an account of intentionality, the mind
itself is made up of signs.
>Where do these signs get their meaning from? If we turn
to the triangular tradition,
>we need another mind to provide the meaningfulness of
these internal signs, and
>we are immediately in a vicious regress involving nested
homunculi
Which I interpret to mean as the meaning triangle no longer
holds up because if you consider the mind as a collection of signs there is no (other)
mind to observe and interpret them. Couldn’t you consider the
mind observing itself, i.e., the mind can perceive and interpret the signs of
which it is composed?
I think repeated exposure to external perceivable signs (sensory
input) gives original meaning to fundamental or foundation “mind signs”
(e.g., electro-chemical patterns in the brain). The “internal
observations” of these mind-signs then give rise to more complex sign/meanings.
The “unlimited semiosis” is still going on.
Bill
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 5:11 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Triangles and meanings. (was: Re: Triadic Sign
Relations)
Um... I hesitate to open up this triadic can of worms yet
again, but this might be a good place to air an issue that has bothered me for
some time. It is a basic clash, or at least tension, between the various forms
of what I will call 'traditional meaning triangle' and modern cognitive
science.
The basic question is, where do the meanings come from? What
force or principle or social construct (or whatever the hell it is) is it that
gives signs their meanings? Everyone from Aristotle through Ogden &
Richards to John Searle seems to agree that a critical part of any explanation
of this must involve a *mind*: an interpreter or observer or intentional agent,
which either (details vary) provides the meaning for the sign or perhaps
embodies the meaning of the sign in some way. I don't want to get into the
details of the various interpret- words, or the exegesis of the various
alternative theories, but only to observe that they all seem to have this in
common, that the proper account of the meaningfulness of a sign must involve a
mind as part of the explanation. That is, the theories of meaning appeal to the
notion of a mind as part of the account of meaning. The pithiest phrase is
Searle's "original intentionality", a basic property of human minds
which accounts for meaningfulness but is not itself reducible (except possibly
to biology in some future extension of biological and psychological science.)
Original intentionality plays the same kind of role in semiotic theory, in this
view, that mass or electromagnetism play in physics: a basic 'force' to which
other phenomena can be reduced but which itself has to be simply accepted as
one of the building blocks of the fundamental theory.
But now turn to modern cognitive science (CS), which is the
only part of science that can claim to have even modest success at accounting
for the cognitive functions which exhibit intentionality. CS treats the human
mind as essentially dynamic information processing in the brain, viewed (at a
suitably high level of abstraction) as a kind of biological computer. Not a Von
Neumann machine, to be sure, but still an information processor which operates
upon internal representations in some way. Now, on such an account of
intentionality, the mind itself is made up of signs. Where do these signs get
their meaning from? If we turn to the triangular tradition, we need another
mind to provide the meaningfulness of these internal signs, and we are
immediately in a vicious regress involving nested homunculi. Aristotle through
Searle appeal to a mind to explain meaningfulness of signs: CS uses meaningful
signs to explain how the mind works. Their explanatory arrows go in reverse
directions, and if we use them both, they form a loop. So if CS is even
sketchily right - and I repeat, no other account of mentality comes anywhere
close to being adequate - then something other than the traditional triangular
accounts of meaning must be used to account for how the internal signs - the
mental representations which constitute the mind's inner ontology, the
machinery of thought - get their meaning, if indeed they have meaning. There is
no other mind to appeal to.
I don't know how to resolve this problem. For myself, it
amounts for me to a refutation of the traditional views of meaning, or at any
rate a reduction of them to triviality. So, sorry, but Aristotle and Pierce and
Searle and a whole lot of other very distinguished minds were all wrong. Searle
obviously thought that it was a refutation of modern cognitive science (I use
the past tense as I havn't spoken with him on this topic for a long time.)
Either way, it is a serious theoretical problem for folk in our profession who
are busily using both the formal techniques and the ideas of CS while relying
upon the traditional triangular view of meaning and intentionality.
Comments? (Peter, if this is off-topic, please say so
publicly and I will take comments off-list.)
On Aug 20, 2010, at 9:29 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
Most of makes sense to me, but why must an object
“materialize” a sign? The object may not be MATERIAL at all
– it could be much more abstract, like the first cold weather is a sign
of the coming Fall and Winter in the northern hemisphere, yet there may be no
visible reminder of the cold day or the coming weather – just a lower
temperature than usual, which seems more abstract than concrete in my
experience.
It seems to me that a better choice of relations is “Object
fulfills sign”, as in expectations of the sign being met by some object,
whether abstract, concrete or a variable in the relation.
I like the choice “Object validates sign” especially,
since that ties in with the way humans perform the usual discovery process of
observing, classifying, theorizing and experimenting.
The edge “Interpretant unifies object” seems a little
strange, since it morphologically reminds me of unification, a process of
substituting one set of symbols for another, some of which can be constants and
others variables. So I am a little nonplussed by that one.
The other three edges (evokes, represents, signifies) seem quite
well chosen, though “signifies” is morphologically related to
“sign”, it still parses well.
Thanks for the suggestions,
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
Rich & All:
Folks here might be interested in revisiting this triangle in the context of
the ongoing discussion.
http://www.rickmurphy.org/images/interpretant-triangle.png
Although much of what's in the triangle is well-known, labeling the sides
combined with the counter-clockwise inner and clockwise outer edges reveals
something unique.
In its next revision the triangle will display the term "IT" at the
bottom and "IS" at the top.
--
Rick
On 8/20/2010 6:38 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
AA] … Broadly, there are two types of semantic models:
Extensional models dealing with classes
Intensional models dealing with properties.
The first one … assigns to every … sign (concept or
predicate) its extension or reference or denotation, like a binary relation is
interpreted as the set of ordered pairs.
RGC] Shouldn’t extensional models also deal with instances,
as well as with classes? Perhaps I have misinterpreted what you are
trying to say here. It seems to me that extensional models deal with
specific cases, which would be the instances. If we get enough instances
together that are similar, we can call it a class, but the extensional model
deals with ALL the instances in the class, so the use of the grouping we call
“class” is simply a plurality of instances, IMHO.
The second one is about relating the symbols with the context,
comprehension, intension, or meaning per se. The whole ontological issue
is here whether classes could be reduced to properties, or if intensional and
extensional models of meanings are equivalent (or at least interoperable as
applications).
Being a non ontologist (though student of ontology), it seems to me
that “relating the symbols with the context, comprehension,
intension, or meaning per se” isn’t a well formed formula – a
symbol can be RELATED to anything, but the MEANING of that relationship is not
the same thing as the relationship itself. Perhaps you can educate me
about what I missed by reaching that conclusion, because it sure seems
intuitively correct at first blush.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday,
August 16, 2010 10:56 PM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] Triadic Sign Relations
Thanks for your continuing efforts to help me understand the
subtleties of this Peircean representation. Below, I have interspersed my
comments among your answers to my last email to form a chain.
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
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.
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!
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday,
August 16, 2010 12:20 AM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] Triadic Sign Relations
"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?"
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
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 AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
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