Nick,
Trouble with my e-mail server. I think you have some of the problem staring at you. It is the observer that decides what is an object or a sign not strictly speaking your formula. If the dragonfly regards airborne gravel as a target it is it’s decision to do so until his tactile organs decide otherwise. Your formula appeals to people only. It may work if you acknowledge the role of the mind of the observer if the observer thinks it is an object engaged in one or the other action. This feels like a theatrical example You and I are at the edge of a duck pond and I bend down to grab a handful of gravel. You watch ducks recklessly eating grit and corn. Then I toss a handful of mixed grit and corn into the air. Then you see a very big, Anax junio, zoom into the debris field. It pause and then discards the grit or grain as unpalatable. The ducks gobble up the fallen material. Four minds at least saw this event and each had different conclusions, but it is the same event that is the heart of the confusion. So is an event an object or a symbol… vib From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson Sent: November-15-16 1:38 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Please I need help with a technical term Hi Eric and Victor, One of the most frustrating features of my attempt to formularize the sign relation, is that with each next example, I always think that applying the formula is going to be easy. And yet, when I try to do it, it always turns out to be VERY hard, or simply impossible. Let me try out my newly-declared formula for the sign relation, … [A sign] re-presents [some object] with respect to [some interpretant]. …on your example: Only to a third party, analyzing the events before them, would "High_contrast_round_things" be a bird-symbol for "Seeds". To the bird it is whatever it is, and is not a symbol of anything. First of all, I assume that “symbol” was a slip of the tongue. In the Peircean world, a symbol is a very special sort of sign, and we are just trying to come up with a general way to attribute sign-dom, so the question of whether this is a “symbol” or not, can be postponed. Before I apply the formula, I need to make a stipulation about how a chick works. I assume that a chick that lacks grit in its gullet but has food is a different chick than a chick that has food in its gullet but lacks grit. Let’s assume that the chick distinguishes between grit and corn, by a trial peck, and that it distinguishes peckable items by how they behave when scratched. With these assumptions in place, let’s try to apply the formula to the chick. Chick scratches [loose Object] re-presents [dirt] with respect to [object vs substrate] [Peckable] re-presents [loose objects] with respect to [size] Chick Pecks, now two possibilities, path a and path b 1a [Hard, dense] re-presents [peckable, loose object] with respect to [density, softness] 1b [Soft, light] re-presents [peckable, loose object ] with respect to [density, softness] 2a [Grit] re-presents [hard, dense, peckable, loose object] with respect to [chick that lacks grit] 2b [Food] re-presents [soft, light, peckable, loose object with respect to [chick that lacks food] Chick pecks and swallows. WHY IS THIS SO HARD!? Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Charles Sent: Monday, November 14, 2016 8:07 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Please I need help with a technical term Good points! And this draws attention to the "third party" problem I mentioned. Only to a third party, analyzing the events before them, would "High_contrast_round_things" be a bird-symbol for "Seeds". To the bird it is whatever it is, and is not a symbol of anything. Should the third party misidentify the function of the objects in question, for example, by neglecting to take into account that birds gain benefit from eating small hard objects of almost any kind (because the non-food aids digestion by performing a grinding function in the crop), then the third-party is wrong about what is going on. This is complicated by the ability of homo sapiens to adopt a reflective third-party perspective regarding their own behavior. Thus I can speculate about what different things symbolize to me, in the same manner I speculate about what different things symbolize to the bird. However, contra Descartes, and in line with Peirce and Freud, we must remember that our diagnoses of our own symbolic actions can suffer from the same deficiency discussed above. A claim like, "To me, this flag symbolizes strength and resolve," is a hypothesis/assertion regarding our own symbolic interaction with the world, and can be mistaken. A third party can challenge our self-symbol claim in all the same ways they could challenge our bird-symbol claim. ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 9:49 PM, VLADIMYR BURACHYNSKY <vbur...@shaw.ca> wrote: Peck_Ground_Now is "Seeds" Birds peck for gravel to aid digestion in the crop. They have to replace the grinding stones regularly. So without grit they starve to death even when supplied with more than adequate grain. Your interpretation of this particular symbol requires a modification. I am such a supplier of information and it requires the linkage of two minds connected by a flexible Script . Your Symbol may or may not be amended that is your decision not mine. However your symbol may ultimately contain information that originates from other minds and preserves this in your language without full attribution. I also adjust my symbols in such a casual manner without intentional disrespect. Check out Umberto Eco's writings on Semiotics and Good Luck. I myself am struggling with Object Oriented Programming versus Procedural Programming and the versions of language appear to overlap and smear out some distinctions. Each discipline attempts to inform users in its unique idiom of a language while the student arrives with a third language set never anticipated by the lecturers. At first reading I thought myself unable to contribute but the slight error seems opportune. You, so it appears, are now trying to reconcile more than one language set for the benefit of unknown minds with unknown language preferences. So it forces you to use a common predecessor language structure which I never considered so important before now. That implies that a general language must be a first step to building subsequent precise languages. This e-mail is perhaps an example of something , I thought came from Wittgenstein ; about the way he thought language is a type of negotiation procedure. I have no idea in truth how you think and expect you have no idea how I think but this scrap of agreed upon language may be of some use to an unknown reader. Serendipity that started a course of thought. vib _____ From: "Eric Charles" <eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <friam@redfish.com> Sent: Wednesday, November 9, 2016 8:38:14 AM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Please I need help with a technical term Case study: We put several (non-toxic) items on the ground around a bird, and find that high-contrast mini-Styrofoam balls, high-contrast glitter, and several similar items result in pecking. From that we learn ---- When Object [Bird] performs Function [Peck_Ground?] with the Cue/Argument [High-contrast_round_things_on_ground], the result is that Bird sets variable "Peck_Ground_Now" = "True" ---- That's all fine and good, I think. But, If you want to get to "signs", I suspect, we need to go up a level of analysis. We need to add into our system a third party capable of taking all of those elements as arguments for something akin to a Function [Evaluate_Evolutionary_Utility]. That is, we must have outside knowledge (perhaps derived from prior study, perhaps from deep study of religious texts), that the "proper" context of Peck_Ground_Now is "Seeds". Building off of several of the messages above, an Object [Human] could run the three-argument-function Evaluate_Evolutionary_Utility(Bird, Peck_Ground, High-Contrast_Round_Things) . As a result, the human would set variable "Evolutionary_Function" = "Seeds". You would then have Human run another Funciton [Is_Sign?], which takes two arguments ---- 1) the third argument in the Evaluate_Evolutionary_Utility function, and 2) the result of the Evaluate_Evolutionary_Utility function ---- to determine if they match. In this case, because they do not match (i.e., "High-contrast_round_things" =/= "Seeds" ), Human sets the variable "Sign" = "True". If you want to make a more sophisticated (Peircian) function, then in this case the Function [Is_Sign?] might lead you to set the variable "Sign" = "Icon" (because it is the type of "sign" that physically resembles what it "stands for"). ---- Note that (and this should appeal to Nick), the "arguments" for the Human include things that were not "arguments" for the bird, demonstrating that one cannot determine whether any particular "thing" is an example of "an argument" without knowing it's role in the program/discussion. At least, that would be my take. ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 3:40 PM, Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> wrote: If you are talking about “S. is a sign to I. of O.” I would call that a ternary relation: isASignOfTo (S, O, I). (Notice I switched the O and the I.) So the triple ("hello", greeting, Nick) is a triple in the isASignOfTo relation. I don't know that there are standard terms for the individual elements. They might be called field values, tuple elements, components, or something similar. I don't like "argument" because I tend to use "argument" when calling a function. But we are talking about relations, not functions. If the fields have names (like sign, meaning, person), you might call the elements use "the sign", "the meaning", and "the person." More generally, if you like to think in terms of roles, you might call the elements in the tuples, role-fillers, where sign, meaning, and person are roles. -- Russ On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 11:53 AM glen ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote: It seems we're conflating relations with operators. The sense of "argument" is that of operand, which can be just an input to an operator or just an output, or both an input and an output. The operand is a possibly dynamic thing operated on by the operator. I don't think you want that sense. So, for that reason, you may not want to use "argument". Naively, relations are simpler statements of how extant/static things relate. And if you really just want relations, then you're talking about a triad, not a dyad. So, there would be 1 relation term and 3 "parameter" (or "variable") terms. But operators _also_ define context, which is relevant to your "O". So, perhaps S and I are merely related in the context set by the O operator? So, the reason I waited till lunch time to answer is because I think the language you choose to say this depends quite a bit on what it is you're trying to say. On 11/08/2016 11:20 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > In the language I proposed, this expression would be rendered as > [Relation1([Relation2][Argument1][Relation3][Argument2]) or something like > that. In other words, I see you as using “argument” exactly as I meant it. > > While still confused, tho, I like your solution to my problem. However my > FRIAM colleagues my react to my usage, Philosophers are going to HATE it. dave> "Arguments in this sense have nothing to do with the structure of the expression itself. dave> dave> It might sound redundant, but I think you should simply use 'Term', e.g. [Term1][relation][Term2][Relation2]Term3] and replace the word 'term' in the prose with 'part' or 'element', i.e. segment or piece. [...] nick> [Argument1][relation1][Argument2][Relation2]Argument3]; or, for short nick> nick> A1R1A2R2A3 -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
