[Inquiry] Re: Peaceful Easy Feelin

[Jon Awbrey]

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PEF.  Note 2

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JR = Joe Ransdell

JR: I suppose one might reasonably say that Peirce's view can be regarded as
    an attempt to solve the symbol grounding problem, as Harnad describes it.
    This is speaking vaguely, of course:  I wouldn't want to claim that Peirce
    would describe the problem or its solution exactly as Harnad (or anyone else)
    does, but to say that it involves an attempt at a coordination of the digital
    and the analogical in explicating cognition seems to me a fair description of
    what Peirce was up to.   I take it that you are a devotee of the pure symbolist
    approach, Jon, i.e. you think Peirce was.

The main thing that a reader has to keep in mind when reading this literature,
along with a lot, but not all, of the related literature in AI and Cog Sci,
is that the word "symbol" means something rather different from what the
same string of six letters means in Peirce's work, or in classically
grounded philosophy in general.  A telling symptom of this is that
the adjective "meaningless" does not lie on the tip of the tongue
when speaking of Peirce's symbols, nor does it apply to his usage
of the term "symbol" at all.  Like I repeatedly say, Peirce's
concept of the sign, defined in terms of a 3-adic relation,
anticipates and thereby avoids in advance all of the usual
pseudo-problems of the 2-addicted species of philosophy.

Jon Awbrey

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