[Inquiry] Re: Peaceful Easy Feelin

[Jon Awbrey]

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PEF.  Note 3

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JA = Jon Awbrey
JR = Joe Ransdell

JA: 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.

JR: Yes, you have been saying that, but you have not made clear to me
    how it is that he manages to pull that off without bringing in the
    auxiliary role of iconism and indexicality, which you think of as
    sullying the purity of the symbol, which supposedly manages to get
    an object without need for association with signs of other types.
    That is the view which Tom Short reduces to absurdity, isn't it?

I've given what serves as an explanation for me
several hundred times by now, for example, here:

| In the pragmatic theory of signs, a "symbol" is a strangely insistent
| yet curiously indirect type of sign, one whose accordance with its
| object depends sheerly on the real possibility that it will be so
| interpreted.  Taking on the nature of a bet, a symbol's prospective
| value trades on nothing more than the chance of acquiring the desired
| interpretant, and thus it can capitalize on the simple fact that what
| it proposes is not impossible.  In this way it is possible to see that
| a formal principle is involved in the meaningful successes of symbols.
| The elementary conceivability of a particular sign relation, the pure
| circumstance that renders it logically or mathematically possible,
| means that the formal constraint it places on its domains is always
| really and potentially there, awaiting its discovery and exploitation
| for the purposes of representation and communication.
|
| Jon Awbrey, "Inquiry Driven Systems:  Inquiry Into Inquiry"
| IDS 068.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-May/001507.html
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm

An information-bearing symbol is not a meaningless symbol.
A symbol bears information, in effect, reduces uncertainty
about its objective domain, by virtue of its participation in
a sign relation, which embodies a real constraint among the
domains of signs, objects, and interpretant signs.  That's
all it takes in order for a sign to carry information.
It depends on nothing more than the formal principle
involved in the particular sign relation, together
with the fact that formal constraints or laws have
a full-fledged reality in Peirce's philosophy.

Now, an explanation of sign action and sign meaning
in terms of informational principles will probably not
satisfy those who are looking for an explanation in terms
of causal forces and iconic images, just as an explanation
of molecular bonding in terms of electrical charges and
force fields will probably not satisfy those who are
looking for an explanation in terms of little hooks,
but there is very little that I can do about that.

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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