[Inquiry] Re: Peaceful Easy Feelin

[Jon Awbrey]

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PEF.  Note 8

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JC = John Collier

Re: PEF 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/002578.html 
In: PEF.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2578

JC: Though I agree with Jon that the debate would be helped by a knowledge
    of Peirce, it should be recognized that the debate is in the context of
    what is now called "neurophilosophy". One of the problems is to discover
    where symbols and meanings come together in the brain. It turns out that
    there are a lot of different neural circuits that deal with representation
    and different types of memory, and nobody really knows yet what is located 
    where, or exactly how it works.  We do know that we use symbols in a general
    way, and that we do it meaningfully and effectively (most of the time).  Part
    of the symbol grounding problem is how a brain like ours can use representations
    in a general way.  This is psychology, and to be fair, the authors listed below
    are psychologists who are well aware of this problem.  Detailed knowledge of
    neurophysiology is required to even understand why the problem is a problem
    that has _not_ been solved by Peirce or anyone else.  To just consider these
    papers in isolation from this other work (which the authors surely do not
    in the context of their journals and meetings) would give a very misleading
    picture of what they are up to.  I also note that "digital" has a special
    meaning in this literature, going back to Dretske's "Knowledge and the Flow
    of Information", though it has some roots in the notion of a binary code as
    well.  I've argued that understanding the nature of binary coding and the
    relation of syntax to semantics from  Peircean view is very useful, but so
    far only a few semioticians have taken much notice.

JC: Perhaps we need more Peircean neurophysiologists around.
    Any volunteers?  I'm trying to educate my flatmate (who was
    hired here to do neurophilosophy in our cog sci program), but
    he keeps saying that neurophysiologists have their own names
    for things, and their own ways of doing things.  The isolation
    goes both ways. Once in a while, though, something resonates.
    When it doesn't, we don't quite get into throwing things at
    each other over dinner, but it gets intense sometimes.  We
    still eat dinner together, though.  My flatmate says I will
    have to relate the work in my paper to current neurophysiology
    before the real scientists will take notice.  Maybe he is right.

John,

I currently view this from a systems theoretic perspective,
from which our favorite species of wetware is just another
brand of intelligent system.  And, yes, there's a lot more
to understand about how intelligent species in general, or
this one in particular, evolve to the point of manifesting
a capacity for inquiry.  And, yes again, a huge subproblem
of this study is figuring out how the dynamic and symbolic
aspects of such critters can be integrated into a coherent
agent or system.  But I still submit that Peirce's special
insights about signs, inference, information, inquiry, and
their interrelations, that shifted the very grounds of the
problem, are 'sine qua non' for any hope of future advance.
Without a more general appreciation of the consequences of
irreducibly triadic relations, the specialized disciplines
are doomed to spin their wheels in all the old dyadic ruts.

Jon Awbrey

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