[CG] Re: Complex Adaptive Systems as Semiosic Systems

BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }No- I don't need three copies; just send posts to the CG list. As for 'self-corrective control - I consider that the triadic semiosic process is what enables this action. A dyadic process excludes MIND-as-mediation. Once you consider that Mind and Matter are correlates, then, any material action becomes also subject to mental action. I'm not terribly interested in the human cognitive process, which proceeds largely with the use of symbolic mental mediation. I'm interested in the physico-chemical and biological cognitive processes - which proceed with the use of indexical mental mediation. That is, these systems can be considered as 'sentient' which means that they are capable of feeling/sensing/perceiving their environment. They do this within the triadic semiosic process, which sets up a mediating analytic process to understand the input data. I refer to this whole process as a function, where f[x]=y, with 'f' understood as mediation. Mediation operates as both a set of evolving [yes, evolving] habits-of-organization AND also includes a number of possible habits. The possible follows the logical path of IF-THEN...ie IF I take this action, THEN, such and such MIGHT occur. The organism can anticipate results of its behaviour. This cognitive process of anticipation reduces RISK - where, if an organism took a certain action without anticipatory thought - it might be disastrous. Anticipation is a vital semiotic process and my point is that an organism will have, in its knowledge base, not merely a 'normal default template' but also, in the more complex organisms, a number of learned optional possibilities. This organism can therefore react to input sensate data by CHOOSING to follow, not its normative habits, but to take one of the optional paths. I consider that Thirdness-as-Secondness is THE vital cognitive mode that enables this indexical 'feeling out' of the environment and the analytic gathering of new possibilities. Learning is a pragmatic observation of the results of these actions - Edwina On Fri 26/11/21 5:02 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent: Edwina, do you want to receive 3 copies? Good: "All existential entities learn by experience" — and Peiirce's theory of logic and method are to explain how learning by experience (intelligence) can be more efficient (which entails effectiveness).That is, how self-corrective control can improve learning by experience! Can we figure out a way to demonstrate this improvement? Here is a passage from Discovering the Future in the Past (pp. 35-41): While other pragmatists, like Veblen, seek “a complete accounting of the socio-historical origins of human conduct” (or an empirical theory) Peirce is concerned with how inquiry determines the future, and his pragmatic (or normative) theory of logic explains how our natural cognitive urge to conceptualize and form habits of thought, which conveniently "automates behavior" in routines and tools, must be checked by our discriminating sensory capability, through pragmatic conduct that continually conceives and tests these ideas for validity and reliability by observing their implications in experience, to establish self-critical control ("The highest quality of mind involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great readiness to lose them" [CP 6.613 (1893)].) Successful collaboration requires the conscious commitment of researchers to self-critical conduct, and creative cooperation is possible only with the stability provided by progressive coordination of outcomes, representing improvement. Compare this with Griffin and Veblen’s defense of the method of tenacity: “the form of group solidarity in any peaceful, workmanlike community.” Peirce conceived his theory to explain not a mechanistic “workmanlike community” but a community of inquiry, where “one's purpose lies in the line of novelty, invention, generalization, theory—in a word, improvement of the situation … instinct and the rule of thumb manifestly cease to be applicable” [CP 2.178 (1902)]. His pragmatic theory of research defines “habits of thinking” as beliefs, and distinguishes believing from reasoning, the self-corrective thinking required in learning to improve habits of thought. He clarifies the roles of belief and reasoning: The best plan, then, on the whole, is to base our conduct as much as possible on Instinct, but when we do reason to reason with severely scientific logic. ... Where reasoning of any difficulty is to be done concerning positive facts, that is to say, not mere mathematical deduction, the aid that logic affords is most important. [CP 2.178 (1902)] . . .Peirce advanced his theory of logic as semeotic to explain that capability we so easily take for granted in its routine and pervasive operation: learning by experience through communication [see CP 2.227, from a manuscript fragment (c. 1897)]. Especially in science, we have been able to develop methods that improve (or economize) the natural trial-and-error procedure of learning by experience. Peirce formulated his pragmatic method of logic for refining scientific learning procedures, and he even created a graphical notation tool, Existential Graphs (EG), as a "topology of logic" for observing and demonstrating how the improvement of learning can occur through the process of dialogic reasoning. He concluded that the essence of successful learning of any sort is due not primarily to the sophistication of its measuring instruments or its investigational techniques, although those are essential. Careful observation and ingenious conceptualization generate knowledge only to the extent that they are collaboratively validated by those engaged in learning. Peirce explains three qualities, "Caution, Breadth, and Incomplexity," as the economic considerations in the intricate evaluation among hypotheses. In respect to caution, the game of twenty questions is instructive. ... The secret of the business lies in the caution which breaks a hypothesis up into its smallest logical components, and only risks one of them at a time. What a world of futile controversy and of confused experimentation might have been saved if this principle had guided investigations into the theory of light! Correlative to the quality of caution is that of breadth. For when we break the hypothesis into elementary parts, we may, and should, inquire how far the same explanation accounts for the same phenomenon when it appears in other subjects. [CP 7.220-21 (1901)] He further explains how an incomplex and even rough hypothesis can be more robust and do what a more elaborate one would fail to do [see CP 7.222 (1901)]. And he often identifies incomplexity with the dialogic purpose of his EG in “the central problem of logic, [which is] to say whether one given thought is truly, i.e., is adapted to be, a development of a given other or not" [CP 4.9 (1906)]. To avoid advocacy, inquiry should proceed only from claims that can be subjected to careful scrutiny of their reasons (as evidence), and inquirers should rely on a "multitude and variety" of many claims and reasons that can be conceptually articulated, rather than the apparent conclusiveness of any one claim. As Peirce explains, reasoning in inquiry should not form a "chain of inferences" (which is no stronger than its weakest link) but rather a cable, "whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected" [CP 5.3 (1902); and see Haack 2009]. The minutest details formulated as claims and reasons can collectively turn out to be crucial contributions in constructing strong arguments. Although this process of inquiry cannot be fully automated, technology augmentation can perform functions of representation, bookkeeping, and logical articulation that are tedious and error-prone for humans, which can be used to clarify and reveal hidden conceptual complexities in modeling and simulation [see Skagestad]. To grasp or understand a concept is to have practical mastery of inferences in a network involving that concept—and its evolving application. Fully grasping complex inferential networks of conditional relations is a significant challenge for inquirers, especially in collaborative inquiry. Asserting a responsible claim requires understanding at least some of its consequences, and realizing what other claims it relates to and what other evidence relates to it. As in playing a game, researchers develop strategies in formulating conjectures that can justify other conjectures, which can be justified by still other conjectures and preclude alternative hypotheses. In this complex reasoning, logical argumentation resembles a game in which researchers economically construct valid inferential articulation—or conceptual content [see Keeler (2004) and (2005); and see Appendix G, for a scenario of players]. Randall Dipert concludes that Peirce made “some of the very few profound contributions in the history of philosophy to the big picture of what logic is, and of the normative dimension of all thought” [(1995): 318]. While a “workmanlike community” can be theoretically represented and analyzed by the usual mechanical (empirical) theories of science, when logic is understood as a general theory of the meaning of signs in deliberate thinking, then pragmaticism as its method should give us the “power of self-controlled thinking” and “self-observation” for “strategic thinking and planning” [see Pietarinen (2012): 179]. We can create habits of self-control to serve some objective, but this capability to predict the future and conduct ourselves toward that aim (of what we determine could or should be) cannot be explained by empirical theory (of what is). In his Economics of Science, James Wible describes, in the broadest sense, Peirce’s contribution to the economics of science: “Peirce rejected the mechanism that flourished in physics and other disciplines during his lifetime. Peirce was an evolutionary indeterminist. Like the mainstream economists, Peirce saw optimization theory as a useful tool of economic analysis. For Peirce optimization took place in the context of a more general evolutionary view of the world, … with an economy of research as an integral part of the conception of scientific inference” [(1998): 82]. Wible finds Peirce’s theory consistent with Michael Polanyi’s “Republic of Science is a Society of Explorers,” who join to move towards achievements that are unknown to any of them [143]. . . .And finally (from the Conclusions, p. 60) Without the socially-conducted, belief-evaluation capability provided by inquiry, we automatically (or unconsciously) assume our limited sample of beliefs. And these limited belief-samples can become even more unconsciously adopted when we use tools that have automated them as habits of conduct! Any good tools must be carefully designed to automate effective habits (habits that improve efforts to reach some goal), and designers of tools to improve inquiry must be able to evaluate what habits can and should be automated for that purpose. Arthur Burks explains how mathematics serves as a tool for clarifying and evaluating deductive reasoning: “When, for example, a logician tests a sorites, or chains of reasoning, he is doing essentially what a mathematician does when he deduces a theorem from some postulates” [188]. Similarly, normative science is conceived to serve as a tool for evaluating inquiry, giving us the power to observe, clarify, and test ideas as hypotheses in experiments toward improvement. As Peirce says: "the entire meaning of a hypothesis lies in its conditional experiential predictions," to the extent that its predictions are true, the hypothesis is true [CP 1.29 (1869); emphasis added]. Normative logic can be used to analyze how to economize (or optimize) our socially-based inquiry (or learning) by mapping means-ends relations to keep track of what tools we need in relation to what purpose or goals we determine they must serve. Not only must intelligence be social, it must be self-controlled (critical), to improve learning by experience.Mary On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 12:08 PM Edwina Taborsky wrote: Mary- yes, I'm receiving three copies - but two are sent to two different email addresses. As for 'learning by experience', my view is that ALL existential entities learn by experience. I include not merely the inorganic but the full organic realm; that is, I don't accept random mutation as the basis for adaptation and evolution but consider that both are semiosic actions within complex adaptive systems. That is - Mind and Matter are correlates - and as such, a biological organism has a proto-consciousness and interacts with its environment in a pragmatic [intelligent] manner. Edwina On Fri 26/11/21 1:45 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu [2] sent: Edwina, thanks for pursuing this significant realm of study. As complexity grows, coordination and collaboration become more significant, especially for "intelligence capable of learning by experience" (as Peirce defines us). You observe: How does mediation differentiate between valid and invalid conclusions? Induction is one method....But, entropic rejection of data as 'noise' is another....Both can lead to problems. Peirce's theory of inquiry proposes abduction, deduction, and induction as the stages required for effective inquiry (or learning) — and these are to be repeated indefinitely. Humans are well equipped (with perception) for guessing, and we can test those possibilities by induction. But to resolve many possibilities into a good guess (worth testing), we need deduction. You might think of this as "reducing noise." The idea is to find testable hypotheses, and to test them in order of how easy they are to test (a process of "reducing noise"). That is just where logical formulation and the deduction of computers can help. And graphical logic could help humans observe this process. But of course I agree with your broader applicability of Peirce's framework!MaryP.S. Are you receiving 3 copies of the notes I send to the List? On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 6:48 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote: Mary- further to your extension of the concept of CAS [complex adaptive systems] to CAR [complex adaptive reasoning] - I certainly agree and consider such a framework to be a basic semiosic triadic process. That is, complex systems are self-organized in order to be adaptive [aka pragmatic], and this requires a method for such pragmatic activity. This method is the triadic reasoning process, where, given input sensate data, the System can reference this input to its mediative analytic system [Peirce's Representamen/sign] wich acts as an If-Then analytic process. That is, this nodal site holds generalities and input sensate data is referenced to these generalities to produce a conclusion. I think the triadic method is a vital morphology in the development of CAS .. On another note, the mediative nodal site holds multiple possibilities for use to analyze input data. A simple system will have very few of these possibilities and therefore, a limited conclusion. This, frankly, provides the larger system with stability -you can't have atoms and molecules changing their format every two minutes]. A more complex system provides many more possibilities - but this can be problematic....How does mediation differentiate between valid and invalid conclusions? Induction is one method....But, entropic rejection of data as 'noise' is another....Both can lead to problems.. Edwina On Wed 24/11/21 7:04 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent: [Let's see if this goes to the list?] Thank you, Edwina, I have similar interests and agree with your conclusion about the applicability of the Peircean framework. I met John Holland before he died, and explained my extension of his CAS to CAR, leading to the idea of the "game of pragmatism" — which he called "a flight simulator for the mind"!Here are a couple of papers that might help to explain (see more at the Revelator site, below)? Complex Adaptive Reasoning: Knowledge Emergence in the Revelator Game http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf [3] Games of Inquiry for Collaborative Concept Structuring [4]http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf [5] Revelator: Game of Complex Adaptive Reasoninghttp://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php [6] If pragmatism is essentially the scientific method, and we need that method for experimenting with ideas in order to develop Normative Science as the study of habit-change, then that game might give us a collaborative way to proceed? It could (and should) incorporate graphical logic so that players can keep track of the development of effective arguments. Here are just a few paragraphs from Peirce in support of this idea (selected from many more).MaryCP Vol 8 (1891) Chapter 6: To Christine Ladd-Franklin, On Cosmology†1 316. My work in philosophy has consisted in an accurate analysis of concepts, showing what is and what is not essential to the subject of analysis. Particularly, in logic, my motive for studying the algebra of the subject, has been the desire to find out with accuracy what are the essential ingredients of reasoning in general and of its principal kinds. To make a powerful calculus has not been my care.317. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years has been to develop my cosmology.†2 This theory is that the evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and absence of all spontaneity.†3 Between these, we have on our side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by contraries. 318. I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit. While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such reversal. Accordingly, time may have been evolved by the action of habit. At first sight, it seems absurd or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is no serious objection, and nothing can be simpler. Time consists in a regularity in the relations of interacting feelings. The first chaos consisted in an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there was no continuity about them, it was, as it were, a powder of feelings. It was worse than that, for of particles of powder some are nearer together, others farther apart, while these feelings had no relations, for relations are general. Now you must not ask me what happened first. This would be as absurd as to ask what is the smallest finite number. But springing away from the infinitely distant past to a very very distant past, we find already evolution had been going on for an infinitely long time. But this "time" is only our way of saying that something had been going on. There was no real time so far as there was no regularity, but there is no more falsity in using the language of time than in saying that a quantity is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of similitude had appeared, been swallowed up again. Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency to generalization had here and there lighted up and been quenched. Had reappeared, had strengthened itself. Like had begun to produce like. Then even pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars, and then these had begun to generalize. And thus relations of contiguity, that is connections other than similarities, had sprung up. All this went on in ways I cannot now detail till the feelings were so bound together that a passable approximation to a real time was established. It is not to be supposed that the ideally perfect time has even yet been realized. There are no doubt occasional lacunae and derailments.†4 Supposing matter to be but mind under the slavery of inveterate habit, the law of mind still applies to it. According to that law, consciousness subsides as habit becomes established, and is excited again at the breaking up of habit. But the highest quality of mind involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great readiness to lose them [(CP 6.613) 1893]. Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood [CP 5.18, Lecture 1, “Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences” (1903)]. CP Vol. 5 What Pragmatism Is [First of three Monist articles, 1905] 1. Experimentalist’s View of Assertion . . . 412. … The laboratory life did not prevent the writer (who here and in what follows simply exemplifies the experimentalist type) from becoming interested in methods of thinking; and when he came to read metaphysics, although much of it seemed to him loosely reasoned and determined by accidental prepossessions, yet in the writings of some philosophers, especially Kant, Berkeley, and Spinoza, he sometimes came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of thinking of the laboratory, so that he felt he might trust to them; all of which has been true of other laboratory-men. Endeavoring, as a man of that type naturally would, to formulate what he so approved, he framed the theory that a conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this doctrine he invented the name pragmatism. Some of his friends wished him to call it practicism or practicalism (perhaps on the ground that {praktikos} is better Greek than {pragmatikos}. But for one who had learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer, along with nineteen out of every twenty experimentalists who have turned to philosophy, had done, and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily, praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose. Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined the preference for the name pragmatism. --------------------- He explains pragmatism as a method that helps us to know what we think, the meaning of which is interpreted as our willingness to act on that thought—in terms of its conceived consequences. Modern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, with its chemistry and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of life, has put us into quite another world; almost as much so as if it had transported our race to another planet. Some of the old beliefs have no application except in extended senses, and in such extended senses they are sometimes dubitable and subject to just criticism. It is above all the normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic) that men are in dire need of having severely criticized, in their relation to the new world created by science. Unfortunately, this need is as unconscious as it is great. [CP 5.513 (c.1905) "Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism"] “Pragmatism is not a system of philosophy. It is only a method of thinking ...” (CP 8.206, c. 1905). On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 9:08 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote: With the opening of this new site for the open and exploratory discussion of, among other things, the use of Peirce in the analysis of the modern world, I'd like to outline, briefly, my interests in this area. I consider that the triadic semiosis is both a continuous process in the generation of matter on this planet - and- can also be understood as the morphological form of discrete entities. That is, a cell is both a triadic semiosic unit and an active process of the semiosic processing of matter...connected and networked to other semiosic units/processes. I consider this outline well-documented within Peircean texts. This view also goes along with my understanding that Peirce's 'objective idealism' is a view that neither Mind nor Matter are primordial but that both are co-evolving correlates. {See 6.24 and other texts]. And as such - I am interested in examining the world as a Complex Adaptive System, which means that both variety and stability are correlates in this generative, adaptive, 'far-from-equilibrium' world - with no final state. These are major areas of my interest, which means that I consider that the Peircean framework is applicable to the physic-chemical, biological and societal/conceptual realms. 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