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Visual Semiotics, Abduction, and the Learning Paradox: The Role of Graphic Signs
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Translation, according to Charles S. Peirce, is semiotic mediation. In sign processes in general, the sign mediates between the object, which it represents, and its interpretant, the idea it evokes, the interpretation it creates, or the action it causes. To what extent does the way a translator mediates correspond to what a sign does in semiosis? The paper inquires into the parallels between the agency of the sign in semiosis and the agency of the interpreter (and translator) in translation. It argues that some of the limits and limitations of translatability are also the limits of the sign in semiosis. Since genuine icons and genuine indices do not convey meaning they are strictly speaking also untranslatable. Nevertheless, icons and indices also serve as mediators in learning how to translate.
Virtual logic is not logic, nor is it the actual subject matter of the mathematics, physics or cybernetics in which it may appear to be embedded. Virtual logic lives in the boundary between syntax and semantics. It is the pivot that allows us to move from one world of ideas to another. This paper studies the virtuality of ordinary and mathematical logic. Through examples it is shown how what we call ‘ordinary reason’ is itself a paradox. Reason itself is not at all reasonable! Each new mathematical construction, each new distinction, each theorem is an act of creation. Ordinary reason itself is virtual. The credo of clarity is not ordinary. It goes beyond reason into a world of beauty, communication and possibility.
This essay explores the Mathematics of Charles Sanders Peirce. We concentrate on his notational approaches to basic logic and his general ideas about Sign, Symbol and diagrammatic thought. In the course of this paper we discuss two notations of Peirce, one of Nicod and one of Spencer-Brown. Needless to say, a notation connotes an entire language and these contexts are elaborated herein. The first Peirce notation is the portmanteau (see below) Sign of illation. The second Peirce notation is the form of implication in the existential graphs (see below). The Nicod notation is a portmanteau of the Sheffer stroke and an (overbar) negation sign. The Spencer-Brown notation is in line with the Peirce Sign of illation. It remained for Spencer-Brown (some fifty years after Peirce and Nicod) to see the relevance of an arithmetic of forms underlying his notation and thus putting the final touch on a development that, from a broad perspective, looks like the world mind doing its best to remember the significant patterns that join logic, speech and mathematics. The movement downward to the Form ('we take the form of distinction for the form.'[9, Chapter 1, page 1]) through the joining together of words into archetypal portmanteau Signs can be no accident in this process of return to the beginning.
By necessity as well as desire, people move and act in space. Our feet carry us from place to place along paths, just as our minds carry us from idea to idea along paths. The same brain structures that underlie places and paths underlie ideas and relations. We talk that way, too; I just did. Our hands place, raise, lower, put together, take apart, turn over push, pull, and throw objects. Our minds and our talk do the same with thoughts. Our minds allow us to take different perspectives on the paths in space, on the relations among ideas, on actions on objects. That turns out to be the key to creativity.
Why do we divide our world into contraries? Why do we perceive and interpret so many of life's contraries as mutually exclusive, either/or dichotomies such as individual~collective, self~other, body~mind, nature~nurture, cooperation~competition? Throughout history, many have recognized that truth may well lie in between such polar opposites. In The Complementary Nature, Scott Kelso and David Engstrøm contend that ubiquitous contraries are complementary and propose a comprehensive, empirically based scientific theory of how the polarized world and the world in between can be reconciled. They nominate the tilde, or squiggle (~), as the symbolic punctuation for reconciled complementary pairs.
Experiments show that the human brain is capable of displaying two apparently contradictory, mutually exclusive behaviors at the same time. Coordination dynamics—a mathematically expressed theory that reconciles the scientific language of "states" with the novel dynamical language of "tendencies"—attests to the complementary nature inherent in human brains and behavior. It may explain, Kelso and Engstrøm argue, why we (and nature) appear to partition things, events, and ideas into pairs. Kelso and Engstrøm's account is not just metaphorical; the reconciliations they describe are grounded in the principles and mathematical language of the theory of coordination dynamics. The Complementary Nature provides a clear-cut methodology for this evolving theory of brain and behavior that can also be applied to areas and developments outside the neurosciences, hence aiding reconciliations within and between disparate fields.
Bradford Books imprint
In this highly original work, Teed Rockwell rejects both dualism and the mind-brain identity theory. He proposes instead that mental phenomena emerge not merely from brain activity but from an interacting nexus of brain, body, and world. The mind can be seen not as an organ within the body, but as a "behavioral field" that fluctuates within this brain-body-world nexus. If we reject the dominant form of the mind-brain identity theory—which Rockwell calls "Cartesian materialism" (distinct from Daniel Dennett's concept of the same name)—and accept this new alternative, then many philosophical and scientific problems can be solved. Other philosophers have flirted with these ideas, including Dewey, Heidegger, Putnam, Millikan, and Dennett. But Rockwell goes further than these tentative speculations and offers a detailed alternative to the dominant philosophical view, applying pragmatist insights to contemporary scientific and philosophical problems.
Rockwell shows that neuroscience no longer supports the mind-brain identity theory because the brain cannot be isolated from the rest of the nervous system; moreover, there is evidence that the mind is hormonal as well as neural. These data, and Rockwell's reanalysis of the concept of causality, show why the borders of mental embodiment cannot be neatly drawn at the skull, or even at the skin. Rockwell then demonstrates how his proposed view of the mind can resolve paradoxes engendered by the mind-brain identity theory in such fields as neuroscience, artificial intelligence, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Finally, he argues that understanding the mind as a "behavioral field" supports the new cognitive science paradigm of dynamic systems theory (DST).
Bradford Books imprint
The classical mechanistic idea of nature that prevailed in science during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an essentially mindless conception: the physically described aspects of nature were asserted to be completely determined by prior physically described aspects alone, with our conscious experiences entering only passively. During the twentieth century the classical concepts were found to be inadequate. In the new theory, quantum mechanics, our conscious experiences enter into the dynamics in specified ways not fixed by the physically described aspects alone. Consequences of this radical change in our understanding of the connection between mind and brain are described.
"Stapp's book is a bold and original attack on the problem of consciousness and free will based on the openings provided by the laws of quantum mechanics. This is a serious and interesting attack on a truly fundamental problem."
Tony Leggett [Physics Nobel Laureate, 2003]
"Stapp's wide-ranging proposal offers stimulating reading, a strong sense of conceptual coherence and intuitive appeal, and empirical predictions that deserve to be refined and tested."
Harald Atmanspacher
"A highly readable book of genuine wisdom by one of the foremost minds for our generation."
Allan Combs
Semetsky’s new book offers a bracing account of Tarot semiotics in view of its deep significance for educational experience. Analyzing the symbolic language of Tarot images that express the intimations of the unconscious, she invites readers to explore novel ways of learning about the nature of ourselves and the world we are situated in. Combining thorough research with an accessible style, this groundbreaking book is essential reading for present and future generations of practitioners, academics and students across disciplines. Pia Brînzeu, Professor of English Literature and Vice-Rector of the Universityof Timis¸oara, Romania; author of Corridors of Mirrors. A sequel to the author’s Re-Symbolization of the Self: Human Development and Tarot Hermeneutic and Semiotics Education Experience, Semetsky’s new book presents the Tarot sign-system as a school of ethical living. Bringing the philosophies of Peirce, Deleuze, Dewey, Whitehead and Gebser in a dialogue with the cutting-edge science of coordination dynamics, she grounds the art of Tarot in the logic of signs acting across nature, culture and human mind. Building on Noddings’ “maternal factor”, Semetsky demonstrates how the lessons embodied in Tarot symbolism recover the feminine value of relations and contribute to Self~Other integration. Such is the message of Tarot images. The Image is the Message. Igor Klyukanov, Professor of Communication, Eastern Washington University, USA; editor, Russian Journal of Communication; author of A Communication Universe: Manifestations of Meaning, Stagings of Significance. Semetsky’s amalgamation of the techniques of visual communication with the emerging field of edusemiotics is an absolute masterpiece in transdisciplinarity. By forging diverse strands of inquiry into an overall model of how images enhance learning, Semetsky’s new book provokes us to take a fresh look at iconic information and is a required reading for everyone who is engaged with the art and science of visual semiotics at the intersection of nature and culture. Marcel Danesi, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada; editor-in-chief, Semiotica; author of The Quest for Meaning: A Guide to Semiotic Theory and Practice. Finally. An in-depth look at Tarot from within the field of semiotics, a perspective that had been inexplicably overlooked until now. As a language of exile from language, Tarot cards are silent words that became images. Here is a book that turns our thirst for symbols into a learning tool. The sign sings in Inna Semetsky’s work. Enrique Enriquez, (con)temporary tarot, www.tarologyfilm.com; author of Tarology.
Bringing together popular and academic cultures, Inna Semetsky presents Tarot as a system of transformative hermeneutics for adult self-education and cultural pedagogy. Her research is a decisive and intelligent step ahead from the reductive stereotype of Tarot as fortune-telling. The fifteen life stories at the heart of the book exemplify the author’s commitment to alternative modes of education and counseling that transcend individual, cultural or language barriers. Assembling a rich array of sources, from Hermeticism to Jungian depth psychology, the philosophies of Noddings, Buber, and Deleuze, and the science of self-organization, this book opens a new path to personal and social revitalization. It should be widely read across disciplinary divides by scholars, students, and professionals alike.
In offering the two Latin words mundus imaginalis as the title of this discussion, I intend to treat a precise order of reality corresponding to a precise mode of perception, because Latin terminology gives the advantage of providing us with a technical and fixed point of reference, to which we can compare the various more-or-less irresolute equivalents that our modern Western languages suggest to us. I will make an immediate admission. The choice of these two words was imposed upon me some time ago, because it was impossible for me, in what I had to translate or say, to be satisfied with the word imaginary. This is by no means a criticism addressed to those of us for whom the use of the language constrains recourse to this word, since we are trying together to reevaluate it in a positive sense. Regardless of our efforts, though, we cannot prevent the term imaginary, in current usage that is not deliberate, from being equivalent to signifying unreal, something that is and remains outside of being and existence-in brief, something utopian. I was absolutely obliged to find another term because, for many years, I have been by vocation and profession an interpreter of Arabic and Persian texts, the purposes of which I would certainly have betrayed if I had been entirely and simply content-even with every possible precaution-with the term imaginary. I was absolutely obliged to find another term if I did not want to mislead the Western reader that it is a matter of uprooting long-established habits of thought, in order to awaken him to an order of things, the sense of which it is the mission of our colloquia at the "Society of Symbolism" to rouse. In other words, if we usually speak of the imaginary as the unreal, the utopian, this must contain the symptom of something. In contrast to this something, we may examine briefly together the order of reality that I designate as mundus imaginalis, and what our theosophers in Islam designate as the "eighth climate"; we will then examine the organ that perceives this reality, namely, the imaginative consciousness, the cognitive Imagination; and finally, we will present several examples, among many others, of course, that suggest to us the topography of these interworlds, as they have been seen by those who actually have been there.
Educational philosophy in English-speaking countries tends to be informed mainly by analytic philosophy common to Western thinking. A welcome alternative is provided by pragmatism in the tradition of Peirce, James and Dewey. Still, the habit of the so-called linguistic turn has a firm grip in terms of analytic philosophy based on the logic of non-contradiction as the excluded middle. A body∼mind approach pertains to the edusemiotic turn that this article elucidates. Importantly, semiotics is not illogical but is informed by the paradoxical logic of the included middle. The process of reasoning is however indirect or mediated; it involves active interpretation (in a variety of forms) versus direct representation; it is analogical and connects what are otherwise doomed to remain isolated substances of body versus mind with a separation of knowledge and action. Analysing and synthesising the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Gilles Deleuze, together with a brief excursion into the cutting-edge science of coordination dynamics, this article will demonstrate how the body∼mind assemblage is created in practice, and what may be the implications of such a stance for educational philosophy and pedagogical practice.
It is sometimes said that the highest philosophical gift is to invent important new philosophical problems. If so, Peirce is a major star on the firmament of philosophy. By thrusting the notion of abduction to the forefront of philosophers’ consciousness he created a problem which — I will argue — is the central one in contemporary epistemology.
Abner Shimony is one of the most eminent of present-day philosophers of science, whose work has exerted a profound influence in both the philosophy and physics communities. This two-volume 1993 collection of his essays written over a period of forty years explores the interrelations between science and philosophy. Shimony regards the knowing subject as an entity in nature whose faculties must be studied from the points of view of evolutionary biology and empirical psychology. He maintains that the twentieth century is one of the great ages of metaphysics, given the deep implications of quantum mechanics, relativity theory and molecular biology. Nevertheless he rejects the thesis that mentality is entirely explicable in physical terms and argues that mind has a fundamental place in nature. Though distinguishing between values and scientifically established facts, Shimony holds that the sense of wonder cultivated by the natural sciences is one of the noblest of human values.
Using the Godel incompleteness result for leverage, Roger Penrose has argued that the mechanism for consciousness involves quantum gravitational phenomena, acting through microtubules in neurons. We show that this hypothesis is implausible. First the Godel result does not imply that human thought is in fact non-algorithmic. Second, whether or not non-algorithmic quantum gravitational phenomena actually exist, and if they did how that could conceivably implicate microtubules, and if microtubules were involved, how that could conceivably implicate consciousness, is entirely speculative. Third, cytoplasmic ions such as calcium and sodium are almost certainly present in the microtubule pore, barring the quantum-mechanical effects Penrose envisages. Finally, physiological evidence indicates that consciousness does not directly depend on microtubule properties in any case, rendering doubtful any theory according to which consciousness is generated in the microtubules.
Why do we divide our world into contraries? Why do we perceive and interpret so many of life's contraries as mutually exclusive, either/or dichotomies such as individual-collective, self-other, body-mind, nature-nurture, cooperation-competition? Throughout history, many have recognized that truth may well lie in between such polar opposites. In
The Complementary Nature, Scott Kelso and David Engstrøm contend that ubiquitous contraries are complementary and propose a comprehensive, empirically based scientific theory of how the polarized world and the world in between can be reconciled. They nominate the tilde, or squiggle (–), as the symbolic punctuation for reconciled complementary pairs. Experiments show that the human brain is capable of displaying two apparently contradictory, mutually exclusive behaviors at the same time. Coordination dynamics--a mathematically expressed theory that reconciles the scientific language of "states" with the novel dynamical language of "tendencies"--attests to the complementary nature inherent in human brains and behavior. It may explain, Kelso and Engstrøm argue, why we (and nature) appear to partition things, events, and ideas into pairs. Kelso and Engstrøm's account is not just metaphorical; the reconciliations they describe are grounded in the principles and mathematical language of the theory of coordination dynamics.
The Complementary Nature provides a clear-cut methodology for this evolving theory of brain and behavior that can also be applied to areas and developments outside the neurosciences, hence aiding reconciliations within and between disparate fields. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
One of the most salient arguments in favor of a semiotic approach, put forward on various occasions among others by Luis Radford,
claims that semiotics is most appropriate to treat the interaction between socio-cultural and objective aspects of knowledge
problems. But if we want to take such claims seriously, we have to undertake revisions of our basic conceptions about reality,
existence, cognition, and cultural development. The semiotic evolutionary realism of Charles S. Peirce provides, or so it
appears, an appropriate basis to such intentions. Man is a sign, Peirce had famously said, and “thought is more without us
than within. It is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us” (Peirce CP 8.256). And as there is no thought without a
sign, we have to accept thoughts, concepts, theories, or works of art as realities sui generis. Concepts or theories have to be recognized as real before we can ask for their meaning or relevance. This was the problem
that concerned critics and protagonists of the New Math Reform of the 1960s and 1970s of the twentieth century, like Thom or Bruner.
KeywordsSemiosis–Peirce–Continuity–Relational thinking–Metaphor–Mathematics education
A New York Times bestseller when it appeared in 1989, Roger Penrose's
The Emperor's New Mind was universally hailed as a marvelous survey of
modern physics as well as a brilliant reflection on the human mind,
offering a new perspective on the scientific landscape and a visionary
glimpse of the possible future of science. Now, in Shadows of the Mind ,
Penrose offers another exhilarating look at modern science as he mounts
an even more powerful attack on artificial intelligence. But perhaps
more important, in this volume he points the way to a new science, one
that may eventually explain the physical basis of the human mind.
Penrose contends that some aspects of the human mind lie beyond
computation. This is not a religious argument (that the mind is
something other than physical) nor is it based on the brain's vast
complexity (the weather is immensely complex, says Penrose, but it is
still a computable thing, at least in theory). Instead, he provides
powerful arguments to support his conclusion that there is something in
the conscious activity of the brain that transcends computation--and
will find no explanation in terms of present-day science. To illuminate
what he believes this "something" might be, and to suggest where a new
physics must proceed so that we may understand it, Penrose cuts a wide
swathe through modern science, providing penetrating looks at everything
from Turing machines (computers programmed for artificial intelligence)
to the implications of Godel's theorem maintaining that conscious
thinking must indeed involve ingredients that cannot adequately be
simulated by mere computation. Of particular interest is Penrose's
extensive examination of quantum mechanics, which introduces some new
ideas that differ markedly from those advanced in The Emperor's New Mind
, especially concerning the mysterious interface where classical and
quantum physics meet. But perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in
Shadows of the Mind is Penrose's excursion into microbiology, where he
examines cytoskeletons and microtubules, minute substructures lying deep
within the brain's neurons. (He argues that microtubules--not
neurons--may indeed be the basic units of the brain, which, if nothing
else, would dramatically increase the brain's computational power.) For
physics to accommodate something that is as foreign to our current
physical picture as the phenomenon of consciousness, we must expect a
profound change--one that alters the very underpinnings of our
philosophical viewpoint as to the nature of reality. Shadows of the Mind
provides an illuminating look at where these changes may take place and
what our future understanding of the world may be.
Traducción de: Die Selbstorganisation des Universums Incluye bibliografía e índice
The chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was one of the first twentieth-century scientists to propose a program to resolve the internal conflict of the modern Enlightenment: scientific detachment and moral nihilism with humanist values. Stefania Jhaâs intellectual biography places Polanyi in the context of his time and culture, analyzes his key philosophical ideas, and explicates the application—and at times misappropriation—of his work. Polanyiâs method was not laid out in his published works, and his vocabulary tends to make his writings difficult to understand. By exposing the structure of his theory of tacit knowing, and by tracing the growth of his thinking, Jha shows how the various elements of his thought are integrated. Through examination of his philosophical roots in Kant and the complexity of his evolving thought, she counteracts the popular notion that Polanyiâs philosophy stands apart from the western philosophic tradition. Jhaâs deep analysis makes Polanyiâs shift of focus from science to philosophy more intelligible, his philosophy more approachable, and the causes he championed—such as the freedom of science and cultural freedom—more understandable. Applying his notion of tacit knowing in practical directions, Jha seeks to bring the study of Polanyiâs philosophy out of the specialistsâ enclave and into such fields as ethics and clinical medicine.