Re: [Fis] Consilience and Structure

Dear Rafael, Stan, and others,

In reply to Rafael:

The thread entitled "Consilience and Structure" has exposed a "disilience"
(to use Rafael's term) between two major philosophical schools of thought.
I am referring to the gulf between the so-called analytical tradition in
philosophy and continental philosophy. I was trained in the analytical
tradition, and was discouraged from reading continental philosophers such as
Heidegger and Husserl. A philosophy department in the English speaking
world typically has at most one professor out of 25 (in my case) who
specializes in continental philosophy. It is clear that continental
philosophy has had a huge influence on the foundations of information
science as it is being discussed by many people in this group.

I make no judgment about things I do not know. In fact, I happen to think
that analytical philosophy needs infusion of ideas from other sources. But
the institutional obstacles that serve to isolate the two major
philosophical schools remain in place--namely, that the rewards (funding,
publication, prizes) are controlled by one's peers within each camp. I
don't see this institutional fact is a good thing, but it's not going to
change anytime soon. I would imagine that everyone in this group has paid a
price for their effort to break down artificial interdisciplinary
boundaries.

One person can't do everything, so I know that I will never find the time to
make a serious effort to understand continental philosophy, no matter how
convinced I am that it would pay intellectual dividends. It would not
advance my career in the short term. I do my bit for the cause by making an
effort to bread down the communication gap between working scientists and
analytical philosophers. I am already paying a price for that.

The bottom line is that I'm unable to respond to Rafael's ideas because I
know next to nothing about continental philosophy. Just so that you know.

In reply to Stan:

I didn't know that birds apparently have four color cones. But it sounds
plausible given the co-evolution of colorful fruits and flowers are in part
"designed" to attract birds. On the other hand, it sounds wrong to conclude
that "What there is in the world is a mutual construct between external
objects and a system of interpretance that interacts with those objects."
It seems mysterious to say that the way that any organism perceives the
world changes the world itself. It changes their perception of the world.
It changes the relationship between the world and the organism. But there
is only one world.

In the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn made similar claims
about paradigm shifts in science (using the analogy of the duck-rabbit
visual gestalt). He claimed that a paradigm shift literally changes the
world in which a scientist lives. On a weak reading, Kuhn is merely
claiming that scientists working in different paradigms see the same world
differently. Under a stronger reading, Kuhn is saying that "What there is
in the world is a mutual construct between external objects and a system of
interpretance that interacts with those objects." That is, there are many
worlds.

In analytical philosophy, the many-worlds doctrine is known as relativism.
I oppose relativism because it denies a fundamental consilience: I prefer
the one-world viewpoint because it is conceptually more parsimonious and
equally consistent with the facts.

Cheers,
Malcolm

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rafael Capurro" <capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de>
To: "Malcolm Forster" <mforster@wisc.edu>; "fis-listas.unizar.es"
<fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Consilience and Structure

> Malcolm
>
> probably the question you are asking has something to do with the
> (conceptual/philosophical) problem of defining what are 'relations'. If
> you take a look at Heidegger's Being and Time � 17, you will find there a
> discussion with Husserl's idea of 'relations' (in German: Beziehungen) as
> a formal concept for all kinds of connections between things. Digns and
> their 'relations' are, following Heidegger, a universal characteric of all
> kind of things but we should not follow from this that all relations
> (Beziehungen) are necessarily of the kind of relations Heidegger calls
> 'reference' (in German: Verweisung).
> I quote Heidegger showing the complexity of the concept of sign:
> "Among sings there are symptons, warning signals, signs of things that
> have hapened lready, signs to mark something, signs by which things are
> recognized; these have different ways of indicating, regardless of what
> may be serving as such a sing. From such 'signs' we must distinguish
> traces, residues, commemorative monuments, documents, testimony, symbols,
> expressions, appearances, significations. These phenomena can be easily be
> formalized because of their forml relational character; we find it
> especially tempting nowadays to take such a 'relation' as a clue for
> subjecting every entity to a kind of 'Interpretation' which always 'fits'
> because at bottom it says nothing, no more than the facile schema of
> content and form."
> This sentence was published in 1927, long before semiotics (and
> cybersemiotics). It can be considered as a criticism of the universal
> claim of semiotics. Heidegger is making the point by making a difference
> between the kind of universal kind of relation he calls 'relation' and the
> kind of relation he calls 'reference'. This last one is confined to the
> phenomena analyzed by Heidegger as being "ready-to-hand" i.e. to phenomena
> as we deal in everyday life (also in a scientific/technical set) by using
> things as tools and organizing them within a wordly environment.
> The difference our retina makes could be interpreted then as a difference
> of the retina that 'reacts' at the light in the sense of a 'reference' and
> not, as expected, in the sense of an objective frame of reference or as a
> 'relation'. The reason for this is the retina has an 'internal stance' (or
> a 'pragmatic' way of doing with 'signs') as Koichiro would say, and that
> we have both, an internal and an external stance of sings as 'relation'
> and as 'reference'. The question concerns them the foundational
> relationship between both. Heidegger argues that although relations are
> universal, this kind of universality (Koichiro's external stance) is an
> abstraction with regard to the 'narrower' or 'pragmatic' view of
> 'reference'. Signs as 'reference' imply the kind of existential
> 'pragmatic' envolvement that makes things understandable by situating them
> within a (familiar) wholeness of references (and significances). I wonder
> if our retina is 'reacting' so to speak automatically, within such a whole
> of references, before our (scientific) mind starts making the universal
> reflection of sings and what they 'mean'
> cheers
> Rafael
>
>

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Received on Fri Nov 12 23:08:03 2004