Dear John,
I got permission of Pedro to post our exchange to the list. As you see, I
edited one sentence a bit because I did not want a third person to be
involved without his permission. The mail went unexpectedly on your behalf.
I can only correct this next week. :-)
With best wishes,
Loet
________________________________
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR),
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681;
[email protected]
; <http://www.leydesdorff.net/>http://www.leydesdorff.net/
----------
From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] On
Behalf Of John Collier
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 8:13 AM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: RE: Fw: [Fis] art and meaning
At 01:42 PM 2006/02/20, you wrote:
>Dear John:
>
>Thanks a lot for the references. I'll begin by reading your draft.
>(Unfortunately, I cannot cc this to the list because of the moderator's
>limitations to two contributions each week.)
>
>Obviously, I should not have used the word "mathematical";
perhaps,
>"non-linear dynamics" would have done the job? May I take the
opportunity
>to include below a draft of my abstract for the World Congress of
>Sociology in your city (Durban)? I have to remain below 200 words, but I
>wonder whether it is understandable:
>
>Yes, it was the 'mathematical' that misled me. I would agree with pretty
>much all of what you say below. I think that it is on the right track.
>[...] What you say below is untouched by my remarks (it's hardly
>reductionist!). Pity you couldn't have replied on the list. I could have
>approved, and we could have advanced another step (hopefully) in the
>collective history of fis.
>
>Cheers,
>John
>
>Modeling Anticipation, Codification, and Husserl�s Horizon of Meanings
>Loet Leydesdorff
>
>Social order cannot be expected to exist as a stable phenomenon, but it
>can be considered as an order of expectations which are reproduced. Thus,
>a non-linear dynamics of meaning is generated: specific meaning can be
>stabilized, for example, in social institutions, but all meaning refers to
>a global horizon of possible meanings. Using Luhmann�s social systems
>theory and Rosen�s (biological) theory of anticipatory systems, I submit
>algorithms for modeling the exchange of meaning in social systems and the
>non-linear dynamics of expectations. First, a system which contains a
>model of itself can use this model for the anticipation. Under the
>condition of functional differentiation, the social system can be expected
>to entertain a multitude of models; each model contains also a model of
>all other models. Two anticipatory mechanisms are then possible: one
>transversal between the models, and a longitudinal one providing the
>system with this variety of meanings. A system containing two anticipatory
>mechanisms can become hyper-incursive. Without taking decisions the
>uncertainty in a hyper-incursive system would explode. Under this
>pressure, informed decisions tend to replace �natural preferences� of
>agents. In a knowledge-based order, action and organization are
>transformed into decision-making structures because of uncertainty in the
>reproduction of expectations among differently codified meanings.
>
>Is this understandable? See you in Durban, but undoubtedly before that on
>the list.
>With best wishes,
>
>Loet
>________________________________
>Loet Leydesdorff
>Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR),
>Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
>Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681;
>loet@leydesdorff.net ;
><http://www.leydesdorff.net/>http://www.leydesdorff.net/
>
>
>
>
>----------
>From: John Collier [ mailto:collierj@ukzn.ac.za]
>Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 12:00 PM
>To: Loet Leydesdorff; "'Søren Brier'"; 'Stanley N. Salthe';
>fis@listas.unizar.es
>Subject: RE: Fw: [Fis] art and meaning
>At 03:16 PM 2006/02/19, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
>
>>Dear Soeren:
>>Before we might be able to measure meaning, we would first need to
have a
>>mathematical theory of meaning in order to specify the expectation.
>I am pretty sure that a mathematical theory of meaning is not a
>possibility, for much the same reason as a purely mathematical theory of
>induction is not possible. There are mathematical constraints on a
>satisfactory theory of meaning (it must fit model theory, for example, and
>not contradict the lambda calculus), and the formal aspects must be able
>to be embodied in a suitable metaphysics, but as soon as you get to this
>point you have left mathematics. Barwise and Perry's situational semantics
>offers and embodiable mathematics, but violates a context free version
>model theory. Talmont-Kaminski and myself suggest a modification of the
>Barwise-Perry approach inspired by Peirce that allows a Montague style
>semantics and pragmatics to be recovered, but that is only after we
>determine meaning by non formal techniques. The problems and the solution
>are outlined in our "Pragmatist Pragmatics" due out later this
year in
>Philosophica. There is a draft version at
>http://www.ukzn.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/pragmatist%20pragmatics.pdf
>Incidentally, since it is arguable that there is no mathematical theory
>that captures exactly the concept of number, the above should not be
>surprising. Barwise was motivated by this problem, but we feel he and
>Perry thew more out than they needed to. My supervisor, Bill Demopoulos,
>wrote a paper, The Philosophical Basis of Our Knowledge of Number,
>Noûs > Vol. 32, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 481-503, in which he
>argues that formal methods can give us a set of entities suitable for
>number theory (part of pure mathematics) but cannot give us a set of
>entities corresponding to our everyday use of number. The main problem to
>overcome has been long known as the Julius Caesar problem, since Fregean
>formalism, as Frege knew, cannot rule out Julius Caesar being a number.
>Demopoulos'solution is the same one I would advocate. In any case, since a
>purely mathematical theory of number is impossible, it follows directly
>that a purely mathematical theory of meaning is impossible. I noted this
>in my PhD thesis (which, not surprisingly, Demopoulos supervised), and
>used the result to argue that Kuhnian incommensurability cannot be
>resolved by purely formal approaches (it is not a purely formal problem).
>Incommensurability, in fact, is a direct result of making two assumptions
>1) that any difference in meaning must make a difference to possible
>experience (Peirce's Pragmatic Maxim) and 2) the weakest verificationism.
>The latter, verificationism, is a direct consequence of thinking that a
>mathematical theory of meaning can exhaust meaning. If one holds both 1
>and 2, then incommensurability is inevitable, and there will be an
>appearance that truth is constructed. However, I would say that that
>appearance is an illusion of accepting 2. It is quite easy to assume 2
>without knowing it, but the typical strategy that presupposes some version
>of 2 is to identify truth and/or meaning with something else that is not
>truth and/or meaning, but something more tractable.
>
>Loet may not have meant that a mathematical theory of meaning would tell
>us what meaning is, since he may think that it has other aspects as well
>that are not mathematical (as I would say mathematical physics does). If
>so, I submit that all the mathematics we need for a theory of meaning are
>already available to us. But the hard work is only begun.
>Cheers,
>John
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Received on Thu Feb 23 11:06:39 2006
