Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 7
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/15/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-7-a/

Learning —

Rules in a knowledge base, as far as their effective content goes, can be obtained by any mode of inference. For example, consider a proposition of the following form.

• B ⇒ A, Just Before it rains, the Air is cool.

Such a proposition is usually induced from a consideration of many past events. The inductive inference may be observed to fit the following pattern.

• Case : C ⇒ B, In Certain events, it is just Before it rains.
• Fact : C ⇒ A, In Certain events, the Air is cool.
────────────────────────────────────
• Rule : B ⇒ A, Just Before it rains, the Air is cool.

However, the same proposition could also be abduced as an explanation of a singular occurrence or deduced as a conclusion of a prior theory.

References —

Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), 40–52.
• https://www.pdcnet.org/inquiryct/content/inquiryct_1995_0015_0001_0040_0052
• https://www.academia.edu/57812482/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry

Dewey, J. (1910), How We Think, D.C. Heath, Boston, MA. Reprinted (1991), Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.
• https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37423/37423-h/37423-h.htm

Resources —

Survey of Abduction, Deduction, Induction, Analogy, Inquiry
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/02/27/survey-of-abduction-deduction-induction-analogy-inquiry-4/

Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/26/survey-of-semiotics-semiosis-sign-relations-5/

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Interpretation #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics
#JohnDewey #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 6
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/13/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-6-a/

Inquiry and Induction —

To understand the bearing of inductive reasoning on the closing phases of inquiry there are a couple of observations we should make.

• Smaller inquiries are typically woven into larger inquiries, whether the whole pattern of inquiry is carried on by a single agent or by a complex community.

• There are several ways particular instances of inquiry are related to ongoing inquiries at larger scales. Three modes of interaction between component inquiries and compound inquiries may be described under the headings of Learning, Transfer, and Testing of Rules.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Interpretation #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics
#JohnDewey #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 5
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/11/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-5-a/

Inquiry and Inference —

If we follow Dewey's “Sign of Rain” story far enough to consider the import of thought for action, we realize the subsequent conduct of the interpreter, progressing up through the natural conclusion of the episode — the quickening steps, the seeking of shelter in time to escape the rain — all those acts amount to a series of further interpretants for the initially recognized signs of rain and the first impressions of the actual case. Just as critical reflection develops the positive and negative signs which gather about an idea, pragmatic interpretation explores the consequential and contrasting actions which give effective and testable meaning to a person's belief in it.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Interpretation #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics
#JohnDewey #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection

References —

Dewey, J. (1910), How We Think, D.C. Heath, Boston, MA. Reprinted (1991), Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.
• https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37423/37423-h/37423-h.htm

Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), 40–52.
• https://web.archive.org/web/20001210162300/http://chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
• https://www.pdcnet.org/inquiryct/content/inquiryct_1995_0015_0001_0040_0052
• https://www.academia.edu/1266493/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry
• https://www.academia.edu/57812482/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry

Resources —

Survey of Inquiry Driven Systems
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/02/28/survey-of-inquiry-driven-systems-6/

Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/26/survey-of-semiotics-semiosis-sign-relations-5/

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#JohnDewey #HowWeThink #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection #Interpretation

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/09/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-4-a/

Interpretation and Inquiry —

To illustrate the role of sign relations in inquiry we begin with Dewey's elegant and simple example of reflective thinking in everyday life.

❝A man is walking on a warm day. The sky was clear the last time he observed it; but presently he notes, while occupied primarily with other things, that the air is cooler. It occurs to him that it is probably going to rain; looking up, he sees a dark cloud between him and the sun, and he then quickens his steps. What, if anything, in such a situation can be called thought? Neither the act of walking nor the noting of the cold is a thought. Walking is one direction of activity; looking and noting are other modes of activity. The likelihood that it will rain is, however, something suggested. The pedestrian feels the cold; he thinks of clouds and a coming shower.❞ (John Dewey, How We Think, 6–7).

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#JohnDewey #HowWeThink #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection #Interpretation

Reference —

Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

Resources —

Hypostatic Abstraction
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2008/08/08/hypostatic-abstraction/

Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/26/survey-of-semiotics-semiosis-sign-relations-5/

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #SopToCerberus #Interpretation

❝I think we need to reflect upon the circumstance that every word implies some proposition or, what is the same thing, every word, concept, symbol has an equivalent term — or one which has become identified with it, — in short, has an “interpretant”.

❝Consider, what a word or symbol is; it is a sort of representation. Now a representation is something which stands for something. I will not undertake to analyze, this evening, this conception of standing for something — but, it is sufficiently plain that it involves the standing to something for something. A thing cannot stand for something without standing to something for that something. Now, what is this that a word stands to? Is it a person?

❝We usually say that the word “homme” stands to a Frenchman for “man”. It would be a little more precise to say that it stands to the Frenchman's mind — to his memory. It is still more accurate to say that it addresses a particular remembrance or image in that memory. And what “image”, what remembrance? Plainly, the one which is the mental equivalent of the word “homme” — in short, its interpretant. Whatever a word addresses then or stands to, is its interpretant or identified symbol. […]

❝The interpretant of a term, then, and that which it stands to are identical. Hence, since it is of the very essence of a symbol that it should stand to something, every symbol — every word and every “conception” — must have an interpretant — or what is the same thing, must have information or implication.❞ (Peirce 1866, Chronological Edition 1, pp. 466–467).

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/08/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-3-a/

The following selection from Peirce's “Lowell Lectures on the Logic of Science” (1866) lays out in detail his “metaphorical argument” for the relationship between interpreters and interpretant signs.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #SopToCerberus #Interpretation

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/07/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-2-a/

A idea of what Peirce means by an Interpretant and the part it plays in a triadic sign relation is given by the following passage.

❝It is clearly indispensable to start with an accurate and broad analysis of the nature of a Sign. I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former. My insertion of “upon a person” is a sop to Cerberus, because I despair of making my own broader conception understood.❞ (Peirce 1908, Selected Writings, p. 404).

According to his custom of clarifying ideas in terms of their effects, Peirce tells us what a sign is in terms of what it does, the effect it brings to bear on a “person”. That effect he calls the interpretant of the sign. And what of that person? Peirce finesses that question for the moment, resorting to a “Sop to Cerberus”, in other words, a rhetorical gambit used to side‑step a persistent difficulty of exposition. In doing so, Peirce invokes the hypostatic abstraction of a “person” who conducts the movement of signs and embodies the ongoing process of semiosis.

Reference —

Peirce, C.S. (1908), “Letters to Lady Welby”, Chapter 24, pp. 380–432 in Charles S. Peirce : Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance), Edited with Introduction and Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1966.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Interpretation

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/06/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-1-a/

Questions about the relationship between “interpreters” and “interpretants” in Peircean semiotics have broken out again. To put the matter as pointedly as possible — because I know someone or other is bound to — “In a theory of three‑place relations among objects, signs, and interpretant signs, where indeed is there any place for the interpretive agent?”

By way of getting my feet on the ground with the issue I'll do what always helped me before and review a small set of basic texts. Here is the first.

Figure 1. The Sign Relation in Aristotle
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/awbrey-awbrey-1995-e280a2-figure-1.png

❝Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).❞ (Aristotle, De Interp. i. 16a4).

References —

Aristotle, “On Interpretation” (De Interp.), Harold P. Cooke (trans.), pp. 111–179 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), 40–52.
• https://web.archive.org/web/20001210162300/http://chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
• https://www.pdcnet.org/inquiryct/content/inquiryct_1995_0015_0001_0040_0052
• https://www.academia.edu/1266493/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry
• https://www.academia.edu/57812482/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Aristotle #Hermeneutics #Interpretation #Interpretant

Peircean Semiotics and Triadic Sign Relations • 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/08/23/peircean-semiotics-and-triadic-sign-relations-3-a/

Having labored mightily to bring out a new edition of my primer on sign relations, including material on the pivotal concept of semiotic equivalence relations, I thought it worth the candle to post a notice of the new version here.

Sign Relations
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Sign_relation

Semiotic Equivalence Relations
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Sign_relation#Semiotic_equivalence_relations

#Peirce #Inquiry #Logic #LogicOfRelatives #RelationTheory
#Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations

Peircean Semiotics and Triadic Sign Relations • 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/08/22/peircean-semiotics-and-triadic-sign-relations-2-a/

When I returned to graduate school for the third time around, this time in systems engineering, I had in mind integrating my long‑standing projects investigating the dynamics of information, inquiry, learning, and reasoning, viewing each as a process whose trajectory evolves over time through the medium which gives it concrete embodiment, namely, a triadic sign relation.

Up until that time I don't believe I'd ever given much thought to sign relations that had anything smaller than infinite domains of objects, signs, and interpretant signs. Countably infinite domains are what come natural in logic, since that is the norm for the formal languages it uses. Continuous domains come first to mind when turning to physical systems, despite the fact that systems with a discrete or quantized character often enter the fray.

So it came as a bit of a novelty to me when my advisor, following the motto of engineers the world over to “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” — affectionately known by the acronym KISS — asked me to construct the simplest non‑trivial finite example of a sign relation I could possibly come up with. The outcome of that exercise I wrote up in the following primer on sign relations.

Inquiry Driven Systems • Sign Relations : A Primer
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_1#Sign_Relations_:_A_Primer

Inquiry Driven Systems • Semiotic Equivalence Relations
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_1#Semiotic_Equivalence_Relations

#Peirce #Inquiry #Logic #LogicOfRelatives #RelationTheory
#Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations

Peircean Semiotics and Triadic Sign Relations • 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/08/20/peircean-semiotics-and-triadic-sign-relations-1-a/

As a “guide for the perplexed”, at least when it comes to semiotics, I'll use this thread to collect a budget of resources I think have served to clarify the topic in the past.

By way of a first offering, let me recommend the following most excellent paper, which I can say with all due modesty in light of the fact all its excellence is due to my most excellent co‑author.

Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), pp. 40–52.
• https://web.archive.org/web/20001210162300/http://chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
• https://www.pdcnet.org/inquiryct/content/inquiryct_1995_0015_0001_0040_0052
• https://www.academia.edu/1266493/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry
• https://www.academia.edu/57812482/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry

#Peirce #Inquiry #Logic #LogicOfRelatives #RelationTheory
#Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations

Pragmatic Truth • 4.2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/07/13/pragmatic-truth-4/

Truth Theories —

There are practical considerations we need to keep in mind when contemplating such radically simple schemes of classification. Real‑world practice seldom presents us with pure cases and ideal types. There are many settings where it is useful to speak of a truth theory as “almost” k‑adic or to say it “would be” k‑adic if certain details are abstracted away and neglected in a particular context of discussion. That said, given the generic division of truth predicates according to their dimensionality, further species may be differentiated within each genus according to a number of more refined features.

The truth predicate in a correspondence theory of truth tells of a relation between representations and objective states of affairs and is therefore expressed by a dyadic predicate. In general terms, one says a representation is true of an objective situation, more briefly, a sign is true of an object. The nature of the correspondence may vary from theory to theory in this family. The correspondence can be fairly arbitrary or it can take on the character of an “analogy”, an “icon”, or a “morphism”, where a representation is rendered true of its object by the existence of corresponding elements and a similar structure.

Resources —

Logic Syllabus
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/logic-syllabus/

Pragmatic Maxim
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/08/07/pragmatic-maxim-a/

Truth Theory
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Truth_theory

Pragmatic Theory Of Truth • Document History
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Pragmatic_Theory_Of_Truth
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Pragmatic_Theory_Of_Truth#Document_history

Correspondence Theory Of Truth
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Correspondence_Theory_Of_Truth

#Peirce #Logic #Inquiry #Truth #PragmaticTruth #TruthTheory
#RelationTheory #TriadicRelations #SignRelations #Semiotics

Pragmatic Truth • 4.1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/07/13/pragmatic-truth-4/

Truth Theories —

Theories of truth may be described according to several dimensions of description affecting the character of the predicate “true”. The truth predicates used in different theories may be classified according to the number of things which have to be taken into account in order to evaluate the truth of a sign, counting the sign itself as the first thing. The number of dimensions is sometimes called the “arity” or “adicity” of the truth predicate.

• A truth predicate is “monadic” if it applies to its main subject, typically a concrete representation or its abstract content, independently of reference to anything else. In that case one may think of a truth bearer as being true in and of itself.

• A truth predicate is “dyadic” if it applies to its main subject only in reference to something else, a second subject. Most commonly, the ancillary subject is either an “object”, an “interpreter”, or a “language” to which the representation bears a specified relation.

• A truth predicate is “triadic” if it applies to its main subject only in reference to a second and a third subject. For example, in a pragmatic theory of truth one has to specify both the “object” of the sign and either its interpreter or another sign called its “interpretant”. In that case, one says the sign is true “of” its object “to” its interpreting agent or sign.

Resources —

Truth Theory
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Truth_theory

Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Pragmatic_Theory_Of_Truth

Correspondence Theory Of Truth
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Correspondence_Theory_Of_Truth

#Peirce #Logic #Inquiry #Truth #PragmaticTruth #TruthTheory
#RelationTheory #TriadicRelations #SignRelations #Semiotics

Pragmatic Semiotic Information • Comment 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/03/22/pragmatic-semiotic-information-comment-3/

Memories are coming back to me more through the association of ideas than ordered by time or place. I can sense, almost touch a tangle of thoughts interlaced with each other — the “information first” approach to ontology, the “arrows only”, element‑free angle on category theory, Peirce's relativity of generals and individuals dispatching nominalism once and for all — but there is at core a hard knot of ideas so tightly wound it makes it difficult to articulate the links or see the untying if there is one to make.

#Peirce #Logic #Inquiry #Information #Uncertainty #ScientificMethod
#Semiotics #Semiosis #RelationTheory #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#InformationEqualsComprehensionTimesExtension #PragmaticSemioticInformation

Pragmatic Semiotic Information • Comment 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/03/20/pragmatic-semiotic-information-comment-2/

I was at the time working as a “scanner” in the High Energy Physics Lab at Michigan State, sitting in a darkened room measuring tracks of particle interactions projected on a lighted scanning table from reels and reels of bubble chamber photographs gathered at CERN in a massive mad dash accelerator experiment some years before. For my part it was a menial job, 4pm to midnight every worklong day, but even a minion can imagine himself sharing in a hunt for the Ω⁻ particle, or whatever the Grail or Questying Beastie was at the time.

Meanwhile, in another part of the grove, I was spending my daylight hours checking off the final boxes for my Bachelor's degree, the main thing being to get my paper on Peirce, “Complications of the Simplest Mathematics”, approved as a substitute for a field study requirement. That had taken me two years' work in MSU's media library, poring through the microfilm reels of Peirce's Nachlass in search of enlightenment about a single puzzling paragraph I tripped over in his Collected Papers.

#Peirce #Logic #Inquiry #Information #Uncertainty #ScientificMethod
#Semiotics #Semiosis #RelationTheory #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#InformationEqualsComprehensionTimesExtension #PragmaticSemioticInformation

Pragmatic Semiotic Information • Comment 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/03/18/pragmatic-semiotic-information-comment-1/

I remember it was back in ’76 when I began to notice a subtle shift of focus in the computer science journals I was reading, from discussing “X” to discussing “Information About X”, a transformation I noted mentally as \( X \to \mathrm{Info}(X) \) whenever I ran across it. I suppose that small arc of revolution had been building for years but it struck me as crossing a threshold to a more explicit, self‑conscious stage about that time.

#Peirce #Logic #Inquiry #Information #Uncertainty #ScientificMethod
#Semiotics #Semiosis #RelationTheory #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#InformationEqualsComprehensionTimesExtension #PragmaticSemioticInformation

Pragmatic Semiotic Information • 2.1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/03/04/pragmatic-semiotic-information-2/

What is information that a sign may bear it?

Three more questions arise at this juncture.

• How is a sign empowered to contain information?
• What is the practical context of communication?
• Why do we care about these bits of information?

A very rough answer to these questions might begin as follows.

Human beings are initially concerned solely with their own lives but then a world obtrudes on their subjective existence and so they find themselves forced to take an interest in the objective realities of its nature.

In pragmatic terms our initial aim, concern, interest, object, or “pragma” is expressed by the verbal infinitive “to live”, but the infinitive is soon reified into the derivative substantial forms of “nature”, “reality”, “the world”, and so on. Against that backdrop we find ourselves cast as the protagonists on a “scene of uncertainty”.

The situation may be pictured as a juncture from which a manifold of options fan out before us. It may be an issue of “truth”, “duty”, or “hope”, the last codifying a special type of uncertainty as to “what regulative principle has any chance of success”, but the chief uncertainty is that we are called on to make a choice and all too often we have very little clue which of the options is most fit to pick.

#Peirce #Logic #Inquiry #Information #Uncertainty #ScientificMethod
#Semiotics #Semiosis #RelationTheory #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#InformationEqualsComprehensionTimesExtension #PragmaticSemioticInformation

Pragmatic Semiotic Information • 1.2
• http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/03/03/pragmatic-semiotic-information-1/

A question of what's true is a “descriptive question” and there exist what are called “descriptive sciences” devoted to answering descriptive questions about any domain of phenomena one might care to name.

A question of what's to do, in other words, what must be done by way of achieving a given aim, is a “normative question” and there exist what are called “normative sciences” devoted to answering normative questions about any domain of problems one might care to address.

Since information plays its role on a stage set by uncertainty, a big part of saying what information is will necessarily involve saying what uncertainty is. There is little chance the vagaries of a word like “uncertainty”, given the nuances of its ordinary, poetic, and technical uses, can be corralled by a single pen, but there do exist established models and formal theories which manage to address definable aspects of uncertainty and these do have enough uses to make them worth looking into.

#Peirce #Logic #Inquiry #Information #Uncertainty #ScientificMethod
#Semiotics #Semiosis #RelationTheory #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#InformationEqualsComprehensionTimesExtension #PragmaticSemioticInformation