[From Bruce Nevin (2001.10.08 23:50 EDT)]
Bill Powers (2001.10.08.1448 MDT) –
Another way I have described level 9, the
“logic level” for short, is asthe level where symbols are handled according to rules, […]
We agree. We’re approaching the elephant from different angles – I to
say that the formalisms of logicians don’t encompass it, you to say that
it is more encompassing than just logic – but we are agreed that it is
an elephant and neither a tree nor a wall.
Whence a can of worms. Or rather, a bucket of symbols sans bucket. What
are symbols and where do they live? Do perceptions become symbols upon
entry into the input functions at the (hypothesized) 9th level? Any
particular perception – the color yellow – may be symbolic, and it is
not treated as a category before being treated as a symbol but in the act
of doing so. Aha, you say, symbols are category perceptions. But merely
categorizing does not a symbol make. A symbol is a perception, surely
(what else?), and to it we may associate a category, that is,
whatever perceptions we in turn associate to a category, but the symbol
itself is not a member or the category, nor an exemplar, nor a
synecdochic representative (as in “tail plus bark => dog”),
nor any of the diverse perceptions which (in that millipoid hypothesis)
can satisfy the input function for the given category perception. There
is an element of the arbitrary about a symbol, and an element of
convention: Let a represent aardvarks (or the leftmost apex of any
isosceles triangle, or George Washington’s forgotten monacle). Whatever
it is, we agree, else there is no symbol. With categorization one can
speculate about ‘natural kinds’; with symbols there are no natural kinds.
Symbols are not in the hierarchical chain with events, transitions,
configurations, and so on below and sequences, programs (etc.),
principles, and system concepts above. A symbol can be any one of these
perceptions set off as it were to the side. (I say any perception: we
prefer as our symbolic tokens perceptions lower down in the hierarchy –
it is at least conceivable to say e.g. “let the principle stated in
the Golden Rule represent birch wood” but much more wieldy to let
birch wood be a symbol for the principle.) So does this setting to the
side and associating take place at the input functions of each level that
manipulates symbols, sequence and above? Seems implausible. So
where?
Wherever that is, there too is all of language. Not just those
configurations of phonemes that we call words (and their parts), but also
those configurations of word-dependencies that we call phrases and
sentences, and those configurations of word-repetition across arrays of
sentences that make discourse coherent. Those too have meanings, which
are in part referential, and in those embracing configurations what we
imagine to be stable denotative associations of word with perceptual
experience, word meanings, are found to extend and slither among and
through and across one another like … a can of worms. Those meanings –
lexical semantics in natural language – are not and never have been
determined by definitional fiat, “let ‘dog’ represent a quadruped
with four legs, usually a tail, usually fur, that may bark …” and
so on. But they do have in common with symbols this residing on a sort of
parallel track alongside non-symbol perceptions as they flow in ordinary
living experience, to which they refer or are associated. Wherever that
“alongside” is.
Bruce
Nevin
···
At 15:01 10/08/2001 -0600, Bill Powers wrote: