From Semiotica on tribes.net:
Computation as a way to understand semioticsI posted on the 22nd-- no response yet. Posted by John at February 27, 2004 09:34 AMNot many people really get semiotics, and that is unfortunate. It's a beautifully simple and elegant philosophy. But I think one of the big problems holding back comprehension is all the bickering about terminology. Charles Peirce was notoriously bad about this, inventing cumbersome new words constantly and using them inconsistently. The problem continues to persist to this day. People get lost in all the "rheme" and "dicent" gibberish, and miss out on the fundamental strength and beauty of semiotics.
Computational semiotics lets us put all this aside, in the same way that building a machine ends all argument about what the machine is and what it's good for. A piece of software is always a formal logical construct of some kind, and the source code describes it precisely. So a big interest of mine is to apply semiotics to software engineering.
In this light, the problem becomes: What do you need to know in order to build a software implementation of semiotic knowledge representation? This is something that some very bright bulbs are working on, and I have my own ideas that I'd like to get into later.
But for now, if you are interested and want to get introduced to this world, I have to recommend a fantastic book by John Sowa called "Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations." Sowa is an excellent encyclopedist of the development of formal logic and semiotics, and his book presents it all in a very non-scary, approachable way. It's intellectually stimulating without being tedious or jargon-laden. Very cool book.
Details here:
....
Just to get the ball rolling, here's a starter kit of assertions:
- a sign is any thought, concept, idea or sensed experience
- signs are monads (embody no internal relational function), dyads (embody a relation of two other signs), or triads (embody a sign related to another sign via a third sign)
- relations more complex than triadic can be reduced to networks of triads, dyads or monads without destroying meaning
- Sign production occurs when any signs are related or when any monads are sensed
- When two or three signs can be related to produce meaning, a new sign embodying that relation is made. This is sign emergence
- Sign emergence is fractal: self-similar at any scaleGecko
Re: Computation as a way to understand semiotics
I agree that a computational approach to semiotics may divest semiotics of its jargon-laden, speculative philosophy. Also, I agree that "Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations" is a hell of a good book.
A few quibbles:
Why refer to semiotic systems as being “fractal ”, when “compositional ”is probably more accurate descriptor. Fractal objects are recursively constructed and they exhibit levels of self-similarity. I can see the recursive construction, but what similarity is there between atomic signs and molecular signs, other than their being signs? A mathematically proscribed sameness would be helpful.
What exactly is a sign? Is it relationally established, or is it a metaphysical, determinant object? The use of ‘sign ’seems so general at times that vacuity threatens.
A great deal of work on reference, meaning, interpretation and translation has taken place in the analytic tradition apart from the semiotics of Saussure, Eco, Barthes, etc. Frege, Russell, Tarski, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, and others have all made interesting contributions that remain (largely) unsynthesized with semiotics. Additionally, the works of Chomsky, Shannon, Turing, Davis and other information theorists and theory of computation luminaries, have not been (to my admittedly limited knowledge) effectively incorporated into semiotics. To sum it up, what does semiotics have to offer these other intellectual traditions that work on the same issues?
These questions may sound unsympathetic, but they are not meant to be. I have a genuine interest in semiotics, but cannot yet see its contributions.
It's funny. I try my hardest to read these posts because I want to know, or at least understand, the things my friends know. I maybe understood 1/3rd of this post, and as I was reading it, I was trying to break down some of the words that I didn't know, like "Semiotic." "Semi" means half or less then a whole (unless this post was about a special truck), right? But what does "Otic" mean? It's not in either of my dictionaries (and neither is "semiotic," but I think it's that thing that has to do with theoretical machines?). My roots in English are showing, but I'd like to know where the word came from. Who came up with it and why? Is it just made up and has nothing to do with the prefix attached?
No one has to reply to this because I know the original post was meant for the philosophers out there, not us pretenders. I also don't want these posts slowed or ceased because I figure I'll one day understand more that half of one.
Oh, and one quibble: "Fractal objects are recursively constructed and they exhibit levels of self-similarity." I always thought that fractals had to have parts that were exactly the same as other parts, only larger and smaller, not just a "similarity."
Posted by: ticknart at February 27, 2004 09:09 PMEtymology: Greek sEmeiOtikos observant of signs, from sEmeiousthai to interpret signs, from sEmeion sign, from sEma sign.
Nothing to do with the prefix 'semi'.
Johnny: I share your confusion concerning the usefulness (or even distinct substance) of semiotics -- what does it give us that syntax, semantics, and pragmatics do not? I also find it strange that the fellow you responded to referenced the book he did when the table of contents shows that only one section of one chapter (6.6) deals explicitly with semiotics.
Posted by: Nihilo at February 28, 2004 12:35 AMJosh:
The term fractal is now used as a scientific concept, as well as a strictly mathematical idea. In the first sense, it means a geometric shape that is self-similar on all scales. In other words, no matter how much you magnify a fractal, it always looks the same (or at least similar).from Wikipedia
Nihilo: Good point about the book. To be fair, semiotic notions are sprinkled about, though they don't do the heavy lifting.
Posted by: John Taylor at February 29, 2004 01:00 PM