#analogy — Public Fediverse posts

🧠 #Brain vs. #Computer💻: Why this #analogy is misleading 🚫

We tend to view the brain as complex #hardware and #consciousness as #software.

📺 https://youtu.be/1ouxs6P3Enc

📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/11/20/das-verkoerperte-bewusstsein/

#Zoomposium #BrainVsComputer #Consciousness #ArtificialConsciousness #ThomasFuchs #Neurophilosophy #Embodiment #Enactivism #PhilosophyOfMind #AI #Digitalization #HardProblemOfConsciousness #Zoomposium #BeingHuman #Phenomenology

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 3

Re: Peirce List • Phyllis Chiasson

A more complete excerpt and the translator’s notes are very helpful here.

A probability (εικος) is not the same as a sign (σηµειον).  The former is a generally accepted premiss ;  for that which people know to happen or not to happen, or to be or not to be, usually in a particular way, is a probability :  e.g., that the envious are malevolent or that those who are loved are affectionate.  A sign, however, means a demonstrative premiss which is necessary or generally accepted.1  That which coexists with something else, or before or after whose happening something else has happened, is a sign of that something’s having happened or being.

An enthymeme is a syllogism from probabilities or signs ;  and a sign can be taken in three ways — in just as many ways as there are of taking the middle term in the several figures :  either as in the first figure or as in the second or as in the third.

• E.g., the proof that a woman is pregnant because she has milk is by the first figure ;  for the middle term is ‘having milk’.  A stands for ‘pregnant’, B for ‘having milk’, and C for ‘woman’.
• The proof that the wise are good because Pittacus was good is by the third figure.  A stands for ‘good’, B for ‘the wise’, and C for Pittacus.  Then it is true to predicate both A and B of C ;  only we do not state the latter, because we know it, whereas we formally assume the former.
• The proof that a woman is pregnant because she is sallow is intended to be by the middle figure ;  for since sallowness is a characteristic of woman in pregnancy, and is associated with this particular woman, they suppose that she is proved to be pregnant.  A stands for ‘sallowness’, B for ‘being pregnant’, C for ‘woman’.

If only one premiss is stated, we get only a sign ;  but if the other premiss is assumed as well, we get a syllogism,2 e.g., that Pittacus is high-minded, because those who love honour are high-minded, and Pittacus loves honour ;  or again that the wise are good, because Pittacus is good and also wise.

In this way syllogisms can be effected ;  but whereas a syllogism in the first figure cannot be refuted if it is true, since it is universal, a syllogism in the last figure can be refuted even if the conclusion is true, because the syllogism is neither universal nor relevant to our purpose.3  For if Pittacus is good, it is not necessary for this reason that all other wise men are good.  A syllogism in the middle figure is always and in every way refutable, since we never get a syllogism with the terms in this relation4 ;  for it does not necessarily follow, if a pregnant woman is sallow, and this woman is sallow, that she is pregnant.  Thus truth can be found in all signs, but they differ in the ways which have been described.

We must either classify signs in this way, and regard their middle term as an index (τεκµηριον)5 (for the name ‘index’ is given to that which causes us to know, and the middle term is especially of this nature), or describe the arguments drawn from the extremes6 as ‘signs’, and that which is drawn from the middle as an ‘index’.  For the conclusion which is reached through the first figure is most generally accepted and most true.  (Aristotle, Prior Analytics 2.27, 70a3–70b6).

Translator’s Notes

1. If referable to one phenomenon only, a sign has objective necessity ;  if to more than one, its value is a matter of opinion.
2. Strictly an enthymeme.
3. If the signs of an enthymeme in the first figure are true, the conclusion is inevitable.  Aristotle does not mean that the conclusion is universal, but that the universality of the major premiss implies the validity of the minor and conclusion.  The example (<all> those who have honour, etc.) quoted for the third figure contains no universal premiss or sign, and fails to establish a universal conclusion.
4. i.e. when both premisses are affirmative.
5. Signs may be classified as irrefutable (1st figure) and refutable (2nd and 3rd figures), and the name ‘index’ may be attached to their middle terms, either in all figures or (more probably) only in the first, where the middle is distinctively middle.
6. Alternatively the name ‘sign’ may be restricted to the 2nd and 3rd figures, and may be replaced by ‘index’ in the first.

Reference

• Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource

• Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A

cc: Academia.edu • Cybernetics • Laws of Form • Mathstodon
cc: Research Gate • Structural Modeling • Systems Science • Syscoi

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2026/05/19/icon-likeness-likely-story-likelihood-probability-2-a/

Re: Peirce List • Phyllis Chiasson
• https://web.archive.org/web/20131211153209/http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/11234
• https://web.archive.org/web/20131211034001/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/11235

I'm still a bit fuzzy on how Aristotle's account relates to Peirce's usage, though I'm pretty sure Peirce must have taken Aristotle's usage into account, but it does seem that Aristotle drew some sort of distinction here, using a term “tekmerion” which gets translated as “index” to make the following remark later on in that chapter.

❝We must either classify signs in this way, and regard their middle term as an index [τεκµηριον] (for the name ‘index’ is given to that which causes us to know, and the middle term is especially of this nature), or describe the arguments drawn from the extremes as ‘signs’, and that which is drawn from the middle as an ‘index’. For the conclusion which is reached through the first figure is most generally accepted and most true.❞ (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 2.27.70b1–6).

Reference —

Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource —

Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A
• https://www.academia.edu/5211369/Theme_One_Program_User_Guide

#Aristotle #Peirce #IconIndexSymbol #Semiotics #SignRelations
#Logic #Mathematics #Probability #ProbableReasoning #Induction
#Inquiry #Analogy #Likelihood #LikelyStory #Likeness #Morphism

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 2

Re: Peirce List • Phyllis Chiasson

I’m still a bit fuzzy on how Aristotle’s account relates to Peirce’s usage, though I’m pretty sure Peirce must have taken Aristotle’s usage into account, but it does seem that Aristotle drew some sort of distinction here, using a term “tekmerion” which gets translated as “index” to make the following remark later on in that chapter.

We must either classify signs in this way, and regard their middle term as an index [τεκµηριον] (for the name ‘index’ is given to that which causes us to know, and the middle term is especially of this nature), or describe the arguments drawn from the extremes as ‘signs’, and that which is drawn from the middle as an ‘index’.  For the conclusion which is reached through the first figure is most generally accepted and most true.  (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 2.27.70b1–6).

Reference

• Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource

• Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A

cc: Academia.edu • Cybernetics • Laws of Form • Mathstodon
cc: Research Gate • Structural Modeling • Systems Science • Syscoi

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2026/05/17/icon-likeness-likely-story-likelihood-probability-1-a/

Here's a likely locus classicus for “icon” in its logical sense —

❝A probability (εικος) is not the same as a sign (σηµειον). The former is a generally accepted premiss; for that which people know to happen or not to happen, or to be or not to be, usually in a particular way, is a probability:

❝For example, that the envious are malevolent or that those who are loved are affectionate.

❝A sign, however, means a demonstrative premiss which is necessary or generally accepted. That which coexists with something else, or before or after whose happening something else has happened, is a sign of that something’s having happened or being.❞ (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 2.27.70a3–10).

Reference —

Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource —

Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A
• https://www.academia.edu/5211369/Theme_One_Program_User_Guide

#Aristotle #Peirce #IconIndexSymbol #Semiotics #SignRelations
#Logic #Mathematics #Probability #ProbableReasoning #Induction
#Inquiry #Analogy #Likelihood #LikelyStory #Likeness #Morphism

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 1

Here’s a likely locus classicus for “icon” in its logical sense —

A probability (εικος) is not the same as a sign (σηµειον).  The former is a generally accepted premiss;  for that which people know to happen or not to happen, or to be or not to be, usually in a particular way, is a probability:  e.g., that the envious are malevolent or that those who are loved are affectionate.  A sign, however, means a demonstrative premiss which is necessary or generally accepted.  That which coexists with something else, or before or after whose happening something else has happened, is a sign of that something’s having happened or being.  (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 2.27.70a3–10).

Reference

• Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource

• Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A

Related Discussion

• Peirce List • Benjamin Udell • Michael Shapiro

In the Way of Inquiry • Reconciling Accounts
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/24/in-the-way-of-inquiry-reconciling-accounts-a/

The Reader may share with the Author a feeling of discontent at this point, attempting to reconcile the formal intentions of this inquiry with the cardinal contentions of experience. Let me try to express the difficulty in the form of a question:

What is the bond between form and content in experience, between the abstract formal categories and the concrete material contents residing in experience?

Once toward the end of my undergrad years a professor asked me how I'd personally define mathematics and I told him I saw it as “the form of experience and the experience of form”. This is not the place to argue for the virtues of that formulation but it does afford me one of the handles I have on the bond between form and content in experience.

I have no more than a tentative way of approaching the question. I take there to be a primitive category of “form‑in‑experience” — I don’t have a handy name for it yet but it looks to have a flexible nature which from the standpoint of a given agent easily passes from the “structure of experience” to the “experience of structure”.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Experience #Expectation #EffectiveDescription #FiniteMeans
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Empiricism #Rationalism
#Concretion #Information #Comprehension #Extension #Intension

In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exigency-a/

A turn of events so persistent must have a cause, a force of reason to explain the dynamics of its recurring moment in the history of ideas. The nub of it's not born on the sleeve of its first and last stages, where the initial explosion and the final collapse march along their stubborn course in lockstep fashion, but is embodied more naturally in the middle of the above narrative.

Experience exposes and explodes expectations. How can experiences impact expectations unless the two types of entities are both reflected in one medium, for instance and perhaps without loss of generality, in the form of representation constituting the domain of signs?

However complex its world may be, internal or external to itself or on the boundaries of its being, a finite creature's description of it rests in a finite number of finite terms or a finite sketch of finite lines. Finite terms and lines are signs. What they indicate need not be finite but what they are, must be.

Fragments —

The common sensorium.

The common sense and the senses of “common”.

This is the point where the empirical and the rational meet.

I describe as “empirical” any method which exposes theoretical descriptions of an object to further experience with that object.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Experience #Expectation #EffectiveDescription #FiniteMeans
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Empiricism #Rationalism

In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exigency-a/

Our survey of obstacles to inquiry has dealt at length with blocks arising from its formal aspects. On the other hand, I have cast this project as an empirical inquiry, proposing to represent experimental hypotheses in the form of computer programs. At the heart of that empirical attitude is a feeling all formal theories should arise from and bear on experience.

Every season of growth in empirical knowledge begins with a rush to the sources of experience. Every fresh‑thinking reed of intellect is raised to pipe up and chime in with the still‑viable canons of inquiry in one glorious paean to the personal encounter with natural experience.

But real progress in the community of inquiry depends on observers being able to orient themselves to objects of common experience — the uncontrolled exaltation of individual phenomenologies leads as a rule to the disappointment and disillusionment which befalls the lot of unshared enthusiasms and fragmented impressions.

Look again at the end of the season and see it faltering to a close, with every novice scribe rapped on the knuckles for departing from that uninspired identification with impersonal authority which expresses itself in third‑person passive accounts of one's own experience.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Empiricism #Rationalism

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Interpretive Frameworks —

Iterations of the recombinatorial process generate alternative hierarchies of categories for controlling the explosion of parts in the domain under inquiry. If by some piece of luck an alternative framework is uniquely suited to the natural ontology of the domain in question, it becomes advisable to reorganize the inquiry along the lines of the new topic headings.

But a complex domain seldom falls out that neatly. The new interpretive framework will not preserve all the information in the object domain but typically capture only another aspect of it. To take the maximal advantage of all the different frameworks that might be devised it is best to quit depending on any one of them exclusively. Thus, a rigid reliance on a single hierarchy to define the ontology of a given domain passes over into a flexible application of interpretive frameworks to make contact with particular aspects of one's object domain.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Paradigms #Pragmatics
#Aristotle #Categories #Complexity #InterpretiveFrameworks

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Conceptual Extensions —

The second use of the formal apology is to permit the tentative extension of concepts to novel areas, giving them experimental trial beyond the cases and domains where their use is already established in the precedents of accustomed habit and successful application.

This works to dispel the “in principle” objection that any category distinction puts a prior constraint on the recognition of similar structure between materially dissimilar domains. It leaves the issue a matter to be settled by after the fact judgment, a matter of what fits best “in practice”.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Paradigms #Pragmatics

In the Way of Inquiry • Formal Apology 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/12/in-the-way-of-inquiry-formal-apology-a/

Using “form” in the sense of abstract structure, the focus of my interest in this investigation is limited to the formal properties of the inquiry process. Among its chief constituents are numbered all the thinking and unthinking processes supporting the ability to learn and to reason. This “formal apology”, the apologetics of declaring a decidedly formal intent, will be used on numerous occasions to beg off a host of material difficulties and thus avoid the perceived necessity of meeting a multitude of conventional controversies.

Category Double‑Takes —

The first use of the formal apology is to rehabilitate certain classes of associations between concepts otherwise marked as category mistakes. The conversion is achieved by flipping from one side of the concept’s dual aspect to the other as the context demands. Thus it is possible in selected cases to reform the characters of category mistakes in the manner of categorical “retakes” or “double‑takes”.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod
#Abstraction #Analogy #Form #Matter #Aristotle #Categories

Functional Logic • Inquiry and Analogy • 5

Inquiry and Analogy • Aristotle’s “Paradigm” • Reasoning by Analogy

Aristotle examines the subject of analogical inference or “reasoning by example” under the heading of the Greek word παραδειγμα, from which comes the English word paradigm.  In its original sense the word suggests a kind of “side‑show”, or a parallel comparison of cases.

We have an Example (παραδειγμα, or analogy) when the major extreme is shown to be applicable to the middle term by means of a term similar to the third.  It must be known both that the middle applies to the third term and that the first applies to the term similar to the third.

E.g., let A be “bad”, B “to make war on neighbors”, C “Athens against Thebes”, and D “Thebes against Phocis”.  Then if we require to prove that war against Thebes is bad, we must be satisfied that war against neighbors is bad.  Evidence of this can be drawn from similar examples, e.g., that war by Thebes against Phocis is bad.  Then since war against neighbors is bad, and war against Thebes is against neighbors, it is evident that war against Thebes is bad.

Aristotle, “Prior Analytics” 2.24, Hugh Tredennick (trans.)

Figure 6 shows the logical relationships involved in Aristotle’s example of analogy.

Resources

• Logic Syllabus
• Boolean Function
• Boolean-Valued Function
• Logical Conjunction
• Minimal Negation Operator
• Functional Logic • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3
• Cactus Language • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • References • Document History

cc: FB | Peirce Matters • Laws of Form • Mathstodon • Ontolog • Academia.edu
cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

#Abduction #Analogy #Argument #Aristotle #CSPeirce #Constraint #Deduction #Determination #DiagrammaticReasoning #Diagrams #DifferentialLogic #FunctionalLogic #Hypothesis #Indication #Induction #Inference #Information #Inquiry #Logic #LogicOfScience #Mathematics #PragmaticSemioticInformation #ProbableReasoning #PropositionalCalculus #Propositions #Reasoning #Retroduction #Semiotics #SignRelations #Syllogism #TriadicRelations #Visualization