The Semiotic Landscape of Abstraction…
High-Dimensional Computation and Semiotic Signs
“The landscape of the mind, against which our thoughts and expectations move, when the wind of the imagination is active, changes as quickly as the clouds; and indeed it consists often of several landscapes, semi-transparent and showing through one another.”
— William Hurrel Mallock
semiotics
/sɛmɪˈɒtɪks,siːmɪˈɒtɪks/
the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation
In the Geometric Mind, the spatial structure of thought and meaning space was explored.
Professor of Cognitive Scientist and Philosopher — Peter Gärdenfors — an explanatory framework to better understand the nature of Human thinking.
Conceptual Space Theory
In his lecture titled The Geometry of Thinking, delivered in June 2014 at the Copernicus Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, he presents his theory on how Humans represent and manipulate concepts.
The fundamental forms of human thinking and reasoning that seek to explain how our minds signify, arrange, manipulate and transform abstract ideas (semiotic signs).
According to Gärdenfors, the human mind has developed mental constructs using spatial and geometric structures to represent concepts in multi-dimensions to organise, simplify and understand (comprehend & grasp meaning).
He argues that this geometric way of thinking is not limited to our perception of the Material World but extends to metaphysical concepts of our Mental World
These multi-dimensional structures of abstraction are elastic, having the capacity to morph, change, and transform over time.
The plasticity of the Mind and its capacity to perpetually adapt to an ever-changing fitness landscape.
Dynamically reorganising relationships and representations to respond to emergence.
“It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human mind and those which are concerned in the laws of nature”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Introducing & integrating new ideas and concepts arising from our embodied human experience, new knowledge and understanding.
A capacity to reconcile differences in abstraction (a priori & a posteriori) and our embodied being in the World — Absence & Presence — and, in doing so, learning how to learn.
Semiotic Signs — The development of languages and tools of abstraction
“It has never been in my power to study anything — mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semiotic”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Over the course of human history, we have gradually extended the somatosensory process beyond our physical bodies and senses by embracing languages of semantic abstraction and physical tools.
The invention of the bicycle ( a physical tool) and the computer — a bicycle of the mind (the combination of a physical tool and semantic languages of abstraction) are two examples.
This ever-expanding array of languages & tools has enabled us to navigate more & more complexity and bring a sense of coherence.
Multi-dimensional relationships of semiotic signs that signify, arrange, manipulate, and transform (e.g. Category Theory) abstract ideas, thoughts, and emotions.
A system of communication and thought that humans use to convey relationships of meaning and support our ongoing inquiry into the fundamental nature of reality
Extending Verstand (Understanding by Rules) — the emergence of automatic machines and computation to regulate states of transformation — the creation of new semantic languages and tools of abstraction
The Turing Machine
In 1936 Alan Turing developed a simple device to manipulate symbols (i.e. semiotic signs) on a piece of tape.
This automatic machine consisted of a tape divided into cells (squares), a head that could read and write symbols on the tape, and a set of states and transitions (i.e. rules of transformation) that defined the machine’s behaviour.
The tape served as the machine's memory, and the head could move left or right along the tape to access different parts of the memory.
The invention of the Turing Machine accelerated humanity's attempts through abstraction ( Mental World ) to shape the states of transformation in our Material World.
The regulation and control of behaviours within a particular context.
It stood on the shoulders of the philosophical ideas of Descartes — Deductive Reasoning — Kant — Verstand & the Primacy of Human Consciousness — and — Hegel — Second Nature.
By extending Verstand ( rules of understanding ) to machines, we enabled these machines to execute algorithms that could regulate & control the states of transformation of behaviours and phenomena in our Material World.
But had the influence of Descartes, Kant and Hegel on the nature of Verstand confused what was the source of illumination of the nature of Reason?
Was it really anchored in the Primacy of Human Consciousness, and had this led to a crisis of Modernity and Post-Modernity?
A collapse in the Semiotic Triadic.
Both ignorance and the old metaphysics tend to produce these undesirable nervous effects of reverse order and so non-survival evaluation. If we use the nervous system in a way which is against its survival structure, we must expect non-survival. Human history is short, but already we have astonishing records of extinction”….
— Alfred Korzybsk
Verstand, the Scientific Method and Science
The Scientific Method was based on uncovering ground truths ( rules of abstraction — Verstand ) from our Noumenon World (Material World) through semiotics and the relationship between the Observer and the Observed ( i.e. Part of the World ).
It emerges from the Observer’s capacity to make sense of the World ( Logos).
The Observer, through abductive reasoning, generates a plausible explanation for a set of observations and phenomena that sits outside the realm of our existing understanding.
It requires the ability to creatively uncover thought patterns and arrive at a hypothesis of what might be true based on the limited information available in a complex, ambiguous environment.
The evidence is the light that illuminates.
It was the culmination of the integration of British empiricism with French rationalism that empowered the Scientific Method.
Nature checks the maths.
Through abstraction (Mental World reductionism — Apart from the World ) and the manipulation & transformation of semiotic signs, we increasingly brought a sense of coherence ( manageability, understandability, and meaning ) to an emergent complex Material World.
Verstand, Technology & Second Nature
Despite the potential of the Turing Machine and computation to be used by humanity as a set of new tools and semantic languages of abstraction to deepen our understanding of the Noumenon World and as an anti-environment that could illuminate our understanding of the Human Condition (a process of learning and reflexivity); instead, the inverse unfolded.
French philosopher Jean Pierre Dupuy highlights this in his book The Mechanisation of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science.
The ideas emanating from the Cybernetics movement had not resulted in the anthropomorphisation of the machine but in the mechanisation of the human.
Automatic Machines were increasingly shaping not only our World View but the World itself (Second Nature).
Apparently, our Minds, Bodies and the World were now Cartesian Mechanical Machines.
Science and Modern Technology were being revealed by seeing everything in nature, including humanity, as a standing reserve — a Bestand — or — as orderly resources for technical application.
The doubling down through Cartesianism and Computation of the Primacy of Human Consciousness had been at the centre of Modernity and Post-Modernity.
The human ego that had initially created the languages and rules of abstraction (algorithms) for execution by the Mechanical Machines had now increasingly relinquished control of the process.
Through “bottom-up” machine and deep learning techniques that take as examples large numbers of output datasets, models could be trained and algorithms generated using multivariate statistical techniques.
The resulting algorithm generated by the Machine was a set of rules (Verstand) that could then be used to automate an ever-increasing array of tasks.
Verstand had now been mechanised and automated by the machines.
This Mechanical Verstand enabled the same machines to shape a Phenomenological World.
The creation of Second Nature, not by humans but increasingly by technology.
A Technological Society and Technological System that increasingly had little relationship with the Natural World.
The primary input of these machines was datasets of semiotic signs generated by humans (Primacy of Human Consciousness) and synthetic semiotic quantitative signs generated by machines.
Noting the semiotic sign inputs did not necessarily have to have any nexus to reality (e.g. the HyperReal and Simulacrum).
The primary output was a Second Nature increasingly created by machines, a Technological Society and Technological Systems
Since Descartes, there has been little attempt to integrate our Minds (Mental World — Primacy of Human Consciousness) and Bodies (Material World — Primacy of Existence).
Instead, a cartesian partition had not only been assembled but fortified through computational abstraction.
“Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
A technical spirit had been released through the mechanisation of Verstand.
Learning was replaced with algorithms used to regulate behaviours and as forms of power & control over the Natural World, including Humanity.
However, the Technical Spirit increasingly had a life of its own.
Was technology still instrumental – a means to an end – and – a human activity, or had a ghost been released from the machine?
The machines were not only shaping the construction of a Technological Society.
The Machines were now shaping a Technological System.
Semiotic Landscapes of Abstraction, the Hyperreal, the Simulacrum and the ever-present risk of a Tower of Babel
Through computational induction techniques such as Machine and Deep Learning, were the algorithms being constructed illuminating patterns in the data or patterns in the machines?
Or stated slightly differently using the Wittgenstein Ruler:
“Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table, you may also be using the table to measure the ruler” …
– Nassim Taleb
What were the Material World implications of embracing a Mental World Mechanical Verstand as the primary driver of Second Nature?
What were the algorithms representing and measuring?
What type of Society was being created?
What was the impact on our Sense of Coherence?
Searle’s Chinese Room Argument
In 1980 United States Philosopher John Searle presented a thought experiment – The Chinese Room Argument – to challenge an increasing narrative that computers could understand languages and were conscious.
“A central failure of the “mind as a computational system” theory is that computations, per se, are devoid of meaning”…
– Stuart A. Kauffman
The argument can be presented as follows:
Imagine a person who does not understand Chinese is in a closed room with instructions written in English for responding to Chinese symbols passed to them on slips of paper through a slot in the door. The person in the room follows the instructions to manipulate the symbols according to certain rules (Verstand) and then passes them back out of the room.
From the perspective of someone outside the room who does not know that the person inside does not understand Chinese, it might appear that the person in the room understands Chinese.
Searle argues that the person in the room, despite following the rules and producing correct responses, does not actually understand Chinese.
The person simply follows instructions without actual understanding or intentionality behind their actions.
According to Searle, a computer program may be able to manipulate symbols according to rules, but this does not mean it understands language or is conscious.
Patterning – What patterns are being revealed? – Patterns in the data or Patterns in Verstand or Mechanical Verstand
What if these computational machines were simply illuminating the creators of the pattern (i.e. the metaphysical spatial structures and landscapes of human thought — the Geometric Mind) rather than observing or making sense of the Material World? Revealing relational structures of semiotic signs and rules of abstraction (Verstand)?
What if their adoption made Human embodiment, contextualisation, the integrated reasoning of Peirce (abduction + induction + deduction), Vernunft, Phronesis, Practical Wisdom, Learning to Learn, and Meaning (Logos & Semiotics) more important than ever?
In a May 2021 article titled AI: The pattern is not in the data, it’s in the machine the author challenges a prevailing assumption in artificial intelligence that suggests that machine learning, which depends on vast amounts of data, finds patterns in the data itself.
The patterns being revealed are really how the weights change in the high-dimensional (multi-variate statistical) model to represent the structure for the transformation function of the semiotic signs.
It is the value of the weights that shape the representation which counts as knowing or understanding.
The implications are profound.
If the machine creates the patterns, then the conclusions people draw about Ai are likely to be incorrect.
Without Humans and the learning process (i.e. Presence & Difference — reconciling differences between a priori & a posteriori abstractions and embodied lived experiences), how will machines ever make sense of and navigate an emergent complex Material World?
Yet, as outlined earlier, Machine Verstand anchored in Cartesian abstraction is increasingly shaping Second Nature.
Hyperreal, the Simulacrum and the ever-present risk of the Towers of Babel
French cultural theorist, sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard's ideas explored how humans construct and perceive reality.
Our experience of the Material World is increasingly being mediated through media and technology, which can result in a context collapse.
We literally lose touch with our embodied lived experience in a Material World and re-enter Plato’s Cave.
A Simulacrum emerges and a Hyperreality where we no longer can distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.
The emergence of computation, including Ai, simply accelerates the risk of this, including the ever-present risk of creating Towers of Babel.
What happens if a Society has been created by embracing more & more Cartesian Abstraction and that a-priori & a-posteriori abstraction through semiotic signs no longer has to have any nexus to what is being observed?
For example, the statement — My mother is a woman, all women are 50 foot tall; therefore, my mother is 50 foot tall — can be construed as a sound piece of Cartesian Rationalism based on Aristotelian Term Logic.
However, the Cartesian a priori term logic applied no longer has any nexus to our Material World.
Refer to Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Ancient Wisdom.
It represents a Semiotic Triadic collapse and presents a risk of entering the Simulacrum and Hyperreality.
The emergence of Semiotic Landscapes of Abstraction
The arrival of the internet resulted in the emergence of high-dimensional semiotic landscapes of abstraction, and the end of a singularity, as late UK musician David Bowie, prophetically predicted in 1999.
Since then, this trend of semiotic map-making has only accelerated.
Higher and higher fidelity maps of these Semiotic Landscapes of Abstraction* — representations of the Geometric Mind — illustrated by the recent launch of computational language models such as GPT-4.
[ *According to some media commentators, the Model (i.e. Transformer function) has been trained on up to 100 trillion parameters creating higher and higher dimensional fidelity maps of the Geometric Mind ]
The key question for Humanity
The key question for the future of humanity is whether we embrace these computation systems as tools (bicycles of the mind) for semantic abstraction.
Acknowledging the map is not the territory, or as Belgium 20th Century surrealist artist Rene Magritte illustrated through his painting — Ceci n’est pas une pipe — The picture is not the pipe.
Recognising the Treachery of Images and moving towards a more integrated form of reasoning that combines Vernunft with Verstand and our Material World with our Mental World (a posteriori & a priori ).
A Symbiosis.
The alternative is to double down on Cartesianism and the mechanisation of the Material World, Mind, and Body.
Retreating into Plato’s Cave, the Hyperreal, the Simulacrum and Hypernormalisation.
A World where Second Nature is increasingly created by Machines.
A Technological Society and Technological System.
But in doing so, we obfuscate our Practical Wisdom & Vernunft and degrade our Sense of Coherence & Survival Instinct.
“The simulacrum is never that which hides the truth — it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.
The simulacrum is true”…
— Jean Baudrillard
What do those semiotic signs of abstraction mean?
Will a computer ever know?
“My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business”…
— John Searle
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