tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19161551711971473752024-03-29T09:46:15.371+11:00The Life Of MeaningChapters 11-13Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-22301532073609440892012-02-18T18:38:00.003+11:002019-08-29T07:57:13.496+10:00Brain: Biology Or Technology?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">Historically, the neurological system has been frequently modelled as if it were a technological artefact. For example, the brain has been modelled as if it were a factory production line, and more recently as a computer, with inputs being “processed” in one section or module, creating outputs which then become inputs for other sections or modules; nerve fibres have been modelled as if they are the wires of a telephone network, carrying “messages” from one region to another</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">[1]</a><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">; and memory has been modelled as if was a storage location from which information is “retrieved”, or “accessed”, and acted upon, first as if it were an office filing system, and more latterly as if it were a place in a computer: “information is stored in memory”.</span><br />
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Using technology as a model for the neurological system is an example of semiotic generalisation<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a>, in the sense used in previous chapters, namely: meanings evolved in one context spread into another where they are proffered for selection. But given that neurological systems are phenotypic products of biological evolution and technological systems are phenotypic products of semiotic evolution, a more self-consistent and parsimonious approach would be to apply biological models to phenomena deemed to be biological systems, as Edelman (1989) has done with his Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS).<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[3]</a> Biological models of biological phenomena are more likely to survive longterm semiotic selection than other models, if only because they are smaller innovations — just as smaller genetic innovations are more likely to survive biological selection. Selection against the technological model of the brain occurs, inter alia, every time a specialist in the field decides that the cost of the approach exceeds its benefits in terms of experiential consistency.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn4">[4]</a></div>
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<b><u>Footnotes:</u></b></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Where this model is used, there is often a failure to distinguish between information as the flow of electro-chemical difference in neural circuits and information in the sense of categories of experience arising from a substrate of brain activity in individuals in ecosystems that include social-semiotic contexts. </div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> In the field of cognitive linguistics, this mapping of the relations of a ‘source’ domain (here: technology) onto a ‘target’ domain (here: neurology) is known as conceptual metaphor. The mapping here is within the larger mapping of ‘an organism is a machine’: ‘a brain is a computer (that processes inputs, such as language)’, ‘a brain region is a processing unit’, ‘nerve fibres are communication lines’, and so on. </div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[3]</a> Compare Einstein’s maxim that the best model of a duck is a duck, and if possible, the same duck. </div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[4]</a> See the discussion of ‘truth’ later in this chapter.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-58130031938164358862012-02-18T18:38:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:38:06.156+11:00Brain Organisation<div style="text-align: justify;">On the model presented here, the brain is organised as a supervenience hierarchy, such that higher levels of organisation emerge from interactions at lower levels of organisation during development and experience. There is no interaction between levels; for example, higher levels of organisation do not <i>control</i> lower levels — ‘downward causation’ — any more than a clock controls the molecules on which it supervenes as a level of organisation, because levels of organisation are <i>complementary perspectives</i> on the same phenomenon. On the TNGS model, the notion of ‘control’ is better reinterpreted in terms of selectional interaction between systems at the same level of organisation, if only because it is a ‘category error’ to map a hierarchy of degrees of control onto a hierarchy of organisational levels. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In considering interactions between systems at the same level of organisation, each system is necessary but not sufficient for the function it performs, just as a specific gene, as “for” iris colour, is necessary but not sufficient for its function (phenotypic expression); a gene only functions in the context of (the functions of) other genes, and its function is distinguished by <i>contrast</i> with the functions of other genes in the genome. Similarly, neurological functions are carried out <i>in the context of other functions</i> and each function is distinguished by <i>contrast</i> with those other functions. Absence or disruption of a specific function results from the absence or disruption of a <i>necessary condition</i> for its performance, as the absence or mutation of a gene results in the absence or variation of its phenotypic expression. By identifying <i>loss</i> of brain function with localised anatomical damage, some have argued that those functions are carried out in those areas, as if such areas are sufficient for the function. However, as brain imaging shows, even for something as “simple” as reciting digits, neural activity is distributed over many regions the brain, and the precise locations of activity vary from one individual to the next.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-34351418468092380482012-02-18T18:37:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:37:43.785+11:00The Categorisable And The Categorising Are Distinct<div style="text-align: justify;">A domain that can be categorised is distinct from any categorising of it.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[1]</a> Categories are not “out there” to be discovered, but are established through the interaction of recognition systems with a categorisable domain, which potentially includes the categorising processes themselves. The categorisable domain is potential, the categorising is a process. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Footnote:</u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Models don’t “construct reality” — they are organisations of categorisations of the categorisable. All models are organisations of categorisations, not of the categorisable.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-65111606592756857842012-02-18T18:37:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:37:19.465+11:00The Perceivable Is Unlabelled<div style="text-align: justify;">Gardner (1970: 227): </div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">The realisation that the world by itself contains no signs — that there is no connection whatever between things and their names except by way of a mind that finds the tags useful — is by no means a trivial philosophic insight. </blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">On this model, the perceivable<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> world isn’t labelled for categories, but it is of survival value to organisms to categorise the world in some ways rather than others. The perceivable world favours (selects) some ways of categorising over others, varying for species, but it does not follow from this that it contains categories independent of a categorising process. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The contexts in which organisms are embedded are categorisable; they are recognition potential. From the perspective of categorisation, such domains are potential: they have, for example, the potential to kill, to end the categorising. They are a flux of varying probability. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Categorising arises from interactions between, on the one hand, domains that can be categorised, that involve difference (information), and on the other, systems that can categorise.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> Domains that can be categorised are differentiable: they have the potential to be differentiated by a categorising system. To experience a perceivable context is to differentiate it. The perceivable is both “experienceable”: categorisable and “act-upon-able”, and experienced: categorised and acted-upon. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b>Footnotes:</b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Note that using the word phenomenon for ‘a perceivable’ would be confusing here. The (nontechnical) meaning is ‘a fact, occurrence, or circumstance observed or observable’ (Macquarie Dictionary 1992:1329), while Kant distinguishes phenomenon: ‘a thing as it appears to and is constructed by us’, from noumenon ‘a thing in itself’ (ibid).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> Strictly speaking, perceiving is an interaction between the universe of difference (in general) being perceived and a part of that difference (perceived by the modeller to be) organised as a categoriser and doing the perceiving.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-5700156067949692232012-02-18T18:36:00.002+11:002012-02-18T18:36:53.320+11:00The Participants In The Categorisation Process<div style="text-align: justify;">The categorisation process is a systematic interaction between: </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(1) the perceivable: what can be detected and categorised; </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(2) a means of detecting the categorisable, specifically: light in the case of visual perception<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[1]</a>; and </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(3) a recognition system that can categorise what it can detect through sensory modalities like vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The distinction between (1) and (2) does not hold for all sensory modalities. For example, in the case of touch, there is no intermediary between the perceivable surface and the tactile sensory detectors. The same is true for taste, where there is no intermediary between the perceivable chemicals and the olfactory sensory detectors. In the case of smell, there is no intermediary between the perceivable chemicals and the olfactory sensory detectors, but the perceivable chemicals may emanate from a source that is not otherwise directly perceivable. This is also the case for hearing: there is no intermediary between the perceivable air compression waves and the auditory sensory detectors, but the perceivable air compression waves may emanate from a source that is not otherwise directly perceivable. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Crucially, the distinction <i>does</i> hold for the <i>primary</i> modality of humans: vision. Visual perception does involve an intermediary between the perceivable and the visual sensory detectors. What makes contact with the sensory modalities, photons, is distinct from the perceivable being categorised visually, but is the means by which the perceivable is detected. The one exception here is the visual perception of light sources, which patterns like smell and hearing, where the perceivable light emanates from a source that may not be otherwise directly perceivable. Visual perception is both atypical and the primary modality through which humans categorise the perceivable, which gives unique status to the rôle of photons in human experience.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[2]</a> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Failure to make this distinction between the visible and the visual means of perceiving the visible has resulted in confusions like “colour (unlike other properties) exists only in the head of the observer”. Colour perception involves the detection and categorisation of difference (categorised by other means as light frequencies) reflecting off and refracting through the visible, and depends, inter alia, on the light frequencies emitted by the source and the molecular arrangement of the visible. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Footnotes:</u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> A similar example in some species is the use of echo location, where the perceiver emits the radiation that reflects off surfaces in its vicinity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> More of which later.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-90080424513944505412012-02-18T18:36:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:36:23.270+11:00Perceiving As Correlating Difference<div style="text-align: justify;">The general principle of a recognition system is the <i>if…then</i> relation: if event x in the recognisable domain, then event y in the recognition system. Recognition by neurological systems involves matching categorisables with neuronal activities that categorise. For perception, this means correlating difference (information) outside the system with difference (information) inside the system. The identity of any categorising activity within the system is given, therefore, by contrast to the other categorising activities within the system. Each categorising has no meaning without reference to other categorising.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-37827527717434706982012-02-18T18:36:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:36:01.287+11:00How Difference Is Correlated<div style="text-align: justify;">In the selectionist model of biological evolution proposed by Darwin and Wallace, Nature selects some variants (potentials) at the expense of others, depending on how well each functions in the contexts in which they have to function. These variants are the ones most likely to "happen again" in the next generation. In the selectionist model of brain function proposed by Edelman, the TNGS, in perceptual categorisation, the perceivable selects some variant neural events (potentials) at the expense of others. Selection involves the strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons in groups in maps, thereby increasing the probability that such configurations will fire again. These neural variants are the ones most likely to "happen again" in the next generation of neural firing in response to specific sensory detections of difference. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This model can be understood in terms of the grammatical concept of ergativity: each perceptual categorising <i>process</i> is actualised through a <i>medium</i>, a brain as neurological recognition system, and caused by an external <i>agent</i>, a domain that can be detected and categorised.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Note, by the way, that this is in stark contrast to an understanding based on the grammatical concept of transitivity. On such a model, a categorising process carries through from an <i>actor</i>, an external domain, to a <i>goal</i>, a brain as neurological recognition system. That is to say, categories flow into brains from the outside. Edelman (1992) labels this position <i>instructionism</i> since it involves seeing categorisation as a process whereby the outside instructs the brain, and he opposes it to selectionism, pointing out that instructionism is Lamarckism applied to the brain.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> In the Lamarckian model of biological evolution, properties flow from the world into genomes, such that acquired characteristics can be inherited by offspring. That is, a coded world acts directly on a specific genome and changes it. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are probably many reasons why the instructionist/transitive model should have been previously favoured in modelling the brain. For example, it is more obviously recognisable from visual experience: we see that things move from one location to another.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[3]</a> Selectionism is more subtle, since it requires a generational timescale to observe the effects of selection in a visible domain. The view of human-as-agent may also have made the acceptance of the phenomenon-as-agent model less probable. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Phenomena make us sense: see, hear, smell, taste, feel (perception); phenomena make us feel (affect); phenomena make us think (cognition); phenomena make us want (desideration).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> Instructionism fails to explain, for example, why a patient of (Oliver) Sacks, ‘Virgil’, who receives sight for the first time at age 50 cannot make sense of what he sees.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[3]</a> Cf Lakoff’s (1987) source-path-goal schema.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-41855990779571580592012-02-18T18:35:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:35:38.737+11:00Categorising As Meaningful For An Organism<div style="text-align: justify;">According to the TNGS, categorising occurs ‘on value’. That is, categorising neuronal systems are linked with value systems — cholinergic and aminergic — of the hedonic centres and limbic system, whose functions include homeostasis and appetites.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> This means that categorising processes occur in the context of the current state of the organism, and the effect of this is to make categorising meaningful — to <i>matter</i> — to the categorising organism.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Footnote:</u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Through this linkage, inherited value systems bias the categorising process in ways that have been of advantage to ancestors; the value systems of those who do not survive to reproduce are not passed down the generations of a biological lineage.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-54966882469389724822012-02-18T18:35:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:35:11.101+11:00Brain Function Is Organised By The Recognisable<div style="text-align: justify;">The brain as recognition system is <i>organised by the domains that it recognises</i>. The domains that it recognises are both ouside and inside the body. The outside, which can include the meaningful expressions of others, is recognised via sensory sheets which detect external difference. The inside includes domains both outside and inside the brain. Outside the brain includes the musculo-skeletal system, which it detects via the peripheral nervous system, and homeostatic systems, to which it is connected via the limbic system. Inside the brain includes all the processes involved in recognising domains both inside the body but outside the brain and outside the body — an ability that varies across animal species. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The recognition process, as the selection of variants by the domains being recognised, can be understood as the brain adapting to those domains: to the ecological context of the body (which includes the behaviours of other bodies), to the somatic context of the brain, and to the brain’s own recognition processes. Just as “Nature” selects genetic potential-for-development in the evolution of a species, “Nature” selects neurological potential-for-behaviour in the evolution of a neurological system embedded in the body of an organism in its lifetime.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-67938320358167143442012-02-18T18:34:00.002+11:002023-03-20T07:56:14.861+11:00No Images, Representations Or Symbols Inside Heads<div style="text-align: justify;">On this model, there are no images in the brain (or mind<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a>) — there are neuronal firing patterns. But some neuronal firing patterns correlate with differentiations of the visually perceivable. The firing of such patterns correlate with experiencing the differentiation of the visible, with having visual experiences.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> Regenerations of past firing patterns can result in visual experiences in the absence of the originally experienced perceivable. By generating portions of different past visual experiences as an integrated whole, it is possible to create new visual experiences that have not previously been experienced — to imagine. And such simulations can be expressed through the skeleto-muscular system as pictorial images that others can experience. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">More generally, to be congruent<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[3]</a>, there are no symbols or representations (things) in brains<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn4">[4]</a>; there are cells and tissues and the functions they perform (processes). Neurological systems make symbols and representations possible, but, through skeleto-muscular action, as perceivable expressions which can be categorised and recategorised and re-expressed, and so on. Lamb (2005) has expressed this point clearly in modelling language with respect to neurological systems:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Likewise, if we consider production of speech, no one has ever found any evidence at all, neurological or otherwise, to support an hypothesis that it operates by the use of symbols represented somehow in the brain. The more realistic alternative is to suppose that what is internal is not symbolic representations of words or morphemes or the like, but the means of producing such forms (as speech or writing). </blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Footnotes:</u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Sometimes the word ‘mind’ is used in these contexts rather than ‘brain’. However, since the mind is not detectable as a (material) thing, it cannot be construed congruently as a place in the material universe that science models, and it is thus incongruent to speak of ‘in the mind’. See the discussion of ‘mind-as-process’ later in the chapter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> See Edelman & Tononi (2000: 202-3).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[3]</a> Those who might claim to speaking metaphorically (eg Hofstadter, Ramachandran) do not provide a congruent reformulation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[4]</a> The idea that symbols exist in brains is consistent with the instructionist model and with naïve realism: the belief that the world consists of true or real categories, and these are represented (accurately or not) in brains.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-71551431026987589802012-02-18T18:34:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:34:25.090+11:00Self-Reference<div style="text-align: justify;">Semiotic systems are both a means of modelling of the categorisable and one domain within the modelling. A model of semiosis is part of modelling the categorisable semiotically. For example, a semiotic model of the categorisable may divide the categorisable into two distinct domains: the material and the semiotic.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-13390805974175504502012-02-18T18:33:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:33:50.338+11:00To Refer To The Categorisable Is To Use Categorisations<div style="text-align: justify;">To refer to the categorisable is to use specific categorisations of it, to express a specific model of it. For example, to refer to the perceivable as ‘the environment’ (or ‘context’ or ‘the perceivable’) is to categorise it within a larger model of meaning-making. Because of this, there is no “pre-theoretical” position that can be adopted on any subject, though some stances may be modelled as “pre-theoretical” for social-semiotic purposes. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Further, no categorisables are ineffable<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a>, since any categorisable can be modelled and semiosis is modelling. However, some categorisables are modelled as being ineffable for social-semiotic purposes. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</span></b></div><br />
<div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Footnote:</u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Cf Wittgenstein.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-77450527199160524812012-02-18T18:33:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:33:14.989+11:00Meaning As A Process That Occurs In The Perceivable World<div style="text-align: justify;">In modelling the categorisable, such as two domains: the material and the semiotic, semiosis is modelled as a process that goes on in the perceivable universe, in the same sense that galaxy formation and supernova explosions are processes that go on in the perceivable universe. Asking and answering the question ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ are processes that go on in the perceivable universe. Making meaning of the perceivable universe is something that organisms do, part of the universe recognising itself. Meaning is not of the categorisable domain of which meaning is made, nor does it transcend the domain of interactions (the perceivable universe) in which it occurs.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-56338135786798205212012-02-18T18:32:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:32:48.143+11:00Models As Systems Of Relations<div style="text-align: justify;">Bronowski<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a>: </div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Physics is not events, but observations; relativity is the understanding of the world, not as events, but as relations. </blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Smolin (1996: 289-90):</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Indeed, for me the most important idea behind the developments of twentieth-century physics and cosmology is that things don’t have intrinsic properties at the fundamental level; all properties are about relations between things. This is the basic idea behind Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but it has a longer history; it goes back to at least to the seventeenth-century philosopher Leibniz, who opposed Newton’s ideas of space and time because Newton took space and time to exist absolutely, while Leibniz wanted to understand them as arising only as aspects of the relations among things. For me, this fight between those who want the world to be made out of absolute entities and those who want it to be made only out of relations is a key theme in the story of the development of modern physics. Moreover, I’m partial. I think Leibniz and the relationalists were right, and that what’s happening now in science can be understood as their triumph.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">To model is to systematise categorisations, the <i>valeur</i> of each categorisation being defined by its relations to other categorisations. Individual categories are <i>necessary but not sufficient</i>: the function of each depends on the function of others, just as the function of a neuronal group depends on the functions of other neuronal groups, and the function of a gene depends on the functions of other genes. The process of categorising (analysis) distinguishes individual units, but these are not categorised without reference to what they differ from. Information is difference, in relation to other difference. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><b><u>Footnote:</u></b></b></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> <i>The Ascent Of Man</i> episode 7: <i>The Majestic Clockwork</i>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-50103971802896406312012-02-18T18:32:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:32:10.704+11:00Modelling Is Relating<div style="text-align: justify;">Like all semiosis, modelling, including scientific modelling, involves relating categories of experience to each other with various degrees and scopes of consistency. Mathematical equations do this by relating measurements, including changing quantities, to each other. In formal systems, such as geometry, new unknown relations are reasoned from known relations, thereby expanding the system of relations by making the implicit explicit.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-46332053789672353772012-02-18T18:31:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:31:44.991+11:00The Metafunctional Dimensions Of Modelling Semiotically<div style="text-align: justify;">The conditions of modelling the categorisable semiotically can be understood in terms of the metafunctional dimensions of meaning-making: the ideational, which includes the experiential and the logical, the interpersonal and the textual. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Firstly, models are located in the space of ideational variation. Models are organised through experiencing the categorisable.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> Categorisable difference selects the categories that may or may not be organised into a model of the categorisable. So models depend on the recognition functionality of the neurological system and the prosthetic technologies that extend its recognition abilities, and they depend on the specific experience trajectories of modellers. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Secondly, models are located in the space of interpersonal variation. Models are organised by values that bias the orientation of modellers to different categories of experience. Limbic system functions that have been of adaptive value to ancestors invest the categories (that are selected by categorisable difference) with positive or negative value, and the complexification of categories within individuals — through the categorisation of categories and their differentiation through semiotic interactions with others — is the complexification of categorial values. Models are motivated organisations of categorisations. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thirdly, models are located in the space of textual variation. Models are organised through selective attention to value-categories: focusing on some categories as relevant, and filtering out others as irrelevant.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> Some value-categories are prominent threads in the weaving together of meanings, while others are thin or absent. Because modelling occurs through a perspectival lens, it is both enabling and disabling: a model is conditional on the assumptions on which it is organised.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[3]</a> Models are ‘ways of seeing’ (Berger 1972). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><u></u><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><u><u><b>Footnotes:</b></u></u></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> The ‘categorisable’ includes categorisations of the categorisable, categorisations of categorisations of the categorisable, and so on.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> This relates to Pike’s notion that a theory is like a window that only faces in one direction. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[3]</a> The influence of ones perspectival lens on categorising was shown by a seminal psychology experiment by Rosenhan (reported in Slater 2004) in which subjects faking their way into mental institutions were not detected by most psychiatrists.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-68647891335537916622012-02-18T18:31:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:31:16.285+11:00Metafunctional Consistency In Meaning-Making<div style="text-align: justify;">One aspect of “truth”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> is consistency in meaning-making, and given the metafunctional dimensions of meaning-making, this entails metafunctional consistency in meaning-making: experiential, logical, interpersonal and textual.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> To be <b>ideationally consistent</b> in meaning-making is to be consistent both in the representation of experience and in the logical relations said to obtain between representations of experience.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[3]</a> To be <b>interpersonally consistent</b> in meaning-making is to be consistent in the <i>values</i> given to — the <i>stance</i> taken on — ideational meanings. To be <b>textually consistent</b> in meaning-making is to be consistent in what is <i>attended to as relevant</i> with regard to ideational and interpersonal meanings. Different consistencies — including tensions between construals of experience, values inherent in construals, and attentions paid to construals — creates diversity in modelling. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Footnotes:</u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> The word ‘truth’ is a noun formed from the adjective ‘true’, which construes it metaphorically as an abstract thing in itself rather than congruently as a description of relations between things. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> From interpersonal and textual perspectives, ideational distinctions are a means of elaborating what is valued and focussed upon. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[3]</a> The word ‘real’ is often used to mean ideationally true, but it is often also extended to mean that the specific categorisations of the description exist as <i>properties of the perceivable</i>, independent of the modelling framework.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-82797069107106112802012-02-18T18:30:00.000+11:002019-05-17T06:39:43.204+10:00‘Consistency’ Means ‘Mutual Fit’<div style="text-align: justify;">
Consistent meaning-making is meaning-making that fits in the context of other meaning-making. Metafunctionally, this is experiential meaning-making fitting in the context of other experiential meaning-making: construals of experience fitting other construals of experience; logical meaning-making fitting in the context of other logical meaning-making: logical relations (between construals of experience) fitting other logical relations (between construals of experience); interpersonal meaning-making fitting in the context of other interpersonal meaning-making: valuings (of construals of experience) fitting other valuings (of construals of experience); textual meaning-making fitting in the context of other textual meaning-making: saliences (of valuings and construals of experience) fitting other saliences (of valuings and construals of experience).</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-72290703532332141212012-02-18T18:28:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:28:43.578+11:00The Variable Scope Of Semiotic Consistency<div style="text-align: justify;">Consistency is a gradable property, varying from as low a value as ‘not being inconsistent’ to ‘being in harmony’ to as high a value as ‘being wholly consistent’, and models may vary in terms of consistency within some domain of categorising. The “truth” of a model depends on the degree to which it fits other models. The scope within which meanings may be consistent varies from the very local to the more global. For example, ideational construals may be consistent within or across<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> fields, within or across tenors, within or across modes. Interpersonal values may be consistent within or across fields, within or across tenors, within or across modes. Textual saliences may be consistent within or across fields, within or across tenors, within or across modes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><b><u>Footnote:</u></b></b></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> This book is an attempt to establish some degree of ideational consistency across fields.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-12550580103316208282012-02-18T18:27:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:27:42.717+11:00The Phylogenetic Function Of Semiotic Consistency<div style="text-align: justify;">Metafunctional consistency is the selection principle in the evolution of modelling. Models are selected <i>for</i> (adopted, used, believed) and selected <i>against</i> (rejected or ignored) on the basis of ideational, interpersonal and textual consistency. There is a biological basis to the origin of this process to the extent that consistent modelling, in terms of construing experiences and assessing their relative value and relevance, increases the survival and reproductive prospects of the modellers.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The evolution of models is a process of each fitting, adapting to, other models (via their perceivable expressions) with which they interact (are correlated).<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> Models are adaptations to other models.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[3]</a> As each model adapts to others, the environment to which other related models adapt changes, so that the evolution of models is a continual pursuit of the moving target of fitting. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So the sense in which the categorisable selects certain models over others is as follows. The categorisable (which includes categories of the categorisable) selects certain categorisings over others, and each model is built from categorisings that fit each other, in a process of each model adapting to similarly constructed models. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><b><u>Footnote:</u></b></b></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Note that natural selection favours not just genes for phenotypic traits but also genes in organisms whose learnt behaviours result in more offspring, even though those behaviours are not the direct expression of genes. Cf Baldwin Effect. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> Just as, in biological evolution, gene complexes adapt (via phenotypes) to other gene complexes with which they interact. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[3]</a> Even though <i>a</i> model is not <i>the</i> model, models are not arbitrary in the sense that any is as good as the next, since not all models equally fit others with which they are correlated (interact).</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-54716187515382069162012-02-18T18:27:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:27:15.337+11:00Aligning With Specific Metafunctional Consistencies<div style="text-align: justify;">Meaning potential thus involves a web of different networks of metafunctional consistencies: different construals, different values, different foci of attention. Meaning-makers variously align (consistently or inconsistently<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a>) with different networks of consistency within the overall web of variant consistencies. Those who share a specific network of consistency potentially form a community of ‘like-minded’ individuals with a ‘common interest’: a community formed around a way of construing experience, a community formed around a way of valuing a construal, a community formed around a way of grading the relative importance of construals and values.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> Since each individual can align (consistently or inconsistently) with multiple networks, each can belong to multiple communities, “us”, and disassociate from multiple communities, “you” or “them”.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b>Footnotes:</b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> There is, of course, the question of consistency between what is said (semiotic behaviour) and what is done (non-semiotic behaviour). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> If each variant consistency is located along three dimensions: the ideational, interpersonal and textual, individuals that align with specific consistencies can be located at different points in the metafunctional space defined by those dimensions; communities correspond to clusters in that space.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-12390530044212404442012-02-18T18:25:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:25:35.828+11:00Facts And Objectivity<div style="text-align: justify;">The term ‘fact’ is a label for a model or proposition whose ideational consistency is regarded as certain by an individual or community.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> That is, the term ‘fact’ expresses an <i>interpersonal stance</i> toward an ideational construal. Similarly, the expression ‘just a theory’ is a label for a model whose ideational consistency is regarded as less certain by an individual or community. The scale of certainty is a dimension within the interpersonal system of modalisation: the semantic space between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 616-25). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">On the other hand, the term ‘dogma’ is a label for a model or proposition whose ideational consistency is regarded as obligatory by an individual or community. The scale of obligation is a dimension within the interpersonal system of modulation: the semantic space between ‘do!’ and ‘don’t’ (ibid). Importantly, terms like ‘fact’, ‘only a theory’ and ‘dogma’ express a <i>relation</i> between a model or proposition and an individual or community. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The terms ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ similarly express an interpersonal orientation toward metafunctional consistency. Objective and subjective are ways of <i>presenting</i> propositions.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> To present a proposition as ‘objective’ or ‘value-free’ or ‘reality’ is a <i>value-laden</i> claim about the proposition — the subjectivity sometimes disguised by being in tune with the shared values of a community — the interpersonal function of which is to remove the negotiability of the proposition. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>Footnotes:</u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Since facts are what we are certain of, they are propositions we believe to be true. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> The subjective or objective orientations may be expressed explicitly or implicitly.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-33430745310024542252012-02-18T18:25:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:25:01.142+11:00The Generation Of Variant Models<div style="text-align: justify;">Variation (for selection) is created by recombining what has gone before into novel arrangements. This includes novel arrangements of meaning and novel arrangements of meaning with regard to the context in which they function. The biological analogues of these are, on the one hand, genetic mutation and recombination, and on the other hand, the diffusion of species to new habitats, such as the expansion of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates from aquatic into terrestrial environments.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
<br />
</div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><b>(1) Recombining Potentials </b></b></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">New variants of a model can be created by recombining meanings within the model.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> If the degree of recombination is sufficient, the result may be a model that can no longer be considered a variant of the original. In science, this can happen when students rebel against a research tradition and build a model on the basis of new questions. As Bronowski<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn2">[2]</a> urges:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">It’s important that students bring a certain ragamuffin irreverence to their studies. They’re not here to worship what is known, but to question it. </blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><b>(2) Recombining Potential And Context: Generalisation </b></b></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">One way to create a new model is to take an existing one and spread it to a new context. This is a process of generalisation in the sense that the scope or range of the model is expanded: from the specific functional context in which it evolved into other contexts where other models may have already evolved. A recent example of this is Edelman’s selectionist approach to neuroscience, selectionism having been successful as a model in immunology as well as evolutionary biology. Another example in neuroscience is the technological model of brain function that was mapped across from the field of computer science. A more ancient example is the mapping of body parts onto the landscape, such that rivers, for instance, have heads, mouths and arms. This body-environment mapping was reversed in mediæval Europe, as when the four elements: air, fire, earth and water were mapped onto the body as the four fluids: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm, respectively, yielding the four humours: melancholic, choleric, sanguine and phlegmatic.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn3">[3]</a> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><b><u>Footnotes:</u></b></b></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> This is easier said than done, of course. Models are basins of attraction: once a model gains currency, it drags other attempts to theorise into it. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[2]</a> <i>The Ascent Of Man</i> episode 11: <i>Knowledge Or Certainty</i>. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[3]</a> Bartlett (2001 :204): </div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Mediæval thinking was dominated by the theory of ‘correspondences’, derived not from Christian revelation but from the idea, Greek in origin, that an explanation, to be part of the divine plan, had to be economical, symmetrical and æsthetically satisfying. What it ignored was the Greeks’ readiness to test a hypothesis by observation and experiment.</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-9379574545287990922012-02-18T18:24:00.000+11:002012-02-18T18:24:26.000+11:00The Selection Of Variant Models<div style="text-align: justify;">Kœstler<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftn1">[1]</a> (1968: 64):</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">However, even if European philosophy were only a series of footnotes to Plato, and even though Aristotle had a millenium stranglehold on physics and astronomy, their influence, when all is said, depended not so much on the originality of the teaching, as on a process of natural selection in the evolution of ideas. Out of a number of ideological mutations, a given society will select that philosophy which it unconsciously feels to be best suited for its need. </blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Monod (1971/1997: 165-6):</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">This selection [of ideas] must necessarily operate at two levels: that of the mind itself and that of performance.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">The performance value of an idea depends upon the change it brings to the behaviour of the person or the group that adopts it. The human group upon which a given idea confers greater cohesiveness, greater ambition, and greater self-confidence thereby receives from it an added power to expand which will insure the promotion of the idea itself. Its capacity to “take”, the extent to which it can be “put over” has little to do with the amount of objective truth the idea may contain. The important thing about the stout armature a religious ideology constitutes for a society is not what goes into its structure, but the fact that this structure is accepted, that it gains sway. So one cannot well separate such an idea’s power to spread from its power to perform.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">The “spreading power” — the infectivity, as it were — of ideas, is much more difficult to analyse. Let us say that it depends upon preexisting structures in the mind, among them ideas already implanted by culture, but also undoubtedly upon certain innate structures which we are hard put to identify. What is very plain, however, is that the ideas having the highest invading potential are those that explain man by assigning him his place in an immanent destiny, in whose bosom his anxiety dissolves. </blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><b></b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><b><u>Footnote:</u></b></b></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1916155171197147375#_ftnref">[1]</a> Kœstler (1979: 523ff) thought of the evolution of ideas as a <i>continuation</i> of biological evolution, involving mutation, selection, survival-value, and adaptation to a ‘period’s intellectual milieu’.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1916155171197147375.post-112566073753632452012-02-18T18:23:00.001+11:002012-02-18T18:23:38.904+11:00Controlling Variation: Institutions As Model Reproduction Nurseries<div style="text-align: justify;">Depew & Weber (1996: 395):</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Controlling what counts as phenomena is a real function of research traditions… </blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">In the evolution of models, a specific model is selected every time it is used. One general means of influencing the selection of a model is the teaching of specific variants in institutions so that they are reproduced widely across a population and passed on to succeeding generations of model users. As semiotically organised social systems, institutions also differentially reward model users, depending on the model they use. By conferring social status and/or material wealth on the users of their favoured models, institutions make the use of the model more likely in the social domains under their control.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com