12,080
edits
Changes
MyWikiBiz, Author Your Legacy — Friday November 22, 2024
Jump to navigationJump to searchDirectory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 6 (view source)
Revision as of 04:00, 15 August 2011
, 04:00, 15 August 2011→6.8. A Perspective on Computation: raw text
===6.8. A Perspective on Computation===
===6.8. A Perspective on Computation===
<pre>
In this section, instead of presenting a standard foundation for computation theory, I focus on a single idea that captures the essence of the computational approach, given that the background assumptions of a formal approach are already in place, in others words, amounting to the specific difference that the CL style adds to the FL perspective.
The notion of computation that makes sense in this setting conceives it as a process that replaces signs with better signs of the same objects. For instance, a computation replaces arbitrary indications of numerical values and other formal entities with clearer and more concise signs of the same objects, ultimately resulting in the clearest and most concise signs of them, called their "canonical interpretants" or "normal forms".
Viewed from a standpoint in the pragmatic theory of signs, computation is a process that trades a sign for a "better" sign of the same object. Thus, a computation is an interpretive process whose passage from sign to interpretant sign "improves" the indication of the object in some way. The dimensions along which signs can be compared are various, usually being described as measures of "clarity", "distinctness", or "usability" of the information conveyed, but all such measures are "interpretive" in character. That is, the sense in which a computation improves its signs is relative to the purpose actualized in a given moment of interpretation.
It is probably worth emphasizing this point. There need be nothing intrinsic to a sign itself that makes it better or worse than another. This is apparent from examples as simple as the sign relations A and B, where nothing intrinsic to the grammatical categories of signs makes either the nouns or the pronouns essentially better than the others in every situation. In general, a preference defined on signs need reflect nothing more than the purpose or caprice of a particular interpreter at a given moment of interpretation. Of course, one is usually interested in cases where a measure of aptness, quality, or utility can be justified on more stable and substantial grounds.
Computation adds to the bare conception of a sign relation a notion of progress, which implies in turn: (1) the dynamic notion of a temporal process taking place between signs, and (2) the evaluative notion of a utility measure rating each sign's relative virtue as a sign.
A "sign process" or "interpretive process" is hypothesized to take place in the connotative plane of a particular sign relation, constituting a temporal process or a dynamic system that is responsible for changing signs into their interpretant signs. A "sign utility" is a comparative measure of sign quality, rating each sign's relative virtues as a sign of a given object. Progress in a sign process means that a change taking place between signs is one that acts in concert with increasing the sign's quality of indication.
</pre>
===6.9. Higher Order Sign Relations : Introduction===
===6.9. Higher Order Sign Relations : Introduction===
