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Article 3435 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Democritus, Schroedinger, and the HOW of signs and reference
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Date: 3 Feb 92 19:04:17 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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 When I reflect on Mikhail Zeleny's critique of various proposals re:
 how signs signify and how references refer, I now see a physical correlative
 and a physical dichotomy which is none other than the wave-particle/local-global
 dichotomy of physics and "natural philosophy".  How indeed can an
 "atomic", "iconic", "local" thingy refer to anything or mean anything?
 Well, what if one introduces the modern physics "paradigm" (sic) in which
 we speak of particles as having both local AND global aspects, both
 compact AND distributed characteristics?  When we say that X is a symbol that
 refers-to/means Y, we are isolating X in its "localness" in order to
 identify it, however the FUNCTIONING of the sign invokes its "globalness"
 and those characteristics which make it possible to refer.
 Now ultimately it is the allowed combinations of physical states that define
 "combinatorics" . So when one maintains that reference is computational,
 one is merely maintaining a position in accord with current 
 best estimations of the nature of the universe.

 


