From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!yorku.ca!rreiner Tue Nov 19 11:09:30 EST 1991
Article 1251 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!yorku.ca!rreiner
>From: rreiner@nexus.yorku.ca (Richard Reiner)
Subject: Re: Is semiotics an "informal logic"?
Message-ID: <rreiner.689651023@yorku.ca>
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Organization: York University
References: <rreiner.689479216@yorku.ca> <Veo4aB1w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1991 01:43:43 GMT

>No, don't post a lot of laborious examples.  But, do you think
>your impression that the book is bad is because it is written
>within another paradigm of logic and the assumptions it makes are
>alien to you?

I find the book bad not because its approach or subject matter are
unfamilar to me (in this case I would not presume to judge it), but
rather because they *are* familar, and Eco has made a botch of his
attempt to handle them.  He makes mistakes so elementary (not only in
understanding the work from other fields that he draws on, but also in
his own reasoning) that I would mark down a paper from a first year
student if it contained any of them.

Anyway, what is "another paradigm of logic" supposed to mean?  If you
mean "another logic", and if this had been what Eco had developed,
then it could only have been criticized in two ways: for internal
consistency and (external) usefulness.  But Eco does not develop a
logic; instead he gives some miscellaneous symbolisms (which contain
mostly terms that are not properly defined), and a lot of vague
assertions about these symbolisms.

Again, if my assertions seem wild, I am prepared to post some
examples.

>Also, was Eco attempting to relate semiotics to ongoing work in AI?

Certainly.  The first of the two Parts of the book culminates in the
idea (the "Model Q of infinite semantic recursivity") Eco thinks he
has taken from an AI paper by Ross Quillian.  This is supposed to
solve all of the problems posed in the preceeding chapters.  Again, as
I have mentioned before, Eco misunderstands Quillian.  Better yet, he
embraces a semantic theory based on infinite regress (and thinks that
Quillian has done so too).  This is just silly.

Richard


