Re: Dispersion, Uncertainty, Doubt, Entropy (DUDE❢)

Thread:
JA:http://web.archive.org/web/20140630184801/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13445

Peircers,

Correcting a few typos and continuing ...

Just a note to anchor a series of recurring thoughts that come to mind incidental to the thread on 
entropy, etc., but I won't have too much to say on the bio-chemico-physico-thermo-dynamic side of 
things, so I'll spin this off under a separate heading.  My interest in this topic arises mainly 
from my long-time work on inquiry driven systems, where understanding the intertwined measures of 
uncertainty and information is critical to comprehending the dynamics of inquiry.

In a famous passage, Peirce says that inquiry begins with the "irritation of doubt" and ends when 
the irritation is soothed.  Here we find the same compound of affective and cognitive ingredients 
that we find in Aristotle's original recipe for the sign relation.

When we view inquiry as a process taking place in a system the first thing we have to ask is what 
are the properties or variables that we need to consider in describing the state of the system at 
any given time.  Taking a Peircean perspective on a system capable of undergoing anything like an 
inquiry process, we are led to ask what are the conditions for the possibility of a system having 
"states of uncertainty" and "states of information" as state variables.

Saved by the Belle, and time for dinner ...

Jon

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