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Por Robert Marty
Número 38
Keywords
: cognitive science, collective cognition, Peircean semiotics,
rational knowledge
Abstract
Theory of collective cognition implies the capture
of cognitive functions that are accomplished by collective entities
as groups, enterprises, organizations or institutions. The most
often, the collective is provided with the same attributes and the
same abilities as the individual. This recover an agglutination
of individual thought in collective thought preserving essential
characteristics of the individual thought. Then the problem is:
to study, describe and formalize the agglutination of individual
thought in collective thought preserving essential characteristics
of the individual thought.
Taking in account the network of the relationships
between individuals, the collective entities, and the fact that
the objects of knowledge are mediatized by signs we capture the
Peirce's conceptions of the individuals living under a "perfusion
of signs". Indeed , the interpretations of the agents are heterogeneous
: spontaneously, they "degenerate" signs according to
their abilities, that is to say they construct objects phenomenologically
more poor that it is possible using the totality of the information
conveyed by the signs (we call this "phenomenological entropy").
Using Peircean semiotics and especially the lattice of the ten classes
of signs we show that the cognition is semiotically "foliated"
and that is possible to pose semiotic conditions for a rational
knowledge.
To
think with accuracy about collective cognition it is necessary to
define with precision the subject of this cognition.This latter
it is not a totality of separate individuals constituted by the
unique common reference to an or several objects of knowledge. Individuals
communicate, knowledge spreads in human communities so much that
Sperber (1987) has been able to advance the metaphor - perhaps a
bit risky - of a "epidemiology of representations". It
concerns of course the capture of cognitive functions that are accomplished
by collective entities as groups, enterprises, organizations, institutions
(Levy 1990) ; for a lot of reasons these functions have to be distinguished
from purely individual cognitive phenomena. However reflections
in this area (the cognitive ecology) lead to a collective entity
provided with a mind and the possibility of express in a thought
like any individual. That allows us to underline that in this passage
from the individual to the collective, that is most often done in
spontaneous manner and without examination, the collective is provided
with the same attributes and the same abilities as the individual.
In other words, in this agglutination of individual thought in collective
thought, and whatever the mode of agglutination, essential characteristics
of the individual thought are preserved. There is a sort of a priori
of mereologic nature that deserves to be examined in view of its
justification. For that purpose we will put forward the notion of
network that will allow us to conceive rationally the human totalities
as collective totalities.
The notion of network is not required only to constitute collective
individual entities; it is as necessary to form the basis of the
individual cognition on which is based in turn collective cognition.
Indeed, all knowledge with regard to any object (material or non)
for a given individual is the result of a direct experience of this
object, and of the informations on the object that he acquires as
member of the network. This latter (mediate experience) is absolutely
determining1 in the meaning where
it organizes the original experience. It is knowledge by signs:
messages transported by the network are the amount of information
about the object of which they stand for under a certain (cognitive)
aspect. The effect of a sign on an individual is the production
of an interpretant (a determination of its mind of a particular
kind that Peirce qualifies "a cognition of a mind" in
Peirce (1931-58:2-242). In the semiosis (interpretation of a sign)
the individual is informed that the qualities or configurations
of qualities that the sign that he perceives posseses are qualities
or configurations of qualities that possesses another object that
is the object of knowledge absent from the field of its current
experience. He builds its conception of the object and organizes
its knowledge by accumulation and successive restructurings that
"stick" its conceptions permanently with the information
of any nature that he get.
For a rigorous approach of collective cognition it is necessary
therefore, according to us, to take social networks into consideration
on the one hand and the semiotic fact that is coextensive to each
acquisition of knowledge on the other hand. This is why by analogy
with the mathematical flow theory on a graph we suggest to formalize
collective cognition in terms of flows of signs on a network. The
analogy is purely formal and exclude for the moment any quantitative
approach like in the theory of information. Notice that this approach
organizes formally the conception of Peirce according to whatever
individual lives under a "perfusion of signs" . Note also,
from these verifications of common sense, how much the semiotics
is the most notable absentee of cognitive science, probably because
the linguistics fills (badly) the role that, in our idea, would
have to return it.
1. Networks, signs and cognition
1.1.
Networks
In the perspective that come you to evoke we will suppose therefore
that nodes of networks are occupied by agents rather than by individuals
and that its arcs are canals of communication effectively covered
by signs. We underline in the way the active character of the nodes
of the network which can be interpreters as well as sign transmitters.
In addition we will suppose that the network is related, that is
to say that no agent or subnetwork of agents is isolated. By organizing
a priori agents in network have insured to incorporate in the modelization
of collective cognition not only interindividual communications
that bring a part of the cognitive information on objects of the
world but also communications between individuals, groups, organizations
and institutions. It suffices to notice that to every group, organization
or social institution one can associate a related subnetwork and
to consider that all agents of this subnetwork are equivalent, (under
a certain aspect that corresponds to specific communication canals
instituted by the membership to the group, to the organization or
to the institution). That does not forbid that, furthermore, individuals
preserve their interpersonal communication canals. The game of the
multiple memberships make that all agent can belong to several subnetworks
of this type. That will authorize us to replace some subnetworks
linked to social groups by an unique collective agent able to emit
and to interpret signs in the same way that an individual agent.
The same one agent, for each of its memberships, will be able therefore
to play the role of representative of each collective agent (it
will be, in each of these roles, a "Sir as" like has told
P.Bourdieu: as consumer, as viewer, as professor, as taxpayer, etc,
etc,...). We will not seek to specify unduly the formal structure
of the network beyond coherence or consistency demands because that
would lead us to pilot the construction of the model by considerations
that are not stemming the observation of facts. We can admit a certain
vagueness as for representations in the network of the different
collective agents and individual agents that constitute them. It
is clear however that, in many areas, it is possible to implement
abstract formalisms clearly more advanced (Parrochia 1993).
1.2.
Signs
In our introduction, we have made implicitly reference in a notion
of sign that situates us in the triadic semiotics of Peirce and
this of a vague way as above-mentioned: a sign is something that
stands for other thing for someone. Note immediately that there
is no question to introduce any pair signifiant/signified or any
pair expression/content. Indeed, the saussurean signified as well
as the hjelmslevean content have universal value for a culture:
they are normative in the meaning where, in the semiological analysis,
they are considered as the "already-there is" to which
a given subject accesss or does not access according to its anterior
cognitive trip. It is difficult, from there to conceive the collective
cognition in its relationships with the individual cognition because
the first emerges from a universalism that ignores the singularity
(therefore also the negativity) of the second. On the other hand,
the peircean triadic sign such that we have formalized it and completed
(Marty 1990) is perfectly adapted to our purpose since it allows
to individualize the relations of every agent to any object of knowledge
according to its personal implication in institutions of the meaning
that rule the relationship between the signs and their objects (that
we could have call cultural codes if the notion of code was less
rigid, less reified). We will analyze further the role and the cognitive
function of these relationships.
At present it is advisable to expose briefly and more precise manner
the triadic conception of the sign that we will implement. To tell
that a sign is triadic is to tell that it is constituted three elements:
the object, the sign itself and the interpretant. The object is
the reality or fragment of the reality that determines the sign
(a "knowable"); it can belong or non to the physical world.
The sign is the concrete thing that represents and the interpretant
is, in the first moment of the analysis, a connection "already-there
is" between object and sign, connection instituted by the culture
(a micro-social institution in the meaning of the Institutional
Analysis, Lourau, 1970) and internalized in varying degrees by members
of a community2. The agent is
therefore the place some which micro-institutions expresses itself;
it is the place of their particularity. It is at this level that
appears possibly the negation of the institution as universal norm.
Then one sees that this conception of the sign brings social dialectic
to the heart of the model because it is easy to conceive that a
denied norm and transformed by a significant majority of agents
of the network opens up in the short term on a transformation of
the norm in question and allows to take charge the temporal dynamic
of meaning. In short, the interpretant is a social norm established
under its universal aspect (moment); and under its psychological
aspect, internalized hic et nunc by an interpreter; it is the particular
determination of a mind conditioned both by this norm that it has
internalized (in the "Teacher Society" in the meaning
of Lourau) and by its own experience of the field to which the norm
applies.
In conclusion the signs that circulate in the network refer, in
the meaning that comes to be stated, to the objects of knowledge
with which they maintain an instituted relationship (but always
under way of institution) because they carry some characteristics
these objects. They allow agents of the network that receive them
to enter in mediate cognitive relationship , that is to say informed
by the culture, with these objects.
1.3.
Cognition
How signs do they bring knowledge on real objects to an agent of
the network? A prerequisite is that this agent has internalized
and/or builds a connection signs/object; in others terms it is necessary
that happen what we have called a phenomenology of seconds intention
(Marty 1990) according to whether a perceived thing - the sign -
is present to the senses but it is a thing generally absent from
the field of the perception - the object - that is present to the
mind.
This prerequisite being supposed one can begin to give general elements
of reply by calling on a taxinomy universally adopted of signs,
borrowed to Peirce (and used sometimes without proper judgement)
namely icon - index - symbols. An icon is a sign that possesses
qualities or a configuration of qualities that possesses also the
object (it is a sign by "resemblance" , this term having
to be used with a lot of precaution, just to give an idea because
it is too vague). An index directs the attention on the object with
which it is really connected. A symbol is an interpreted sign as
being an instance of a social convention, law or collective habitus
(one sees here the necessity of the prerequisite); more generally
a symbol is a sign to which a community attributes a value of regularity
for an indefinite future. Iconic
signs bring information on their objects since they possess qualities
of this object. These qualities, configured or non, are selected
de facto to the moment of the actualization of the connection with
the object whose they constitute the essence itself. Index allow
to identify objects on which is brought the information and symbols
mobilize to their purpose concepts, laws or habitus that them are
applicable (for example the membership of the object to a class
of objects labelled by a name in the culture; a symbol states therefore
that its object "tomb under a concept"; in other words,
is an instance of law).
It is important to note that these categories do not constitute
a tripartition of signs. More precisely and by definition, an index
contains necessarily an icon and a symbol contains necessarily an
index therefore also an icon.
However for a given sign a little bit complex, it can happen that
parts of this sign function as icons, others as index, others again
as symbols not without that these icons have any relationship with
those that are logically incorporated in index. The same notices
holds for symbols in relation to index. The perfect sign is that
that functions simultaneously to the three levels3;
it does not exist necessarily for each object on which one wants
to transmit the knowledge. It will be necessary then to resort to
a combination of the different categories of signs to give a complete
cognitive representation. This are considerations of this order
that are going to allow us complexify the model.
2. Complexification of the model
2.1.
Modes of being
Signs that circulate in the network represent therefore, for agents
that are in place in the nodes of the network, objects to which
they are connected, under a certain aspect. It follows that the
representation of an object and, by way consequence, the cognition
on this object, depends a priori on the performance of the sign
in this connection. The latter is conditioned, in a way, by the
capacities of the sign to connect and it is clear that, in the case
of connections by social convention at least, it is what motivates
the choice of signs. Modes of being covered categorizations of possibilities
a priori for a thing to be connected with an other. It is advisable
therefore to grant them the greatest importance since they determine
entirely the mediate cognition. As far as we are concerned, since
a sign is a concrete thing, we are going to categorize relational
capacities of concrete things. Previously, it is necessary to notice
and keep constantly present to the mind that a sign is a fragment
of the physical universe that "loan" a part to its being
to another fragment of the universe. If Peirce could write: "
it is a thing to be and it is another thing to be represented ",
it is precisely because the connection between a sign and an object,
even if is it highly faithful , can practically never represent
the whole of being of the object. A such thing would be possible
only in a "singleton" universe with an unique element
that would be both sign, object and interpretant.
Modes of being are therefore categories of connection possibilities.
One can define them rigorously from formal purely considerations
by situating them in the relational algebra from a formalization
of the perception of the physical world into relational structure
terms (Marty 1990 and 1992a ). We give here only the results by
underlining that it is in perfect concordance with phaneroscopic
or coenopythagorean categories of Peirce, that is to say categories
of elements of phenomenon. One distinguishes modes of being unary
or monadic corresponding to the peircean Firstness that connect
a sign to its object by reference to common qualitative possibilities
(connection by the quality: two things producing, for example, a
"feeling of red" belong to the class of red things that
bases the "redness" as general quality and this common
membership connects them ); modes of being binary or dyadic that
are connections de facto in which two things merge in an event whose
they are protagonists and that they constitute (it is the case of
every action-reaction in the physical universe that illustrates
the peircean Secondness ) and modes of being ternary or triadic
that institute the mediations between two other things (it is the
case of a mental act that connects a sign and its object in accordance
with a law or regularity whose it is an instance : this case illustrates
perfectly the peircean Thirdness ). Laws or regularities in question
preexist in the explicit form (laws the physical world, concepts,
social conventions institutionalized), or the implicit form (habitus,
instituted social, "practical" ideologies",...).
There are not others "relational" modes of being possible.
Indeed, a relational algebra theorem whose Peirce had the intuition
and established in different but convergent theorical contexts(Herzberger
1981, Marty 1990, Burch 1992) allows to establish that any other
mode of being can be described as a combination (like to the one
which , in chemistry, put together atoms in molecules) of the three
fundamental modes of being .
In addition these three modes of being are organized into hierarchy
by non reciprocal relationships of presupposition : the Thirdness
presupposes the Secondness which presupposes the Firstness. It is
obvious since all regularity concerns necessarily the Existent and
Facts which presuppose incarnate general qualities of the matter.
To take in account the modes of being in constitutive relationships
of the sign lead logically to a categorization of signs that complexifies
the initial purpose and presents a great interest for the study
of the collective cognition.
2.2. Classes of signs
A finer analysis of the triadic sign shows that the triad is established
by means a twofold determination : first, from the sign by the object,
second, from the interpretant by the sign.These dyadic relationships
are implied, incorporated in the triad. They express modes of being
in the sign of the elements of the sign. Now, the hierarchy of modes
of being impose that these determination respect the order 3,2,1
according to whether a mode of being Third able determine a Third,
a Second or a First, a mode of being Second able determine a Second
or a First and a First can determine only a First. Correspondingly
10 combinations only are phenomenologically possible. There are
therefore only 10 classes of signs possible. In addition these 10
classes of signs are ordered in an algebraic structure called lattice
(these results are established and widened in Marty 1990 using algebraic
category theory).
The lattice of 10 triadic classes of signs constitutes therefore
a real grammar that governs relationships of signs . It follows
that every set of signs given to the perception as a collective
totality is structured a priori by these relationships. It seems
that a result of this nature that concerns notably the representation
of knowledge could have be usefully taken in account in cognitive
science.
2.3.The cognitive foliation
The knowledge in relation to an object that reach the agents of
the network by means signs are therefore determined by modes of
being of the objects that they represent and by modes of being of
the signs that support the representation. An object "third"
(a regularity) will be able therefore to be represented by an other
object third, an object "second" or an object "first",
an object second by another second or by a first, a first only by
a first. The same happens in the relationship of the sign to the
interpretant and the two modes of being are concatened. It can happen
a sort of phenomenological entropy (for example, a third that is
represented by a second can be interpreted as a second or a first
that is incorporated in this second). In other words each agent
builds, according to its particular relation to institutions of
the meaning, a set of objects determined by modes of being that
it identifies. These objects are structured by these modes of being;
they belong to classes of signs that are ordered by the lattice.
These objects are, in a way, "above" signs to different
levels determined by their phenomenology. They constitute a very
"foliation" of knowledge transported by the representation
(for an application to semantic networks, to see Marty 1992a, and
to the theory of text to see Marty 1992b). In addition, the different
levels of this foliation are linked by relationships of the lattice
a bit to the manner whose sheets of calculation can be linked in
a spreadsheet It follows that flows of signs that reach an agent
of the network are in fact the "multiflows" in a different
and more precise meaning that expresses Parrochia (1993 : 213).
That allows an approach clearly more structured of the "communication
in movement"(Parrochia, 1993:71).
3.
Cognitive multiflows on a network
3.1.
From the individual to the collective
We are now in position to formalize in new terms the real situation
in which agents of the network receive and emit signs by means canals
that are to their disposition. What stands to reason, it is that
one will not be able to speak collective cognition if all agents
of the network have not obtained the same information, directly
or indirectly, and if they it have not all interpreted likewise
(that is to say if they have not all attributed to the same object
qualities -configured or non - of an even signs, and/or if they
have not all taken in account its objective relationships with other
objects, and/or if they have not interiorized the same law or regularities
and they have not considered that this latter incorporate the object
and his relations in their application area).
However, we have seen furthermore that, according to the relations
that agents maintain with micro-institutions of the meaning (notably
correspondingly of their social status) agents can spontaneously
"degenerate" signs (in the meaning of the phenomenological
entropy, that is to say that they construct signs by taking only
in account modes of being underlying to these that have determined
the sign to its emission). It follows that the collective cognition
situates necessarily at the lowest phenomenological level: it is
the common sign inferior to the others the highest in the lattice
that characterizes the collective cognition in relation to this
object.
Conversely the sign less raised superior to the others characterizes
the highest knowledge level reached by at least one agent of the
network.
3.2. Image and cognition
Every experience is cognitive because it consists of a relation
with the object that brings necessarily some information on this
object. With Peirce we define the conscience as a "bundle of
feelings" and therefore the conscience of an any object is
a certain bundle of qualities of feelings whose this object is the
cause. Now, in addition, the sign of the lower level are precisely
the qualisigns or signs of quality. It suffices therefore that all
agents of the network have had an unique relation with an object
in order that one could speak collective cognition of this object.
There is, in a way, a guarantee cognitive level . It is the product
of an "emotional" immediate interpretant that builds the
qualisigns materialized in the iconic sinsigns (singular things
that possess qualities of the object). These latter are, approximatively,
images of the common sense. It follows that the "civilization
of the image" is that that produces surely the collective cognition
of lower cognitive level. This conclusion that is not the result
of the intuition, precisely match up the observations of many observer
of the social communication (to see also Marty, to appear).
3.3. Diffusion and distribution of knowledge in a network
It is clear that the introduction of the new cultural mass technologies
(Levy 1990) by modifying existent canals and by creating again canals
increases possibilities of agents, obtaining practically for every
possibilities of a mediatized experience with most of objects. However
this modification cannot generate a cognition of superior level
(in the meaning of the lattice of the classes of signs) only if
it is accompanied by elements that allow it, namely the put at disposal
of legisigns of all types (there are six) allowing the elaboration
of a rational knowledge of objects by means of "logical"
interpretants. Indeed agents can create their own legisigns but,
current conditions of the reception that isolate agents, have for
consequence that laws that they elaborate spontaneously are rarely
confronted with others, hence a certain epistemological solipsism.
In conclusion, note that the interest of the semiotic formalization
of dynamic cognitive phenomenon that concerns the sociology of the
cognition does not limit only to the reformulation in terms more
or less sophisticated of observations noticing the common sense.
Because one can, for example, sink in the complexity of the network
and its subnetworks linked to groups, organizations and institutions
so as to release properly semiotic characteristics of the different
relations to knowledge of these social categories. Similarly one
can think that some questions of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence
could be a little clarified. It is necessary also to underline strongly
that the model can complicate - by using, for example, the hexadic
sign (Marty 1990: 201) according to the necessities of the research.
Notas:
1
That is highlight, for example, in this well known experience of
psychologists in which a person mixed to a ten accomplices finishes
by admitting, with all the other participants, that a round object
is square.
2
One can consider that a cultural community and the bundle of its
micro-institutions of the meaning are interdefined
3 Reflections of Peirce on signs
were notably motivated by the research of an ideal notation system
for needs of the logic.
Referencias:
Burch,
R.W., (1992) A Peircean reduction thesis and the Foundations
of the Topological logic, , Lubbock, Texas, Texas Tech University
Press.
Herzberger H.G., (1981) "Peirce Remarkable Theorem" in
Pragmatism and Purpose, 41-58. Toronto : University of Toronto
Press.
Lévy, P., (1990) Les technologies de l'intelligence,
l'avenir de la pensée à l'ère informatique,
Paris, La découverte.
--- (1992) "Les systèmes à base de connaissances
comme modes de transmission de l'expertise" in Intellectica,
1991/92, 181-214.
Lourau, R., (1970). L'Analyse Institutionnelle,Paris, Editions
de Minuit.
Marty, R., (1990). L'Algèbre des signes. Amsterdam-Philadelphie
,
John Benjamins B.V.
--- (1992a), "Foliated Semantic Networks : concepts, facts
and qualities" in Semantic Networks in Artificial Intelligence,
Fritz Lehmann (ed.), 679-696. London : Pergamon Press.
--- (1992b), "Semiótica del texto : Niveles y pasarelas"
in Signa 1, 107:131, Asociación Española
de Semiótica.
Parrochia, D., (1993). Philosophie des réseaux Paris
: Presses Universitaires de France.
Peirce, C.S., (1931-58), Collected Papers. Burcks W., Hartshorne
H., Weiss P. (ed.). Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press
Sperber, D., (1987), "Anthropology and psychology" in
Towards an epidemiology of representations, Man (M.S.),
n° 20, 73-89.
Dr.
Robert Marty
Professeur Emérite en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication
Université de Perpignan, France. |