Frederik Stjernfelt

This article investigates recent shifts in the landscape of Artificial Intelligence (ai), focusing on the emergence and controversies surrounding Large Language Models (llm s). Tracing the historical trajectory of ai enthusiasm from the 1960s to the present, the paper delves into the paradigm shifts influenced by symbolic ai, parallel distributed processing, and the rise of llm s, with particular emphasis on the transformative impact of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 release in late 2022. The paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on ai ethics, societal implications, and the intricate debate surrounding the perceived intelligence and consciousness of contemporary language models.

T.L. Short’s _Charles Peirce and Modern Science,_ in which he discusses Peirce’s intimate relation to modern science, simultaneously functions as Short’s own philosophical testament. Short’s overall argument is that Peirce takes _inquiry_ to be the main definition of science, implying that all other definition attempts or central issues of science are but products of inquiry: methods, experiments, observations, conclusions, results, syntheses, theory buildings, system constructions, laws, predictions, metaphysical assumptions, scientific values, etc. On this basis, Short develops central Peircean ideas such as inquiry into inquiry, phenomenology, and his “normative sciences” as elements of a reinvigorated and metaphysically ambitious version of empiricism. In this process, however, certain problems appear, such as Short’s tendency to refute any relevance in scientific investigations of systematicity, the a priori, the strive for conclusions and results.

Many types of everyday and specialized reasoning depend on diagrams: we use maps to find our way, we draw graphs and sketches to communicate concepts and prove geometrical theorems, and we manipulate diagrams to explore new creative solutions to problems. The active involvement and manipulation of representational artifacts for purposes of thinking and communicating is discussed in relation to C.S. Peirce’s notion of diagrammatical reasoning. We propose to extend Peirce’s original ideas and sketch a conceptual framework that delineates different kinds of diagram manipulation: Sometimes diagrams are manipulated in order to profile known information in an optimal fashion. At other times diagrams are explored in order to gain new insights, solve problems or discover hidden meaning potentials. The latter cases often entail manipulations that either generate additional information or extract information by means of abstraction. Ideas are substantiated by reference to ethnographic, experimental and historical examples.

En 2007, le philosophe danois Frederik Stjernfelt a donné une nouvelle vigueur aux études sur les diagrammes en publiant son opus majeur Diagrammatology. Ce terme a acquis l’extension d’une sous-discipline à part entière à l’intérieur des études sémiotiques. La diagrammatologie fédère aujourd’hui des recherches venues des sciences cognitives aussi bien que du post-structuralisme, des mathématiques et des études littéraires. Frederik Stjernfelt explique comment la diagrammatologie résulte pour lui d’une redéfinition de certains concepts fondamentaux (ceux de signe, de proposition et de diagramme au premier chef) amorcée par le père du pragmatisme, Charles S. Peirce.

This book investigates a number of central problems in the philosophy of Charles Peirce grouped around the realism of his semiotics: the issue of how sign systems are developed and used in the investigation of reality. Thus, it deals with the precise character of Peirce's realism; with Peirce's special notion of propositions as signs which, at the same time, denote and describe the same object. It deals with diagrams as signs which depict more or less abstract states-of-affairs, facilitating reasoning about them; with assertions as public claims about the truth of propositions. It deals with iconicity in logic, the issue of self-control in reasoning, dependences between phenomena in their realist descriptions. A number of chapters deal with applied semiotics: with biosemiotic sign use among pre-human organisms: the multimedia combination of pictorial and linguistic information in human semiotic genres like cartoons, posters, poetry, monuments. All in all, the book makes a strong case for the actual relevance of Peirce's realist semiotics.

To Peirce scholars and other aficionados of logic, semiotics, and pragmatism, 2017 brought the great news of Bellucci’s Speculative Grammar book, providing the eye-opening first detailed chronological overview over Peirce’s career-length developing of his semiotics. Now, the first volume of Ahti Pietarinen’s long-awaited three-volume publication of the totality of Peirce’s writings on his mature logic representation system known as Existential Graphs not only gives us a plethora of hitherto unpublished Peirce papers but also a new and in many ways surprising view into the origin and development of this important fruit of Peirce’s last, creative philosophical burst taking its beginning around 1896, famously to...

This open access monograph argues established democratic norms for freedom of expression should be implemented on the internet. Moderating policies of tech companies as Facebook, Twitter and Google have resulted in posts being removed on an industrial scale. While this moderation is often encouraged by governments - on the pretext that terrorism, bullying, pornography, “hate speech” and “fake news” will slowly disappear from the internet - it enables tech companies to censure our society. It is the social media companies who define what is blacklisted in their community standards. And given the dominance of social media in our information society, we run the risk of outsourcing the definition of our principles for discussion in the public domain to private companies. Instead of leaving it to social media companies only to take action, the authors argue democratic institutions should take an active role in moderating criminal content on the internet. To make this possible, tech companies should be analyzed whether they are approaching a monopoly. Antitrust legislation should be applied to bring those monopolies within democratic governmental oversight. Despite being in different stages in their lives, Anne Mette is in the startup phase of her research career, while Frederik is one of the most prolific philosophers in Denmark, the authors found each other in their concern about Free Speech on the internet. The book was originally published in Danish as Dit opslag er blevet fjernet - techgiganter & ytringsfrihed. Praise for 'Your Post has been Removed' "From my perspective both as a politician and as private book collector, this is the most important non-fiction book of the 21st Century. It should be disseminated to all European citizens. The learnings of this book and the use we make of them today are crucial for every man, woman and child on earth. Now and in the future.” Jens Rohde, member of the European Parliament for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe “This timely book compellingly presents an impressive array of information and analysis about the urgent threats the tech giants pose to the robust freedom of speech and access to information that are essential for individual liberty and democratic self-government. It constructively explores potential strategies for restoring individual control over information flows to and about us. Policymakers worldwide should take heed!” Nadine Strossen, Professor, New York Law School. Author, HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship.

The seventh sign in Charles Peirce’s well-known 10-sign taxonomy of the 1903 Syllabus has received relatively little attention compared to many other types of sign that he described. It is the sign type of “Dicent Indexical Legisigns”, a result of the combinatory strategy of the 3x3 elementary sign aspects defined by the three basic sign trichotomies of Qualisign-Sinsign-Legisign, Icon-Index-Symbol and Rheme-Dicisign-Argument, a new strategy developed by Peirce in that famous text. It is well known how such aspects do not combine freely, hence not resulting in 3 × 3 × 3 = 27 sign types, but only in 10 sign types, due to the application of the rule aptly summarized by Bellucci as “a certain combination...

What are the points of contact between Peirce’s and Husserl’s thoughts? Ever since the rather negative conclusions of Herbert Spiegelberg’s 1956 evaluation of the commonalities in Peirce’s and Husserl’s systems of thought, virtually no comprehensive studies have appeared on the mutual insights that could be obtained from the works of these two influential philosophers, despite the fact that some of their fundamental ideas germinated under similar conditions, contexts, influences and predecessors.

This paper addresses the concept of semiotic scaffolding by considering it in light of questions arising from the contemporary challenge to the humanities. This challenge comes from a mixture of scientistic demands, opportunism on the part of Western governments in thrall to neo-liberalism, along with crass economic utilitarianism. In this paper we attempt to outline what a theory of semiotic scaffolding may offer to an understanding of the humanities’ contemporary role, as well as what the humanities might offer to the elucidation of semiotic scaffolding. We argue that traditional humanist positions adopted in defence of the humanities fail to articulate the enhancement of humanity that semiotic scaffolding represents. At the same time, we note that the concept of scaffolding is sometimes in danger of taking on a functionalist perspective which understanding the humanities modus operandi is likely to dispel. Putting forward these arguments, we draw on the work of Peirce, Cassirer and Sebeok in elucidating the structural and ‘future-orientated’ benefits of the scaffolding process as it suffuses the humanities.

The claim in the title of this article is now heard more and more frequently. It often comes from religious people who have themselves been targets of attack for fundamentalism, and they feel compelled to pay back this criticism in the same currency. Secularists, too, they claim, hold fast to a point of view, and this tenacity of belief is in itself deemed a fundamentalism, the religious person argues. The character of the point of view in question is of no importance; the very fact that it is held is sufficient to denounce it as fundamentalism. This is a smart…

The paper gives a detailed reconstruction and discussion of Peirce’s doctrine of propositions, so-called Dicisigns, developed in the years around 1900. The special features different from the logical mainstream are highlighted: the functional definition not dependent upon conscious stances nor human language, the semiotic characterization extending propositions and quasi-propositions to cover prelinguistic and prehuman occurrences of signs, the relations of Dicisigns to the conception of facts, of diagrammatical reasoning, of icons and indices, of meanings, of objects, of syntax in Peirce’s logic-as-semiotics

Based on the conception of life and semiosis as co-extensive an attempt is given to classify cognitive and communicative potentials of species according to the plasticity and articulatory sophistication they exhibit. A clear distinction is drawn between semiosis and perception, where perception is seen as a high-level activity, an integrated product of a multitude of semiotic interactions inside or between bodies. Previous attempts at finding progressive trends in evolution that might justify a scaling of species from primitive to advanced levels have not met with much success, but when evolution is considered in the light of semiosis such a scaling immediately catches the eye. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest a scaling of this progression in semiotic freedom into a series of distinct steps. The elleven steps suggested are: 1) molecular recognition, 2) prokaryote-eukaryote transformation, 3) division of labor in multicellular organisms, 4) from irritability to phenotypic plasticity, 5) sense perception, 6) behavioral choice, 7) active information gathering, 8) collaboration, deception, 9) learning and social intelligence, 10) sentience, 11) consciousness. In light of this, the paper finally discusses the conceptual framework for biosemiotic evolution. The evolution of biosemiotic capabilities does not take the form of an ongoing composition of simple signs into composite wholes. Rather, it takes the shape of the increasing subdivision and control of a primitive, holophrastic perception-action circuit already committed to “proto-propositions” reliably guiding action already in the most primitive species.

Semiotics (the study of sign processes—‘semiosis’—and sign systems) embraces linguistics, philosophy, and literary studies, as well as linking to anthropology, art, psychology, and biology. This new Routledge collection helps to make sense of the subject’s huge interdisciplinary corpus of scholarly literature and brings together the best and most influential materials from ‘the first phase’, neo-classics from the institutionalization of semiotics in the 1960s, and contemporary works illustrating the ongoing development of semiotics and its widening applications (for example, in the natural sciences). Volume I (‘Philosophy’) collects pre-modern material showing the genesis of semiotics from Locke to Peirce, along with a range of work from the last thirty years. Volume II (‘Linguistics’) includes key work from recent developments in cognitive linguistics and cognitive semantics, while Volume III focuses on ‘Text and Image’. Finally, Volume IV (‘Logic, Biology, Psychology, Culture, and Anthropology’) gathers the best offerings from other disciplines, and from emerging fields such as ‘biosemiotics’. Fully indexed, and with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, that places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, this is an essential work destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital one-stop reference resource.