Structural Similarity And Pattern Linkage

Similarity daunts philosophers, probably not by its abstractness, but by the myriad ways it incarnates into daily fabrics of our life. How would the similarity between a hobbyhorse and a real horse be different in more or less fundamental way from the similarity between two spiecies of the order primate, which, in turn, would difinitely differ from that between the event of 'my going to school' and that of 'your going to school'? Similarity straddles across things, events and even some more immaterial and less well-defined objects such as stories and meanings. It seems to the author that a serious investigation of the notion might hopefully not be sheer philosophical redundancy.But the thesis presented here is less an analysis of the meaning of 'similariy' than the interpretation of cases in which the primitive notion of similarity can be applied. There are, according to the author, 'extensional' cases, which can be taken account of by the existence of any external similarity set S*e(), and 'non-extensional' cases of similarity, which cannot. The structural similarity between things falls into the first category, whereas that between events and other more immaterial objects falls into the second.External similarity is thoroughly discussed in Chapter 1, ended by the conclusion that every external similarity, especially similarity between things, can be expressed by the repercussion expression (exp.l and exp.2), and lie somewhere between the strong form and the weak form. Under the same norminal condition, the more levels involved in S*e(), the more likely that the similarity is a structural one.Chapter 2 deals with the similarity of the second category, the one that lies between events and other less well-defined objects. A tricky task of individuation of events is discussed on the outset. The author shows that unlike the similarity of things, the similarity of events cannot be defined by extensional means. It seems to the author that a ontological framework that treats events not as individuals, but as epiphenomenal properties of things is preferable. In such non-extensional framwork, events are actually special second-order properties, that is to say, they are properties of existing properties that represent the pattern linkage among the latter. Thus defined, the similarity between enents can be easily interpreted into the similarity between linkage patterns.A critical case study of Claude Levi-Strauss and C. S. Peirce is conducted in Chapter 3 based on the theory developed above. Levi-Strauss'anthropological studies of myths are good examples that may support the author's opinion about how the events are representations of pattern linkage. Whereas Preice's semiotical theory of interpretant might be reinterpreted using the notion of pattern linkage.