On Mar 20, 2011, at 4:18 PM, joe.bren...@bluewin.ch wrote:
> ... I am convinced that for further progress in information, let alone other
> matters, some recognition of the limitations of Peirce may have to be
> recognized. John's statement that "pragmatics means action" can be applicable
> to real processes only if the pragmatics in question includes ontological
> (scientific) principles and not only epistemological classifications.
Dear Joe,
I do not believe that any Peirce scholar takes Peirce to be definitive.
Peirce's inquiry is broad and penetrating, but it is also diverse and
exploratory.
However, I do not think that Peirce would understand your second sentence here
because it is poorly stated, full of misconceptions about his ideas and
incomplete. Peirce gave these existential matters deep consideration.
>
> As Queiroz, Emmeche and El Hani write: "In a Peircean model, Sign, Object and
> Interpretant are triadically coupled in a dynamically irreducible process. In
> other words, 'information' requires a triadic pattern of determinative
> relationships involving the Sign, Object and Interpretant." Information, in
> this view, has a "processual nature".
>
> In my view, this simply displaces the problem further, since the Peircean
> categories themselves are derivative, epistemological constructions which
> 'mirror', literally and figuratively, the underlying dynamic structure of the
> universe as Peirce saw it. The processes referred to by Q, E and EH are
> indeed interpreter-dependent objective processes, but they admit that they
> cannot be dissociated from the notion of a situated agent. Here, we have gone
> outside Peirce, since the discussion of the "agent" and his/her interactions
> requires a physical dialectics and logic that is absent in Peirce.
This is simply a false statement. Peirce gave extensive consideration to what
you call "agents and their interactions" and physical, existential, aspects as
they relate to the elements of logic.
> To try to restate my interpretation, to say that for effective information,
> or effective semiosis to take place by having a Sign effectively communicate,
> by mediating the relation between Object and Interpretant, a form from the
> object to Interpretant by changing the state of the interpreter (emphasis
> mine) says no more than that information is something that changes the state
> of an agent. In the statement that an effective Sign, by being actualized
> (sic), has an actual effect on an interpreter (NOT interpretant), Sign is
> simply a placeholder for an undefined real process, since a "Sign defined as
> a medium for the communication of a form" is, again, simply an analytic
> mirror for some reality that operates according to as yet undefined rules.
>
> The Peircean processual approach to information seeks to acquire additional
> dynamics by distinguishing it from some structure considered as a totally
> static phenomenon. What has been missed are the actual and potential dynamic
> aspects of structure and form themselves - a sequence of nucleotides, for
> example, not in abstracto, but in a real cell.
Again, this is simply not the case. I urge you to find a copy of his Collected
Papers, or the chronological publications of The Peirce Project, where there
are examples too numerous for me to cite in brief.
One note of my own observation: This notion of "communicate" that you use and
is often found in discussions of information is a way of speaking about the
distinct expression and apprehension of marks. Signs do not "communicate" (and
nor do "marks"). A sign in any semeiotic theory is a feature of, embodied by,
the apprehender.
With respect,
Steven
--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info
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