Dear John, The reference you cited looks like essential reading and I have ordered it. Thank you for calling it to our attention. I believe, also, that the conventional view of meaning leads to its erasure, and this exactly why a Derridean view of writing (and speech) is required in which erasure does not mean the total loss of meaning. As far as signs go, the area of debate is clear. A theory of signs (or sign-relations) is essential to the understanding of information and questions of reality and illusion. You believe that Peirce delivers this and I do not. The reason is that the critical fallibility, I think, is not in our representations, about which there should be no debate, but in taking signs (Peirce's icon and index) as representations in the first place. Doing this leads straight to the illusions we as realists wanted to avoid. Thus when you write: "A proper understanding of how signs, and thus logic, works can avoid these problems", I agree, but wish to suggest that neither standard logics, nor Peirce's logic, also truth-functional, grounded in language, can do the job. Something like Lupasco's extension of logic to real processes, his "Logic of Energy" (1951), may be required. I am looking forward to the Taborsky opus to help develop this approach. Best regards, Joseph ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht---- Von: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Datum: 05.05.2011 14:36 An: <fis@listas.unizar.es> Betreff: [Fis] The world of singularities, beyond language - John Collier Message from John Colier ------------------------------------ Hi all, This is interesting, as it brings up some ancient issues that continue to roil philosophy. I think that C.S. Peirce has the best answer to these puzzles (and does not eliminate the wonder). For his (realist) pragmatacism Peirce adopts the pragmatic principle that all of the meaning of a sign is contained in our the totality of our expectations for possible experience. He realized that this can be vague, and subject to change based on further experience. In particular, he thought that it is the possibility that our expectations can be contradicted by experience that commits us to a real external world, beyond our ideas, and requires that we should regard our representations as fallible. This allows for the sort of leaps Rafael mentions (and which are the subject of my doctoral dissertation). I also agree that the usual notion of the observer is flawed, as it does not typically recognize our involvement in the world. It is a philosophical illusion that we alone determine meaning, and that our meanings are determinate. In THE DYNAMICAL BASIS OF INFORMATION AND THE ORIGINS OF SEMIOSIS, in Edwina Taborsky (ed) Semiosis. Evolution. Energy Towards a Reconceptualization of the Sign. Aachen Shaker Verlag 1999 Bochum Publications in Semiotics New Series. Vol. 3 (1999): 111-136, I argue that the conventional view of meaning ironically leads to the erasure of meaning. In Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, Clarendon Press (2007), we argue (and this is grounded in Peircean principles) that the thing in itself is a metaphysical illusion, and does not fit modern science. Peirce also argued against such metaphysical illusions. If you maintain the illusion, then you get caught in nominalism and antirealism. A proper understanding of how signs, and thus logic, works can avoid these problems. My best, John ---------------------------------------------
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