Replying to Raphael, Joseph, and Loet -
**
*Rafael Capurro* to Robert, fis
show details 10:13 AM (4 hours ago)
well... not exactly. This is the way Hegel (and others) looked at it,
discarding the 'singulars' or including them into the particulars and so
creating a dialectics of the universal and the particular. Kierkegaard
was not at all happy with this. What I am trying to say (quoting Octavio
Paz) is nothing mystical or singular in the sense that might be part of
the process of questioning ("falsifying") theories and the like. It is
surely not against scientific method (fallibilistic or not) and it is
not mystical (a word used by Wittgenstein as you know). Trees are trees,
not signs. As simple as this. Best. Rafael
Trees vary according species and cultures, each of which has evolved signs
to negotiate with them. ‘Trees as trees’ are a ‘scientific’ fiction insofar
as they are supposed to be so without any connection to observation and
interpretation. In fact here we have a good example for consideration of
nominalism. ‘Trees’ is a universal, and depends upon
observation/interpretation regarding particular ones in order to be
instantiated at places and times. Science believes it can transcend this
by, for example, observing different species interacting with a particular
kind of tree. The worm, the moth and squirrel are observed interacting with
a kind of tree, under the idea that the more kinds of interactions we
observe the more actual is this kind of tree. But the whole scene is a
social construct; placing a universal into an increasingly inclusive
observer-constructed context does not make it increasingly ‘real’ as a
universal. Recording our observations and combining them with those of
others merely increases the ‘scale’ of the observation. A library full of
treatises on oaks does not make ‘oak’ a real universal -- unless your
philosophy deems it to be so. Things-as-such are linguistic constructions.
------------------------------------------------------
Then to Joseph --
Joseph --
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 2:59 PM, joe.bren...@bluewin.ch <
joe.bren...@bluewin.ch> wrote:
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.
Without this there can be no discourse about the origin of semiosis, which
requires the concept of indexical signs.
------------------------------------------
Then replying to Loet --
On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Loet Leydesdorff <l...@leydesdorff.net>
wrote:
Dear Koichiro and colleagues,
-snip-
Meaning is provided to the events from the perspective of hindsight, and
with reference to other possible meanings (at t +1). Thus, acting against
the arrow of time, the communication of meaning increases the redundancy (as
different from the increasing entropy to which it is coupled as a feedback
mechanism).
>From a semiotic perspective, a system will already have its meanings
embodied in signs. This involves foresight, even searching, as well.
-snip-
Your point of replacing the “why” with “by what” seems not necessary to me.
The communication is carried by those units which have communicative
competencies. This closes the domains operationally. You and I cannot
communicate in terms of atoms, whereas molecules can. The why-question is
utmost important because it involves evolutionary theorizing about the
systems under study; for example, chemical versus biological evolution.
I agree with this. In semiotics the 'why' is embodied in the pragmatic
aspects of semiosis, resulting, in biological systems, from adaptation. The
'why' is involved up front in the seeking for information. Totally
unrelated, uncalled-for, information will simply be missed (possibly at
peril!).
STAN
Best wishes,
Loet
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