Jon, List…
Feeling inspired by your take, Jon, that "the entire universe is a vast semiosic continuum, signs all the way down." Here's a link to the latest draft of my preprint, Association as Downward Causation, now launched into the journal review process, in case you’re interested: https://www.academia.edu/129898049/UPDATE_Association_as_Downward_Causation Some purists might object to my approach, which does not address directly the essential specifics of semiotic theory and the Peircean categories. Their claims might be justified, give or take. However, as an interdisciplinarian, mine is a pragmatic strategy to deliver a simple appreciation of downward causation (Association) that does not require detailed familiarity across the nuances of semiotic theory (seems us engineer types think alike, heh heh). Having said all this, astute semioticians would recognize bridges to Firstness and Thirdness (not just Secondness) in my references, for example, to embodied cognition (you cannot have mind without body) and culture (the habits coming from the top-down, outside-in). Cheers, sj From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: 23 July, 2025 12:51 AM To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Semiosic Ontology (was Spencer-Brown's concept of 'reentry') Gary F., Gary R., List: I appreciate the clarification from Gary F. and am now eager to find out what Gary R. views as "the critical matter" here. I am also still wondering if my previous post, perhaps in conjunction with this one, adequately addresses Ivar's specific questions. Peirce's quoted criticism of Mill seems to be that he mistakenly treats the effect of a cause as an event, with the trivial result that "the entire Universe of being" is both cause and effect. By contrast, Peirce claims that "everybody else" maintains that the effect of a cause "is, not the entire event, but such abstracted element of an event as is expressible in a proposition, or what we call a 'fact.'" As he writes elsewhere, "A state of things is an abstract constituent part of reality, of such a nature that a proposition is needed to represent it. There is but one individual, or completely determinate, state of things, namely, the all of reality. A fact is so highly a prescissively abstract state of things, that it can be wholly represented in a simple proposition" (CP 5.549, EP 2:378, 1906). We prescind a fact from "the all of reality" as an effect, and then identify its cause as an antecedent prescinded fact--one without which the entire effect "could not be realized." This matches up nicely with what I advocate as the first steps of semiotic analysis--we prescind an individual sign from the real and continuous process of semiosis, and then identify its object as an antecedent prescinded sign. The key difference, of course, is that a sign and its antecedent object are always in a genuine triadic relation with a consequent interpretant, while an effect and its cause are usually understood to be in a strictly dyadic relation with each other. The effect might then serve as the cause of a subsequent effect, but the series is reducible to the two dyadic reactions--if there is a triadic relation at all, it is a degenerate one. I am suggesting that there is such a triadic relation, because the series of causes and effects is governed by real laws, which can only be represented by subjunctive conditional propositions. Mill, like Hume and unlike Peirce, was a nominalist who denied this. Otherwise, my only immediate response to Gary F. is belaboring a point that I have already made repeatedly, which is the reason why I prefer to call my position "semiosic synechism" instead of "pansemioticism"--for me, "everything is a sign" does not mean that every individual thing is a sign (bottom-up), but that everything as a whole is a sign (top-down). In other words, the entire universe--"not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe, embracing the universe of existents as a part, the universe which we are all accustomed to refer to as 'the truth'" (CP 5.448n, EP 2:394, 1906)--is not composed of signs in the sense of being built up from them, but instead is perfused with signs in the sense that "every part has parts of the same kind." Again, whatever is, in any of the three Universes of Experience, is representable--capable of serving as the dynamical object of a sign--and thus likewise of the nature of a sign. The further implications of this are what I am continuing to explore. As Peirce recognized, we primarily do that by studying human semiosis, and then generalizing our findings to ascertain whether and how well they match up with other observable phenomena. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 1:19 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: List, I won't comment for now on what I think is the critical matter that Gary F takes up in this latest post, although I may have a few things to say. But I'd like to read Jon's response to Gary F's remarks before I add any of my own. For those without a copy of EP2 at hand, or who'd prefer not to mill through the longer excerpt Gary F linked to, here is a short excerpt that gets at the heart of Peirce's point that "Mill’s usage of the word “cause” deprived that word of all utility." I have broken the passage into two paragraphs and boldfaced an essential snippet in the 2nd paragraph. GF: All I’m trying to say is that for those purposes, your idea of “signs all the way down” deprives the word “sign” of all utility, just as Mill’s usage of the word “cause” deprived that word of all utility, according to Peirce ( <https://gnusystems.ca/KainaStoicheia.htm#Millcause> EP2:315). What is a law, then? It is a formula to which real events truly conform. By "conform," I mean that, taking the formula as a general principle, if experience shows that the formula applies to a given event, then the result will be confirmed by experience. But that such a general formula is a symbol, and more particularly, an asserted symbolical proposition, is evident. Whether or not this symbol is a reality, even if not recognized by you or me or any generations of men, and whether, if so, it implies an Utterer, are metaphysical questions into which I will not now enter. One distinguished writer seems to hold that, although events conform to the formula, or rather, although /the formula/ conforms to the Truth of facts, yet it does not influence the facts. This comes perilously near to being pure verbiage; for, seeing that nobody pretends that the formula exerts a compulsive force on the events, what definite meaning can attach to this emphatic denial of the law's "influencing" the facts? The law had such mode of being as it ever has before all the facts had come into existence, for it might already be experientially known; and then the law existing, when the facts happen there is agreement between them and the law. What is it, then, that this writer has in mind? If it were not for the extraordinary misconception of the word "cause" by Mill, I should say that the idea of metaphysical sequence implied in that word, in "influence," and in other similar words, was perfectly clear. Mill's singularity is that he speaks of the cause of a singular event. Everybody else speaks of the cause of a "fact," which is an element of the event. But, with Mill, it is the event in its entirety which is caused. The consequence is that Mill is obliged to define the cause as the totality of all the circumstances attending the event. This is, strictly speaking, the Universe of being in its totality. But any event, just as it exists, in its entirety, is nothing else but the same Universe of being in its totality. It strictly follows, therefore, from Mill's use of the words, that the only causatum is the entire Universe of being and that its only cause is itself. He thus deprives the word of all utility. As everybody else but Mill and his school more or less clearly understands the word, it is a highly useful one. That which is caused, the causatum, is, not the entire event, but such abstracted element of an event as is expressible in a proposition, or what we call a "fact." The cause is another "fact." Namely, it is, in the first place, a fact which could, within the range of possibility, have its being without the being of the causatum; but, secondly, it could not be a real fact while a certain third complementary fact, expressed or understood, was realized, without the being of the causatum; and thirdly, although the actually realized causatum might perhaps be realized by other causes or by accident, yet the existence of the entire possible causatum could not be realized without the cause in question. It may be added that a part of a cause, if a part in that respect in which the cause is a cause, is also called a cause. In other respects, too, the scope of the word will be somewhat widened in the sequel. EP2:314-5 Best, Gary R On Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 1:34 PM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Jon, I have been following your argument that “the entire universe is a vast semiosic continuum, signs all the way down.” My comment was not intended to challenge the exegesis that leads you to that conclusion from your selection of Peirce’s texts. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve been assuming that your “entire universe” includes not only all universes of discourse but also the physical and psychical universes. In other words, your argument virtually erases all distinctions between signs and anything else, or between semiosis and the flow of time. The only distinctions left are between degrees of degeneracy. I have no objection to pansemiotic or theosemiotic language games; they are instructive on some level. I’m just saying that they are irrelevant to investigations of the reality of biosemiosis (including anthroposemiosis) as we experience it every day and hour. I don’t see how we in our time can carry forward Peirce’s inquiry into actual semiosis if we don’t apply what has been learned since his time about complex systems and how they work. Peirce could not think in those terms because they were simply not available then; it’s up to us (those of us who are interested in how “quasi-minds” actually get determined) to go beyond Peirce, as he himself said more than once. All I’m trying to say is that for those purposes, your idea of “signs all the way down” deprives the word “sign” of all utility, just as Mill’s usage of the word “cause” deprived that word of all utility, according to Peirce (EP2:315 <https://gnusystems.ca/KainaStoicheia.htm#Millcause> ). Love, gary f. Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg
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