I think this discussion on the biosemiotics list has been very fruitful, and would like to add a few metacomments which I’m also copying to peirce-l because they relate directly to Peirce’s logic and semiotics. By the way, the subject line I’ve copied here comes from John Deely, and appears to be truncated, but I’ve left it because it reminds me of a line from Wallace Stevens: “Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.”
First, I think a comparison of Deely’s “spiral” of semiosis with Vinicius Romanini’s “solenoid of semiosis” would throw a lot of light on Peirce’s classification of signs. Both are represented in sets of youtube videos: see <http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E9651802BCDC14BF> http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E9651802BCDC14BF and <http://www.minutesemeiotic.org/> http://www.minutesemeiotic.org/. Both of these, as far as I can tell, adhere to the ethic of terminology which prescribes that once somebody has named an identifiable phenomenon or concept, and that name has been accepted in that field, future workers in that field should maintain that usage of that term, for the simple reason that any specialized field requires a consistent lexicon shared by all the workers in that field. (However, nobody should expect such consistency to prevail in other contexts, including interdisciplinary dialogues, where the terms have to be explicitly defined or their usage inferred from the context.) Within the field of Peircean semiotics, Deely and Romanini have been working pretty much independently, as far as I know, and that’s why the comparison of “spiral” and “solenoid” should illuminate how Peircean semiotics is evolving. I would not, however, recommend either of the above to beginners in Peircean semiotics; they would be much better off to start with the de Waal book on Peirce, in my opinion. The second metapoint I’d like to make, or reiterate, is that the products of any analysis — the “elements” identified by it — are determined not only by the inherent qualities of what’s being analyzed, but also by the purpose of the analysis. Peirce’s analysis of semiotic phenomena is essentially a logical analysis: starting with the traditional question of how arguments work, he proceeded to analyze arguments into propositions, propositions into subject and predicate (and copula), those elements of the proposition into signs, etc. His aim was to make this analysis as elementary and as universal as possible, so that it generates terms capable of explaining how the most primitive forms of semiosis are related to the most highly developed form, which is the argument. Part of that explication relates human reasoning to the much more comprehensive “logic of the universe” which we call the “laws of nature”. On the biosemiotics list, we have at least two “semiotic” analyses which differ from the Peircean because their purposes are different. One is Howard Pattee’s, and his purpose, as far as I can tell, is to restate (I won’t say “solve”) the traditional “symbol-matter problem” in physics. Since he limits himself to the specialized lexicon of physics, and has no interest in logic (not even in the forms of reasoning employed by physicists), he has no use for the Peircean analysis of signs, and generalizes from this to the vociferously expressed opinion that biosemiotics has no use for the minute Peircean analysis of semiosis. (Yet, oddly enough, he also claims that his usage of the term “symbol” is the same as Peirce’s). The other analysis, also delivered quite vociferously, is Edwina Taborsky’s. She also insists that her analysis is Peircean to the core, but I think she’s just about the only one who believes this. As far as I can tell, the purpose of her analysis is to work out a consistent pansemiotic theory of the “organization of matter”, using a quasi-mathematical method. From what I’ve seen, her analysis is very clever and does appear to be consistent. Personally I have found no use for it, because to me it seems to be purely mathematical, i.e. hypothetical rather than experiential. Mathematicians may well feel differently. Anyway I would classify Taborskian pansemiotics as a separate and distinct branch of theoretical biosemiotics, one that biologists in particular have little use for, because it doesn’t clearly distinguish between semiosis and physical existence. One can’t explain a special relationship between life and signs on that basis, and that is the relationship that most biosemioticians are interested in. I don’t expect that either Edwina or Howard will accept my description of their work, and that’s fine, I only mention them to illustrate my point that the products of analysis are partially determined by the purposes of the analysis. I do think this is important for a basic understanding of Peirce, because his analyses varied with his purposes. For instance, sometimes his analysis of the proposition would “throw into the subject everything that can be removed from the predicate”, while at other times, what the predicate is depends on what we choose to consider as a subject. (This wording is from the article by Francesco Bellucci on “Peirce's Continuous Predicates” in Transactions 2013, no. 2, pp. 178-202.) I think if we kept this in mind — and recognized ‘that it is no inconsiderable art, this business of “phaneroscopic” analysis by which one frames a scientific definition’ (EP2:403) — it would eliminate many “logomachies” or terminological disputes which serve no useful purpose. gary f. From: Deely, John N. [mailto:jnde...@stthom.edu] Sent: 19-Mar-14 6:34 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee Subject: [biosemiotics:5459] Re: What kind of sign is ANYTHING called "a The “representamen” is not a relation, but one of three terms within or “under” a single triadic relation, the one that serves as the sign-vehicle (one of Peirce’s terms, by the way). The “significate” (or object) may or may not be an existential unit in itself: Napoleon as Emperor of the French at one time was such an “existential unit in itself”; Hamlet as Prince of Denmark never was. So there can often be a dyadic interaction with resultant dyadic relation between representamen and significate. A relation I not an action but rather a suprasubjective connection or link that arises from actions. The representamen as such is such because of the postion it occupies in a given triadic relation; but the representamen is indeed often a thing, like that red-colored octagon with white markings commonly called “a stop sign”. What doesn’t represent another than itself, insofar as it does not, is simply not actually a representamen. It remains that what you call the “triadic sign” is the consequent of one relation irreducibly triadic; whence there is no such thing as “a non-triadic sign”; a system of signs indeed is a set of relations; but a given “sign” is a set of terms united under one relation. (Try that video -- < <http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E9651802BCDC14BF> http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E9651802BCDC14BF> -- all five parts, however.) Cheers
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