Gary,
Speaking of Wallace Stevens ...
I have sampled but a fraction of what floats over from the bi-semiotics list, but nothing I've
sampled so far tempts me to seek for more. By and large it all evokes a reminiscence of the kind of
stuff I used to read from Carnap and Morris back in the 1960s -- not as far off-base from Peirce as
some have said, not with a grain of charitable interpretation anyway, but still too embroiled in
dyadic styles of S-R behaviorism to convey the core of what Peirce was saying. That largely comes
from failing to grasp the basic concepts of the logic of relatives and the mathematics of relations.
It has always been hard for Peirceans to make much headway through the mists of syntax generated by
logical atomizers, but a failure to understand the difference between objects and signs makes it the
going go from tough to retrograde.
Regards,
Jon
Gary Fuhrman wrote:
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
and 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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