Edwina,
I didn’t mean that either your argument or Howard’s was “non-logical” in the sense that they lack a “consistent infrastructure”, as you put it. Rather I meant that Peirce’s was a logical analysis in the sense that it starts with the traditional question that logicians address, namely that of how arguments function, and works down from there to the basics of semiotics. I don’t think either you or Howard deal with the logician’s question, which is essentially philosophical, but rather deal with questions arising from physics or biology. Anyway I’m happy that you see my outline as useful, even if it doesn’t get the Taborskian position quite right! gary f. From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 20-Mar-14 12:08 PM To: Gary Fuhrman; [email protected] Cc: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:5459] Re: What kind of sign is ANYTHING called "a I think that's a nice outline, Gary. Of course I'll comment. I won't say anything about Howard's focus on the symbol; I agree with your outline of his use of the term and anything else - is for him to comment. However, I disagree with one small part of your attempt to classify Peirce's, Howard's and my analysis of semiosis. That is, you attempt to classify Peirce's as 'logical'...and Howard's and mine as...non-logical??? I disagree. Howard's outline is quite logical - and I consider that mine is as well. I don't mean logical in the daily use sense, but as having a consistent infrastructure from the simple to the complex. And I don't think that Peirce's massive works and thought can be reduced to 'logic'. Certainly, my view includes semiosis within the physico-chemical realm, but as I've pointed out, so did Peirce. I'm not going to repeat the many references to Peirce about 'matter as effete mind' etc. I'd hardly say that my outline is mathematical! (Me???) The question of 'what is life' and 'how is it different from the physico-chemical realm' is not confined to biologists or semioticians - and I'm not sure that knowing this will help biologists in their attempt to understand how the biological realm works in its pragmatic tasks of adaptation and evolution. I think that some basic differences that I have with others is that they seem to have a more linguistic or anthropomorphic view of semiosis, in that there is often an emphasis on cognition, thought...while my view is that habitual laws of organization (not interpretation) are the basis and these laws are not confined within human thought. So, I'm interested in CAS (complex adapative systems) as semiosic - and these include all realms (physico-chemical, biological and societal). i certainly agree that the many (and endless!) terminological disputes really have no constructive purpose. But, your outline is, I think, productive in showing us that semiosis is a broad and complex field. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Gary Fuhrman <mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: Peirce List <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:43 AM Subject: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:5459] Re: What kind of sign is ANYTHING called "a 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.
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