Thanks for this overview of your work, Howard, which Im copying to peirce-l (since your work is not as well known there as it is to the biosemiotics list). I dont know why you say that it shows my thumbnail sketch to be incorrect; to me it confirms (in greater detail) my view as expressed and thus shows it to be dim only in the sense of being parsimonious.
gary f. From: Howard Pattee [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 20-Mar-14 11:25 PM At 11:43 AM 3/20/2014, Gary F wrote: 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. HP: Gary F takes a dim and incorrect view of what I have been doing <https://www.academia.edu/2767702/Historical_introduction_to_LAWS_LANGUAGE_A ND_LIFE> for the past 75 years (see esp. pp. 3-8 of link). So I need to make my activities clear. My purpose has been to understand the nature of life and how it might have originated in a lifeless physical universe. I accept the current scientific views of physical laws and the latest knowledge of molecular biology and evolution as a given framework. I also accept von Neumann's logical conditions for Self-Reproduction <http://cba.mit.edu/events/03.11.ASE/docs/VonNeumann.pdf> (see pp. 84-87) that requires the conceptual separation of symbolic "description" and material "construction" for evolvable life. This symbol-matter problem <https://www.google.com/#q=%22symbol-matter+problem%22> is not just a physics problem! It exists at all levels of evolution in including the philosophers classic mind-body problem. [The current argument about genes as symbols misses the essential fact that there are no isolated symbols. Symbols exist only as elements of a language. That is why the origin of life is a hard problem.] So far, I have explained in some detail, at least to the satisfaction of many physicists and biologists (disclosure: some of them were my doctoral students), the necessary conditions for material symbol vehicles to function as informational boundary conditions (constraints) on physical laws that satisfy both the empirical facts life and von Neumann's logical conditions ( Physics of Symbols <https://www.academia.edu/233726/The_physics_of_symbols_bridging_the_epistem ic_cut> ). GF: Since [Howard] 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. HP: Again, a dim and a false view. Anyone who has read my papers will find a vocabular common to wide areas of science and references to philosophers, even Peirce! I have been interested in Peirce for many years beginning with his pragmatism, which obviously requires a commitment to empiricism as well as parsimony, both of which physics requires. I also agree substantially with what I have read of Peirce's philosophy of science and many other of his ideas. It was his "thought experiments" about what he called logic that did not fit with the empiricism so obvious in his extensive scientific work. So, about 13 years ago I questioned Jon Awbrey about empiricism on his Arisbe blog. If you read our discussion ( http://stderr.org/pipermail/arisbe/2001-August/000833.html <http://stderr.org/pipermail/arisbe/2001-August/000833.html> continuing for several links) I think you will see that Jon wants to talk about his favorite logic, but is reluctant (or maybe evasive) talking about empiricism. Our current discussions are deja vu all over again, only with Jon being replaced by Gary F acting as Peirce interpreter-in-chief. The current participants (except Sung) on the biosemiotics list and Peirce-L are not interested in talking about empirical issues either. The only issue where I fundamentally disagree with Peirce (and agree with Poincaré and modern physics) is the foundations of logic. My opinions about Peirce's refinements and classifications of signs are "vociferous" simply because cannot understand why they are helpful. Eventually they may be useful, but at present they appear to be producing more arguments than enlightenment. I have no doubts about Peirce's formal logic and mathematics where he is an expert, and I agree with most of his opinions. For most modern physicists the properties of logic and reason are considered neither psychological nor anti-psychological. Also, physicists and mathematicians think in such diverse and often mysterious ways that any attempt to impose "right reasoning" or how one "ought" to reason becomes, as Poincaré says, nothing but shackles. The choice of logics is just an empirical issue like the choice of concepts of probability. If a logical process does not lead to correct empirical results, don't use it. Classical (Boolean) logic does not lead to correct QM results, so we try something <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic> else <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic> . (Ironically, this requires a formal mathematics that Pierce helped develop, lattice <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthocomplemented_lattice> theory <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthocomplemented_lattice> .) This result does not invalidate any logic, common sense, or even Peirce's "right reasoning" when they work, as they often do in normal life. What non-Boolean logic and the "spooky" unreason of QM strongly suggests is that logic of any type is neither normative nor universal, but like sensorimotor controls and languages, has evolved from many evolutionary levels, empirically tested by natural selection and all types of experience. Howard
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