Dear Sung
Prigogine can be said to deliver a physical support to Peirce's evolutionary
worldview except that he does not have a theory of signification and meaning.
Best
Søren
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Sungchul Ji [mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu]
Sendt: 28. april 2014 04:06
Til: Gary Richmond
Cc: Stephen C. Rose; PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu
Emne: [biosemiotics:5904] Re: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8
Gary R, List,
According to I. Prigogine (1917-2003), there are two types of structures in the
Universe -- (i) equilibrium STRUCTURES (e.g., table, bible, ec.) that do not
change with time nor require energy dissiaption for them to exist, and (ii)
dissipative STRUCTURES(e.g., the flame of a candle, TV images, EEG,
Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions, action potentials) that change in time and
require dissipation of energy for their existence. As is well known, Prigogine
was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for having contributed to
establishing the concpet of dissiaptive structures.
Can philsophers and semioticians utilize the Prigoginean theory of STRUCTURES ?
With all the best.
Sung
__________________________________________________
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Pharmacology
and Toxicology Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers University Piscataway,
N.J. 08855
732-445-4701
www.conformon.net
> Stephen, Michael, Gene, List,
>
> It seems to me that in sum the argumentation so far has been that
> Michael maintains that Peirce should be seen as a structuralist, Gene
> has countered that Peirce is best seen as a thorough-going process
> philosopher, and Michael responded to this by saying that to refer to
> his philosophy as processual is redundant since a properly understood
> structuralism includes the ideas of process and growth, and I have
> suggested that structuralism is generally not understood as such (that
> is, as involving change and growth), and that many Peircean
> philosophers see Peirce as a process thinker, but not as a
> structuralist.
>
> Now you may be suggesting--but I'm not exactly sure what your intended
> meaning was, Stephen--that Michael may well be proven correct and that
> there is good reason to see Peirce as a structuralist when that theory
> is "properly understood" to include the notions of history, change,
> and growth.
>
> But currently--and although I'm not a big fan of post-structuralism
> and deconstruction, etc.--structuralism tends to connote to many
> certain ideas which are not processual. Thus, at the conclusion of a
> the overview of structuralism in the Wikipedia article one is give
> these tenets "common to the various forms of structuralism" as
> formulated by the feminist theorist, Alison Assiter:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism
>
> *First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a
> whole. Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural
> laws deal with co-existence rather than change. Fourth, structures are
> the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of
> meaning.*
>
>
> Now I would imagine that Michael would say that Assiter does not
> properly understand structuralism. Still, and again, structuralism
> does indeed connote these ideas to many. And especially for this
> discussion note that the third tenet is that "structural laws deal
> with co-existence rather than change."
>
> So, until structuralism is "properly understood" (and I have no doubt
> that Michael has things of considerable importance to say about this,
> especially in the realms of linguistics and semiotics), it's a heavy
> load at present to suggest that Peirce is more structuralist than
> processual (or, rather, that that the idea of structure properly
> understood includes process, as Michael is saying).
>
> I'll be eager to learn more about this proper understanding of
> structuralism, and in that sense I agree with you, Stephen, that we
> should reserved judgment.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary
>
>
>
> *Gary Richmond*
> *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
> *Communication Studies*
> *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Stephen C. Rose
> <stever...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I think it is much too early in the course of things to exclude
>> Michael's conjectures which I assume are intended to widen in a
>> radical and original manner the scope of Peirce's influence. It has
>> after all taken 2000 years to arrive at the start of an appropriate
>> revision of Aristotle, again based in part on Peirce's growing
>> influence. It is somewhat a problem for the dead, who cannot respond,
>> to have exclusive interpretations attached to aspects of their
>> thought. Particularly if, like Peirce, they were inclined to favor
>> the growth of communities of discourse and partial to abduction which
>> means, I assume, guessing.
>>
>> *@stephencrose <https://twitter.com/stephencrose>*
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Gary Richmond
>> <gary.richm...@gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Gene, Michael, List,
>>>
>>> I would tend to agree with Gene here, especially given the situation
>>> that Structuralism is not generally "properly understood" in the
>>> sense in which you are suggesting, Michael.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, a number of Peircean scholars use 'processual' in this
>>> context much as Gene does, and these include Andre de Tienne, Floyd
>>> Merrell, Kelly Parker, Cathy Legg, and, perhaps, and especially,
>>> Nicholas Rescher.
>>>
>>> Even in a group of papers you edited, Michael, as *Peirce Seminar
>>> Papers: Essays in Semiotic Analysis*, Nils B. Thelin in
>>> "Biopragmatism, Space/Time Cognition, and the Sense of Language,"
>>> finds what he calls a "hierarchical-processual understanding"
>>> implicit in Peirce's treatment of abduction-deduction-induction in
>>> inquiryh. Thelin's extension of this--involving a model of
>>> "hierarchical-processual-feedback"--appears
>>> to
>>> me to be an attempt at developing further what is implicit in this
>>> regard in Peirce.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Gary
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Gary Richmond*
>>> *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
>>> *Communication Studies*
>>> *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 5:15 PM, Eugene Halton
>>> <eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Michael,
>>>>
>>>> Sorry, but it is not in the least redundant to
>>>> characterize Peirce’s philosophy as processual. It clarifies what
>>>> pervades his thinking.
>>>> Calling Peirce a structuralist, on the other hand, does not, in my
>>>> opinion.
>>>>
>>>> Gene
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Michael Shapiro [mailto:poo...@earthlink.net]
>>>> *Sent:* Sunday, April 27, 2014 12:11 PM
>>>> *To:* Eugene Halton; PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu
>>>>
>>>> *Subject:* RE: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Gene, list,
>>>>
>>>> Structuralism properly understood does not exclude process or
>>>> growth, just the opposite, so calling Peirce's doctrine
>>>> "processualism" is both redundant and terminologically inadvisable,
>>>> given the latter's unusualness.
>>>> Cf. my 1991 book's title
>>>>
>>>> *The Sense of Change: Language as History. *Michael
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Eugene Halton
>>>> Sent: Apr 27, 2014 12:02 PM
>>>> To: "PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu"
>>>> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Response to Michael Shapiro’s post that Peirce should be seen as
>>>> a structuralist. Shapiro: “The use by Peirce of the form
>>>> "rationalized"
>>>> (rather than "rational") as a modifier of "variety" in the
>>>> quotation above should be taken advisedly. This use of the
>>>> participial form, with its adversion to process, should serve as a
>>>> caveat that when Peirce talks about
>>>> "*objective* idealism," what he ought to have said is
>>>> "*objectified*idealism."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Peirce: “The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of
>>>> objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits
>>>> becoming physical laws†Peirce, CP 6.25.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Note “becoming.†And even those physical laws are still subject
>>>> to evolution. A habit is a process, semiosis is an inferential
>>>> process, “rationalized variety†is a kind of habituated variety
>>>> yet still in process. I see no reason for calling Peirce a
>>>> structuralist, since even a structure, in Peirce, is a
>>>> habit-process, however slow or even seemingly invariant that
>>>> inveterate habit may be: it remains potentially subject to growth.
>>>> Why not simply acknowledge Peirce’s thoroughgoing processualism?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Gene Halton
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Michael Shapiro
>>>> [mailto:poo...@earthlink.net<poo...@earthlink.net>]
>>>>
>>>> *Sent:* Sunday, April 27, 2014 7:51 AM
>>>> *To:* PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu
>>>> *Subject:* RE: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear Fellow-Listers,
>>>>
>>>> I'd like to offer up the following as a take on ch. 7 and an
>>>> anticipation of ch. 8, from the perspective of a non-philosopher
>>>> interested in developing a Peircean theory of language for the
>>>> twenty-first
>>>> century:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Because he was a practicing scientist in the modern
>>>> sense, Peirce is *the* one great philosopher who escapes my
>>>> definition of a philosopher as someone who only solves problems of his own
>>>> devising.
>>>> This
>>>> makes him also a proto-structuralist (a structuralist *avant la
>>>> lettre*
>>>> ).
>>>>
>>>> The essential concept of structuralism, whether applied
>>>> to physics or linguistics or anthropology, is that of invariance
>>>> under transformation. This makes theory, following Peirce's whole
>>>> philosophy and his pragmaticism in particular, the rationalized
>>>> explication of
>>>> variety: "[U]nderlying all other laws is the only tendency which
>>>> can grow by its own virtue, the tendency of all things to take habits ....
>>>> In
>>>> so far as evolution follows a law, the law or habit, instead of
>>>> being a movement from homogeneity to heterogeneity, is growth from
>>>> difformity to uniformity. But the chance divergences from laws are
>>>> perpetually acting to increase the variety of the world, and are
>>>> checked by a sort of natural selection and otherwise ... , so that
>>>> the general result may be described as 'organized heterogeneity,'
>>>> or, better, rationalized variety'' (CP 6.101). Or, translating law
>>>> and habit into the appropriate phenomenological category:
>>>> "Thirdness ... is an essential ingredient of reality" (EP 2:345).
>>>>
>>>> Once we properly understand structuralism not as the
>>>> putatively debunked epistemology that originated in Geneva with
>>>> Saussure, but rather as the revised, essentially correct version
>>>> originating with Jakobson in Prague and Hjelmslev in Copenhagen, we
>>>> can recognize the patterning of Thirdness and Secondness in
>>>> language––the so-called "passkey semiotic"––for what it is.
>>>> Consequently, the fundamental notion of alternation between basic
>>>> form and contextual variant becomes understandable as immanent in
>>>> theory, and not merely a construct or an artifact of description.
>>>> The importance of this notion cannot be overestimated.
>>>>
>>>> A child learning its native language, for instance,
>>>> is exactly in the same position as an analyst. It has to determine
>>>> which linguistic form is basic, and which is a contextual variant.
>>>> Take a simple example from English, that of the voiceless stops
>>>>
>>>> English voiceless (actually, tense) stops are
>>>> aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable,
>>>> as in *pen*, *ten*, *Ken*. They are unaspirated when immediately
>>>> following word-initial s, as in *spun*, *stun*, *skunk*. After an
>>>> *s* elsewhere in a word they are normally unaspirated as well,
>>>> except when the cluster is heteromorphemic and the stop belongs to
>>>> an unbound morpheme; compare dis[t]end vs. dis[tÊ°]aste. Word-final
>>>> voiceless stops are optionally aspirate.
>>>>
>>>> This variation makes aspiration non-distinctive
>>>> (non-phonemic) in English, unlike, say, in Ancient Greek or Hindi,
>>>> where aspirated stops change the meaning of words by comparison
>>>> with items that have their unaspirated counterparts *ceteris
>>>> paribus*.
>>>>
>>>> I think it is only by taking such variation for what
>>>> it is, i. e., the working out of Thirdness in the context of
>>>> Secondness, that we can we understand what Peirce had in mind with
>>>> his version of Pragmatism.
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>> P. S. The use by Peirce of the form "rationalized" (rather than
>>>> "rational") as a modifier of "variety" in the quotation above
>>>> should be taken advisedly. This use of the participial form, with
>>>> its adversion to process, should serve as a caveat that when Peirce
>>>> talks about "
>>>> *objective* idealism," what he ought to have said is
>>>> "*objectified*idealism." This slight grammatical change puts the
>>>> meaning of the phrase (and the doctrine!) in a whole new––and
>>>> completely acceptable––light.
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
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