(I’ll combine a bunch of short replies to various people) > On Sep 4, 2014, at 8:59 PM, Deely, John N. <[email protected]> wrote: > > Sun and earth do communicate, but resulting directly dyadic rather than > triadic relations, and with no involvement of cognition. The point can be > generalized: communication is broader than cognition.
No higher order cognition for sure. I’d say that the relation still isn’t dyadic since it is mediated though. > Edwina, Pansemiotics carries the connotation of panpsychism. Physiosemiosis > has no such connotation. And the term “pansemiosis” carries just the opposite > of what you attribute, namely, the idea that the universe IS composed > exclusively of signs. While I tend to read Peirce in terms of pansemiotics, I’d also recognize that this borderline panpsychism is extremely controversial. It is well worth doing what we can to separate Peirce’s semiotics from his ontological commitments. However as I take you to be saying later, it’s hard to say the universe is just signs (thirdness) since Peirce in various places obviously sees firstness and secondness. > If there is any physiosemiosis, that is as much a part of semiotics as > biosemiosis is. It is a question of the range or extentof the action of signs > in the physical realm of things whether living or not. Per se, the question > of physiosemiosis, thus, is “the final frontier” (to borrow an expression > from StarTrek) of semiotic investigation. Per se, this “final frontier” > question has NOTHING to do with so-called, or mis-called, “pansemiotics”. > Semiosis may be a process present throughout the physical universe, living or > not; but semiosis is NOT the only process thus present (which is what the > name “pansemiosis” or “pansemiotics” implies). I think the problem is that when we speak of an interpretant we immediately think of a human like cognition and interpretation. While there are similarities with general hermeneutics and interpretation I think Peirce was aiming at something more broad. As such it’s probably best to simply jettison talk of human-mind and explicitly say we’re speaking more broadly. That has many benefits. First it allows semiotics to make sense of physics without all the problem of “observers” or the nonsense that quasi-mystical interpretations of QM give. It also does justice to Continental concerns about phenomenology whether it be a saturated phenomena, traces, the unconscious or whatever. Semiotics is pervasive and is more broad than conscious phenomena or interpretation. This also avoids some of the limits I think that philosophy of language in the analytic tradition constantly finds itself in due to how it artificially limits the topic. (For instance things like “body language” or unconscious interpretations) > The question of physiosemiosis is a question of to what extent is the action > of signs simply co-terminous with the realm of living things. (to perhaps put > it in Frederik’s framework: are there natural dicisigns beyond the frontiers > of life?) The question properly phrased cannot be, as Frederik below > suggests, properly “rephrased as pansemiotics versus biosemiotics”. Well said. I think it makes sense to talk about signs in non-living systems. Primarily because it seems that life is near a continuum in terms of mind with humans having significant cognition; apes, dolphins and others having a fair bit, on down to various types of insects and then down to microscopic “life.” It’s not clear to me where one draws the line on what is or isn’t cognition. Without making a slippery slope fallacy, it seems worth considering whether we should bother drawing the line when speaking broadly. (Obviously there are practical considerations that make the line useful in certain contexts)
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