Please note that "physiosemiosis" and "pansemiosis" (or "otics") are NOT AT ALL synonyms.
From: Frederik Stjernfelt [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2014 18:31 To: [email protected]; Peirce List Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Physics & Semiosis Dear Clark, list If feel somewhat bad of having brought the discussion down this tangent. (I've changed subject as per request) I hope you don't mind me making one final comment. Not at all, these are important questions. On Sep 7, 2014, at 4:49 AM, Frederik Stjernfelt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Not all triadicity and thirdness is semiotic - that is my conclusion. In Peirce, claims pointing in both directions can be found, so this is not a question which can be solved by Peirce philology. Rather, it should be solved by looking to what the sciences are actually doing. So ,to me, the decisive argument against pan- or physiosemiotics is that I have never seen any semiotic redescription of physical processes (like: the crater is an index of the meteor) adding the tiniest bit to our knowledge of physics. In that sense, such description seems superfluous. Quite the contrary is the case in biology where semiotic concepts abound. It seems to me that there are many examples of exactly this sort of dual direction and most of the best examples occur in thermodynamics. Especially when combined with a statistical mechanics conception. But perhaps I'm missing something obvious about what you mean by adding to our knowledge of physics. If I say the entropy is an index of the state of particles I am saying something different from entropy is caused by the state of the particles. At least it does to me. but the entropy as a function of the state of the particles may be expressed without semiotic terminology, right? Are any sign-like concepts necessary in the classic Boltzmann and other descriptions? Is there any sign-like process going on in the macroscopic property of entropy resulting from one of several possible microscopic particle states? I am not speaking about whether WE use sign-like concepts in shaping our knowledge of the situation - but whether there is a sign process going on when we're not looking, so to speak ... Maybe that's not the best example, but then again I may be just missing the point you are making. (Again, apologies if I am - I bring it up only because it seems something important) If I have you correctly you are making a distinction between the mental and the physical that's somewhat analogous to Davidson's anomalous monism. That is a mental description might describe the same physical state as a physical description but the physical description doesn't exhaust the mental description. That is, the mental description is irreducible. (The opposite of say Rorty's take where talking about pain or the firing of neurons seems the same) I see the analogy but I do not think semiotics is mental in the sense Davidson intends. I think semiotic description in biology is irreducible, not so in physics. The question then is whether going in one direction or the other matters in physics. You mean the direction of time, cf. the second law of thermodynamics - but I don't see why this necessitates description in terms of signs. I think the existence of signs presuppose the local teleology of the closed circuits of the metabolism of an organism - but that is only in ch. 6 of Natural Propositions - (I intend by Davidson just an analogy - not that it is akin to the anomalous monism which if I recall depends upon the nature of normative descriptions) If that's right then I really do think the traditional description of thermodynamics and the statistical mechanics presentation of thermodynamics really is a classic example. Most teachers and interpreters tend to be very careful to note that we *shouldn't* assume statistical mechanics explains all thermodynamics (although some might think it does). Yet with that distinction the index then becomes quite significant.
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