List, Frederik, On Sep 13, 2014, at 7:44 PM, Deely, John N. wrote:
> Just as semiotics is the generic name for the study of semiosis, and > anthroposemiotics the specific name for the study ofanthroposemiosis allowing > of many substudies, and zoösemiotics is the name for the study of > zoösemiosis, (in both cases with or without the dieresis intended only to > ensure correct pronunciation and to distinguish the specific study from the > sub-study of captive animals as “zoo-semiotics”), and biosemiosis is the name > for the study of semiosis among all living forms, so physiosemiotics is the > name for the study of physiosemiosis. > Living individuals as fundamental natural units are called, under Aristotle’s > maxim that the world is either one (monism) or many (pluralism), but in order > for there to be many there have to be ones, “substances”. The change from > living to nonliving, or (at life’s evolutionary origin) nonliving to living, > including thus “in the beginning” when a living substance first emerged from > the physical interactions of (probably a planetary) environment, would > involve but not reduce to semiosis.... > ... BEKNIGHTED in the attempt to reduce or equate the question of substantial > change to some manner of the action of signs. Beknighted! What a delightful term for capturing the prevailing attitudes of many regular posters to this list serve. Is this "beknighting" a part of broader personal philosophies, rooted in the long sterile debate between the internalists and the externalists and hence the origin of biosemiotics and it's failures to communicate with the other sciences? I do not know. IMHO, a key component of the utter failure of communication within this narrow community appears to emerge from the rhetorical association of the root of "seme" with nouns, verbs, and as an adjective. The meaning of these rhetorical derivatives of "seme", as they are used on this list serve, are often intermixed, intertwined, interlaced and interwoven with the notion of the inquiry into study of the concept of a sign. This failure to distinguish between the study of signs as a formal inquiry into communication acts results in endless, almost child-like, bickering here, which has persisted for well over a decade. The contributors seeking to promote the externalistic perspective of "semes" ground arguments on realism, which for CSP, is both the well-defined and ill-defined notions of the paths of constructing arguments, e.g. A Guess at the Riddle, EP1: 252. Often, CSP grounds/roots his realism on the ur-chemical notions as they existed in his day, EP1: 267-269. CSP is continually seeking to express what is known today as the correspondence theory of true, the foundational argument of the chemical sciences. The intrinsic nature of the correspondent relations restrict them to local arguments and the inferences are based on facts mentally represented as semes and communicated to others by usage of the same artificial semes. The contributors seeking to promote the internalistic perspective of "semes" ground arguments on a view of "coherence theory of truth" such that the construction of arguments can include a wide range of other beliefs that do not depend on correspondent relations among physical or chemical or biological facts, in accordance with personal consciousness and free will. Is this debate between the internalists and the externalists completely hopeless? I think not. One action that serious contributors could take (for the purpose of reducing the incoherence of communications) is to adopt the term "semiology" for the study of signs. Thus, the prefix "semio-" could be added to nouns to express the desired scope or limitation on the noun. It this capacity, the meaning of "seme" would serve as an adjective modifying the meaning of the noun, restricting it. In certain cases, the concept of "seme" in biology is already used in this role for representing factual observations. For example, the Apple dictionary gives the following definition for modifying a noun as a form of inquiry. semiochemical |ˌsemē-ōˈkemikəl, ˌsēmē-| nounBiochemistry a pheromone or other chemical that conveys a signal from one organism to another so as to modify the behavior of the recipient organism. For another example that illustrates the role of "seme" as an adjective, "semio-biology" in the sense that it is an inquiry into conveyance of signs / signals in biological communication. Shannon information theory could be taken as a pseudo-example of semio-physics. The term "Semio-biology" would intrinsically infer internal-internal, external-internal, internal-external and external-external communications. If the students of "semio-biology" make a clear expression of which of the four forms of bio-communication was the subject discourse, and how many of the four forms were being addressed, major improvements in communication could be achieved. This form of communication problems does not exist in the purely mathematical sciences. This conceptualization of semio-biology is nascent; obviously it could be expanded into a major work. Open questions: Is this idea worth exploring? What changes would it require? Would it reduce the mis-communications? Why should this suggestion be rejected? Anybody up to a difficult challenge? Cheers Jerry Headwater House
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