Howard, I thought you were lagging behind the discussion of NP, but now it seems you've jumped ahead of it!
However, your quotation from NP p.107 got a bit garbled. What the book says there is: "Nominalism and psychologism often, if not always, go together. Peirce refused both - with the upshot that his naturalism automatically includes thought, logic, semiotics, and mind as intrinsic aspects." You may not approve of Frederik's usage of these "-isms", but I think the context (p. 105-7) explains the reasoning behind his statement clearly enough, and I don't think I can improve on it as an answer to your question "Why don't nominalism and psychologism also, "automatically include thought, logic, semiotics, and mind as intrinsic?"" You say that semiosis "first occurs in an empirically testable sense at the origin of life." This strikes me as a peculiar use of the term "empirically testable", so I'm not sure whether I (as a "Peircean" disagree with it or not; but I am definitely skeptical of your apparent presupposition that "the origin of life" is or was a singular point in evolutionary history, and I can give Peircean reasons for that if you wish. You disagree with Frederik's Peircean thesis that "Propositions do not require an explicit linguistic system in which to function" (p.107), saying that "The biological evidence is clear that all life requires a linguistic system to replicate, engage the environment, and survive. I am defining a linguistic system and symbols functionally, just as Frederik defines a proposition functionally." GF: Yes, but your "functional" definition of "linguistic system" is quite different from Frederik's. I think the popular concept of a "genetic language" is metaphorical (though a highly convenient metaphor), while Frederik's usage in the phrase "explicit linguistic system" is the standard non-metaphorical one in science. This is obvious from the fact that the origin of language is a topic no less controversial than the origin of life, and none of the scientists working on either problem take them to be the same problem. They all agree that the origin of language occurred much more recently than the origin of life - which is not compatible with your claim as quoted above. As for Chapter 6, I'd prefer to cross that bridge when we come to it. gary f. From: Howard Pattee [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 19-Oct-14 11:57 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:7252] Re: Natural Propositions Chapter 4 Frederik, Gary F, list: I apologize if I missed Frederik's answers to my Chapter 2 questions. My short term memory is deteriorating. I do not understand why my answers to Gary's questions caused such a bad reaction. I have moved on to NP Chapter 4, where the complete rejection of nominalism and psychologism still seems to be the starting point. Frederik says, "Peirce refused nominalism and psychologism often, if not always together. Peirce refused both - with the upshot that his naturalism automatically includes thought, logic, semiotics, and mind as intrinsic aspects" HP: Why don't nominalism and psychologism also, "automatically include thought, logic, semiotics, and mind as intrinsic?" I agree with what Frederik is trying to do, naturalizing human mental activities by considering their function so they apply to lower organisms. I have been trying to naturalize the origin of function so that semiosis is possible. I think this first occurs in an empirically testable sense at the origin of life (e.g., see Cell Psychology <https://www.academia.edu/863857/Cell_psychology_an_evolutionary_approach_to _the_symbol-matter_problem> ). Peirceans disagree with this. I would like to hear Frederik's view. I see no basic conflict in our aims, but our approaches are separated by 4 billion years and two cultures, which I think is the basic reason that disagreements arise. Frederik: "Nowhere is this [refusal of nominalism] more apparent than in his idea that propositions may be defined purely functionally." This implies four things: "(1) Propositions do not require an explicit linguistic system in which to function." (p.107) HP: Here I disagree. The biological evidence is clear that all life requires a linguistic system to replicate, engage the environment, and survive. I am defining a linguistic system and symbols functionally, just as Frederik defines a proposition functionally. Isolated symbols do not exist. To be functional there must be an interpreting agent with an underlying symbol system, i.e., the genetic language, which experiments shows to be far more complex than anyone imagined. It must have evolved from simpler origins, but of course that is just the origin problem. In Chapter 6, Frederik gives good examples of Dicisign signaling from bacteria, fireflies, and bees to vervet monkeys. What needs to be emphasized is that all of his examples are special-purpose signals that depend on instructions (and constructions) from the general-purpose genetic language (vervet signals may also depend on some learning). I also infer that Frederik would interpret the deflated truth value of a primitive proposition as its survival value. I agree with that interpretation, but could a realist be satisfied with that interpretation of truth? Also, how is a genetic instruction (an imperative or conditional) interpretable as a proposition? Howard
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