Tyler, thanks for your reply and discussion. 1) I don't think that all Signs are Arguments but all Signs, in my view, function within the 'universal Mind', which in itself as an aspatial and atemporal force, is an 'Argument'. I don't see the other Sign formats (the ten classes) therefore as degenerate forms of an Argument Form but as part of the complex nature of Argumentation/ Mind processes. As such a part, they are of individual significance, since I see the Argument/Mind as akin to a Godelian process which expresses itself in finite individual morphologies.
2) I do indeed confine the symbol to the human realm. That's because I also rest semiosis within an analytic frame of evolution that rejects gradualism (Darwin) and favours 'punctuated equilibrium' of three distinct realms of material organization. The physico-chemical, biological and socio-conceptual realms of organization are each separate, although networked, functional morphological semiosic realms in themselves. The evolution in complexity of semiosic morphology of these three realms from the more simple physico-chemical to the biological to the socioconceptual is not gradual but distinct and a 'jump' and thus makes each realm semiosically and functionally distinct. This distinctiveness also argues against the reductionism of many views that accept the non-punctuated formats of these three realms. I consider that the use of symbolic semiosis is confined to the human realm and gave this realm an enormous evolutionary capacity to process energy/matter. No other species can imagine the world; can change the world from its imagined 'ought' to be..to an actual 'is'. No other species, rather than evolving wings, can imagine and develop the capacity to fly via technology. And so on. Now, is hypostatic abstraction (p162) rather than the use of the symbol, the definitive criterion of this third realm, the socioconceptual human realm? That is, the movement of information from the local singular to the general. But, this is, in my view, a process of Thirdness and I consider that such a process...moving the local experience to the generality, is a property of all three realms. So, at the moment, I will stick with the use of the symbol as the defining characteristic of this Third Realm. I don't think this is the time to debate Peirce's commitment to Darwinism, but I question Frederik's statement (p 257) that Peirce had a 'strong Darwinism'. I'll question that later but just comment that Darwin's gradualism and randomness confines evolution to Secondness and rejects the process of Mind within Thirdness. 3) I have no argument against the reality of relations with the Dynamic and Immediate Objects, but maintain my strong hesitation in applying the mode of 'symbolic' to any such relation outside of the socioconceptual or human realm. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Tyler Bennett To: [email protected] ; [email protected] Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 11:56 AM Subject: [biosemiotics:7283] Natural Propositions Chapter four Edwina, Gary R, Gary F, Frederik, list, In my initial post I wanted to raise the question of the taxonomic approach mainly because, from one perspective it is not possible within the dicisign doctrine as it is laid out in NP. If all real signs partake of arguments, the details of which are worked out as separate interactions of icons, indices, etc., than these particular workings out are degenerate or fragmentary and as such are not "signs" per se and have no individual significance. Therefore to use the typology of ten for example to classify different kinds of sign actions would be incorrect. On this topic Edwina wrote: "My own view is that the symbol is a semiosic relation (that between the Representamen and the Object) which is confined to human cognition. As a purely artificial relation, I think that it REQUIRES an artificial means of expression - which is language or other cognitively constructed media system. Furthermore, I think that this enabled the human species to free itself from the restrictions of the physical realm and 'imagine' the world as it 'ought to be' rather than 'as it is'...This leaves the non-human realm with the Dicent Indexical Sinsign - a local mechanical reaction, and the Dicent Indexical Legisign which is, by virtue of its Legisign, connected to the truths of the Universal and thus, not merely reactive." While this is one way to preserve the taxonomic use of Peirce's theory of signs (e.g. for distinguishing human from non-human semiosis), it seems to me that the alternative solution could be just as effective. That alternative solution would be to cede symbols to all instances of semiosis (or at least to some non-humans), but to subdivide them and arguments according to the typology of 66 signs, where some kinds of symbols/arguments are applicable to E. coli for example, and others only occur in the case of verbal language signs. One reason I think this approach would be better is that NP already goes beyond the 1903 classification, even if not explicitly. It does so in 3.7 where Frederik maintains that dicisigns have both immediate and dynamic objects. As Gary pointed out, this connection of the parts of the dicisign to immediate and dynamic objects is one of the most interesting portions of the book so far, and explains in a concrete example how one sign action can possess more than one relation to an object (can be an icon, index, and/or a symbol), something for which the 1903 classification does not accommodate. Another reason to prefer this solution has to do with the stress Frederik puts on hypostatic abstraction being the true human semiotic threshold. Hypostatic abstraction is another of Peirce's terms which, although it is not explicitly articulated within any known typologies of the 66 types, certainly could be said to only obtain within one of the six classes of symbolic legisigns (according to Romanini's periodic table of signs). This is just one way that we could both cede symbols to all forms of semiosis, while retaining the possibility of taxonomically differentiating human from non-human semiosis, and would allow us to disambiguate some of the terms in NP. On this disambiguation, Gary R. wrote, "your unsettling question concerning the differentiation of proto-propositions from full fledged propositions surely needs to be addressed if we are to include the proto-propositions in the kind of thinking just discussed above." For example we could possibly distinguish proto-propositions from fully fledged propositions as those which do not entail hypostatic abstraction. Though this solution would be a nice way to preserve the taxonomic use of Peirce's signs, elsewhere Frederik does maintain, "that higher animals are not only at the command of symbols in general, but also of those most demanding and complex of symbols called arguments and reasonings, involving diagrams," and "...there is probably no upper bound to the complexity of symbol types which higher animals have access to as single signs," but "To Peirce, explicit control is even paramount to reasoning proper -- which is why animal reasoning despite many similarities to human reasoning only rarely may qualify as proper reasoning." 245 Diagrammatology I wonder if he would also say that there is no "upper bound" to the symbol use of the E.Coli bacteria? Frederik appears at once to allow for the taxonomic approach ("My aim here is to render the semiotic aspects of Deacon's hypothesis -- with which I basically sympathize -- somewhat more precise" [Diagrammatology]), and at the same time to preclude the possibility that this precision can be articulated in taxonomic Peircean terms. There are two ambiguities: The degrees of "self control" that distinguish the human use of signs, and the distinction between proto- and fully fledged propositions. Can/should they be 'rendered more precise' according to the higher types of sign?
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