Dear Howard, lists - I stumbled over a text bite from mid-October which gave me the idea that there may be some terminological confusion at the root of some of our discussions.
Den 20/10/2014 kl. 18.19 skrev Howard Pattee <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: HP: Exactly. More generally, do the symbols of the genes code only nominalistically for specific amino acids, or do they code realistically foruniversal functions like catalysis and self-replication? The evidence seems clear that gene symbols code for both, as well as many other conditional and control activites that can't be called either specific or universal. Here, Howard couples nominalism/ realism with specific/ universal. But this is strange to me. "Specific", of course, comes from "species", all the way back to Aristotle (species/genus or eidos/genos) - and "species", of course is a general concept, a universal (in traditional discussions, the staple example of universals are animal species such as lions). So specific terms are also universals. They come in many different degree of generality: "artifacts" - "furniture" - "chairs" - "armchairs" - "Louis XVI armchairs" - "red Louis XVI armchairs" are all universals on different levels of generality. What is not universals is particulars, individuals: "this armchair". The nominalism/realism issue pertains to whether all such universal terms are only figments of the mind, grouping together particulars in reality which have nothing at all in common (nominalism) or whether there is some fundamentum in re in certain universals (but not all universals, I think most scientists agrees that universals like "demons", "ether", "unicorns", "fairies", maybe "gods" have no fundamentum in re). Conversely, realism could not be the claim that signs refer to the most general functions as in Howards's quote. Realism is the claim that some predicates (or "codes") refer to real structures of the world ("round" has its fundamentum in re in the existence of round objects, "iron" has its fundamentum in re in the existence of objects made out of iron). But I think I can see where Howard is heading in the quote. I think he is right that gene symbols code for functions both on a specific and a more general level - on several levels of generality, as it were. But all functions are general. This lies in the fact that several, numerically distinct events or processes can serve the same function. As with Peirce's example : baking an apple pie, you (and the recipe you follow) have only a general conception of the cake you intend. Many different, idividual baking processes may satisfy the recipe. The recipe speaks of, e.g. "4 apples", not about "4 particular, identifiable apples found on a particular branch on a particular tree in a particular orchard in Massachusetts at a particular date". - But the resulting cake is not general. Best F
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
