Howard wrote:
It has been over 140 years since Maxwell's semiotic demon began
confusing physicists, but by now it is a well-established principle
that any semiotic system insofar as it is interpreted as bearing
information is indeterminable by laws; and conversely, any system
insofar as it is completely determined by laws does not involve
semiosis. The only other restriction on semiotic information is that
its use cannot violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Edwina: I'm aware that Howard wrote this to support his own rejection of
semiosis within the physico-chemical realm, but as a supporter of
pansemiosis, I'm going to disagree. Essentially, this analysis of Howard's
also applies to machines, but, although a machine operates completely in
itself within Secondness, i.e., as a Dicent Sinsign (2-2-2), nevertheless,
following the principle of 'communal informational processing', that machine
relies on the agency of the human who built and operates and uses/interprets
this machine.
To consider that semiosis only exists when the Interpretant is open to other
influence, and to more interpretations, i.e., that it operates in a mode of
Firstness - and six of the ten semiosic classes do just that - is, in my
view, an inadequate view of the full nature of semiosis. The vital power of
the Interpretant being open to interpretation, i.e., to being in a mode of
Firstness, cannot be underemphasized. BUT, the stability of information
processing provided by an Interpretant in a mode of Secondness (as are all
three of the Dicents) is equally vital. Plus that mode of Secondness is
always local in context - and that is equally vital to the production of
instances in all three realms of semiosis. So, an Interpretant in a mode of
Secondness, which has no capacity to change in itself - is indeed a semiosis
action.
We know that a law, a formal system, can never be fully articulated (Godel),
but even if the instances of that law are stable and have little capacity to
vary from the perimeters of that law, they still follow the triadic nature
of the Sign: Object-Representamen-Interpretant.
Semiosis in my view is not simply about openness to interpretation; it is
about the 'manufacturing' and processing of matter-as-information. That
functions in all three realms: the physico-chemical, the biological, the
socio-conceptual.
Edwina
-----------------------------
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 .
