At 08:50 PM 1/28/2015, Jon Awbrey wrote:
This is common misconception of life as semiotics.
HP: Without some evidence here, I would consider this misconception only one opinion. Many others say life and semiotics are coextensive.
JA: A more pragmatic understanding of the process would regard its object as the infinitive "to live" while the protein is an interpretant sign of the double helix sign.
HP: I see your point, but I would add that a more pragmatic understanding of "to live" implies "to evolve." Consequently, I would call evolution the final object. Otherwise, how could you get such novelties as philosophers and physicists? But evolution first requires self-replication. How can you self-replicate a sign? I will try to briefly explain why this is not so simple, and why symbols require more immediate objects like proteins.
Signs are interpreted matter (the sign vehicle). To self-replicate a sign requires first to duplicate the sign vehicle without regard to its interpretation. But if the duplicated sign is to retain its meaning the interpretation must also be duplicated. Your calling proteins "interpretant signs" only leads to Peirce's well-known infinite regress problem.
Peirce: "So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series."
HP: To solve the infinite regress problem you must understand the <http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/pattee.html>Physics of Symbols. To carry information, sequences of symbol vehicles must not be limited by laws. More generally, all signs and interpretants insofar as they convey information, and all memories insofar as they store information, must be energy degenerate. It is only when the degeneracy is removed that a sign can exert any influence on a physical system. This first influence I would call the immediate object. In the case of the cell, this is the folded protein.The final object, evolution, is much too complicated to model in such detail.
Howard
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