This message was sent by Gary Fuhrman to the biosemiotics list, but is of interest to Peirce forum members. Gary R
Um, Stan, you took that sentence out of its context, which was the proposition that experiments are *signs determined by their objects, *i.e. by the real world beyond our models -- not the other way round. To unpack that a bit more, the questions we put to nature are designed to refute (conclusively) or confirm (provisionally) our abductive inferences about nature. Those inferences are signs determined by their objects to determine experiments as their interpretants. Then, by inductive logic, the observed results of those experiments determine (modify) scientific theories -- which are *also* signs determined by the same dynamic objects which determined the abductions. It's a cyclic process, of course, and one liable to manipulation, corruption and misdirection, but when it's carried out by people bent on learning the truth from experience, it's informed at every turn by actual contact with some object external to the model (the sign). The form of that contact determines the form of the theory. That contact itself consists of indexical signs, while the theory is an iconic sign of whatever object the index points to. Lacking such indexical contact, a theory can't even be wrong. (But I guess a radical social constructivist would indeed deny that any theory can be wrong.) So that's how social constructions are determined by the external world in which they perforce have to exercise their functions, whatever those are. But we've been through all this before, and if you don't believe in an external reality beyond social construction, this isn't going to change your mind. So I'd better just drop it. gary f. *From:* Stanley N Salthe [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* 31-Jan-15 3:38 PM *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* [biosemiotics:8069] Constructivism again Gart F wrote I doubt that we can grasp the reality of gravitation, or any other type of phenomenon, without experiments of some kind. S: This is gist of the social constructivist view of science. The experiment 'determines' (what to the observers is) the nature of the immediate object. STAN
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