Dear Sung, Howard, lists - I tend to agree with Kauffman that some some sort of proto-metabolism must have been the earliest quasi-life (like his "autokatalytic sets"), rather than DNA first or membranes first etc - for the reason that self-sustaining cycles seem to be the first candidate to local teleology. Later aspects of that cycle will be needed and hence proto-meaningful for earlier aspects. So, once there is a metastable autokatalytic set in the primordial soup, it will be able to recruit membranes, and recruit RNA and later DNA for its replicability … something like that. It will also involve generality in the sense, that specific phases of the catalytic chain possibly may be satisfied by several different, but related, substances - in that case, they will be so to speak categorized as functionally the same (a bit like E. Coli being able to digest many different carbohydrates …)
Best F Den 28/04/2015 kl. 17.38 skrev Sungchul Ji <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> : Frederik, Howard, Lists, Frederik answered "By the first semiosis" to Howard's question, "When in the history of the universe do you say the first proposition occurs?" Frederik, can you speculate on what you think was the first semiosis like ? Would you agree that whatever it was, it must have been an irreducibly triadic process, or a self-organizing chemical reaction-diffusion system, similar to the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction or the artificial Krebs cycle of the Matsuno type? All the best. Sung On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 7:04 AM, Frederik Stjernfelt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Dear Howard, lists - Den 28/04/2015 kl. 12.44 skrev Howard Pattee <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> At 05:18 AM 4/28/2015, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote: [snip] - Dicisigns - applies to biosemiotics as well. To me, this forms part of a naturalization of semiotics. But, simultaneously, a naturalization which takes generalities such as empirical universals as well as mathematics/logic as parts of nature. I have argued that to be consistent with the physicists' view of natural laws, the first phenomenon occurred with the first self-replication (as did the first self, the first semiosis, and the first evolvable life, etc.). I think we're in agreement here. To me, semiotics and biology are co-extensive. Pansemioticians like Peirce think differently about natural laws and origins. I do not think Peirce is consistently a pan-semiotician (even if that tendency can most certainly be found in his work, so can counter-tendencies). We covered this ground before, did we not? I have three questions about your view: (1) What "parts of nature" do you include in "naturalization of semiotics"? I am not sure I understand the question. I do not think the results of mathematics are a human invention. I think mathematics is part of nature in the sense that it contains structures which are as they are without human agency - no matter whether they have physical realizations or not. They may be seen as hypothetical or modal in order to avoid naive Platonism. (2) Do you think of mathematics and logic as a part of (subset) of semiotics? No. I rather think semiotics is a subset of logic in Peirce's broad epistemological conception of logic. (3) When in the history of the universe do you say the first proposition occurs? By the first semiosis. Best Frederik ----------------------------- 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]<mailto:[email protected]> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected]<mailto:[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 . -- Sungchul Ji, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers University Piscataway, N.J. 08855 732-445-4701 www.conformon.net<http://www.conformon.net/>
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