Jerry, lists,
Do you mean (A) measurements made by physicists, chemists, biologists?
Or (B) all those measurements and also physical, chemical, and
biological interactions as constituting measurements even when no person
is involved? (I was discussing things in the perspective of (B)).
Best, Ben
*On 5/1/2015 2:26 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:*
Ben, List:
Biological measurements are expressed in terms of units in the sense
of Kempe, as cited by CSP.
They are referred to chemical measurements by reference to molecular
biology.
Chemical measurements are inferred by reference to physical measurements.
CSP refers indirectly to these difference in terms of the logic of
icons, the logic of indexes and the logic of symbols.
The underlying premise of CSP's chemo-centric world view demand a
"Unity of Nature" perspective.
Of course, IMHO.
Cheers
jerry
On May 1, 2015, at 10:32 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Howard, Gary F.,
Howard, I don't see why a rock's hitting the ground on a lifeless
planet shouldn't be taken as occasioning a measurement. That's the
sense that I got for example from Gell-Mann's _The Quark and the
Jaguar_. I can see how people can disagree about which interactions
constitute measurements, but the key thing that seems to distinguish
the biological situation is not a measurement per se but a kind of
evaluation or appraisal or act of classification, reflecting the
living thing's interests as a member of a species or lineage, and
those interests have to do with reproduction of fertile offspring. To
keep in the spirit of applying philosophical semiotic to biosemiotics
(at least through analogy), let me add that reproduction (as opposed
to mere repetition) of observations has been called the 'sanity
check' in science, and biological self-replication could be called a
health check, or fitness check, except that capacity to reproduce
fertile offspring is not just a check but is of the essence of
biological fitness (likewise reproduciblity of results, at least in
principle, is of the essence of scientific fitness). Within the
organism, there must be the replicability, reproducibility, of
information that you discuss.
If there is something like evaluation or appraisal in nonliving
things, things that lack vital interests that the appraisals would
reflect, then such appraisals would seem of a rather lower grade than
in living things, - I guess something to do with the common end of
entropy increase in an isolated system as a whole, or the
conservation of certain quantities when physics symmetries hold.
(Things get murky to me here.)
I'd agree that living things' capacities for measuring, sensing,
detecting, are evolved to lend themselves to evaluational semiosis;
they have a 'bias' or selectiveness for sensing the things that
evolutionary quasi-experience has shown to matter, to be worth the
attention of the evaluative faculties.
I think that a focus on the measurement's function for species- or
lineage-purposeful appraisal would keep one from having to take sides
in physical theory on whether measurements require living brains,
living systems, or simply bodies. To me that seems an advantage, but
you may see advantages that my lack of background keeps me from
seeing in a particular physical definition of measurement in those
respects.
Best, Ben
On 5/1/2015 7:50 AM, Howard Pattee wrote:
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