Frederik, you wrote,
[So here I agree with Howard (and I guess P would do so as well) that the right direction is to generalize the observer-phenomenon distinction so as to cover all biological organisms.]
GF: I agree about the right direction, but I don't see that Howard does, because he defines "phenomenon" not as the thing observed, or the object of attention, but as the result of the observation.
HP: Gary, you should know by now that generalizing the subject-object problem to all life is what I've been doing! You are just quibbling over choice of words and missing the problem. If you want to call "the thing observed" a phenomenon, that's OK. But then what do you want to call the result or experience of observation? Whatever words you choose to call the object and the observer, or the detected and detector, you will still require a subject-object distinction.
The common usage in physics calls "the thing observed," or what is being detected, an "event." The result is the phenomenon, or the "first person experience" according to the phenomenologist.
GF; In Howard's words,"A phenomenon is information resulting from an individual subject's detection of a physical interaction." And this result is entirely "subjective . . ."
HP: Exactly.The result is an experience, and all experience is entirely subjective -- without exception [see Max Born, or any phenomenologist]. Experience is accumulated by interpreting and evaluating phenomena.
GF: . . . as if you could have a subject of experience without an object, or a sign with an immediate object but no dynamic object, or an interpretant sign unrelated to the object of the sign it interprets.
HP: Your "as if . . ." is a false inference. Phenomena obviously require events, including events arising from the individual's memory.
GF: For logical purposes, the subject/object distinction is a poor substitute for the sign/object/interpretant triad . . .
HP: It is not a substitute. As I explained in my 5/1 post: Physical measurement is irreducibly triadic -- the object-event itself, the record of the event (usually a symbol), and the agent-subject-interpreter. Agreed, this may not be Peircean, but it is Hertzian.
I would still like some comment on my original question to Frederik (re p. 306 in NP ): How do the Peircean signs and triads avoid facing the subject-object relation (which Peirce himself called "obscure and mysterious")?
Howard
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