306 in NP is actually a blank page, so I don't have the context here.
Here is where you should use Peircean reasoning and inference. On page 307 Frederick says:
"The crooked and not very successful history of modern semiotics, however, is no testimony to the idea that it should be easy to steer such a conception of signs away from the dangers of received subject-object dichotomies
I hope this book makes a case for Peircean semiotics being able to follow this course, with the conception of signs in which biological intentionality must, from the very beginning, be able to instantiate simple inferences."
HP: I agree with Frederik's aim of generalizing intentionality to all life, including the first self-replicating individual. I have read the book, and I do not see how intentionality, which is an exclusive property of an individual mind or self, can exist without distinguishing it from the properties of matter, which does not exhibit intentionality. This has been known as the mind-matter problem for 2500 years. (At the origin of self-replication, which requires a symbol-system, I call it the symbol-matter problem.)
Peirce says:
The result that the chemist observes is brought about by nature, the result that the mathematician observes is brought about by the associations of the mind. . . the power that connects the conditions of the mathematicians diagram with the relations he observes in it is just as occult and mysterious to us as the power of Nature that brings about the results of the chemical experiment." [hhp italics] W:6, 37, Letter to Noble on the Nature of Reasoning, May 28, 1987. (1897)
This is the same problem, only Peirce does not call it a "dangerous dichotomy", but only an "occult mystery". Does Peirce claim to solve the mystery or eliminate the subject-object dichotomy? If so, can anyone outline concisely how he does it?
Howard
I think itâs already been pointed out on the list (though I donât have time to search for it now) that the words you put in quotation marks here are not Peirceâs, nor is it clear what they are applied to, so your parenthesis is also without context.
If you really want to know what âthe Peircean signs and triadsâ are good for, philosophically or biosemiotically, I think you could learn from Frederikâs examination of dicisigns in Natural Propositions, or even from the first half or so of my (less technical) book, or more directly from EP2. However
âFormal operations relying on one framework of interpretation cannot demonstrate a proposition to persons who rely on another framework. Its advocates may not even succeed in getting a hearing from these, since they must first teach them a new language, and no one can learn a new language unless he first trusts that it means something.â
Michael Polanyi (1962, 151))
Gary f.
From: Howard Pattee [ mailto:hpat...@roadrunner.com]
Sent: May 4, 2015 9:46 AM
To: Gary Fuhrman; biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; 'Peirce-L 1'
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8567] Re: Natural
At 09:49 AM 5/2/2015, Gary Fuhrman wrote:
- 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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