[PEIRCE-L] Aw: [biosemiotics:8892] Re: The problem with

Helmut Raulien Sat, 19 Sep 2015 05:17:01 -0700

Dear Sung, lists,

I like your diagram:

f g

Phaneron -------------> Body --------------> Mind
(Firstness) (Secondness) (Thirdness)
[Object] [Representamen] [Interpretant]

| ^
| |
|__________________________________|
h

But I am confused about the assignments of object and representamen. I see arguments for assigning them as you do, and I also see arguments for assigning them the other way around. For arguments for your version I see, that the phaneron in this case is environment or "Umwelt" (Uexküll), which contains the objects, and that the body produces reactions to these objects, which reactions are representamens. For arguments to do the assignment the other way I see: The body consists of permanent entities, and permanence is a trait of objects. From the phaneron there come events, that meet the senses, and are representamens. I am just as confused, as I have been when I first had read the Peirce quote: "A sign is a first....", in which I have not understood until today, what Peirce means by "first" and "second". That was, why I later have made up my own interpretation, that representamens are events, and objects are entities. Is this wrong? If so, I will delete and rewrite my blog again.

Very best,

Helmut

"Sungchul Ji" <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:

Kristina, Stephen, Helmut, Edwina, list members,

The heated debate between Edwina and Kristina reminds me of the Republican debate we saw on TV last night. Let us not fight against each other but focus on defeating the Democrats of the challenging problems in contemporary science and philosophy.

One possible way to resolve the perennial mind-body problem in philosophy may be to utilize the principles of supplementarity and complementarity introduced into philosophy by Niels Bohr in the first decades of the last century [1]:

" . . . Within the scope of classical physics, all characteristic
properties of a given object can in principle be ascertained by a single experimental arrangement, although in practice various arrangements are often convenient for the study of different aspects of the phenomenon. In fact, data obtained in such a way simply supplement each other and can be combined into a consistent picture of the behavior of the object under investigation. In quantum mechanics, however, evidence about atomic objects obtained by different experimental arrangements exhibits a novel kind of complementary relationship.
Indeed, it must be recognized that such evidence which appears

contradictory when combination into a single picture is attempted,

exhausts all conceivable knowledge about the object. Far from

restricting our efforts to put questions to nature in the form of

experiments, the notion of complementarity simply characterizes

the answers we can receive by such inquiry, whenever the interaction

between the measuring instruments and the objects forms an integral

part of the phenomenon. . . . (my italics) [2]"

In 2012 [3], I proposed a possible solution to the mind-body conundrum based on the principles of supplementarity and complementarity defined above and two more ingredients -- (i) the so-called the Structure-Information-Matter-Energy (SIME) Square of Burgin [4] (see below) and (ii) the modeling relation of Rosen [5]. First, SIME Square:

". . . information is not of the same kind as knowledge and data, which are structures.
Actually, if we take that matter is the name for all substances as opposed to energy

and the vacuum, we have the relation that is represented by the following diagram called
the Structure-Information-Matter-Energy (SIME) Square:

similar

Figure 1. The Structure-Information-Matter-Energy (SIME) Square. Reproduced from [3].

I presented a possible solution to the mind-body problem in a diagram [3, p. 636] which is reproduced below:

S Natural System (N) <- - - - - -> Formal System (F)

U ^ ^

P | |

L v v

E Energy <- - - - - - - - - - - - -> Information 'LIFORMATION'

M MATTERGY | | | | or

E Matter <- - - - - - - - - - - - -> Knowledge/Life 'INFOKNOWLEDGE'

N ^ ^
T | |
A v v

R Body <- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> Mind
I ^ ^

T | |
Y |____________ _____________|
COMPLEMENTARITY

Figure 1. A schematic representation of the postulate that the mind and the body are the complementary aspects of the ultimate reality. (If the figure is distorted in your email, please see the original figure available on line at http://www.conformon.net [3].

The following points deserve emphasis in Figure 1:

(1) There are two vectors; the Body-Matter-Energy-Natural System (BMEN) vector on the left and the Mind-Knowledge-Information-Formal system (MKIF) vector on the right. For convenience we may refer to these vectors as the N (Natural System) and F (formal System) vectors, borrowing the terms used by Rosen [5]. There is an unmistakable family resemblance among the components of the N vector which are connected one to the other by the Principle of Supplementarity as exemplified the the additive (i.e., supplementary) relation between matter and energy as established by Einstein's E = mc^2. The components of the F vector also exhibit unmistakable family resemblance, as exemplified perhaps by Shannon's famous equation, H = log_2 W, where H can be interpreted as Information and W as our Knowledge or Mind knowing or counting W.

(2) The key postulate of Figure 1 is that the N and F vectors are complementary to each other. In other words the N and F vectors are the complementary aspects of a third entity which I identify with the Ultimate Reality or the Firstness of Peirce.

(3) Combining (1) and (2) leads to the following diagram that connects the mind-body problem to Peircean (metaphysics) and [semiotics]:

f g

Phaneron -------------> Body --------------> Mind
(Firstness) (Secondness) (Thirdness)
[Object] [Representamen] [Interpretant]

| ^
| |
|__________________________________|
h

Figure 2. The postulate that the phaneron-body-mind as an irreducible triadic relation (ITR).

f = perception/consciousness (?); g = conceptualization (?); and
h = correspondence or grounding (?)

If you have any questions, suggestions or corrections, let me know.

All the best.

Sung

____________________________________

Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Rutgers University

Piscatawy, N.J.

[1] Bohr, N. (1958). Quantum Physics and Philosophy - Causality and Complementarity, in Philosophy in the Mid-Century, R. Klibansky (ed.), La Nouva Editrice, Florence.

[2] Ji, S. (2012). Complementarity. In: Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical Applications. Springer, New York. Section 2.3, pp. 24-50. PDF at http://www.conformon.net.

[3] Ji, S. (2012). Towards a Category Theory of Everything (cTOE). In: Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical Applications. Springer, New York. Pp. 633-642. PDF at http://www.conformon.net

[4] Burgin, M. (2010). Theory of Information: Fundamentality, Diversity and Unification. World Scientific, Singapore. P. 117.

[5] Rosen, R. (1991). Life Itself, Columbia University Press, New York.

On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 3:09 AM, <kirst...@saunalahti.fi> wrote:

Stephen, I don't think adding "unity" helps. Unity is already implied in the form of the 'mind-body'. - The problem lies deeper than in wordings. The mind-body problem needs to be solved. Which is not easy. Right now I'm quite busy writing down the solution I have arrived at, using both Peirce and Foucault. (Which will yet take a month or two...). After I've finished my work, I'll be happy to discuss it with you & other listers.

Kirsti

Stephen Jarosek kirjoitti 16.9.2015 16:56:
Kirsti, you make a sensible observation. Speaking for myself, it looks
like I have become a bit sloppy in my wording... I used to write
"mind-body unity" but have become lazy, shortening it to "mind-body",
assuming that people will take the "unity" part for granted. But is
there an alternative to writing "mind-body unity" every time? I like
Ken Wilber's use of the word "holon", but not everybody knows what
that means. I suppose the word "entity" is an alternative to "holon"
and I've seen that used in the past.
Cheers
sj

-----Original Message-----
From: kirst...@saunalahti.fi [mailto:kirst...@saunalahti.fi]
Sent: Wednesday, 16 September 2015 3:23 PM
To: Clark Goble
Cc: PEIRCE-L
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8863] The problem
with instinct - it's a category

Dear list,

I sincerely do find talk about "mind-bodies" basically twisted. A
modern division, a split, is thereby taken for granted, taken as the
starting-point. - A being, be it a human being, or a bee, should
remain as the starting point.

Best,

Kirsti

Clark Goble kirjoitti 15.9.2015 21:13:
Apologies - I just found out I’d sent this to the old Peirce list
rather than the new one. My apologies for the problem. Apple Mail
appears to autosuggest based upon what emails you have archived.
Sometimes this leads to the old list getting picked up. Unfortunately
Mail’s UI also doesn’t display the full email unless you click on it.
So unless I click on the Peirce-L name I occasionally get the wrong
email. When I’m posting regularly I always remember. When I’m posting
infrequently (as has of late been the case) then I can forget. Once
again my apologies again.

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:

On Sep 8, 2015, at 1:36 PM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote:

Stephen,
you wrote: "The axiomatic principles of cognition (Peirce’s
categories) will establish how mind-bodies define the things that
matter."
Again, I think that we have different concepts of the term "know" or
"cognition". In my understanding, cognition does not appear in the
three categories from the start, but is a matter of subcategories. I
agree, that everything underlies the three categories
possibility/quality, actuality/relation, representation/continuity.
Secondness has two modes, and thirdness has three modes. These modes,
or subcategories, again have submodes, or subcategories as before. I
think, that knowledge is a matter of eg. thirdness of thirdness of
thirdness, or something like that.

It seems to me Peirce adopts a position where things are more
mind-like or more matter-like as a matter of degree rather than kind.
I’m not sure it relates directly to the categories beyond the idea of
consciousness seems tied to firstness in certain ways.
Yet the categories are always at play in an irreducible way.

At times Peirce appears to see the more mind-like as what is less
constrained. So evolution is leading to the development of substance
as a kind of permanence. Up to that time there is more “swerve”
and that swerve, when seen from the inside, is likely traditional
phenomenal mind.

This ontology of Peirce is probably the most controversial aspect of
his thought but it does lead to all sorts of interesting
considerations. An analogy someone else brought up recently was
Richard Feynman’s QED really being thinking what it must be like to
be an electron. In this conception there’s always an inside and
outside and Peirce isn’t quite so divorced from Kant as people
assume. Yet in taking this inner view we don’t have the thing in
itself in quite the same fashion. If only because Peirce lets
firstness create a sign. Indeed remembering our experience of a
phenomena is always a sign (thirdness) in response to firstness.

That may be what you mean by modes or subcategories though. (Forgive
me - haven’t yet caught up on my reading of the list)

On Sep 8, 2015, at 12:18 PM, Stephen Jarosek <sjaro...@iinet.net.au>
wrote:

Bees are conscious in accordance with the same principles that we are
conscious. This is one important aspect of the axiomatic framework
that I base my thinking on. That is to say, Peirce’s categories apply
to _all_organisms, even cells.

Pierce says bees have mind. I’m not sure he means by that they are
conscious in any strong way. It seems a matter of degree for Peirce.

Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the
work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world;
and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that the
colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there.
Consistently adhere to that unwarrantable denial, and you will be
driven to some form of idealistic nominalism akin to Fichte’s.
Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there.
But as there cannot be a General without Instances embodying it, so
there cannot be thought without Signs. We must here give “Sign” a
very wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide a sense to come within
our definition. Admitting that connected Signs must have a
Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated
sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a
Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at
one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless
be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded.
Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a
necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should
be dialogic. You may say that all this is loose talk; and I admit
that, as it stands, it has a large infusion of arbitrariness. It
might be filled out with argument so as to remove the greater part
of this fault; but in the first place, such an expansion would
require a volume - and an uninviting one; and in the second place,
what I have been saying is only to be applied to a slight
determination of our system of diagrammatization, which it will only
slightly affect; so that, should it be incorrect, the utmost certain
effect will be a danger that our system may not represent every
variety of non-human thought. (“Prolegomena to an Apology for
Pragmaticism CP 4.551)
Whenever you have signs, even physical signs, you have a quasi-mind.
So of course thirdness applies to them the same as it does us. The
question of feeling or firstness seems a bit more tricky.

As I recall to the degree he talks about consciousness it’s the inner
aspect of the “swerve” or chaos. In other places he says we have
consciousness to the degree we have self-control. I think this aspect
of his ontology is among the most controversial of his views. I think
one can adopt most of his system without adopting this particular
thread. (Which I think comes out of the remnant of Kant’s “in-itself”
that survives no external thing-in-itself)

…whatever is First is _ipso facto _sentient. If I make atoms swerve
- as I do - I make them swerve but very very little, because I
conceive they are not absolutely dead. And by that I do not mean
exactly that I hold them to be physically such as the materialists
hold them to be, only with a small dose of sentiency superadded. For
that, I grant, would be feeble enough. But what I mean is, that all
there IS, is First, Feelings; Second, Efforts; Third, Habits - all
of which are more familiar to us on their psychical side than on
their physical side; and that dead matter would be merely the final
result of the complete induration of habit reducing the free play of
feeling and the brute irrationality of effort to complete death (CP
6.201)

What further is needed to clear the sign of its mental associations
is furnished by generalizations too facile to arrest attention here,
since nothing but feeling is exclusively mental.
But while I say this, it must not be inferred that I regard
consciousness as a mere “epiphenomenon”; though I heartily grant
that the hypothesis that it is so has done good service to science.
To my apprehension, consciousness may be defined as that congeries
of non-relative predicates, varying greatly in quality and in
intensity, which are symptomatic of the interaction of the outer
world,— the world of those causes that are exceedingly compulsive
upon the modes of consciousness, with general disturbance sometimes
amounting to shock, and are acted upon only slightly, and only by a
special kind of effort, muscular effort,— and of the inner world,
apparently derived from the outer, and amenable to direct effort of
various kinds with feeble reactions, the interaction of these two
worlds chiefly consisting of a direct action of the outer world upon
the inner and an indirect action of the inner world upon the outer
through the operation of habits. If this be a correct account of
consciousness, i.e., of the congeries of feelings, it seems to me
that it exercises a real function in self-control, since without it,
or at least without that of which it is symptomatic, the resolves
and exercises of the inner world could not affect the real
determinations and habits of the outer world. I say that these
belong to the outer world because they are not mere fantasies but
are real agencies. (Pierce, Pragmatism EP 2.418-419)

As I said this is controversial. At the time it put Peirce quite at
odds with the mechanistic determinacy that was taken for granted in
physics. Today we allow chance or swerve, yet it seems a kind of
deterministic probability that still is at odds with Peirce’s notion
of control.

It would seem that Peirce would allow sentiency to even an electron
in some degree yet it seems the ability to control ones behavior and
form habits that makes for the degree of consciousness.

-----------------------------
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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

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