Edwina, in a previous comment, you stated, “I'd use the term 'Sign' [capital S] to mean, I think, what you mean by a 'holon'.“
While I wholly agree with your point, my reference to holon as a mind-body is also helpful one to keep in mind, because it draws attention to the relationship between the mind-body and pragmatism. That is, the body provides very specific “tools” that predispose an entity to making very specific choices from its ecosystem. So, where you consider a bacterium to be a “semiosic materialization of Mind” you must surely also be inferring the mind-body predispositions in which it manifests… ie, its physical structure and chemical properties. A mind-body is a sign, but the body is also the toolkit that extracts from infinite possibility the very specific things that matter, and that become defined in the mind-body’s world-view. For example, sex across species and gender roles in culture… and chemical reactions in molecules. As I am not a scholar studying Peirce in detail, am I perhaps over-stating the already obvious? sj From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, April 2, 2017 8:16 PM To: [email protected]; Stephen Jarosek; [email protected]; John F Sowa Subject: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term) John, list: As you say - you've evaded the issue. My own interest is in examining the 'rational materialization of Mind' - each of which I consider a Sign, or rather, a Sign-process, since nothing is static. So, rather than saying that a single bacterium 'has' a quasi-mind, I'd consider that bacterium to be a semiosic materialization of Mind. The brain is not the same as Mind. Edwina -- This message is virus free, protected by Primus - Canada's largest alternative telecommunications provider. http://www.primus.ca On Sun 02/04/17 12:00 PM , John F Sowa [email protected] sent: On 4/2/2017 11:04 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote: > I like your terms and yes, Peirce has indeed used all of them. > My question is: What would your definition be of a 'sign'? > You use it often in the chart but it has no definition. I'm glad that you approve of the choice of terms. Re definition of sign: I agree with all of Peirce's definitions. He used different words and phrases on various occasions, but I believe that they are consistent ways of expressing the fundamental relationships. In "Signs and Reality", I quoted one of them (CP 2.228), but it uses the word 'person', which would exclude computers. Later, I quoted “Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain” (CP 4.551). And I also believe that his term 'quasi-mind' is important for biosemiotics and computer systems. In short, I evaded the issue. But I think that Peirce also evaded the issue -- for a very good reason: Within a particular formal system (axioms in some version of logic), it's possible to state necessary and sufficient conditions that cover all and every use of a term within that system. But the question of how or whether a particular formal theory applies to some aspect of the real world is an empirical issue. Nobody knows what kinds of quasi-minds might exist somewhere in the universe. Even within our own brains, neuroscientists are constantly discovering unexpected features. If a single bacterium could be considered to have a quasi-mind, what about a single neuron in the brain? A single eukaryotic cell has several organelles, derived from more primitive cells that have been "swallowed" and incorporated into the larger cell. Are those organelles also "quasi-minds"? Marvin Minsky coined the term 'Society of Mind'. Are our brains societies of billions of quasi-minds (neurons), each of which is a society of even smaller quasi-minds? John
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