Jerry R, Helmut, and Jon AS,
This note is rather long, but each of your questions requires
a lot of explanation supported by quotations.
JR
But my reservation about not treating bacteria as quasi-mind remains.
How is this even possible?
I'll answer that question with another question: A brain is a colony
of one-celled neurons. How would it be it possible for a brain to
support a mind unless each cell had at least a quasi-mind?
See the attached intention.gif. Note the Following comment:
A bacterium swimming upstream in a glucose gradient marks
the beginning of goal-directed intentionality.
That kind of behavior is possible with living things as simple
as a bacterium. But it's not possible with a rock, which Peirce
said had an 'effete mind'. By comparison, a bacterium would have
a far more robust quasi-mind.
Remember that I'm just trying to explain what Peirce said.
I agree with him, but one could define mind in different ways
that are not Peircean. But I trust Peirce's intuition --
especially when it's supported by modern experts, such as Lynn M.
HR
linguistics can only be better developed than biosemiotics, if it is
not a branch of it´s, i.e. if there are inanimate things that speak.
Linguistics is *not* based on psychology or biology. Linguists have
always derived grammars from large corpora of examples. There were
no native speakers of ancient Greek, Latin, or Egyptian, but there
were thousands of documents in Greek and Latin, including many more
examples of how they evolved over the centuries.
For Egyptian, they discovered the Rosetta Stone, which had parallel
texts in Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and a later notation called
demotic.
As a starting point, they made a guess that the Coptic language,
which was still in use for church services, evolved from ancient
Egyptian. That proved to be true. And they were able to derive
the meaning, the grammar, and even the pronunciation of Egyptian.
Of course, their pronunciation would be closer to Coptic than the
way the Pharaohs actually spoke. But that's good enough.
HR
Mathematics is only the basis of it all, if it is more than mere
tautology, but then it would be dependent on new experience too
Pure mathematics is indeed "mere tautology". If you're using
Peirce's rules of inference, the proof of every mathematical
theorem begins with a blank sheet of paper. Next, draw a double
negation around a blank. That produces an EG of the form "If blank,
then blank". Next, insert the hypothesis and all the axioms into
the If-area. From that derive the conclusion in the Then-area. For
examples, see slides 31 to 41 of the intro to existential graphs:
http://jfsowa.com/talks/egintro.pdf
Re experience: Pure mathematics is independent of any other subject.
But every science, including common sense. is applied mathematics.
It begins with some observations and assumptions, selects an appropriate
version of pure math, and links the actual entities to the If-part of
some theorem. The conclusion in the Then-part is a prediction about
those actual entities.
By methodeutic, test that conclusion to see if it's true. If all the
predictions turn out to be true, then you can have some confidence
that the pure theorem, when applied to the actual subject matter,
makes reliable predictions about that subject. You can call it a law.
HR
I doubt, that classification of sciences makes sense at all.
That classification is central to everything that Peirce wrote.
If you're not convinced, please read more by Peirce and by other
authors who explain what Peirce meant
JAS: Peirce repeatedly made it very clear that he considered Logic
as Semeiotic to be a Normative Science, not a branch of phenomenology.
JFS: No. He explicitly said that logic is a branch of mathematics.
I would also add that phenomenology is not a normative science.
But Peirce used logic to analyze and specify the phenomenological
categories. That application of logic is prior to normative science,
and it establishes the theory of semiotic.
JAS
Please provide a citation for this claim. The first branch of
mathematics is "the Mathematics of Logic" (CP 1.185), not "formal logic"
There are 106 instances of 'formal logic' in CP. See below for
a few that explain these issues. In particular, CP 4.226:
Indeed all formal logic is merely mathematics applied to logic.
JAS
He wrote elsewhere that "mathematics has such a close intimacy with one
of the classes of philosophy, that is, with logic, that no small acumen
is required to find the joint between them" (CP 1.245; 1902). However,
note that here logic is still not a branch of mathematics, but of
philosophy.
Yes. But you have to distinguish formal logic from logic applied
to something other than mathematics. Note CP 4.420 quoted below:
Formal logic... is mathematics. Formal logic, however, is by no
means the whole of logic, or even its principal part.
That principal part, which is critical for evaluating truth in
any actual application, is methodeutic. As pure math, formal
logic is independent of any possible experience. But methodeutic
requires both perception and action -- observation and testing.
That application is not be part of mathematics.
John
_________________________________________________________________
3.92 Indeed, logical algebra conclusively proves that mathematics
extends over the whole realm of formal logic; and any theory of
cognition which cannot be adjusted to this fact must be abandoned.
We may reap all the advantages which the mathematician is supposed
to derive from intuition by simply making general suppositions of
individual cases.
3.418 What is commonly called logical algebra differs from other formal
logic only in using the same formal method with greater freedom. I may
mention that unpublished studies have shown me that a far more powerful
method of diagrammatisation than algebra is possible, being an extension
at once of algebra and of Clifford's method of graphs; but I am not in
a situation to draw up a statement of my researches.
4.226 Indeed all formal logic is merely mathematics applied to logic.
4.240 Mathematical logic is formal logic. Formal logic, however
developed, is mathematics. Formal logic, however, is by no means the
whole of logic, or even its principal part.
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