Jerry, list, I don't know, I may have misunderstood you, and I don't know whether this is merely about whether one distinguishes, as you seem not to distinguish, "individual" from "unique" and/or whether one uses, as Peirce used, the word "real" in a different sense than the words "actual" and "existent." For example I don't understand why you say that "a valence is not a universal" (or, in Peircean terminology, a general). _This_ hydrogen atom's _individual_ valence=1 instantiates the general valence=1 universal to hydrogen atoms.
A _unique_ valence, or a given molecule's _unique_ composition and structure, are a different though related issue. In Peircean semiotics there is a big difference between (A) individuality and indexicality and (B) qualities, iconicity, and characters such as composition and structure, be a given composition and structure soever unique. I don't know but suspect that this difference is recognized in biosemiotics insofar as it seems that biosemiotics has been much influenced by Peirce. In logic, it's usual to hold that if x and y share all their predicates, then x=y, they're the same object. Yet there's something more to being a subject than having a unique set of predicates. In experience there are elements of the actual and individual, and also of quality, character, etc. One may hold that some essential characters, if unique, such as unique genetic makeup, define the individual who possesses them. But that doesn't change the difference between a characteristic and an actual individual in experience, and the differences of their roles in semiosis, for example the indexical versus the iconic. Anyway, for his part Peirce identified individuality with actual existence, not with essence or characters. This seems to dovetail with Gene's point that Peirce didn't really regard people as individuals, but as generals embodied carnally but not only carnally. Regarding "real" and "actual" - Peirce in his 1906 "Answers to Questions concerning my Belief in God", CP 6.495, reprinted in part as "The Concept of God" in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, J. Buchler, ed., 1940, pp. 375-8: I will also take the liberty of substituting "reality" for "existence." This is perhaps overscrupulosity; but I myself always use _exist_ in its strict philosophical sense of "react with the other like things in the environment." Of course, in that sense, it would be fetichism to say that God "exists." The word "reality," on the contrary, is used in ordinary parlance in its correct philosophical sense. [....] I define the _real_ as that which holds its characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or men may have _thought_ them to be, or ever will have _thought_ them to be, here using thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forcible _means_ are not used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched. To hold that generals or even qualities are real does not require holding that they are actual in the sense that one might have locked the number 5, as such, in a closet, or hitched a ride on blueness, as such, orbiting a house in New Orleans. You joked, "...when I speak the word 'horse' a horse does not come out of my mouth" - but likewise when I speak the name of any individual person, place, or thing, still that individual does not come out of my mouth unless for example in the act I name that particular vocal breeze. Personal names are mere words except those that can indexically help to lead one to their objects. General names are mere words except those that can by symbolizing help one to apprehend real generals, norms, habits, propensities that the general names denote. If you believe that you can arrive at true nontrivial universal propositions (e.g., all have the same valence=1) about quinquavigintillions of hydrogen atoms almost none of which any of us will ever be able to observe or single out, then I'd say that you're banking on some generals' being discoverable and independent of any actual person's or group's opinion - i.e., some generals' being real, in Peirce's sense. Best, Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: Jerry LR Chandler To: Benjamin Udell ; [email protected] Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 9:47 PM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process" Ben: Your message is too cryptic for me to understand exactly what it is that your presupposing, asserting and and concluding. Are you referring to biosemiotics? DNA? diagrammatic logic? categories? identity? the distinction between predicate logic and antecedent / consequent? universals? All of these terms bear on the meaning of such terms as identity/singularity/individuality/uniqueness. Can you point to the particular sentence in my post that you are referring to? BTW, nearly a century of enquiry since Peirce past means that new interpretations of CSP writings are essential, at least to me, if I am to give a coherent account of biosemiotics as the origin or source of communicating signs used by humans and other living organisms. More specifically, my text presupposes that the logic of biosemiotics is functionally different from the logic of information theory. Cheers Jerry On Aug 5, 2011, at 8:46 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote: Jerry, That can all be the case without contradicting anything that Peirce said. Peirce never, so far as I know, denied that there could be a unique character to something or denied that it could matter - but it's just not what he was mainly discussing when he used words like "singular" and individual." He meant the stubborn _this_, not the _uniquely such_, even when many an actual individual is unique in important or essential characters. Best, Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: Jerry LR Chandler To: [email protected] Cc:Benjamin Udell Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 8:22 PM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process" Ben, List: You write: "I mean singular existentially; and chemistry in general is not just about _this_ or _that_ molecule." I respond simply: Your DNA is about "YOUR" DNA molecule and the encoding of YOUR life. It is an Identity, it is singular. It is also about your individuality. This is the very heart and sole of molecular biology, biosemiotics, and Jesper's semethic. This modern conceptualization of the logic of chemistry and the unique genetic molecules of every individual was not inductively constructed until several decades after CSP died. Cheers Jerry On Aug 5, 2011, at 8:06 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote: Jerry, list, Peirce's diagrams are of two kinds in terms of logical quantity: (1) general icons (iconic legisigns), which are general diagrams or diagrammatic generals, instantiated by (2) individual icons (iconic sinsigns) which are individual diagrams, or diagrammatic individuals. Peirce would call general many of the things which you call singular - including molecules in general and their adjacent parts in general. When he calls something singular he means, for example, just _this_ actual individual hydrogen molecule and no other actual individual hydrogen molecule, a molecule kept perhaps it in a certain place where people could come view at least its container, a molecule singular like you, me, or the Parthenon - I don't mean singular or unique in quality, I mean singular existentially; and chemistry in general is not just about _this_ or _that_ molecule. For my part I've said in the past that I regard the idioscopic a.k.a. special sciences as taking for their subject matter actual individuals in a way that more abstract fields do not; the observable universe, for example, is an actual individual; but what we want to learn about such subject matter is not just its individualities but its kinds, its totalities and parameters, and its laws, such as could not be learned purely from more general or mathematical considerations, and such that we would come to have good reason for confidence in our opinions as to those kinds, totalities, and laws, as pertaining to indefinitely many actual individuals that we would not have the actual opportunity to single out or observe. The idea of a real general is simply the idea of a general that is independent of particular persons' or groups' opinions yet is discoverable such that investigators would come to agree about it if they were to push investigation about it far enough. So we suppose that intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy might announce its presence by broadcasting the first score or so prime numbers, because we figure that prime numbers are _real_ or, as many prefer to say, _objective_. Peirce also allows of generals that are not real but are instead figments, e.g., the objects of false universal propositions. Best, Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: Jerry LR Chandler To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 7:13 PM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process" Gary, Gary, Peter, Stefan, List: Thank you all for the productive discussion. It was valuable to me. I would only add a footnote or two, based on the Stoic notion of logic as antecedent and consequence as well as the material causality implicit within the mathematics of the chemical / biosemiotic sciences. I believe that the sense of Popper's assertion about the singular and the universal is widely abused in the philosophy of science, particularly in the evaluation of biosemiotics and the role of identity of the individual. If one asserts a universal and a single counterexample is true, then this asserted universal is not a true. Simple enough. But, 'universals' are of the mind. I consider "Universals" as nominialistic. CSP was a realist. I consider "universals" to be metaphysical objects, not real objects. I recall from an ancient source a phrase about the meaning of an utterance - when I speak the word 'horse' a horse does not come out of my mouth. :-) The role of universals (variables?) in mathematics is profound, perhaps being most profound in category theory and the widely acclaimed universal diagrams that S. Mac Lane exposes so forcefully and beautifully. Peirce's diagrammatic logic (exhibited on 'sheets of assertion') are singulars. Thus, the meaning of CSP diagrams is open, at least in my mind. Clearly, CSP's logical diagrams are semiotic in character. Indeed, he uses the chemical concept of valence in creating the assertions and in expressing the grammar of the diagrams. (see Gary F. essay for details). The modern understanding of (co)valence is as a particular relation between two parts of a molecule. A valence, as a graph edge (or line in CSPs diagram) is not a universal. The consequence of these sentences is a deep tension between Popper's view of falsification of hypotheses and chemical / biosemiotic practice. Popper's logic of falsification depends on an inductive universal; logically, it is possibility that a (physical?) universal is falsified. Chemical inductive logic (wrt logical diagrams) is never a universal, it is always about two particular adjacent particles. Furthermore, it is always about antecedent and consequence within a context of material causality. This local inductive argument of biosemiotics is mathematically necessary as a consequence of the the chemical table of elements and Dalton's hypothesis of ratio of small whole numbers. It is the deepest source of biological identity / individuality in that it emerges from the encoding of genetic symbols, the semiotics of DNA and molecular biology. There are several conundrums buried in this text - I have just sketched the surfaces that are easily translated into expressions that may carry some meaning for this group (I hope that my comments are not too technical, but fear the worst!). I have intentionally not addressed the problems of the community as the source of our symbolic expressions, such as this series of email exchanges. For example, a modern community uses multiple sign systems to communicate - alphabets, mathematics, music, dance, chemistry, etc, each with a particular diagrammatic logic. Does falsification in one symbol system infer falsification in another symbol system? In short, what is the role of category theory in semiotics or in Jesper Hoffmeyer's 'semethic'? This line of thought moves us into the multiple roles of logics in human communication - a topic dear to Tori Alexander's writings. At least to me, closure on the concept of falsification remains remote - obscured by the different usages of signs and the different "sign" languages used by different disciplines. Cheers Jerry Jerry LR Chandler Research Professor Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study On Aug 5, 2011, at 5:08 PM, Stefan Berwing wrote: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to [email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
