List, Jerry, Tori, (a) Signs, in the Peircean sense, are not mere signals. According to Peirce, they have the living quality (feeling) that gave life to the cosmos from the get go (either that or one is going to have to (1) take a theological stance, which Peirce decidedly does not, or (2) the advent of complex organization systems, life, for prime example, remains a great mystery (which, of course, in a sense it is--but not a dualistic and mechanical one!) The triadicity of Peirce's theory, especially his valency theory, allows for that kind of evolutionary bifurcation which (from the standpoint of teleology and self-organization), and as Ilya Prigogine titles one of his books, can create "order out of chaos' (it might not, of course, as all evolutionary "experiments" aren't successful by a long shot). (b) Your phrase, the "necessity to act separates the mere mental from the existential" represents, to my way of thinking, exactly the dualism which Peirce was at pains to overcome, so I guess we're back to a kind of materialism--a reduction to the 'existential'. It seems to me that a number of scientists still seem stuck in that dualism (which treats mind as an epiphenomenon). Re: Fabbrichesi's abstract: (a) The very title of the paper suggests a bias, that this "inconspicuous. . . tradition" represents some sort of "scripture" (whatever that means). (b) The project of "discovering a universal language" is something which Peirce strongly and decisively argues against (sources forthcoming if desired). (c) Peirce's Existential Graphs represent an important part of the second of the logical trivium, as you put it, Jerry, namely, critical logic. They are hardly the whole or even the most of it, as Fabbrichesi seems to suggest. Indeed, the third part of it, speculative rhetoric (also called methodeutic, or theoretical rhetoric, or semiotic rhetoric, etc.), called by Peirce the "most living" branch of semeiotic, is exactly prepared for by theoretical grammar (not linguistic grammar, btw) and critical logic. So, the most one might claim is that Existential Graphs represent an important aspect of "logic as logic" (another expression for Peirce uses for critical logic). (d) In sum, Fabbrichesi seems not to "sustain" anything regarding Peirce's theories of logic as semeiotic, continuity, teleology, evolution--all directed toward a view of semiosis concerned not at all with "discovering a universal language" but, rather, with inquiring into how order develops out of chaos. Thus, I tend to agree with Soren Brier when he writes: "I believe that the biosemiotics that Sebeok. . . developed on a Peircean theorectical basis can be applied as a framework for integrating the various ontological levels of description. Within such a framework we further need to develop a theory of possible interactions among. . . levels and types of causality [something like Brier's five levels of reality, namely: 1. the quantum vacuum fields, 2. the physical level, 3. the chemical level (information), 4. the level of the semiotics of living systems', 5. human semiosis. GR] . . . (Soren Brier, Cyber Semiotics: Why Information is Not Enough, 430). I should add that I am finding Brier's and Noth's suggestion that there are "protosemiotic" relations as well as semiotic ones helpful. Indeed, the informational interactions at the chemical level would seem to be exactly this kind of relation. Yet, as Brier suggests, these levels need to "be understood within a framework of Peircian bisosemiotics that introduces a theory of pure feeling, the law of mind and meaning, into its basic ontology." Reductionism in science doesn't, of course, allow for any such thing. So, following Brier, I think we need to develop "an inclusive heterarchy, in that the natural habits--which we call laws--are the broadest and most universal ordering principles. Basically, these habits create order" (Brier, 439). This creating of order out of chaos is a principal thrust of Peirce's scientific project which Fabrrichesi appears to grossly misrepresent. Best, Gary
>>> Jerry LR Chandler <[email protected]> 8/16/2011 1:02 PM >>> (Edited for parallelism in third sentence of the second paragraph.) List, Gary, Tori: Below is an abstract that does not mention the term 'teleology', but, in fact, IMHO and idiosyncratic philosophy, gets to the heart of the issues of ostension. Much is to be learned by comparing the current paper under discussion to this paper by Rossella Fabbrichesi. One ought to consider that any living system must not only acquire signs from its current situation, but also ACT on the signification of the signals in such a manner AS TO PROSPER. This necessity to act separates the mere mental from the existential. This necessity for action separates traditional biosemiotics from semiotics, chemistry from physics, perplexity from complexity. In human societies, this includes the genesis and sustaining of the community, the common social and cultural structures inherited from the past generations. In short, the problem is not one in which a sign generates an infinite ingress into further signs, but rather that the living system creates actions from the signs. Idiosyncratically Yours Cheers Jerry Iconic thought and diagrammatical scripture: Peirce and the Leibnizian tradition ROSSELLA FABBRICHESI Abstract I will sustain in this article that Peirce can be seen as the last great representative of that inconspicuous but persistent tradition that, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, spent its energies on discovering a universal language. His project of Existential Graphs is in fact grounded on the isomorphism among a Sheet of Assertion, in which Graphs-signs are drawn, a Mind, with its thoughts-signs, and the Universe, with its facts-signs. In the same sense, Leibniz worked on his Characteristica Universalis, seen as a general Encyclopedia or alphabet of human thoughts, and a pictum mundi amphitheatrum. Keywords: Peirce; Leibniz; existential graphs; Characteristica Universalis; universal language; icon --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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]
