Re: [PEIRCE-L] More Peirce MSS posted online by Harvard, incl [Reasoning and Instinct] - MS 831
Ben, Jerry, lists, Ben: . . . . . When Peirce uses the word 'individual' he generally means something such as this horse (Bucephalus), that building (the Empire State Building), yonder tree (located on 7th St. in Manhattan), etc. In Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as Far as They Are Determined (starting on p. 289 in EP 2, also appearing in CP 2.233-72) Peirce introduces his 10-class system made out of three trichotomies of signs; he recapitulates it in a 1904 letter to Lady Welby in CP 8.327-41. In that system, any individual serving as a sign is a sinsign; also in that system, all symbols(072615-1) are legisigns, none are sinsigns, i.e., no symbols are individuals. . . . Sung: I know that the 10 classes of signs Peirce defined based on the 9 types of signs (or sign relations) do not admit of any symbolic sinsign and all symbols are legisigns, i.e., only symbolic legisigns are allowed, as Ben mentioned. I have one question. In 1998, Lu et al. [1] were able to isolate a single molecule of the enzyme called cytochrome oxidase and measured its enzymic activity, for the first time, as a function of time. Why can't we consider this enzyme molecule that Lu et al. studied as an INDIVIDUAL and its name cytochrome oxidase as a SYMBOL ? In other words, what would be wrong to consider cytochrome oxidase as a symbol standing for the actual enzyme molecule (i.e., a sinsign) rather than a natural law (i.e., legisign) ? If we can divide sign processes into two categories --- MICROSEMIOTICS (i.e., the study of molecular signs such as DNA) and MACROSEMIOTICS (i.e., the study of macroscopic signs such as Peircean writings) --- depending on the physical size of the representamens invovled (e.g., moleucules in the former and printed words in the latter) [2-6], I wonder if not all the assertions that Peirce made based primarily on macrosemiotics apply to microsemiotics, just as not all the assertions valid in macrophysics (e.g., Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics) are found to be valid in microphysics (e.g., quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics). If this analysis is right, the interesting debate that is on going between Ben and Jerry may be akin to the debates in the last century between classical physicists and quantum physicists. All the best.s Sung References: [1] Lu, H. P., Xun, L. and Xie, X. S. (1998). Single-Molecule Enzymatic Dynamics. *Science* *282*:1877-1882. [2] Ji, S. (1997). Isomorphism between Cell and Human Languages: Molecular Biological, Bioinformatic and Linguistic Implications. *BioSystems* *44*:17-39. [3] Ji, S. (1999). The Linguistics of DNA: Words, Sentences, Grammar, Phonetics, and Semantics.* Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci*. *870*:411-417. [4] Ji, S. (2001). Isomorphism between Cell and Human Languages: Micro- and Macrosemiotics. In: *Semiotics 2000: “Sebeok’s Century”* (S. Simpkins and J. Deely, eds.), Legas,Ottawa. Pp. 354-374. [5] Ji, S. (2001). Isomorphism between Cell and Human Languages: Micro- and Macrosemiotics. In: Semiotics 2000: “Sebeok’s Century” (Simpkins, S., and Deely, J., eds.), Legas, New York. Pp. 357-373. [6] Ji, S. (2002). Microsemiotics of DNA. *Semiotica* 138 (1/4): 15-42. (The PDF files of References 2 through 6 are available at http://www.conformon.net under Publications Proceedings Abstracts or Refereed Journal Articles.) On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 10:29 AM, Benjamin Udell bud...@nyc.rr.com wrote: Jerry, you're simply using the word 'individual' in another way than Peirce does. When Peirce uses the word 'individual' he generally means something such as this horse (Bucephalus), that building (the Empire State Building), yonder tree (located on 7th St. in Manhattan), etc. In Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as Far as They Are Determined (starting on p. 289 in EP 2, also appearing in CP 2.233-72) Peirce introduces his 10-class system made out of three trichotomies of signs; he recapitulates it in a 1904 letter to Lady Welby in CP 8.327-41. In that system, any individual serving as a sign is a sinsign; also in that system, all symbols are legisigns, none are sinsigns, i.e., no symbols are individuals. He's explicit about it. Peirce also discusses there and elsewhere how the same sign can incorporate icons, indices, symbols. You see a chemical analogy with Peirce's sign classifications, but if the analogy puts you at odds with what Peirce said in plain English, then your analogy isn't quite working. Trying to get me to be less rigid in my interpretation of Peirce won't help your analogy if I'm correct about Peirce. Anyway, Peirce may have been inspired by some chemical analogies, and his meditations on complex chemical structures surely helped him think more skillfully about other complex structures, but he was quite explicit about not basing philosophical semiotic (or any other kind of cenoscopy) _ *logically*_ on any idioscopic principles or theories (such as physics
Re: [PEIRCE-L] More Peirce MSS posted online by Harvard, incl [Reasoning and Instinct] - MS 831
Jerry, you're simply using the word 'individual' in another way than Peirce does. When Peirce uses the word 'individual' he generally means something such as this horse (Bucephalus), that building (the Empire State Building), yonder tree (located on 7th St. in Manhattan), etc. In Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as Far as They Are Determined (starting on p. 289 in EP 2, also appearing in CP 2.233-72) Peirce introduces his 10-class system made out of three trichotomies of signs; he recapitulates it in a 1904 letter to Lady Welby in CP 8.327-41. In that system, any individual serving as a sign is a sinsign; also in that system, all symbols are legisigns, none are sinsigns, i.e., no symbols are individuals. He's explicit about it. Peirce also discusses there and elsewhere how the same sign can incorporate icons, indices, symbols. You see a chemical analogy with Peirce's sign classifications, but if the analogy puts you at odds with what Peirce said in plain English, then your analogy isn't quite working. Trying to get me to be less rigid in my interpretation of Peirce won't help your analogy if I'm correct about Peirce. Anyway, Peirce may have been inspired by some chemical analogies, and his meditations on complex chemical structures surely helped him think more skillfully about other complex structures, but he was quite explicit about not basing philosophical semiotic (or any other kind of cenoscopy) _/logically/_ on any idioscopic principles or theories (such as physics or chemistry). I didn't mention species, but since you bring it up: The word 'species' in Peirce's time was taken to refer to a _/kind/_ as opposed to a total population of that kind. There is a relatively recent shift of meaning, as John Collier has pointed out, by some biologists to refer by the word 'species' not just to the species as a kind but to the species' total population during the course of the species' existence - that total population as a somewhat scattered and long-existent collective individual - sort of like an individual swarm or flock, etc., but with much more dispersion, longevity, and turnover in membership. In that sense, the sense of a concrete individual (soever scattered, etc.), a species is an individual even in Peirce's sense. Is that your sense of 'biological species'? Meanwhile, I look up 'chemical species' and find that definitions vary on whether it is an _/ensemble/_ of identical atoms or identical molecules or identical ions etc. under observation, or whether it is simply the unique _/kind/_ to which the identical atoms or identical molecules, etc. belong. An individual ensemble is a collective individual, as far as I can tell. But if 'chemical species' just means the kind to which identical atoms (or the like) belong, then it is not an individual in Peirce's sense, except in an abstract universe of discourse with abstract singulars. Now, we often talk that way, speaking of 'individual kinds' and so on. I suspect that that's what you mean by 'individual species' both in biology and in chemistry - you mean a (taxically more-or-less bottom-rung) _/kind/_. Or maybe you do mean this or that individual ensemble. In any case I really don't think that by 'chemical species' you mean, for example, the total population of O_2 molecules as a single concrete collective (though dispersed) object throughout space and time. Anyway in Peirce the main sense of 'individual' is not that in the phrase 'individual kind'. You have not clarified your sense of the word 'individual'. In calling an atomic symbol 'individual', do you mean (A) an individual instance of the symbol, a symbolic expression appearing on a certain page of a certain copy of a certain book? Or do you mean (B) that atomic symbol in general, across all its instances in a given language or (C) that atomic symbol in general, across all its instances in all languages and thought? (B) and (C), in Peirce's system, are legisigns, i.e., generals serving as signs. If you mean (B) or (C), then you're simply using the word 'individual' in another way than Peirce does. Best, Ben On 7/24/2015 4:17 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:Ben, List: Although we discussed aspects of this question before, fresh citations may shed a different hue on the meaning of the CSP's usage in various contexts. Frankly, I think that your reading of the meaning of the term symbol is to rigid. First, CSP's trichotomy separates the concept of a sign (qualisign, sinsign and legisign) sharply and distinctly from the concept of symbol (and its association of symbol, index and icon) as the identities associated with and related to the first row terms. If my recall is correct he asserts that the terms (icon, index and symbol) contains parts of one another. (This is consistent with chemical units where all three are used in representation and all three are representations are products of the human mind from
