[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Patrick:A few quick notes from Salzburg as I found your comments of interest and perhaps I can clarify some issues.My goals are more concerned with a coherent philosophy of science, especially a coherent relation between chemical philosophy and biological philosophy and medical philosophy. Peirce, as a 19 th Century chemist should be relevant to my interests. Whitehead asserts a philosophy of organism, which also should be relevant.While the course of development of an individual's thought and patterns of digestion and indigestion are always relevant to understanding the individual, they are not always relevant to my restricted interests. In particular, at the turn of the 21 Century, we see highly specialized logics in Quantum mechanics, chemistry (valence) and molecular biology (genetic code). The challenge I face is to place the modern logics in context of earlier logics. The QM advocates have a highly developed narrative. Chemistry and biology do not. Thus, I seek connections that allow development of coherent narratives for these sciences. It is in this context that I appreciate the narratives you construct.Now for a few comments:On Jul 2, 2006, at 1:08 AM, Peirce Discussion Forum digest wrote: In any case, I can see I'll have my work cut out=20 to be brief in replying to your notes, since=20 brief though they may be, they are also fairly=20 "dense" in "content". terms, at least if I try to=20 read between the lines.. I would prefer the terms "concise" and "crisp", but, if you insist on the term "dense" I accept your judgment. :-) You wrote: My take on the distinctions between Peirce and Whitehead is rather differen= t. In early Peirce (1868), the analogy with=20 distance functions and branching was the given=20 basis for distinguishing paths of logic,=20 relation to chemical valence and the more=20 general concept of extension. The later=20 writings of Peirce describing "division" of a=20 sign in natural language is not a crisp way of=20 looking at the concept of extension. (One might=20 substitute for the term "division" such terms as=20 partition, trichotomy, lattice, subtraction,=20 incomplete parts, lack of additivity, and so=20 forth; but I do not see how that would create a=20 coherent concept of relational extension.) Well, first off, I personally think it is very=20 important that "early" and "late" Peirce's are=20 seen as part and parcel of one and the same=20 philosophical project, that developed (emerged)=20 over a considerable time period, but always with=20 the key notion of synechism ("the tendency to=20 regard everything as continuous") at its base.=20 Kelley Parker's work on Peirce's continuity is a=20 useful point of reference here.This comment identifies a critical issue. It is not clear to me how relate Peirce's later views to continuity. I do not know the writings of Parker. Clearly, the concept of continuity as well as chemistry was in the early writings. However, in later works, the "flow of semiosis" displaces the relevance to chemical logic; it remains consistent with various aspects of "signal processing" and "Memory Evolutive Systems." When you write that "The later writings of Peirce=20 describing "division" of a sign in natural=20 language is not a crisp way of looking at the=20 concept of extension", I think I'll have to ask=20 you for a bit more detailed explanation of what=20 you mean by that... Very simple. Extension as growth; as increase; as sequence of relations, the later extending the former.My conjecture is that extension is easy in number/arithmetic, difficult in chemistry, and very difficult in natural language.In the example, sign is extended to qualisign, sinsign and legisign. This extension appears to me to include a fair amount of arbitrariness. Fine for a philosophy of belief, not adequate for chemical or biological purposes. It would be helpful if someone could suggest a path that associates these terms with chemical, biological or medical practice. In late Whitehead, Process and Reality, he gets=20 into bed with set theory and never re-emerges=20 from this highly restrictive view of extension.=20 In modern chemistry, a multitude of=20 possibilities for extension exist . (The flow=20 of passions in a bed are great, but they should=20 not be conflated with the light of reason. :-) Regarding "early" and "late" with regard to=20 Whitehead, the same considerations as above=20 regarding the recursive, stepwise development of=20 Peirce's architectonic, I think also holds for=""> Whitehead. From the beginning he was a=20 mathematician (and education theorist) more than=20 a philosopher (and in fact, like Peirce, he never=20 "formally" studied philosophy apart from his own=20 personal readings of other philosophers' work),=20 but process and reality is built round ideas=20 developed in his many other philosophical=20 writings, such as "Adventures of Ideas", "Science=20 and the Modern World" -- in my opinion a good=20 starting
[peirce-l] Re: Neuroquantology Journal
Hi Steven, You wrote: Koch is fairly religious (Catholic) - and has recently written about his religion on his web site - and without making aspersions upon his integrity I do find that a number of scientists in the field that are prepared to accept such magic are also religious. As a result they may, in fact, be predisposed to the argument that God did it. My own view is that these appeals to magic as the product of intellectual laziness. :-) You are of course entitled to your own views, but I feel you are being a bit harsh on scientists/ philosophers who might happen to hold personal religious beliefs in your comments, especially when you mention people by name, as you do above. Seems lkike a bit of a blow beneath the belt to me. Both Peirce and Whitehead certainly believed that holding religious beliefs and maintaining a responsible and coherent scientific attitude were fully compatible with one another. Now, it may not be absolutely necessary to believe in God in order to do good science or philosophy, but on the other hand, it is not absolutely necessary either to believe passionately in science in order to live our lives and do our daily work well, and treat other people with tolerance and respect. Belief in science and religious beliefs have each their different potentials and each fulfill their own specific human/social functions - for good and for bad (remember Giordano Bruno and eugenics) I think where serious problems often arise is when the sentiments or passions that might move people to believe in God (or not) become confused with the sentiments that might move people to believe (or not) that a consciencious pursuit of scientific practice in the course of time will provide us with the objective or true knowledge about the world that we desire/ need in order, not only just to survive, but also to live our lives together well... As Peirce put it (all good) logic is based on a social principle, since for him, any workable logic presupposes ethics, which in its own turn presupposes aesthetics. I would consider either agnosticism or athieism to be valid metaphysical positions based on specific sentiments that may be as strongly held as those metaphysical positions based on specific sentiments that may valorise religious beliefs. You wrote too: Crick's Astonishing Hypothesis (the name of Crick's book on the subject) is emergence and identity theory - and the continuing focus of Crick's younger partner (Crick himself died recently) Christophe Koch at CalTech is neuronal according to Koch's recent book (as I recall). All theories dependent on emergence and identity are essentially appeals to magic - despite the wide popularity of the argument (including the popular appeals by Wolfram, Kurzweil et al.). However, in the generally accepted scientific paradigm (when it works), any hypothesis (astonishing or not) will always come to be read as a very provisional assertion regarding some (presumably reasoned and argued) opinion, or set of opinions, about the way things may well be The current norms of the community of science hold that the practical consequences of any such assertions must be shown to hold consistently over time on the basis of some future systematic empirical inquiry in order to be taken seriously. If not, the hypothesis in question is not likely to become widely accepted as potentially valid/useful by the wider community of inquiry. Whether any given theory is an appeal to magic -- a term which I would provisionally take to mean potentially appealing to the eye/sentiments/mind but also potentially deluding -- or not, it is often only time -- coupled with the degree of individual and collective interest and energy the scientific community actually turns out to devote to systematic inquiry into the problem in hand -- will show. I always tend to hold with Peirce that we should never try to block the way of inquiry, however wild other people's speculations may seem to be. But of course we need some kind of filters that help us sort out the chaff from the wheat. So, in a sense, we will always have to put our trust in the wider market of ideas (assuming that all ideas can flow and be discussed as freely as possible), and in the informed common sense of our peers Best regards Patrick At 12:03 -0700 28-06-2006, Steven Ericsson Zenith wrote: Crick's Astonishing Hypothesis (the name of Crick's book on the subject) is emergence and identity theory - and the continuing focus of Crick's younger partner (Crick himself died recently) Christophe Koch at CalTech is neuronal according to Koch's recent book (as I recall). All theories dependent on emergence and identity are essentially appeals to magic - despite the wide popularity of the argument (including the popular appeals by Wolfram, Kurzweil et al.). Koch is fairly religious (Catholic) - and has recently written about his religion on his web
[peirce-l] Christop Koch's science / religion paper
For those curious about the paper I mentioned previously - you can find it here : http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/religion-06.pdf With respect, Steven --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
