Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8551] Re: Natural
Ben: (B) in the sense of to be or not to be, that is the question! :-) (A) requires one to change the units of measure and hence the mode of measurement of different disciplines. (A) also requires artificial signs for numbers or whatever markers one is doing the bookkeeping in. Of course, I presuppose that Mother Nature is consistent in her path. This is necessary (modal) logic that binds iconic logic to indexical logic to symbolic logic (in artificial symbol systems). In computer science jargon, Mother Nature is both operand and operator. Cheers Jerry On May 1, 2015, at 1:44 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote: Jerry, lists, Do you mean (A) measurements made by physicists, chemists, biologists? Or (B) all those measurements and also physical, chemical, and biological interactions as constituting measurements even when no person is involved? (I was discussing things in the perspective of (B)). Best, Ben On 5/1/2015 2:26 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: Ben, List: Biological measurements are expressed in terms of units in the sense of Kempe, as cited by CSP. They are referred to chemical measurements by reference to molecular biology. Chemical measurements are inferred by reference to physical measurements. CSP refers indirectly to these difference in terms of the logic of icons, the logic of indexes and the logic of symbols. The underlying premise of CSP's chemo-centric world view demand a Unity of Nature perspective. Of course, IMHO. Cheers jerry On May 1, 2015, at 10:32 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote: Howard, Gary F., Howard, I don't see why a rock's hitting the ground on a lifeless planet shouldn't be taken as occasioning a measurement. That's the sense that I got for example from Gell-Mann's _The Quark and the Jaguar_. I can see how people can disagree about which interactions constitute measurements, but the key thing that seems to distinguish the biological situation is not a measurement per se but a kind of evaluation or appraisal or act of classification, reflecting the living thing's interests as a member of a species or lineage, and those interests have to do with reproduction of fertile offspring. To keep in the spirit of applying philosophical semiotic to biosemiotics (at least through analogy), let me add that reproduction (as opposed to mere repetition) of observations has been called the 'sanity check' in science, and biological self-replication could be called a health check, or fitness check, except that capacity to reproduce fertile offspring is not just a check but is of the essence of biological fitness (likewise reproduciblity of results, at least in principle, is of the essence of scientific fitness). Within the organism, there must be the replicability, reproducibility, of information that you discuss. If there is something like evaluation or appraisal in nonliving things, things that lack vital interests that the appraisals would reflect, then such appraisals would seem of a rather lower grade than in living things, - I guess something to do with the common end of entropy increase in an isolated system as a whole, or the conservation of certain quantities when physics symmetries hold. (Things get murky to me here.) I'd agree that living things' capacities for measuring, sensing, detecting, are evolved to lend themselves to evaluational semiosis; they have a 'bias' or selectiveness for sensing the things that evolutionary quasi-experience has shown to matter, to be worth the attention of the evaluative faculties. I think that a focus on the measurement's function for species- or lineage-purposeful appraisal would keep one from having to take sides in physical theory on whether measurements require living brains, living systems, or simply bodies. To me that seems an advantage, but you may see advantages that my lack of background keeps me from seeing in a particular physical definition of measurement in those respects. Best, Ben On 5/1/2015 7:50 AM, Howard Pattee wrote: - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8551] Re: Natural
Ben, List: Biological measurements are expressed in terms of units in the sense of Kempe, as cited by CSP. They are referred to chemical measurements by reference to molecular biology. Chemical measurements are inferred by reference to physical measurements. CSP refers indirectly to these difference in terms of the logic of icons, the logic of indexes and the logic of symbols. The underlying premise of CSP's chemo-centric world view demand a Unity of Nature perspective. Of course, IMHO. Cheers jerry On May 1, 2015, at 10:32 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote: Howard, Gary F., Howard, I don't see why a rock's hitting the ground on a lifeless planet shouldn't be taken as occasioning a measurement. That's the sense that I got for example from Gell-Mann's _The Quark and the Jaguar_. I can see how people can disagree about which interactions constitute measurements, but the key thing that seems to distinguish the biological situation is not a measurement per se but a kind of evaluation or appraisal or act of classification, reflecting the living thing's interests as a member of a species or lineage, and those interests have to do with reproduction of fertile offspring. To keep in the spirit of applying philosophical semiotic to biosemiotics (at least through analogy), let me add that reproduction (as opposed to mere repetition) of observations has been called the 'sanity check' in science, and biological self-replication could be called a health check, or fitness check, except that capacity to reproduce fertile offspring is not just a check but is of the essence of biological fitness (likewise reproduciblity of results, at least in principle, is of the essence of scientific fitness). Within the organism, there must be the replicability, reproducibility, of information that you discuss. If there is something like evaluation or appraisal in nonliving things, things that lack vital interests that the appraisals would reflect, then such appraisals would seem of a rather lower grade than in living things, - I guess something to do with the common end of entropy increase in an isolated system as a whole, or the conservation of certain quantities when physics symmetries hold. (Things get murky to me here.) I'd agree that living things' capacities for measuring, sensing, detecting, are evolved to lend themselves to evaluational semiosis; they have a 'bias' or selectiveness for sensing the things that evolutionary quasi-experience has shown to matter, to be worth the attention of the evaluative faculties. I think that a focus on the measurement's function for species- or lineage-purposeful appraisal would keep one from having to take sides in physical theory on whether measurements require living brains, living systems, or simply bodies. To me that seems an advantage, but you may see advantages that my lack of background keeps me from seeing in a particular physical definition of measurement in those respects. Best, Ben On 5/1/2015 7:50 AM, Howard Pattee wrote: At 10:06 AM 4/30/2015, Gary Fuhrman wrote: At 10:59 AM 4/28/2015,Gary F.wrote: Howard, interesting definition! [A phenomenon is information resulting from an individual subject's detection of a physical interaction.] HP: This definition is just an extension of the classic definition to subhuman organisms. GF: Classic:? I think modern might fit better, given your Kantian usage of the term subjective and your vaguely Husserlian take on phenomenology HP: Call it whatever you like. If you will allow me to define my terms, I am starting with this standard definition: Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view . . . [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]. Notice, the SEP definition includes experience recalled from the subject's memory. I am then extending this concept of phenomenology below the human conscious level, as a good biosemiotician should, incorporating the physicists' condition that „No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon‰ [J. A. Wheeler]. I define observed as sensed, detected, measured, remembered, or any information processed by a subject (agent, self, cell, organism, human, robot, etc.) acquired from an object (anything in the agent's environment including its internal memory). ˇGF: But even in modern philosophy, I think very few use the term phenomenon as referring only to a subject's experience and not to the object experienced (or semiotically, referring to the sign and not its object). HP: I have no objection to the many other uses enjoyed by philosophers. My definition is one philosophers' definition also used by many physicists who can be realists only so far! Modern physics theories resist realistic interpretation. I consider a phenomenon as the subjective result of a physical interaction with an individual
Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8551] Re: Natural
Jerry, lists, Do you mean (A) measurements made by physicists, chemists, biologists? Or (B) all those measurements and also physical, chemical, and biological interactions as constituting measurements even when no person is involved? (I was discussing things in the perspective of (B)). Best, Ben *On 5/1/2015 2:26 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:* Ben, List: Biological measurements are expressed in terms of units in the sense of Kempe, as cited by CSP. They are referred to chemical measurements by reference to molecular biology. Chemical measurements are inferred by reference to physical measurements. CSP refers indirectly to these difference in terms of the logic of icons, the logic of indexes and the logic of symbols. The underlying premise of CSP's chemo-centric world view demand a Unity of Nature perspective. Of course, IMHO. Cheers jerry On May 1, 2015, at 10:32 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote: Howard, Gary F., Howard, I don't see why a rock's hitting the ground on a lifeless planet shouldn't be taken as occasioning a measurement. That's the sense that I got for example from Gell-Mann's _The Quark and the Jaguar_. I can see how people can disagree about which interactions constitute measurements, but the key thing that seems to distinguish the biological situation is not a measurement per se but a kind of evaluation or appraisal or act of classification, reflecting the living thing's interests as a member of a species or lineage, and those interests have to do with reproduction of fertile offspring. To keep in the spirit of applying philosophical semiotic to biosemiotics (at least through analogy), let me add that reproduction (as opposed to mere repetition) of observations has been called the 'sanity check' in science, and biological self-replication could be called a health check, or fitness check, except that capacity to reproduce fertile offspring is not just a check but is of the essence of biological fitness (likewise reproduciblity of results, at least in principle, is of the essence of scientific fitness). Within the organism, there must be the replicability, reproducibility, of information that you discuss. If there is something like evaluation or appraisal in nonliving things, things that lack vital interests that the appraisals would reflect, then such appraisals would seem of a rather lower grade than in living things, - I guess something to do with the common end of entropy increase in an isolated system as a whole, or the conservation of certain quantities when physics symmetries hold. (Things get murky to me here.) I'd agree that living things' capacities for measuring, sensing, detecting, are evolved to lend themselves to evaluational semiosis; they have a 'bias' or selectiveness for sensing the things that evolutionary quasi-experience has shown to matter, to be worth the attention of the evaluative faculties. I think that a focus on the measurement's function for species- or lineage-purposeful appraisal would keep one from having to take sides in physical theory on whether measurements require living brains, living systems, or simply bodies. To me that seems an advantage, but you may see advantages that my lack of background keeps me from seeing in a particular physical definition of measurement in those respects. Best, Ben On 5/1/2015 7:50 AM, Howard Pattee wrote: - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
