Jon, I have been following your argument that “the entire universe is a vast semiosic continuum, signs all the way down.” My comment was not intended to challenge the exegesis that leads you to that conclusion from your selection of Peirce’s texts. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve been assuming that your “entire universe” includes not only all universes of discourse but also the physical and psychical universes. In other words, your argument virtually erases all distinctions between signs and anything else, or between semiosis and the flow of time. The only distinctions left are between degrees of degeneracy.
I have no objection to pansemiotic or theosemiotic language games; they are instructive on some level. I’m just saying that they are irrelevant to investigations of the reality of biosemiosis (including anthroposemiosis) as we experience it every day and hour. I don’t see how we in our time can carry forward Peirce’s inquiry into actual semiosis if we don’t apply what has been learned since his time about complex systems and how they work. Peirce could not think in those terms because they were simply not available then; it’s up to us (those of us who are interested in how “quasi-minds” actually get determined) to go beyond Peirce, as he himself said more than once. All I’m trying to say is that for those purposes, your idea of “signs all the way down” deprives the word “sign” of all utility, just as Mill’s usage of the word “cause” deprived that word of all utility, according to Peirce (EP2:315 <https://gnusystems.ca/KainaStoicheia.htm#Millcause> ). Love, gary f. Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: 21-Jul-25 17:22 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Semiosic Ontology (was Spencer-Brown's concept of 'reentry') Gary F., Jack, Helmut, Ivar, List: Gary F. and Jack seem to have missed the point of my first two posts in this thread, so perhaps I was insufficiently clear in them. Again, what I am proposing is that the entire universe is a vast semiosic continuum, signs all the way down. After all, "There is a science of semeiotics whose results no more afford room for differences of opinion than do those of mathematics, and one of its theorems … is that if any signs are connected, no matter how, the resulting system constitutes one sign … and the entire body of all thought is a sign, supposing all thought to be more or less connected" (R 1476:36[5-1/2], 1904). However, I do not mean this in the reductionist sense, where the whole is an assemblage of discrete parts; on the contrary, in accordance with Peirce's late topical conception of continuity, the whole is ontologically primordial and "every part has itself parts of the same kind" (CP 6.168, c. 1903-4). As I said before, the upshot is that discrete things and their dyadic reactions are degenerate manifestations of continuous and triadic semiosis. I am not sure that I agree about Peirce not being "a systems thinker," but in any case, I doubt that he would accept the substitution of "system" for "person" as that upon which "a Sign ... determines an effect" (EP 2:478, 1908 Dec 23). Instead, as Helmut noted, he sometimes substitutes "quasi-mind" for "person," presumably in an effort toward "making [his] own broader conception understood." For example ... CSP: [E]very sign,--or, at any rate, nearly every one,--is a determination of something of the general nature of a mind, which we may call the 'quasi-mind.'" ... A sign ... is determined by the object, but in no other respect than goes to enable it to act upon the interpreting quasi-mind; and the more perfectly it fulfills its function as a sign, the less effect it has upon that quasi-mind other than that of determining it as if the object itself had acted upon it. ... It seems best to regard a sign as a determination of a quasi-mind; for if we regard it as an outward object, and as addressing itself to a human mind, that mind must first apprehend it as an object in itself, and only after that consider it in its significance; and the like must happen if the sign addresses itself to any quasi-mind. It must begin by forming a determination of that quasi-mind, and nothing will be lost by regarding that determination as the sign. (EP 2:389-92, 1906) CSP: Now as every thinking requires a mind, so every sign even if external to all minds must be a determination of a quasi-mind. This quasi-mind is itself a sign, a determinable sign. (SS 195, 1906 Mar 9) CSP: [A] Sign has an Object and an Interpretant, the latter being that which the Sign produces in the Quasi-mind that is the Interpreter by determining the latter to a feeling, to an exertion, or to a Sign, which determination is the Interpretant. ... For any set of Signs which are so connected that a complex of two of them can have one interpretant, must be Determinations of one Sign which is a Quasi-mind. Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. (CP 4.536&551, 1906) Some signs are external to all individual minds, but every sign and its interpretant are determinations of quasi-minds. Accordingly, I maintain that the entire universe satisfies Peirce's definition of a "perfect sign," and is thus itself a "quasi-mind." CSP: Consider then the aggregate formed by a sign and all the signs which its occurrence carries with it. This aggregate will itself be a sign; and we may call it a perfect sign, in the sense that it involves the present existence of no other sign except such as are ingredients of itself. ... Such perfect sign is a quasi-mind. ... This quasi-mind is an object which from whatever standpoint it be examined, must evidently have, like anything else, its special qualities of susceptibility to determination. Moreover, the determinations come as events each one once for all and never again. Furthermore, it must have its rules or laws, the more special ones variable, others invariable. (EP 2:545n25, 1906) As a quasi-mind, the entire universe involves possible qualities (1ns), actual events (2ns), and real laws (3ns). While I agree that my billiard ball example is "a case of purely dyadic efficient causality," again, Peirce himself says that "the dyadic action is not the whole action; and the whole action is, in a way, triadic" (CP 6.331, 1907)--it is governed by a real law as a final cause, i.e., a final interpretant. "[I]nstead of being a purely negative critic, like Hume, seeking to annul a fundamental conception generally admitted, I am a positive critic, pleading for the admission to a place in our scheme of the universe for an idea generally rejected. ... All that Hume attacked I defend, namely, law as a reality" (CP 6.605, 1893). Peirce thus denies that "final causality is [only] about needs of an organism"; on the contrary, "It is ... a widespread error to think that a 'final cause' is necessarily a purpose. A purpose is merely that form of final cause which is most familiar to our experience" (CP 1.211, EP 2:120, 1902). Instead, "Efficient causation is that kind of causation whereby the parts compose the whole; final causation is that kind of causation whereby the whole calls out its parts. Final causation without efficient causation is helpless ... Efficient causation without final causation, however, is worse than helpless, by far; ... it is blank nothing" (CP 1.220, 1902). Ivar has posed some specific questions that I would prefer to address in a separate post, but I will comply with the moderator's current limit of one per day per thread. I will also not effectively circumvent that rule by making this post even longer than it already is, especially since I hope that what I have written above can at least serve as a start toward providing my answers. Please let me know what (if anything) remains unclear or otherwise warrants further discussion. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt
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