Gary R, list, Thank you for digging up this concise account of Pattee’s “epistemic cut” concept. I agree that it’s not as dualistic as the word “cut” makes it sound. I think the closest analog to it in Peircean semeiotics is the type/token distinction.
Applying that distinction across systemic scales leads us to perceive a hierarchy of types, in which the “higher” levels include the relatively lower ones. In biology, for instance, the genus typically includes many species, and these too include subdivisions, while the genus is also included within a higher “type.” The generic double-helix structure of DNA is also a type, of which every individual DNA molecule is a token. But at the level of the organism, the molecule is a token of the genotype; and the genome of the organism includes a token or “replica” of it in the nucleus of each cell. Pattee’s designation of dynamic processes as “rate-dependent” is also relative rather than absolute: it’s a matter of time-scale. At the developmental scale, the “stem cell” differentiates into various cell types as determined by the effects of epigenetic processes on the expression of the genome tokens. At the evolutionary scale, genotypes likewise produce variations, and natural selection determines which ones survive and replicate themselves, but this takes much longer — depending on the rate at which the organisms reproduce. Gregory Bateson in Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity pointed out that thought has the same structure: a hierarchy of generality: [[ In what is offered in this book, the hierarchical structure of thought, which Bertrand Russell called logical typing, will take the place of hierarchical structure of the Great Chain of Being and an attempt will be made to propose a sacred unity of the biosphere that will contain fewer epistemological errors than the versions of that sacred unity which the various religions of history have offered. What is important is that, right or wrong, the epistemology shall be explicit. Equally explicit criticism will then be possible. So the immediate task of this book is to construct a picture of how the world is joined together in its mental aspects. How do ideas, information, steps of logical or pragmatic consistency, and the like fit together? How is logic, the classical procedure for making chains of ideas, related to an outside world of things and creatures, parts and wholes? ] —Bateson 1979, 21] Bateson affirmed the continuity between mental and physical or “dynamic” processes. So did the ecologist Howard Odum, with his concept of the “energy hierarchy”: https://gnusystems.ca/TS/ssc.htm#nrgsms Peirce also made an interesting connection with the origins of the word “type” — but I’ll leave that for later in case anybody’s interested. Love, gary f. Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg } Eternity is not another order of time, but the atmosphere of time. [Merleau-Ponty] { <https://substack.com/@gnox> substack.com/@gnox }{ <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> Turning Signs From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Gary Richmond Sent: 9-Sep-25 00:05 To: Peirce List <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Howard Pattee's "Epistemic Cut" and Peircean semeiotics Erratum: I wrote, "As I mentioned in an earlier post, to some degree Pettee's views seem to me to parallel Frederik Stjernfelt's in Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce's Doctrine of Dicisigns (2014) regarding constraints, both arguing that life works by constraints that connect symbolic and dynamic domains. However, I should note that Pattee critiques Deacon for placing 'interpretation' "too early." See: "Symbol Grounding Precedes Interpretation: Commentary to the target article by Terrence Deacon" (Biosemiotics, 2021)." I stand by my first comment regarding Stjernfelt's dicisigns as perhaps paralleling Pattee's epistemic cut, but was thinking of Deacon at about the same time (I had spoken with him regarding a related issue at an ICCS conference about a decade ago). Having momentarily lost my intellectual compass, I erroneously pointed to Pattee's remarks concerning Deacon. I haven't yet read "Symbol Grounding Precedes Interpretation: Commentary to the target article by Terrence Deacon." GR On Mon, Sep 8, 2025 at 7:01 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: List, In the past few weeks there have been several references to Howard H. Pattee's theory of an "epistemic cut" as argued in his essay, "The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut" (2001). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12009802_The_physics_of_symbols_Bridging_the_epistemic_cut I had heard of the epistemic cut several times over the past decade and a half, especially after becoming quite interested in biosemiotics and so reading some of the literature related to it. At that time I joined the biosemiotics list, then at a 2011 biosemiotics conference in New York City, presented a paper by Vinicius Romanini, a good friend and colleague, who was at the last minute unable to attend. I was able to meet and, in some cases, have instructive/constructive conversations with several of the leading figures in the field then such as Don Favareau, Kalevi Kull, Marcello Barbieri, Eliseo Fernandez, Susan Petrilli, Søren Brier, John Collier, and others. I should note that while some had, not all of these scholars had embraced Peirce's theories. However, as an introduction to biosemiotics as it relates to Peircean thought, I highly recommend the book Romanini edited with another dear friend, Eliseo Fernandez, since passed. See: Vinicius Romanani and Eliseo Fernández, Editors: Peirce and Biosemiotics: A Guess at the Riddle of Life https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-7732-3 However, I had never really explored the notion of an epistemic gap, and so recently decided that, since it had been mentioned on the List, I might now take a look into it. Strangely, as I began my research, and although Pattee's essay is cited not infrequently in the biosemiotic literature, I couldn't find any reviews of it online, so I began by reading this page where one can read the Abstract of the essay and several Section snippets: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0303264701001046 I haven't yet completed reading the entire paper, but I think I've grasped enough of a sense of it to make a few comments which might be helpful to those who are interested in the concept. The epistemic cut, as I understand it, is a distinction Pattee makes in consideration of living organisms, between symbols (which he calls 'rate-independent', e.g. genetic codes) and dynamics ('rate-dependent', virtually all physical processes). In Pattee’s framework, rate-independent processes are symbolic, like DNA sequences, their meaning not depending on how fast or slow they are 'read' or 'copied'. Rate-dependent processes, on the other hand, are physical dynamics, like chemical reactions, whose outcomes depend on timing, rates of change, energy flows, etc. The epistemic cut separates the aforementioned domains, Pattee arguing that these must interact for living systems to exist at all. The paradigmatic example, indeed the first appearance of the epistemic split according to Pattee, appears as the genotype/phenotype split, where DNA sequences (symbols) direct the construction of proteins (matter). In Pattee's view, evolution itself depends on bridging this gap through control and coding. Pattee asks, how do living systems express novelty, memory, and freedom? His answer is that all life requires stored genetic memory and constraints that allow alternative pathways within physical laws. I would note that the epistemic cut, although not an ontological division in reality, is, according to Pattee, necessary for scientific knowledge. He argues that to speak of “symbols” in referring to “objects” demands a functional separation, and this separation is irreducible because physical laws alone cannot account for the higher-level processes such as coding and control. As I understand him, Pattee holds that all symbols are grounded in physical bases/substrates, and that biology shows this most clearly. He argues that bridging the epistemic cut in life depends on specific material conditions such as genetic coding and what he calls evolutionary 'search' processes involving physical constraints. The point for 'life' is that what distinguishes the living from the lifeless is that life entails symbol/matter complementarity, requiring both physical law and symbolic constraints. Pettee maintains that to understand life fully, science must integrate physics, semiotics, and biology, and to recognize the indispensable role of the epistemic cut. Now as to how this might relate to Peirce's semeiotic: First, it seems to me clear enough that Pattee’s epistemic cut does not represent Cartesian dualism. Indeed, it could be argued (although I don't know that it has been) that it is much closer to Peirce’s trichotomic than to dualism. As noted above, Pattee explicitly says that the cut is not a division in reality but an “epistemic necessity: Symbols in living beings (DNA, codes, etc.) are physical structures -- what he calls 'heteropolymers', which embody the bridge across the epistemic cut. This is to say that their ordered sequences serve as symbols, while their material structures and reactions perform physical functions -- so they are clearly not immaterial “ideas.” As I mentioned in an earlier post, to some degree Pettee's views seem to me to parallel Frederik Stjernfelt's in Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce's Doctrine of Dicisigns (2014) regarding constraints, both arguing that life works by constraints that connect symbolic and dynamic domains. However, I should note that Pattee critiques Deacon for placing 'interpretation' "too early." See: "Symbol Grounding Precedes Interpretation: Commentary to the target article by Terrence Deacon" (Biosemiotics, 2021). Further connecting these ideas to Peircean semeiotics, it appears to me that Pattee’s framework implicitly involves three irreducible elements: Symbols (rate-independent structures), dynamics (rate-dependent processes), and constraints (mediating laws and habits). I would suggest that his position is closer to Peirce’s realism and semeiotics than to any form of dualism because it treats symbols as physical signs embedded in dynamics such that their meaning and function arise only through relational processes. Further, Pattee’s epistemic cut is, as I see it, not only not at all dualistic but closer to a Peircean view in which Pattee's "symbols, dynamics, and constraints" can be viewed as corresponding to Peirce’s sign, object, and interpretant. This would further suggest that the epistemic cut might also be seen as grounded in Peirce's three categories. Best, Gary R
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