I don’t have any disagreement with Shapiro’s basic points. The Foundational Habit that I propose is just that one sign is interpreted from another. Purely Peircean. But as I show in the paper (and more in the book) this accounts not only for the acquisition and building of language structure (from tree structures to constructions), it also is the basis for LLMs, explains anomalies in philosophy e.g. Searle’s Chinese Room (I was sharing an office with the late John Searle as he came up with this idea and we discussed it quite a bit at the time). In my Peircean Linguistics book to be submitted this summer, I also explain how Existential Graphs remove problems that have bothered Chomsky for his entire career, eliminating the need for both Compositionality (which I refer to as “Frege’s Error”).
I have written several books on this topic, but the most relevant here is likely this one: https://www.amazon.com/How-Language-Began-Humanitys-Invention/dp/0871407957 Also this talk at Harvard, among many others available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uUilIN-8gk - Dan On Apr 28, 2026, at 11:10 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote: Dan, List, I've only had a chance to read the abstract of your paper, but I hope to read it in its entirety in the next week or so as the thesis sounds most interesting and, to me at least, a bit provocative. As you probably know -- and as long term readers of the List may know -- I tend to agree with the linguist, Michael Shapiro's, that supports Peirce's, as opposed to Chomsky's, view of the acquisition of language. For Shapiro, the contrast between Chomsky and Peirce turns on fundamentally different conceptions of language and its acquisition. As is well known, Chomsky’s rationalist model treats language as grounded in an innate cognitive architecture -- Universal Grammar -- so that language acquisition consists largely in the 'triggering' of a pre-existing 'cognitive system'. Michael argues that Chomsky's emphasis on formal syntactic structure abstracts language from communicative practice and, so, renders it static in principle, as well as largely asocial and non-semiotic (since language is approached as an internal code rather than a process of sign use). Shapiro, on the other hand, argues that “language is not an autonomous formal system but a mode of sign activity,” and he argues against “the hypostatization of grammar as an object independent of its use.” As he sees it, generative grammar mistakes analytic constructs for innate mental realities and, in the doing, obscures the fundamentally semiotic character of linguistic phenomena. Shapiro finds in Peirce a model that situates language within semiosis -- an ongoing, socially embedded process of sign interpretation in which what is innate is, as I think you suggest in your abstract, less a determinate structure than a capacity for abductive inference. Here language acquisition is developmental and open-ended: this involves the formation and revision of habits through interaction, fallible hypothesis formation rather than the unfolding of a fixed system. So Shapiro emphasizes that “grammar is not given in advance but emerges from the functioning of signs in communicative life,” thus aligning linguistic structure with evolving patterns of use. An essential difference, I think, lies in their respective notions of instinct: for Chomsky, as noted, it is a structured internal grammar, whereas for Peirce it is an evolutionary tendency toward successful abduction, a probabilistic 'bias', shall we say, that integrates biological predispositions with learning and language and cultural transmission. For Shapiro, the Peircean account is superior because it integrates biology, learning, culture, and communication without reducing language to a fixed internal mechanism. I've cc'd Michael who, I expect, will correct me if I've misrepresented any of his views. Best, Gary Richmond On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 7:23 PM Everett, Daniel <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Semeiosis is the foundation of all inference. I refer to this in the paper linked below as “The Foundational Habit.” It is: Sign —> Sign It is a recursive procedure and on this all of science emerges. <https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009854> CONCEPTIONS OF INSTINCT IN LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION: PRAGMATIST VS. RATIONALIST APPROACHES - lingbuzz/009854<https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009854> ling.auf.net<https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009854> <favicon.ico><https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009854> DLE On Apr 28, 2026, at 19:13, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: [EXTERNAL]: This email originated from outside of Bentley University. Do not click on any links or open any attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Please contact Bentley Help Desk with any questions or concerns. Gary R, List Yes, you are quite correct- the function is a rule of mediation - and I said that quite clearly in my outline - when I referred to and gave examples of the HABITS or rules or laws of mediation - and mediation is of course, a ‘mode of connection - but, more, it is a mode of transformation, where it transforms, via its rules, habits, knowledge base... input data into a viable interpretation. . And yes, this semiosis triad, which I compare to the function [ and I am hardly the only person to do so!!!] does lead to , at a specific time and place, one interpretation. It has to -otherwise the world is chaos. And since this function is a triad, with each node containing vital data - it’s not a dyadic process - and you are quite incorrect to claim such - ie, the function is not the same as a a mathematical equal sign - which IS dyadic!!! . This triad/function/ is a vital action- I must interpret the input sounds or images to be: one interpretation at this specific time and space.Not multiple interpretations,but ONE. My neighbour is saying Hello - and is NOT an evil witch putting a curse on me. …I must interpret the image I see to be Rain- and not gold coins…or harmful chemicals or angels dropping from the sky or... As for the concept of continuous semeiois - that’s basic to Peirce - but my outline of ONE specific action of semiosis hardly nullifies the concept of the world as a continuous semiosic process. Edwina On Apr 28, 2026, at 6:40 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Doug, List, Since she mentioned it in her response to you, I must remark that Edwina Taborsky's interpretation of Peirce’s semiosis as a function, f(x) = y, where x is the object, f is the sign, and y is the interpretant, is exceedingly problematic in my view. In her model the sign 'operates' on the object to 'produce' the interpretant. This would mean that the interpretant is generated through a transformation comparable to a mathematical mapping. While this model may seem appealing to those trained in analytic philosophy or, say, Shannon's classical information theory -- since it offers a clean input-output picture of semiosis -- nonetheless, it replaces Peirce’s open and continuous semiotic mediation with a closed system of transformation. Further, a function implies a dyadic and determinate relation: one value of x leads to one value of y. Peirce’s semiosis, however, is at its very heart triadic and relational. Yes, the object determines [in Peirce's sense of 'constrains'] the sign which determines [constrains] the interpretant, but none of these determinations is mechanical. For Peirce the sign does not transform the object into an interpretant; rather, it mediates between them within a process that remains open and continuous. In reducing semiosis to transformation,Taborsky's model ignores the potential, and the creative aspects which animate Peirce’s semeiotics, including as regards his conception of meaning. In short, the formula f(x) = y collapses Peirce’s open-ended process of mediation (3ns) into a fixed act of transformation (2ns) in that it substitutes function for a law of habit. Whereas a function ends with an output, Peirce’s semiosis generates new interpretants as new signs indefinitely, each interpretant, in turn, becoming a sign. This process has no definite closure. Some have called this 'infinite semiosis': the process where the interpretant of a sign becomes a new sign for the same object, and so initiates an endless chain of meaning. It implies that meaning-making is never static or fully realized, but is always open to further interpretation and unfolding. And there is one additional danger: that of over-formalizing Peirce’s ideas. While it is true that Peirce himself sometimes used mathematical analogies (although, and for prime example, he strongly argued against using his system of Existential Graphs as a calculus), his semeiotic is anything but computational. By turning semiosis into a neat function, one is treating signs as static conversions rather than as evolving acts of interpretation rooted in culture, experience, and inquiry (there are biological analogies of these). In addition, it's important to note that Peirce’s semeiotic is deeply entangled with his phenomenology and metaphysics (see, for example,“An Outline Classification of the Sciences” in the 1903 Syllabus) and is, in my view, not fully detachable from them. There is, perhaps, a limited sense in which Taborsky’s metaphor might be helpful. But if so, she would have to treat the 'function' not as a deterministic formula but as a rule of mediation; that is to say as a pattern of relational continuity rather than causal mapping. As such it might serve as a shorthand for the way the sign organizes its reference. But then Taborsky would have to acknowledge that f here is not an operator but a habit: a mode of connection among object, sign, and interpretant within a continuum of semiosis, something I think that she is unlikely to do. Perhaps the greatest flaw in Taborsky’s model as I see it is that it doesn’t capture the continuity -- the evolutionary continuity -- the vitality in Peirce’s thought. His semeiotic came out of his own evolving ideas about synechism and habit-formation, stressing the continuity and growth of interpretation. A fixed function like f(x)=y freezes what Peirce understood as a living, evolutionary process. For these reasons, in my view such essentially dyadic models as Taborsky's misunderstand and misinterpret Peirce’s semiosis. Best, Gary Richmond On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 2:00 PM doug mackenzie <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi all, I've just joined this mailing list because I am finally taking the opportunity to dig into Peirce's writings. I am a sessional instructor at UBC and I will be teaching COGS 303 (Research Methods in Cognitive Systems) this September for the second time. I taught the course last September and hewed closely to the syllabus as it was designed by Dr. Ron Rensink (details here<https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rensink/publications/download/preparingUgrads-rr.pdf>). I've been sold on the Team-Based Learning approach and I'm in the process of designing the modules which will compose the course. I'm now reading The Fixation of Belief and How to Make Our Ideas Clear, and Peirce's ideas about the scientific method and doubt seem really to fit with the course's focus on self-awareness of cognitive biases. I was wondering if anyone has made use of Peirce's writings or ideas in courses on research methods or the philosophy of science. Best, Doug Mackenzie Vancouver, BC _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>">UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>">UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>">UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]";>UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
