> On Jul 30, 2014, at 10:07 AM, Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote: > > I agree that a tape will decay eventually but not while being read with a > tape reader (to produce sound or visual images that last only very briefly > relative to tape itself).
Right - so there is always a temporal aspect. Although I’d dispute whether a tape will always be correct while playing. In my experience much of the degradation happens during play. Again a small point and perhaps being pedantic but I think these temporal issues are quite important. > I would think that your “particular objects” correspond to “phenomenon” in > Figure 1 above, and “idealized signs” correspond to “model”. To be somewhat clear and avoid future confusion, I think “idealized signs” are sometimes taken as fictions, sometimes a regulatory limits (which is how Peirce often treats idealizations I suspect), and sometimes taken as real structures. Keeping these distinctions in mind is important since nominalists often still talk about idealizations as if they were real. This is even an issue in physics where one can ask whether idealizations like the ideal gas law are really a fundamental law from which variations occur only because of added complexities or whether it is an idealization that is never true but simply a useful conceptual model. (OK, perhaps the gas law is a bad example there, but you hopeful get the idea) This gets important in thermodynamics since one can construct classic thermodynamics purely out of a system, its symmetries and its statistics. The nominalist might then say thermodynamics is an emergent set of descriptions but not fundamental. Others see thermodynamic laws as fundamental. Some see them as one of the *most* fundamental aspects of reality. This is probably the most common view although most physicists honestly don’t consider the philosophy underneath all this. I think many (most?) physicists end up in practice holding to inconsistent beliefs — often switching between them dependent upon context. My sense is (and correct me if I’m wrong) but you are holding to thermodynamics being a fundamental prescriptive aspect of the universe. > To me, semiotics is the study of signs, and thermodynamics is the study of > heat. Thermodynamics is necessary for semiotics but not sufficient. Are you making assumptions in this about what can constitute a token for semiotics? Also are you assuming a certain subset of materialistic ontology? I’m just trying to draw our your hidden assumptions here because my sense is they are key for your claims. > The crucial point to consider is the fact that an artificial flower does not > dissipate any energy to exist but a real flower has to and does. It is > probably for this reason that an artificial flower can last much longer than > a real flower. When you say “does not dissipate any energy to exist” could you clarify? Again, this seems a matter of degree from my perspective. > “Equilibrium state” to me is the state of a thermodynamic system that > exhibits no measurable/observable changes (again within the limits of > Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle). As John pointed out, equilibrium and > dissipative states are mostly scale-dependent. Right, but that then gets at the issue of whether we are talking ontology or simply “close enough analysis” — which I think the scale dependence gets at.
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