> On Jul 31, 2014, at 3:32 PM, Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote: > > Do you deny that DNA is matter ? Does it not represent an organism? > > Do you deny that > > “Semiosis is a material process enabled by the action of the (073114-6) > irreducible triad of object, representamen and interpretant. > Hence, all the components of semiosis possess material bases.” > > “. . . the habits of formation act as the representamen and (073114-8) > transforms the input data from the object into the > interpretant.” > > So, where is the habit encoded or what embodies the habit ? Thin air or > a ghost ?
Just to second Edwina, these are clearly explained within Peirce. They are at odds with what I guess is your materialistic ontology. So perhaps you’re assuming some form of simple materialism so much you’re having a hard time wrapping your mind around there being different ways of thinking here. It is rather common to assume some space/time substrate with extension as a necessary substrate for any property. So much so that it’s rather common for many from the scientific community to even recognize it as an unestablished assumption. (And one which many scientists have disagreed with) With regards to Peirce he discusses this in many places. I think a good starting point on this might be the SEP in the “Mind and Semeiotic” section. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/#mind Allow me to quote the relevant part as I think it would eliminate a lot of confusion at play here. Connected with Peirce's insistence on the ubiquity of mind in the cosmos is the importance he attached to what he called “semeiotic,” the theory of signs in the most general sense. Although a few points concerning this subject were made earlier in this article, some further discussion is in order. What Peircean meant by “semeiotic” is almost totally different from what has come to be called “semiotics,” and which hails not so much from Peirce as from Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles W. Morris. Even though Peircean semeiotic and semiotics are often confused, it is important not to do so. Peircean semeiotic derives ultimately from the theory of signs of Duns Scotus and its later development by John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot). In Peirce's theory the sign relation is a triadic relation that is a special species of the genus: the representing relation. Whenever the representing relation has an instance, we find one thing (the “object”) being represented by (or: in) another thing (the “representamen”) and being represented to (or: in) a third thing (the “interpretant.”) Moreover, the object is represented by the representamen in such a way that the interpretant is thereby “determined” to be also a representamen of the object to yet another interpretant. That is to say, the interpretant stands in the representing relation to the same object represented by the original representamen, and thus the interpretant represents the object (either again or further) to yet another interpretant. Obviously, Peirce's complicated definition entails that we have an infinite sequence of representamens of an object whenever we have any one representamen of it. The sign relation is the special species of the representing relation that obtains whenever the first interpretant (and consequently each member of the whole infinite sequence of interpretants) has a status that is mental, i.e. (roughly) is a cognition of a mind. In any instance of the sign relation an object is signified by a sign to a mind. One of Peirce's central tasks was that of analyzing all possible kinds of signs. For this purpose he introduced various distinction among signs, and discussed various ways of classifying them. One set of distinctions among signs was introduced by Peirce in the early stages of his analysis. The distinctions in this set turn on whether the particular instance of the sign relation is “degenerate” or “non-degenerate.” The notion of “degeneracy” here is the standard mathematical notion, and as applied to sign theory non-degeneracy means simply that the triadic relation cannot be analyzed as a logical conjunction of any combination of dyadic relations and monadic relations. More exactly, a particular instance of the obtaining of the sign relation is degenerate if and only if the fact that a sign s means an object o to an interpretant i can be analyzed into a conjunction of facts of the form P(s) & Q(o) & R(i) & T(s,o) & U(o,i) & W(i,s) (where not all the conjuncts have to be present). Either an obtaining of the sign relation is non-degenerate, in which case it falls into one class; or it is degenerate in various possible ways (depending on which of the conjuncts are omitted and which retained), in which cases it falls into various other classes. Other distinctions regarding signs were introduced later by Peirce. Some of them will be discussed very briefly in the following section of this article. In addition one should read the section on "Psycho-physical Monism and Anti-nominalism.” It’s far too easy to read the above in terms of popular views of mind (typically eliminative or highly reductive) which Peirce simply didn’t hold. (Emphasis mine in the below) Peirce held that science suggests that the universe has evolved from a condition of maximum freedom and spontaneity into its present condition, in which it has taken on a number of habits, sometimes more entrenched habits and sometimes less entrenched ones. With pure freedom and spontaneity Peirce tended to associate mind, and with firmly entrenched habits he tended to associate matter (or, more generally, the physical). Matter he tended to regard as “congealed” mind, and mind he tended to regard as “effete” matter. Thus he tended to see the universe as the end-product-so-far of a process in which mind has acquired habits and has “congealed” (this is the very word Peirce used) into matter. This notion of all things as being evolved psycho-physical unities of some sort places Peirce well within the sphere of what might be called “the grand old-fashioned metaphysicians,” along with such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Whitehead, et al. Some contemporary philosophers might be inclined to reject Peirce out of hand upon discovering this fact. Others might find his notion of psycho-physical unities not so very offputting or indeed even attractive. What is crucial is that Peirce argued that mind pervades all of nature in varying degrees: it is not found merely in the most advanced animal species. This pan-psychistic view, combined with his synechism, meant for Peirce that mind is extended in some sort of continuum throughout the universe. Peirce tended to think of ideas as existing in mind in somewhat the same way as physical forms exist in physically extended things. He even spoke of ideas as “spreading” out through the same continuum in which mind is extended. This set of conceptions is part of what Peirce regarded as (his own version of) Scotistic realism, which he sharply contrasted with nominalism. He tended to blame what he regarded as the errors of much of the philosophy of his contemporaries as owing to its nominalistic disregard for the objective existence of form. Reading the original works of Peirce on all these topics is typically important if one wants to really get at what Peirce meant by semiotics. Many have adopted elements of Peirce’s thought but typically in ways that break and transform Peirce’s conceptions of signs. As I’ve been at pains to acknowledge, Peirce is perhaps most controversial here. I think few are inclined to adopt Peirce’s panpsychic views of universal evolution. Effectively it leads to a conception in which signs are fundamental rather than the substance entities which most popular ontologies tend to privilege.
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