Dear Gary, Edwina, list This is an recurrent discussion in P scholarship. It may be rephrased as pansemiotics versus biosemiotics, or it may be expressed as the claim that all true triadic relations are signs vs. the claim that signs only comprise a subset of triadic relations. Both tendencies are in Peirce so the isssue can not be resolved by Peirce scholarship. Personally, I tend to side with the latter of the two schools, based on the observation that the science of physics does not need semiotics in the description of its subject matter (only in its theory of science) while biology, on all levels, involves spontaneous semiotic concepts, from biochemistry to ecology and ethology you'll find "genetic code", "Information", "signals", "cues" etc. which presumably form part of the subject matter of biology. For that reason, I think pre-biological nature could be seen as a sort of semiotic zero-case. Adding semiotic concepts to your description of physical events can be done, but it does not really add to our understanding of them - while in our understanding of biological events, semiotic concepts are always-already there. I do not discuss this deeply in "Natural Propositons" but of course it forms the prerequisite to my discussing biological sign processes but not purely physical events conceived as semiotics. But I think deciding pro or con pansemiotics is no prerequisite for following the book's argument.
Best F Den 03/09/2014 kl. 16.08 skrev Gary Fuhrman <g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>>: Jon, Edwina, lists, Yes, I read McCullough a few decades ago and learned a lot from him, long before I started reading Peirce). But I think part of the problem here is that for Peirce, and I think for his contemporaries, "physiology" is closer to "phenomenology" than it is to "physics". It is the study of forms and sturctures generally, not only of physical forms and biological structures. For instance, in his classification of sciences where he's discussing phenomenology, esthetics and ethics, he writes: "The true principal purpose of these sciences is the Classification of possible forms. But this must be founded on a study of the Physiology of those forms, their general elements, parts, and mode of action. Thereupon should follow the Classificatory part, including the general discussion of what is good and what bad; and this should be followed up by a study of the principles that govern the production of such forms" (EP2:272). The same applies to the usage of "physiology" in the 1883 quote I posted today. Peirce is talking about the physiology of *logic* (i.e. of semiosis as he would put it later on), not primarily about biology or physics or psychology. That excerpt is about the connection of syllogistic logic with primitive forms of *cognition*, but Edwina reads it pansemiotically as applying to physical "organization of matter" all the way down to the molecular (maybe the atomic?) level, and thus doesn't distinguish between cognitive and physical processes. But for purposes of NP, we don't need to engage in the endless debate over pansemiotics; primitive cognition is as far down as we need to go in theorizing its continuity with reasoning. gary f.
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