Dear Ben, lists, I think you are right in proposing that quasi-inferences are inferences with less than full self-control. But self-control comes in many degrees ( I address this a bit in ch. 6 I think). A very low degree of self-control may be the slow change over evolutionary adaption - with the lineage as the self-controlling entity able to learn, rather than the single organism. You're right about the vague sense of Peirce's different "quasis" - maybe an intended vagueness. But I think it is right that, as a tendency, P would regard learning (ever so slowly) as essential for his mind concept (of course the famous crystals-and-bees quote may be marshaled as a counter-quote). Best F
Den 16/09/2014 kl. 20.09 skrev Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com>> : Clark, list, In regard to the Peirce quote from 1907 that you provided, it's also pertinent to the discussion of biosemiosis, physiosemiosis, etc., taking place lately here. It was in the 1906 "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism" that he discusses quasi-mind, quasi-utterer, quasi-interpreterhttp://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/quasi-mind . In the 1907 passage that you quote, mentioning the Jacquard loom, he doesn't mention the "quasi-"s although they seem pertinent. But in another 1907 from the same MS 318, published in CP 5.473 (the famous "semeiosy" passage), he says that a Jacquard loom should be regarded as a "quasi-sign", because the action is that of automatic regulation, which he distinguishes from semeiosy (semiosis). [Quote] In these cases, however, a mental representation of the index is produced, which mental representation is called the _immediate object_ of the sign; and this object does triadically produce the intended, or proper, effect of the sign strictly by means of another mental sign; and that this triadic character of the action is regarded as essential is shown by the fact that if the thermometer is dynamically connected with the heating and cooling apparatus, so as to check either effect, we do not, in ordinary parlance speak of there being any _semeiosy_, or action of a sign, but, on the contrary, say that there is an "automatic regulation," an idea opposed, in our minds, to that of _semeiosy_. For the proper significate outcome of a sign, I propose the name, the interpretant of the sign. The example of the imperative command shows that it need not be of a mental mode of being. Whether the interpretant be necessarily a triadic result is a question of words, that is, of how we limit the extension of the term "sign"; but it seems to me convenient to make the triadic production of the interpretant essential to a "sign," calling the wider concept like a Jacquard loom, for example, a "quasi-sign." [End quote] I tend to see this distinction as allied a distinction that he makes in an unpublished MS which the Robin Catalogue describes as follows: 831. [Reasoning and Instinct] A. MS., n.p., n.d., pp. 2-29, incomplete. The fine gradations between subconscious or instinctive mind and conscious, controlled reason. Logical machines are not strictly reasoning machines because they lack the ability of self-criticism and the ability to correct defects which may crop up. Three kinds of reasoning: inductive, deductive, hypothetical. Quasi-inferences. Well, I don't know what to make of "quasi-inferences" - I'd have thought that he would regard instinctive or automatic inferences as quasi-reasonings. I'll be very interested to read MS 831 if it ever becomes available. Anyway I've tended to think of genuine semiosis as involving the capacity to learn, capacity for self-correction etc. (and I've heard that this is De Tienne's view) - I mean not merely self-correction to maintain homeostasis or balance while walking etc. (which could be done by automatic regulation), but 'design-level' self-correction, correction of one's own methods, correction of one's own semiosic habits, etc. But one finds inferences embodied in vegetable-level and physical phenomena, are they not semioses? Are they quasi-semioses? The prefix "quasi-" starts to seem too vague to capture the possible senses. I also don't have too firm an idea of all the things that Peirce means by "mind". Does mind, in Peirce's sense, always involve the capacity to learn? If I call something a quasi-mind, should that mean like a mind but not learning? Or could it mean learning like a mind without being a mind capable of consciousness (I've thought of biological evolution as having a 'quasi-mind'). Vegetable-level (quasi-)semiosis seems like we ought to strongly distinguish it from whatever strictly dynamic or material/chemical (quasi-) semiosis we think there is, because at the vegetable level, signs or signals are 'interpreted' in terms of highly specific kinds of pertinence to the organism for the end of the thriving of the species. It indeed _seems_ rather like semiosis as we ordinarily think of it because, although vegetable-level organisms don't learn (at least last that I heard of), they behave by seemingly specific-purposeful interpretants, thanks to the trial-and-error (quasi-)learning by evolution that made them that way. People set up the Jacquard loom, put its cards in place, etc., evolution sets up (vastly more complex) vegetable organisms. The hypothetical Gaia seems like another case. One might say that it is 'quasi-alive'. I guess it also has a 'quasi-mind'. Evolving over time, it has 'quasi-mind' in the (quasi-)learning sense. We need more prefixes, this is turning into mush. Best, Ben
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