Dear Clark, lists - As I write in the book, I think there must be posited a continuous scale between Dicent Indexical Sinsigns in one end and full Symbolic Propositions in the other. Given that, I think it is easy to recognize symbols in non-human animals. The requirement is that they are habitual, stable, repeatable, future-oriented and with a general meaning. All this goes for, e.g., firefly signaling, covered in ch. 6. Of course, this depends upon accepting phylogenetically established behaviour as habitual. But I do not see why the distinction between phylo- and ontogeny should have anything to do with habit in the Peircean sense of the word. The species-specific firefly code seems a habit evolved over many generations of natural selection. In ordinary parlance, it is true, we tend to associate habit with regular behaviour developed in the lifetime of an individual. But that is not the case in Peirce's vast generalization of the term. As to signs in biology, I think simpler organisms even have signs which are MORE stable and repeatable than higher organisms. The possibility for one-shot propositions only seems to me to occur to pretty intelligent organisms. Best F
Den 03/11/2014 kl. 04.40 skrev Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com<mailto:cl...@lextek.com>> : On Nov 2, 2014, at 1:24 PM, Frederik Stjernfelt <stj...@hum.ku.dk<mailto:stj...@hum.ku.dk>> wrote: There is a bit terminological confusion here. Peirce's distinction within Dicisigns was between propositions and quasi-propositions, the latter being those Dicisigns which are not symbols. I wanted to talk about this earlier when it was covered in the book. Unfortunately I was rather swamped and am only now getting to this. The reason to separate dicisigns into those with symbols and without is obviously a very natural and clear one. As you develop things in the book you focus on these non-symbolic dicisigns as natural propositions. As I read through this though I wondered if we can have symbol-signs in non-human minds. I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with examples where that arbitrariness that is characteristic of symbols is present naturally. Unfortunately I’ve not come up with any good examples outside of computer based programs. Those are controversial due to the role of human intelligence in starting the process. I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts in this regard. (Apologies if this was covered - I’m working backwards from newest posts) The closest I could come up with are animal calls, such as bird songs. It seems those are arbitrary but I’m not sure they function quite as symbolic signs let alone full dicisigns. Also most signs like these in nature while arbitrary in one sense are not-arbitrary in important other senses due to the nature of their evolution.
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