Yes, I was thinking of activity that goes through the environment, including through unexpected channels. That is why I used "distributed through the environment", though I see what I said could be read as if the environment is an agent.
I will try to clarify the other things you are puzzled about as we move on. However the organism brings things to the environment which the environment either responds to favourably or not. This is also true of lineages, which have a certain degree of autonomy (they must, because some biological functions serve the lineage, not individual organisms). As Frederik pointed out there is the further, in bacteria there is also no clear distinction between organism and lineage, which strengthens the case for lineage autonomy in this case. Lastly, it has been pretty proven that bacteria mutate faster under harsh conditions (part of the endobiosemiotics "leaking out") which enhances lineage survival. There is a lot more. John From: Gary Fuhrman [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca] Sent: November 19, 2014 9:11 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; 'Peirce Discussion Forum' Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions 6 Good introduction, John. I don't have much to say about your "two large questions", so I'll leave those for others who are better prepared to offer answers, and just focus on this point: [JC]: Frederik argues that the bacteria individually do not have semiotic self-control, as there is not even any monitoring of the process. He suggests there might be some degree of semiotic self-control in the bacterial lineage over evolutionary time, but this is also limited. I would like to note that selection requires action by the environment as well as the organisms, so if there is any semiotic self-control through selection it is at least in part distributed through the environment. [GF]: I would say that selection requires dynamic processes to be taking place in the environment, but i would not say that it requires "action by" the environment, because I don't see "the environment" as being an autonomous agent in the sense that an organism must be in order to survive and reproduce in that environment. Perhaps you are thinking of niche construction or something like that, which does affect selection, but that must involve the organism's agency, no? - and I don't see why it must involve any other agency (though of course it may, and often does, involve actions of other organisms). Nor do I see why the semiotic self-control of a lineage, involving selection as well as agency, has to be "distributed through the environment." Actually I'm not even sure what that would mean. (Likewise, I don't know what you mean when you ask about "complex endobiosemiotics" "leaking out into its umwelt.") gary f. From: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za] Sent: 18-Nov-14 3:16 AM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee<mailto:biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee>; Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions 6 Still problems with my normal email system, so I am sending this by an alternate route. You may get further copies eventually. Sorry in advance. Folks, I am a bit indisposed right now due to snowballing problems concerning visas, and also three attacks on my money accounts in Canada, one of which was successful (all by traditional phone calls and faxes impersonating me). I have to leave South Africa by next Friday. I will be going to Vienna for a while and should have email there, but I will be absent while travelling. Chapter 6 deals with the evolution of semiotic self-control. I will briefly summarize the introduction and the first two sections in this post, which deal with the importance and centrality of dicisigns to and for biosemiotics. These sections set the stage for the later development of a theory and explanation of semiotic self-control grounded in biology and later psychology and society. Semiotic self-control involves the formation and use of dicisigns, whereas the most primitive dicisigns in biology are innate and inflexible (except in lineages over evolutionary time). Nonetheless they show the basic structure of more sophisticated and flexible dicisigns in terms of connecting perception and action in the form of an argument. Functionality is mentioned throughout as a background condition, but the argument is not entirely clear, though it is clear that basic biological functionality is the contribution to survival (either individual or lineage). Something else that I find unclear is how far back this role for dicisigns goes (perhaps exactly as far back as functionality, or to the origin of codes, or both). These are two large questions I would like to see addressed. Perhaps Frederik has something to say about them that goes further than his book (so far). So the sections, starting with the introduction: The introduction argues for the pre-eminence of dicisigns in biology right from the beginning. The alternative view from, for example Deacon, is that biology started with icons that became coordinated to form indexes and then only rather late in the game (perhaps only in humans) became integrated into symbols, making humans the paradigmatic symbolic species. Frederik argues that this view should perhaps be turned on its head. He has two lines of argument. The first is that isolated icons and indexes are rare, though they occur, and that Peircean semiotics does not permit the combination of icons to form indexes and indexes to form symbols (as in Deacon's model). The second reason is not unconnected: isolated icons and indexes are not biologically useful (not functional, though presumable we can find uses for them in our abstract thought). Icons are too vague to be useful, giving pure possibilities, whereas indexes are restricted to individual instances, unlike symbols, which are general, and can be applied to a variety of cases. Only the latter can be useful for guiding patterns of behaviour, and only these can be selected. As I mentioned above, I think the question of the nature of this usefulness, or functionality, needs further development, and there is also the question of how far back in the origins of life we want to go. There are some on these lists who would want to push the role of symbols all the way back to pre-life because that is continuous in some way with life. This position avoids, at least on the surface, the origins issue. Section 6.1 fills this argument out with more detail, arguing that dicisigns, as bearers of truth are what we need to explain the possibility of biological adaptation and resulting evolution. Or at the very least we need success in their use. Frederik argues that success and truth should be connected, but points out that mistakes (falsity) is inherent in the symbolic nature of dicisigns. This happens when normally or expected applications misfunction. If this happens often enough, evolution will select away and perhaps refine, a position he develops in the next section in the discussion of E. coli. Section 6.2 discusses how the basic function of dicisigns in biology applies even to very simple organisms in a very simple but basically complete way through the perception-action cycle. (I am not happy with "perception" here, and would prefer some like "detection" instead, but that is a quibble in the context that is trying to connect ideas together on a grander scale.) E. coli interacts with its environment in basically two ways: moving up a sugar gradient and down a toxin gradient. Its umwelt is basically made up of these gradients. (I note that internally bacteria are immensely complex, and have very complex endobiosemiotics. How much of this "leaks out" into its umwelt is unclear to me, but I suspect it is rather more than the simple umwelt that Frederik focuses on.) The possibility of detecting these gradients is innate to the bacteria and is a general ability. Detection of a sugar gradient creates a true proposition (though it can be fooled by artificial sweeteners, just as we can). This invokes an action of following the sugar gradient, which is also general and waiting to be made true. These two dicisigns are thus connected together as an argument (of the deductive sort), closing the perception-action circle. Selection maintains the connections unless something changes in the environment (or the organism in more complicated cases) that undermines the function. There can be various responses to this in evolutionary time (though in fact many bacteria have a large potential for individual internal adaptation). Frederik argues that the bacteria individually do not have semiotic self-control, as there is not even any monitoring of the process. He suggests there might be some degree of semiotic self-control in the bacterial lineage over evolutionary time, but this is also limited. I would like to note that selection requires action by the environment as well as the organisms, so if there is any semiotic self-control through selection it is at least in part distributed through the environment. I will return to this sort of issue in discussion of later sections of the chapter. There are two large questions that I think are left unanswered, as I have mentioned above. Frederik brings function in, pretty much assuming it in his arguments and explanations, but it seems to me that it could be better integrated into the semiotic story (though he makes the same point that I have been making for about five years now that biosemiosis is grounded in survival). The other point is the question of how far back can be the model he gives for E. coli be pushed back towards the origin of life, or perhaps even before that. John
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