Dear Howard, lists, Sorry for having been away from the discussions for some time. Hope to catch up a bit in the Christmas week.
HP: Chapter 6 is full of examples of signaling and communication by special purpose symbols. What is missing is the fact that the existence of all thesespecial purpose Dicisigns and perception-action cycles depends on the information expressed by the general purpose language of the genes. This includes the construction of the nervous systems that can also learn. By general-purpose language I mean a communicable (heritable) open-ended(evolvable) symbol system that instructs all the organism's special purpose signaling, perceiving and acting systems. Howard is right that genes play a central role in the introduction of the semiotic aspect of the world. However, I think he makes it too central by simply assuming genes form a general purpose language on which all other symbols are dependent. This discussion is related to the phil-of-biology question of what came first, the DNA, the RNA, the cell, the cell membrane, etc.? It seems quite improbable to me that a fully equipped general-purpose language emerged as a whole. The genes are marvellous regulators but they did not create the processes which they regulate. That is why I side with the cell-first proponents in that discussion - like Kauffman or Deacon. The basic characteristic of the cell seems to be stable, self-sustaining metabolism - supposedly emerging in a nutrient-rich environment where chemical cycles from and - in some cases - become stable over time - Kauffman's autocatalytic networks, Deacon's autocells or autogens. Only later those stable, circular processes acquired membranes to further support their stability and genetic regulators to facilitate their reproduction. Taking such a picture to approach the order of origin, my argument rests on this idea: that the first germs of semiotics lies in the metabolic cycle. The metabolic cycle can be said to "need" certain chemicals in order to close the circle - this seems to me a plausible first, primitive intention. Also, I don't find any clear distinction between the language in which the symbolic information is expressed and the consequent physical action that is instructed or constrained. For example, Frederik speaks of the perceptual Dicisign reading the active site followed by the action Dicisign of swimming (p. 145). He goes on to say that this is not merely a causal process and that the semiotic aspect of this process "lies in the fact that the weak local interaction makes a whole class of surface stimuli from different sources give rise to the same typical behavior. Thus it is the fact that the bacterium does not interact causally with the whole of the molecule (before consuming it, that is) but merely weakly interacts with a spot on its perimeter which is a precondition for its turning a semiotic and not merely causal process." I do not follow this semiosis vs. causality distinction. There is no reason why the actions of the bacterium could not, in principle, be completely causally described by chemical and physical laws given the genetically constructed molecules. On the other hand, there is a good reason why the order of thesymbol sequences forming the language of the genes cannot be causally determined or explained by any laws. I do not think the distinciton between semiosis and causality is as brutal as assumed here. I rather think that the fact that primitive metabolism may have phases which may be served by different but related molecules (e.g. different carbohydrates) could be a first germ of generality. My reference to the weak molecular forces (van der Waals bonds, hydrogen bonds) refers to a later phase where we already have full competent organisms like bacteria - because it is those forces which allow for very primitive organisms to detect the presence chemical compounds without entering into full chemical covalent action with those compouts (such action immediately destroying those compounds, of course, and in some cases, themselves). All in all, genetic semiosis - which Howard speaks about as being not determinable by physical laws - I take to be the amazing result of early biosemiotic evolution rather than its starting point. Best F
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