Hi Edwina, I agree that Peirce says such things. He also seems to say that genuinely triadic relations are only found in living and/or intelligent systems and beings.
So, instead of plopping down for one of the options and insisting that this or that is Peirce's real view, my initial reaction in reading passages like CP CP 6.322 is that he is probably operating like a good scientist who is trying to frame the question in a way that we might hope to make some progress towards an answer. Part of this effort requires of us that we formulate competing hypothesis--and that we be as clear as possible about the meanings of the concepts that are being used in the formulation of the competing explanations. Only by such a method do we stand any chance of f putting the competing hypotheses to any kind of adequate test. This is especially true where we are working on one of the most difficult of all metaphysical questions. At this level of the debate, Peirce suggests that we should put our trust in the theory of logical inquiry as our guide. Our hope is that it will provide us with the conceptual resources needed to root out the vagueness in our hypotheses so that we might formulate explanations with sufficient uberty. One worry that I have about this approach is that our best theories of logic seem to leave a lot of room for improvement. That is, they leave us with a lot of unanswered philosophical questions. Given the heroic struggles that Peirce made to improve upon the received theories of logic of his time, I have much sympathy with his suggestion that the deepest questions in logic and metaphysics that we face are not matters that any individual should presume to decide. Rather, they are matters that are better left for generations of inquirers to leave their mark. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Edwina Taborsky [tabor...@primus.ca] Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 8:22 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; Sungchul Ji; PEIRCE-L Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7995] Re: NP 8.3 and the I don't agree that Peirce says this; in fact, Peirce says the opposite - that genuine sign relations are found in all existential reality and that includes crystals etc... I've given this quote many times: "Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world"...4.551 (Apology for Pragmaticism 1906)...and " there cannot be thought without Signs". Therefore, since thought appears in 'the work of crystals and throughout the purely physical world'...and since 'there cannot be thought without signs'...therefore, there is genuine semiosis in non-living (ie what we know as biological) systems. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: "Howard Pattee" <hpat...@roadrunner.com> To: <biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee>; "Sungchul Ji" <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>; "PEIRCE-L" <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>; "biosemiotics" <biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee> Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 9:54 PM Subject: [biosemiotics:7995] Re: NP 8.3 and the > At 09:02 PM 1/25/2015, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote: > >>While he [Peirce] does explore this idea in places, he suggests elsewhere >>that can't find any clear examples of genuine sign relations outside of >>living or intelligent systems. > > I believe Frederik says this, but where does Peirce say this? > > Howard > > >
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