I agree that such quotes as both you and I offered are, and must be, open to
the 'collection of scholars' and can't be accepted without empirical
evidence. Peirce's 4.551 quote (crystals and bees) is a basic logical
format;
Crystals, bees and the physical world seem to function within the process of
thought.
All thoughts function as signs.
Therefore, crystals, bees and the physical world function as signs.
Logic, of course, is not enough to prove existentiality - and that remains
for empirical evidence.
The question then becomes - not simply of when does 'life' appear -
understanding life as self-organizing matter (which means that it has the
self-capacity to adapt and evolve), but also, what exactly causes this
self-organized capacity. If we remove 'Mind' as causal (as Peirce does in
4.551 when he states that Mind is also in physical forms) then, we have to
ask: is this Mind different in the physical vs biological; is there some
other factor...and so on.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Brian Downard" <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu>
To: <biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee>; "PEIRCE-L" <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 10:51 PM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7995] Re: NP 8.3 and the
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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