Dear John
That is a pity, because for me this is such a central question, which so many
with a background in the science or logic and mathematical philosophy avoids to
deal with. That maybe why I have so few suggestions to improve my attempt in
Cybersemiotics. I would really like to have papers on this to Cybernetics &
Human Knowing. A special issue if there are several that want to attempt this
difficult area.
Best
Søren
Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 30. december 2015 19:09
Til: Søren Brier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign
Yes. We’ve discussed this before here. We disagree on the usefulness of
phenomenology and hermeneutics for dealing with the problem. I also think that
he informational approach by itself is insufficient. I think we need to
understand the dynamics involved as well as using a semiotic perspective to
explain why the problem seems intractable. Nut I don’t have the time to go into
this here and now.
John Collier
Professor Emeritus and Senior Rsearcch Associate, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier
From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb....@cbs.dk]
Sent: Wednesday, 30 December 2015 4:33 PM
To: John Collier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign
Dear John
I agree on the irreducibility of the sign triad. My main point is that we do
not from the material, energetic or the informational ontology worldview have
any idea of how it could emerge from that foundation. It only works from
Peirce’s foundation. That is the geniality of what he created – in my view.
Everyone who wants to use his concepts has to use his philosophical foundation
or create a better one. And the so called scientific ones that does not
integrate phenomenological and hermeneutic views are not able to do the job.
The informational and the info-computational do not.
Søren
Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 30. december 2015 11:01
Til: Søren Brier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign
Søren,
I have argued for some time that if Peircean thirds are irreducible they must
be emergent. I see no reason to doubt that. I think that Deacon’s views are
reductionist in some respects, though he is changing that slowly (he quotes me
on information in his second book, for example, but I don’t think he absorbed
the significance of the quote). I believe that information is fundamental, and
that it is physical, but that is not a materialist view.
I don’t see Stjernfelt the same way as you do. He doesn’t talk about
self-organization or emergence directly, but he does think that thirds are
irreducible. His arguments about the centrality of dicisigns don’t make a lot
of sense otherwise. But perhaps he is a more cryptic version of Marcello
Barbieri. I doubt that, though.
Marcello is indeed very much upfront that he doesn’t see Piece as scientific. I
have argued that his views imply anti-reductionism, however, in spite of
himself. He denies that. Howard Pattee disappointed Marcello when he said he
took a basically antireductionist view on meaning. My views are similar to
Howard’s but I don’t like his epistemic and other cuts. I see the problem they
are supposed to address; I don’t think they are a solution. Even if you take a
non-materialist view (idealist or neutral) there is still a problem of how
local consciousness emerges. But I think that from our previous discussions we
might disagree about that last point.
John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier
From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb....@cbs.dk]
Sent: Tuesday, 29 December 2015 6:50 PM
To: John Collier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign
Dear John and Stephen
I think there is an ontological difference between your views as Deacon and to
a certain degree Stjernfelt’ s views are based on ,to me unclear “scientific
worldviews”, which in the end means physicalism. None of them has taken a clear
opposition to physicalism. They are not mechanical materialist but believe in
thermodynamic self-organization through Prigogine’s non-equilibrium
thermodynamics. Deacon is close to general system theory but does not accept it
openly probably because Bertalanffy was an organicist and therefore not
compatible with the physicalist scientific worldview. Never the less he endorse
a developmental theory combined with evolution theory from matter, over
objective information to icons. Stuart Kaufmann seems also to attempt to make
signs emerge from a physicalist worldview. Stjernfelt seem to run a standard
scientific ontology parallel with a Peircean semiotic as far as I can read,
never going into self-organization and theories of emergence. But in my view a
Peircean icon does not work without his whole pragmaticist philosophy with its
foundation in his hylozoist, thycistic ontology, combined with his aesthetics,
ethics and semiotic logic as the base of his phaneroscopic epistemology. There
are a lot of attempts to use Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticism on other
philosophical foundations than the one he painstakingly developed over his
life. One of the more obvious is Barbieri’s codebiology, but he is so honest
and explicit in his argumentation that it is possible to discuss it, as I have
done in the attached article from Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.
Am I wrong?
Best
Søren
Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 29. december 2015 04:13
Til: Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign
Stephen, List,
That is similar to Terry Deacon’s view in The Symbolic Species (1997), and also
later in Incomplete Nature (2012). He argues that the evolution of symbols
starts with icons, icons combine to form indexes, and we end up with, in
humans, full symbols. Frederick Stjernflelt takes issue with this
(Diagrammatology, chapter 11, 2007; Natural Propositions, chapter 6, 2014),
arguing that dicisigns can be found, and are needed, right back to the
beginning of signs in biology, so that (proto)symbolic symbols and arguments as
well are original, both factually and as a requirement for understanding how
signs evolved. I am currently inclined to agree with Stjernfelt (Collier, 2014,
Signs without minds. V. Romanini, E. Fernández (eds.), Peirce and Biosemiotics,
Biosemiotics 11), though I didn’t know about his work at the time.
John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier
From: Stephen C. Rose [mailto:stever...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 29 December 2015 3:47 AM
To: Peirce List
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign
I see a sign as something that emerges in the vague penumbra called First or by
me Reality. It is named and acquires identity rising from its primal being. It
naturally encounters a blunt index of truths which I call Ethics (Second) and
is composed of Values (not virtues) and from there it passes through a the
doorway to the Third which I call Aesthetics and understand to be the point at
which the consideration, which this is, evolves into expression and action. In
terms of Peirce's maxim this Third is the the substance of the matter. When I
see folk discussing signs and firsts and seconds and thirds in highly complex
ways I do not think I am thereby missing the possibilities of Triadic thought.
I feel its possibilities lie in a little leap from the point at which Peirce
implies that logic might lead to good results to a point at which Triadic
thinking actually does lead to such results. I am coming to feel that Peirce's
thought is a mite confused at the point of getting grounded and that categories
became for him a sort of detour from a a more frontal effort to state the
implications of his thought. Fortunately he left a good deal to go on.
Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU
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