Jeff - could you provide some of the key concepts. Thanks.
As I previously pointed out, Aristotle had differentiated between 'chance'
and 'spontaneity' - with his chance more aligned with what I am talking
about - i.e., the abductive generation, by means of Mind working within
informational data, of a novel form. His 'spontaneity' would be more akin
to randomness - i.e., the lack of information, the lack of Mind. And I
reject this spontaneity/randomness with regard to evolution. Because I
consider it a huge waste of energy. Again, it would be like relying on
winning the lottery each month to pay your mortgage. Random mutations cannot
be relied on within the biological realm for by the time your 'numbers came
up' - you would be long, long extinct.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Brian Downard" <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu>
To: <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 2:57 PM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Six categorial vectors; three categorial
mirrors, was, The categorial "mirror image" of 'determination' and
'representation'.
Edwina, Ben, List,
Here is a nice introduction to the concept of randomness: What Is
Random?: Chance and Order in Mathematics and Life, by Edward Beltrami. It
might be helpful for those who feel a temptation to "reject randomness" as
being explanatory when it comes to living systems.
--Jeff
Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Edwina Taborsky [tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 12:41 PM
To: Benjamin Udell; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Six categorial vectors; three categorial
mirrors, was, The categorial "mirror image" of 'determination' and
'representation'.
I'll try to be brief on my views on evolution within the Peircean
semiosis.
1) I reject randomness - and the old mantra that 'all mutations are
random' and most are harmful' is - irrelevant. Why? Because it is, for the
organism, a waste of resources - energy and information. The random
mutations are noise. But, ALL systems MUST have the ability to adapt
because the nature of matter is that it is not stable. It is subject to
entropy - and - must be constantly re-organizing itself to prevent that
entropy.
2) Within the Peircean categories - I'll focus on Thirdness. Mind. 3-3 is
pure Mind. But, embedded Thirdness - which is Thirdness embedded within
matter, is of two types. There's 3-2 and 3-1.
Thirdness-as-Secondness is MIND operating within physical matter. I view
it as embedded within the organism - networking constantly with the
informational data of its envt - coming up with functional solutions to
that changing envt. Functional. Not random. After all, for an organism to
rely on random solutions to envtal problems is like relying on winning the
lottery to pay your mortgage.
That's why I say that the organism will interaction, informationally, with
its envt, and come up with several viable solutions. Let's say that the
seeds on the bushes get harder shells. The birds that live on them...will
require a solution. Within the community, the
Thirdness-as-Secondness...which is MIND connected to these physical
indexical realities...will come up with several hypothetical [abductive]
anticipatory solutions. One solution might be to switch to a berry diet -
and change the digestive system. Another solution might be to migrate.
Another solution might be to develop a tougher beak. It is pure chance
which one dominates.
Domination of one solution is by Mind again. But it's
Thirdness-as-Firstness ...where the pattern of organization [Thirdness] is
copied iconically within the community and becomes dominant.
3) Of course this isn't rational in the sense of consciousness, but it is
certainly not mechanical - which it would be if it were pure randomness.
Nor is it deterministic. It is agapastic, which acknowledges that the
organism and its envt are working together, in a rational way so to
speak, to exist.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Benjamin Udell<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com>
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Six categorial vectors; three categorial
mirrors, was, The categorial "mirror image" of 'determination' and
'representation'.
Edwina, list,
I'm unsure what you're arguing about here with me. As I said in the
analogy to abductive inference, we see the mediation of a thirdish
attunement to nature, involving what the reasoner knows at least by
inherited instinct about the environment. IF that means to you that the
tychastic principle is simply not involved at that stage, not even in some
mediated form, then I'm not prepared to argue for Peirce's view there any
further, especially as Gary R. suggests that Peirce's view later evolved.
Anyway, we don't see purely, wildly random mutations or genetic
variations; some traits are more stable (more necessarily, anancastically
transmitted) than others; and, if you're right, then we will see a
favoring of genetic variations responsive to what the organism knows by
its informative relations with its current semiosic environment.
On the other hand, your idea that all genetic variations are "viable"
seems to need qualification. It's hard to believe that they're all
_equally_ viable, so I take it that you don't mean that. Furthermore, how
much can the organism 'know' about what will be viable for itself or its
lineage during the next ten years, the next century, etc.? One way or
another, there's still the need for the test by sometimes variable
experience. Some genetic variations may prove ill-timed, for example, even
if they might have been advantageous or at least non-disadvantageous at
many other times. Certainly some abductive conclusions even at their start
are much less plausible or viable than others. But mine and Gary R.'s
analogy with abductive inference breaks down in your scenario because,
even if all one's abductive conclusions (explanatory hypotheses) are
viable, one does not prefer one of the competing hypotheses just by
chance.
But maybe by "viable" and "functional" you mean something analogous to
what some economists mean in saying that all economic action is
"rational," i.e., has reasons in the actors' minds, even if not always the
best or smartest reasons.
I confess that I know little of current efforts to rehabilitate something
like a Lamarckian spirit in evolutionary biology. I remember that, in high
school, teachers told us that the vast majority of mutations are
disadvantageous, i.e., decreasing the organism's viability, even if not
making it flatly non-viable. I'd be surprised if it were shown that _no_
mutations are seriously disadvantageous.
Best, Ben
On 1/22/2016 3:11 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Ben, list - at the moment, I'm standing by my view that evolution, by
which I do mean agapastic, which is akin to the inclusion of Mind, cannot
function within pure randomness.
I think that the confusion could be between the meaning of randomness and
chance. Aristotle, in 'Physics' [Book II, Ch6] discusses this vital
difference - using different terms [spontaneity and chance]. Randomness
is, in my view, mechanical and detached from interactions. A random
action, would consist of the modes of Firstness and Secondness but no
Thirdness. So, we could have the Rhematic Iconic Qualisign, which operates
totally in Firstness - and the result is a local, non-related,
non-interpreted 'thing'. And the Rhematic Iconic Sinsign - another
non-analyzed experience/thing. And the Rhematic Indexical Sinsign - a
mechanical cry. These are random events, unrelated to Mind. My point is
that they cannot be readily picked up by MIND; they can be irrelevant
noise.
BUT - if you had - not randomness, but a novel interaction with the envt -
i.e., a MINDFUL novel reaction to the envt, producing a novelty - which
would be the case in a process of, let's say, the Rhematic Indexical
Legisign - then, this would be agapastic evolution.
I do not agree that a random emergence of a 'hopeful monster' has anything
to do with evolution. That is, I consider that prior to that emergence of
the particular 'monster', the semiosic system of MIND [Thirdness] in a
biological organism has been in informative contact with all the networked
interactions of its broad vast semiosic envt. Within this complex wealth
of information, the organism will come up with several solutions to its
needs and, BY CHANCE, chooses ONE of them. But any one of them would have
been functional. Why would any have been functional? Because the
organism's MIND [Thirdness] was and is, in informative networking with its
envt and KNOWS that several solutions are viable. The chance action - is
that ONE is 'chosen' by the organism. By whim? Who knows. But any would
have been functional.
Natural selection does not judge and select the ONE that is 'chosen'.
Natural selection ENFORCES the dominance of the one that was already
chosen within the anticipatory MIND of the organism.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Benjamin Udell<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com>
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Six categorial vectors; three categorial
mirrors, was, The categorial "mirror image" of 'determination' and
'representation'.
Edwina, Gary, list,
Peirce's account of natural selection in "Evolutionary Love"(1893)
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/evolove/evolove.htm<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/menu/library/bycsp/evolove/evolove.htm>
and "A Guess at the Riddle" (1887-8)
<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/menu/library/bycsp/guess/guess.htm>
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/guess/guess.htm differs
from Gary R.'s, which may be based on some later writing. However, Gary
R.'s account of the first phase as "sporting" accords with Peirce's:
In "Evolutionary Love"
Natural selection:
1ns: Chance sporting. Spontaneous energy: energetic projaculation.
Bio-evolutionary tychasm.
▷ 3ns: (Lamarckian) habit: habit-formation and harmonization.
Bio-evolutionary agapasm.
2ns: Heredity, mechanical transmission of characters. Bio-evolutionary
anancasm.
The agapastic principle is that of the mediation of the mutually warring
tychastic and anancastic principles: the (selective) generalization of
characters, including the casting out of sporadic characters.
Peirce ("Evolutionary Love", CP 6.300):
Lamarckian evolution is thus evolution by the force of habit. -- That
sentence slipped off my pen while one of those neighbors whose function in
the social cosmos seems to be that of an Interrupter was asking me a
question. Of course, it is nonsense. Habit is mere inertia, a resting on
one's oars, not a propulsion. Now it is energetic projaculation (lucky
there is such a word, or this untried hand might have been put to
inventing one) by which in the typical instances of Lamarckian evolution
the new elements of form are first created. Habit, however, forces them to
take practical shapes, compatible with the structures they affect, and, in
the form of heredity and otherwise, gradually replaces the spontaneous
energy that sustains them. Thus, habit plays a double part; it serves to
establish the new features, and also to bring them into harmony with the
general morphology and function of the animals and plants to which they
belong. But if the reader will now kindly give himself the trouble of
turning back a page or two, he will see that this account of Lamarckian
evolution coincides with the general description of the action of love, to
which, I suppose, he yielded his assent.
If the case of the modes of inference is analogous, as Gary R. says, then
one notes that:
On one hand, abductive inference is how one generates new ideas and
truths. The abductive inference works, at a stechiotic level, by an icon,
with, I guess, a purported index, and is purportively _informative_, like
what is now called 'surprisal' or 'self-information', with a conclusion
that will be a _new_ truth if it is true at all - like a mutation, a
hopeful monster etc., to be tested. There seems no other way to generate
new truths; this goes to the general justification of abductive inference
at an elementary level.
Yet - on the other hand - in critique of arguments, an abductive
inference's intrinsic value consists _not_ in its newness (the newer, the
more doubtful) but in its naturalness and facility, its instinctual
_attunement_ to nature. This seems analogous to the role of previous
semiosis that you point out in biological evolution. That attunement is
itself a kind of harmonization, something thirdish, even though abductive
inference is associated with firstness and the newness of ideas. Following
the analogy, the tychastic principle can appear as chance sporting in
natural selection even if, on reflection, one notices it already
conditioned by agapastic mediation rather than totally wild, untrammeled,
the biological version of 'fringy' and beyond.
Best, Ben
On 1/22/2016 9:06 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
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