Dear Eugene, thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I am not sure about your classification of Simmel as a neokantian. But when using the a priori as distinction criterion then Simmel is as much neokantian as Ernst Cassirer. I believe both of them go beyond it.
I have never been into biosemiotics. In the "two cultures" discussion (naming it sloppy) i have seen only two paths until now: one is culturalizing natural sciences and the other naturalizing social sciences. Are there pragmatist approaches taking both directions at the same time? I am not hungry for abstract pansemiotism, but would be really interested in studies that look at concrete examples?
Where can i find Simmels discussion of pragmatism? It is interesting how bad pragmatism was received in Germany at the time. Even Schelers discussion of pragmatism isn't positive. The first appreciating reception i know of - besides Jerusalem - is Marcuses "Amerikanisches Philosophieren" - published at a time when the "continental turn" was already at work in the US.
I really appreciate your comment and would be thankful for any further hints.
Best, Stefan fyi: from Simmels "Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie":"Es giebt offenbar sehr viele Stufen des Apriori und sehr verschiedenartige Mischungen der hinzubegrachten Form mit dem vorgefundenen Inhalt."
" Auch hier gilt die tiefe Beobachtung von Aristoteles, daß dasjenige, was in der rationalen Ordung der Dinge das erste ist - die Erkenntnisfunktion des Geistes - für unsere Beachtung und Beobachtung das letzte ist. Wieweit sich diese unbewusste Herrschaft der der Verbinungsformen über das Thatsachenmaterial ausdehnt, das hat Kant wegen seiner scharfen Trennung des Apiori von allem Empirischen nicht in vollem Umfange erkannt. Indem wir heute die Erfahrung sich viel höher hinaus erstrecken lassen, als er es that, erstreckt sich uns das Apriori viel tiefer hinunter."
Am 27.11.16 um 18:25 schrieb Eugene Halton:
Dear Stefan, Interesting. One rarely ever hears of a student of Simmel.Despite widespread appeal as a lecturer in Berlin, Simmel was denied a regular professorship for decades because of anti-semitism. He was Privatdozent at Berlin from 1885 to 1901, then Ausserordentlicher Professor until 1914 when he finally (good news) got a professorship at the University of Strassbourg, (bad news) on the eve of the first world war. He died in 1918, and turned to Lebensphilosophie in his last work. In his essay, "The Conflict of Modern Culture," he applied the Kantian distinction between form and content as that of form and life, arguing that history can be seen as a dialectic of new forms encapsulating formless life. He saw in the emergence of twentieth-century culture a seemingly unviable paradox that the emerging form was life itself; that is, that formless life would be the new form for culture in the 20th century. Artistic expressionism was one of his interesting examples. But Simmel also saw pragmatism as an example, criticizing it for elevating life over objective truth: "The repudiation of the principle of form culminates not only in pragmatism, but also in all those thinkers imbued with a modern sense of life who reject the coherent systems in which an earlier age, dominated by the classical notion of form, saw its entire philosophical salvation." Though not naming him, Simmel seems to have in mind William James as the basis for his characterization of pragmatism. Clearly Peirce's pragmatism does not fit that characterization. And pragmatism more broadly as a philosophical movement, including Dewey and George Herbert Mead, allows both sociality and biosemiosis to nature in ways that undercut the rigid confines of Simmel's neo-Kantian dichotomizing of nature and culture, life and form.Gene HaltonOn Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 4:33 PM, sb <peirc...@semiotikon.de <mailto:peirc...@semiotikon.de>> wrote:John, Kirsti, List, for those interested in the philosophy of stories and able to read german i recommend: * Wilhelm Schapp (2012) In Geschichten verstrickt. Zu Sein von Mensch und Ding. 5. ed. Klostermann. * Wilhelm Schapp (1981) Philosophie der Geschichten. 2. ed. Klostermann. His academic teachers were Rickert, Simmel and Dilthey. He got his PhD in 1910 in Göttingen from Husserl. His Doktorarbeit "Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung" is one of the classic texts of german phenomenology. He didn't pursue a career as an academic and worked his life long as a lawyer. His phenomenology of stories is strongly influenced by his work as a lawyer. Schapps style is lucent and clear. He is fun to read and the absolute opposite of Husserls dry turkey books. Best, Stefan P.S: http://www.wilhelm-schapp-forschung.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/ <http://www.wilhelm-schapp-forschung.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/> Am 10.11.16 um 14:51 schrieb kirst...@saunalahti.fi <mailto:kirst...@saunalahti.fi>:John, list, Most important points you take up, John. Time-sequences between stories do not apply. - The big-bang is just a story,one on many just as possible stories. Time-scales are just as crucial with the between - issue as are storywise arising issues. There are no easy ways out ot the time-scale issues. Best, Kirsti John F Sowa kirjoitti 9.11.2016 21:25:Edwina, Kirsti, list, ETI wish we could get into the analysis of time in more detail.I came across a short passage by Gregory Bateson that clarifies the issues. See the attached Bateson79.jpg, which is an excerpt from p. 2 of a book on biosemiotics (see below). Following is the critical point: GBthinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds whether ours or those of redwood forests and sea anemones... A story is a little knot or complex of that species of connectedness which we call relevance.This observation is compatible with Peirce, but CSP used the term 'quasi-mind' to accommodate the species-bias of most humans: CP 4.551Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi- interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic.Re time: We have to distinguish (1) time as it is in reality (whatever that may be); (2) time in our stories (which include the formalized stories called physics); (3) the mental sequence of thought; and (4) the logical sequence (dialogic) of connected signs. ETThe question is: Are the Platonic worlds BEFORE or AFTER the so-called Big Bang? I read them as AFTER while Gary R and Jon S [not John S] read them as BEFORE. In my reading, before the Big Bang, there was Nothing, not even Platonic worlds.This question is about time sequences in different kinds of stories: the Big Bang story about what reality may be; and Platonic stories about ideal, mathematical forms. The time sequence of a mathematical story is independent of the time sequence of a physical story. We may apply the math (for example, the definitions, axioms, and proofs of a Platonic form) to the construction of a physical story. But that application is a mapping between two stories. The term 'prior to' is meaningful only *within* a story, not between stories. In short, our "commonsense" notion of time is an abstraction from the stories we tell about our experience. The time sequences in two different stories may have some similarities, but we must distinguish three distinct sequences: the time sequences of each story, and the time sequence of the mapping, which is a kind of meta-story. JFSDoes anyone know if [Peirce] had written anything about embedding our universe in a hypothetical space of higher dimension?KMI am most interested in knowing more on this.David Finkelstein, p. 277 of the reference below:Peirce seems to have included geometry in his evolutionism, at least in principle... [He] seems not to have responded to the continuously- evolving physical geometry of Riemann and Clifford... nor to Einstein's conceptual unification of space and time.In any case, I think that the notion of time as an abstraction from stories -- imaginary, factual, or theoretical -- provides a way of relating different views. It also allows for metalevel reasoning that can distinguish and relate different kinds of stories that have independent time scales and sequences. John ____________________________________________________________________ From Google books: _A Legacy for Living Systems: Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics_ edited by Jesper Hoffmeyer, Springer, 2008: https://books.google.com/books?id=dcHqVpZ97pUC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=Order+is+simply+thought+embodied+in+arrangement&source=bl&ots=DQUnZlvOYu&sig=X8bH0YAG597uwjyedB4dSf2BuC0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizyZD88JrQAhVENxQKHeEeBwoQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=Order%20is%20simply%20thought%20embodied%20in%20arrangement&f=false <https://books.google.com/books?id=dcHqVpZ97pUC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=Order+is+simply+thought+embodied+in+arrangement&source=bl&ots=DQUnZlvOYu&sig=X8bH0YAG597uwjyedB4dSf2BuC0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizyZD88JrQAhVENxQKHeEeBwoQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=Order%20is%20simply%20thought%20embodied%20in%20arrangement&f=false> David R. Finkelstein, _Quantum Relativity: A Synthesis of the Ideas of Heisenberg and Einstein_, Springer, 1996. https://books.google.com/books?id=OvjsCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA277&lpg=PA277&dq=peirce+relativity&source=bl&ots=0rc7kjxqIJ&sig=Hsgtu9_LwZAoDxH7kbVgvWmAfiI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihk4SzpZzQAhWF3YMKHR1kA5wQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=peirce%20relativity&f=false <https://books.google.com/books?id=OvjsCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA277&lpg=PA277&dq=peirce+relativity&source=bl&ots=0rc7kjxqIJ&sig=Hsgtu9_LwZAoDxH7kbVgvWmAfiI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihk4SzpZzQAhWF3YMKHR1kA5wQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=peirce%20relativity&f=false>----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu <mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu <mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. 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