>”And I'd also agree that imitation is vital, but I'd define such an action >more through the development of common GENERAL habits-of-form and behaviour >than pure active imitation or direct copying.”
I am 100% with you on this. I just did a synonym search on imitation, without luck. I think we need to invent a new word to more accurately describe this replication and sharing of signs/behavior. From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] Sent: Saturday, April 1, 2017 2:30 PM To: tabor...@primus.ca; 'Jon Alan Schmidt'; 'Jeffrey Brian Downard'; Stephen Jarosek Cc: 'Peirce-L' Subject: Re: RE: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term) Stephen - interesting outline. I'd use the term 'Sign' [capital S] to mean, I think, what you mean by a 'holon'. And I agree with your notion of non-local 'entanglement' which I would refer to as 'informational networking'. It is also non-local. And I'd also agree that imitation is vital, but I'd define such an action more through the development of common GENERAL habits-of-form and behaviour than pure active imitation or direct copying. Edwina -- This message is virus free, protected by Primus - Canada's largest alternative telecommunications provider. http://www.primus.ca On Sat 01/04/17 3:48 AM , "Stephen Jarosek" sjaro...@iinet.net.au sent: List, Regarding the Peircean categories in matter, here are the starting assumptions that I work with: 1) First, a couple of definitions: A HOLON is a mind-body. Every living organism, as a mind-body, is a holon. Furthermore, IMITATION is an important category of pragmatism. Every organism “learns how to be” through imitation; 2) The Peircean categories relate to holons. Pragmatism requires a mind-body in order to define the things that matter; 3) An atom or a molecule is a holon; 4) In the video Inner Life of the Cell <https://youtu.be/FzcTgrxMzZk> , what I observe is less chemical reactions (in the conventional, linear, materialist sense) than it is a whole ecosystem at the molecular level. In the persistence of atoms and molecules across time, we encounter Peirce’s description of matter as “mind hide-bound in habit,” so we have no argument there. But what about pragmatism, or the other categories? From a semiotic/pragmatic perspective, how does an atom or molecule define the things that matter? This is where entanglement (nonlocality) enters the picture. My conjecture is that atoms and molecules “know” their proper conduct, or properties, through entanglement. Entanglement is their imitation. A molecular “mind-body” has its predispositions (secondness, or association) and motivations (firstness), and it will act on them as per the video clip… but it can only “know how to be” through entanglement. Knowing how to be, I guess, relates in the first instance to firstness. It is along these lines that I base my DNA entanglement thesis: https://www.academia.edu/29626663/DNA_ENTANGLEMENT_THE_EVIDENCE_MOUNTS Imitation plays such an important role in pragmatism and defining the things that matter. Even for atoms and molecules. Imitation is perhaps the most important antidote to entropy… no let me rephrase that… imitation is perhaps central to overcoming entropy. A species sharing identical mind-bodies with identical predispositions is one thing, but there are so many possibilities in those predispositions that a shared consensus in behavior… imitation… is required to enable an ecosystem to hang together. We see this especially in human cultures… same mind-bodies, but totally different cultures. Imitation whittles down infinite possibility to pragmatic, tangible reality. sj From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca <javascript:top.opencompose('tabor...@primus.ca','','','')> ] Sent: Friday, March 31, 2017 11:33 PM To: Jon Alan Schmidt; tabor...@primus.ca <javascript:top.opencompose('tabor...@primus.ca','','','')> ; Jeffrey Brian Downard Cc: Peirce-L Subject: Re: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term) Jeff, list: I agree; I have written about how the relations - as I call them, the Six Relations of: Firstness -as- Firstness, i.e., genuine Firstness Secondness -as- Secondness; i.e., genuine Secondness Thirdness-as-Thirdness, i.e., genuine Thirdness Secondness-as-Firstness, i.e., degenerate Secondness, or Secondness operating within a mode also of Firstness Thirdness-as Firstness, i.e., degenerate Thirdness Thirdness-as- Secondness I've written about how these Six Relations - and I agree that ALL of them are vital - operate to enable particular matter, diversity of matter, stability of type etc. I could send you, off list, a paper on this. I don't see posting it on this list. I would question, however, whether dyadic 'things' were primary, as you seem to suggest, and only later evolved to include the triad. I think the triad is primal. Edwina -- This message is virus free, protected by Primus - Canada's largest alternative telecommunications provider. http://www.primus.ca On Fri 31/03/17 4:18 PM , Jeffrey Brian Downard jeffrey.down...@nau.edu <javascript:top.opencompose('jeffrey.down...@nau.edu','','','')> sent: Edwina, Jon S, List, With the aim of sharpening the point, Peirce seems to suggest that, for the sake of explaining the cosmos, it is important to ask how degenerate forms of these relations might have grown into more genuine forms of the relations. As such, the question is not simply one of how, as you seem to be putting it, simple firsts, second and thirds started to grow together--or of how one simple element might have preceded the other in some sense. Rather, using the more sophisticated classification of types of seconds and thirds that Peirce provides in a number of places, the question I'm asking is how things having the character of essential or inherential dyads might have evolved into relational dyads of diversity, or of how qualitative relational dyads might have evolved into dynamical dyads--and how more genuine types of triads might have evolved from those that were relatively vague. This, I think, is a better way of framing the questions coming out of his work in phenomenology and semiotics. From this work, we are supposed to derive the resources needed to frame better hypotheses in metaphysics and, in turn, in the special sciences. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 _____ From: Edwina Taborsky Sent: Friday, March 31, 2017 12:57 PM To: Jon Alan Schmidt; Jeffrey Brian Downard Cc: Peirce-L Subject: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term) Jeff, list - I'll continue to reject that Thirdness preceded 1stness and 2ndness. I think that ALL THREE are primordial BUT - the 'big bang' action, so to speak, began with Firstness, followed by the particularity of Secondness, followed by the habit-taking of Thirdness. But by this, I do NOT say that Firstness was primordial. Just that the first expression of the Three Primordial Modes...was Firstness. Agree, that most certainly, the development of Mind-into-Matter was not by mechanical bits sticking together, but by the indeterminate becoming determinate. BUT - I'd add that one must never ignore the power of dissipation and Firstness, which rejects pure determinates and constantly includes deviations from the norm - and - dissipation of the normative habits. Edwina -- This message is virus free, protected by Primus - Canada's largest alternative telecommunications provider. http://www.primus.ca On Fri 31/03/17 2:23 PM , Jeffrey Brian Downard jeffrey.down...@nau.edu <javascript:top.opencompose('jeffrey.down...@nau.edu','','','')> sent: Hi Jon S., List, You say: If the tendency to take habits was truly "original," then it seems to me that 3ns must have preceded 1ns and 2ns in some sense. This is consistent with Peirce's remarks about "super-order" in the first additament to the article (CP 6.490; 1908), as well as the blackboard diagram in the final RLT lecture (1898); hence the notion of primordial 3ns or "ur-continuity" that we have discussed on the List in the past. For my part, it tend to think that Peirce has a remarkably rich set of resources to draw from for the sake of working out how the various formal and material elements--studied in both phenomenology and semiotics--might be combined in the conceptions he is employing in formulating these hypotheses concerning the origins of order in the cosmos. So, for instance, one might think of triadic relations that embody vague sorts of order for the third part of a genuine triad, and dyadic individuals that are just possibles--like essential and inherential dyads and triads as the "subjects" that are governed by such primordial forms of what is general. (see "On The Logic of Mathematics; an attempt....") Remember, the primary movement in the explanatory process is that of showing how, through processes of diversification and specification, something that has its origins in a homogeneous sort of vague-uralt potentiality might evolve. It is not primarily by a process of adding little elemental atomic bits together that things grow, but by a process of the indeterminate becoming determinate that the cosmos evolves. Hope that helps. Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 _____ From: Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: Friday, March 31, 2017 10:16 AM To: Jeffrey Brian Downard Cc: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term) Jeff, List: What I find interesting about that quote from "A Guess at the Riddle" (1887-8) is the often-overlooked implication that "the principle of habit" (3ns) already had to be in place and operative in order to bring about the "second flash," which "was in some sense after the first, because resulting from it." Peirce only belatedly recognized this himself; in one of the early manuscript drafts of "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908), he referred to the notion that the habit-taking tendency brought about the laws of nature as "my original hypothesis," and then made this comment about it. CSP: But during the long years which have elapsed since the hypothesis first suggested itself to me, it may naturally be supposed that faulty features of the original hypothesis have been brought [to] my attention by others and have struck me in my own meditations … Professor Ogden Rood pointed out that there must have been some original tendency to take habits which did not arise according to my hypothesis … (R 842) If the tendency to take habits was truly "original," then it seems to me that 3ns must have preceded 1ns and 2ns in some sense. This is consistent with Peirce's remarks about "super-order" in the first additament to the article (CP 6.490; 1908), as well as the blackboard diagram in the final RLT lecture (1898); hence the notion of primordial 3ns or "ur-continuity" that we have discussed on the List in the past. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard < jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> wrote: Edwina, Clark, Jon S, List, Let's make a comparison for the sake of framing a question in the special science of cosmological physics. Does Peirce's explanatory principle help to address the kinds of questions that Ilya Prigogine is trying to answer about the irreversibility of thermodynamical systems? Once again, here is the quote in which Peirce describes the principle: “out of the womb of indeterminacy, we must say that there would have come something, by the principle of Firstness, which we may call a flash. Then by the principle of habit there would have been a second flash…..” (CP, 1.412) See: Prigogine, Ilya (1961). Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes (Second ed.). New York: Interscience. If Peirce is addressing the same sort of question, then are the Prigogine and Peirce explaining the irreversibility of such thermodynamical processes in the same general way? Or, is Peirce trying to answer a set of prior questions. For instance, one might infer from the quote above taken together with Peirce says in the last of the lectures in Reasoning and the Logic of Things (including the suggestive draft versions) that Peirce is interested in more general questions about what makes any sort of process ordered so that it is irreversible--including, for example, the "unfolding" of the dimensions of quality as well as those of space and the order of time. Prigogine's general strategy is to provide an account of what makes some complex systems chaotic. Then, he tries to explain how some chaotic systems can evolve in a manner that is self-organizing. The explanation draws on the conception of a dissipative structure. As such, a comparison between the two might help us better understand how to frame competing hypotheses concerning the evolution of order in such systems--including forms of order that are irreversible in one way or another. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 <tel:(928)%20523-8354>
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