Ah yes Edwina, now I remember… we had this conversation before… perhaps we should quit while we are still friends J
But briefly, should others here be interested in exploring where I’m coming from, my reasoning is along the lines of Norman Doidge’s ideas on neural plasticity, and how experience wires the brain. Experiences are intercepted by bodies, and it is at the interface between body and experience that the brain is wired. There is no genetic blueprint to account for the brain’s functional specializations. The brain is a “bucket of bugs” where neurons/glia are free to assemble themselves in order to accommodate experiences. Much like how a city of people assemble themselves in order to accommodate the city-culture’s experiences. The functional specializations of a city (zones – residential, commercial, industrial, etc) are my metaphor for the functional specializations in the brain (cerebellum, visual cortex, medulla, etc). But all this is outlined in greater detail in my Biosemiotics journal article (Springer). The study of feral children relates directly… feral children are not “brain damaged” – their brains are wired perfectly, following exposure to unique experiences, in order to accommodate those unique experiences. The ideas of Tomasz Szasz (The Myth of Mental Illness) also relate. The principle target of my criticism is the widely accepted genocentric notion, in the mainstream, of “instinct”. Darwinism, especially Neo-Darwinism, has imposed on our cultural narrative this self-consistent “explanation” for behavior grounded in instinct. It is accepted as a given. Their method of analysis relies on confirmation bias to prove it. “Oh cats behave like cats because instinct, dontcha know?” “It’s programmed into the genes, dumbass.” “Dogs bark because instinct, silly.” Genocentrism… it’s just not how life works… not by a long shot. Cheers sj From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] Sent: Wednesday, April 5, 2017 2:18 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; Stephen Jarosek Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatism and Sign as holon as mind-body as tool Stephen, list - I think this is a bit of 'putting the cart before the horse'; I'm not a fan of Sebeok - and to say that because an organism does not have the physiological equipment for speech means that they will not use speech - is hardly a world-shaking analysis. Perhaps I've missed the point. Edwina -- This message is virus free, protected by Primus - Canada's largest alternative telecommunications provider. http://www.primus.ca On Wed 05/04/17 5:00 AM , "Stephen Jarosek" sjaro...@iinet.net.au sent: List, Allow me to take advantage of this lull in postings to elaborate on the relationship between pragmatism and the mind-body unity. The notion of body-as-tool is a very important one because it sheds light on so many things, from sex differences in most species to gender roles in culture, to why cats don’t boogie, to why dogs don’t wear suits. Or, why can’t dogs ever be taught to drive? Because their mind-bodies do not predispose them to caring about all the contexts that must come together to make driving a “thing”. Why can’t cats be taught to use a fork and knife instead of gulping down their cat-food from a bowl? Because their mind-bodies provide no basis upon which they should define table manners as relevant. But can’t you just indoctrinate the most stubborn of critters by repetition, or shouting instructions at them more often and more loudly? No, because you cannot cross pragmatism’s mind-body barrier. If something cannot matter to an entity, then no manner of shouting at it is going to change their minds. To a cat with four paws and no vocal chords with which to voice approval or dissent, a fork and knife will bear no relationship to food, and it never can. Now you might be able to make table-manners matter by the force of will and the threat of punishment, but said “manners” will never matter in the same way that it matters to humans, the meaning is completely different. None of this has anything to do with “intelligence” and everything to do with motivation (firstness?) and bodily predispositions and how an entity defines the things that matter. It’s a fundamentally simple idea that is often expressed along the following lines (variously misattributed to everyone, from Mark Twain to Abraham Maslow): “If Your Only Tool Is a Hammer Then Every Problem Looks Like a Nail” “A man whose only tool is a hammer will perceive the world in terms of nails” “A critter whose only tool is four paws, fur and whiskers will perceive the world in terms of cat-food.” (ahem… that last one was me) Developing upon this theme: A human whose only tool is a woman’s body will perceive the world principally in terms of the cultural known; A human whose only tool is a man’s body will perceive the world principally in terms of the interface between the cultural known and the unknown. (where the cultural known relates to the habits of established authority, traditions, values, etc, and the cultural unknown relates to risk, competition, resource management, etc) Thomas Sebeok was basically on track with his thesis that an ape can never use language to communicate with humans: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/02/us/thomas-sebeok-81-debunker-of-ape-human-speech-theory.html Now whether or not Sebeok’s thesis is 100% accurate, before an ape can be taught to speak, it has to have the MOTIVATION to speak. And that can only come about by somehow addressing the ape’s mind-body predispositions, and the environment with which it interfaces, to draw those predispositions into actuality. Now perhaps I am making leaps in reasoning that need to be laid out. The notion of Self as Sign, for example, might be better understood if we factored in the DNA entanglement that unifies all the cells constituting a mind-body (holon), into a single unity. Without at least an outline alluding to the physics of this unity (the binding problem), our way forward will remain ambiguous. Either way, my position is that the notion of body as tool is fundamental to understanding pragmatism (and consciousness). And this is not inconsistent with the notion of mind-body, or holon, as Sign. A more detailed explanation of my line of reasoning can be found in the Biosemiotics journal (Springer), or at: https://www.academia.edu/3236559/Pragmatism_Neural_Plasticity_and_Mind-Body_Unity My paper on DNA entanglement is scheduled to be published in a couple of months time in another journal – an outline of the original relevant concepts exists: https://www.academia.edu/29626663/DNA_ENTANGLEMENT_THE_EVIDENCE_MOUNTS sj
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