Thanks Ben, glad to see that you get it. While the concepts are not all that difficult, one needs to step outside of their existing assumptions and make an effort to review the totality of what is being said. That’s why I write such articles as the one referenced. By contrast, someone nitpicking over a couple of sentences will only take what is being said out of context, and they’ll miss the point entirely. It’s also why I wrote my book. Providing explanations, individually, are a waste of time because, at the very least, people need the initiative to develop their own narratives around the core principles.
Basically, what I am doing in this forum is rephrasing what many people here already know, but placing it in a more practical and specific context that can, to some extent, be experimentally verified. I’m trying to make 2-dimensional flat theory 3-dimensional and “real”. But ultimately we still come up against a quite intractable problem, and it is this… In order to understand the relationship between meaning, choices and experience, people need to experience experience. What I mean… they need to live out their theories and test them, and experience the effect that different choices and experiences have on their changing perspectives. There is no other way. Why? Because we need to formulate our own internal narratives and explanations that are far too involved to “explain” to fellow academics. The only thing that one CAN do is outline the basic principles, along the lines of established Peircean theory, but the real LIVING of them is a personal responsibility. It is only by LIVING the theory that you can grasp the truth of the theory. Become whistleblower, stand up for what you believe in, or if that’s too hard, travel, relocate… and then see how your world view changes… that kind of thing… trying to “explain” what is going on inside your head will just bore other mortals to death, and that’s why the best that can ever be explained is basic principles (eg, Peirce… or even, Buddhism or Christianity). sj From: Ben Novak [mailto:trevriz...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, April 6, 2017 10:40 PM To: Thomas903 Cc: Stephen Jarosek; PEIRCE-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatism and Sign as holon as mind-body as tool Dear Stephen: I read your piece on Neural Plasticity, at https://www.academia.edu/3236559/Pragmatism_Neural_Plasticity_and_Mind-Body_Unity and it makes a lot of sense to me. I suspect Tom's questions will dissolve upon reading it, too. Ben N. Ben Novak 5129 Taylor Drive, Ave Maria, FL 34142 Telephone: (814) 808-5702 "All art is mortal, not merely the individual artifacts, but the arts themselves. One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be—though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes may remain—because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone." Oswald Spengler On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Thomas903 <ozzie...@gmail.com> wrote: Stephen J., List ~ A - "The notion of body-as-tool is a very important one because it sheds light on so many things." B- “If Your Only Tool Is a Hammer Then Every Problem Looks Like a Nail” If my body is a tool (hands, feet, eyes, etc.), then how can my ONLY tool be a hammer or any other external object? After saying (A) the body is a tool, then statement (B) is wrong on its face. Statement (B) suggests that people are limited-function robots. If my only (external) tool is a hammer and I wish to attach two boards together, I can walk to my neighbor's house (feet and legs) and ask him (voice) to glue or screw them together, or use various wood-wood bonds such as mortise-and-tenon. Why must I stay at home and insist on using my only tool to bond the boards with nails? If my house is on fire, I could use my body (hands, arms, feet, etc.) as tools to fight the fire, or a hose as a tool to convey water to the site, or social arrangements such as a telephone call to the fire department. There's more: "An ape can never use language to communicate with humans." Humans and apes have already communicated. If a man or woman learns the sounds made by an ape under various circumstances, then the ape can communicate with a human using its own language. The ape doesn't need to do anything unusual. Dolphins can communicate via sound/language with humans. Some birds use the language of birds of another species to trick them. Babies and pets use non-language sounds to communicate with adult humans. "Why can’t cats be taught to use a fork and knife"? I have never heard of a cat using silverware to eat, but I have seen a crow use a chop stick to pick up its food. (One stick, not two.) Monkeys sometimes use sticks, too, to pick up food (esp. ants). But even if cats were disposed to use silverware, how would you know? The silverware have to be scaled for the size and shape of the cat's paws, and shaped appropriately for the food the cat is eating. A human wouldn't use silverware if each utensil were 20' long and weighed 200 lbs, and people don't use a fork to eat soup or potato chips. I don't really need a response to any of these questions, because they were only posed to reveal the sloppy thinking, logical gaps and inconsistencies in your posting. At the very least, individual statements (definitions, axioms, predictions) should be able to stand up to scrutiny, before asserting those statements can all be combined into a coherent theory. Regards, Tom Wyrick On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 4:00 AM, Stephen Jarosek <sjaro...@iinet.net.au> wrote: 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 ----------------------------- 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 . 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