Gary,
I've been wondering myself how to approach Deacon's book on this list and was
hoping you would have the answers. :-) All i can suggest is a post or two
that would explain why the book would be worth reading -- perhaps introducing
some of Deacon's most crucial innovations, such as the concepts of orthograde
and contragrade change -- and then proceed directly to the explicitly semiotic
aspects of the book. Certainly we can't do some kind of slow read that would
cover his whole account of emergence, so i would suggest that we cut directly
to the semiotic chase and then deal with questions as they arise, rather than
build the whole theory from the ground up as the book does. I think Deacon's
theory fits into a line of thinking that will be familiar to some members of
the list -- people like John Collier -- but fills in some of the gaps in
earlier versions of the story. Those to whom it's all new will just have to
read the book in order to follow what we're saying about it, if they're
interested.
For now, just one comment on this:
GR: [[ There are places in Peirce (for example, near the conclusion of the 1898
Cambridge Lectures (the so-called "cosmological lectures") where he argues (the
'blackboard' analogy) that there is a vague general character (the blackboard)
out of which the three categories emerge. This is 'top-down' thinking in
Deacon's and Fernandez's terms (and 'top-down' causality too==from the whole to
the parts; categorially, from thirdness to firstness). So, "the world of
possibilities" within that vague generality, so to speak. ]]
If everything emerges out of this vagueness, then it would be the “top” in some
schemas — like the Ein Sof in Kabbalah, the supernal out of which everything
emanates — but i think “top-down” in Deacon, as in the neuroscience of circular
causality, is just the opposite, where the primal is the bottom or ground,
while the top is the highest emergent level. Top-down causation, like
Aristotelian formal cause, consists in the constraints imposed by an emergent
system on the processes it has emerged from (and still depends on for its
existence). For instance, the self-organization of the brain emerges from the
constant chaotic “firing” of individual neurons, yet it organizes itself by
imposing constraints on them, and it's the latter part of this circle that is
“top-down”. This is indeed “from the whole to the parts” but not in the sense
where the “whole” is the world of possibilities and actualities are parts.
More later when i've clarified (for myself) the connection between Thirdness
and reciprocality.
Gary F.
} No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise. [the Mock Turtle] {
www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce
-----Original Message-----
Sent: January-10-12 1:52 PM
Gary, List,
Gary F. wrote: It's just occurred to me that there's another reciprocal pair of
semiotic principles [. . . ]: (1) All thought is in signs (EP1:24), and (2) All
signs are in thought [. . .]. Of course "one must not take a nominalistic view
of Thought as if it were something that a man had in his consciousness. ... It
is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us” (CP 8.256; see also EP2:269,
etc.) -- and the same goes for this usage of "mental". Biosemiotics would seem
to be rooted in the principle that all living beings are "in thought" in this
Peircean sense.
GR: This immediately brought to my mind the passage from 'Prolegomena to an
Apology for Pragmaticism' where the concepts of quasi-mind, quasi-utterer, and
quasi-interpretant are introduced, the beginning of it speaking directly to the
matter as biosemiotics views it. Peirce
writes:
"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of
bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no
more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of
objects are really there [, , , ] Not only is thought in the organic world, but
it develops there. But as there cannot be a General without Instances embodying
it, so there cannot be thought without Signs. We must here give "Sign" a very
wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide a sense to come within our definition.
Admitting 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 (from
Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism', CP 4.551,
1906)
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/quasiinterpreter.html
You continued:
GF: [. . . ]some of the implications of this thought/sign reciprocity have yet
to be fully explored (if they can ever be fully explored!) ...
indeed they are related to the subject of Intelligence Augmentation which the
still current slow read is dealing with.
GR: I'm not exactly sure what you have in mind here, Gary, but I hope, perhaps
when Peter continues the IA slow-read, that you'll explicate your thinking
here. You immediately continued:
GF: They are also related to Terrence Deacon's observation in _Incomplete
Nature_ that recursive or reciprocal processes are essential to teleodynamics
and thus to life and sentience. I'm wondering now whether a reciprocal relation
between *different* recursive loops is essential to Thirdness itself. Perhaps
we can take this up along with Deacon's book.
GR: For those not familiar with Deacon's book, here is the definition of
'teleodynamics as it appears in his Glossary.
Teleodynamics: A form of dynamical organization exhibiting end-directedness and
consequence-organized features that is constituted by the co-creation,
complementary constraint, and reciprocal synergy of two or more strongly
coupled morphodynamic processes (Incomplete Nature,
552)
GR: Here 'morphodynamic' refers to dynamical organizing tending spontaneously
to more and more organization over time. My first thoughts on your comment
above is that (1) I think it is indeed likely that "recursive or reciprocal
processes are essential to teleodynamics and thus to life and sentience," while
(2) I'm must less likely to imagine that "a reciprocal relation between
*different* recursive loops is essential to Thirdness itself." But, again,
these are just first reactions.
The second, re: "essential to Thirdness," may be the consequence of my
discussing a related matter with a scholarly friend not in the Peirce forum,
but who is now reading Deacon's book. My correspondent wrote of "
'the world of possibilitchance that must be accounted for as originating."
My comment in response to this was:
GR: "There are places in Peirce (for example, near the conclusion of the
1898 Cambridge Lectures (the so-called "cosmological lectures") where he argues
(the 'blackboard' analogy) that there is a vague general character (the
blackboard) out of which the three categories emerge.
This is 'top-down' thinking in Deacon's and Fernandez's terms (and 'top-down'
causality too==from the whole to the parts; categorially, from thirdness to
firstness). So, "the world of possibilities" within that vague generality, so
to speak."
My tendency has been to see that 'vague generality' (the Tohu Bohu, or, in
Egyptian mythology, the dark Nun out of which arise all the principles and
powers of nature, the neteru) as primal. How would firstness--not to mention
mere chains of secondness--ever bring about thirdness if it weren't there from
the outset? But perhaps this pre-scientific isn't exactly to your (and
Deacon's) point, so I'll have to reflect further on it.
In any event, I'm wondering how to go about commencing a discussion of
*Incomplete Nature* in the forum. I certainly wouldn't expect many on the list
to have a copy (although there are two members whom I know do since I sent it
to them as a holiday gift), or to buy it (although for its length--602 pages
including the Glossary, Notes, and Index--it's quite reasonably priced, the
e-version going for $16, the hard-copy version for under $20--it retails for
$29). But the length itself presents another problem (I've been encouraging
folk to start with the Peircean 6th chapter, "Constraint," but the entire work
is breakthrough in my opinion). I know that Eliseo Fernadez's Kansas City based
Peirce discussion group is now reading portions of Incomplete Nature, and I'll
contact him and Deacon perhaps later this week for any thoughts they might have
on taking up a discussion of the book online. Meanwhile, I'd be interested if
you and anyone on the list have any suggestions as to how to proceed in
consideration of a list discussion of Incomplete Nature. I'm hoping that Deacon
will at least allow us to post some excerpts from the book, but of course
copyright considerations might severely limit the length of those excerpts.
Best,
Gary
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