ONT Re: Dynamics & Semiotics
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Dear Dr. Einstein,
Your formulas relating energy and mass are quite eccentric,
and you appear to be using the terms "energy" and "mass"
in senses that we can find neither in any modern lexicon
nor in the latest 'Handbook of Physics', therefore we are
returning your manuscript for you to reconsider bringing
it up to par with current standards of usage.
Mit herzlichen Grüßen,
The Editors
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HP = Howard Pattee
JA = Jon Awbrey
JA: Howard, we started to have this conversation once before,
but you never answered the first questions that I asked.
In order for me to speak sensibly of signs and meaning,
I have to know what the object, sign, and interpretant
domains are, and how the system under view is supposed
to fit the definition of a sign relation that I use.
HP: I thought I had answered that question. As I explained, I prefer not to use
Peirce's definitions for sign and symbol, and his interpretant sign concept,
although I am still unclear about it. This is because none of my physics
or biology community use his language, there is no advantage to using it
that I have found, and because it does not conform to dictionaries, usages,
or to any etymologies that I have found. I am trying to learn some of the
Peircean vocabulary so that I can make sense of his and his follower's texts,
but I have no reason to imitate him. I'll run very briefly through my usage
again in an oversimplified and un-hedged form.
Actually, I was referring to my question about the "meaning of life",
that is to say, about the objective or goal of a metabolic process.
HP: In the lexicon I am familiar with a sign is more concrete and more active
than a symbol because it derives from a more direct (verb-like, causal,
dynamic, operational) relation to its referent (e.g., smoke is sign of
fire, sign of the cross, the "+" sign, document signing, ASL signing,
signifying, etc.). An individual interpreter might have some clues
about the referent of some signs from experiencing natural events.
In other words, there are many natural signs. A symbol is usually
an artifact and requires a community of interpreters. Symbols
are more passive, noun-like (often residing in a memory) and
are related to their referent by community codes or conventions
so that the interpreter must understand the "language" or
"symbol system" of his community to understand symbols.
Some individual signs can have meaning (in an individual
triad: sign, interpreter, referent). Individual symbols
seldom have meaning or function, but must belong to symbol
systems or languages in a community of interpreters.
Yes, parts of that are similar to what I learned in grammar school,
other pieces of it I can recognize as having entered contemporary
discourse with Morris or Saussure. But hermeneutics or semiotics,
as we now know it, is a very old science, acquiring not a few of
its first formal definitions with Aristotle's "On Interpretation",
entering puberty around the time of Saint Augustine, and already
middle aged by, well, the Middle Ages. And I am sure that you,
of all people, appreciate the fact that the technical concepts
and terminological apparatus of a well-developed science, that
has come of an age beyond its infancy in common sense notions,
must be judged on some grounds other than popular familiarity.
One of the advantages of reading Peirce is that he absorbed
the entire corpus of these historical developments and then
set to work building up the most articulate, detailed, and
technically powerful framework for investigating semiotics
that we have yet to see, bar none, up to the present time.
I have never failed to find it an incredible labor-saver,
in the long run, to make use of the work he already did.
Please do not take this as an insult -- if it were not for the circumstance
that several well-known physicists have admonished the unwashed masses for
engaging in "cargo cult physics" I would not try to exploit their phrase
in hopes of making you understand this point -- but many contemporary
writers who fail to do their homework on this score are treading
dangerously close to "cargo cult semiotics".
HP: The most important point of the above paragraph is not the
choice of the words "sign" and "symbol," but recognizing the
important distinctions they make. A cell can detect a sign in
its environment, but the cell's interpretation depends on its DNA.
In the words of the umpire, "It's not a sign until I detect it".
HP: In my earlier post I said the DNA acts as a symbol because its referent
requires a common code that is executed by a population of interpreters.
What is its referent?
And how do you know?
HP: The proximal interpreter is the entire protein synthesis system (mRNA, tRNA,
the coding synthetases, ribosomes, et al.), and the proximal referents are
the proteins.
I find this very questionable. It looks to me like proteins
are just another class of signlike entities in the sequence.
The way I can tell is that they fit the definition of signs.
HP: However, there are many interpreters. Evolution occurs successfully because there are
stable hierarchical levels of organization (e.g., Simon, "Architecture of Complexity"),
so that the concept of interpreter is open-ended. Every level of a complex organization
might be described as an interpreter of the lower level.
HP: Perhaps here we come closest to Peirce's "interpretant sign" concept, but only
in the sense that it evokes an open-ended series of further interpretant signs.
This is popular misconception. The system of signs can also be "closed but unbounded".
HP: So one might say we start with the lowest ribosome-level
triad (symbol-referent-interpreter) which at higher levels
of organization has other interpreters, the cell, the organ,
the organism, the community, and ultimately the ecosystem, or
Spinoza's God. [I have no idea if Peirce would see it this way,
but unlike many Peirce-followers, agreeing with Peirce is certainly
not my motivation in life.]
Peirce went through the same transformation, regarding interpreters, in his time,
that mathematical systems theory went through, regarding agents, in modern times,
namely, replacing the agent with a "representative point" that moves through the
associated "state space", a space that embodies all of the features and motions
of the systemic agent in question. There are many good reasons for doing this,
as the histories of cybernetics, dynamics, and systems theory record, and the
same sorts of reasons are why Peirce shifts from speaking of interpreters to
talking about interpretant signs. I'm afraid that the old man is still just
a little bit ahead of the current scene on this score. It would hardly be
the first time.
HP: The conceptual and empirical problem we have at these higher levels (both in
cells and brains) is that sign and symbol are no longer discrete, decomposable,
or distinguishable. Often there are no discrete or distinguishable signs, referents,
or even interpreters. We can clearly see that at the genetic level symbols can be
linearly (literally, sequentially stored, read, and executed in a line) related to
protein sequences, but we lose linearity at the very first level of folding. This
is why many complexity theorists and biologist find semiotic description inadequate ...
Mostly, I find their description of semiotics inadequate.
From a pragmatic perspective, you have no objects in the
scheme of things yet, but are only talking about sundry
varieties of signs. An object is "that in relation to
which one sign relates to another". It may be a part
of the flow of signs, but more often stands outside
of the process itself.
HP: ... and instead use (don't convulse) "nonlinear" dynamics to describe these levels
(e.g., Goodwin, Kauffman, Bak, Kugler, Kelso, Yates, et al.). These dynamics are
usually closely associated with macroscopic physical laws.
HP: Because of this problem, much of my writing over the past decades has focused on
how discrete symbols control continuous dynamics and how dynamics control symbols,
which is to inquire: How does physics relate to semiotics?
That all depends.
Jon Awbrey
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