To save Jay (and maybo others) some time:
Jay has already responded, 3 years ago, in fact, at
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2004_12.dir/0079.html
this post includes links to other relevant papers by Jay.
I see that what I pasted in below somehow dropped the line on
"corrigibility" which wa a point in the earlier discussion.
Where you see
> representamen, i.e., as something signifying the energy available from
the
> light to be absorbed later, after stems and leaves have moved. This to
light
> can be corrected, modified, or lost as the species "learns" from its
It should be
after stems and leaves have moved. This triadicity can be seen in the
corrigibility of the process, by which the response to light can be
corrected, modified, or lost as the species "learns" from its "experience"
in responding to the source of non-present (future) energy through the
mediation of the present light.
(also I see a dropped "is" and 3 dropped "a"s, sorry about that.)
On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Tony Whitson wrote:
> Jay,
>
> I certainly agree on the differentiations you are making, and on their
> importance.
>
> So I'm not actually disagreeing at all with the point you're making. I'm only
> being protective of an idea of "semiotic" that doesn't turn on that
> particular difference.
>
> When Peirce says the universe is perfused with signs, and discusses the
> semiotic character of the natural world prior to the advent of humans, he is
> obviously using a broader and more general idea of what is semiotic.
>> From this vantage point, the dance of the bumblebee is not infra-semiotic,
> although this semiosis proceeds with a much inferior degree of thirdness.
>
> Jay, would you believe I actually had you in mind when I illustrated this
> point with the example of phototropism in sunflowers in a footnote in my
> paper for our 1992 symposium on Situated Cognition? Three paragraphs from the
> paper's footnote are pasted in below (pp. 103-4 in the book). The point
> illustrated here is Peirce's use of "scientific intelligence" -- meaning "any
> intelligence capable of learning by experience"-- as criterially indicative
> of semiosic triadicity. I wanted to illustrate the broad generality of this
> "scientific intelligence" as occuring even in plants. In this sense, the
> genetically established phototropism of sunflowers is not "infra-semiotic."
> Again, this is not a disagreement with the point that you are making, just a
> different point about what makes something semiotic, or not (so it's really
> more about concptions of semiosis).
>
> Here's from the footnote (I'm sure 15 years later there are things I'd say
> differently now):
>
> Peirce's usage here would include the evolution of a species' semiosic
> capabilities (e.g., the instinctive responses of some species to the shapes,
> colors, or other signs of their predators-responses which [in the species, if
> not in the individual] can be adapted for responding more successfully to
> deal with such things as camouflage by predators, and mimicry by other
> species) as a kind of learning from experience; and the system capable of
> such learning could be regarded as a "scientific" intelligence, in that
> sense. For Peirce, even a plant species was exhibiting a rudimentary
> intelligence in the evolution of its heliotropic response to sunlight. Note
> that the plant's leaves are not dynamically caused to move by any mechanical
> force from the sunlight; instead, the plant has its own mechanism for
> triadically responding to the sunlight as a sign of the energy to be absorbed
> by its leaves. A single specific instance of such movement could be described
> as a series of dyadic (cause and effect) events. But that description does
> not account for the existence of the phenomenon, which is actually (although
> somewhat "degenerately"-see this footnote, below) triadic. Since the culture
> of positivistic analysis trains us to think that we have not understood
> something "scientifically" until we understand it exclusively in terms of
> dyadic causation, it is not surprising if the description of the plant's
> movement as an interpretant, or as an event in which the plant responds to
> the sunlight as a sign (or, more precisely, as a representamen) of nutrient
> energy, strikes us as unwarranted and unscientific pre- (or post-) modern
> anthropomorphizing mysticism.
>
> However, the scientific justification for Peirce's view is demonstrated
> easily enough (and we should remember that Peirce made his career as a
> practicing laboratory scientist, as well as a philosopher of logic and
> mathematics), in the familiar principles from which a biologist could
> hypothesize that a plant species would adaptively come to discriminate in
> responding to different kinds of light (based on color or other qualities,
> for example) signifying differences in the energy available for
> photosynthesis. The process does comprise a complex of mechanical (dyadically
> caused) events; but the process itself occurs, and the outcome of the complex
> of mechanical events is determined, on the basis of a triadic relation in
> which the leaves respond to light not as a simple cause or stimulus, and not
> for the energy which that light made available for photosynthesis, but as a
> representamen, i.e., as something signifying the energy available from the
> light to be absorbed later, after stems and leaves have moved. This to light
> can be corrected, modified, or lost as the species "learns" from its
> "experience" in responding to the source of non-present (future) energy
> through the mediation of the present light.
>
> In the present light of this discussion, we can consider how the "scientific
> intelligence" of the botanists differs from that of the plants. The
> measurements, designs, constructs, models, and calculations developed and
> produced by the scientists would be included among the kinds of things that
> Clancey and Roschelle (1991) define as "representations" (see above, pp.
> 4-5). The botanists themselves are at least partially aware that they are
> interested in these things as representations of things other than the signs
> themselves, so the scientists (unlike the plants) are capable of deliberately
> and consciously changing their representational and interpretive practices to
> better serve their interests (including scientific, as well as budgetary,
> career, ideological, or other interests). Peirce would account for this as an
> example of how triadicity is more fully realized in the semiosic activity of
> the botanists than in that of the plants. false hypothesis or
> less-than-satisfactory model or instrument can be corrected or improved
> through critical symbolic reflection, and does not depend on such a crude
> corrective mechanism as "survival of the fittest." Although the plant species
> might also exhibit rudimentary triadic intelligence, its triadicity
> relatively "degenerate" (i.e., in a sense analogous to that in which Peirce,
> as mathematician, would recognize a circle as a degenerate ellipse, and a
> square as a degenerate tetrahedron. Peirce did explore various kinds and
> degrees "degeneracy" in the triadicity of signs, but the implications of this
> line of inquiry need not be explored here.).
>
> On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Jay Lemke wrote:
>
>>
>> Tony,
>>
>> I don't disagree with this general view about meaning. But I still think
>> that operations do not normally function as elements of semiosis, except
>> indirectly by potentiating the actions that they constitute. Or at least
>> they do so in ways very different from how actions participate in
>> semiosis. We don't use operation-level behaviors normally as objects,
>> representamina, or interpretants ... though of course they do have a
>> material role in the overall practices in which we do so for actions.
>>
>> Think of the articulations of the lips, tongue, palate, vocal chords, etc.
>> in the process of uttering a word.
>>
>> JAY.
>>
>> At 12:39 PM 10/25/2007, you wrote:
>>> Another way of putting this:
>>> Meaning is not what signs convey;
>>> Meaning is what signs do.
>>> What signs do is that they mean, and what it is for signs to mean is
>>> that they signify through unending cascades of interpretants potentiated
>>> by the triadic relations constituting them as signs.
>>>
>>> On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Tony Whitson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jay,
>>>> I would just want to briefly take issue with the idea of "semiotic"
>>>> that is presupposed in your gloss on "infra-semiotic."
>>>>
>>>> From a Peircean perspective, I would argue that meaning is not
>>>> something that signs convey. Meaning is what signs potentiate. Sign is
>>>> triadic relation, potentiating interpretants in which the "object" of
>>>> interpretation is interpreted through the mediation of representamena
>>>> (including intermediate/intermediating interpretants). Meaning is the
>>>> signification-thru-mediated-activity* potentiated by the triadic sign
>>>> relation, rather than a positive (or structurally relative, as in
>>>> Saussure) semantic content that may be contained and conveyed in or by
>>>> "signs" as containers or conveyors of "meaning."
>>>>
>>>> In this view, operations qualify as fully semiotic (vs.
>>>> infra-semiotic) sign-elements insofar as they participate in such
>>>> triadically mediative activity.* The difference that you point to in
>>>> terms of "meaningfulness" might be considered in terms of differences
>>>> in how Thirdness is realized, as between actions and operations, but
>>>> this would not be a differences of semiosis vs. non- (or infra-)
>>>> semiosis.
>>>> _______
>>>> *"activity" here is not meant in the sense of differentiation from
>>>> actions & operations.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Jay Lemke wrote:
>>>>> I have always thought of operations as "normally infra-semiotic" ,
>>>>> i.e. under most conditions they do not have or convey meaning in
>>>>> themselves. (Anything can be made meaningful by some special
>>>>> framing, of course).
>>>>> Jay Lemke
>>>>> Professor
>>>>> University of Michigan
>>>>> School of Education
>>>>> 610 East University
>>>>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>>>> Tel. 734-763-9276
>>>>> Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
>>>>> Website. <http://www.umich.edu/~jaylemke%A0>www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>
>>>> Tony Whitson
>>>> UD School of Education
>>>> NEWARK DE 19716
>>>>
>>>> twhitson@udel.edu
>>>> _______________________________
>>>>
>>>> "those who fail to reread
>>>> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
>>>> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
>>>
>>> Tony Whitson
>>> UD School of Education
>>> NEWARK DE 19716
>>>
>>> twhitson@udel.edu
>>> _______________________________
>>>
>>> "those who fail to reread
>>> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
>>> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>
>>
>>
>> Jay Lemke
>> Professor
>> University of Michigan
>> School of Education
>> 610 East University
>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>
>> Tel. 734-763-9276
>> Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
>> Website. <http://www.umich.edu/~jaylemke%A0>www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK DE 19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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Received on Thu Oct 25 13:57 PDT 2007
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