From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Sat Nov 05 2005 - 00:16:15 GMT
Arlo (Ian mentioned),
[Arlo]
Corrected. If I'm not mistaken, Ian has also mentioned the idea that
semiotics
undergirds the inorganic and biological levels, where my position is that it
emerges at the social level. This is something I would like to explore
further.
(Ian- if I have your take wrong, sorry.)
Scott:
Well, he says he sees information processing as being what all levels are
about, but he stops short (last I brought this up anyway) of agreeing with
me that if that information processing is valued, then we are talking
semiotics.
[Scott]
And, by the way, it is not that I am unable to understand "evolutionary,
emergentist patterns", but that I don't think that's how new patterns come
to be, that emergentism is just made up to maintain materialism. But that's
a
whole 'nother discussion.
[Arlo]
And one I'd like to have.<skip -- to be addressed separately if I get to it
:)>
Anyways, Scott, it is your position that everything is a sign? Let's take
Pirsig's amoeba and vinegar analogy. Your position is that the amoeba's
response is semiotic? How?
Scott:
Yes, every thing is a sign. I start with agreeing with Pirsig that anything
experienced has value (or there is value in the experiencing) and adding to
that the observation that it can only have value if it fits some pattern
that is valued, and that there were options: B values pre-condition A if and
only if something other than A were possible. Note that "some pattern that
is valued" is SQ, not the particular thing experienced. That is, SQ are more
like concepts than particular things/events, which latter are the expression
of those concepts.
On the amoeba and vinegar example, let me quote myself from my last post to
Mike on this question:
"I agree that amoebas and carbon molecules don't estimate consequences. That
is, I think that it is a mistake to say that an amoeba is making
distinctions. However, that is the amoeba that we perceive. You might note
that in these situations I have been very careful to say "there is
intellect (or consciousness) involved" and to not say "the amoeba has an
intellect" or "the amoeba chooses to move away from the acid". Just how that
involvement shakes out we really can't say, though I am partial to Rupert
Sheldrake's morphogenetic forms as a possible description, if you're
familiar with it. The reaction of the amoeba to the acid, or the carbon
molecules habit of bonding the way it does is, as you say, an extremely
rigid and predictable pattern of value. So what I am saying is that those
SPOV are conceptual in nature, and the actions of the amoeba and carbon atom
are the spatio-temporal expression of those SPOV, in the same way that words
and sentences are the spatio-temporal form of the concepts that we trade
back and forth (the same except that the latter's dynamicism is higher:
words change meanings faster than species change form or behavior)."
- Scott
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