A formal model of the processes of digestion in a hypothetical cell is developed and discussed as a case study of how the threefold logic of Peircean semiotics works within Rosen’s paradigm of relational ontology. The formal model is used to demonstrate several fundamental differences between a relational description of biological processes and a mechanistic description. The formal model produces a logic of embodied generalization that is mediated and determined by the cell through its interactions with the environment. Specifically, the (...) synchronization of the functions of pattern recognition and semantic attribution results in an open and adaptive learning system that is stabilized by a hermeneutical circle. The relational principles of biosemiotics demonstrated through this case study are applicable to other biological systems, as well as to the relational ontology of systems theory, artificial intelligence systems, and relativistic quantum theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beastly Vagueness in Charles Sanders Peirce and Henry JamesMegan M. QuigleyIn 1878, Charles Sanders Peirce closed the first section of "How to Make our Ideas Clear"—an article that William James later declared a "birth certificate of Pragmatism"—on a strangely anecdotal note.1 Using what would become known as the pragmatic method to demolish the notion of Grand Ideas ("Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects"), Peirce (...) also included a lesson from an "old German story":Many a man has cherished for years some vague shadow of an idea, too meaningless to be positively false; he has nevertheless, passionately loved it, has made it his companion by day and by night, and has given to it his strength and his life, leaving all other occupations for its sake, and in short has lived with it and for it, until it has become, as it were, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; and then he has waked up some morning to find it gone, cleaned vanished away like the beautiful Melusina of the fable, and the essence of his life gone with it. I have myself known such a man.(WCSP, p. 261)The story of the fled Melusina (a half-woman, half-serpent who gives birth to monsters) acts ostensibly as a warning against the danger inherent in "vague" ideas. "A vague shadow of an idea" can sap the life-blood out of a young man and, therefore, Peirce asserted, we must strive to be clear. But Peirce's anecdote did more than further his argument; it was an autobiographical aside—so personal, in fact, that he ordered the passage to be deleted in all future printings of his essay.Melusina was not just an allusion to a mythological figure; it was also a reference to the middle name of his wife, Harriet Melusina Fay. Since his schooldays, Peirce's friend and, later, wife, whom he called [End Page 362] "Zina," had been his constant companion and even the scribe for his fervent aspirations. Under the title "Theories of C. S. Peirce, 1854" she had transcribed his ambitious declaration: "My life is built upon a theory: and if this theory turns out false, my life will turn out a failure" (Brent, p. 51). By the mid 1870s, Peirce's theory, "passionately loved... his companion by day and by night," was finally being elucidated in his articles; however, Melusina herself had "cleaned vanished away," after two decades of intimacy, leaving Peirce in Paris to what his friend Henry James described as "a very lonely and dreary existence." Peirce's inclusion of an anecdote about his own loneliness—"I have myself known such a man"—is poignant even as it reveals his anger. Melusina is both a monster and "beautiful," and with her disappearance, Peirce has lost, "the essence of his life." The personal allusion also highlights the anxiety in the young Peirce's writing. What if his theories came to nothing, remained merely vague, and he lost his whole life and his wife to a misguided dedication? And how ironic would that be given that the idea itself aimed to explode the fallacy of grand ideas? Such an irony was not lost on his main companion during the winter of 1875, Henry James.In the following pages I aim to demonstrate that Charles S. Peirce's anxiety acted as a germ for the beast of John Marcher in James's late story, "The Beast in the Jungle." "More than any of Henry James's tales," Paul Lindholdt writes, "'The Beast in the Jungle,' has prompted source studies and psychoanalytic discussions by critics striving to identify" John Marcher.2 Eager to diagnose the relationship between Marcher and May Bartram, critics have sought both autobiographical and literary sources for Marcher's character.3 Strangely, however, no one has noted the connection between Peirce and Marcher, an omission that is especially odd given the critical attention directed at the relationship between the story and pragmatism. Since Richard Hocks's Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought highlighted the pragmatic tendencies of James's story and called Marcher the "anti-pragmatist" hero, "an epitome of William's... (shrink)

The first-person access to the self has been widely recognized by philosophers. But a competing idea arises, challenging the first-person givenness, from those who argue that self-interpretation and self-knowledge are acquired through the third-person perspective. I argue that these two dichotomous perspectives of the self can be mediated by the second-person perspective through dialogical semiosis of narrative. Peirce’s semiotic perspective on the self emphasizes the role of a semiotic subject that participates in sign processes as an interpreting agent. In this (...) sense, the concept of self is acquired through semiosis of narrative and at the same time it is interpreted in narrative world, taking the role of character. It is character which makes a person identifiable as a person, since character is not substance but quality as a recognized pattern or type through time, which becomes a habit of act and thought, thus forming personal identity. Within this context, I argue that from the first-person perspective a deliberate subject of self as “subjective I” and from the third-person perspective a dynamic object of self as “objective I” are mediated by the relationship between self and other as an imaginary relation in narrative world, just like an imaginary line of identity, connecting word with thing. From the second-person perspective, oneself as another forms teridentity (co-identity) in textual world. I shall illustrate the interlock between the semiotic self and narrative identity through Peirce’s semiotic approach to the self and Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, analyzing the filmic narrative text of Burning (2018). (shrink)

Peirce’s category of Firstness is first and fundamental. Without Firstness, we can say, nothing can (later) be – no time, no space, no things, no processes, no growth, no regularities, and no thoughts – hence, nothing of which we can ever conceive. However, despite the fundamentality of Peirce’s category of Firstness, we still do not believe that it has received the attention that it rightly deserves; not by Peirce himself, nor by his commentators. In the following we will, therefore, look (...) at the category of Firstness and try to give a modest glimpse of its fundamentality in relation to four other of Peirce’s central concepts: namely, evolution, consciousness, icon, and, finally, abduction. (shrink)

Following recent work by Don Ross (Ross, 2000; Ross & Spurrett, 2004), I contrast the influential theories of Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland in information-theoretic terms. Dennett makes much of the fact that the morphological shorthand which emerges before a witness as she looks upon cohesive aggregates of matter commands some measure of predictive power. This, for him, speaks against eliminating recourse to an intentional vocabulary. By contrast, the eliminative materialism defended by Churchland does not gloss such informational compressibility as (...) an explanatory desideratum, and thus regards the informational noise which accrues at higher levels of description as patently unacceptable. Yet, since it is unlikely, as Ross, Ladyman, and Collier (2007) have recently suggested, that anything remains once we subtract the appeal to patterns, I argue that the ubiquity of informational compression in scientific explanation seriously undermines the claim that talk of the mental could be eliminated. (shrink)

I’m grateful for the opportunity to give the 2019 AJTP Lecture and for the leeway since then allowed me in developing ideas first presented there; it is indulgent of this journal to publish the overlong result in two parts, of which this is the first.1 The philosophical tradition epitomized by William James and Charles S. Peirce figured importantly in my early philosophical formation, but I am not a scholar of their work; nevertheless, Mike Hogue—at the time the editor of AJTP (...) and once a doctoral student at the University of Chicago Divinity School at the same time as me—approached me about the AJTP Lecture after learning that I had taught a class in the University of Chicago Divinity School called “American... (shrink)

This workbook of "études" offers a collection of experimental texts for communal dialogue and discovery that crosses multiple academic disciplines, including: foundations of physics, metaphysics, theoretical biology, semiotics, cognitive science, linguistics, phenomenology, logic & mathematics, poetry and theology. Each étude probes limits, horizons and boundaries by implicitly bring into relation foundational issues that characterize different academic disciplines or systems of meaning formation. Some formal techniques are deployed the études. Most notable is the use of the “logic of three” to overcome (...) falsely totalizing images and inexorable dualities. This technique involves a particular kind of attunement to the “betweenness” of mediation that is not common in modern science. The attunement draws on the formal and precise movements of analysis in concert with the metaphoric and singular movements of synthesis. (shrink)

If argument forms evolve then the possible existence of localized argument forms may create an interpretive impasse between locally distinct argument communities. Appeal to evolutionarily ‘deep’ argument forms may help, but might be strained in cases where emergent argument forms are not reducible to their base conditions. Overcoming such limits presupposes the virtue of compromise, suggesting that compromise may stand as ‘deep virtue’ within argumentative forms of life.

Triadic (systemical) logic can provide an interpretive paradigm for understanding how quantum indeterminacy is a consequence of the formal nature of light in relativity theory. This interpretive paradigm is coherent and constitutionally open to ethical and theological interests. -/- In this statement: -/- (1) Triadic logic refers to a formal pattern that describes systemic (collaborative) processes involving signs that mediate between interiority (individuation) and exteriority (generalized worldview or Umwelt). It is also called systemical logic or the logic of relatives. The (...) term "triadic logic" emphasizes that this logic involves mediation of dualities through an irreducibly triadic formalism. The term "systemical logic" emphasizes that this logic applies to systems in contrast to traditional binary logic which applies to classes. The term "logic of relatives" emphasizes that this logic is background independent (in the sense discussed by Smolin ). -/- (2) An interpretive paradigm refers to a way of thinking that generates an understanding through concepts, their inter-relationships and their connections with experience. -/- (3) Coherence refers to holistic integrity or continuity in the meaning of concepts that form an interpretation or understanding. -/- (4) Constitutionally open refers to an inherent dependence in principle of an interpretation or understanding on something outside of a specific discipline's discourse or domain of inquiry (epistemic system). Interpretations that are constitutionally open are incomplete in themselves and open to responsive, interdisciplinary discourse and collaborative learning. (shrink)

Although culturally prominent modernist influences account for much of Skinner's early behaviorism, the subsequent changes in his views are appropriately considered as postmodern and are indebted to other sources. These changes are strikingly apparent in his 1945 publication. "The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms." In that publication. Skinner introduced a probabilistic three-term contingency for verbal behavior with an expanded contextualism and an increased emphasis on consequence with a clear alignment to pragmatism. Instead of reaffirming the mechanistic and necessitarian values of (...) modernism that he had previously embraced, Skinner was aligning himself with the postmodern values of pragmatism and selectionism. (shrink)

For Peirce, logic is essentially illative, a relation of inferential growth. It follows that inference and argumentation are essentially ecstatic, an asymmetrical, ampliative movement from antecedent to consequent. It also follows that logic is inherently inductive. While deduction remains an essential and irreplaceable aspect of logic, it should be seen as a more abstract expression of the illative, semiological essence of inference as such.