Re: Vedr.: Re: information as a selection signs as meaning

In reply to Soren Brier's post, where he writes that:

"I want to attract your attention to the fact that my paper attempt to
solve many of the problems you are discussion by suggesting: Five
levels of existence: 1 Quantum vacuum field. 2. Energy/matter. 3.
Information/signals or proto signs. 4. Signs/meaning. 5. Language."

I haven't had time to read his paper but I like the sense of an
increasing complexity of organization. I'll have to read what a
'quantum vacuum field' is - but I agree with the basic concepts of the
quantum field as a process of energy dynamics. Energy then 'cools' to
become what we recognize as matter, differentiated into organized mass
(information)...which can operate as signals and then signs. Language
is, to me, a type of relation, a symbolic type of relation.

Soren then writes: "In this way you can follow Stonier in his
objective information concept and make it the organizing aspect of
nature as Taborsky also wants. Meaning is arising with the living
systems as fully triadic signs with meaning are first found with
living systems and language with symbols ( see Terrance Deacon: The
Symbolic Species) only in humans. Information is still a part of human
messages in language."

Here - I would say that the triadic process is operative right down to
that basic quantum field theory. I disagree with the idea that
'meaning' begins only with living systems, though I fully agree that
only human language is symbolic.

Soren's statement " I suggest then the Peircian objective idealistic
pragmatic and evolutionary metaphysical framework that avoids both pan
informationism and pan semiotism. It is the only one I can see holding
this complexity although I know that many scientists think it is too
high a price to pay."

Now- here, I disagree. Peirce is a pansemiotician or
pan-informationalist. He was, after all, a chemist, and a lot of his
writings deal with molecular interactions as semiotic. And as anyone
who knows me also knows - I'm a pansemiotician. I feel that semiosic
processes are basic - and found in the physico-chemical as well as the
biological and human realms. But- there's no point in trying to 'make'
everyone agree with this perspective. I think that one simply has to
state one's beliefs - and that's it.

    I think what scientists are fearful of is quite valid- a
reductionism to what almost amounts to essentialism. However, stating
that processes of organization are operative at all levels is hardly a
reductionist essentialism. The key is to consider that each realm has
its limits. The physico-chemical realm cannot set up symbolic
relations! But it most certainly can operate within iconic and some
indexical relations. All such relations are triadic. There's an Object
to which one relates (another molecule). There's my long-term
normative rules of relation (the Representamen)..which I, as another
molecule , must follow in setting up how I relate to that Other
Molecule. And, there's my actual Interpretation, which is the result
of that relationship (I'm now bonded to that Other Molecule). So- it's
a triad, even though it's simple. The relation that I have with this
Other Molecule is equally simple - iconic or at most indexical. But
only a simple relation. The fact that I can't set up a secondary
referential system (symbolic) to talk about this interaction is not
relevant to the semiosis.

Edwina Taborsky
Received on Sun May 19 22:30:09 2002