Re: Is FIS in semiotics?

With regard to Rafael's post, we all use different terms and must
therefore, work around these. From my translation of Rafael's terms to
my own Peircean analysis, I can see certain similarities. That is, the
interpretive or interactional process is triadic and transformational
rather than direct, linear, dyadic. However, what should be stressed,
in my view, is that this transformative process requires different
levels and therefore types of codification. The triad given by Rafael
of pre-formation/ in-formation/ new-formation doesn't show us these
differences and we could view it as linear and serial rather than
transformation.

One step, a median step, must be operative in a different process. In
Peircean terms, it is Thirdness, and is the process of generalization.
Some people have called this a digital code (Hoffmeyer, Pribram); the
point is, it is a process of condensing information and thus enabling
it to become general and applicable to numerous instances.

Yes, there is a difference between the external and internal but I
don't think that an organism lives only within the internal. That is,
an organism's semiosic process must be both external and internal;
working within contextual links of information, and internal data and
internal habits. This internal and external really has nothing to do
with the observer. I myself prefer to leave this individual out of the
picture.

With regard to Pedro's differentation of the cell into three levels:
macro, meso and micro- I'm not in agreement. Purpose can't be confined
only to the macroorganism, nor do constraints operate only at the meso
level, nor does fuzziness operate only at the micro level. I think
that all these processes operate at all levels and can't be located in
size-regions.

Abduction is a process operative within both sides of the experience:
the 'individual' and the 'environment'.

John and Edwina,

very interesting discussion on abduction. Thanks.
I think it is time to talk about the relation of
semiotics and hermeneutics and... to see if this
brings something to information science (related
particularly to biology). There is, first of all, the
triadic relation. It is a classical (particularly since
Heideggers Being and Time � 32) topic of hermeneutics
to make a distinction between:
(pre-)understanding - interpretation - understanding - new
pre-understanding...
The main point in this *circle* (which is supposed to be
a *constructive* not a *vicious* circle) is, that interpretation
does not produces by itself an understanding *out of nothing*
but is always based (and *biased*) on a pre-understanding
that it makes explicit giving thus rise to a new pre-understanding
etc.
This is related by Heidegger with regard to the existential
constitution of (human) existence and particularly with
regard to *signs* (Being and Time � 17) in the sense that
the formal relations ("Beziehungen") between signs (as explicited by
Husserl)
are not identical with the existentiall grounded relations
("Verweisungen")
in which we (in the life-world) are *already* immersed.
The point is now, in my view, to see how for in non-human living
nature (a cell, for instance) is *immersed* in a network of
*living relations* in such a way that the *horizons* of
pre-understanding-interpretation-understanding are more or less (!)
(how far?) fixed by *natural laws*. But there is a difference
between the way we (as observers) see these relations and the
way an organism *lives* within them (Koichiro's different between
two different *time* views: exo/endo-view). So the phenomenon
of *abduction* could be seen, within such a hermeutic perspective,
as something that questions a given (implicit) pre-understanding
giving rise to a process of interpretation. Within *natural
philosophy* (or *biophilosophy*) we could speak
of pre-formation - in-formation - (new)formation

kind regards
Rafael

Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro, FH Stuttgart, Hochschule der Medien (HdM)
University of Applied Sciences, Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart,
Germany
E-Mail: capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de; rafael@capurro.de
Tel. : +49 - 711 - 25 706 - 182
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Received on Tue Jul 23 18:56:09 2002