Tag Archives: biosemiotics

02/1/25

Looking at Gustavo Caetano-Anolles’ Chapter (2024) “Evolution of Biomolecular Communication” (Part 10 of 10)

0388 I conclude this examination of Gustavo Caetano-Anolles’ chapter with a brief discussion on the third item appearing in section 10.3, titled, “Communication”.

0389 The first item that the author mentions is Peirce’s tradition of inquiry.  Peirce’s three categories offer a variety of ways to portray triadic relations.

Biosemiotics is all about triadic relations.  This examination has shown that secondness tends to associate to phenomena.  Thirdness and firstness tends to associate to what models need to explain.

0390 The second item that the author mentions is Shannon’s information theory.

I wonder about the implications of the virtual nested form in the realm of secondness that Shannon’s information theory generates.

What if the associations are more than mere analogy?

What if my neighbor, getting that new-fangled lumber treatment and all, is not sending me a message through a channel2b that conducts wood-eating insects that are not happy, and frankly, fed up with the wooden food-fare that my neighbor’s shed now offers?

How weird and disturbing is that?

0391 The third item that the author mentions is Chomsky’s hierarchy of formal languages.  Formal language consists of operations within a finite symbolic order.

0392 Finite symbolic order?

Think of how Charles Peirce might rebrand Ferdinand de Saussures’s key term, system of differences.

0393 Ultimately, symbols enter into a picture of the evolution of biomolecular communication.

And, when they do, they seem to associate to “a receiver2c” in Shannon’s virtual nested form in secondness.

0392 Here is a picture.

0393 But that is not all, in the evolution of biomolecular communication, symbols overflow destination2c and cascade down into the bucket that the transmitter2a works from.

The author spends sections 10.4 through 10.8 discussing the implications of this imaginary overflowing, which reminds me of a Tarot card, the ace of cups, where a hand appears out of cloud overhanging an idyllic landscape.

The hand holds a water-filled cup that overflows, in a very biomolecular-cascading fashion, from a perspective-level that associates to love.  Is love an empedoclement?  Only after the empedoclements (which are the inverse of impediments) come together, in the right sort of way, does strife arrive to both hone and diversify the new creation.

0394 Here is the cup of organic biosemiosis.

01/31/25

Looking at Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen’s Book (2021) “Semiotic Agency” (Part 1 of 24)

0001 The book before me is Semiotic Agency: Science Beyond Mechanism, by biosemioticians Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen.  The book is published in 2021 by Springer and logs in at volume 25 of Springer’s Series in Biosemiotics.  Series editors are Kalevi Kull, Alexei Sharov, Claude Emmeche and Donald Favareau.  These editors have Razie Mah’s permission for use of the following disquisition, with attribution of said blogger.

Points 0001 to 0226 cover Parts I and III of this book.  These Parts are titled, (I) Overview and Historiography and (III) Theoretical Considerations.  These two sections set forth the rationale for scientific inquiry into semiotic agency. 

0002 Chapter one begins with a question.

Can agency be a scientific subject?

To me, the question, “What is science?”, must be addressed.

0003 Scientific inquiry involves a judgment within a judgment.

0004 Okay, then what is a judgment?

A judgment is a triadic relation containing three elements: relation, what is and what ought to be.  When each of these three elements uniquely associates to one of Peirce’s categories, then the judgment becomes actionable.  Actionable judgments unfold into category-based nested forms.  

What am I talking about?

Consult A Primer on The Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0005 Here is a diagram of judgment as a triadic relation.

A relation (belonging to one category) brings what ought to be (belonging to another category) into relation with what is (belonging to the one remaining category).  Peirce’s three categories are firstness, secondness and thirdness.  Firstness is the monadic realm of possibility.  Secondness is the dyadic realm of actuality.  Thirdness is the triadic realm of normal contexts, mediations, judgments, sign-relations, and so forth.

0006 If scientific inquiry involves a judgment within a judgment, then the larger judgment is called the Positivist’s judgment.  A positivist intellect (relation, thirdness) brings an empirio-schematic judgment (what ought to be,secondness) into relation with the dyad, a noumenon [and] its phenomena (what is, firstness).

Here is a diagram.

0007 In regards to the relation, the positivist intellect has a rule.  Metaphysics is not allowed.

0008 What is “metaphysics”?

Aristotle proposes four causes: material, efficient, formal and final.  The first two are (more or less) physical.  The second two are (more or less) metaphysical.  So, the second two causes are ruled out in the seventeenth century by the mechanical philosophers of northern Europe.

0009 Of course, ruling out formal and final causes truncates material and efficient causalities.  Imagine a material cause (such as the flow of ink onto a piece of paper) without its formal cause (the piece of paper will then be folded and put into an envelope).  Imagine an efficient cause (the role of glue in sealing an envelope) without its final cause (the envelope will be put in the mail).

So, the rule of the positivist intellect has the effect of truncating physical material and efficient causalities from their metaphysical companion causalities.  The positivist intellect is assigned to the category of thirdness, the realm of normal contexts.

0010 In regards to what ought to be, the empirio-schematic judgment belongs to the category of secondness (the realm of actuality), even though it obviously belongs to the category of thirdness, because judgments are triadic relations.  In other words, to think in terms of the Positivist’s judgment, one must disregard the obvious and regard the empirio-schematic judgment as an exercise in the realm of actuality, if that makes any sense.

0011 It may help to consider the empirio-schematic judgment as a tool for producing scientific models.  Disciplinary language (relation, thirdness) brings mathematical and mechanical models (what ought to be, secondness) into relation with observations and measurements of phenomena (what is, firstness).

Here is a picture.

These figures are initially constructed in Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

01/6/25

Is Biosemiotics Scientific? (Part 1 of 4)

0201 The book before me is Semiotic Agency: Science Beyond Mechanism, by biosemioticians Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnnessen.  The book is published in 2021 by Springer and logs in at volume 25 of Springer’s Series in Biosemiotics.  The editors of this series have Razie Mah’s permission for use of following disquisition, with attribution of said blogger.

Part III concerns theoretical considerations, addressing the headliner question.

Here is a list of the chapters, along with their titles.

Each title labels a labor of biosemioticians.

0202 So far, from Part I, Sharov and Tonnessen propose a philosophical dyad that serves as an overlay for the noumenon of biosemiotics.  The authors’ proposed noumenon constitutes what is for the Positivist’s judgment and contains what all biosemiotic phenomena have in common.

This is significant.

0203 The Positivist’s judgment is constructed, starting in the 1600s, by mechanical philosophers.  Mechanical philosophers aim to bracket out metaphysics, in favor of models based on observations and measurements.

So, what is science?

0204 Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) “Natural Philosophy” shows that the scholastic ideation of three styles of abstraction comes close to a satisfying answer.  But, no one can capitalize on that answer until a hidden knot is unraveled.  A knot?  Two judgments are entangled.  This becomes clear when the abstractions are pictured as elements of judgment.

0205 The following diagram of the Positivist’s judgment is a satisfying way to portray what the mechanical philosophers created in the 1600s and what Kant corrected in the late 1700s.

In 2025, no definition of science compares to this diagram.

0206 In the Positivist’s judgment, the positive intellect (relation, thirdness) brings the empirio-schematic judgment (what ought to be, secondness) into relation with the dyad, a noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena (what is, firstness).

In the empirio-schematic judgment, disciplinary language (relation, thirdness) brings mathematical and mechanical models (what ought to be, secondness) into relation with observations and measurements of phenomena (what is,firstness).

0207 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) forces natural scientists to concede that they investigate the observable and measurable facets of the thing itself.   Plus, their observations and measurements cannot fully objectify the subject of inquiry.

0208 Over the next two centuries (1800s and 1900s),  scientists promote their successful models, saying, “Our models are more illuminating than the thing itself.  Indeed, our models can take the place of the noumenon.  Once that happens, then our models can be objectified by their phenomena.  Observations and measurements validate the successful model.”

The academic laboratory sciences are born.  For example, a chemistry laboratory and its accompanying lecture belong to the laboratory science of chemistry.  In contrast, the science of chemistry is the study of natural processes, that is, things themselves.  The key to science is to make an observation and then explain it.  The model is an explanation, rather than the thing itself.

01/2/25

Is Biosemiotics Scientific? (Part 4 of 4)

0222 With that said, here is a quick wrap-up of the four chapters in Part III.

For chapter six, Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay conceptualizes semiotic agency.

For chapter seven, semiotic agency is considered an actuality2.  In order to understand an actuality2, the actuality2 must have a normal context3 and potential1.

0223 Here is the nested form for semiotic agency2.

Semiotic agency2 presents a sign-relation as a dyadic actuality.  This is shown in Part I.

Semiosis2 does not occur without an agent3 and the possibility of ‘significance’1.

0224 For chapter eight, the evolution of agents3 and the possibility of ‘significance’1 proceeds in tandem with the evolution of semiotic agency2.

0225 For chapter nine, phenomenology serves as a precursor to biosemiotics, just as the social sciences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries serve as intimations of phenomenology.

0226 Without a doubt, Sharov and Tonnessen build upon the insights of philosophers writing a century earlier, as seen in two of Razie Mah’s e-books: Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy and Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev’s Book (1939) Spirit and Reality.  Both Maritain and Berdyaev are interested in understanding the nature of scientific inquiry.  And now, their works inform biosemioticians.