Category Archives: Biosemiotics

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.

01/4/25

Is Biosemiotics Scientific? (Part 2 of 4)

0209 It’s funny how academics can turn disappointments around.

0210 Triumphalist science establishes a pattern.  If one considers a model to be the noumenon, then one can look for phenomena that objectify that model.  This is how the social sciences are born.  Since their inception in the late 1700s, social scientists have argued that the mechanical philosophies that gave birth to the natural sciences also apply to the study of people and society.

How do social scientists identify social and psychological noumena?

Social sciences pull noumena out of holes in the ground.  In other words, if a social scientist observes and measures activities that must correspond to a noumenon, then all the investigator needs to do is to dig a little and find the thing that their phenomena must be objectifying.

0211 This process gets formalized by phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1859-1938).  Husserl develops a method by which common opinions about a thing are bracketed out, because they cannot reveal what the noumenon must be.  The models of natural science must also be bracketed out, because triumphalist scientists will insist that, if their models replace the noumenon, then everything becomes a controlled experiment, like in a college laboratory.

Phenomenology is precisely the formal process that self-identifying social scientists are informally practicing with the construction of the social sciences in the 1800s and 1900s.

0212 Yes, phenomenologists formalize the process by which noumena are formulated by the social sciences.

What do they get for their labors?

Established social scientists say that phenomenologists are pulling noumena out of their asses.

0213 How rude!

Okay, a lot of money is on the line.  How so?  Both social scientists (on their own) and phenomenologists (by way of a well-characterized method) ascertain what the noumenon must be, by considering associated phenomena.  The intent is to activate the Positivist’s judgment.  As soon as what is of the Positivist’s judgment constellates, it stands as a robust possibility worthy of empirio-schematic inquiry.

Empirio-schematic inquiry takes time and effort.

Is that the same as money?

Of course, social-science research requires so much money as to attract intellectuals who cannot tell their asses from holes in the ground.

In that regard, they are not so different from the laboratory sciences.

0214 Oh, on second thought, social scientists pull ideas out of holes in the ground.

Phenomenologists should not compete with that.

So, phenomenology takes a cultural turn.  Husserl is hired to sit in the same professorial chair as Kant at the University of Freiberg.  In 1916, Husserl is 56 years old.  The (soon to be Catholic) philosophy student, Edith Stein, works as his personal assistant.  In 1926, one of his students, Martin Heidegger, takes modern Western philosophy to the next level with the publication of Being and Time.

0215 All I can say is, “Look at what phenomenologists pulled out of their asses.”

01/3/25

Is Biosemiotics Scientific? (Part 3 of 4)

0216 In Part III of their book, the authors dance through a philosophical critique without Peircean tools to depict triadic relations.

Uh oh.  Without figures, is this critique philosophical or scientific or phenomenological?

0217 Here is the bottom line.

There is a method to the madness of the phenomenologists.

This is why Catholic philosophers long to engage in discourse with phenomenologists, even as phenomenologists reject discourse, on the um… grounds… that phenomenology follows the mandate of the positivist intellect.  Metaphysics is not allowed.

0218 Catholic philosophers see that there is a method to phenomenology that can be articulated (somehow) by scholastic tradition (following Aquinas, not Poinsot).  But, they do not appreciate how phenomenology is historically embedded in the modern Age of Ideas.  Also, they do not appreciate what the scholastic tradition has achieved.  John Poinsot writes in the 1600s and Thomas Aquinas writes in the 1200s.  Poinsot figures out that signs are triadic relations.  Aquinas mentions signs as things that signify other other things.

Razie Mah opens the lid to this can of worms in the series, Phenomenology and the Positivist Intellect (articles available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0219 Yes, there is a method to the madness of the phenomenologists.

Phenomenologists intuitively generate (through their prescribed methods) noumenal overlays that coincide with semiotic agency, as articulated by Sharov and Tonnessen.

0220 What does this imply?

Sharov and Tonnessen’s formulation of semiotic agency, as a noumenal overlay, allows the inquirer to consider the prescribed methods of phenomenology as ways for examining natural and social phenomena arising from… the noumenal overlay of semiotic agency.

0221 Am I saying that phenomenological determinations of what the noumenon must be are really models that phenomenologists triumphantly overlay upon S&T’s noumenon?

I suppose… if what I say is correct… then biosemiotics is a science that belongs to a new age of understanding.

What age is that?

John Deely (1942-2017) thought long and hard about the proper label.

How about The Age of Triadic Relations?

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.