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.

12/31/24

Looking at Bill Arnold’s Article (2020) “Genesis and the Challenges of the 21st Century” (Part 1 of 5)

0001 This article records a presentation at a symposium on Adam, the Fall, and the goodness of God.  The text is published in the journal, Pro Ecclesia (2020), volume 29(4), pages 387-406.  I request that the journal to unlock this issue.  After all, this lecture is not the only gem, covering a topic that is seldom broached.

0002 The author steps to the podium and posits two axioms.  One addresses the evolutionary sciences, in a minimalistic sort of way.  The other addresses biblical hermeneutics in the modern age.  Ironically, another science hides in the shadow of the second axiom.  That science is archaeology.

0003 Here is a picture of the two axioms.

0004 The science axiom poses a double difficulty.

Currently, the biological sciences present all evolution as continuous developments in time, although there are moments of radical… um… “re-organization”, hence the theory of punctuated equilibrium.  When the evolutionary sciences cast their models of human evolution into the mirror of theology, the theologian sees a picture that does not quite sync with the wild change of… um… “genre” that occurs the moment after God wraps up the Creation Story, by telling humans that they should give food to the animals (Genesis 1:30).

Speaking of that, here is an application of the two axioms in action.

0005 Mirror of theology?

See Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2014), available at smashwords and other e-book venues, as well as Razie Mah’s blog for the months of April, May and June, 2024.

On the one hand, the mirror of theology embraces the noumenon.

On the other hand, the mirror of theology reflects models proposed by science.  Science is not interested in the noumenon, the thing itself.  Scientists are only interested in a noumenon’s phenomena.  Phenomena are the observable and measurable facets of a noumenon.  Scientists build models based on observations and measurements of phenomena.  If the model “works”, then scientismists want to say that the model is more real than the thing itself.  At this point, natural philosophers and theologians object and say, “No, the scientific model is not more real than the thing itself.”

0006 After an awkward pause, triumphalist scientists reply, “Well, then, how are you going to know anything about the noumenon without our models?”

“Well,” the natural philosophers say, “What about matter and form?  I can know these about the noumenon through experience of it.”

“So how are you going to do that when the noumenon is evolutionary history?  How can you grasp that though determining its matter and form?”

To which the theologian sighs and says, “Listen, whatever the noumenon is, it cannot be reduced scientific models of its phenomena.  So, I will set up a mirror that will reflect your scientific model, so you can be assured that your models are not ignored when I contemplate the metaphysical structures intrinsic to the thing itself, while keeping my mind open to revelation (including the the Bible). I will call it ‘the mirror of theology’.”

0007 To which the scientist counters, “And, we will correspondingly set up a mirror in our domain, a mirror of science.  We will look at the theological statements concerning the character of the noumenon, which really should just be replaced by our mathematical and mechanical models.  Then, we will laugh at and ridicule them.”

0008 Now, I once again present the odd coincidence pictured before as an application of the two axioms.

Do I have that correctly?

Does the scientist project his model into the mirror of theology?

Does the theologian project his metaphysical analysis into the mirror of science?

How confusing is that?

0008 It seems to me, a mere semiotician, that these two images actually reflect a single real being.  The theologian looks into the mirror of theology and sees what evolutionary scientists project, then looks at revelation and locates an appropriate correspondence.  Then, when the theologian’s correspondence is viewed by the scientist in their mirror of science, it says, “That is superstitious nonsense!”

“It”?

I thought male and female he created them.

“It” must be a first approximation.

0009 Of course, to the semiotician, the whole situation is sort of funny, because it implies that there is a body of wisdom that is independent of science, but not subject to science, because it concerns the noumenon, the thing itself.

12/30/24

Looking at Bill Arnold’s Article (2020) “Genesis and the Challenges of the 21st Century” (Part 2 of 5)

0010 Okay, so there is a off-chance that there is wisdom… or… superstitious nonsense… that is independent of science, comes from the realm of theology, appears in the mirror of science and provides a weirdly compelling impression.  After all, the start of the Developed Neolithic (projected into the mirror of theology) enhances the impressiveness of Genesis 1:30 (projected into the mirror of science).  How can it be superstitious nonsense, when the Genesis verse sounds like a sign of the corresponding evolutionary period?

0011 With this impressiveness in mind, I reiterate the following.

Currently, the biological sciences present all evolution as continuous developments in time, although there are moments of radical… um… “re-organization”, hence the theory of punctuated equilibrium.  When the evolutionary sciences cast their image of human evolution into the mirror, the theologian sees a picture that does not quite sync with the wild change of… um… “genre” that occurs the moment after God wraps up the Creation Story, by telling humans that they should give food to the animals (Genesis 1:30).

So, the question arises, “Is there a scientific proposal that would be in sync with this change in genre?

Yes, there is.  It is called the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0012 Both human evolution and chapters one through three of Genesis portray two phases.

0013 Razie Mah offers three scientific masterworks that project well in the mirror of theology.

The first work is titled, The Human Niche.  The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.  This e-book covers the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The second work is titled, An Archaeology of the Fall.  It dramatizes the scientific discovery of the first singularity.  But, for those who prefer not to dally in fiction, there is The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.  In the series, “Crystallizations of the Fall”, this essay is paired with Original Sin and Original Death: Romans 5:12-19.  

The third work is titled, How To Define the Word “Religion”.  The accompanying course includes ten primers, starting with A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.  This course concerns our current Lebenswelt.  It introduces the category-based nested form, which encompasses three logics, corresponding to firstness, secondness and thirdness.  Thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness.

Yes, these terms come from the philosophy of Charles Peirce.  The logic of firstness is inclusive and allows contradictions.  The logic of secondness is where the logics of contradiction and non-contradiction apply.  The logics of thirdness are exclusion, complement and alignment.

0014 In sum, human evolution comes with a twist.

That twist is mirrored in the sudden shift of genres in the first two chapter of Genesis.

12/28/24

Looking at Bill Arnold’s Article (2020) “Genesis and the Challenges of the 21st Century” (Part 3 of 5)

0015 Our current Lebenswelt starts with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

Do the stories of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2.4 on) associate to the events early in the “history” of the Ubaid?

“History”?

The term, “history”, typically refers to written documentation that serves as evidence of trends and events.

Perhaps, I can qualify stories about trends and events of times before the invention of writing in the Uruk period of southern Mesopotamia as “pre-history”.

0016 Arnold prefers the term, “mytho-history”.

0017 Yet, even here, science adds to the picture.

No one in the world would know about the mythic origin stories of the ancient Near East were it not for intrepid archaeologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (who, ironically, were funded by wealthy people interested in the origins of civilization, of the Bible, of the Iliad and Odyssey, and so on).  One could say that our knowledge of these origin stories is “fragmentary”, because it is read off of fragments of cuneiform-bearing clay tablets that were fired into bricks when royal libraries burned, thousands of years before the modern age.

Some tablets date over two-thousand years before Socrates.

Indeed, the start of our current Lebenswelt is nominally set at 7824 years ago at 0 U0′ (Ubaid Zero-Prime).  The Uruk invented writing around 1800 U0′.  The Sumerian civilization officially starts around 2800 U0′.  Christ lives around 5800 U0′.  Our year is nominally 7824 U0′, but maybe astrologers who hear about the hypothesis of the first singularity can cast for an appropriate celestial inauguration marking the start of the Ubaid, the first culture to practice speech-alone talk.

0018 The list of mythic origin stories of the ancient Near East and Egypt, is not long.  Arnold goes through the trouble of naming them and identifying them with Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian sources.  As it turns out, both the Creation Story and the Primeval History share the same genre of this “literature of the ancient Near East”.

Here is a picture of reflections in the mirrors of science and theology.

Remember that the theologian sees what science projects into the mirror of theology and the scientist sees what theology projects into the mirror of science.

Do I have that correctly?

Does the mirror of theology stand in the domain of theology?

Does science project into the mirror of theology?

Does the mirror of science stand in the domain of science?

Does theology project into the mirror of science?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Now, where was I?

0019 During the past two centuries, the early stories of Genesis are liberated from a literal reading.  These tales do not explicitly reveal a beginning.  Rather, they portray the beginning of some sort of revelation.  If the Creation Story and Primeval History exhibit not only the style, but some of the content, of the excavated written origin stories of the ancient Near East, then some conclude that the Genesis text derives from these even more ancient written sources.

But, that is not the case.  One cannot confidently claim that the living oral traditions that give rise to the written Genesis text in, say 5200 U0′, are derived from a literary tradition among elites that was written, say as early as 2800 U0′.  No, the style and material are so entangled, that the family oral tradition and the elite written traditions, must have been already established by the time of Ur III.  Ur III is the last flowering of the Sumerian civilization.  After that, the Sumerian language is dead.  It is no longer a living language.

Terah leaves Ur of the Chaldeans.

And Abram leaves his father, Terah, in the land that his kin lived in for so many generations.

0020 A daring exposition of the implications of these two reflections is found in chapter 13C of An Archaeology of the Fall (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

Here is another example of the strange double-reflection between the hypothesis of the first singularity and the stories of Adam and Eve.  The infilling of the Persian Gulf occurs during the Wet Neolithic.

12/27/24

Looking at Bill Arnold’s Article (2020) “Genesis and the Challenges of the 21st Century” (Part 4 of 5)

0021 One scholar proposes that the correspondences between Genesis and written origin stories of the ancient Near Eastare due to myth-making.  Myth-making produces certain literary characteristics, such as ascribing personality to nature, describing the world phenomenologically, rather than analytically, and a lack of interest in the linearity that we attribute to modern history and historiography.  Arnold adds one other literary feature to Oswalt’s list.  Arnold adds “the etiological dimension”.

0022 Etiology?

Etiology is the study of the world today in terms of what happened long ago.

The Ubaid, the Uruk and the Sumerian Dynastic have no interest in describing the world in a fashion that is acceptable to modern historians.  Why?  There are no modern historians.  Instead, there are people who are dealing with cycles of civilization that are really spirals of unconstrained social complexity.  These folks are caught in the tourbillion and are holding on for dear life.

0023 Indeed, if history is like matter, and myth is like form, the Arnold’s “etiological dimension” is the contiguity between real events as they would be recorded by a modern historian and the mythic telling of events from long ago that explain why the world is the way it is today.

Here is a picture.

0024 Indeed, Arnold calls the etiological dimension an “ideological substance”.

0025 Now, let me apply Oswalt’s and Arnold’s myth-making hypothesis to the thing that both Genesis and the written stories of the ancient Near East have in common.

0026 What is the thing?

The esse_ce, prehistory [etiology], consists of events corresponding to the emergence of unconstrained social complexity in a speech-alone talking culture.  It just happens that the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.  At the time, all other cultures practice hand-speech talk.  Soon, cultures adjacent to the Ubaidwill drop the hand-component of their hand-speech talk in order to imitate their civilizing brethren.  But, they will not be able to catch up in social complexity for thousands of years.

The essence, [etiology] ancient myth, consists of stories in oral, then later, written traditions.  The ideological substance that binds the matter of prehistory to the form of ancient myth, cannot be anything like the modern historian’s pretensions that history proceeds linearly.  In fact, if one looks at a recitation of events in modern times, one finds that the recitation does not grant the same insights as (even) the literature of the day, which wrestles with past, present and future.

Perhaps, that is why modern histories can be so boring.

0027 The question arises, “How do we understand this thing?”

In the 7750s, theologian William F. Albright makes an attempt.  He places the thing2 into the normal context of evolution3operating on the potential of phases of human reason1.

Here is a diagram.

0027 Albright suggests that the thing belongs to the first of three phases: (1) the proto-logical, (2) the empirical and (3) the formally logical.

0028 Of course, seventy years later, scholars chuckle, but there is a doom to this first guess.

0029 By way of formal logic, we know that there are phases of human reason.

By way of the empirical, we know that each phase supports its own actuality2, its own “thing”.

By way of the proto-logical, we all know that each phase is decreed by the gods. 

3, 2, 1 then 0?

0030 For moderns, matter is more like history.  Form is more like knowledge.  The contiguity is more like [explanation].

For those who live before the formalization of logic, matter is still like history, but flavored with the spice of fate.  Surely, fate is empirical.  Form is still like knowledge, but containing a degree of moralization that moderns are not accustomed to.  Surely, moral strength and weakness allows one to act wisely, rather than foolishly.

For those who live before the empirical phase, matter is all about fate and form is all about heroic strengths and weaknesses, along with wisdom and foolishness.

0031 That brings me to the doom of Albright’s initial guess.

If one tracks these phases back from say, the writing of the Bible (where formal logic is apparent in later writings), to the oral histories of Moses (where the law is written in a fashion that does not sound formally logical, but exhibits a certain empiricism), to the stories of Abraham and earlier, all the way to the mythic Adam and Eve (where each figure lives out a theological drama), there is one more story left.

Yes, it is the Creation Story.

0032 The Creation Story may tell of the construction of the tent of the heavens and the earth.  But, in terms of where Albright’s initial guess ends, the Creation Story is what stands before the manufacture of Adam and Eve in the Primeval History.

The Creation Story stands at 0, the null.

0033 Albright imagines that civilizational development is the same as human evolution.

It is not.

So, his guess is doomed.

Doomed to flower into another guess.

12/26/24

Looking at Bill Arnold’s Article (2020) “Genesis and the Challenges of the 21st Century” (Part 5 of 5)

0034 Yes, Razie Mah covers what postmodern scientists should project into the mirror of theology.

Our current Lebenswelt (German for “living world”) is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The discontinuity is called “the first singularity”.

0035 The discontinuity entails a change in the way humans talk.

The hypothesis is technically described in The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.

The scientific discovery is dramatically portrayed in An Archaeology of the Fall.

Both texts are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0036 The hypothesis, along with the hypotheses proposed in The Human Niche and How To Define the Word “Religion”,pose significant challenges to the way that human evolution is currently conceptualized.  See Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), as well as Razie Mah’s blog for January through March 2024.

0037 Arnold drills down into the ideological substance of etiology.  With the hypothesis of the first singularity, the theologian’s focus on etiology bifurcates precisely along the fault-line between two genres.

Shall theology project this nested form into the mirror in the domain in science?

0038 The first step in Albright’s development scenario corresponds to the stories of Adam and Eve through the Table of Nations (following the stories of Noah’s flood).  Here, Albright’s intuition hits the mark.  This step corresponds to a phase of human reason, that may be correctly labeled, “proto-logical”.

Not surprisingly, the “proto-logical” label also applies to all the literature of the ancient Near East that is listed by Arnold.

Indeed, the label, “proto-empirical”, also applies.

Imagine passage from a world that thinks in hand-speech talk to a world that thinks in speech-alone talk.  The former allows a diversity of implicit abstractions.  The latter does not, because explicit abstraction gums up the works of implicit abstraction.  In the proto-empirical phase, explicit abstraction starts to establish a life of its own.

0039 Arnold adds that the next etiological phase corresponds to the stories of Abraham.  The founding of the people of Israel touches base with Albright’s “empirical” phase.  The Biblical text changes in clarity and focus when passing from the mythohistories of Noah to the tales of Abraham.  Terah does not move from his long-established home city lightly.  He moves for empirical reasons.  Yes, it is history, but it is rendered as myth.

0040 So, the Primeval History, along with other written origin stories of the ancient Near East, may be gathered under the catchment of “mytho-history”.  This term has the same semiotic structure as “proto-logical” and “proto-empirical”.  Yes, it is logical, but it is before formal logic.  Yes, it is empirical, but it is before the empirical takes on a life of its own.

0041 Arnold notes that Albright sees how the term, “adamah”, changes from “humanity” to “a personal name”, in the course Genesis 2.4 through 4.

He sees the change as significant and unsettling.

But, he does not have a vision where the stories of Adam and Eve are located in the tourbillion of increasing unconstrained social complexity manifesting in the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

0042 Barth smiles at this unsettlement.  For this theologian, as soon as Adam is with us, so is Christ.

In the construction of the temple of the heavens and the earth, God creates humans in His image in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

In the manufacture of Adam’s body and the inspiration of Adam’s breath, God creates humans in our current Lebenswelt.

0043 Thus, the discontinuity of the first singularity that appears in the mirror of theology, located in the domain of theology, is reflected back in the mirror of science, located in the domain of science, as the discontinuity between Genesis 2:3 and Genesis 2:4.

I wonder.

Can I imagine that there is only one mirror?

0044 A twenty-first century reading of Genesis challenges evolutionary scientists.

Genesis joins all the written origin stories of the ancient Near East, in proclaiming what evolutionary scientists ignore,humans are created by the gods in recent prehistory.  Indeed, a causal observation of the archaeological data demands the proposal of a hypothesis like the first singularity, if only the separate two million years of evolution within constrained social complexity from the 7800 years of theodramatic madness within unconstrained social complexity.

But, there is more, see Razie Mah’s blog on October 1, 2022, for a research project for all of Eurasia.

0045 The stories of Adam and Eve precisely capture the theodramatic character and the absolutely crazy turns of events that typify our current Lebenswelt.  One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.  Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.

Meanwhile, the Creation Story intimates a deep prehistory, confounding the construction of the temple of the heavens and the earth with a counter-intuitive sequence of events that weirdly coincides with a phenomenological vision of the Earth’s evolutionary “progression”.  

0046 A twenty-first century reading of Genesis challenges theologians interested in the noumenon of humans, in our current Lebenswelt.

If the hypothesis of the first singularity becomes more and more plausible, so does a second doctrine of original sin,where the deficits of Augustine’s first attempt are amended, yielding a doctrine that applies to the post-truth condition. See Razie Mah’s blog for January 2, 2024 for a call to action.  Also see Razie Mah’s blog for July through October 2024.  These blogs will be assembled (for user convenience) as a three-part commentary, Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

12/24/24

Looking at Tomasz Duma’s Article (2023) “The Specificity of Secundum Dici Relations…” (Part 1 of 14)

0001 In 2017, the author publishes a book, in Polish, with the English title, “The Metaphysics of Relation: At the Basis of Understanding the Relations of Being”.  This article slices out one topic among many.

Thomas Aquinas uses the Latin term, relationes secundum dici, in ways that lead to a variety of interpretations.  Consequently, the complete title of this work is “The Specificity of Secundum Dici Relations in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics”.  The article appears in Studia Gilsoniana 12(4) (October-December 2023), pages 589-616.

0002 I know that this article is scholarly, because the summary (abstract) appears at the end of the text.

0003 Why does this article capture my attention?

The term translates into relations (relationes) according to (secundum) speech (dici)… er… talk (dici).

I don’t think the Romans have a word for forms of talking other than speech.

They are so civilized.

0004 The term applies to various questions, such as when a pagan calls his god, “Lord of the heavens”, as well as the relation between matter and form, the relation between accident and substance, qualities of things, one’s orientation in labeling one side of an auditorium “right” or “left”, and so.  These are just samples.  Duma presents five cases in detail.

0005 The dici term contrasts to a similar term, relationes secundum esse.

The latter translates into relations (relationes) according to (secundum) existence (esse)… er… esse_ce (esse).

Esse_ce?

Esse_ce is a written play on the Latin term, esse.

Esse_ce is the complement to essence.

Whatever has esse_ce also has essence.  Whatever has essence also has esse_ce.

0006 Those two statements sound like relationes secundum esse even though they may be relationes secundum dici.

Why?

The relation between esse_ce and essence is another way to state the relation between matter and form.

0007 Plus, the relation between matter and form is an exemplar of Peirce’s category of secondness, the dyadic realm of actuality (that contrasts with thirdness, the triadic realm of normal contexts, and firstness, the monadic realm of possibility).

Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  For Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the real elements are matter and form.  The contiguity is not named.  However, a name stands ready-at-hand.  That name is “substance”.  So, I can take the word, “substance”, and place it in brackets (for notation), to arrive at the following figure.

0008 Now, my interest in Duma’s article begins to clarify.

The relation between matter and form is a relation where the terminus of the relation is a word, so to speak, that denotes either the presence (matter) or the shape (form) of a thing.  But, it does not denote a thing (which expresses both esse_ce and essence).

The same goes for the creature calling his creator, “master”.

When I watch the ritual proclamation, I encounter two real elements, the creature and the proclaimed word.  I must figure out the contiguity between these two real elements.  Both real elements are locked in a literal relationes secundum dici (a relation according to talk).

So, I place my guess into the slot for contiguity.

0009 Because Aristotle’s hylomorphe is a premier example of Peirce’s secondness, the creature [calling Creator] aspect of the dyad carries the feel of matter [substance], esse_ce, or “existence”.  Also, the [calling Creator] “Master” aspect carries the feel of [substantiating] form or essence.

May I go as far to say that much of Aquinas’s philosophy carrries the feel of matter [substance] form, even as Aquinas transcends the esse_ce and essence of Aristotle’s philosophy in an intellectual flight towards a recognition that is so… so… divine?

God is Substance.

God is the contiguity between all real elements in Peirce’s secondness.

0010 According to John Deely’s massive book, Four Ages (2001 AD), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is an important waystation between St. Augustine (354-430), who poses the question of sign-relations, and John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot (1589-1644)), who finally and correctly identifies signs as triadic relations.

Aquinas mentions relatives in his discourses on various theological and philosophical questions and disputes.  The diciand esse relations stand out.  They are are similarly worded. The formula is relationes secundum X, where X is either esseor dici.  Esse relations pose few difficulties.  Dici relations lead to confusion and debate.

0011 Here is a table listing some of the characteristics of each.

0012 In this examination, I have already brought Duma’s article into relation with one aspect of Peirce’s philosophical schema.

I hope that no one is surprised.

The next step adds another layer and that may take the reader off guard.

12/23/24

Looking at Tomasz Duma’s Article (2023) “The Specificity of Secundum Dici Relations…” (Part 2 of 14)

0013 What is “dici”?

0014 Most translate the word into English as “speech”.

What happens when I consider the English word, “talk”.

0015 For the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, hominins walk with their feet and talk with their hands.  The initial motivation is obligate collaborative foraging in mixed forest and savannah ecologies, during the late Pliocene and the Pleistocene.

Hominins forage in teams, as evidenced by Oldowan stone tools.  Oldowan stone tools are hastily constructed, on the spot, during a scavenging team-situation.  One rock is struck against another is such a fashion that the target rock fractures, creating a “referent”, a sharp edge, that indicates what is is capable of doing.  It is capable of acting like giant tooth.

To me, the Oldowan stone tool represents the occasion of a relationes secundum esse (a relation according to esse_ce).  There is a sharp edge hidden within the target rock.  A few well-placed blows from another rock reveals that edge.  The edge is its essence.  The edge is what the original target rock refers to, if that stone could talk.

0016 Hand talk within team activities evolves along the same lines.  Every team has needs for members to indicate what they intend to do.  Such indication requires reference.

At first, manual-brachial gestures pantomime or point to their referents.  Then, each particular pantomime and pointing gets routinized into a gesture word, distinct from other gesture words.  So, hand-talk in teams becomes sort of (or proto) linguistic.  The key?  The referent precedes the gesture-word and is imaged or indicated by the gesture-word.  Plus, the gesture-word is used sensibly and avoids confusion.

0017 For example, the raven may be pantomimed in a way that distinguishes it from other birds (such as sparrow or vulture).  

0018 Now, this looks like a relationes secundum dici that is very close to a relationes secundum esse.   So, maybe I should call it relationes secundum dici (hand talk).  Since hand talk images and indicates its referents, and since the referent precedes the gestural-word, dici (hand talk) is just about the same as esse.

0019 What about this “proto-linguistic” business?

Well, the hand-talk word, [RAVEN], can be used in a statement about a raven or ravens in the course of a team activity.  Here, the term serves as a noun.

The same hand-talk word may be used in a way that stretches sensible construction (until it becomes a habit within the team’s repertoire).  That is to use [RAVEN] as an adjective to indicate a color.

For example, black fruits from a particular plant are ripe and ready for a team to harvest.  So, the elder of the team hand-talks the following.

0020 Surely, hand-talk naming of [RAVEN], plus its use as color, associate to relationes secundum esse, but technically belong to relationes secundum dici (hand talk).

Compared to Aristotle’s hylomorphe, both esse and dici (hand talk) occupy the slot for matter and relationes go into the slot for form.  The contiguity is [secundum].

Perhaps, this business about hand talk is a surprising development for philosophers engaged in the application of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas to various questions.

Thus begins the added layer.