0087 Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant are discussed in sections 2.2 and 2.3.

0088 Descartes is considered to be one of the great mechanical philosophers of the 17^th century.  He invents a tradition that becomes capable of substituting mathematical and mechanical models for the thing itself.

Weirdly, triumphalist natural science makes the noumenon superfluous.

That brings me to the metaphor of the leaf as a site for a type of inquiry that makes the tree of semiosis invisible.  I pull a leaf off the tree of semiosis, examine it carefully, and realize that it only proposes a mechanism that substitutes for the thing itself.

Does the tree of semiosis even exist?

Where do all these leaves, like ink-filled pages in academic journals, come from?  All I read about are observations and measurements of phenomena, as well as the mathematical and mechanical models that account for them.  Sheaves of leaves, all detached from… what?

0089 Well, from prior discussion on the nature of the Positivist’s judgment and the empirio-schematic judgment, I may construct the following association between Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay and Descartes’ triumphalist scientific paradigm.

It is just a guess.

0090 What about Descartes’ mind-body dualism?

Well, what if the noumenon is a wish?

Does the term, “wish”, associate to the mind or the body?

If wish (noumenon) associates to the mind, and if the observable and measurable facets of my wish are my choices (phenomena), then I can construct a model based on my bad choices that does not blame my conscious self (er…. “mind”) but rather my unconscious self (er… “body”).

Oh, that takes me back to Sigmund Freud.

0091 Now, I am not claiming that Freudian psychoanalysis is an exemplar of Descartes’ mind-body dualism.

My claim runs on a different set of tracks.

The locomotive manifests the power to move its body-cars and authorizes its own mission for why the cars are in the train.

As soon as the inquirer replaces the psychoanalytic noumenon, with a model of an unconscious locomotive, pulling the body along like a train and justifying itself to the mind, then the analytic dyad becomes the method by which a client comes to awareness of what drives unconscious wishes.

0092 Let me say that again.

What do the above figures imply?

Initially, conscious wishes constitute the real initiating event (SV_s) for this noumenal overlay.

0093 As soon as I commit an act of triumphalist science and replace the conscious wish with an unconscious one, then Freud’s schema detaches from the S&T noumenal overlay.  

Unconscious wishes are models that replace conscious wishes as the noumenon.

Bad choices serve as phenomena that can be observed and measured.  Observations of bad choices support models for how a locomotive for unconscious wishes both pulls the body along, like cars on a train, and justifies its own existence because the cars on the train must be going somewhere important.

The Freudian “driver of unconscious wishes” paradigm enters into Sharov and Tonnessen’s dyadic noumenal overlay as the source of real initiating events (SV_s) and then is objectified by bad choices (SO_s).

The real initiating event (SV_s) no longer consists of conscious wishes, but unconscious ones.

At this moment, the psychoanalyst lets go of the tree of semiosis because the locomotive-model (as noumenon) now generates real initiating events (SV_s) that stand for bad choices (SO_s).

The client now must learn how to place the locomotive on a track that produces less bad or maybe even good choices.

0094 In short, as soon as the triumphalist psychoanalyst claims the prize and places the locomotive-model in for the noumenon, the subject of inquiry changes to one that a biosemiotician is no longer interested in.  The real initiating event_2a is produced by a locomotive of desire, as if this hypothetical construct is a disembodied mind.

Okay, maybe the substitution of a locomotive model for the real initiating event_2a would create a subject of inquiry that a biosemiotician might be interested in.

Shall we ask what the locomotive has to say?

0095 Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay allows me to see how the character of biosemiotic models changes within the milieu of psychoanalysis.

What else have I learned?

Biosemiotic models primarily account for the habit of the major dyad.  Psychoanalytic disciplinary language and the potential of the analytic dyad correspond to self-governance and the potential of courses of action.  

Biosemiotic models secondarily account for the salience between bad choices (as observed phenomena) and attributions to a locomotion of unconscious wishes (as a source of phenomena).

0096 The primary biosemiotic models may be abbreviated with the term, “habit”.

The secondary biosemiotic models are a little more slippery.  The resonant dyad associates with the matter of semiotic agency and may be abbreviated with the term, “choice”.

Here is a picture of Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay, which has proved surprisingly adaptable so far, greatly simplified.

0097 Section 2.4 concerns evolution.

Botanist Jean Baptiste Lemark (1744-1829), natural philosopher Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and English polymath Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) observe natural phenomena.  Each builds models from their observations.  In doing so, each follows the Positivist’s judgment, to varying degrees.

0098 Here is a picture, one again.

0099 The noumenon may be described as each species, making its way in the world.  Jean Baptiste Lemark is a botanist, who argues that nature (not God) is the supreme author of all evolving things and conceives of evolution as nature’s self-governance.  This alone is a breakthrough viewpoint, especially in regards to the idea of semiotic agency.  The question that he apparently does not answer is how self-governance works on the potential of diverse courses of action.

0100 In this regard, Lemark’s models do not satisfy the expectations of success that allows a triumphalist scientist to place his models, over the noumenon, thereby resolving the tension introduced by Immanuel Kant.

0101 A lifetime later, Charles Darwin arrives at a model that does the job. Noting the practices of animal breeders, Darwin claims that nature itself selects for certain properties. Nature acts as ruthlessly as human animal breeders (who kill the animals that do not satisfy expectations).  “Breeder selection” becomes “natural selection”.  The trait being selected for gets re-labeled as “adaptation”.  The breeder selects for a particular trait based on some opportunity.  That opportunity becomes the niche, the potential to exploit ‘something’ independent of the adapting species.

0102 Darwin’s paradigm, is it really a model?

Or is it a noumenon?

It is not based on observations and measurements of the animal itself, but of what a human breeder is doing in order to um… play God with another species.

Oh, it is alright.  The breeder is really “playing nature”.

0103 Here is a picture of the resulting two-level interscope.

0104 Now, Darwin’s two-level interscope should look familiar.  It embodies a specifying-sign relation.

Using dog breeding as an example, burrows of various forest animals_2a (SV_s) stands for the long-narrow body of the dachshund or “badger dog”_2b (SO_s) in regards to selective breeding_3b of a dog able to participate in the hunting of badgers_1b (SI_s).

0105 At this point, Darwinism can be reformulated into a dyadic structure more suitable for overlaying onto the noumenon, since components of the structure are readily identified as phenomena or the stuff of models.

0106 Here is a picture of Darwinism portrayed as an S&T noumenal overlay.

0107 What about simplification?

I wonder whether this is where the English polymath, Herbert Spencer, comes into the picture. 

0108 Natural selection_3b operates on the potential of exploiting an actuality independent of the adapting species_1b and supports an evolutionary model_3b that Spencer labels, “survival of the fittest”.  It’s like a habit. Today, “survival of the fittest” is less provocatively named “differential reproductive success”.

0109 An adaptation is objectively oriented towards a goal. Do what it takes to stay alive.  So, the contiguity between the objective adaptation and the goal of staying alive may be labeled, “a choice”.

0110 Finally, nature asks, “If I bred animals for specific traits, what would I wish for?”

Would I wish for a dog that scurries down badger burrows?

Would I wish for a dog that runs a race-track and wins?

0111 Only a genius would tease out a simplification capable of transforming the discipline of biology from the scribbles of natural philosophers to the notebooks of scientific dachshunds.

0112 Spencer’s evolutionary vision is beautiful in its radical simplicity.  It is what the noumenon must be, if Darwin’s evolutionary schema is to be applicable.  For decades, most biologists demur, saying, “I would rather study biology as pure mechanism or through observations of natural phenomena.”

0113 But, Spencer’s breakthrough cannot be denied.

During the same decades, other post-Christendom polymaths begin working out the machinations of other “evolutionary visions”, in which an intellectual (or, should I say, “oligarchal”) vanguard selectively “habituates” humans according to their ideological formulations (wishes).  Adapt to our wish-filled system or die.  In some jurisdictions, this mandate becomes the human’s choice.

Well, that sounds existential.

0114 But, it establishes a point.

For some biological sciences, triumphalist scientists can overlay the noumenon with a successful model, just as in chemistry and physics.

For other biological sciences, something else is going on.

Sharov and Tonnessen’s dyad is not the first non-mechanistic noumenal overlay.

0115 Section 2.5 considers the non-mechanistic approaches of the American pragmatist, William James (1842-1910), and French philosopher, Henri Bergson (1859-1941).

These thinkers reject fully mechanistic models.

Do their ideas cohere to Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay?

0116 For example, James considers consciousness.  Consciousness is a state of semiotic agency.

This makes sense.

0117 Here is another option.

If one reduced the noumenal overlay of “consciousness” to a model of one specific type of incident where a real initiating event (such as a subject encountering loaded options provided by a state-empowered ideological agent) determines the same choice (regardless of the diversity of the human subjects), then a mechanism (the option preferred by the empowered agent is the “better” option) may be said to be a correct model.  Afterwards, this “successful” modelmay be placed over the noumenal overlay of “consciousness”.  Choice is habitually following the wishes of an ideological agent.

0118 This makes no sense at all.

Why?

The subject (human) lacks semiotic agency (the topic introduced in section 2.6).

0119 But, what if the intellects of the time (say, around 1900) say that the subject has agency in way of choice [habit] wish.  What if choice [habit] wish establishes a conceptual apparatus that can substitute for S&T’s semiotic agency as a noumenal overlay?

Then, is “consciousness” still relevant?

Sure, James and Bergson say so.  But, where are the mechanistic and mathematical models that are the fruits of the Positivist’s judgment when “consciousness” is positioned as the noumenon for human agency?

0120 Is this where phenomenology comes in?

Phenomenology is the topic of section 2.7.

0121 Razie Mah offers a series, titled “Phenomenology And The Positivist Intellect”.  E-articles within the series are available at smashwords and other e-book venues. The present blog fits nicely into this series, because… well… wait and see.

Sharov and Tonnessen’s book, Semiotic Agency, brings up the issue of phenomenology in section 2.7 and develops the theme of phenomenology in chapter 9.

So, section 2.7 is an introduction.

0122 I have already set a civilizational scene that draws phenomenology onto the stage as an actor who is trying to deal with the way that a theoretical construct that seems to be a mechanistic model (such as Spencer’s evolutionary vision as the dyad, choice [habit] wish) gets overlaid onto biological noumena and then is objectified by phenomena supporting empirio-schematic models that treat humans, not as semiotic agents, but as machines that validate the noumenal overlay.

0123 But, Spencer’s evolutionary vision is not a mechanistic model, even though it appears that way to the triumphalist biologist.  Rather, it is a declaration of what the noumenon should be for the evolutionary sciences.

Plus, it is a simplification of Darwin’s two-level interscope, re-configured in the style of S&T’s noumenal overlay (points 107-112).

The resulting phenomena support observations when wishes and choices are experimentally controlled.  After crunching the data, scientists offer a mathematical or mechanical model that characterizes the habit.

When applied to humans as biological subjects, the Positivist’s judgment does not make sense.

Human semiotic agency becomes a black box, to be replaced by a successful mathematical and mechanical model based on phenomena arising from the controlled initiation of wishes and the detached observation of choices.

Does this makes sense?

If phenomena are the observable and measurable facets of a noumenon, and if the noumenon is choice [habit] wish,then occasions of choices and wishes, even though metaphysical (in Aristotle’s sense of the term) must be classified as phenomena.

Humans are capable of observing and measuring these phenomena, because the tools to do so are innate.

0124 Phenomenology brings these statements to consciousness.

Section 2.7 introduces three phenomenologists.  Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961).  These academics resist behavioral approaches to human agency in a European civilization that is increasingly mechanized.  Indeed, mechanics serves as a metaphor… er… model for um… what the triumphalist biologists are saying that the noumenon must be.

Husserl develops a method for ascertaining what the noumenon must be.  The method brackets out both the mechanistic models of the natural sciences and popularized pseudo-models that seem like mechanisms, but really are not.  The method also brackets out common opinions.

So, I suppose that the phenomenalist intellect replaces the positivist intellect.

But, there is a caveat.

In order to retain academic respectability in the face of triumphalist scientists (who the phenomenologist co-opts), the rule of the positivist intellect still applies.  Metaphysics is to be treated as if it is not metaphysics.

0125 The result is the nearly the same as the nightmare produced when choice [habit] wish serves as the noumenal overlay.  The empirio-schematic judgment still makes observations and measurements. Novel disciplinary languagesare coined in order to build novel “mechanistic” models. 

At least, successful models no longer overlay their respective noumena.

Rather, each model sort of melds in with its noumenon, since the noumenon is a guess made by someone trained in the arts of phenomenology.

0126 I suspect that there are two ways to approach the art of phenomenology.

That is to say, there seems to be two ways to express the phenomenologist intellect.

Okay, there are actually three (F, G and H).

0127 One (F), section 2.8 covers the hermeneutic way.  The art of phenomenology involves interpretation.  Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Wilhelm Dilthey (1914-2006), and Hans-George Gadamer (1900-2002) are implicated.  These intellectuals push hard against the rule of the positivist intellect.  Gadamer’s Truth and Method (1927) goes as far as to say that the methods of the natural sciences do not apply to human phenomena.

0128 Of course, that doesn’t work.

Grants to government funding agencies require a section on methods.

And, the empirio-schematic judgment is the only method that sells.

After all, it is what ought to be for the Positivist’s judgment.

The truth be damned!

Or better, ignored.

0129 Two (G), section 2.9 covers all the implications of that last statement.  The truth of human subjectivity is the reason why empirio-schematic objectivity is well… dehumanizing.  Human subjectivity is how humans exist.  Without that “existence”, phenomenologists could not practice their methods.  The two intellectuals most implicated in the existentialist approach are Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973).

The truth is that humans cannot be broken down into mathematical and mechanical models.

But, they can be broken by them.

0130 Three (H), section 2.10 offers an alternative formulation, “What if humans can be broken down into automata?  If so, then being broken by automata is not so bad, because humans are automata, too.”

Isn’t that the truth?

0131 So, what are “automata”?

The word, “auto-” means “self”.

What about “-mata”?

Does that mean “governing”?

0132 With the cybernetic approach, the path to biosemiotics becomes obvious.  Even though cybernetics returns to the Positivist’s judgment for biologists, certain modifications have been made.  In a hat tip to phenomenology, the cybernetic intellect allows metaphysical mechanisms (corresponding to Aristotle’s formal and final causes) as long as they aren’t “metaphysical” (that is, associated to religious presuppositions).

Yes, the term, “metaphysical” has fallen on hard times.  Aristotle coins the term to mean the causalities that cannot be accounted for by material and efficient causalities.  Scholastics take the term to formulate religious doctrine.  Then, unscrupulous modern intellectuals confound Aristotle and the scholastics, in such a way as to discredit both.

Why?

How else is one to satisfy the rule of the positivist intellect?  Metaphysics is not allowed.

0133 Like phenomenologists, cyberneticists maintain the appearance of following the rule, while skirting around it.

For example, Claude Shannon (1916-2001) invents of a way to measure information based on the degradation of a signal between sender and receiver.  This theoretical advance takes formal and final causes as constants (so to speak), so the variable habit of transmission can be modeled according to the phenomena of a choice (to send a signal) and a wish (to receive a signal).

Or, is it the other way around?

0134 In 1948, Norbert Weiner (1894-1964) publishes a book titled Cybernetics, opening the door to systems and information theory.  How do we control (that is, habituate) communication in the animal and the machine?

Observe and measure their wishes and choices.

Then build mechanistic models of their habits.

0135 Here is a picture of how the biologist’s Positivist’s judgment gets modified.

For example, consider a computer that tells me that I have typed in a digital ID number that is not permitted by the Institute for Corralling Humans.

Well, my wish is to type in a number that will allow me to register for my daily allotment of feed.

And my choice is that I must type the number again, even though I am still hungry from my last paltry allotment.

0136 Here a map of the general functional circle.

Maybe the circle should be enclosed within the brackets of [habit].

0137 This leads to a question.

What do the authors, Sharov and Tonnessen, offer that cybernetics does not?

Answer: They offer a more semiotic friendly overlay.

0138 One does not see sign-processes bubbling within a noumenon such as choice [habit] wish.

One sees the semiotics within S&T’s noumenal overlay.

The triadic specifying sign-relation has been converted into a noumenal dyad, consistent with Peirce’s category of secondness and reminiscent of Aristotle’s hylomorphe.

Plus, the resulting phenomena are better delineated.  The real-initiating event associates to the SV_s.  The dyad of information [and] goal associates to the SO_s.  These phenomena can be witnessed by any human because the S&T noumenal overlay not only applies to humans, but humans are adapted to this actuality₂, which is independent of the adapting genus_2a.

Finally, the things that needs to be modeled, [the contiguity between SO_s and SV_s] and [the continuity within SO_s],directly and indirectly pertain to SI_s.

0139 Chapter Two ends and brings Part I to a conclusion with a promise.

A journey awaits the biosemiotician.

Where can the S&T noumenal overlay take us?

As far as the functional circle goes, the S&T noumenal overlay offers an image that is far more clarifying than choice [habit] wish.

Indeed, the functional circle resides within the sign-interpretant of the specifying sign-relation (SI_s).

0140 Part 3 is titled, “Theoretical Considerations”.

The first chapter of Part III, chapter six, is titled, “Conceptualizing Agency”.

0141 In Part I, this examiner developed a dyad for semiotic agency.

Here is a picture.

0142 In section 6.1, the authors ask (more or less), “What is the ontological status of semiotic agency?”

0143 Table 6.1 provides a list of definitions for the term.

0144 What are the attributes of agency?

0145 The first attribute is wholeness. S&T’s noumenal overlay constitutes a whole thing.  This dyadic “whole thing” contains a two contiguous real elements.

The second attribute is the capacity to generate end-directed behaviors.

Agency_2b fits the bill.  Agency_2b is a specifying sign-object (SO_s) [in contiguity with] a goal.

The real elements in the above figure can be observed and measured by humans.  As such, they serve as phenomena that objectify semiotic agency.

0146 The third attribute is normative constraint in the agent’s interaction with the environment.  Normative constraints apply to potential ‘courses of action’_1b (SI_s).  In fact, one of the jobs of biosemioticians is to identify normative constraints.

0147 The fourth is sign processing.  Indeed, S&T’s noumenal overlay presents a sign-relation (corresponding to Peirce’s category of thirdness) as a dyadic structure, corresponding to both Aristotle’s hylomorphe and Peirce’s category of secondness.

Why is the presentation of thirdness as secondness crucial for scientific inquiry?

Secondness exhibits the logics of contradiction and noncontradiction.  If a scientist consistently observes and measures certain intuitively obvious phenomena, such as SV_s, SO_s and goal, then semiotic agency should belong to secondness.  Even though different biosemioticians hold different intuitions (as to what the corresponding phenomena are), contradictions concerning the noumenon can be discussed and resolved.

0148 The fifth attribute testifies to the weirdly unconstrained nature of semiotic agency.

In other words, Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay veils a fully semiotic noumenon.  The physical and metaphysical causalities in sign-relations are not bounded in the same way that the truncated material and instrumental causalities of natural and laboratory science are.  Sign-relations entangle the material world.  So, from the point of view that only observable and measurable phenomena may be mathematically and mechanically modeled, sign-relations are problematic.

It is like describing the material and instrumental causalities of a spoon without recognizing that, when mother shakes a spoon at you at dinner table, that means to sit up straight.

0149 Table 6.1 sets the stage for a declaration of the author’s point of view.

The book is peppered with such declarations.  The authors take their mission seriously.

So, what is the declaration?

The time has come to bring the notion of semiotic agency “back” into science.

0150 What does this imply?

As previously discussed, this implies that the time has come for a biosemiotic version of the Positivist’s judgment.

0151 Of course, there are caveats.

The authors call them “heuristics”.

They should call them, the three please do’s (P, Q and R).

0152 First (P), please, limit agents to things that are accessible to observation and measurements (see points 0153-0174).

Second (Q), please, do not explain agency by any hypothesized substances or forces other than those already known to modern natural science, social sciences and humanities (see points 0175-0176).

Third (R), please, do not link agency with unproven, speculative physical effects such as subatomic quantum factors, extra dimensions in space, and so on (0177).

0153 Does Sharov and Tonnessen’s dyadic noumenal overlay fit these heuristics?

First, S&T’s semiotic agency [can be objectified by] its phenomena (more or less).

Indeed, the very structure of their noumenal overlay directs the inquirer to those elements that give rise to phenomenaand to those elements that call for models.

0154 This is one of the advantages of biosemiotics compared to phenomenology and cybernetics.

Phenomenologists rely on an intuition that is naturally informed by S&T’s noumenal overlay.

Phenomenologists intuitively ascertain what the noumenon must be.  The results are overlaid onto the noumenon, in such a fashion as to yield observable and measurable facets (that is, phenomena).  Then, these novel phenomena support novel empirio-schematic inquiry.

0155 For example, the empirio-schematic natural sciences may observe and measure the combustion of a house.  Then, they may model the process in terms of reagents (fuel and oxygen), heat release (the natural course of combustion), and initiation (what starts the fire).  All these can be observed and measured.

The phenomenologist will say, “That is not sufficient to account for the phenomena.”

After all, someone’s home is on fire.

0156 As soon as the house, as a site for human belonging, is regarded as what the noumenon must be, then empirio-schematics consider phenomena that objectify the home.  Social scientists may look into obtaining grants to study the statistics of home fires, in order to assess social causes, as well as civilizational costs and consequences.  They collect data and build models.

0157 But, is that enough?

0158 What if a home is characterized as two real elements, a wish and a choice?  What if the contiguity between that wish and choice is a habit?

Well, then a cybernetic intellect (relation, thirdness) may bring this new noumenon, choice [habit] wish, along with its related phenomena, into relation with mechanisms that account for the contiguity, habit.

0159 Let me take one more step in the cybernetic paradigm and ask the following question.

What about what people think?

Well, phenomenology applied to the political sciences produces curious noumena, er… models that substitute for… what people think.   What people say constitute the corresponding phenomena.

Of course, the classical Positivist’s what is of what people think [cannot be objectified as] what people say must be overcome when the noumenon consists of a response to a relativist one’s initiative (think, “government agency’s action”).  Observations and measurements of what people say are conducted by psychometric scientists (think, “surveys”) and modeled on the basis of capitalist and socialist frameworks (that is, specialized scientific languages within the psychometric sciences).

0160 The psychometric sciences are discussed in Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition, (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.)  The inquirer may also look at Razie Mah’s blog for the months of July through October, 2024.

Like psychoanalysis, the psychometric sciences aim to substitute capitalist and socialist models in for the noumenon of what people think.

The enterprise is highly lucrative.

0174 Do you know where I am going with this?

Do I know where I am going with this?

Ah, the question!

Does Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay satisfy the three principles listed in point 0152?

I examine the first item.

First (P), limit agents to things that are accessible to observation and measurements.

In other words, for biosemiotics, limit phenomena to the noumenal items portrayed in green.

0175 What about the second admonition (Q) in point 0152?

Do not explain agency by any hypothesized substances or forces other than those already known to modern natural science, social sciences and humanities.

This suggestion is pictured in blue in the above figure.

0176 Of course, the term, “substances”, needs clarification.

According to Razie Mah, the term, “substance”, may be used to label the contiguity between the real elements of matter and form.  By extension, Aristotle’s hylomorphe is an exemplar for Peirce’s category of secondness.

The problem is that the word, “substance”, can be applied to all sorts of crazy notions. 

So, biosemioticians take note.  Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay suggests that substances need to be explained by biosemiotic models.  Substances are not explanations.  They are contiguities that need to be explained.

0177 The third please-do in point 0152 (R) says, “Do not link agency with unproven, speculative physical effects such as subatomic quantum factors, extra dimensions in space, and so on.”

Both authors work as editors in the fledgling field of biosemiotics.  Imagine the manuscripts that they have received.  How does one explain triadic sign-relations in terms of dyadic cause and effect?

Here, I wonder.  Are these diagrams equivalent to subatomic quantum factors, extra dimensions in space, and so on? 

Obviously not, physical factors do not cause purely relational beings.  Physical factors may be drawn into a triadic relation.  And, that makes it difficult to tell which is more real.

Physics or metaphysics?What is the nature of reality?