[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

[Nick Thompson]

Hi,, Jon, 

 

Another case of my being at risk of drowning in my own thread.*  Ach!

 

Please see larding below.

 

Nick 

 

*!!!!! Mixed metaphor alert.  Can one drown in a thread?  I think Dave is going to like that metaphor!  

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2019 12:46 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

 

Nick,

 

`Signs all the way down` ... hmm.

 

Such a theory strikes me as necessarily objective, in the sense that:

1) there is nothing that signs ultimately refer to, signs

are not produced through reflection about the world.

[NST==>To be honest, I am having trouble understanding your meaning of “objective”, so I may be off the mark, here, but… :  Let’s say for starters that a sign is a relation such that if I stands in relation to O via S, S is a signifier of O for I.  OK, now that is an objective relation in the sense that you and I, and scientists everywhere, could have a meaningful conversation about whether these conditions are fulfilled by any situation in nature.  I think when those conversations are held, we will see controversially that all biological systems, including human social systems, are governed by signs.  In some of his writings, Peirce seems to take the step down to the next level and insist that physical laws are of the same character.  People like me call that “Weird Peirce”:  we are tantalized by it but we don’t like to be caught  talking about it in public.  Please see my comments about Sheldrake, below. <==nst] 

2) that the corresponding system of signs is to be taken

as the privileged frame of reality, there is no world.

[NST==>Well, I agree if you mean by “no world”, no world apart from experience as I use the term (monistically –i.e. the world consists of everything that is experienced and there is not experience outside of experience because experience is just everything that is.  Or, you could put it the other way around and switch the words experience and world in the above sentence and still be a proper monist.)  It really doesn’t matter to a monist what you call “it”, because every naming I inevitably falsifies monism by  implying a contrast.   <==nst] 

 

To the extent that you agree with this characterization

of your own Piercean interpretation, what prevents the

ultimate collapsing of sign (and reality) under Baudrillard's

`sign as universal equivalent`?

[NST==>alas, I don’t know what you are talking about here. <==nst] 

 

Wrt Sheldrake, I remember being tempted by his theory

that the universe evolves through habit.

[NST==>Oh, Crap!  Now I have to read Sheldrake.  Your words might have been written by Peirce.  In fact, come to think of it, I think they WERE written by Peirce.  Since I cannot do this justice now, I am going to cc Mike Bybee, and see what he has to say.  <==nst] 

 I very much enjoy

thinking that physical law began through arbitrary and

frivolous fluctuations before settling on what happened

most. In an effort to see where he would take such a

theory, I found some youTube videos of him speaking.

My favorite and perhaps most  disillusioning was a

talk he gave at Google, where with maybe six people

in the room, I had the privilege to observe what a

rhetor he was capable of being. Now, I almost

never think about him or his theory.

 

Jon

[NST==>Jon, please put aside readings for me for when I get back. N<==nst] 

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