Semetsky From Design to Organization or a Proper Structure for a Proper Function

8/13/2019 Semetsky From Design to Organization or a Proper Structure for a Proper Function

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/semetsky-from-design-to-organization-or-a-proper-structure-for-a-proper-function 1/23

INNA SEMETSKY

FROM DESIGN TO SELF-ORGANIZATION, OR: A PROPERSTRUCTURE FOR A PROPER FUNCTION

ABSTRACT. It is suggested that Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic semiotics providesa framework for a diagrammatic representation of a sign’s proper structure. Theaction of signs is described at the logical and psychological levels. The role of (un-conscious) abductive inference is analyzed, and a diagram of reasoning is offered. Aseries of interpretants transform brute facts into interpretable signs thereby pro-viding human experience with value or meaning. The triadic structure helps in de-mystifying the relations between Penrose’s three worlds when the latter are con-sidered as constituting a semiotic triangle.

KEY WORDS: abduction, Peirce, Penrose’s three worlds, process ontology,semiotic reality, the diagrammatic reasoning, the complex plane

1. INTRODUCTION

Following the framework supplied by the triadic nature of a sign(linguistic or non-linguistic) as per C.S. Peirce’s semiotic categories,this paper will propose a type of structural or formal organizationfor what Millikan (1984) identied as proper functions. In otherwords, so as to function properly, a certain organizational pattern – let us call it ‘‘a proper structure’’ – must be satised. However, aproper structure proposed in this paper, and in contrast toMillikan’s conceptualisations, is not associated with explicit pur-pose, design or goal. Rather the goal is implicit or virtual, and as

such is inherent in the dynamical or process-structure per se . Thepaper will also demonstrate that for the structure to be functionaland not dis-functional (pun intended, but see also Bickhard 2004),we ought to assume the existence of a level beyond the reality of the world of objects ‘‘out there’’ accessible to sense perception. Thepaper will posit this level as semiotic or pre-symbolic, that is, in a

Conference ‘‘Dynamic Ontology: An Inquiry into Systems, Emergence, Levels of Reality, and Forms of Causality’’ University of Trento, Italy, September 7–11, 2004.

Axiomathes (2005) 15:575–597 Springer 2005DOI 10.1007/s10516-005-2780-6



certain way extra-linguistic. So in the most general terms this paperaims away from the infamous linguistic turn and towards, let mecall it, a semiotic turn.

The paper, rst, will introduce three basic Peirce’s categories andconnect them with his three types of inference, including abduction.In the current philosophy of science discourse abduction is usuallytaken in one sense only, as an inference to the best explanation; thispaper will posit abductive inference as open to interpretation in psy-chological and, quite possibly, naturalistic terms. Peirce sometimesused abduction interchangeable with retroduction. What he meant,however, is that retroduction is a process encompassing abduction.The paper, secondly, will propose a model of such a retroductiveprocess. For this purpose I will employ a mathematical formalismborrowed from Gauss who left us an ingenious interpretation of acomplex number (Figure 1). Third, and in order to demonstrate thevery dynamics inherent in the retroductive process, I will model thecomponents as vectors on the Gauss plane (Figure 2). This interpre-tation, I suggest, is in compliance with Peirce positing logic as ascience of the necessary laws of thought and his also asserting thatthe semiotic categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness arethe ‘‘conceptions of complexity’’ (Peirce CP 1. 526).

The inferential process reected in the triadic relational structurepresupposes the presence of continual feedbacks. The presence of

Figure 1 . The complex plane.

INNA SEMETSKY576



feedbacks is, in accord with the dynamical systems theory, a pre-condition for self-organization. The self-organizing dynamics makesthe positing of a design, or purpose, or external goal a moot point.However, this does not dispute the directionality, or teleological

dimension, presupposed by Millikan’s proper functions founded assuch on learning and integration or, as Peirce was saying, synthesis.In fact, the directionality is maintained and is inherent in the verydenition of a vector, which has both magnitude and direction. Itis just that a goal is immanent to the structure per se, tendingtowards what Peirce has rather mysteriously classied as a sign of itself. The directionality, however, is not meant to represent any di-rect cause-effect link. A triadic relation is indirect, or mediated, thevery concept of causality therefore begging a question.

Vectors, having both direction and magnitude, are potentiallyopen to interpretation not only in mathematical, but physical termsas well; that is, the suggested model may very well represent theaforementioned hypothetical, semiotic, level of reality. Similarly,the triadic structure posits a level, which exceeds references: it is alevel of meanings embedded in the ternary structure of the sign.While staying at the level of mathematical formalism, the triadicstructure, nonetheless, may be considered as also representing phys-ical qualities, thereby making a generic mental representation openin principle to explanation in physical and objective terms. Ourconceptualisations in terms of self-organization and the emergence

Figure 2 . The resultant vector.

FROM DESIGN TO SELF-ORGANIZATION 577



of meanings at a different level of complexity seem to overcome theanalytic paradox as well as the suspected inconsistency betweenarticulating representations and meanings as per Peirce’s semiotics.

2. THE ACTION OF SIGNS

The word sign is ambiguous. While traditionally dened as some-thing that stands for something else, the notion of a sign as used inthis paper follows Peirce’s triadic conception so as to underline thedynamic character of the sign-process. A sign can be anything thatstands to somebody, a sign-user, for something else, its object, insome respect and in such a way so as to generate another sign,called its interpretant . In the broadest sense, Peirce used the wordrepresentamen to designate a sign, in agreement with the wordrepresentation describing both the dynamic process and the terminusof such a process, by which one thing stands for another. Eachrepresentamen , or sign, is related to three things, the ground , theobject and the interpretant . With respect to its ground, the represen-tamen, as ‘‘used by every scientic intelligence...may embody anymeaning’’ (Peirce CP 2. 229). Peirce gave the name semiosis to theprocess of generation, exchange, and interpretation of signs, that is,

a continuous communication and interaction between signs by vir-tue of quasi-utterer and quasi-interpreter. The relation of standing for always involves the mind – or quasi-mind, as in the case of qua-si-utterer that, for example, utters the signs of the weather – and istherefore quasi-intentional: because all thought is sign-process, allsign-processes are idea-like. Due to the innite stream of interpre-tants, that is, the systems relating a sign vehicle to its object, the to-tal number of meanings is potentially innite. Furthermore, it is notrequired for the interpretant to actually exist: for Peirce, it being in futuro accounts for its reality. Signs grow and become other signs,contributing via their interpretants to learning and the evolution of human consciousness: a thought that has passed from a genuinedoubt to belief is a sign of signs, or representation.

The modern conception of logic has been developed by Peirce toinclude a general theory of signs, making semiotics tantamount tologic, the latter including what Peirce called abduction , or peculiarlogic of discovery or hypothesis-generation. While representing, in anarrow sense, the necessary conditions for the attainment of truth,logic for Peirce ‘‘is a science of the necessary laws of thought, or,better still (thought always taking place by means of signs), it is a

INNA SEMETSKY578



general semeiotics, treating not merely of truth, but also of thegeneral conditions of signs being signs’’ (Peirce CP 1. 444). Peircealso included in his conceptualisations the ideas of a set of beliefs,which – as habits of thinking – are both culturally produced and also derived from a common layer of shared experiences.

The triadic nature of relations between signs leads to Peirce’sclassifying signs in terms of three basic ontological categories:‘‘First is the conception of being or existing independent of any-thing else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the con-ception of reaction with, something else. Third is the conception of mediation, whereby rst and second are brought into relation.... Inpsychology, Feeling is First, Sense of reaction Second, Generalconception Third, or mediation...Chance is First, Law is Second,the tendency to take habits is Third. Mind is First, Matter is Sec-ond, Evolution is Third’’ (Peirce CP 6.7). Firstness is quality, possi-bility, freedom, spontaneity, and novelty. Secondness, as a relationof the First to the Second, is of opposites, this or that of reality,billiard-ball forces, rigid deterministic laws, direct cause and effect,action and reaction. Thirdness relates seconds to thirds; it is syn-thesis, communication, memory, and mediation in general.

By virtue of their meanings, ‘‘the ideas play a part in the real

world’’ (Peirce MS 967. 1). The relationship between meanings andhabits is one of reciprocal presupposition: meanings may changedepending on the formation of new habits; in turn, the new mean-ings eventually affect the change in habits, despite the seeminglyxed character of the latter. For Peirce, the meaning of a thing liesin the ‘‘habits it involves’’ (Peirce CP 5. 4). Precisely because of thexed nature of habits, the abrupt change in meaning may comeabout by what Peirce identied as a cataclysm in the otherwisecontinuous evolutionary process.

Peirce asserted that growth, evolution, and complexity representthe basic facts in the universe. He further noticed that these factslead to a possibility ‘‘that there is probably in nature some agencyby which the complexity and diversity of things can be increased’’(Peirce CP 6.58). The mechanical law alone would not explain thiscomplexity; the infallible mechanical laws are insufficient. ‘‘Howcan the regularity of the world increase, if it has been absolutelyperfect all the time?’’ asks Peirce (CP 1.174). Physical laws them-selves are, in semiotic terms, the result of habits: matter (Second),for Peirce, is effete mind (First), and the mind (First) has to beentrenched in habits (Thirds) so as to congeal, as Peirce says, into




matter (Second). Peirce’s basic categories are expressed in numbersthat are not simply ordinal or sequential but cardinal, that is, theThirdness, by denition, includes Secondness and Firstness. Peircerefused to ‘‘conceive of the psychical and the physical aspect of matter as two aspects absolutely distinct’’ (Peirce CP 6. 268). Hisholism implies the coordination between the two different aspectsof one total process: matter is mind, whose habits became so xedand rigid that the ‘‘mind’’ in question is unable to either take anew habit or break an old one. Habit taking as an evolutionaryprocess – the cardinality of Thirdness – exists only providing itincludes Firstness in itself, in a form of chance, feeling, creativity,novelty, or freedom, as a necessary condition of its own dynamics.

The result of abductive inference is the guess proffered or thehypothesis drawn. If reasoning from premises to conclusion is con-sidered to be either deductive, or inductive, or fallacious, then anabductive guess understood as an inference to the best explanation,that expresses merely some likelihood in reasoning, would seem torepresent a fallacious kind, indeed, and is considered as such withinthe analytic discourse. In a Peircean sense, however, abduction sug-gests that something might possibly be the case (Peirce CP 5. 171).For Peirce, what is real cannot be in any way reduced to the

actual, in fact ‘‘the will-be’s, the actually-is’s and the have-been’sare not the sum of the real. They only cover actuality. There arebesides would be’s and can be’s that are real’’ (Peirce CP 8. 216),such would-be-ness constituting the realm of the virtual, however,still semiotically real , world. 1 The semiotically real world thereforeincludes possibilities ‘‘articulated’’ by means of abduction.

At the ontological level, Firstness as a mode of being is possibility,Secondness – actuality, that is, existence, and Thirdness – potential-ity. But because thoughts as the signs in the category of Thirdnessmust include Firstness as qualities and Secondness as facts, theontological and experiential levels interpenetrate: the potentia of Thirdness is what connects the possible with the actual. By the sametoken, although Peirce assessed meanings as ‘‘altogether virtual ...[because located] not in what is actually thought, but in what thisthought may be connected with in representation by subsequentthoughts’’ (Peirce CP 5. 289) – in futuro , that is – they are still maxi-mally real due to their ability to produce real effects in terms of con-sequences, or ‘‘practical bearings’’ (Peirce CP 5. 402) in accord withPeirce’s pragmatic maxim. The realm of the virtual nonetheless con-stitutes ‘‘Reality which by some means contrives to determine the

INNA SEMETSKY580



Sign to its Representation’’ (Peirce CP 4. 536), the contrivance indi-cating a possession of an implicit goal or purpose.

3. ABDUCTION AND INSIGHT

Meanings exist in virtue of the relational sign-process in which thewhole triadic relation of the sign to its object via interpretantbecomes the object of the new sign. As the First logical category,abduction therefore is part of the total inferential or reasoning pro-cess. 2 All cognition, for Peirce, is sign-mediated, however the First-ness of abduction is presented in an instance and is directly hadprior to the Thirdness of mediation. Abductive inference blendsinto a perceptual judgment, which ‘‘is subconscious...[and] does nothave to make separate acts of inference but performs its acts in onecontinuous process’’ (Peirce 1998, p. 227). Abduction does seem tofunction instantaneously not because there is no temporal intervalof inference, but because the mind remains unaware of when it be-gins or ends: psychological immediacy and logical mediation consti-tute what Peirce has called a ‘‘mediated immediacy’’ (Peirce CP. 5.181). It is amenable to a clear insight, therefore becoming con-scious: sure enough, the abductive suggestion ‘‘comes to us as a

ash. It is an act of insight ’’ (Peirce CP 5. 181). Albeit fallible, itstill has a mysterious power ‘‘of guessing right’’ (Peirce CP 6. 530)even while being pre-conscious and not rationally controllable sothat it leads to judgment forced upon one’s acceptance by thetotally involuntary mental process.

At this level of the real and ‘‘physically efficient’’ (Peirce CP 5.431) generals , a hypothetical idea constitutes what Peirce called apsychological ground for a habit that carries a avour of anticipa-tion: it ‘‘is already determinative of acts in the future to an extentto which it is not now conscious’’ (Peirce CP 6. 156). Describingthe structure of perceptual abduction, Peirce pointed out ‘‘the rstpremise is not actually thought, though it is in the mind habitually.This, of itself would not make the inference unconscious. But it isso because it is not recognized as an inference; the conclusion is ac-cepted without our knowing how’’ (Peirce CP 8. 64–65). For Pei-rce, the hint to conjecture or hypothesis is derived from experience:the stimulus to abductive guessing is out there, in the specic, here-and-now, conditions present in the phenomenal world.

At the psychological level, abduction is an intuitive and quasi-immediate perception of the object. Peirce’s genuine doubt is not a




personal doubt of a Cartesian subject but has an external origin byvirtue of a surprising, anomalous or perplexing, instance: it is anobjective uncertainty constituted by tension or difference betweenthe present experience and the whole of the organism–environmentsystem. 3 It is just a feeling, the First, indeed an imaginative hintamounting to ‘‘sensations so faint’’ (Peirce and Jastrow 1884, quo-ted in Hacking 1990, p. 205) so as to bypass the level of cognitiveawareness. 4 Peirce emphasized the feeling-tone of abduction sayingthat every abductive inference involves a particular emotion: ‘‘thevarious sounds made by the instruments in the orchestra strikeupon the ear, and the result is a peculiar musical emotion... Thisemotion is essentially the same thing as a hypothetic inference’’(Peirce CP 2. 643). In a characteristic language, Peirce and Jastrowcommented that the ‘‘insight of females as well as certain ‘tele-pathic’ phenomena may be explained in this way. Such faint sensa-tions ought to be fully studied by the psychologist and assiduouslycultivated by every man’’ (in Hacking 1990, p. 206).

An unconscious inference functioning abductively as intuition isthe cognitively unmediated, as Firstness, access to knowledge. Theknowledge organization that proceeds in a habitual way becomes‘‘fully accepted’’ (Peirce CP 7. 37) and as such ‘‘tends to obliterate

all recognition of ...premises from which it was derived’’ (CP 7. 37):the inferential steps per se stay out of consciousness, we are notaware of them. Sure enough, Peirce considered intuition not as acapacity of the mind, but just the opposite, as one of the fourso-called incapacities articulated by Peirce in 1868: we cannot intuitknowledge directly as every cognition is logically determined byprevious cognition. But ‘‘if we were to subject this subconsciousprocess to logical analysis, we should nd that it terminated inwhat this analysis would represent as an abductive inference’’(Peirce CP 5. 181). What seems to be a paradox is part and parcelof the tri-relative, synechistic , and ‘‘self-generative’’ (Peirce CP 1.409) semiotic process, described by a general law ultimately denedin terms of the ‘‘tendency of all things to take habits’’ (Peirce CP 6.101). Habits, for Peirce, are dispositions to act in a certain wayunder specic circumstances ‘‘and when actuated by a given mo-tive’’ (Peirce CP 5. 480), a ‘‘motive’’ performing therefore a pur-poseful, teleological function.

The mind ‘‘hidebound with habits’’ (Peirce 1955, p. 351) is whatwe call matter; there is life in the diversication of structuresand combination of forms; those forms embody ideas. An act of

INNA SEMETSKY582



imagination that in-habits the Firstness of possibilia is potentiallytransformative, according to Peirce, in its function to generate ameaning for a habit. Peirce called these ontological possibilities‘‘airy nothings to which the mind of a poet, pure mathematician,or another might give local habitation and a name within thatmind’’ (Peirce CP 6. 455). New information, derived from asthough ‘‘nothingness’’ of the unconscious with the help of aninsight and as the effect of interpretation, not only conceptualisesan idea but also embodies it in the physical world of action: it isthe Thirdness of interpretation that governs Secondness because it‘‘brings information ...determines the idea and gives it body’’(Peirce CP 1. 537). Interpretation contributes to transformation of in-formation from the unconscious into consciousness, implying apossibility of not only habits taking but also habits breaking.

This transformation, or habit-change inscribed in the evolution-ary process, would be impossible if not for the Thirdness of ‘‘medi-ation, which is the continuity of it [and] is brought about by a realeffective force behind consciousness’’ (Peirce 1955, p. 237), as wellas for the Firstness as a category of tychism . Peirce’s philosophy isevolutionary not because of its sole reliance on Darwinian principleof natural selection but because the greater realizations of mean-

ings due to the chain of interpretants involved in a continuoussemiotic communication is a feature of organic evolution: ‘‘theman-sign acquires information and comes to mean more than hedid before’’ (Peirce 1955, p. 249). Peirce’s typology of signs, interms of the different manner in which signs stand for their objects,includes icons (or images), indices, and symbols, and a perfect sign,for Peirce, would have had an ideally equal admixture of ‘‘the ico-nic, indicative, and symbolic characters’’ (Peirce CP 4. 448). As forutterances, however, the fact of substituting an index for the mean-ing more often than not, impoverishes the linguistic signs becauseof mistaking the part for the whole (see note 14 further below),analogous to the mechanistic Secondness considered to be all thereis, at the expense of Firstness and Thirdness.

4. A DIAGRAM OF REASONING

Peirce asserted that all logical relations, and accordingly theprocess of semiosis, could be studied by means of being displayedin the form of existential graphs, or iconic representations; suchdiagrammatic reasoning may yield solutions to the otherwise




unsolvable logical problems. A diagram is an icon in Peircean cate-gorization, and because icons are described in term of structuralproperties common with their referents, the diagrammatic reason-ing is especially advantageous in semiotics or logic of relations, aswell as bringing out experimental and exploratory character of rea-soning (Greaves 2002). Unlike the sentential dyadic reasoning, anabstract diagram is open to the Thirdness of interpretation therebycreating meaning, which is implicit in its very structure.

In this section I suggest a model of abductive inference based onPeirce’s triadic structure of a sign. 5 The spatial representation of the structure is a grid, although non-Cartesian: the two coordinateaxes are located on a Gauss (or Argand) plane and marked withimaginary, on a vertical axis, and real on a horizontal axis, num-bers, respectively. An imaginary number i is the square root of minus one. Descartes had a rather derogatory attitude towardsimaginaries: it was he who rst coined the name. There was noplace for them in Newton’s mechanistic philosophy either: he con-sidered them plainly impossible. Leibniz recognized their intermedi-ary character and positioned them at the ontological level betweenbeing and non-being. The true metaphysics of imaginary numberwas elusive even for Gauss. He, however, agreed that their geomet-

rical or diagrammatic representation establishes their meaning.Imaginary and real numbers together form a plane, on which a

point represents a complex number a+b i . The point thereforestands for the pair, a of the real numbers and b of the imaginarynumbers (Figure 1).

Abduction’s place would be on the vertical axis: because it is anact of insight, an intuitive leap, a jump in imagination, an imagi-nary number seems to be the appropriate symbol to signify theFirstness of abduction, especially considering its indeterminate andelusive character. The level of Secondness is marked along the hori-zontal axis by means of real numbers, in the actuality of the physi-cal world of action that includes linguistic behaviour. So in thismodel the syllogistic reasoning is complemented by imagination,insight, and intuition, such logic being represented by means of complex numbers as the ordered pair on a complex plane. The ana-lytical representation of direction is also possible, by means of avector: the two vectors along the horizontal and vertical axes ‘‘addup’’, geometrically, to a resultant vector r on a complex plane rep-resented by an arrow from the origin to the point a+b i (Figure 2).

INNA SEMETSKY584



A vector, by denition, has both magnitude and direction, thatis, it can be described in principle both by a mathematical quantityand a physical property. A vectorial diagram, therefore, representsthe dynamics inherent in abstract structure: it is an organisationalpattern or a process-structure reecting Peirce’s process ontology.The process organisation is what determines the structure’s ‘‘causalpower. Everything that has causal power is organized, and has theparticular causal power that it does by virtue of...its organization’’(Bickhard 2004, p. 124). The cause in question is what Peirce con-sidered to be the other kind of causation, the one that forms astrange loop embodied in the closed shape of the triangle onFigure 2.

The resultant vector may be considered to represent evolution inmeaning as different from the preceding, infamous, prior knowl-edge, because abduction contributes to explicating that what was yettacit and implicit; but also by virtue of it enabling a transition fromthe level of real numbers onto the succeeding level of numbers onthe complex plane, it therefore contributes to the complication of knowledge. Peirce indeed distinguished between what he called anampliative and explicative forms of reasoning, suggesting that theformer aims at plainly increasing existing knowledge while the

latter, by contrast, is capable of making hidden or implicit knowl-edge explicit, of making manifest what has been latent. Indeed, theaddition vector as a whole is irreducible to the (arithmetical) sum of its parts, making the mind as a whole, represented by the shadedarea, greater than its Cartesian cogito . Without the Firstness of abduction, all knowledge would remain pretty sequential, becausesigns would stay at the level of Secondness: they would be growingin magnitude solely because of the arithmetical progression alongthe horizontal axis, yet not being able to change their direction. It ismerely some prior knowledge that would be amplied, precludingthe emergence of novelty because the tacit and preconscious,implicit and pre-conceptual ‘‘knowledge’’ would lack any possibilityof explication so as to enable the new knowledge, represented nowas a vector on a complex plane, with a denite direction, determinedby both horizontal and vertical evolutions and pointed to by theend of the arrow, to enter cognition. 6

It is the Thirdness as a diagonal transversal line that enables thecoming into being of the new objects of knowledge, for us, as thenewly created concepts. The dyadic relation alone would not leadto the creation of meanings: a sign, ‘‘in order to fulll its office, to




actualise its potency, must be compelled by its object’’ (Peirce CP5.554) therefore it strives to abductively leap from the unconsciousinto being integrated into consciousness as though driven by a pur-pose or goal. However, if we imagine positioning ourselves in thevery midst of this resultant line, there are two perspectives that mayemerge: ‘‘Viewing a thing from the outside, considering its relationsof action and reaction with other things, it appears as matter.Viewing it from the inside, looking at its immediate character asfeeling, it appears as consciousness’’ (Peirce CP 6. 268). Respec-tively, we may view the resultant vector as embodying two dimen-sions simultaneously, external and internal, therefore representingthe dynamics inscribed in the indiscernible succession of mentalstates. 7 The complex number a+b i pointed to by the arrow of thevector represents a single synchronic slice of the total diachronicevolution, or a quasi-determinate content constituted by both inter-nal and external features. 8

Millikan’s (1984, 1999) prominently externalist position consid-ers past evolutionary history as all there is to a proper function.The model suggested here, at least with respect to one’s cognitivefunction, would consider such description as incomplete because of its disregard towards both the present moment (cf. Bickhard 2004)

and a possible future evolution. 9 We remember that, for Peirce, theobject to which a sign refers may not have a solely physical exis-tence but may very well be a thought, a dream or a totally imagi-nary entity; ditto for the interpretant whose being in futuro , as anon-manifest goal, ‘‘will suffice’’ (Peirce CP 2. 92). The abductionas a quasi-instantaneous action is informed (literately, as informarein Latin means giving material form) by the instance of the real,here-and-now experience, and the magnitude along the vertical axisof imaginary numbers would inadvertently affect the direction thediagonal resultant vector would have taken.

A novel hypothesis might literally, as we can see on theFigures 1 and 2, bring a new direction into the line of reasoning,and the semiotic categories of Firstness and Thirdness, the two cat-egories outside the formal logic, functioning only on the marginsthe latter, are capable of constructing the new level of knowledgebrought into being at the different level of organization. Abduction(or intuition, or imagination, or insight, in mentalistic terms) cre-ates a magnitude along the vertical axis, the logical depth , that is, aleap towards the different level of order in the complex knowledge-system. 10 Peirce’s semiotics reects the novelty that alone provides

INNA SEMETSKY586



‘‘uberty or richness of thought’’ (Deely 2001, p. 627) contained inthe Firstness that carries the level of reality over and above thecustomary mechanistic Secondness usually considered as constitut-ing ‘‘the whole truth about existence’’ (Deely 2001, p. 627). ForPeirce, signs always move from one to another; they grow andengender other signs because the triadic logic leads to signs alwaysbecoming something more and something else exemplifying the no-tion of learning from immediate experience as a necessary condi-tion for the evolution of signs.

The diagrammatic representation expressed in Figures 1 and 2 isconceptualised on the premise of what Peirce called ‘‘a portraitureof Thought’’ (Peirce CP 4. 11). As such, it conforms to the semioticcategories of representation, relationality and mediation andappears to be capable, albeit in a static format, of ‘‘rendering liter-ally visible before one’s very eyes the operation of thinking in actu ’’(Peirce CP 4. 571), or demonstrating the very dynamics of theinferential process. The eld of the complex numbers is undifferen-tiated and would appear to be, in Peirce words, ‘‘what the worldwas to Adam on the day he opened his eyes to it, before he haddrawn any distinctions, or had become conscious of his own expe-rience’’ (Peirce CP 1.302). The complex plane as a whole contains

what Peirce would have called an admixture or, in other words, theweighted sum (cf. Penrose 1997; Seager 1999) of real and imaginarycomponents, a and bi . Peircean holism anticipated a peculiar parts-whole system’s organization, which conceptualises all causalrelations as if owing in two directions at once, bottom-up andtop-down, thereby creating a strange feedback loop.

The triangle as per Figure 2 is a self-organising process-structureor, in terms of the logic of explanation, a self-cause (cf. Juarrero1999) disregarded by a science of modernity, which reduced thefour Aristotelian causes, including formal and nal, to a single effi-cient causation. Based on Aristotle’s fourfold scheme, the Latins inthe later times rened the latter to account for the objective orderof physical phenomena. 11 The external, ideal, causality – a type of blueprint, or plan, or design – is introduced from without, in con-trast to the natural Aristotelian formal cause that organises itsmaterial from within. One more causal type, however, pertains tothe role of observer who exercises a type of objective causality.Deely (2001) explains its functioning in the following way: ‘‘On thesubjective side, a thinker may try to turn attention toward or awayfrom [the object]; but the measure of success lies not in the




subjective effort but in the objective content surviving the effort.And since presenting objects is exactly the function of signs, the ac-tion of signs is a species of this...extrinsic formal causality, called‘specicative’’’ (Deely 2001, p. 633), which is irreducible to eitherideal or intrinsic formal cause but is retaining, as embedded in thetotal system, the objective signicance for the human subject .

Peirce’s categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdnessdemand such an admixture of mind-dependent and mind-indepen-dent relations that are ultimately supposed to solve the problem of intelligibility and understanding. The eld Adam has awaken up tois the infamous blooming, buzzing confusion , indeed the weightedsum of ‘‘dream and reality, possibility and actuality’’ (Deely 2001,p. 645) in its as yet undifferentiated state of both mind-dependentand mind-independent relations that comprise the totality of hu-man experience.

In other words, the causal loop demands a quasi-mind, as wesaid earlier, that is, a dialogical organism–environment communica-tion, an intervention of cognition, or interaction (see Bickhard2004) so as to ensure the sign’s potential relation to itself as a con-dition for ultimate intelligibility. For the function so as to fulll itspurpose, that is, to be proper, it has to have a triadic structure as a

necessary condition of this very fulllment. Specically, for the cog-nitive function of us, biological beings, to function properly, thatis, comprise all three Peircean categories, means to reason (Third-ness) properly , that is, analytically (Secondness) but also insight-fully or intuitively (Firstness). 12

The sign, reduced to Secondness only, is what Peirce calledde-generate or we may call dis-functional, that is, not capable of performing its function properly. Only as genuine, the triadic signwould amount to the Thirdness of ‘‘synthetic consciousness, ...senseof learning’’ (Peirce CP 1.377). Abduction or intuition is a neces-sary condition for production of meanings; the very etymology of the word conrms this: to in-tuit means to learn from within, evenif ‘‘the parish of percept [is] out in the open’’ (Peirce CP 8. 144) of the experiential world, in conformity with the total retroductiveprocess demanding the two-directional evolution. Without theFirstness of insight or abduction no closed loop would be formed.Functioning at the level of as yet pre-conscious presentations, itnonetheless posits itself, as Peirce has said, as a real force behindconsciousness. As a powerful and quiet possibly real physicalforce because of its vectorial quality, it reaches the representation

INNA SEMETSKY588



in consciousness at the level of Secondness, along the horizontalaxis of real numbers. It will surely have a different magnitude:using a trivial example, pain is directly had, but may be interpretedas a toothache or as an effect of being burned and hence judged tobe a singularity of a specic kind.

The diagonal resultant vector casts its own shadow (cf. note 14further below) on the horizontal axis emerging as though fromnowhere because its end-point a+bi exists at the level of complex-ity exceeding the realm of real numbers. The very function of abduction is to create a semiotic bridge that joins the infamous gapbetween existence and essence. Its effect consists in the ‘‘inward [or] potential actions...which somehow inuence the formation of hab-its’’ (Peirce CP 6. 286) precisely because these actions were initiateddue to the causal loop, the circularity of Thirdness having providedconditions for the ight of abductive inference because of the dif-ference perceived in experience. This inward direction creates aninternal dimension, the logical depth of meaning, as a necessaryoutcome within the process of semiosis. We never have a totaltabula rasa . If there were no triadic structure, then the leap of imagination or insight as a sign of Firstness, if such indeed were totake place, would have sunk back into the dyadic existence, back

to the point of its own departure and, worse, we would not evenknow this as there would not be any difference for us to interpretand, respectively, to make a difference in the world of action, tocreate novelty. The difference in the present experience brings innovelty and change that, instead of eliciting adaptation as a soleconsequence of the natural selection, affects and transforms the to-tal organism–environment situation as a whole.

The natural world is not limited to its solely mechanical aspectsimilar to experience as not being reduced to action and reactiontaking place at the level of Secondness. Thirdness enters the pro-cess as mediation and learning, it takes time and self-reection; itenables response to meanings rather than to direct physical stimuli,and meaning is dened as ‘‘that form in which the propositionbecomes applicable to human conduct’’ (Peirce CP 5. 425), therebycontributing to further habits taking. Nature is much broader andincludes its own virtual or semiotic dimension, which is, however,never beyond experience. But in semiotic terms experience itself is arelational category. Structured by sign-relations, human experienceis an expression of a deeper semiotic process. Because everysign conveys a general nature of thought, and the Thirdness is




ultimately a mode of being of intelligence or reason, the generalitydoes come about from a quasi-mind comprising what Peirce calleda repository of ideas or signicant forms.

Signs do ‘‘catch on’’, that is, they are capable of receiving infor-mation, or signicant meaning, that cannot be reduced to either‘‘merely a physical [or] even merely a psychical dose of energy’’(Peirce c.1907: ISP nos. 205–6 as quoted in Deely 2001, p. 629).This level of signicance is semiotic in its core and, by analogywith the biosphere , it has acquired a name semiosphere during thepost-Peircean times. 13 This other, semiotic, level would haveencompassed the biological in itself like two nested circles, similarperhaps to Pythagorean tetractys encompassing natural numbersthat are inside the integers that are inside the rationals that areinside the reals, and the real themselves being just a line among thecomplex numbers populating the whole plane, notwithstanding anincrease in dimensions, and hence order. 14

5. SEMIOTIC REALITY

For Peirce, the whole universe is perfused with signs; signs are all

there is; yet ‘‘nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign’’(Peirce CP 2. 308). The semiotically real world does address possi-bilities; by the same token, the realist’s view asserts the reality of potentialities not yet actualised. The natural world is not reducedto the facts of Secondness but becomes an object of interpretation,and human understanding is the necessary Thirdness in this rela-tionship, for ‘‘man is nature’s interpreter’’ (Peirce CP 7. 54) in acontinuous ow of semiosis. The actualisation of many potentiali-ties through the magnitude of Thirdness appears to take place dueto subjective bottom-up ‘‘intervention of the mind’’ (Shimony 1993,p. 319) – that performs the role of an interpretant in the semiotictriad – into a signifying chain of semiosis.

Says Shimony: ‘‘It is honorable to be an epigone of Peirce’’(1993, p. 245). The continuity of inference, even if only in a proba-bilistic sense, dees the idea of some unknowable thing-in-itself, thelatter being only hypothetical like any other First and is to be ulti-mately known as a sign, or Thirdness of Firstness, after it being‘‘present to me’’ (Peirce CP 5. 289). Yet this very intervention maybe considered objective in a sense of itself being implemented by achoice of a global, top-down, character, analogous perhaps to the

INNA SEMETSKY590



semiotic functioning of some relationis transcendetalis . A choice of this kind may be accounted for by means of what Shimony,addressing the hypothetical status of mentality in nature (Shimony[Penrose, Shimony, Cartwright, Hawking] 1999, pp. 144–160), dub-bed a super-selection rule in nature. Considering that the genuineThirdness, as thought and reason (intelligence, consciousness,potentiality), and it being the cardinal, always includes the First-ness of abduction (or intuition, the unconscious, possibility) initself and governs Secondness (actuality, which in turn encompassesthe Firstness of possibility) by bringing information and embodyingthe ideas, the process of making the unconscious conscious (inother words, actualisation of the virtual) thereby completing thecausal circuit is crucial.

Process ontology, as non-physicalistic, that is, irreducible to theSecondness solely, posits potentiality as a semiotic bridge. Thisconnection enables the very ‘‘transition between consciousness andunconsciousness [which] need not be interpreted as a change of ontological status but as a change of state, and properties can passfrom deniteness to indeniteness and conversely’’ (Shimony[Penrose, Shimony, Cartwright, Hawking] 1999, p. 151). Peirce con-sidered consciousness a rather vague term and has noted that if it

was supposed ‘‘to mean Thought it is more without us than within.It is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us’’ (Peirce CP 8.256). We have to remember that a genuine sign has a triadic struc-ture, while the relations at the level of Newtonian laws are dyadic.An active interpretation (or interaction, in Bickhard’s conceptuali-sation) and not a passive adaptation is what transform the brutefacts of natural world into interpretable signs with which the uni-verse is always already perfused. And interpretation creates themeaning, or provides an experience with value that, albeit implicitin each and every triadic sign, is as yet absent among the brute facts of Secondness.

We remember that because every sign is capable of transmittingsomething of the thought’s general nature and, respectively, receiv-ing a signicant meaning, Peirce posited the quasi-mind as reposi-tory of ideas or signicant forms. Process metaphysics and theabsence of the ontological dualism therefore presuppose whatRoger Penrose, non-incidentally, has dened in terms of a ‘‘contactwith some sort of Platonic world’’ (Penrose [Penrose, Shimony,Cartwright, Hawking] 1999, p. 125). The relationship between thethree worlds, namely the physical world, the Platonic world of




ideas, and the mental world has been considered a mystery, heavilydebated, and dubbed as gaps in Penrose’s toilings (Grush andChurchland 1995). 15 The core of Penrose’s argument is that thephysical world may be considered a projection of the Platonicworld and the world of mind arises from part of the physicalworld, thus enabling one in this process to insightfully grasp and,respectively, understand some part of the Platonic world.

Because the Platonic world is inhabited by mathematical truths,but also due to the ‘‘common feeling that these mathematicalconstructions are products of our mentality’’ (Penrose [Penrose,Shimony, Cartwright, Hawking] 1999, p. 96), the mysterious depen-dence of the natural world on strict mathematical laws and the tri-relative relationship can be inscribed in the following diagram onthe Figure 3.

The relations stop being mysterious though if we considerPenrose’s three worlds as constituting a semiotic triangle andencompassing Peirce’s three modes of being. The mathematicallaws express the Thirdness of habit taking that would have beenrepresented, for Penrose, by a ‘‘part of Platonic world whichencompasses our physical world’’ (Penrose [Penrose, Shimony,

Figure 3 . Three Worlds and three mysteries (reproduced with permission fromPenrose [Penrose, Shimony, Cartwright, Hawking] 1999, p. 96).

INNA SEMETSKY592



Cartwright, Hawking] 1999, p. 97) of matter, or Seconds. Bits of Thirdness, we may say, are ‘‘accessible by our mentality’’ (1997,p. 97) by virtue of the Firstness of insight or abduction, the latterintrinsically non-computable. Indeed, what in-habits the Platonicworld is not only the true but also the good and the beautiful,which are all ‘‘non-computable elements – for example, judgement,common sense, insight, aesthetic sensibility, compassion, morality’’(Penrose [Penrose, Shimony, Cartwright, Hawking] 1999, p. 125),all the moral attributes of the psyche that necessarily mediatesbetween the world and the intellect. The causal circuit closes up onitself in the process of creative semiosis.

The rules of projective geometry, which indeed serves as a basisfor conceptualising the diagram as per Figure 3, establish the one-to-one correspondence like in a perspectival composition towards avanishing point implying therefore isomorphism, or mapping of thearchetypal ideas of the Platonic world onto the mental and physicalworlds. 16 The level of meanings exceeds references because itencompasses our thinking (mental world) as belonging with (cf.Seibt 2004) our doing (physical world, the world of action), that is,the very organism–environment interaction, which proceeds in ac-cord with the speculative grammar of Peirce’s semiotics. Abduction

enables the grasp of moral meanings as primum cognitum makingtherefore the aforementioned relationis transcendetalis in fact imma-nent in perception!

The brute facts of the physical world intervene in practice andnot only supervene in theory: ‘‘Firstness is a dream out of whichens reale , the category of Secondness, inevitably at times awakens asleeper’’ (Deely 2001, p. 661). An ex-sleeper that has been awakenhas changed her perspective or her point of view literally: a per-spectival point is now in the mental world, leading to isomorphismappearing between a generic mental representation and the othertwo worlds, the world of ideas together with the world of action.The archetypal ideas that are, intrinsically , forms without contentacquire this very content relationally within the dynamics of self-organising semiotic process. The informational content there-fore always already is, albeit potentially or unconsciously. 17,18 Theself-organising dynamics of sign-relations overcomes the paradox of new knowledge as well as what appears to be an inconsistencybetween articulating representations and meanings in terms of Peirce’s logic of signs.




NOTES

1 Peirce seems to have anticipated contemporary developments in quantummechanics. His pragmatic philosophy deals with the might-be-ness of counterfactu-als and, as Penrose (1997) stated, it is ‘‘quantum mechanics [that] enables you totest whether something might have happened but didn’t happen...[it] allows realeffects to result from counterfactuals!’’ (Penrose 1999, p. 67). See further below.

2 See Magnani (2001) for the extensive review of abduction in the philosophy of science discourse and in the eld of AI. Magnani cites H. Simon ([1965]1977) onthe subject of abduction in terms of the logic of normative theories: ‘‘The prob-lem-solving process is not a process of ‘deducing’... [I]t is a process of ...trial and

error using heuristic rules derived from...experience, that is, sometimes successfulin discovering means that are more or less efficacious in attaining some end...it is aretroductive process’’ (Simon 1977, p. 151, in Magnani 2001, p. 16). Modern logicallows accounting for the nonmonotonic or dynamic character of abduction bymeans of belief revision (Magnani 2001, p. 24), the latter capable of representingcases of conceptual change (2001, p. 39). The nonmonotonic logic permits the jump or leap to the [fallible] conclusion in the absence of immediate contradictoryevidence. This jump is nonetheless inferential and appears to correspond toPeirce’s logical form of abduction: ‘‘The surprising fact, C, is observed; But if Awere true, C would be a matter of course: Hence, there is reason to suspect that Ais true’’ (Peirce CP 7. 202).

3 Deely (2001) expresses the same idea in the following way: ‘‘Modern philoso-phy began with the universal doubt whereby Descartes had made being a functionof his thinking. Pragmaticism [Peircean pragmatism] begins rather from a belief inthe reality of what is more than thought, and proceeds by continually putting totest the contrast between thought and what is more than thought, between merelyobjective being and objective being which reveals also something of the physicaluniverse’’ (Deely 2001, p. 627, brackets mine). See also Bickhard’s (2004) interac-tive theory based on error-guided experiential learning. See also Semetsky (2003)for the ontology of difference and its function within the process of semiosis.

4 See Kihlstrom (1993) for his description of this now-classic experiment on sub-liminal perception by Peirce and his student Jastrow. Kihlstrom provides manyreferences to the contemporary research in experimental psychology and cognitivescience on the topic of psychological unconscious understood as ‘‘a domain of mental structures and processes which inuence experience, thought, and actionoutside the phenomenal awareness and voluntary control’’ (1993, p. 125).

5 I initially addressed this idea in the paper ‘‘Learning by abduction: a geometri-

cal interpretation’’ presented at the Peirce Symposium: Cultivating the art of inquiry, interpretation and criticism , INPE 8th Biennial Conference, August 7–11,2002, University of Oslo, Oslo Norway. See also Semetsky 2004.

6 Bickhard would have agreed. He states that process metaphysics is a pre-requisite for the ‘‘different, novel, emergent causal power. The possibility of emer-gence is ubiquitous in new organization of process’’ (Bickhard 2004, p. 124).

7 Seager (1999) suggests an analogous approach for addressing the internalist– externalist debate in the philosophy of mind.

8 I guess the whole Swampman argument becomes then a moot point.

INNA SEMETSKY594



9 See Bigelow and Pargetter (1999) for the forward-looking theory of functionsthat objects to Millikan’s aetiological position and proposes instead the notion of dispositions or a ‘‘survival-enhancing propensity’’ (1999, p. 109) in view of afuture goal.10 The term ‘‘logical depth’’ has been elaborated in Hoffmeyer (1993). The infor-mation theory denes a message’s logical depth as the expression of its meaning,its worth or value. Hoffmeyer labels such logical depth ‘‘a semiotic freedom’’(1993, p. 66). In Peircean terms, freedom is of course the manifestation of First-ness, the logic of creative abduction.11 See Deely (2001), chapter 15, ‘‘Charles Sanders Peirce and the Recovery of Sig-num ’’, pp. 611–668. See also Rescher (2000). Rescher reminds us of medieval causaas a concept that abolishes a dualism between causes and reasons ‘‘which themoderns since the time of Descartes have... insisted on separating sharply’’ (2000,p. 40).12 This is logic as an ethics of thinking (see Deely 2001, p. 622), which for Peirceis inseparable from human conduct, that is, an ethics of doing.13 In Semetsky (2000) I explored a concept of semiosphere that was rst coinedby Russian semiotician of the Tartu school, Yuri Lotman (1990). Lotman’s termhas undergone its second birth when recently posited by molecular biologistHoffmeyer (1993) who dened semiosphere as a holistic structure that ‘‘pene-trates to every corner of these other spheres [the atmosphere, the hydrosphere,and biosphere], incorporating all forms of communication [and constituting] aworld of signication ’’ (1993, p. vii). Deely (2001) suggests the all-encompassingterm signosphere to pay tribute to what he calls Peirce’s grand vision, which hasthe advantage of being rooted in science rather than in mysticism (Deely 2001,

p. 630).14 Cf. Thom (1985). Peirce’s form of the sign, as we said earlier, includes icon,index, and symbol. Introducing the genesis of image (or copy, or icon) in the con-text of Peirce’s semiotic categories, Thom acknowledges the necessary isomor-phism of forms and makes it clear that the correspondence is produced byinteraction or ‘‘coupling’’. In the case of projected shadow, for example, isomor-phism is maintained because the light, illuminating the original and casting theshadow, performs the function of interaction. Thom believes that the formation of copies (that is, representations, for the purpose of this paper) is a manifestation of the universal irreversible dynamics. He notices that stability of biological formshas to have a dynamically physical character, that is, depend on constraintsimposed by the physical level: ‘‘the organic release of evolution allows the appear-ance of forms, more rened, more subtle, more global...and...charged with mean-ing’’ (Thom 1985, p. 280). Archetypal forms, for Thom, are located on this

physical level. Thom notices that very often we reduce a whole being to its indexas ‘‘an act which confers on the latter a symbolic value. In language, this proce-dure is at the root of many tropes (metonymy in particular: taking the part for thewhole)’’ (1985, p. 282).15 Rick Grush and Patricia Churchland (1995) argue against Penrose’s positing apossible direct insight into Platonic truths, and therefore understanding the mean-ings of the (mathematical) concepts, over following the logic of computationalrules. But the logic and psychology of abduction, as advanced in this paper,would have refuted the claim.




16 This is of course my conjecture solely, albeit supported by Roger Penrose’spositing Platonic world as being projected onto the physical. The rigorous proof would have required a detour to set theory and the concept of innite cardinalityand is out of scope of this paper.17 Hence the problem of zombies who become automatons (or what Peirce wouldhave called the de-generate signs), the logic of which is reduced to the dyadic rela-tions between the world of ideas and the physical world of blind and unconsciousaction.18 What may be called the language of thought is therefore extra-linguistic: it is asign-system, that by denition would have included not only verbal symbols butalso icons and indices as per Peirce’s triad. Lacan was correct when he said thatunconscious too is structured as a language. But the language in question is thelanguage of signs. Thom (see note 14, above) concludes his article ‘‘From the Iconto the Symbol’’ (1985) in those words: ‘‘Only those who know to listen to responseof Mother Nature will come later to open a dialogue with her and to master a newlanguage. The other will only babble and buss in the void, bombinos in vacuo . Andwhere, you may ask, will the mathematician be able to hear Nature’s response? Thevoice of reality is in the signicance of the symbol’’ (Thom 1985, p. 291).

REFERENCES

Bickhard, M.: 2004, ‘Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Represen-

tation’, Axiomathes 14 , 121–155.Bigelow, J. and R. Pargetter: 1999, ‘Functions’, in Buler David J. (ed.), Function,

Selection and Design. , Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 97–114.Deely, J.: 2001, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of

Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-rst Century , Universityof Toronto Press: Toronto.

Greaves, M.: 2002, The Philosophical Status of Diagrams , Center for the Study of Languages and Information Publications: Stanford, US.

Grush, R. and Patricia S. Churchland: 1995, ‘Gaps in Penrose’s Toilings’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (1), 10–29, United Kingdom: Imprint Academic.

Hacking, I.: 1990, The Taming of Chance. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,UK.

Hoffmeyer, J.: 1993, Signs of Meaning in the Universe , trans by. Barbara J. Haveland.Bloomington & Indianopolis: Indiana University Press.

Juarrero, A.: 1999, Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System ,The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.

Kihlstrom, J. F.: 1993, ‘The Rediscovery of the Unconscious’, in Harold J. Morowitzand Jerome L. Singer (eds.), The Mind, The Brain, and Complex Adaptive Systems ,Proceedings Volume XXII, Santa Fe Institute, Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (=The AdvancedBook Program), pp. 123–143.

Magnani, L.: 2001, Abduction, Reason, and Science: Processes of Discovery and Explanation , Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: Dordrecht.

INNA SEMETSKY596



Millikan, R.: 1984, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories , MIT Press:Cambridge MA.

Millikan, R.: 1999, Proper functions, in Buler David J. (eds.), Function, Selectionand Design , Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 85–96.

Peirce, C. S.: 1860–1911, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce , vol. I- VI,C. Hawthorn and P. Weiss (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Peirce, C. S.: 1955, Philosophical Writings of Peirce , J. Buchler (ed.). New York:Dover Publications.

Peirce, C. S.: 1998, The Essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, vol. 2(19893–1913) . (Peirce Edition Project, eds.) Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress.

Penrose, R., A. Shimony, N. Cartwright and S. Hawking: 1999, The Large, theSmall, and the Human Mind , paperback edition, Cambridge University Press: UK.

Rescher, N.: 2000, Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy ,State University of New York Press: Albany.

Seager, W.: 1999, Theories of Consciousness: An Introduction and Assessment ,Routledge: London and New York.

Seibt, J.: ‘General Process Theory: A Descriptive Framework for DynamicOntologies’, paper delivered at the conference Dynamic Ontology: An Inquiry intoSystems, Emergence, Levels of Reality, and Forms of Causality , University of Trento, Italy, September 7–11, 2004.

Semetsky, I.: 2000, The End of a Semiotic Fallacy. SEMIOTICA 130, 3/4. Mouton deGruyter: Berlin, New York, 283–300.

Semetsky, I.: 2003, ‘The Magician’s Autopoietic action, or Eros Contained andUncontained’, Trickster’s Way , vol. 2, http://www.trinity.edu/org/tricksters/Trix-Way/current/Vol%202/Vol23/semetsky.html.

Semetsky, I.: 2004, ‘The Role of Intuition in Thinking and Learning: Deleuze and thePragmatic Legacy’, Educational Philosophy and Theory 36 (4), Blackwell Publish-ing, 433–454.

Shimony, A.: 1993, Search for a Naturalistic World View , vol. II, CambridgeUniversity Press.

Thom, R.: 1985, ‘From the Icon to the Symbol’, in Robert E. Innis (ed.),SEMIOTICS: An Introductory Anthology , Bloomington: Indiana University Press,pp. 275–291.


Semetsky From Design to Organization or a Proper Structure for a Proper Function

Documents

Transcript of Semetsky From Design to Organization or a Proper Structure for a Proper Function