[Fis] How Molecules became Signs

[Christophe Menant]

Thanks Terry for spending some time with us on your interesting paper “how Molecules became Signs”.


Your approach on signs covers the evolution from abiotic components (molecules) to living organisms. You start at molecule level where you introduce the concepts of constraint, information and interpretation, and you look at the end of the paper at “the emergence of progressively higher levels of interpretive competence” where “semiotic constraint is progressively transferred from molecules to cells to tissues to body structure”.
While writing about signs you do not tell much about their meaningful aspect. Peirce has written a lot about the Interpretant. And, as Semioticians have noted ,“Peirce defined the Interpretant as “something created in the mind of the Interpreter”, the Interpretant being Peirce’s term for the meaning of a sign” [Noth 1990].
Don’t you feel it could be interesting to explicit a bit more in your approach the concept of “meaning” ? The word “meaning” is more understandable than “Interpretant” and it can be used rather simply for living entities (https://philpapers.org/rec/MENITA-7<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Frec%2FMENITA-7&data=04%7C01%7C%7C1be7858341364a569a3e08d9f69d21bb%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637811977021815344%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=0aQUf2up6iS5MfrSBXZPkyaMlxpqqEUnAoTGz4MhqFc%3D&reserved=0>).

Could you let us know your thoughts on this?


Christophe




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