No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis examines the relation of systems theory to biosemiotics. To this end, it considers the claim that biosemiotics is an uneven development of systems theory. To do this, this thesis explores theories of 'modelling' and 'information' in biosemiotics from the enhanced point of view of systems theory. It will do so following the example set by Deely's 'archaeology of concepts' (1981). By means of the concept of 'isomorphism as structural similarity' (Bertalanffy 1945) the thesis argues that biosemiotics and cybernetics/systems theory share a systems thinking which is grounded in 'transdisciplinarity', 'history' and 'function'. This thesis also argues that such a common methodological perspective is an instance of historical continuity due primarily to biosemiotics' and systems theory's involvement with Tartu-Moscow semiotics. Subsequently, the thesis argues that biosemiotics' and cybernetics' systems thinking differ in their view of 'information'. It shows how biosemiotics broadly conceives information in terms of Peirce's notion of 'abduction', whereas cybernetics conceives information in terms of deduction. It also shows, as a consequence, how biosemiotics' modelling strategies are identifiable with logic as semiotics, while systems theory's modelling strategy is more closely identifiable with mathematical logic alone. Such a methodological difference is argued to be an 'uneven development' (Althusser 1965). The following thesis reveals much that biosemiotics has left unconsidered: the continuing relevance of systems theory, especially in relation to information and observership, and reveals this through the strength of the principle of abduction. Lastly, the thesis 'Biosemiotics as Systems Theory' provides the grounding for a new form of cultural analysis that supersedes the fallacies of semiology. It does so by proposing the following guidelines for the analysis of culture: substituting 'interpretation' with modelling, dispensing of 'representation' in favour of purely objective reality, and recasting 'motivation' in terms of cybersemiotic constraints.

In this thesis I argue that science and common sense do not recognise the same kinds in nature, and hence the reference of kind terms in scientific and ordinary language differs. Therefore, a satisfactory philosophical account of natural kinds and their names should respect these differences. I begin by describing the account of natural kinds and their names offered by Putnam and Kripke, showing that their 'causal account' of reference predicts that kind terms in science and in ordinary language should agree in their extension. I then review cases from biology, chemistry, physics and the social sciences that suggest this is not the case - that the kind terms in these sciences differ from seemingly comparable terms in ordinary language. I go on to describe a notion of incommensurability devised by Thomas Kuhn, based on translatability and translation failure. I then show that the differences between science and common sense, employed to critique the causal view, show that science and common sense are incommensurable in Kuhn's sense. I take this to show that no satisfactory account of natural kinds can offer a single set of kinds and kind terms, and a single story of their nature, for both science and common sense. I then discuss accounts of kind concepts in developmental psychology, to see how these explanations of the nature and development of lay-concepts relates to the incommensurability thesis. I then deal with issues that may arise in light of the thesis; for example, explaining how the layman, steeped in common sense, can learn scientific theory. This leaves me in a position to clear the ground for a positive account of kinds and kind terms - surveying, in the light of the foregoing discussions, what must be included in, and excluded from, a satisfactory account,

This thesis examines David Lewis's short sketch of an ordering semantics for incomplete descriptions, and develops on its basis what I hope to be an efficient semantic theory for definite descriptions. Definite descriptions are a central topic of debate in the Philosophy of Language ever since Bertrand Russell proposed his famous theory of definite descriptions. His theory has been of continued interest over the whole past century especially because it solves a huge number of puzzles which are relevant to various areas in Philosophy. However, the presence of incomplete descriptions in ordinary language poses a serious problem for the theory. Various accounts of incomplete descriptions have been developed to solve the problem, but none of these accounts seems to provide an entirely satisfactory answer. Lewis offered a short sketch of an ordering semantics for incomplete descriptions which is based on salience orderings of objects, and which is analogous to his famous ordering semantics for counterfactuals. His account of incomplete descriptions seems to share the advantages of Russell's theory, and to avoid the problems that arise for it. But in spite of its initial virtues, it is only little-known. My aim in this thesis is to give a precise outline of his semantics, to refine it, to generalise it, to further motivate it, to discuss its central notion of salience, and to defend it against possible objections, and thereby to develop it into an efficient semantic theory for definite descriptions.

No description available.

This thesis explores what I term the question of life's ultimate meaning. I distinguish this from some other investigations into the meaning of life on the basis that I am not primarily interested in ways of making life more meaningful. I address these issues of partial meaning implicitly, but my central focus is on whether it is possible to conceive or achieve an existence the meaningfulness of which cannot be improved upon. This endeavour can be rephrased to parallel epistemological discussions of our desire to eliminate doubt in order to arrive at knowledge claims that are certain. For, just as we have a tendency to ask how a claim drafted in to provide epistemological justification for a prior claim is itself justified, we have a tendency to ask by what further criteria a goal or purpose that is meant to bestow meaning is itself meaningful. It is my hypothesis that this capacity to re-iterate a request for justification for each new candidate that presents itself calls for a candidate to be presented which disrupts our ability to carry out such re-iteration. My route into this search for such a candidate is by examination of the notion of 'nothing'. I centre this examination around the work of Martin Heidegger, whose dealings with the subject form a nexus for differing understandings of 'nothing' in many important strands of philosophical thought. Hence, I discuss analytic interpretations of 'nothing' deriving from Rudolf Carnap's criticism of Heidegger, post-structuralist reactions as found in Jacques Derrida's work, and consider some provocative remarks that Wittgenstein makes on 'nothing' as Heidegger presents it. The radicality of the search for an understanding of 'nothing' also requires attention to the methodology of such an endeavour, and indeed to whether philosophy can adequately proceed without acknowledging the possibility of its other, faith.