The Vagueness of Life: Peirce’s Thirdness in Biological Systems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48160/18532330me5.133Keywords:
biological information, scholastic realism, biosemiotics, ThirdnessAbstract
Charles S. Peirce’s philosophical system turns around a triad of categories that underlies his metaphysical conception of reality. I offer an interpretation of the category of Thirdness, and of the closely related notion of “vagueness”, in terms of our current understandingof biological systems. By looking at the concept of biological information through the lens of Thirdness, we can offer a rejoinder to the critics of said concept: far from being a mere metaphor, information becomes a real and fundamental element of biological systems.
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