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Gary, Frances, and
list:
I think I was sloppy in my
statement, Gary, which was not intended as a general attack on Frances's views
but was a comment on what she is saying in a particular message. I regret
not making that clear. I could be mistaken about what was happening that I
was objecting to, too, but I need to reread the message carefully and
then if I still find it off the mark to state exactly what I was objecting to,
which I didn't do. In the meanwhile, I agree with your admiration for her
courage in putting up with a lot of harsh criticism earlier on, in
particular. Ben's view is another matter altogether, and I said
nothing about that. I do think it is a mistake for her to indulge
the tendency to introduce neologisms of her own, though, when one of the main
problems in interpreting Peirce has to do with problems of
terminology. Each new coinage just adds one more difficulty to
understanding what he is saying.
Joe Ransdell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 11:45
PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Design and
Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from "Peircean elements" topic)
Frances, Joe, Ben, List,
While I have for some years now
thought that Frances' neologisms create an impediment to her analyses being
given a sympathetic hearing, and have at moments even deplored her seemingly
revisionist approach to Peirce on this list and at least one other (the
Esthetics forum of which I was briefly a member), I do not at this point think
"that something is going very wrong" in her understanding of Peirce.
While I will certainly reflect on Joe's analysis/critique of the
'sign' 'representatmen' distinction as she employs it, at the moment I do
not think that whatever may be decided in that matter--certainly
an issue hardly 'settled' in Peircean scholarship or in Peirce's own thinking
as even Joe seemed to imply in his post--that it fundamentally
undermines Frances' acute analysis. Indeed, at the moment, I find her argument
rather persuasive (strengthened, perhaps, by a sense in which she accepts her
fallibility and incomplete understanding of these difficult issues). Her
courage (Ben's too) in the face of so much criticism & neglect over the
years is to me inspiring, sometimes humbling. Perhaps it goes without saying
that for these reasons--and others--that I have a great deal of respect for
both Ben and Frances. I have also learned a great deal from them.
More
to the present point as I see it, Frances is one of the very few on this list
who has even begun to make a good faith attempt at grappling with Ben's
'recognizant' and 4th semeiotic category (including the whole matter of its
relation to collateral observation, the status of the object, etc.). I applaud
her for this and look forward to Ben's response to her analysis. It seems to
me likely that I would want to take up Ben's recognizant, proxy, need for a
fourth category (something certainly considerably more radical
even than Frances' tendency towards neologism, revisionism, etc.),
etc., once again in the light of Ben's (likely?) response to Frances and hope
that others on the list might join this discussion. What's at stake is--as I
see it--is nothing less than the acceptance or undermining of a conception of
Three Universes of experience, three Universal, Existential, and
Logical-semeiotic categories, etc.
But very few here or, for that
matter, anywhere have really struggled with Ben's revolutionary semiotic
notions. For example, Joe has seemingly thrown up his hands at understanding
them at all, suggesting in one recent post that he'd have to leave such
analysis to such as me to struggle with (viz., someone who could grasp
anything at all of Ben's radical tetradic abduction, and this despite my
expressed antipathy to it, which most any reader of this list--and certainly
Ben--has observed). One would of course yet very much like to see Joe reflect
on Ben's 4's at some point (certainly Ben and I have both been responsive to
much of Joe's extraordinary philosophical analysis over the years and my own
sense of Peirce's semeiotic has been deeply informed by reading Joseph
Ransdell on the topic).
But for now, I would simply like to say that
Frances has contributed in "good faith" something of value in this
dialogue with Ben.
Gary
Joseph Ransdell wrote:
It seems to me that something is going very wrong in your understanding of
Peirce, Frances, apparently stemming from a misunderstanding of the "sign"
and "representamen" distinction. The word "representamen" seems to be
introduced as the name for the refined conception of a sign that enables him
to understand interpretational processes more broadly than "sign" would
permit, as ordinarily understood, though there is some place of later date
where he says that he doesn't think he needs to have recourse to it, after
all, presumably meaning that he thinks the word "sign" can be used more
broadly than he thought it could earlier. But wherever human interpretation
is involved he uses the two terms indifferently.
"A sign is a representamen of which some interpretant is a cognition of a
mind." CP 2.242 1903
". .. I make the best analysis I can of what is essential to a sign, and I
define a representamen as being whatever that analysis applies to.... in
particular, all signs convey notions to human minds; but I know no reason
why every representamen should do so." CP 1.541 1903
He never speaks of "signers", as far as I know. What use is there for that
word ? And you use some other non-Peircean terms as well:. "semiosics",
"synechastics", "physiotics", consequently you seem at times to be
explaining the obscure by tee even more obscure. What's the good of that?
Joe Ransdell
Joe Ransdell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frances Kelly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 2:17 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from
"Peircean elements" topic)
Frances to Ben and others...
Recognizants you define as the experiences in mind of objects acting
as signs. If the experiential recognition however is itself not acting
as a sign or as part of a sign situation, then it is for the signer
only collateral to semiosis. This hence implies that not all
phenomenal things that exist in the world are signs or objects of
signs, or perhaps even prone to teleonomic designs and assigns.
If the pragmatist thrust on the matter is correctly understood by me,
the "experience" for Peirce when it is deemed within semiosis is
itself held by him to be a sign, and therefore an objective logical
construct. Just exactly what kind of sign it is remains unclear for
me. It may go to informative grammatic effects, or evaluative critical
worths, or rhetorical evocative responses; and all in the Morrisean
pragmatic manner, if it can be put that way. On the other hand, the
"experience" may be partly preparatory to semiosis, and thus often
collateral to signs. All things that are felt to continue evolving in
the world and that are given uncontrolled to sense after all are
phenomenal representamen that exist as objects, but not necessarily
objects that act as signs. This may be the condition for experiencing
and recognizing objects, whether the objects and recognizants are
signs or not. Besides differentiating these states or kinds of
objects, there must also be a differentia maintained between
representamens and signs, because there are phenomenal representamens
that are continuent but not existent, and thus that are not objects or
signs, nor interpretants.
You stated earlier that by "recognizant" is meant some experiential
recognition, formed as collateral to the sign and its interpretant in
respect of its object. This means that where a normal human signer
senses the object, they then recognize that object as being as they
interpreted some sign to represent that object. The experiential
recognizant therefore would strictly not be in semiosis nor be a sign.
In other words, if the sign and interpretant do not carry or convey
any direct experience of the object, then the idea that any dependent
familiar understanding of the sign is thus outside the interpretant.
The sign may have the recognizant as an object and content it carries
or have it as an interpretant effect, but otherwise the sign and
interpretant would not intrinsically be the experienced recognizant
itself. The recognizant cannot be, within the same relation or mind,
the mental experience or recognition of the object, and also the sign
or interpretant of the object. To hold that both exist simultaneously
in semiosis or in the same mind would be a logical contradiction.
Signers need the experience and recognition of objects, because signs
and interpretants in semiosis themselves do not convey the experience
of the objects that they signify or mean. The experience and
recognition of objects is thus necessarily collateral to the signs
that signify those objects. If the experiential recognizant is not
part of semiosis, then its presence in the act must therefore be
accounted for by other means or in ways other than semiosic.
When the "experience" however is perhaps deemed before and outside
semiosis but within synechastics as a phenomenal representamen that is
an object but not yet fully a sign, then the "experience" here might
be held by him to be a phaneron that acts as a signer, such as the
maker or giver or sender or framer or driver or taker or user of a
sign. For example, if a phenomenal object by itself alone acts solely
as a representative sign of itself as its own object to itself for
itself, as an isolated evolving atom might, then that phaneron acts as
a signer and is engaged in an act of "experience" to the extent that
it can do so. If this pushes the "experience" too far back into its
primordial physiotic beginnings, then the same synechastic state might
exist in biotics for say a newborn organism. One thorn here of course
is that it renders some "experiences" like that of some objects or of
some representamens or of some phenomena as being independent of
semiosis, at least in their early evolutionary growth, which may not
be allowed for the "experience" by Peircean pragmatism. The main point
to remember for me perhaps is that signs objectively and logically
continue to exist in the absence of mind or life or matter. They may
be accidentally discovered as dispositions by thinkers, but they are
not arbitrarily invented as deliberations by them; at least not as
logicomathematic constructs. This presumably would go to the idealism
of pragmatist realism; and why Peirce tried to avoid positing any
global sense of psychologistic subjectivism into his brand of logic
and semiotics.
For me to fully appreciate what is meant by the concept of your
"recognizant" requires a fuller assay of objects, as they might be
given to sense in all of their various being. My thrust here is that
there may in fact be objects that act as synechastic objects and
semiosic objects. These would be the same objects, but in different
evolutionary states. My tentative understanding is that all objects
are phenomenal phanerons, but that act as existential representamens.
As such, objects initially continue to exist as synechastic objects,
or representamens that are not yet signs of objects.
In synechastics and before semiosics, there are perhaps two states of
objects. The first state posits objects in themselves solely alone as
phenomenal representamens, where they simply represent themselves by
themselves to themselves as themselves for themselves. The second
state posits objects with the mere potential of becoming signs, either
of themselves as their own signified objects, or of themselves as some
other signified objects, but only to themselves. This is the state
when such objects determine that all such objects will exist as signs.
If only life forms or even if only human forms as phenomenal
representamens and as existential objects have this determinative
ability, then this biotic state would be the genesis and limits of
recognizants. It is my feeling however that all organisms of living
life are signers of signs, and can thus consciously experience and
recognize their own existence, at least to some primitive extent,
therefore recognizants are not limited to human forms. This may of
course not be so with mechanisms of dead matter. All life and matter
nonetheless may have this determinative ability, which is to determine
that objects will be signs, since all matter and life are all objects
and are all signers.
In semiosics and after synechastics, there are then perhaps two kinds
of objects. This is after the very being of objects, because
representative signs are already initially determined. It is within
semiosics that synechastic objects determine the main kind
representamens that are signs will eventually be in acts of semiosis.
This is the grammatical information signs bear, aside from their
critical and rhetorical aspects or divisions. There are therefore two
kinds of informative semiotic objects, those objects being immediate
and dynamic. Immediate objects determine signs to be mainly pure
icons, or almost pure. Dynamic objects determine signs to be
dominantly icons or indexes or symbols. These dynamic icons are
somewhat degenerative, and are thus called hypoicons. The further
contents and defined subjects of referred objects, beyond the
information signs bear and the informative effects they initially
generate, then falls to their critical values and meanings and worths,
and later their rhetorical forces or powers.
It seems to me that recognizants can certainly be synechastic objects
of organic and biotic life forms, at least when such objects and forms
are driven by evolution to act as signers. Whether recognizants
however have any role to play in semiosics or semiosis or semiotics
remains unclear to me. Tentatively, the recognizant is thus possibly a
synechastic object, but not yet a semiosic object or sign. In
synechastics, the object and sign and signer to include any
recognizant are all together in combination the sole phenomenal
representamen and existent that then determines semiosis and the very
being of a sign and especially the main kind a sign will be.
If the recognizant is held to be the synechastic object of a signer,
and not also simultaneously the semiosic object of a sign, then there
is no contradiction. What is held to exist then is two different
states of objects, where one is a synechastic object of which the
recognizant may be a direct part acting as a signer, and one is a
semiosic object of which the recognizant may not be a part, unless it
acts at the behest of a signer indirectly as a sign. Mental
recognizants therefore need not be held only as signs, any more than
do all objects or existents or representamens or phanerons.
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