[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor

[Gary Richmond]

Benjamin Udell wrote: In any case, you've made an assertion, not an argument, and I've made arguments, including many on this thread. Rather than improvising a rehash of them to a very general assertion, I refer you to them. Your arguments which seem apodictic to you have not ever made much sense to me (perhaps I, like Joe, may just be obtuse), for example, your recent analysis of a fire in a post addressed to Joe (of which more later). My analysis (in diagrammatic form) of a line from a Shakespeare play was a preliminary attempt at using the two semiosical triads of Charles Rudder to relate the three Peircean semeiotic elements to real world objects while not introducing a fourth element (I don't recall your even commenting on that attempt; but then you had earlier suggested to Charles that one of his semiosical triads wasn't valid, or at least had no basis in Peirce's analysis, a conclusion with which I would strongly disagree). Having tried unsuccessfully  for years to grasp your reasons for a putative need for a fourth category, all I've been able to do recently is to point to the kinds of arguments (for example, in the "composite photograph" piece in Transactions) which are congruent with my own understanding of three categories/semeiotic elements as being necessary and sufficient. But I'm going to try one last time to make the Peircean case from the standpoint of collateral knowledge. I know I've said "one last time"  before. But truly, as I see it, I really now have spent enough time studying and trying to understand your position, trying to respond to it as best I can; while certainly nothing that I have said in support of Peirce's three categories and elements has been anything but ignored or rejected by you. Meanwhile a long, deep, intense study of Peirce's arguments for an essentially triadic Science has been so compelling to me that sometimes I've thought that just quoting him would be sufficient to make the triadic case (and who could argue it better than Peirce?)  Although you've rejected all my previous efforts, I will however try once again. But first I'd want to say that I fully concur with Joe in his saying: JR: The universal categories are analytical elements involved in all cases alike and any individual case must already be fully constituted as being of the nature of a cognition of some sort before the question of its verificational status can even arise.  The verificational factor therefore cannot be on par with the sort of universal element we are concerned with when we are concerned with the categories. and JR: There is nothing. . . that requires some new type of entity functioning as nodes other than something of the nature of a sign, something of the nature of an interpretant of a sign, and something of the nature of an object of a sign. Basically, It is still just a diagram about signs referring to objects, some of which are being referred to as signs and some of which are not. and JR . . .the point to the basic category analysis is to make it possible to represent cognitions of any and every sort in a helpfully analytic way, and once you have the elements required for the analysis of any given cognition, you ipso facto have what is required for such special cases as, say, that of verifying cognitions For those of us who see it this way, your insisting on a fourth element because of your "special experience of the object itself" just doesn't hold water; indeed your response to Joe's argumentation (which I found strong--the excerpts above are really more just conclusions and do not represent the subtlety of his argumentation) seemed strangely dismissive. Now, I think we all agree that there is are dynamical objects and that there is collateral knowledge of them; yet as I see it there are but three worlds of experience, three universal categories, three existential categories, three essential logical modalities, etc. and my "merely asserting" that at this point assumes that you have read enough of Peirce's own arguments to know that line of thought (Lord knows, I've quoted him often enough in the matter!)  And, again, while your arguments for the four make almost no sense to me, Peirce's arguments for the three make great good sense and have almost always gained in clarity upon rereading. For "we Peirceans" it is of the nature of cognition (and, as Joe pointed out, of re-cognition) that it--cognition--takes precisely a triadic form, and so also in consideration of such matters as the extraordinary complexity of semeiotic events (and their relations) involved in verification and the like. So it's always, as you've even insisted, been a matter of trying to grapple with your reasons why Peirce's analysis is insufficient and wrong (and it would then follow that his whole philosophy. steeped in triads and trichotomies, would have to be abandoned) while yours is sufficient and correct. Enough of this triadic confusion! Now for the collateral case. Again I'll leave most of the argumentation here to Peirce  (although, as opposed to what you've intimated, I have tried arguing at points for the Peirecean position in this thread including the post on the "composite photograph metaphor" which initiated it and in several other threads in the past).. Peirce writes:  CP 6.338 §6. MODES OF BEING All thinking is dialogic in form. Your self of one instant appeals to your deeper self for his assent. Consequently, all thinking is conducted in signs that are mainly of the same general structure as words; those which are not so, being of the nature of those signs of which we have need now and then in our converse with one another to eke out the defects of words, or symbols. These non-symbolic thought-signs are of two classes: first, pictures or diagrams or other images (I call them Icons such as have to be used to explain the significations of words; and secondly, signs more or less analogous to symptoms (I call them Indices) of which the collateral observations, by which we know what a man is talking about, are examples. The Icons chiefly illustrate the significations of predicate-thoughts, the Indices the denotations of subject-thoughts. The substance of thoughts consists of these three species of ingredients. [emphasis added by me] Peirce says that "collateral observations, by which we know what a man is talking about" are indices.  There is an objective world which we can point to because, as he writes elsewhere, an index is "a sign . . . which refers to its object . . . because it is in dynamical. . . connection both with the individual object, on the one hand, and with the senses or memory of the person for whom it serves as a sign." [emphasis doubly added by me--this and the next several quote are in Buchler, here, 107] Now I have tried to argue in the past from "senses" and "memory" of someone "for whom it serves as a sign". I think that Charles' two semiosical triads suggest a promising approach to diagramming the relationship holding between the inner/outer worlds as to make sense of Peirce's own understanding of  "collateral observation" as an example of indexical reference to the actual/objective/real world of experience. Not incidentally, Peirce also notes that indexicality is so caught up in the semeiotic mix that "it would be difficult, if not impossible, to instance an absolutely pure index, or to find any sign absolutely devoid of the indexical quality." (emphasis added by me, Buchler, 108) But now to counter your own personal fire example, I offer one of Peirce's examples: CP 2.287 . . . Suppose two men meet upon a country road and one of them says to the other, "The chimney of that house is on fire." The other looks about him and descries a house with green blinds and a verandah having a smoking chimney. He walks on a few miles and meets a second traveller. Like a Simple Simon he says, "The chimney of that house is on fire." "What house?" asks the other. "Oh, a house with green blinds and a verandah," replies the simpleton. "Where is the house?" asks the stranger. He desires some index which shall connect his apprehension with the house meant. Words alone cannot do this. Well, perhaps so far you'd agree. Then he continues: The demonstrative pronouns, "this" and "that," are indices. For they call upon the hearer to use his powers of observation, and so establish a real connection between his mind and the object; and if the demonstrative pronoun does that--without which its meaning is not understood--it goes to establish such a connection; and so is an index. CSP Why one would take those very human "powers of observation" and  try to make a semeiotic category out of them I simply can't fathom. You'd be quite right in saying that there's no argument here: we humans simply use indices to point to aspects and features and objects in this world we inhabit together and communicate about. But all our thinking concerning it--including any thought involved in our observation of it--is through icons, indices, and symbols. (Peirce's logic is founded he says on his phenomenology, so the primitive argument involves ones first finding three categories there, then in logic, then in many a place). You concluded your fire example: BU: I hadn't sat around interpreting a.k.a. construing, instead I had actively arranged to have a special experience of the objects themselves, an experience logically determined in its references and significances both prior and going forward, by the interpretation that my building was afire; and the experience determined semiosis going forward as well, and was corroborated in my interactions with fellow witnesses and by subsequent events, including the gutting and rebuilding the store. "a special experience of the objects themselves"--this makes sense to me only as ordinary human experience of a world (however, "the objects themselves" is beginning to sound a bit like Dem Ding an Sich). But then you asked the following questions of Joe which you then answered yourself (apparently to your own complete satisfaction): - Was the experience the object in question? - No. - Was it the sign? - No. - Was it the interpretant? - No. - Was it determined logically by them? - Yes. - Was it, then, another interpretant of the prior interpretants and their object? - No, because it was not an interpretant of the object, instead it further acquainted me with the object. Now, I can't  follow you here at all. Your experience was existential/semiotic, it included signs and interpretants, visual elements and memories, past interpretations, ordinary human intercourse with your neighbors, sights and sounds, feelings in your stomach,  etc. But a fourth semeiotic element? I don't see how that follows despite the perhaps thousands of words you've written on the theme. Well, as you recently said to me, you have your own "dear theory" and I have mine. As I suggested in an earlier post, I also have no idea what you mean by your one "Yes" above--that your "special experience" was "determined logically" by the object, sign, and interpretant. You assert this, and I suppose you'll say you argued it; but then I don't follow your argument. Also, I thought you said this was "a special experience of the objects themselves."  So this "special experience of the objects themselves" is "determined logically"? This seems to me a strange usage of both "determined" and "logically" and "experience of the objects themselves" (not to mention that a fourth category cannot it seems to me mediate between all the others in the way a Peircean category strictly can and MUST mediate between the other two in a genuine triadic relationship). You concluded this section by saying to Joe: BU: Now, if you don't see a problem for triadicism there, then I'd say that you've set the bar exceedingly high for seeing a problem. And if you reply that you don't find that sequence of questions and answers convincing of anything, even of the plausible appearance of a problem, without pointing to just where the logic breaks down, then I'll conclude that you've merely skimmed it, and haven't reasoned your way through it at all. No, I don't think the bar for "triadicism" (ugly _expression_) has been set "exceedingly high for seeing a problem" at all for Joe or for anyone here. Rather, you should consider that since, for example, your "sequence of questions and answers" was certainly NOT "convincing of anything" to me (was it convincing to Joe or anyone else on the list?--perhaps so) and, further, that you have so far failed to convince even a single other person of the need for a fourth category (if you have, who is that person?--still this is no argument against your position) then I think that you might at least consider "seeing a problem" in your own philosophy of fours. Perhaps you've set the bar, etc. Gary --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com