[peirce-l] Re: Peircean elements
Claudio, list, It's fine with me if you or others modify my graphics for the purposes of discussion, and you seem good at the graphics. The discussion has advanced considerably beyond the point which you seem to have reached. You seem to have isolated a few of my remarks and addressed them without reading the rest. Thus you end up saying things like you find "nothing" in my text about _why_ there should be a fourth element. It really is not plausible to address my explanations by claiming that I did not offer any, claiming it so casually as to raise the question of whether you read more than a few sentences of that post. I in fact did so and have done so in many other posts. You also fail to distinguish between the categories themselves, the semiotic elements, and, apparently, Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes. About a year after I joined peirce-l, Joe justifiably dinged me for not offering arguments for my claims -- I was mainly offering patterns of ideas and asking people to ponder them and grasp resonances, grasp them as that which might be called a philosophical-conceptual version of curve-fitting. So, since then, I have worked to develop arguments, and sought to capture articulate various inferential moves which I was making but had regarded as somehow "too technical" to be worth stating. And so I can understand how the interpretant seems to have the valuable cognitive content and how an inference to a judgment,an inference to a recognition, can seem somehow "extra" and its thematization can seem "not reallyneeded" because what such inference adds is mainly soundness, it adds the status of that which can reasonably be called knowledge,rather than still-further understanding.The interpretant appraises; the recognition merely legitimates. But in fact it is by such inference and its articulate counterpart, the argument that concludes in an acknowledgement, that a discipline like philosophy gets anywhere. I mean, it's nice and I really do like it when people respond to my posts, but I ask them to follow the argument closely enough to respond to it. Also, my arguments relate in important ways to Peirce's discussions of collateral experience, many of which are at http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005/02/collateral-observation-quotes.html Now I think I can show, that collaterally based recognition's being a semiotic element follows from the Peircean conception of semiotic (a.k.a. logical) determination. I will try to make it as deductive as I can, so it is important for the reader to consider whether s/he grants the premisses and regards the conclusions as following deductively or at least cogently. Points 1 - 3 have, I think, the most deductive structure, I can't deduce all possible counterarguments, however, so from 4 (with its A-K) onward we're in especially inductive territory. I will send Points 1-4 today. Some peope may have additions to make for Point 4, so I'll hold off on going beyond Point 4for a week or two. Thebasic ideais that everything logicallydeterminate or determinative is logically determinate or determinative _as_ a semiotic element, (e.g.,_as_ semiotic object or _as_ sign or _as_ interpretant). Thus, if the collaterally based recognition is logically determinate or determinative in its role _as_ collaterally based recognition,then it must be a semiotic element. 1. **Semiosis is logical process, the process OF logic,and everythinglogically determinative or determinate in the course of semiosis is so _in some logical role_.** 2. **The idea of the sufficiency of the triad, the idea of the diagrammability of relationships of logical determination interms of the three elements or elemental roles in thetriad,is this, the idea that everything that is logically determinative or determinate,is so,in the role of either object, sign, or interpretant.** If somebody diagrams semiotic, logically determinational relations, one would expect at any given juncture or 'vertex' to find a label of the kind one sees, "S"(or "R")for "sign"(or "representamen")or "O" for "object,"or "I" for "interpretant." One could accept some complication, where a given thing is a semiotic object in one set of relations and is a sign in another set of relations (it might be easier to label the arrows than the vertices), or where a given thing is a sign in one set of relations, but simply uninvolved in another set. All the same, one would not expect to find a case where, despite an assumption of triadic sufficiency, something is put intologically determinational relations as _decidedly definitely_ neither sign nor semiotic object nor interpretant. It would, I believe, be regarded as conflicting with theidea of triadic sufficiency. **A bit more precisely, the idea of triadic sufficiency is that everything, that is logically determinative or determinate to whatever given extent in whatever given respect,is logically determinative or determinate
[peirce-l] Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic)
Frances to Ben and Claudio and others: Forgive the interjection, but here are some interpretations of mine on Peircean ideas that may be related to your present concerns in signs and my current interests in designs. Let me state my speculations and invite corrections to them. The initial grammatic division of semiosis, or the fundamental structure of signs as information they bear, does rightly consist of: (1) representamens; and (2) referred objects; and (3) interpretants. This grammatic division however is only the first of three divisions, where interpretants in fact go on to permeate the other two divisions, which divisions are roughly critics and rhetorics. The recognizant as a sign force therefore may be merely a further development of an interpretant supersign beyond the information it is sensed to bear, and perhaps mainly within the rhetoric division. The recognizant thus would be part of a tridential and trichotomic system of signs, and should then not be held as the basis of some extended tetradic model of signs. If further quasi categories are to be found or deemed beyond the trichotomic phenomenal categories of terness, in the familiar plan of firstness and secondness and thirdness, then they might be of nomenal zeroness as an empty class holder in waiting, or even perhaps of epiphenomenal enthness to include fourthness and beyond. This however takes mind into some extra semiotic arena of the celestreal or ethereal or supereal world, which is not phenomenal or existential or experiential, nor logically categorical for that matter. States of thingness beyond phenomenal terness are after all senseless and illogical, because they are absolutely of nothingness or vaguely of anythingness and everythingness, which when outside the existence and experience of tridential phenomena makes them pointless and meaningless and useless. It is not known by me if Peirce admitted any aspects of the world that might be held to precede or succeed the phenomenal world. It is clear however that only phenomena can be felt or sensed or known, and that any other aspect before or beyond phenomena must then be done so by analogy using phenomenal representamen that are signs. Now, there are continuent phenomenal representamen or eternal things that are seemingly not objects nor signs, but that are felt by all phenomena or phanerons, to include physiotic mechanisms of dead matter and biotic organisms of live life; and if evolution takes things that far, there are existent phenomenal representamen or synechastic objects that are semiosic signs of semiosic objects. These are certainly felt, but may and can also be sensed and willed and known by phenomena acting as signers. Exactly just how phenomena evolve into being representamens, and then into infinite continua and definite or indefinite existentia is open to exploratory probes, but it is likely by some process of representation, upon which the logic of relations or relativity could be brought to bear. The whole wide world nonetheless is surely permeated and fully perfused with representamen, if not with signs. Phenomena is thus more of metaphysical seeming than of nomenal or epiphenomenal being. What thus seems to sense is likely that all objects are phenomenal and existent representamen, but that there are objects that are not signs. This makes the representamen of phenomena the umbrella over all else, and means that representamen is not necessarily a synonym of sign. The sequential layout of phenomenal synechastic representamen might thus range from (1) object to (2) sign to (3) signer, where signer might embrace the recognizant. The sequential layout of phenomenal semiosic representamen might then range in acts of semiosis from (1) sign to (2) object to (3) purpose like effect or worth or response or some other outcome. One issue here for me is whether existent phenomenal objects can be classed as synechastic and as semiosic justly within a Peircean scheme. One point on the semiotic square as a diagrammatic model is that for me tentatively it is seemingly not dyadic or tetradic or polyadic, but is basically triadic. My view holds that it consists of related poles whose signs are of: (1) horizontal contradictarity or opposition, such as false and true on the top plane with doubt and belief on the bottom plane; and (2) diagonal contrariety or reposition, thereby allowing for the critical judgement of say a doubted truth or a believed falsity; and (3) vertical complimentarity or apposition, such as a doubted falsity or a believed truth. In using the model, my experience furthermore has been that any attempt to fit too much of divisional semiosis and semiotics into one square may often fail. It is also usually the diagonal poles that yield the enlightening brute position of secondness, which is after all the key to factuality and sensibility and reality. This kind of restructuring for the semiotic square does violate its semiological origins, but seems useful. In
[peirce-l] Re: Are there authorities on authority?
Larry: Thanks for the extensive reply to my criticisms. Sorry for the delay in responding but it will take me a few days more before I am ready to do so properly. I've been reading the various material by you that provides background understanding in some depth for what you say in your messages here, and I am increasingly intrigued by the issues implicit in this project, though not yet convinced that -- as presently conceived -- it is either viable in principle or achievable to a significant degree in practice without turning into something else that you will eventually want to dissociate yourself from. But your attempt to develop a philosophically sound conception of it, and to do so both by extensive dialogue and by practical involvement and experimentation in actual implementation of it is the last thing I would wish to discourage in any way, as long as the idealism is still there and you stay open to criticism. The reason I am so slow in response is that I don't want to present only a negative view of your project but to suggest a somewhat different perspective to entertain, if I can describe it properly, which might be of some help in developing a more profitable understanding of its prospects and problematics than achieved thus far. I don't mean to be speaking as if from some superior vantage point but only from a somewhat different one, in virtue of different experience acquired in pursuit of what seem to be relevantly similar goals. Let me explain one reason why I say this, though I should apologize in advance for the length of it. I don't expect a response in detail. It is mainly just FYI. Hopefully, I will be able to come up with something of more value to you later. The interest I have in the sort of thing you are concerned with stems from two distinct but related aims. The first is one which has gradually formed itself over the years in connection with the standing problem in Peirce scholarship posed by the fact that Peirce's philosophical work still remains largely entombed in a vast quantity of unpublished manuscript material which is available, as a practical reality, only to a privileged few, and even for them in a largely unordered form that often defeats the possibility of shared access to it convenient enough to build effectively on the basis of it. The recent developments of computer-based information and communication technology make it possible to solve the problem of universal access to it and to develop instruments of organization and analysis and scholarly communication that could do justice to it, but attempts to do this have yet to be successful, and my own efforts in this direction thus far have caused me to think of the practice of scholarship and of philosophy rather differently than I otherwise would and in ways that seem to me to bear on what you are trying to do, too. More to the point, though, is the second aim, which is one which I acquired more or less by accident in virtue of my philosophical interest in the role of communication and publication in the process of inquiry motivated by the purpose of getting at the truth about something. From the Peircean perspective, which regards the inquiry process as fundamental in understanding epistemological matters, inquiry is to be understood as a essentially of the character of a dialogical process, which means that one has to be concerned with the question of what the role of publication is in that process, which is usually just ignored by philosophers of science because they think of publishing as something one does only to communicate results after they have been arrived at and already recognized as being acquired knowledge. In working out the implications of this I was led to the question of what is or can be meant by peer review, which is supposedly a validation process that occurs in the process of attempted publication, justifying the publication by somehow certifying or validating the document submitted as worthy of publication. But how can It do that if the judgment of a peer is logically on par with the judgment of the author, as is implicit in the concept of a peer? A second opinion is just another opinion nor can any piling up of further peer opinions change the logical status of the opinion reviewed, regardless of whether they agree or disagree. Omitting the reasons here, let me just say that I came to the conclusion that the common understanding of this practice is seriously flawed, and what is usually referred to as peer review is actually only a degenerate form of it at best since authentic peer review is something that can occur only in consequence of publication rather than being something that occurs prior to it that can justify it, as it is usually but mistakenly conceived. But at about this time I discovered that something had been happening in certain of the hard sciences which also lent support to this conclusion, namely, the movement,
[peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic)
Frances, In Peirce's discussions of collateral experience, notice how he repeatedly says that the sign, the interpretant, the sign system, do not convey experience of the object. Instead, they convey meaning about the object. http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005/02/collateral-observation-quotes.html There are ten quotations from Peirce about it there. In all but one of those quotes, he is quite clear about the role of collateral experience. It tells you the denotations of the objects. One needs such experience because sign interpretant themselves do not convey experience of the objects which they denote. I think that experience is needed also to learn and verify connotations, meanings, any sign power. The reason for all of that, is that the map is not the land, the portrait is not the person, and so on. One's experience of the sign is not one's experience of the object. I mean this in the most plain and obvious way. A big point of a sign is to convey information from beyond given present limits of experience. Some argue that one's experience of the object is simply a sign or interpretant which one has about the object, as if one's experience of the object were no more than a drawing or a text about the object. Thus they agree not with Peirce but with Steven Hawking and the positivists, that there are only models, pictures, of reality, one never has reality itself. Since Peirce usually does decisively distinguish experience from sign or interpretant, their argument is first of all with Peirce. Experience is fallible not always reliable, but that does not mean that experience is really one of those things -- i.e., signs interpretants -- which conveys information but not experience about the object. Now: by recognizant I mean experiential recognition, formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object. I mean where you look at the object and recognize it as being as you interpreted some sign to represent it. Now, go back again to the idea that sign and interpretant do not convey experience of the sign, the idea that familiarity-dependent understanding of the sign has outside the interpretant. How can the recognizant be, in the same relations regards, both the mind's experience of the object and the mind's sign or interpretant of the object? Something cannot both be, and not be, a sign or interpretant in the same respect extent. A choice must be made. I said that, though I wouldn't belabor the point, it was crucial. If somebody does not see the contradiction to which I am pointing, then that is where I wish to concentrate. If you don't see the contradiction, what do you see? Does it have the appearance of a contradiction? Why do you think that it isn't a contradiction? Or do you agree that it is a contradiction? If you agree, then how can you say that the recongnizant is a sign? Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Frances Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 7:05 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic) Frances to Ben and Claudio and others: Forgive the interjection, but here are some interpretations of mine on Peircean ideas that may be related to your present concerns in signs and my current interests in designs. Let me state my speculations and invite corrections to them. The initial grammatic division of semiosis, or the fundamental structure of signs as information they bear, does rightly consist of: (1) representamens; and (2) referred objects; and (3) interpretants. This grammatic division however is only the first of three divisions, where interpretants in fact go on to permeate the other two divisions, which divisions are roughly critics and rhetorics. The recognizant as a sign force therefore may be merely a further development of an interpretant supersign beyond the information it is sensed to bear, and perhaps mainly within the rhetoric division. The recognizant thus would be part of a tridential and trichotomic system of signs, and should then not be held as the basis of some extended tetradic model of signs. If further quasi categories are to be found or deemed beyond the trichotomic phenomenal categories of terness, in the familiar plan of firstness and secondness and thirdness, then they might be of nomenal zeroness as an empty class holder in waiting, or even perhaps of epiphenomenal enthness to include fourthness and beyond. This however takes mind into some extra semiotic arena of the celestreal or ethereal or supereal world, which is not phenomenal or existential or experiential, nor logically categorical for that matter. States of thingness beyond phenomenal terness are after all senseless and illogical, because they are absolutely of nothingness or vaguely of anythingness and everythingness, which when outside the existence and experience of tridential phenomena makes
[peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic)
Second correction! I must be tired. Sorry. I've gone over it extra carefully this time. - Ben. Sorry, one-word correction, but it's needed. It's indicated in the text. - Ben - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 1:05 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic) Frances, In Peirce's discussions of collateral experience, notice how he repeatedly says that the sign, the interpretant, the sign system, do not convey experience of the object. Instead, they convey meaning about the object. http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005/02/collateral-observation-quotes.html There are ten quotations from Peirce about it there. In all but one of those quotes, he is quite clear about the role of collateral experience. It tells you the denotations of the objects. One needs such experience because sign interpretant themselves do not convey experience of the objects which they denote. I think that experience is needed also to learn and verify connotations, meanings, any sign power. The reason for all of that, is that the map is not the land, the portrait is not the person, and so on. One's experience of the sign is not one's experience of the object. I mean this in the most plain and obvious way. A big point of a sign is to convey information from beyond given present limits of experience. Some argue that one's experience of the object is simply a sign or interpretant which one has about the object, as if one's experience of the object were no more than a drawing or a text about the object. Thus they agree not with Peirce but with Steven Hawking and the positivists, that there are only models, pictures, of reality, one never has reality itself. Since Peirce usually does decisively distinguish experience from sign or interpretant, their argument is first of all with Peirce. Experience is fallible not always reliable, but that does not mean that experience is really one of those things -- i.e., signs interpretants -- which conveys information but not experience about the object. Now: by recognizant I mean experiential recognition, formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object. I mean where you look at the object and recognize it as being as you interpreted some sign to represent it. Now, go back again to the idea that sign and interpretant do not convey experience of the object [object, not sign], the idea that familiarity-dependent understanding of the sign is [is, not has] outside the interpretant. How can the recognizant be, in the same relations regards, both the mind's experience of the object and the mind's sign or interpretant of the object? Something cannot both be, and not be, a sign or interpretant in the same respect extent. A choice must be made. I said that, though I wouldn't belabor the point, it was crucial. If somebody does not see the contradiction to which I am pointing, then that is where I wish to concentrate. If you don't see the contradiction, what do you see? Does it have the appearance of a contradiction? Why do you think that it isn't a contradiction? Or do you agree that it is a contradiction? If you agree, then how can you say that the recognizant is a sign? Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Frances Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 7:05 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic) Frances to Ben and Claudio and others: Forgive the interjection, but here are some interpretations of mine on Peircean ideas that may be related to your present concerns in signs and my current interests in designs. Let me state my speculations and invite corrections to them. The initial grammatic division of semiosis, or the fundamental structure of signs as information they bear, does rightly consist of: (1) representamens; and (2) referred objects; and (3) interpretants. This grammatic division however is only the first of three divisions, where interpretants in fact go on to permeate the other two divisions, which divisions are roughly critics and rhetorics. The recognizant as a sign force therefore may be merely a further development of an interpretant supersign beyond the information it is sensed to bear, and perhaps mainly within the rhetoric division. The recognizant thus would be part of a tridential and trichotomic system of signs, and should then not be held as the basis of some extended tetradic model of signs. If further quasi categories are to be found or deemed beyond the trichotomic phenomenal categories of terness, in the familiar plan of firstness and secondness and thirdness, then they might be of nomenal zeroness as an empty class holder in waiting, or even perhaps of epiphenomenal enthness to include
