[peirce-l] Re: Representamens and Signs (was Design and Semiotics Revisited was Peircean elements)
Steven I agree with you in being unable to find what Frances is saying intelligible, but I want to take the occasion to ask you what you mean by immediacy, which seems to have a special meaning in your writings which is of special importance to you that I don't understand. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 12:41 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Representamens and Signs (was Design and Semiotics Revisited was Peircean elements) Dear List, I was hoping to keep out of this. Mostly I think the deconstruction of Peirce's writings concerning representamen / sign is a waste of time and simply unable to produce any meaningful result. This message by Frances simply makes no sense to me. How do you, Frances or Gary, propose a representamen that is prior to all existent objects and 'signs' and semiosis - this assertion makes no sense ontologically or epistemologically. Indeed, even if I consider such an argument viable, any such representamen would not be accessible to apprehension. It leads me to believe that there is a misunderstanding in Frances argument concerning the very nature of semeiosis. I think you are both reading too much into Peirce's exploration - which he clearly testifies to. Consider the two terms a property of the immediacy of his manifest refinement (his analysis). With respect, Steven Frances Kelly wrote: Gary... Thanks for your search and post. As you implied, the distinction attempted to be made by me is in deed the difference between representamens that are broader and prior to all else in the world, including existent objects and signs and semiosis, and that are independent of thought and mind and sense and life itself. The reason for my making this attempt is simply the seeming distinction made by Peirce himself in his many passages quoted here. Agreeably, it may certainly prove useful to distinguish between signs conveying notions to human minds and those representamens which can not or need not do so. My train of thought on this matter may of course be way off track, in that there may be no substantial distinction at all. The Peircean writings recently posted to the list by you on the terms representamen and representamens and representamina will be read by me in detail for some insight. -Frances --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Representamens and Signs (was Design and Semiotics Revisited was Peircean elements)
Frances to Joseph and listers... If representamens and signs are held to be separate and distinct, this will certainly make the world more complex and its field of logical study more complicated, and perhaps needlessly so. For now, my task is to carefully read all the passages from the Peircean writings available to me on the matter, before rendering some further appreciation or opinion. There is still perhaps a further related distinction for me to ponder, which is whether there might be any substantive difference between the terms representamen and representation that might exist in Peircean philosophy. It seems tentatively clear to me nonetheless that the concept of representation is about trichotomics and semiotics, and is say a property of signs. This however may not be so with representamen if it does indeed differ. My intended study of the writings may of course resolve this muse. Incidentally, the term reference is also used occasionally in early Peircean logic to separate and segregate qualitative grounds and relative correlates and interpretive representations. The implication here for me is that things like qualities and grounds and relations and correlates can be referred to by some means in isolation of representations, and presumably of signs as icons and indexes and symbols. Those other means may indeed be by way of representamens that are not interpretive representations or signs. This passage is liberally edited by me from the source noted below. We may also make the following scheme. Let 1 stand for reference to a ground, 2 stand for reference to a correlate, 3 stand for reference to an interpretant. The [1] is quality, [1/2] is relation, [1/2/3] is representation. In relation, the references are separable in equiparance which we may write [1-2] and inseparable in disquiparance which we may write [1+2]. In representation: in likeness the references are all separable [1-2-3]; in indication reference to a ground is not separable but the two first references are separable together [1+2-3]; in symbolization all are inseparable [1+2+3]. Peirce Chronological Edition, CE1.476 (1866) Finally, the mature human mind may not be able to think logically about phenomena in the world that it senses without the use of representative signs, nor perhaps should logical semiotics be concerned with such illogical stuff, but that does not necessarily mean that phenomena other than sensible representative signs are senseless or that they cannot by some means be found to in fact exist. It seems to me that metaphysical philosophy and empirical science must leave the representative door to inquiry ajar a little. Otherwise, proposing some rational argument in favor of say supereal deity for example might well prove to be impossible. Allow me for now to posit this speculative and tentative musement. In metaphysical philosophy, a representamen is a phenomenal phaneron serving to represent anything and everything to physiotic matter or biotic life, and represent it to that continuent or existent phaneron itself solely alone; while a representation on the other hand is an existent object serving to represent something to quasi mind or mind for some purpose other than for the mechanistic or organic phaneron itself, which representation in effect is as a representative sign. An important consideration here in scientific semiotics and logics is perhaps that the normal human mind needs representations as signs to think about representamen, even if such thought is nondiscursive and senseless and irrational and illogical. Furthermore and aside from phanerons sensing or thinking or knowing phenomena, it seems that in the whole evolving world all phenomenal phanerons to include representamens can feel to some degree, which means that primordial phenomena can feel either as representamen or can feel other representamen as such. Only in this way can evolving matter and life be semiotically or logically accounted for, because it is not likely that representative signs alone are able to do so. Joseph Ransdell wrote... Neither Theresa nor I disagree with what you are saying about the vernacular word sign being more narrow in scope of application than the word representamen and I assume you agree that there are several quotations which make clear that he regards the one as a technical explication of the other. If so there is no disagreement there. I think I was mistaken, though, in identifying confusion about the nature of that distinction as being what would account for the unintelligibility I find (or think I find) in her message. Also, I agree with Theresa in objecting to what Frances says in the passage she quotes from her: In my guess, it may be that for Peirce in the evolution of things representamens are more say monadic or dyadic and primitive then signs where objects that act as signs require them to be say triadic and the thought of organisms, while representamens may not. I take it that what
[peirce-l] Re: Representamens and Signs (was Design and Semiotics Revisited was Peircean elements)
A string search of representamen or representamen's or representamens or representamina in the electronic CP yields the following passages (I have not included comments by the editors of the CP). Note that what follows are in most cases the complete paragraphs in which the terms occur, but in a very few cases I have excluded a continuation of the paragraph which did not seem relevant, or added a short paragraph preceding or following the one employing the term. This has not been indicated in any special way. Gary Richmond CP 1.480 Cross-Ref:†† 480. Genuine triads are of three kinds. For while a triad if genuine cannot be in the world of quality nor in that of fact, yet it may be a mere law, or regularity, of quality or of fact. But a thoroughly genuine triad is separated entirely from those worlds and exists in the universe of representations. Indeed, representation necessarily involves a genuine triad. For it involves a sign, or representamen, of some kind, outward or inward, mediating between an object and an interpreting thought. Now this is neither a matter of fact, since thought is general, nor is it a matter of law, since thought is living. Peirce: CP 1.540 Cross-Ref:†† 540. The analysis which I have just used to give you some notion of genuine Thirdness and its two forms of degeneracy is the merest rough blackboard sketch of the true state of things; and I must begin the examination of representation by defining representation a little more accurately. In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or a representamen. I use these two words, sign and representamen, differently. By a sign I mean anything which conveys any definite notion of an object in any way, as such conveyers of thought are familiarly known to us. Now I start with this familiar idea and 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. If therefore I have committed an error in my analysis, part of what I say about signs will be false. For in that case a sign may not be a representamen. The analysis is certainly true of the representamen, since that is all that word means. Even if my analysis is correct, something may happen to be true of all signs, that is of everything that, antecedently to any analysis, we should be willing to regard as conveying a notion of anything, while there might be something which my analysis describes of which the same thing is not true. In particular, all signs convey notions to human minds; but I know no reason why every representamen should do so. Peirce: CP 1.541 Cross-Ref:†† 541. My definition of a representamen is as follows: A REPRESENTAMEN is a subject of a triadic relation TO a second, called its OBJECT, FOR a third, called its INTERPRETANT, this triadic relation being such that the REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant. Peirce: CP 1.542 Cross-Ref:†† 542. It follows at once that this relation cannot consist in any actual event that ever can have occurred; for in that case there would be another actual event connecting the interpretant to an interpretant of its own of which the same would be true; and thus there would be an endless series of events which could have actually occurred, which is absurd. For the same reason the interpretant cannot be a definite individual object. The relation must therefore consist in a power of the representamen to determine some interpretant to being a representamen of the same object. Peirce: CP 1.557 Cross-Ref:†† 557. Since no one of the categories can be prescinded from those above it, the list of supposable objects which they afford is, What is. Quale (that which refers to a ground) Relate (that which refers to ground and correlate) Representamen (that which refers to ground, correlate, and interpretant) It Peirce: CP 1.564 Cross-Ref:†† 564. I must acknowledge some previous errors committed by me in expounding my division of signs into icons, indices and symbols. At the time I first published this division in 1867 I had been studying the logic of relatives for so short a time that it was not until three years later that I was ready to go to print with my first memoir on that subject. I had hardly commenced the cultivation of that land which De Morgan had cleared. I already, however, saw what had escaped that eminent master, that besides non-relative characters, and besides relations between pairs of objects, there was a third category of characters, and but this third. This third class really consists of plural relations, all of which may be regarded as compounds of triadic relations, that is, of relations between triads of objects. A very
[peirce-l] Re: Representamens and Signs (was Design and Semiotics Revisited was Peircean elements)
Gary... Thanks for your search and post. As you implied, the distinction attempted to be made by me is in deed the difference between representamens that are broader and prior to all else in the world, including existent objects and signs and semiosis, and that are independent of thought and mind and sense and life itself. The reason for my making this attempt is simply the seeming distinction made by Peirce himself in his many passages quoted here. Agreeably, it may certainly prove useful to distinguish between signs conveying notions to human minds and those representamens which can not or need not do so. My train of thought on this matter may of course be way off track, in that there may be no substantial distinction at all. The Peircean writings recently posted to the list by you on the terms representamen and representamens and representamina will be read by me in detail for some insight. -Frances --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
