[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben, Just one word about a small part of your response (I am now lacking time for a much detailed response). You wrote: I had said that your scenario implies that a mind gets object-acquaintance from a sign (the previous interpretant) to that same mind about the object. So you contradicted Peirce in order to get those two triangles. A mind gets acquaintance with the object from a sign : Yes and No. The apparent contradiction seems to me to be solved precisely by the duality between the continuous agreggate of experience of some object and the instantaneous effect of the same object through its actual sign. 1)On the side of continuity the interpreter's mind holds an history, a digest of an object through the aggregation of a multiplicity of instantaneous signs of it. Such an aggregation we call experience. In this sense we can say that object acquaintance comes -indirectly- with a series of signs. This lets open several questions: a) the identity of the object to which such an experience refers and b) the kind of the processes that proceed to the aggregation (the question of memory, be it individual or collective, c)how short could be the series in order to be effective for acquaintance, etc. I remember an old discussion on the list with Cathy Legg in order to know what happens with the first sign of some object (for example the first occurrence of a new word). 2)On the other side there is the instantaneous effect of a sign of the same object for the interpreter's mind. This effect does not bear anymore the identity of the object. In this sense the sign does not offers acquaintance with its object. It can only tell something about it. 3) Putting into relation 1) and 2) does the whole job. But analytically speaking, collateral experience is not genuinely distinct from the basic S-O-I relation. It is only a particular manifestation of such a relation qua entering into a continuous series of actualized signs. To my understanding of this, if somebody wanted to do a basic revision of Peirce's semiotic it should consist not to add a fourth element but to argue that without psychology (the aggregation process in some human head) there could hardly be any semiosis at all. The other angle d'attaque would be to argue that the recourse to time (the series of signs) requires to change the theory of signs. None of them was accepted by Peirce of course. Regards Bernard --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Dear Ben, Folks-- Thanks for the reassuring clarification, Ben. Here's my thought on the matter for today. The distinction between the knowledge we gain from direct acquaintance with an object verses the knowledge we gain of the same object through a symbolic sign of that object is that direct aquaintance is mediated by an actually indexed icon of the object whereas indirect symbolic aquaintance is mediated by an imputed icon of the object. The meaning of symbols depends in part upon the reliability of linguistic conventions, customs and habits. The meaning of icons depends primarily upon the reliability of direct observation. Ideally the meanings we assign to our symbols are rooted in aquaintance with the actual objects to which they refer, but customs take on a life of their own and are notoriously susceptible to the distorting influence of such factors as wishful thinking, blind allegiance to authority, tradition and the like. Science and common sense teach us that it is useful to periodically compare our actual icons with our theories and symbolic imputations of them. Symbols provide indirect aquaintance with objects. Actual observation of objects provides direct aquaintance. However in both cases the aquaintance (in so far as it provides us with a conception of the object) is mediated by signs. In the case of direct aquaintance the sign is an icon. In the case of indirect aquaintance the sign is a symbol with an imputed icon. Whenever we make comparisons we do so with signs. Mere otherness is basically dyadic. Comparison is fundamentally triadic. A is not B is not a comparison but merely an indication of otherness from which we gain no real sense of how A compares to B. On the other hand the analogy that A is to B as B is to C is a comparison which actually tells us something about the relative characters of the elements involved. Comparing a collateral object with a symbol for a collateral object is really a matter of comparing the meaning of an actual icon with the meaning of an imputed icon. We are never in a position to compare an actual object with a sign of that object because we have no conception of objects outside of signs. Sometime I think, Ben, that you are just blowing off the notion that all our conceptions of objects are mediated by signs. You say you agree with this formulation but when it comes to the collateral object you seem to resort to the position that direct aquaintance with the collateral object is not really mediated by signs but outside of semiosis. But what Peirce means (as I understand him) is that the collateral object is not actually iconized in the symbol that stands for it but is merely imputed to be iconized. To experience the actual icon we must experience the collateral object itself. That is the sense in which the collateral object is outside the symbol but not outside semiosis. One of the recurring problems I personally have in understanding Peirce is that I am often unsure in a particular instance whether he is using the term sign to refer to a symbol, an icon or an index. Morevover when it comes to icons and indexes I am often unclear as to whether he means them as signs or as degenerate signs. Maybe this is where I am going astray in my present analysis of the role of the collateral object in the verification of the sign. In anycase I continue to find this discussion helpful. Best wishes to all-- Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Bill, list, Peirce does disgtinguish between direct and immediate. See Joe's post from Feb. 15, 2006, which I reproduce below. It's not very clear to me at the mmoment what Peirce means by without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or operation. -- which is part of how he means direct. I know at least that when I say direct I mean such as can be mediated, and I've thought that Peirce meant direct in that sense too. So by direct I guess I mean something like -- if mediated, then such as not to create impediments, buffers, etc., and such as instead to transmit brute or unencoded, untranslated determination of the relevant kind by the shortest distance. (I.e., insofar as the mediation means an encoding, it's not the relevant kind of determination anyway). Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 8:36 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: immediate/mediate, direct/indirect - CORRECTION I did a check against an aging photocopy of the MS of the quote from Peirce in my recent message, and found some errors of transcription, and also a typo of punctuation that needed correction as well. I also include in this correction an indication of the words which are underlined in the original (using flanking underscores). I show one illegible word as a set of six question marks enclosed in brackets because the illegible word appears to have six letters, maybe seven. Here is the passage again, corrected (though not infallibly): A _primal_ is that which is _something_ that is _in itself_ regardless of anything else. A _Potential_ is anything which is in some respect determined but whose being is not definite. A _Feeling_ is a state of determination of consciousness which apparently might in its own nature (neglecting our experience of [??] etc.) continue for some time unchanged and that has no reference of [NOTE: should be to] anything else. I call a state of consciousness _immediate_ which does not refer to anything not present in that very state. I use the terms _immediate_ and _direct_, not according to their etymologies but so that to say that A is _immediate_ to B means that it is present in B. _Direct_, as I use it means without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or operation. -- MS 339.493; c. 1904-05 Logic Notebook Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Bill Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor Jim, List: I cannot accept the notions direct acquaintance or direct experience if those terms mean unmediated, or generally assume a human sensory system that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any observer. Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules. That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical. It obviously is, or we would have perished. But isomorphism is no more necessary to veridicality than it is to the analogical relationships between mathematical formulae and the physical world. The most direct experience we have, and it seems to me Peirce supports this contention, is a strong affective state. For the baby, it's a hunger pang, a physical hurt, or more happily, being fed or swaddled. What is felt is all there is; stimulus and response are essentially unitive. It takes awhile for a child to learn to mediate between that systemic relevance and the identity that is commonly called objective. Developmental psychologists have commented upon the beginnings of perception in relevance. For example: an urban infant commonly sleeps through all sorts of traffic noises--sirens, crashes, horns, etc., but wakes up when mother enters the room. And relevance continues to direct us in our adult, everyday lives where things and events have the identies and meanings of their personal relevances--what we use them to do and how we feel about them. The wonderfully bright and sensitive colleague who stopped by our office to chat yesterday is inconsiderate and intrinsically irritating today with his endless yammering while we are trying to meet a paper deadline. There is some physiological evidence that meaning precedes perception--i.e., that the relevance of a sensory response is responded to in the brain's cortex before differentiation of the stimulus identity. Contrary to experience, we've been brought up and educated to believe we perceive and identify the object and then have responses--which, if it were so, would have promptly ended evolution for any species so afflicted. You couldn't dodge the predator's charge until after you'd named the predator, the attack and what to do. For most of our lives, the subject-object relationship analysis only enters when things go wrong, when the ride breaks down and we have
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Dear Bill, I did not mean to suggest that direct aquaintance with an object was unmediated by signs . I was trying to make just the opposite point -- that all meaningful conceptions are mediated by signs whether we are in direct contact with the object or indirectly as when the object is represented by a symbol. My further point was that direct contact permitted actual iconization of the object based upon direct observation whereas the symbol only provided an imputed icon which depended in part upon community conventions. So I think I am more in agreement with your position that I made clear in my earlier posts. I even agree with the thrust of your argument that meaning guides perception rather than vice versa. We do not perceive truly unknown objects that are meaningless to us. An unfamiliar object that is a member of a familiar class is of course not instance of a meaningless object becuase we have a framework in which to perceive its broad outlines. But a truly unknown object would escape our notice because it has no meaningful contours. As to firstness -- I seem to be in a mininority around here as to what constitutes a feeling, a quality or a firstness. I say we have no conception of firsts (other than as firsts of thirds) because without the sign we have no conception of anything. In the beginning is the word. Sorry I have not responded more directly to your comments. I find them interesting as always but just now I'm in a big rush. Still I could not resist a comment or two of my own. Best wishes, Jim Piat - Original Message - From: Bill Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor Jim, List: I cannot accept the notions direct acquaintance or direct experience if those terms mean unmediated, or generally assume a human sensory system that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any observer. Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules. That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical. It obviously is, or we would have perished. But isomorphism is no more necessary to veridicality than it is to the analogical relationships between mathematical formulae and the physical world. The most direct experience we have, and it seems to me Peirce supports this contention, is a strong affective state. For the baby, it's a hunger pang, a physical hurt, or more happily, being fed or swaddled. What is felt is all there is; stimulus and response are essentially unitive. It takes awhile for a child to learn to mediate between that systemic relevance and the identity that is commonly called objective. Developmental psychologists have commented upon the beginnings of perception in relevance. For example: an urban infant commonly sleeps through all sorts of traffic noises--sirens, crashes, horns, etc., but wakes up when mother enters the room. And relevance continues to direct us in our adult, everyday lives where things and events have the identies and meanings of their personal relevances--what we use them to do and how we feel about them. The wonderfully bright and sensitive colleague who stopped by our office to chat yesterday is inconsiderate and intrinsically irritating today with his endless yammering while we are trying to meet a paper deadline. There is some physiological evidence that meaning precedes perception--i.e., that the relevance of a sensory response is responded to in the brain's cortex before differentiation of the stimulus identity. Contrary to experience, we've been brought up and educated to believe we perceive and identify the object and then have responses--which, if it were so, would have promptly ended evolution for any species so afflicted. You couldn't dodge the predator's charge until after you'd named the predator, the attack and what to do. For most of our lives, the subject-object relationship analysis only enters when things go wrong, when the ride breaks down and we have to get off to fix it. The rest of the time the perceptual information/data that we treat as objective is submerged in our comparatively mindless states of feeling and doing. We write or type instead of moving our fingers and hands to produce selected results. We drive three quarters of the way to work and wake up to realize we've no memory of the prior two miles. Or we come home angered by someone at work and yell at spouses and kids. That's the everyday world we live in, and in that world the organic unity of the sensory system means responses to environmental impingments (exteroception) are inherently conditioned by what we are feeling and doing--by interoception and proprioception. I understand this primary level of information processing to be essentially what Peirce means by firstness. I don't think we can get to secondness until
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben, Thank you for your response. I suppose at the crack of doom humans will still be wrestling with definitions. These exchanges are useful for egocentrics like me who assume their terms mean the same as someone else's. When I think of immediate, I think of something very like Peirce's immediate state of consciousness. In the prior post I used the example of an infant's experience of a hunger pang or hurt. That also seems to me to be compatible with Peirce's A is immediate to B formulation. But when we clip the prefix from immediate I think I leave the definitional camp. When I speak of mediation, I'm talking about the use of a medium, some constrained/limited system which we use informationally, such as the sensory system or language. From the standpoint of information, the medium is not an obstructive intermediary, but the necessary if often unconsciously used means of information processing. So I may be at odds with you and Peirce as regards the concept of mediation. - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 1:15 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor Bill, list, Peirce does disgtinguish between direct and immediate. See Joe's post from Feb. 15, 2006, which I reproduce below. It's not very clear to me at the mmoment what Peirce means by without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or operation. -- which is part of how he means direct. I know at least that when I say direct I mean such as can be mediated, and I've thought that Peirce meant direct in that sense too. So by direct I guess I mean something like -- if mediated, then such as not to create impediments, buffers, etc., and such as instead to transmit brute or unencoded, untranslated determination of the relevant kind by the shortest distance. (I.e., insofar as the mediation means an encoding, it's not the relevant kind of determination anyway). Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 8:36 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: immediate/mediate, direct/indirect - CORRECTION I did a check against an aging photocopy of the MS of the quote from Peirce in my recent message, and found some errors of transcription, and also a typo of punctuation that needed correction as well. I also include in this correction an indication of the words which are underlined in the original (using flanking underscores). I show one illegible word as a set of six question marks enclosed in brackets because the illegible word appears to have six letters, maybe seven. Here is the passage again, corrected (though not infallibly): A _primal_ is that which is _something_ that is _in itself_ regardless of anything else. A _Potential_ is anything which is in some respect determined but whose being is not definite. A _Feeling_ is a state of determination of consciousness which apparently might in its own nature (neglecting our experience of [??] etc.) continue for some time unchanged and that has no reference of [NOTE: should be to] anything else. I call a state of consciousness _immediate_ which does not refer to anything not present in that very state. I use the terms _immediate_ and _direct_, not according to their etymologies but so that to say that A is _immediate_ to B means that it is present in B. _Direct_, as I use it means without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or operation. -- MS 339.493; c. 1904-05 Logic Notebook Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Bill Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor Jim, List: I cannot accept the notions direct acquaintance or direct experience if those terms mean unmediated, or generally assume a human sensory system that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any observer. Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules. That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical. It obviously is, or we would have perished. But isomorphism is no more necessary to veridicality than it is to the analogical relationships between mathematical formulae and the physical world. The most direct experience we have, and it seems to me Peirce supports this contention, is a strong affective state. For the baby, it's a hunger pang, a physical hurt, or more happily, being fed or swaddled. What is felt is all there is; stimulus and response are essentially unitive. It takes awhile for a child to learn to mediate between that systemic relevance and the identity that is commonly called objective. Developmental psychologists have commented upon the beginnings of perception in relevance. For example: an urban infant commonly sleeps through all sorts of traffic
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Gary, This is to say that I am gratified and somewhat relieved to learn that you found something worthwhile in my "as if" post, and that I am not ignoringyour responses to my recent posts. On the contrary, you have prompted me to reexaminemy "Three Worlds"speculationtogether with some of the Peirce material that I included (especially CP 5.119 in connection with CP 4. 157) with the result that I am now thinking in terms both of some revision and expansion. It may take a while as I am now under some time constraints from which I had some reprieve over the last three weeks. In any case, if and when I think I have something cogent in hand I will post it. Charles PS The answer to your question off listabout who and where I am is yes. On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:41:44 -0400 Gary Richmond [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Charles, list, One of the Peirce quotations in your "as if" post strongly supports your notion, reiterated here, that it is possible and, indeed, desirable to make a double trichotomic distinction of Sign - External Object - Interpreter and Sign - Immediate Object - Interpretant, and that especially the relation between these Inner and Outer semeiotic trichotomies might prove fertile grounds for further inquiry. I've myself (and bouncing off your "as if" post) have begun work reflecting upon and diagramming some of your questions, ideas, also my own abductions as to the relationship holding between the two triads, etc. However, it's much too early for me to offer a report on any of this except to say that you are asking some very stimulating questions, Charles, which have certainly gotten me thinking in refreshing new directions. In any case, here is the quotation in your "as if" post which I'm pointing to: Were I to undertake to establish the correctness of my statement that the cardinal numerals are without meaning, I should unavoidably be led into a disquisition upon the nature of language quite astray from my present purpose. I will only hint at what my defence of the statement would be by saying that, according to my view, there are three categories of being; ideas of feelings, acts of reaction, and habits. Habits are either habits about ideas of feelings or habits about acts of reaction. The ensemble of all habits about ideas of feeling constitutes one great habit which is a World; and the ensemble of all habits about acts of reaction constitutes a second great habit, which is another World. The former is the Inner World, the world of Plato's forms. The other is the Outer World, or universe of existence. The mind of man is adapted to the reality of being. Accordingly, there are two modes of association of ideas: inner association, based on the habits of the inner world, and outer association, based on the habits of the universe. (CP 4.157)Commenting on this passage you wrote: CR: I am also thinking that Consciousness as such is First for the Inner World, that the Present as such is First in the Outer World, and that Actionresponsiveness reactivenessthat mediates relations between the Inner and Outer Worlds creates a Third World and Third Worlds within worlds among which is the Human World, which, as I see it, would be to say that, as Peirce puts it, MAN is a Signa Representamen.Your present extension of this idea seems to me generally sound, while I am thinking at this point that one might extend the notion of Interpreter quite a bit further than you seem to be doing. For example, in biological evolution higher and more complex systems and structures tend to entrain less complex systems (making them sub-systems in respect to the evolutionary advances made) suggesting to me that there is something which receives contributes "as if" it were Interpreter, and so this sentient 'something' need not necessarily be human in contributing to "acts of representation". In other words, while it would appear to be true that from the standpoint of the further evolution of consciousness it is necessary that we humans direct ourselves to the reflective self-control of our own form of evolution (and all that this implies for re-presentation); yet without any help from us the cosmos apparently "represented" to itself exactly the patterns necessary for the evolution of that creature -- homo sapiens -- which could eventually undertake that very human self-reflective task (and where else would our power of representation come from if not from Firstness and Thirdness active in the Universe itself?--however, you may see my use of "represented" here as too vague and loose as to be useful). I might add that while we humans have seemingly not yet fulfilled our own evolutionary vocation--this being epitomized in my thinking of the past few year by especially the Engelbartian abduction of the
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Dear Ben, Joe, Folks -- Ben, are you saying that Peirce's categories (including representation) are inadequate to account for comparisons betweenknowledge gainedfrom direct aqauintance with a collateral object andknowledge gainedfrom a signofa collateral object? That when we make these sorts of comparisons weengage insome category of experience (such as checking, recognition. verification or the like) that is not accounted for in the Peircean categories? Is that basically what you are saying or am I missing your point? I want to make sure I'm stating the issue to your satisfaction before I launch into further reasons why I disagree with that view.I fear wewe may be talking past one another if we don't share a common understanding of what is at issue.So I want to make sure I'm correctly understanding what you take to be at issue. When and if you have the energy and interest, Ben. I admire your stamina and good cheer. And yours, too, Joe.I think that dispite its frustrating moments this has been a worthwhile discussion.For me the notion of what we can know and how we know it is atthecore of Peirce's philosophy.Each timethe listrevisits this issue in one form or another I gain a better understandingof what is a stake-- and also of someerroneous assumptions or conclusions that I have beenmaking.Thanks to all -- Jim Piat Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 3:15 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, list, [Joe] I was just now rereading your response to Charles, attending particularly to your citation of Peirce's concern with verification, and I really don't see in what you quote from him on this anything more than the claim that it is the special concern for making sure that something that someone -- perhaps oneself -- has claimed to be a fact or has concluded to be so (which could be a conviction more or less tentatively held) really is a fact by putting the claim or acceptation of that conclusion to the test, in one way or another. This verificational activity could involve many different sorts of procedures, ranging from, say, reconsidering the premises supporting the claim as regards their cogency relative to the conclusion drawn to actively experimenting or observing further for the same purpose, including perhaps, as a rather special case, the case where one actually attempts to replicate the procedure cited as backing up the claim made. Scientific verification is really just a sophistication about ways of checking up on something about which one has some doubts, driven by an unusually strong concern for establishing something as "definitively" as possible, which is of course nothing more than an ideal of checking up on something so thoroughly that no real question about it will ever be raised again. But it is no different in principle from what we do in ordinary life when we try to "make sure" of something that we think might be so but about which we are not certain enough to satisfy us. The purpose (http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu/msg01288.htmlalso at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1344) of my quoting Peirceon verification was to counter Charles' claim that verification amounts to nothing more than one's acting as if a claim were true, and Charles'making it sound like there's something superfluous about verification, that it's somehow meaningless to think of really verifying or disverifying a claimed rule like "where there's smoke, there's fire," meaningless insofar as it supposedly involves indulging in Cartesian doubt and insofar one has already done whatever verificationone can do, by acting as if the claimed rule were true -- as if the way to understand verification were to understand it as a piece of symbolism about a rule only hyperbolically doubtable, understand verification as an act which stands as symbol (or, for that matter, as index or whatever) to another mind,rather than as an observing of sign as truly corresponding to object, and of interpretant as truly corresponding to sign and object. Verification does not need to be actually public and shared among very distinct minds, though it should be, at least in principle, sharable, potentially public in those ways. (Of course, _scientific_ verification has higher standards than that.) I quoted Peirce on verification to show that, in the Peircean view,the doubting of a claimed rule is not automatically a universal, hyperbolic, Cartesian doubt of the kind which Peirce rejects, especially rejects as a basis on which (a la Descartes)only deductive reasoning will be allowed to build -- a Cartesian needle's eye of doubt through which all philosophica
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
. And it is easy to be seriouisly mistaken in both ways, which raises important questions about research methodology in philosophy that are too often avoided. But as regards the matter in question here, I can only say that I have a strongly felt hunch that your argumentation is being distorted by the misguided attempted to try to fit the problematics of verification into the context of the problematics of category theory, where it simply doesn't fit. You are mistaken in thinking that I am so totally persuaded that there is no fourth category to be added to Peirce's three that I am simply prejudiced against what you are saying for that reason. In fact, I am not persuaded of that at all and would not be inclined to want to put the time in on trying to demonstrate it. I just don't know of any reason that persuades me that there is such a thing. As regards your work, It is just that when I read what you say on the topic I don't really understand what you are saying most of the time, whereas I usually find you very good at understanding and commenting upon what Peirce is saying, but I do not find myself inclined to trust your judgment on this particular topic because I find you saying so many things that seem to me to be off in some way, even though I usually can't say exactly why. I can't simply refute your claim, Ben, but I am suspicious enough of so much of what you are saying in that connection that I am content with the hunch that you are mistaken, and I do think that the reasons I have adduced in respect to the claim about verification as being or essentially involving a fourth categorial factor are pretty good ones for rejecting that particular claim of yours. Well, maybe that really is the last word on that for me! Best regards, Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 2:46 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor Sorry, I forgot to compensate for an MS Outlook Express problem which involves URLs not getting copied properly. Now taken care of. Charles, list, [Charles] With this post which exhausts all I am incluned to say in this context, I too will probably go quiet. [Charles] On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:58:50 -0400 Benjamin Udell writes: [Ben] Charles, list, I guess it's hard for me to let any remarks about my ideas go by without response, but I still am inclined, as I've put it, to go quiet. Charles wrote, [Charles] [I would say that Bens Recognition is included in (not outside) the Interpretant as an element of the Interpreters contribution to its determination.] [Ben] The recognition or recognizant, in the core narrow sense, is _defined_ as object-experience (of the acquaintance kind) formed collaterally to sign and interpretant in respect of the object; the recognizant is defined as something which, Peirce (usually) says, is not gotten from the sign and is outside the interpretant. So you're simply contradicting the definition. [Charles] I have said nothing that I see as contrary to what Peirce says about the role of collateral experience in sign processes. In the situation where you saw smoke and went looking for a fire, seeing smoke functioned as a sign that you took as representing something other than smoke at at least two levels, a general and a singular. Before you found and actually saw the fire, you interpreted seeing smoke (the sign itself, a sinsign, distinguishable from its objects and interpretants) according to a general rule (a legisign), something like, Wherever there is smoke there is fire. and according to a singularization of the rule something like, With the smoke I presently see there is presently a fire. As Peirce points out, smoke would be uninterpretable as a sign of fire apart from your prior acquaintance with fire (and smoke also for that matter), but seeing smoke prompting you to look for fire and a particular fire was mediated by rules with which you were also already acquainted and apart from which you would not have known to look for fire. I agree that a singular instance of seeing smoke and interpreting seeing smoke as a sign of fire occurs by means of collateral experience that would include recognizing smoke as smoke and not a cloud of steam or dust, fire as fire, etc. in which the interpretant of seeing smoke in its capacity as a singular sign played no partoutside, as you say, the interpretant. But the collateral experience would also include having learned to act and acting as if a rule is true apart from which smoke, insofar as it is suited to function as a sign, could not be interpreted as a sign. What I have been trying to say is that acts of interpretation which include recognition are semiosical, and that recognizing is an interpretant or included in interpretants of a sign or signs that are collateral to the interpretant of any particular sign
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben, list,
Ben,
With this post which exhausts all I am incluned to say in this context, I
too will probably "go quiet."
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:58:50 -0400 "Benjamin Udell" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Charles, list,
I guess it's hard for me to let any remarks about my ideas go by without
response, but I still am inclined, as I've put it, to "go quiet."
Charles wrote,
[I would say that Bens Recognition is included in (not
outside) the Interpretant as an element of the Interpreters contribution to
its determination.]
The recognition or recognizant, in thecore narrow sense,is
_defined_as object-experience (of the acquaintance kind) formed
collaterally to sign and interpretant in respect of the object; the
recognizant is defined as something which, Peirce (usually)says, is not
gotten from the sign and isoutside the interpretant. So you're simply
contradicting the definition.
I have said
nothing that I see as contrary to what Peirce says about the role of collateral
experience in sign processes. In
the situation where you saw smoke and went looking for a fire, seeing smoke
functioned as a sign that you took as representing something other than smoke at
at least two levels, a general and a singular. Before you found and actually saw the
fire, you interpreted seeing smoke (the sign itself, a sinsign, distinguishable
from its objects and interpretants) according to a general rule (a legisign),
something like, Wherever there is smoke there is fire. and according to a
singularization of the rule something like, With the smoke I presently see
there is presently a fire. As
Peirce points out, smoke would be uninterpretable as a sign of fire apart from
your prior acquaintance with fire (and smoke also for that matter), but seeing
smoke prompting you to look for fire and a particular fire was mediated by
rules with which you were also already acquainted and apart from which you would
not have known to look for fire.
I agree that a singular instance of seeing smoke and interpreting seeing
smoke as a sign of fire occurs by means of collateral experience that would
include recognizing smoke as smoke and not a cloud of steam or dust, fire as
fire, etc. in which the interpretant of seeing smoke in its capacity as a
singular sign played no partoutside, as you say, the interpretant. But the collateral experience would also
include having learned to act and acting as if a rule is true apart from which
smoke, insofar as it is suited to function as a sign, could not be interpreted
as a sign. What I have been trying
to say is that acts of interpretation which include recognition are semiosical,
and that recognizing is an interpretant or included in interpretants of a sign or signs that are collateral to the
interpretant of any particular sign.
Beyond the
primitive perceptual event seeing a virtually meaningless something, any
meaning that accrues to seeing something by means of which it is recognizably (a
classification) and recognizable as (a singularization of a clsssification)
smoke rather than steam (which for a young child it might not) is
semiosical. Apart from acting as if
rules that are linguistic and/or embedded in habits are in some sense true or
valid, neither you nor I nor anyone else seeing smoke would look for fire, and
no particular instance of seeing smoke, following it to its source, and, sure
enough, seeing fire, can verify that a rule of thumb like, Wherever there is
smoke there is fire. is true. What
if you had been unable to find a fire before the smoke disappeared? Would you have then concluded that your
seeing smoke was an illusion of some sort?
Would you have concluded that the rule of thumb, Wherever there is smoke
there is fire. is false?
I believe
that you may be conflating Peirces distinction between signs and replicas of
signs by criticizing his theory of signs in terms of experience and conduct
mediated by signs together with sign replicas about which Peirce has relatively
little to say. I also believe that
you are ignoring Peirces critique and rejection of the possibility of universal
doubtas if doubting were as easy as lyingin his discussions of the relation
between doubt and belief. In short,
it appears to me that you are interpreting Peirce nominalistically.
Charles
---
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[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Sorry, I forgot to compensate for an MS Outlook Express problem which involves URLs not getting copied properly. Now taken care of. Charles, list, [Charles] With this post which exhausts all I am incluned to say in this context, I too will probably "go quiet." [Charles] On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:58:50 -0400 "Benjamin Udell"writes: [Ben] Charles, list, I guess it's hard for me to let any remarks about my ideas go by without response, but I still am inclined, as I've put it, to "go quiet." Charles wrote, [Charles] [I would say that Bens Recognition is included in (not outside) the Interpretant as an element of the Interpreters contribution to its determination.] [Ben] The recognition or recognizant, in thecore narrow sense,is _defined_ as object-experience (of the acquaintance kind) formed collaterally to sign and interpretant in respect of the object; the recognizant is defined as something which, Peirce (usually) says, is not gotten from the sign and isoutside the interpretant. So you're simply contradicting the definition. [Charles] I have said nothing that I see as contrary to what Peirce says about the role of collateral experience in sign processes. In the situation where you saw smoke and went looking for a fire, seeing smoke functioned as a sign that you took as representing something other than smoke at at least two levels, a general and a singular. Before you found and actually saw the fire, you interpreted seeing smoke (the sign itself, a sinsign, distinguishable from its objects and interpretants) according to a general rule (a legisign), something like, Wherever there is smoke there is fire. and according to a singularization of the rule something like, With the smoke I presently see there is presently a fire. As Peirce points out, smoke would be uninterpretable as a sign of fire apart from your prior acquaintance with fire (and smoke also for that matter), but seeing smoke prompting you to look for fire and a particular fire was mediated by rules with which you were also already acquainted and apart from which you would not have known to look for fire. I agree that a singular instance of seeing smoke and interpreting seeing smoke as a sign of fire occurs by means of collateral experience that would include recognizing smoke as smoke and not a cloud of steam or dust, fire as fire, etc. in which the interpretant of seeing smoke in its capacity as a singular sign played no partoutside, as you say, the interpretant. But the collateral experience would also include having learned to act and acting as if a rule is true apart from which smoke, insofar as it is suited to function as a sign, could not be interpreted as a sign. What I have been trying to say is that acts of interpretation which include recognition are semiosical, and that recognizing is an interpretant or included in interpretants of a sign or signs that are collateral to the interpretant of any particular sign. (Assuming that you intend no practical difference made by differences between "recognizing" and "recognition" etc.) -- Insofar as "recognizing" in the current discussion is defined as "forming an experience as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object," you're saying that an experience formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object isan interpretant of that object. That's just a contradiction, both internally and to Peirce. It is notan interpretant in Peirce's view,which is that acquaintancewith the object is not part of the interpretant about that object. From C.S. Peirce, Transcribed from Letter to Lady Welby Dec 23, 1908 (in _Semiotics and Significs: Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby_, ed. Charles Hardwick, Indiana U. Press, 1977, p.83) http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/interpretant.html also at http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_peircematters_archive.html . Quote: Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience. End quote. Note that Peirce does _not_ say that _collateral_ acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience. Peirce is not stating such a truism. Instead he says that acquaintance, any acquaintance at all, must be gained by collateral experience. There is good reason for Peirce to hold that view, since experience of the sign of an object is not experience of that object, which in turn is because the sign is (usually) not the object, and part of the whole point of signs is to lead the mind to places where, in the relevant regard,experience and observation have not gone yet but could conceivably go. This is as true as ever even when the experienced object is a sign experienced in its signhood or an interpretant sign experienced in its interpretancy. It is not clear to me whether you are tacitlydisputing Peirce or believe that you are
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Charles, list, One of the Peirce quotations in your "as if" post strongly supports your notion, reiterated here, that it is possible and, indeed, desirable to make a double trichotomic distinction of Sign - External Object - Interpreter and Sign - Immediate Object - Interpretant, and that especially the relation between these Inner and Outer semeiotic trichotomies might prove fertile grounds for further inquiry. I've myself (and bouncing off your "as if" post) have begun work reflecting upon and diagramming some of your questions, ideas, also my own abductions as to the relationship holding between the two triads, etc. However, it's much too early for me to offer a report on any of this except to say that you are asking some very stimulating questions, Charles, which have certainly gotten me thinking in refreshing new directions. In any case, here is the quotation in your "as if" post which I'm pointing to: Were I to undertake to establish the correctness of my statement that the cardinal numerals are without meaning, I should unavoidably be led into a disquisition upon the nature of language quite astray from my present purpose. I will only hint at what my defence of the statement would be by saying that, according to my view, there are three categories of being; ideas of feelings, acts of reaction, and habits. Habits are either habits about ideas of feelings or habits about acts of reaction. The ensemble of all habits about ideas of feeling constitutes one great habit which is a World; and the ensemble of all habits about acts of reaction constitutes a second great habit, which is another World. The former is the Inner World, the world of Plato's forms. The other is the Outer World, or universe of existence. The mind of man is adapted to the reality of being. Accordingly, there are two modes of association of ideas: inner association, based on the habits of the inner world, and outer association, based on the habits of the universe. (CP 4.157) Commenting on this passage you wrote: CR: I am also thinking that Consciousness as such is First for the Inner World, that the Present as such is First in the Outer World, and that Actionresponsiveness reactivenessthat mediates relations between the Inner and Outer Worlds creates a Third World and Third Worlds within worlds among which is the Human World, which, as I see it, would be to say that, as Peirce puts it, MAN is a Signa Representamen. Your present extension of this idea seems to me generally sound, while I am thinking at this point that one might extend the notion of Interpreter quite a bit further than you seem to be doing. For example, in biological evolution higher and more complex systems and structures tend to entrain less complex systems (making them sub-systems in respect to the evolutionary advances made) suggesting to me that there is something which receives contributes "as if" it were Interpreter, and so this sentient 'something' need not necessarily be human in contributing to "acts of representation". In other words, while it would appear to be true that from the standpoint of the further evolution of consciousness it is necessary that we humans direct ourselves to the reflective self-control of our own form of evolution (and all that this implies for re-presentation); yet without any help from us the cosmos apparently "represented" to itself exactly the patterns necessary for the evolution of that creature -- homo sapiens -- which could eventually undertake that very human self-reflective task (and where else would our power of representation come from if not from Firstness and Thirdness active in the Universe itself?--however, you may see my use of "represented" here as too vague and loose as to be useful). I might add that while we humans have seemingly not yet fulfilled our own evolutionary vocation--this being epitomized in my thinking of the past few year by especially the Engelbartian abduction of the co-evolution of man and machine--does not mean that we never will. The Peircean doctrine offers hope that we may yet rise to our fully human vocation, that is, to express the truly reasonable (and loving) in itself. It is perhaps precisely the interpenetration of hierachies of the ordering of the inner and outer semiotic worlds which might lead to this fulfillment since, as your concluding quotation in the "as if" post has it, the distinction between the two "is after all only relative." The main distinction between the Inner and the Outer Worlds is that inner objects promptly take any modifications we wish, while outer objects are hard facts that no man can make to be other than they are. Yet tremendous as this distinction is, it is after all only relative. Inner objects do offer a certain degree of resistance and outer objects are susceptible of being modified in some measure by sufficient exertion intelligently directed. (CP 5.45) So, again, further inquiry into the relationship between the two semiotic triads would
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
eason -- (a) rashness, (b) complacency, (c) cowardice, (d) defeatism.) In a sense the distinction (interpretant vs. verification) which I'm discussing is an aspect of the ancient one traceable between meaning, value, good, end (telos), actualization, affectivity and factuality, validity, soundness, true, entelechy, reality, establishment, cognition. To make it four-way: 1. object ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. interpretant 2. sign ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. recognition, verification 1. strength, dynamism ~ ~ ~3. vibrancy, value, good 2. suitability, richness ~ ~ ~4. firmness, soundness, truth etc. 1. will character ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. affectivity sensibility 2. ability competence ~ ~ 4. cognition intelligence 1. agency ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. act, actualization 2. bearer ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. borne, supported 1. beginning, leading, arche ~ ~ 3. end, telos, culmination 2. middle, means ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. check, entelechy 1. multi-objective optimization process ~ ~ 3. cybernetic process 2. stochastic process ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. inference process 1. forces ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. life 2. matter ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. intelligent life Best, Ben http://tetrast.blogspot.com/ - Original Message - From: Jim Piat To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 1:54 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Charles Rudder wrote: That is, there is an immediate--non-mediated and, hence, cognitively autonomous relation between cognizing subjects and objects consisting of phenomena and/or things in themselves who are in some sense able to "see" or "recognize" objects and relations between and among objects as they are independent of how they are represented by signs and their interpretants. On this account of cognition, signs and systems of signs are "instrumental" auxiliaries to cognition and their semiosical instrumentality is subject to being and is consciously or unconsciously continuously being extrasemiosically evaluated, validated, or "verified" by cognizing subjects; a process which Peirce, who makes cognition and cognitive growth an exclusively semiosical process, ignores. Dear Charles, Folks Here's my take -- That one has some sort of non-representational "knowledge" of objects against which one can compare or verify one's representational or semiotic knowledge does seem to be a popular view of the issue of how reality is accessed or known. But I think this is a view Peirce rejected in the New List. However this is not to say that there is no practical distinction between what is meant by an object and what is meant by a representation of an object. An object is that which is interpreted as standing for (or representing) itself. A sign is something that is interpreted as standing for something other than itself. Thus one can compare one's interpretation of a sign of a collateral object with one's interpretation of the referenced collateral object itself even though both the object of the sign and the collateral object are known only through representation. The collateral object and the object of some discussion of it are in theory the same object. The distinction is between one's direct representation of the object vs it's indirect representation to one by others. In both cases the object is represented. There are no inherent distinctions between those objects we interpret as objects and those we interpret as signs -- the distinction is in how we use them. The object referred to by a sign is always collateral to the sign itself unless the sign is referring to itself in some sort of convoluted self referential fashion. The distinction between direct (albeit mediated) knowledge of an object and the sort of second hand knowledge one gains from the accounts of others poses no special problems. There is nothing magic about direct personal knowledge that gives it some sort of special objective validity over the accounts of others. What makes such personal aquaintance valuable is not their imagined "objectivity" but their trustworthiness (in terms of serving one's own interests as opposed to the interests of others). OTOH multiple observation gathered from different "trustworthy" POVs do provide a more complete and thus more reliable and useful (or "true"as some say) account of reality. And finally, verification (conceiving a manifold of senuous impressions as having some particular meaning) IS representation -- at least for Peirce (as I understand him). Just some thoughts as I'm following this discussion. Best, Jim---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming messa
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Benjamin Udell wrote: Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction As I see it, it's not that simple because of the dynamical object, the fact of inter-communication as well as internal inference, etc. Charles may mean something somewhat different from what I'm taking his two semiosical triads to be referring to (I hope he'll comment further on them at some point), but I'll show how I see the two through an example diagramming them in relationship to each other. [Btw, I would recommend an analysis Charles posted 12/1/05--his "as if" post--in which he considers certain Peircean passages which brought him to his inner/outer notion] This is admittedly only a very preliminary analysis and I may see things differently as I consider the two triads further (I may be conflating some of the inner and outer aspects, or not connecting them properly--it appears, not surprisingly, to be a very complex relationship indeed) outer semiosical triad: The sign in this case is a particular line spoken in a particular production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing by a particular actor at one outdoor performance in a New York City park. | The audience members hearing it spoken are these (selected) interpreters: (a) a young acting student who is studying the given role, (b) an 8 y.o. child attending her first live play, (c) a Spanish speaking man without much English language skills dragged to it by his girlfriend. (d) the director of the play The dynamical object is whatever meaning/emotion Shakespeare, the actor, the director mean to convey/express in that line, through its delivery, etc. However this sign as reflected in semiotic processes of the various audience members are naturally very different semioses ( a, b, c and d) at the moment of their each hearing and "following the meaning" of the line: inner semiosical triad [read 1/2/3]: 1. The sign is pretty much whatever the line spoken is heard as (given educational backgrounds, language skills, the coughing of someone next to one interpreter, a thought of the need to pay a bill at just that moment) and what each takes it to mean, possibly accompanying thoughts, etc. 1/2/3 | 3. The interpretant also will be very different for each (much could be said about the various interpretants, but not in this diagram!) 2. The immediate object varies considerably for each (you'll have to imagine what this might entail, but there is enough difference to suggest what I have in mind) Although this is perhaps different from how Charles sees the two relating, I connected them in the following way in a recent post [this kind of analysis "back and forth" between two communicators within the context of a real world of experience is also Peirce's approach in the "Stormy Day" letter to William James which, btw, has pertinence to the present discussion] outer semiosical triad: . . inner semiosical triad: . . . . . . . . . . . . sign sign: . . . . . . . . . | interpretant | interpreter . . . . . . immediate object dynamical object Well, whether or not this particular analysis will hold, the point is to connect the signwith the inferences of living, breathing, thinking, feeling, human intelligences (Man as symbol) and as this occurs in the world of experience where object and sign are not just roles. As for the individual as he is involved in these complex patterns of semioses: CP 7.583 We have already seen that every state of consciousness [is] an inference; so that life is but a sequence of inferences or a train of thought. At any instant then man is a thought, and as thought is a species of symbol, the general answer to the question what is man? is that he is a symbol. . . Ben gives the inference process as a fourth element. 1. multi-objective optimization process ~ ~ 3. cybernetic process 2. stochastic process ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. inference process But there is no need for a fourth semeiotic element to explain such inference in the way of looking at matters as suggested by 7.583. Gary --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Joe, list, Joe, I don't know why it seems to you like I'm suddenly releasing a "tirade of verbal dazzle." The prose there looks pretty mundane to me and I certainly didn't mean it intimidate you. Generally when I write such prose I'm just trying to present links in arguments, keep from being confusing, and keep the internal cross-references clear. I try (not always successfully) to avoid trying to write "dazzling" prose because often enough when I've looked at it months later it seems a bit stilted and labored. My editing consists most of all in replacing pronouns with nouns and phrases, even though it leads to repetition, because it worked very well for Fritjof Capra in his _The Tao of Physics_, and he pushed that sort of writing about as far as it can reasonably go, to excellent effect. As for showing that there's no subtle weird complex way that one could reduce verification to the triad, I don't know why you were expecting such in my response to Jim. I've said earlier that I was working on something,and that it would take maybe a week. Then you soon posted to me on other stuff in regard to verification, and that led to the current discussion, so I don't know where you think that I'd have found the time towork onthe no-reduction argument. And when I said that I've practical matters also to attend to, I wasn't just making it up. Now, I didn't see any reason to rush the kind of argument which you asked me to make, since it would be the first time that I'd made such an argument on peirce-l. And I see it as dealing with more challenges than you see it as dealing with, for I don't seem able, even after all this time, to get you to _focus_ on analyzing the verificatory act, for instance, of checking on what a person says is happening at some house. You refer to such an act but you don't look at it. Somebody tells me there's a fire at a house, I form an interpretation that there's a fire at that house, I run over and look at it, and looka there, it's on fire! Feel the heat! Look atthe fire trucks! Cross to the other side of the street in order to get past it. Verification, involving experience of the object(s). Now, if that experience merely represented the house to me, the smoke, its source, etc., then it wouldn't be acquainting me with the house as the house has become. Doubts about this lead to the interesting question of _what are signs for, anyway_? Meanwhile, if the house really is on fire, then subsequent events and behaviors will corroborate the verification. Once, from around 16 blocks away, I saw billowing smoke rising from the vicinity of my building. I rushed up to the elevated train station but couldn't get a clearer view. Finally I ran most of the way to my building, where I observed that the smoke was coming from a block diagonally away -- the Woolworth's store was aflame and my building was quite safe and sound. Ihadn't sat around interpreting a.k.a. construing, instead I had actively arrangedto have aspecial 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. - Wasthe experiencethe 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, 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. Yes, generally I point out thatsign and interpretantdon't give experienceof theobject and that verification involves experience of the object. There's a cogent general argument right there. But if you see no problem for semiotics in the question of signs and experience, no problem that can't be "taken care of" later, some time, when somebody gets around to it, meanwhile let somebody prove beyond this doubt, then that doubt, then another doubt, that there's some sort of problem there that needs to be addressed,well, then, you'll never feel a burden of need to deal with it. Generally I''m okay with this, because it leads to my exploring interesting questions. In response to my points about collateral experience, some asked, among other things -- "but how does that make
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
ughts, etc. 1/2/3 | 3. The interpretant also will be very different for each (much could be said about the various interpretants, but not in this diagram!) 2. The immediate object varies considerably for each (you'll have to imagine what this might entail, but there is enough difference to suggest what I have in mind) -- [Gary] Although this is perhaps different from how Charles sees the two relating, I connected them in the following way in a recent post [this kind of analysis "back and forth" between two communicators within the context of a real world of experience is also Peirce's approach in the "Stormy Day" letter to William James which, btw, has pertinence to the present discussion] [Gary] --- outer semiosical triad: . . inner semiosical triad: . . . . . . . . . . . . sign sign: . . . . . . . . . | interpretant | interpreter . . . . . . immediate object dynamical object Generally, I don't see that there is anything in this that contradicts what I said about (the conception of) an interpreter not introducing something unaccounted for, in terms ofbasic semiotic elements,in the object-sign-interpretant trichotomy. If, however, this is in some sort of relation to an conception of recognition as "really" being an interpreter, a grand interpretant, I've addressed it a lot more explicitly and with argumentsin past posts. [Gary] Well, whether or not this particular analysis will hold, the point is to connect the signwith the inferences of living, breathing, thinking, feeling, human intelligences (Man as symbol) and as this occurs in the world of experience where object and sign are not just roles. As for the individual as he is involved in these complex patterns of semioses: [Gary] CP 7.583 We have already seen that every state of consciousness [is] an inference; so that life is but a sequence of inferences or a train of thought. At any instant then man is a thought, and as thought is a species of symbol, the general answer to the question what is man? is that he is a symbol. . . I hope I've already clarified that I don't regard logical roles as roles in a mereness sense. However, I don't see where you've addressed the question of how an experience receives logical determination from semiosis such as to be a recognition of the consistency, truth, validity, soundness, etc., of object, sign, interpretant in respect to one another, and how the experience would do this without being an interpretant that, contradictorily to Peircean semiotics, acquaints or further acquaints the mind with the object. [Gary] Ben gives the inference process as a fourth element. [Ben] - 1. multi-objective optimization process ~ ~ 3. cybernetic process 2. stochastic process ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. inference process - [Gary] But there is no need for a fourth semeiotic element to explain such inference in the way of looking at matters as suggested by 7.583. Well, I hope you haven't gotten the idea that I think that the four semiotic elements are to be equated rather than merely correlated tothose processes mentioned in my table. The point was inter-table correlations across to various other tables in my post [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor, August 20, 2006 (August 21st at gmane,http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1325). 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. Best, Ben http://tetrast.blogspot.com/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
A minor correction Ben. In my last post where I said, "assuming that what I have referred to as assessing the 'fidelity' of a sign's representation of its object is or includes what you are calling 'verification' . . ." I intended to say "is or is included in what you call verification." Charles --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Charles Rudder wrote: That is, there is an immediate--non-mediated and, hence, cognitively autonomous relation between cognizing subjects and objects consisting of phenomena and/or things in themselves who are in some sense able to "see" or "recognize"objects and relations between and among objects as they are independent of how they are represented by signs and their interpretants. On this account of cognition, signs and systems of signs are "instrumental" auxiliaries to cognition and their semiosical instrumentality is subject to being and is consciously or unconsciously continuously being extrasemiosicallyevaluated, validated, or "verified" by cognizing subjects; a process which Peirce, who makes cognition and cognitive growth an exclusively semiosical process, ignores. Dear Charles, Folks Here's my take -- That one has some sort of non-representational "knowledge" of objects against which one can compare or verify one's representational or semiotic knowledge does seem to be a popular view oftheissue of how reality is accessed or known. But I think this is a view Peirce rejected in the New List. However this is not to say that there is no practical distinction betweenwhat is meant by an object and what is meant by a representation of an object. An object is that which is interpreted as standing for (or representing) itself. A sign is something that is interpreted as standing for something other than itself. Thus one can compare one's interpretation of a sign of a collateral object with one's interpretation of the referenced collateral object itself even though both theobject of the sign and the collateral object are known only through representation. The collateral object and the object of some discussion of it are in theory the same object.The distinction is between one's direct representation of the object vs it's indirect representationto one by others. In both cases the object is represented. There are no inherent distinctions between those objects we interpret as objects and those we interpret as signs -- the distinction is in how we use them. The object referred to by a sign is always collateral to the sign itself unless the sign is referring to itself in some sort of convoluted self referential fashion. The distinction between direct (albeit mediated) knowledge of an object and the sort of second hand knowledge one gains from the accounts of others poses no special problems. There is nothing magic about direct personal knowledge that gives it some sort of specialobjective validity over the accounts ofothers.What makes such personal aquaintance valuable is nottheir imagined "objectivity" buttheir trustworthiness (in terms of serving one's own interests as opposed to the interests of others). OTOH multiple observation gathered from different "trustworthy" POVs do provide a more complete and thusmorereliable and useful (or"true"as some say) account of reality. And finally, verification (conceivinga manifold of senuous impressions ashaving some particular meaning) IS representation -- at least for Peirce (as I understand him). Just some thoughts as I'm following this discussion. Best, Jim --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Here's my take (reflecting Charles' 2 semiosical triads diagrammed in relation to each other)-- outer semiosical triad: . . inner semiosical triad: . . . . . . . . . . . . . sign sign: . . . . . . . . . | interpretant | interpreter . . . . . . immediate object dynamical object Gary Jim Piat wrote: Charles Rudder wrote: That is, there is an immediate--non-mediated and, hence, cognitively autonomous relation between cognizing subjects and objects consisting of phenomena and/or things in themselves who are in some sense able to "see" or "recognize"objects and relations between and among objects as they are independent of how they are represented by signs and their interpretants. On this account of cognition, signs and systems of signs are "instrumental" auxiliaries to cognition and their semiosical instrumentality is subject to being and is consciously or unconsciously continuously being extrasemiosicallyevaluated, validated, or "verified" by cognizing subjects; a process which Peirce, who makes cognition and cognitive growth an exclusively semiosical process, ignores. Dear Charles, Folks Here's my take -- That one has some sort of non-representational "knowledge" of objects against which one can compare or verify one's representational or semiotic knowledge does seem to be a popular view oftheissue of how reality is accessed or known. But I think this is a view Peirce rejected in the New List. However this is not to say that there is no practical distinction betweenwhat is meant by an object and what is meant by a representation of an object. An object is that which is interpreted as standing for (or representing) itself. A sign is something that is interpreted as standing for something other than itself. Thus one can compare one's interpretation of a sign of a collateral object with one's interpretation of the referenced collateral object itself even though both theobject of the sign and the collateral object are known only through representation. The collateral object and the object of some discussion of it are in theory the same object.The distinction is between one's direct representation of the object vs it's indirect representationto one by others. In both cases the object is represented. There are no inherent distinctions between those objects we interpret as objects and those we interpret as signs -- the distinction is in how we use them. The object referred to by a sign is always collateral to the sign itself unless the sign is referring to itself in some sort of convoluted self referential fashion. The distinction between direct (albeit mediated) knowledge of an object and the sort of second hand knowledge one gains from the accounts of others poses no special problems. There is nothing magic about direct personal knowledge that gives it some sort of specialobjective validity over the accounts ofothers.What makes such personal aquaintance valuable is nottheir imagined "objectivity" buttheir trustworthiness (in terms of serving one's own interests as opposed to the interests of others). OTOH multiple observation gathered from different "trustworthy" POVs do provide a more complete and thusmorereliable and useful (or"true"as some say) account of reality. And finally, verification (conceivinga manifold of senuous impressions ashaving some particular meaning) IS representation -- at least for Peirce (as I understand him). Just some thoughts as I'm following this discussion. Best, Jim --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Jim, Charles, Gary, Joe, Jacob, list, (Let me note parenthetically that, in my previous post, I used the word "mind" in a number of places where I probably should have used the word "intelligence," given the far-reaching sense which the word "mind" can take on ina Peircean context.) Jim below says things pretty near to that which I'm saying in terms of the distinction between object and sign, andit seems that the "bad regression" stuff that I've said about his previous stuff no longer applies. Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction, not a metaphysical or physical or material or biological or psychological distinction, though it takes on complex psychological relevance insofar as a psyche will be an inference process and willnot onlydevelop structures which manifest the distinction, but will also tend consciously to employ the distinction and even thematize it and make a topic (a semiotic object) out of it (like right now). However, my argument has been that, when one pays sufficient attention to the relationships involved, one sees that a verification is _not_ a representation, in those relationships in which it is a verification, -- just as an object is not a sign in those relationships in which it is an object. Even when a thing-in-its-signhood is the object, the subject matter, then it is _in that respect_ the object and not a sign, though it wouldn't be the object if it were not a sign (and indeed every object is a sign in some set of relationships). These logical distinctions don't wash away so easily. Meaning is formed into the interpretant. Validity, soundness, etc., are formed into the recognition. Meaning is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of interpretants. Validity, soundness, legitimacy, is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of recognitions. One even has some slack in "making" the distinction between interpretant and verification -- it's a slack which one needs in order to learn about the distinction so as to incorporate those learnings into oneself as a semiosic sytem and so as to employ the distinction in a non-reckless but also non-complacent manner. (For everything -- (a) boldness, (b) confident behavior, (c) caution, (d) resignation -- there is a season -- (a) bravery, (b) duely confident behavior, (c) prudence, (d) "realism" -- an out-of-season -- (a) rashness, (b) complacency, (c) cowardice, (d) defeatism.) In a sense the distinction (interpretant vs. verification) which I'm discussing is an aspect of the ancient one traceable between meaning, value, good, end (telos), actualization, affectivity and factuality, validity, soundness, true, entelechy, reality, establishment, cognition. To make it four-way: 1. object ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. interpretant 2. sign ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. recognition, verification 1. strength, dynamism ~ ~ ~3. vibrancy, value, good 2. suitability, richness ~ ~ ~4. firmness, soundness, truth etc. 1. will character ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. affectivity sensibility 2. ability competence ~ ~ 4. cognition intelligence 1. agency ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. act, actualization 2. bearer ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. borne, supported 1. beginning, leading, arche ~ ~ 3. end, telos, culmination 2. middle, means ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. check, entelechy 1. multi-objective optimization process ~ ~ 3. cybernetic process 2. stochastic process ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. inference process 1. forces ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. life 2. matter ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. intelligent life Best, Ben http://tetrast.blogspot.com/ - Original Message - From: Jim Piat To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 1:54 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Charles Rudder wrote: That is, there is an immediate--non-mediated and, hence, cognitively autonomous relation between cognizing subjects and objects consisting of phenomena and/or things in themselves who are in some sense able to "see" or "recognize" objects and relations between and among objects as they are independent of how they are represented by signs and their interpretants. On this account of cognition, signs and systems of signs are "instrumental" auxiliaries to cognition and their semiosical instrumentality is subject to being and is consciously or unconsciously continuously being extrasemiosically evaluated, validated, or "verified" by cognizing subjects; a process which Peirce, who makes cognition and cognitive growth an exclusively semiosical process, ignores. Dear Charles, Folks Here's my take -- That one has some sort of non-representational "knowledge" of objects against which one can compare or verify one's representational or semiotic knowledge does seem to be a popular view
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
W will just have to leave it as a stand off, Ben. I have no more to say on this than I have already said. Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 2:21 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, Gary, Jim, Charles, Jacob, list, It's obvious that in _some_ sense or other I disagree with Peirce about how semiosis is related to experience. However, I think I find sufficient material in Peirce to make the argument in Peirce's own terms, especially in Peirce's discussions of collateral experience, where he plainly says that one needs experience collateral to sign and interpretant of the object in order to identify the object. And I don't get the idea of finding the equation or dis-equation of an experience and a sign/interpretant so confusing that "it literally makes no sense," so confusing that one can't make sufficient sense of it in order to argue against it in terms of what experience is, what interpretation is, etc. If it were true that it is, -- in your words, "a confusion in virtue of talking about the interpretant as being an 'experience or observation.' In talking about the sign-object-interpretant relationships we are doing so in the process of analyzing such things as experience or observation (or verification) and it literally makes no sense to me put in that way," -- then Peirce's discussions of collateral experience would make no sense. He's far too specific in delineating relationships of semiosis to experience for those delineations to be compatible with that which you say. Why would Peirce say things like "All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. It is...the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign." Why would Peirce say, "Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience"? Note that he does not say that _collateral_ acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience. He is not stating such a truism. Instead, he says that acquaintance, any acquaintance at all, must be gained by collateral experience. Peirce is saying that the _representing_ of the object is never an _acquainting_ with the object (except, as usual, in the limit case where the representing sign and its object are the selfsame thing). But that is just the sort of statement which you say _makes no sense_ to you. How do you account for that? Do you deny that that's what he is saying? If so, how do you justify such a denial? I don't know why it makes no sense to you to speak of denying or affirming that one's experience of an object is or isn't one's sign of an object, least of all can I understand why this would be a consequence of talking about object-sign-interpretant relationships in the process of analyzing such things as experience or observation. You talk as though experience were something like the moon or the color green or the letter "C," which one would certainly not expect to see treated as basic semiotic elements on a par with object, sign, and interpretant. But we have Peirce right above characterizing _all_ signs in terms of experience and, in particular, distinguishing them -- _all_ of them -- from acquaintance, observation, experience of the object. How could this make sense if it doesn't make sense to speak of an object experience as being a sign of the object or not being a sign of the object? I have only one Peirce collateral-experience discussion which presents me with any problems for my views or, more specifically, for my use of his views -- you have all the rest of his collateral-experience discussions contradicting you. You say, "The semeiotical terminology is properly used in explication of such notions as that of experience, observation, verification, etc. and therefore signs and interpretants cannot except confusedly be equated with such things as observations or experiences or verifications." I would say that conceptions of objects, signs, interpretants, and verifications are all of them analytic tools for analyzing processes of objects, signs, interpretants, and verifications (and more generally, experiences), and none of this stops us from clearly dis-equating experiences/verifications from interpretations, etc. Or maybe you mean that sometimes one's experience of the object is one's sign of the object, and sometimes not? I.e., that one only confusedly equates or confusedly dis-equates them because there's no such general rule? But I don't understand why anybody would think, that, even i
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Charles, Joe, Gary, Jim, Jacob, list, [Charles] Following up on Joe's saying: [Joe] "If I am understanding you correctly you are saying that all semeiosis is at least incipiently self-reflexive or self-reflective or in other words self-controlled AND that the adequate philosophical description of it will REQUIRE appeal to a fourth factor (which is somehow of the essence of verification) in addition to the appeal to the presence of a sign, of an object, and of an interpretant, allowing of course for the possibility of there being more than one of any or all of these, as is no doubt essential for anything of the nature of a process. The appeal to the additional kind of factor would presumably have to be an appeal to something of the nature of a quadratic relational character. To be sure, any given semeiosis might involve the fourth factor only in a triply degenerate form, just as the third factor might be degenerate in a double degree in some cases, which is to say that the fourth factor might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis, just as thirdness might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis." Note for anybody reading at http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu/maillist.html : I find that a few recent posts from me and Joe didn't get posted at mail-archive.com. They can be found here: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1311(post from me August 19, 2006) http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1312(post from Joe Ransdell August 19, 2006) [Charles] and your saying: [Ben] "Generally, I'd respond that that which Peirce overlooks in connection with verification is [Ben] -- that verification is an experiential recognition of an interpretant and its sign as truly corresponding to their object, and that verification (in the core sense) involves direct observation of the object in the light (being tested) of the interpretant and the sign. "In the light (being tested)" means that the verification is a recognition formed _as_ collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object. Experience, familiarity, acquaintance with the object are, by Peirce's own account, outside the interpretant, the sign, the system of signs. [Ben] -- and that, therefore, the recognition is not sign, interpretant, or their object in those relationships in which it is the recognition of them; yet, in being formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object, it is logically determined by them and by the object as represented by them; it is further determined by the object separately by observation of the object itself; and by the logical relationships in which object, sign, and interpretant are observed to stand. Dependently onthe recognitional outcome, semiosis will go very differently; it logically determines semiosis going forward. So, how will you diagram it? You can't mark it as object itself, nor as sign of the object, nor as interpretant of the sign or of the object. What label, what semiotic role, will you put at the common terminus of the lines of relationship leading to it, all of them logically determinational, from the sign, the object, and the interpretant? [Charles] I am still trying to find out if I have any grasp at all of what you think the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits. [Charles] Suppose I am given a photograph to use as a means of finding aperson whomI have never seen. As far as I can see there would be nothing "tested" in my looking for the person unlessI fail to find the person, in which case, assuming that the person was present, I might wonder if the photograph is recent, if the person has gained or lost weight, grown or shaved a beard, etc. That is, I might question what I sometimes fall the "fidelity" of a sign or how precisely the Immediate or Semiosical Object of thesign represents its Dynamical Object--in this illustration how closely the features of the photographic image resemble the features of the person photographed. Having failed in an attempt to _use_ a sign, I might and actually have questionedits _usefulness_ as a sign. Inference may be deliberate, conscious, controlled (and that's reasoning or ratiocination) or nondeliberate, unconscious, uncontrolled. The question of whether inference or testing or such things take place, is not the question of whether one is conscious of inferring or testing or such things and of learning thereby, but rather of whether intentionally or unintentionally, indeed consciously or unconsciously, one so infers or tests such that, intentionally or unintentionally, and consciously or unconsciously, one learns. It is quite natural to look back on experiences and realize that they involved trials whereof one was unaware or only confusedly aware at the time. The point is whether one incorporates and practices one's learnings from them, whether or not one is aware of having done so. Not every system is of _such a nature
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Charles, Joe, Gary, Jim, Jacob, list, The occasion here is that Charles wrote, "I am still trying to find out if I have any grasp at all of what you think the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits." The idea that one can't even grasp what I'm saying leads me to make one last try. What do I think the relation omits? I thinkthat the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits recognition, verification, establishment. I mean "recognition," "verification," "estabishment," and the like, in a pretty commonsense way. I'm trying to think of how to get the tetradic idea across. First, I'd point out that the difference between interpretation and verification can be taken in a common-sense way with which we are all familiar. That common-sense way is at the basis of how I mean it. But I've pointed that out in the past. I've even brought the plot of _Hamlet_ (because peirce-l is classy :-)) into the discussion. Now, there's a weak sense of the word "understanding" where one says "well, it's my _understanding_ that Jack is going to come" -- one is saying that one doesn't _know_ whether Jack is actually going to come -- one hasn't _verified_ it, even to oneself -- one means that, instead, it's _merely one's interpretation_. I think that we're all familiar with these ways of talking and thinking. I talk and think that way, and my impression is that most people talk and think that way. Those ways of talking and thinking are quite in keeping withobject-experience's being outside the interpretant. An interpretation isa construal. An unestablished, unsubstantiated interpretation is a _mere_ construal in the strongest sense of the word "mere." (In a similar way, one should think of a sign which is unsubstantiated in whatever respect as a _mere_ sign, a _mere_ representation, in that respect.) One should not let the _word_ "interpretant" evoke anything stronger in sucha case, but, instead, one should stick with the common notion of interpretation. Even a biological mutation, considered as an interpretant, should be considered as a construal and as a random experiment which "experience" or actual reality will test. Research and thought had thousands of years to show that one can make much progress by merely making representations and construals about other researchers' representations and contruals and by, at best, verifying representations and construals _about_ representations and construals -- doing so via books about other books and by researchers' going back and checking the originals and considering the ideas presented there. This sort of thing in the end makes little progress when the subject matter is not thought itself but instead, say, physics or biology. One needs to verify by experiences of the subject matter. The logical process must revisit the object, somehow, some way. Second, I'd point to the analogy between decoding and interpretation, an analogy which has been referred to and alluded to often enough, e.g., in David Lodge's "Tout décodage est un nouvel encodage." I'd point to the extended analogy, and ask, why does triadic semiotics have no analogue for the recipient? source ~~~ object encoding ~~ sign decoding ~~ interpretant recipient ~~ ? Is it merely that in early scenarios the decoding was usually mechanical and the recipient a human? Why does a recipient notice redundancies and inconsistencies which a decoder does not notice? What is the difference in function between a decoding and a "recipience"? Why, at the fourth stage, does the analogy suddenly break down between information theory and triadic semiotics? Does one of them have the wrong scenario? Which one? Is it normal or is it a warning alarm, when a tenable analogy just suddenly goes bad? If the interpretant is analogous both to decoding and to recipient, what functions analogous to theirs does it combine? Should a semiotic philosopher be concerned about such questions? Especially a Peircean one accustomed to tracing extensive analogies and correlations, a philosopher who believes in doing that sort of thing? But I've pointed this all out in the past. Third, I'd point out the following logical stream of thought: Peirce says that to represent an object is not to provide experience or acquaintance with the object. There are good reasons to agree with Peirce about this, which I've discussed in the past. It is rooted in the fact that, except in the limit case of their identity, the sign is not the object but only, merely, almost the object. However, in being almost the object, it does convey information about the object; however, acquaintance with the object can't be gained from the sign. Now, when one forms an acquaintance or experience with an object, what does that give to one, that a sign, indeed, acquaintance with a sign, does not give to one? Why is object acquaintance or object experience involved with confirming something about an object? The core of
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben, list: Ben, I am struggling to understand exactly what it is you are saying Peirce overlooks in connection with verification. In an effort to get some further clarification of your position, I am including a statement of my understanding of some of what Peirce says on the subject followed by some questions. I. Peirce on Verification TRANSUASION (CP 2.98): A Transuasive Argument, or Induction, is an Argument which sets out from a hypothesis, resulting from a previous Abduction, and from virtual predictions, drawn by Deduction, of the results of possible experiments, and having performed the experiments, concludes that the hypothesis is true in the measure in which those predictions are verified, this conclusion, however, being held subject to probable modification to suit future experiments. Since the significance of the facts stated in the premisses depends upon their predictive character, which they could not have had if the conclusion had not been hypothetically entertained, they satisfy the definition of a Symbol of the fact stated in the conclusion. This argument is Transuasive, also, in respect to its alone affording us a reasonable assurance of an ampliation of our positive knowledge. By the term "virtual prediction," I mean an experiential consequence deduced from the hypothesis, and selected from among possible consequences independently of whether it is known, or believed, to be true, or not; so that at the time it is selected as a test of the hypothesis, we are either ignorant of whether it will support or refute the hypothesis, or, at least, do not select a test which we should not have selected if we had been so ignorant.(END QUOTE) I take the word "verification" as a synonym for the consequences of Peirce's transuasive arguments (distinguishable from abductive and deductive arguments) that set out the conditions under which individuals will be most likely to agree to act as if statements referring to perceptual events and relations between and among perceptual events are true. I say "act as if" because I understand Peirce to say that "belief" necessarily entails both cognitive and behavioral action. Granting that there are semiosical antecedents to one's being able to name and otherwise classify perceptual events like seeing a burning building, any physically and psychologically normal person who sees a burning building will most likely voluntarily or quasi voluntarily agree to report seeing or having seen a burning building as a consequence of their experience's compelling them to act as if they are or were in the actual presence of a burning building. The cognitive assent in agreeing to say there is or was a building burning in which Thirdness is predominant is inseparably connected to a nonvoluntary inabilitydominated by Secondnessto act as if seeing a burning building is or was an hallucination, optical illusion, etc. To refuse to report or to quibble over reporting that a building is or was burning would be an instance of "paper doubt." Say what you will, the consequences of acting as if there is or was no building burning are identical to what we conventionally mean (the import of Peirce's pragmatic maxim) by saying that a building is burning is true. Peirce's transuasive argument does not set out conditions under which all rational individuals ought to agree, but conditions under which, over time,most people will in actual fact agree as a consequence of an inability to act as if what is predicted will not occur. Belief has the character of a wager. Whatever a person's state of mind, relative to present states of information the odds favor acting as if the conclusions of transuasive arguments are true. II. Questions 1. Do you generally agree with my summary of Peirce's transuasive argument? If not, where in your opinion have I gone astray? 2. If you do generally agree with my account of transuasion, what does Peirce's transuasive argument fail to address in connection with verification? --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
rpretant and a recognition/verification, not a distinction such that the mind "makes" the distinction and employs it as an option tied neither to penalty nor to reward, but, instead, a distinction such that the mind _learns_ how to practice it.) Another way to put it is that, given the rule is that experience with the object is outside the interpretant, then an interpretanttakes form as a_conception as reached by inference_, not as a judgment as reached by inference,even if it takes the form of a proposition (oreven of an argument). It is a conception as inferred-toconsciously or unconsciously. In the case of a conception unconsciously inferred-to, the interpretant conception (or its embodiment as a commonly perceptible sign)may be asign formed "from life," like a painting ofanactual person, and intended more as an occasion for interpretation and less as an outcome of interpretation. (Most of us, and most artists, will rightlynot regard such a painting as actually an "uninterpretive" sign; W.C. Williams' novel _White Mule_ is not mere "slice of life" writing; but even whenone is aware ofitsinterpretiveaspects, there are very likely even more aspects that could befairly called interpretive than those of which one is aware).The interpretant is the idea, the clarification, the elucidation,that one comes up with from the sign; the recognition is the establishment, in greater or lesser firmness, of said idea, andtakes form asa judgment as reached by inference, a concluding judgment. The inferred-to conception may bevibrant to the mind and important to it, etc. I agree with the view to which Peirce came, that even a name can reasonably have something like assertoric force, influencing the mind. I've called the conscious inference to a conception "conceptiocination," though that is not a general enough term. Given that in commonsense perception one can form a perceptual judgment, I would tend to regard that as involving percepts rather than perceptual "conceptions." It is perfectly possible to act upon an unverified -- or an inadequately verified -- interpretant, and this is experimentation. It also may be bold and may be rash or brave. It does, when deliberate, involve at least the conscious recognition of the interpretant _as_ an interpretant, and this is a kind of recognition which we experience, observe, and practice every day. Somebody says, "well that's just your interpretation," and the addressee says, "well, yes, but I believe that I'll be able to prove it this afternoon." Coming up with an idea is one thing, establishing it is another. That's common sense, and the burden is on critical common sense if it wishes to reject the common sense. A recurrent problem , as Peirce pointed out in regard to pre-modern science, is mistakenness about verification itself, not some lack of verificatory spirit; and, as Peirce wrote elsewhere, everybody thinks himself or herself already sufficiently good at logic. There is an order of being, whereby we explain things by inferred objects, laws, etc., and an order of knowledge, whereby we verify; in that sense, the explanatory "ultimates" means what is farthest from the mind, while verificational "ultimates" means what is nearest to the mind and most familiar. So it's natural to believe oneself to have little of worthyet to learn about logic unless one truly believes oneself to be low in intelligence by some standard which one actually holds. The question in the current discussion seems now to be revolving over the issue of whether establishment and verification are a formal logical element on a par with object, sign, and interpretant, though Joe's recentest post raises the idea once again (if it was ever really left aside) of whether a verification might be merely some complexus of objects, signs, and interpretants in considerable multiplicity. Best, Ben Udell ----- Original Message - From: Charles F Rudder To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 12:08 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Ben, list: Ben, I am struggling to understand exactly what it is you are saying Peirce overlooks in connection with verification. In an effort to get some further clarification of your position, I am including a statement of my understanding of some of what Peirce says on the subject followed by some questions. I. Peirce on Verification TRANSUASION (CP 2.98): A Transuasive Argument, or Induction, is an Argument which sets out from a hypothesis, resulting from a previous Abduction, and from virtual predictions, drawn by Deduction, of the results of possible experiments, and having performed the experiments, concludes that the hypothesis is true in the measure in which those predictions are verified, this conclusion, however, being held subject to probable
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben: If I am understanding you correctly you are saying that all semeiosis is at least incipiently self-reflexive or self-reflective or in other words self-controlled AND that the adequate philosophical description of it will REQUIRE appeal to a fourth factor (which is somehow of the essence of verification) in addition to the appeal to the presence of a sign, of an object, and of an interpretant, allowing of course for the possibility of there being more than one of any or all of these, as is no doubt essential for anything of the nature of a process. The appeal to the additional kind of factor would presumably have to be an appeal to something of the nature of a quadratic relational character. To be sure, any given semeiosis might involve the fourth factor only in a triply degenerate form, just as the third factor might be degenerate in a double degree in some cases, which is to say that the fourth factor might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis, just as thirdness might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis. That seems possible. Is that your view? I pose it in this abstract way to make sure we are talking about something on par with the sign, the object, and the interpretant. If so how do you know that semeiosis cannot be adequately described without recourse to that factor, i.e. cannot be described on the basis of an appeal to some complexity possible through recursion and referential reflexivity involving only three kinds of elements or factors -- as Peirce would have to claim? Joe Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] . - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor Jacob, Joe, Gary, Jim, list, [Jacob] Theres been a lot of debate on this issue of verification, and it almost sounds like patience is being tried. If I could just give my input about one remark from the last posting; I hope it helps some. [Jacob] Ben wrote: I dont know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, thats about all. I dont have some hidden opinion on the question. [Jacob] Prof. Ransdall (or do you prefer Joe?) replied: I dont think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirces approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesnt mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. [Jacob] I want to agree with Joe; its hard for me to see Peirce overlooking that bit, for several reasons. But the question of why verification isnt a formal element in inquiry needs some unpacking. [Jacob] The discussion sounds like everyones talking about isolated instances. All the examples given to illustrate testing here are particular, individual cases where one person observes something, draws a conclusion, and checks to see if hes right. Thats not the only way to view the development of thought. [Jacob] Take Joes common-sense example: You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . . Well, you get the idea. So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) [Jacob] I dont think anyone finds this sort of thing unusual; the difficulty with this illustration is in *how* it bolsters the case Joe is making. [Jacob] It also seems to me theres some confusion about what were arguing about. The role of verification in *inquiry* or *thought*? At the level of individuals or in general? Let me try to illustrate what I mean. [Jacob] When checking your work, you might discover that youd made an error (often the case with me), or even that you initially had the right answer but somehow messed up (not often the case with me). This occurs at the individual level. But animals reason too, though they dont verify. And thats telling. (This was Bens point when quoting Lewes on Aristotle: science is science because of proof, testing, verification.) Animals don't deliberately verify. Even most human verification is not carried out with a specifically
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
goes way back before I joined (a week or so ago). Just trying to help clarify the problem. Best wishes, jacob Original-Nachricht Datum: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 13:36:47 -0500 Von: ���Joseph Ransdell��� [EMAIL PROTECTED] An: ���Peirce Discussion Forum��� peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Betreff: [peirce-l] Re: The ���composite photograph��� metaphor Ben: I forgot to say something about the supposed problem of distinguishing sense from nonsense. That���s what the pragmatic maxim is all about, isn���t it? Tom��� Short���s take on this has to do with Peirce���s supposed failure to realize that his view of infinite interpretability entailed an infinite deferral of sense being given to the initially senseless symbol. In my view Tom doesn���t understand what Peirce���s view in the work of the late 1860���s actually is. I think I can establish pretty persuasively that Peirce was, to put it mildly, a bit more sophisticated than Tom credits him with being. It is really just a matter of understanding what he meant by an ���imputed quality��� in defining the symbol in the New List, which Tom finds too distastefully Lockean to be taken seriously; but it has to be laid out and tediously tracked through text after text in order to put an end to the sort of misreading of Peirce that Tom gives, which is what I am currently completing. I don���t see that it has anything to do with verification, though. It is just a question of what his theory of meaning is. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 1:01 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The ���composite photograph��� metaphor Ben Says: I don���t know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that���s about all. I don���t have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn���t convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it���s the verification problem; I can���t help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. REPLY: I don���t think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce���s approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn���t mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain about how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the making of research claims to do what one can describe as ���verifying��� them. That would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate experimental results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to the fact that it would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental procedures and observations of results, the far more usual case being the setting up of related but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose results would have rather obvious implications for the results claimed in the research report being verified or disverified, depending on how it turns out. I don���t think there would be anything very interesting in getting into that sort of detail, though. Take a common sense case of that. You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . .Well, you get the idea. So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) The question is, why have philosophers of science so often gotten all agitated about the problem of verification as if something really important hinged on giving an exact account of what does or ought to count as such? You tell me, but my guess is that it is just the age old and seemingly insatiable but really just misguided quest for absolute and authoritative certainty. Why this shows up in the form of a major philosophical industry devoted to the production of theories of verification is another matter
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Jacob, Joe, Gary, Jim, list, [Jacob] Theres been a lot of debate on this issue of verification, and it almost sounds like patience is being tried. If I could just give my input about one remark from the last posting; I hope it helps some. [Jacob] Ben wrote: I dont know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, thats about all. I dont have some hidden opinion on the question. [Jacob] Prof. Ransdall (or do you prefer Joe?) replied: I dont think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirces approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesnt mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. [Jacob] I want to agree with Joe; its hard for me to see Peirce overlooking that bit, for several reasons. But the question of why verification isnt a formal element in inquiry needs some unpacking. [Jacob] The discussion sounds like everyones talking about isolated instances. All the examples given to illustrate testing here are particular, individual cases where one person observes something, draws a conclusion, and checks to see if hes right. Thats not the only way to view the development of thought. [Jacob] Take Joes common-sense example: You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . .Well, you get the idea. So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) [Jacob] I dont think anyone finds this sort of thing unusual; the difficulty with this illustration is in *how* it bolsters the case Joe is making. [Jacob] It also seems to me theres some confusion about what were arguing about. The role of verification in *inquiry* or *thought*? At the level of individuals or in general? Let me try to illustrate what I mean. [Jacob] When checking your work, you might discover that youd made an error (often the case with me), or even that you initially had the right answer but somehow messed up (not often the case with me). This occurs at the individual level. But animals reason too, though they dont verify. And thats telling. (This was Bens point when quoting Lewes on Aristotle: science is science because of proof, testing, verification.) Animals don't deliberately verify. Even most human verification is not carried out with a specifically verificative purpose. To the extent that animals learn and are capable of unlearning, they do test, verify, disverify, etc. I throw a stick for a dog to fetch, we go through it a couple of times. Then I make the motion but don't release the stick. The dog runs, can't find the stick, walks half-way back, and I show the stick to the dog. Soon enough the dog realizes that just because I make that rapid throwing motion doesn't mean I throw the stick. The dog waits till it sees the stick flying through the air, at least until it thinks that I've stopped pretending about throwing the stick. [Jacob] At the general level it doesnt seem to be the case. I cannot think of any time in the history of physical sciences when the scientific community at large said anything like, Copernicus goofed Ptolemy was right after all! and *reverted* to the original way of doing things. It just doesnt happen. When a development occurs in knowledge, its pretty much forward-moving. The same goes for other fields of inquiry. Actually Copernicus brought about a reversion to the heliocentric view of Aristarchus, who arrived at it in apparently a reasonably scientific manner. (The view also appears in some of the ancient Vedas.) Yet there is a forward motion. A new theory is supposed to explain that which the old theory explained, and then some. The decrease of massive overturnings of previous scientific views pertains to research's becoming really good at verification, in those fields where research has done so. Freud held sway for quite a time, but many now say it's all junk; others say that his concepts of transference, denial, projection, etc., are solid additions to psychological theory, even if one rejects other aspects of his theory. Some theories in research
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben Udell wrote: Anyway, my semiotic four are, instead, object, sign, interpretant, recognizant. I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. Dear Ben, Folks-- Thanks, Ben, for your earlier helpful clarifications of my previous questions.Sorry I've taken so long to get back.I see that I did misunderstand some of your ideas. No doubt I've done so again in some of my remarks below. Though hopefully not in the same ways as before. Seems to me that your "semioic four" are all included in Peirce's third category of representation. In particular I think verification is a matter of comparing one sign with anotherin orderto develop acoherent, predictable account of the worldwe experience. Thosesigns thatpredict and coherewe count as moving toward truth. Those that do not we tend to discard as misinterpretations.Much as we might wish I don't think we have access to a non representational standard against which we can verify our representations of reality. Kicking a table orbeing poked in the ribsmay convince one that there is a world beyond his own will, but that is not the same as proving we have non representationalverification or awareness ofthese experiences. What, after all, does verification meanother thansome correspondence between expectation and perceived outcome -- both instances of representation.Verification isone of many useful things that can be done with signs. Signs can also be used for planning, communicatingandso on. These are all important and useful functions of signs but thisdoes not, in my opinion, make them fundamental or distinct modes of being which is, IMHO, thelevel of analysisPeirce was trying to address with his categories. I think Peirce was trying to answer the question -- what are the minimally adequateset of basic modes of being that are required to account for all experience. I believe he would say that verification is oneuse or example of representation. IOWs verification ismade possible by and is an instance ofrepresentation but is not itself a fundamental mode of being or pole of representation (as are quality, reaction and representation itself). OTOH one might argue that thePeircean category of secondness (orotherness)mightbe construed as a kind of objective verification of the interpretive pole of representation. Ben, can you give me an example of verification that does not involve signs or requires some action or experience that can not be achieved by signs alone? Maybe that would help me to better understand what you mean by verification as a fundamental category of being that goes beyond Peirce's three. I'm nottrying to say verification is not important. In fact I think that verification is the crux of the scientific method that Peirce so extolled.But Ialsobelieve thatPeirceexcluded verification (in thecategorical sense that you seem to be recommending) as a fundamental building block of experience. In part I think he did so in his criticism of positivism.And I certaintly don't agree that Peirce failed to recognized or address the problem of sense vs nonsense. Whatis the goal of logic and science if not toaddress this issue? Rather I'd say that he offered an alternative triadic analysisof this traditional duality. Seems to me many folks are are attracted to the definitive (and self serving) appeal of dualistic categories such as sense vs nonsense, good vs evil, us vs them andthe like -- but for Peirce experience was fundamentally triadic, continuous and a matter of interpretation. To say that Peirce missed the importance of distinguishing between sense and nonsense (or any other duality) is in my view to missa major point Peirce was trying to make. The answer is not either/or but both. Verification can not be divorced from purpose or POV and non of us has as yet achieved God's point of view. We are all captives of our individual point of view and the only path to freedom is community. Maybe. Ah, another thought -- there is perhaps a sense in which representation (or continuity)may besynonymous with verification. Continuity in the Peircean sense implies a circularity in which begining and end are inextricably joined or mediated in what one might call an expanding, evolving verification of nature's inherent purpose. In any case I've enjoyed your comments, Ben, though I don't have the background (or stamina!) to follow allof yourfourfold analyses. And I
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben Says: I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. REPLY: I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain about how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the making of research claims to do what one can describe as "verifying" them. That would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate experimental results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to the fact that it would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental procedures and observations of results, the far more usual case being the setting up of related but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose results would have rather obvious implications for the results claimed in the research report being verified or disverified, depending on how it turns out. I don't think there would be anything very interesting in getting into that sort of detail, though. Take a common sense case of that. You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . . Well, you get the idea.So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) The question is, why have philosophers of science so often gotten all agitated about the problem of verification as if something really important hinged on giving an exact account of what does or ought to count as such? You tell me, but my guess is that it is just the age old and seemingly insatiable but really just misguided quest forabsolute and authoritative certainty. Why this shows up in the form of a major philosophical industrydevoted to the production of theories of verification is another matter, and I suppose that must be explained in terms of somenatural confusion of thought like those which make it seem so implausible at first that we can get better control over our car when it goes into a skid if weturn the car in the direction of the skid instead of by responding in the instinctively reasonable way of trying to turn it in opposition to going in that unwanted direction.Okay, not a very good example, but you know what I mean: something can seem at first completely obvious in its reasonableness that is actually quite unreasonable when all relevant considerations are taken duly into account. some of which are simply too subtle to be detected as relevant at first.Thus people argue interminably over no real problem. It happens a lot, I should think. In any case,a will-of-the-wisp is all that there is in the supposed need for some general theory of verification. There is none to be given nor is there any need for one. People make claims. Other people doubt them or accept them but want to be sure and so they do something that satisfies them, and others, noting this, are satisfied that the matter is settled and they just move on.Of maybe nobody is ever satisfied. That's life. Of course it can turn out at times that it is not easy to get the sort of satisfacion that counts for us as what we call a verification because it settles the matter in one way, or a dissatisfaction because it settles it in a contrary way. But that is all there is to it. Maybe there are fields or types of problems or issues in which the course of experience of inquiry about them has resulted in the development and elaboration ofprocedures that are regarded as having verification or disverification as their normal result, but that will surely just be because that particular sort
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Joe, Gary, Jim, list, [Joe] Ben Says: [Ben] I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. [Joe] REPLY: [Joe] I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain about how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the making of research claims to do what one can describe as "verifying" them. That would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate experimental results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to the fact that it would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental procedures and observations of results, the far more usual case being the setting up of related but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose results would have rather obvious implications for the results claimed in the research report being verified or disverified, depending on how it turns out. I don't think there would be anything very interesting in getting into that sort of detail, though. One might make similar remarks on abductive inference, which is belief-laden and context-sensitive and would require getting into lots of details and variation case by case. Note that the kind of hypotheses which inferential statistics characteristically produces are "statistical hypotheses" rather than explanatory ones, and it is not as if statisticians never had an interest in the subject; a few years ago one statistician wrote here at peirce-l about being interested in general approaches to the production of the content of hypotheses which go beyond the usual statistical kind. Statistics deals with phenomena in general and, though often applied in idioscopy, is not itself about any special class of phenomena. Yet one does, in at least some philosophy,attemptand pursue general characterizations_of_ abductive inferenceand this is becauseabductive inference is a logical process of a general kindand is therefore part of philosophy's subject matter.Verification is also a logical process of a general kind. The question is, is it some kind of interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof? Or is it something else? Now there are two more questions here: Did Peirce think that verification was important and determinational in inquiry? (Yes). Did Peirce think that verification is a distinctive formal element in semiosis? (No.) Your discussion of an emphasis on verification as reflecting a pathology of skepticism, a search for infallible truth, etc., goes too far in de-valorizing verification, certainly to the extent that you may be ascribing such a view to Peirce. From the Collected Papers of C.S. Peirce Vol. I, I. General Historical Orientation, 1. Lessons from the History of Philosophy, Section 3. The Spirit of Scholasticism, Paragraph 34, http://www.textlog.de/4220.html 66~~~ 34. Mr. George Henry Lewes in his work on Aristotle(1) seems to me to have come pretty near to stating the true cause of the success of modern science when he has said that it was *_verification_*. I should express it in this way: modern students of science have been successful because they have spent their lives not in their libraries and museums but in their laboratories and in the field; and while in their laboratories and in the field they have been not gazing on nature with a vacant eye, that is, in passive perception unassisted by thought, but have been *_observing_* -- that is, perceiving by the aid of analysis -- and testing suggestions of theories. The cause of their success has been that the motive which has carried them to the laboratory and the field has been a craving to know how things really were, and an interest in finding out whether or not general propositions actually held good-- which has overbalanced all prejudice, all vanity, and all passion. Now it is plainly not an essential part of this method in general that the tests were made by the observation of natural objects. For the immense progress which modern mathematics has made is also to be explained by the same intense interest in testing general propositions by particular cases -- only the tests were applied by means of particular demonstrations.
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Gary, Joe, Jim, list, (continued,3rd part) [Gary] Again, you maintain that the "logically determinational role" of "such recognition" cannot be denied and yet I can't even find it! For me it is less a matter of its being denied than my not even missing it (clearly you've fixed your own ideas in this matter quite differently). Your arguments around the interpretant seem absolutely convincing to you, but I have not been able to fully comprehend your argument regarding the logical necessity of this fourth "intuition" of the object as a proxy for the it. Perhaps this originates in my not being able to find it unmediated in my experience (as phenomenologist, as semeiotician, as ordinary "muser" etc.) But you say you cannot see how it is possible to argue logically for anything except a categorial schema which includes this putatively necessary fourth element that is so obvious to you, but a mystery to me. You're mixing the proxy up with the recognition and misattributing to me the view that experience is unmediated. You seem to have forgotten the difference between "direct" and "unmediated." The logically determinational role is that of (dis-)confirmatory experience. I look and see that person X is wearing a hat as I expected. I see X wearing the hat as I expected. Now, it's confirmatory in regard to my interpretive expectation based on signs, confirmatory in logical virtue of what the contents of the sign, interpretant, and object-as-represented were and inlogical virtue of what the object now shows itself to be and indeed what the object, sign, and interpretant now all show themselves to be. It is indeed confirmatory of a massive amount of prior semiosis without which I couldn't make enough sense of what I was seeing in order to think or say "looka there, he's wearing a hat!" In that sense, the experience is indeed logically mediated and logically determined. There was even a logically determined need for such a confirmation. My further stream of interpretation and verification will be decisively determined logically by the fact that I have confirmed that X is indeed wearing a hat just as I expected on the basis of earlier signs and interpretants. The confirmation touches not only on the question of whether X is wearing a hat and the ramifications regarding X, but also on the validity and soundness of the whole semiosis leading up to the confirmation, ultimately on the whole mind as aninference process. In sum: If the experience is formed *_as_* collateral to sign interpretant in respect of the obect, then object, sign, and interpretant logically determine it in its collaterality. And it in turn logically determines semiosis going forward. It really should be setting off one's philosophical alarm bells if one finds oneself denying that experience, recognition, verification, have a logically determinational role. I don't understand how anybody could argue that a claim does not logically determine the character of its verification (in the sense that, e.g., a claim that a horse is on the hill determines a verificationconsisting in looking for a horse on the hill) or that the claim's verification does not logically determine further inference involving the claim (e.g., a horse was confirmed to be on the hill, and it's good news that a horse is nearby, and it's also good news that the semiosis leading up to the verification was faring quite well, and Joey the horse-spotter was right again, and so forth, and all those items factor determinatively into semiosis going forward, a semiosis which would go _very differently_ if it had been dis-confirmed that a horse was on the hill). I don't understand how anybody could argue such, but I'm willing to examine such an argument if one is offered. So, the semiosis can't be diagrammed in its logical determination without lines representing relationships of experience to object. You could draw little dots in the line to show that the experiential relationship is, from another viewpoint, interpretively mediated. But that doesn't stop the line from being an experience line, any more than breaking a representation line into atoms and their motions turns the representation line into a mere mechanics or matter line. If you insist on showing the experience line as a mere interpretation line, then you have no way to display experience of the object such that the experience is "outside" the interpretant and sign of the object. That's part of why nobody has sat down and drawn a diagram showing how recognition or verificationis merely interpretation. Another seemingly open door gets closed when an intended signhood turns out to be the mind's experience's serving as a sign of some other object than the object of which it is the mind's experience. Of course one experiences things as being signs of still more things. Now, the following seems simple to me: __The object does not, of itself, convey experience or even
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Joe, Gary, Jim, list,
I forgot that I had wanted to make a remark on the Pragmatic Maxim in the
present connection.
[Joe] I forgot to say something about the supposed problem of
distinguishing sense from nonsense. That's what the pragmatic maxim is all
about, isn't it?
The Pragmatic Maxim is all about distinguishing sense from nonsense, given
a healthy inquirial setting. By itself, it is about the clarification of
conceptions. It is not about actually checking them, which also is important in
order _soundly_ to distinguish sense from nonsense. I think that,
as a practical matter, the result of semiotics' more or less stopping at the
stage of clarification, is that degenerate forms of pragmatism, feeling the
importance of practical, actual verification and consequences,have
emphasized actual outcomes ("cash value") at the expense of the conception of
the interpretant, an expense exacted throughpersistent misreadings of the
Pragmatic Maxim as meaning that the meaning of an idea isin its
actualobserved consequences "period, full stop."
Yetthe Pragmatic Maximprovides a basis for saying that _the
interpretant is addressed to the recognizant_. The interpretant, the
clarification, is in terms of conceivable experience having conceivable
practical bearing. It is a narrowing down of the universe represented by the
sign -- it picks out some ramifications of value or interest under the standards
of the interpreter. As an appeal to possible relevant experience, _it
is an appeal to possible recognizants_. As experiences, the
recognizants are not merely"specialized" down from the sign's represented
universe; instead they are downright singularized, insofar as experience is
singular. For instance,a prediction based on a hypothesis is a
potential recognizant, or a step in the formation of an actual recognizant. It
tends to be a prediction which is, itself, crucial-testable, and whose
confirmation lends support to the hypothesis, while its disconfirmation
disconfirms the hypothesis. The less crucial-testable a prediction is, the more
it is like a hypothesis itself if it is testable at all.
Best, Ben Udell http://tetrast.blogspot.com/
---
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[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben: JR: I must say that I think you are missing mypoint because of some mistaken assumption that I can't identify. The reason I gave the simple example of a common sense verification was to make as clear as I could that there is no deep logical point involved. Consider again my simple example: You see something and tell me about it and I take a verifying look. I see what I expect to see given what you told me to expect and that's enough for me. That is a verification. It doesn't follow that either of us grasped the truth of the matter, but if you did indeed grasp it by taking a look as you passed by the object and I did indeed graspit by taking another look thenwe are both correct. But where in all of that is this all important difference you keep talking about between mere interpretation and experience" There was no more or less experience in my look than in yours, and no more or less interpretation, as far as that goes, other than the memory that the reason I took a look myself was because I wanted to see if what you saw is what you thought it to be, which I am willing to credit if, after taking a look myself, the description matches up. There is no denial of verification involved in any of this. It is an imaginary account of a very simple case of verification. JR: Now you can complicate it as much as you want, turn the look at a macroscopic object requiring no special instruments of vision(a burning fire) into, say, the look at the object which is involved in the case of scrutinizing a bunch of measurement data gathered from cranking up a particle accelerator at CERN with the help of a thousand other people, and the basic idea of verification or disverification is unchanged except for being required to be vastly more sophisticated, given the enormously different conditions of perceptual access to the object, and of course given the equally enormously greater amount of inference involved in the one case than in the otherwhen we move fromunderstanding the perceived object to be a burning building to the compared case ofunderstanding the perceived object to be, say, a quark doing its thing under this and those conditions. Exactly the same sort of gross macro description of it applies assemiotically construed: an object is perceived as manifesting this or that, which, semiotically, is talked about in the same terms regardless of the difference between beingan object with manifest qualities functioning asrepresentations interpreted as being aburning fire or quark doing whatever quarks do. JR: So I just don't get it, Ben. Of course there is much of philosophical interest, at a specialized level, if one wants to deal with highly complexexperiences instead of simple ones. I am not denying that. I assumed that you would understand that. You say: BU: One might make similar remarks on abductive inference, which is belief-laden and context-sensitive and would require getting into lots of details and variation case by case. Note that the kind of hypotheses which inferential statistics characteristically produces are "statistical hypotheses" rather than explanatory ones, and it is not as if statisticians never had an interest in the subject; a few years ago one statistician wrote here at peirce-l about being interested in general approaches to the production of the content of hypotheses which go beyond the usual statistical kind. Statistics deals with phenomena in general and, though often applied in idioscopy, is not itself about any special class of phenomena. Yet one does, in at least some philosophy,attemptand pursue general characterizations_of_ abductive inferenceand this is becauseabductive inference is a logical process of a general kindand is therefore part of philosophy's subject matter. JR: Yes, of course, but why would I deny any of that? You then say: BU: Verification is also a logical process of a general kind. The question is, is it some kind of interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof? Or is it something else? JR: Now that baffles me. Of course it is some kind of "interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof." Why would you even say such a thing? Is it something else? Well, it is supposed to be all of that considered as occurring subsequent to some prior instance of "interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof", relating to that prior instance as sufficient like it (or in some other way relevant to it) to count as something that might verify or disverify a claim made that cited the prior instance as evidential relative to that claim. Yes, it is one thing to be a verification and quite another to be that which is verified. But what is all of this talk about the one being a mere sign and interpretant whereas the latter is an experience? Both are equally describable in semiotic terms and are equally experiential. And then you say:
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben, Joe, Jim, list, Ben, not having gotten your argument for a putative necessary fourth semeiotic element earlier--and I've certainly tried--your most recent comments have also not helped me get any closer to what you apparently find near-obvious, or at least "simple." You write: [BU] It really should be setting off one's philosophical alarm bells if one finds oneself denying that experience, recognition, verification, have a logically determinational role. I wouldn't disagree that experience, recognition and verification have their logical roles which appear to me to occur as semeiotic events in the Peircean, that is, triadic sense (allowing for an extra-semiotic dynamical object, and that one can build up collateral experience which "points" to such a reality which simply is what it is, etc.) You write: BU: I don't understand how anybody could argue that a claim does not logically determine the character of its verification (in the sense that, e.g., a claim that a horse is on the hill determines a verificationconsisting in looking for a horse on the hill) or that the claim's verification does not logically determine further inference involving the claim (e.g., a horse was confirmed to be on the hill, and it's good news that a horse is nearby, and it's also good news that the semiosis leading up to the verification was faring quite well, and Joey the horse-spotter was right again, and so forth, and all those items factor determinatively into semiosis going forward, a semiosis which would go _very differently_ if it had been dis-confirmed that a horse was on the hill). I don't understand how anybody could argue such, but I'm willing to examine such an argument if one is offered. Again, it's a matter of one's understanding of the semiotic role of "verification." No one--and least of all Peirce--has argued against verification, experience, collateral knowledge as important. But I see verification as a stage in a given semiosis, just as the writing (or reading) of Hamlet would have stages (of recognition, for example, as Hamlet begin to see the intimate relationship of Gertrude to the villainous king). I don't think I would say with you that it logically determines the character of its verification as meaning for it appears to me part of an existential-semeiotic thread which intertwines with the rest of the threads of the evolving cable/symbol. In short it is a stage, albeit a significant stage, in some semeiotic event. I thought that this was a part of Joe's point too (in both his earlier response and his more recent and expanded one) Joe quoted you then commented: [BU] I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. REPLY: [JR] I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. I agree with Joe that "verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry." You say it is up to us argue against something which for me at least isn't even there as "a distinctive formal element in inquiry"--as I've remarked, I cannot find it to argue against it. You say it is there; I (we?) say it is not. So while this is very simple (and obvious) to you, to me it remains a mystery. You wrote: [BU] <>Now, the following seems simple to me: __The object does not, of itself, convey experience or even information. The sign interpretant convey information but not experience of their object. Those considerations settle in the negative the question of the adequacy of a triad of interpretant, sign, and object, for verificative purposes. Verification, qua verification, has a determinational role in logic.__ I don't know why any of this doesn't seem simple to others. Well, I've simply come to another conclusion: the immediate object is involved in the semeiosis, and "verification, qua verification" points exactly to its involvement in the growing symbol, the richer, truer meaning--say, perhaps, of my life as a sign-user and whatever role I might play in my society as a result of my seeing that object more clearly. Perhaps I don't think verification is "determinative" in the way you say it does. "The object determines the sign for the interpreter" and there is both a dynamical and an immediate object determining. Verification seems
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Gary, Joe, Jim, list, (continued, 2rd part) [Gary] It does seem most likely and natural that there are a number of corrections and additions to be made in regard to Peirce's theories. For example, Ben points to the need for contemporary research fields to find their places within Peirce's classification of the sciences. But first folk have got to see the power of such an approach to classification, a matter which Kelly Parker admirably discusses at length in relation to continuity/triadicity in one of the early chapters of his book (the revisions that Ben has suggested to Peirce's classification seem to me idiosyncratic; and certainly any such revision of the classification ought not be one person's "take" on the matter anyhow). That last remark sets up a strawman. To the contrary of course I'm not suggesting that people ought to embrace my revision even when they disagree with it and when I'm the only one in favor of it. Any revision of the classification ought not to be decided by a poll of whether one person supports it or dozens of people support it, etc. If, nevertheless, numbers are worth mentioning when I'm in the minority of one, let's remember that -- in numbers of supporters among philosophers -- Peirceanism itself comes in far behind linguistic analysis phenomenological/existential philosophy. Now, if we want to rephrase "minority of one" into "thinks he's right and whole rest of the world is wrong," that's merely self-inflammatory rhetoric, especially when the whole philosophical world is far from agreement among its constituents about the subject in question. Now, I don't see why _more_ folks have tofirst see the power of an approach to classification. What is needed is for the people most interested in the subject to actually attempt it -- just _do_ it, engage the issues, and get productive inquiry rolling. The commencing to appear of some sort of interesting questions and first fruitful results along the way will be the strongest persuader that the approachcouldbe more generallyfruitful and that the subject is even worth pursuing at all. Birger Hjørland http://www.db.dk/bh/home_uk.htmhas written http://www.db.dk/bh/Core%20Concepts%20in%20LIS/articles%20a-z/classification_of_the_sciences.htm"There is not today (2005), to my knowledge, any organized research program about the classification of the sciences in any discipline or in any country. As Miksa (1998) writes, the interest for this question largely died in the beginning of the 20th century." And the would-be classifier is up against a lot more than that. It seems that not a few researchers believe that classification of research is an unredeemablebane. Of course, I do think that the reason that Peirceans haven't attempted incorporations of contemporary fields into the Peircean classification, is that it's rather difficult. For instance, statistics seems to belong in cenoscopy, but it doesn't seem to belong within philosophy in any traditional sense. And what of information theory and its various areas? The problems involved are philosophical problems -- I think that they're to be solved philosophically. I doubt that stirring interest in people from various fields will do much to help various research fields "find their places" in the Peircean classification when those most familiar with the classification can't figure out how to place such well establishedand much written-about fieldsas probability theory, statistical theory, information theory, etc. within it. Of course I'm not against trying to stir other people's interest. But I think that it's just delaying the grappling with the philosophical problems. Regarding idiosyncrasy. You think my classification is idiosyncratic. I think that a side-by-side comparison of my classification with Peirce's would show that mine is not idiosyncratic and is actually more regular and systematic. With each of four major families of research, I associate a category -- Peirce doesn't do that at all -- a referential scope or 'quantity'-- Peirce doesn't do that -- and a typical inferential mode of conclusion -- Peirce does that only for mathematics. Crossing the families are inter-family bands of 'friendly cousins' based ultimately on such general and systematizable conceptions as those of relationshipsof 'one-to-one,' 'many-to-one,' 'one-to-many,' and 'many-to-many'. What those abtract and colorless characterizations amount to or correlate with, I try to sketchalong the first columnat the relevant rows.Meanwhile the attempt totrace outimplicit Peircean inter-family and inter-subfamily bands or patterns leads to that which Joe Ransdell has called the appearance of "derangement" in Peircean classification. Now, one can certainly believe that my classification is wrong, andsome years ago I put it through enough changes that the possibility of revising it again is quite real to me, and, one way or another, itcertainly is a work in
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben, Joe, Jim, List Benjamin Udell wrote: I don't see how the logically determinationalrole of such recognition [as represented by a fourth proxy element] can be arguably denied and so I will stop trying to so argue. But I don't see it. Let me at least give an attempt at a definitive parting _expression_ of my position in this matter. I'll begin by saying that it seems peculiar to me that in his voluminous work on logic as semeiotic that Peirce would have missed exactly the *logical* element (see 4. proxy -- logic, substantiation, etc. in Ben's schema below) and notably exactly at the place Ben finds it, in relation to collateral knowledge (not forgetting that Peirce makes quite a bit of the distinction of collateral knowledge from the system of signs itself as Ben correctly noted). My modus operandi in consideration of a personal "economy of research" has been centered around my sense that as an increasing number of folk are beginning to see the power of Peirce's triadic and trichotomic philosophy and wish to further it (for example, as opposed to the dyadic semiotic which has until recently dominated even computer semiotics) it would be best to emphasize its strengths and powers first before entertaining more complex hypotheses (such as Ben's). Yet, and not denying the need for a critical stance in all these matters, Ben seems to have suggested recently that in the light of his understanding, which cannot be "arguably denied", that this kind of triadic and trichotomic thinking represents some sort of blindness or, perhaps, group-think. It does seem most likely and natural that there are a number of corrections and additions to be made in regard to Peirce's theories. For example, Ben points to the need for contemporary research fields to find their places within Peirce's classification of the sciences. But first folk have got to see the power of such an approach to classification, a matter which Kelly Parker admirably discusses at length in relation to continuity/triadicity in one of the early chapters of his book (the revisions that Ben has suggested to Peirce's classification seem to me idiosyncratic; and certainly any such revision of the classification ought not be one person's "take" on the matter anyhow). A powerful idea is (paraphrasing Peirce) like a child--it needs care and nurturing. With friends suggesting the child is a kind of partially formed monster, who needs enemies? Certainly were I ever to become convinced that there were indeed other than three universes of experience, three categories, three semeiotic elements I would immediately be forced on pragmatic principles to modify my view radically. But that has not happened, and the 3 universes, categories, and semeiotic elements continue to be confirmed in my own experience and thinking. As regards Ben's thinking in this matter, I have not yet been convinced by his arguments that, say, collateral experience on the one hand, or coding/decoding on the other, necessitate adding a fourth semeiotic element or analog. Until that happens I personally will concentrate on promoting the healthy growth of a *child* who seems to me most remarkable, most promising, who continuously inspires my own creative work, etc. But moving along, as you've written before, Ben, your 1st is a kind of 2nd, and your fourth is in a sense another form of the object. Here you give your semeiotic four in outline form. 1. index -- extremality, force, shortest distance, etc. ~ ~ ~ 3. symbol -- information, coding, importance, etc. 2. icon -- probability, likelihood, etc. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. proxy -- logic, substantiation, legitimacy, etc. Besides the probably insignificant point that commencing with a kind of secondness, and having two object-like elements seems to me to weight your four-fold structure with too much secondness, as well as my sense (from studying your Tetrast diagrams) that index, icon, and symbol in your system represent some aspects of Peirce's categories, but also much else which seems alien to Peirce's understanding of these three (so that they are really not the same animals), I again just ask: how could Peirce--and many brilliant interpreters--have missed the 4th, the proxy, your "logic itself" (as in your schema above--there the symbol seems reduced to mere coding of information and to have no inferential or generative power of its own vs Peirce where "symbols grow")? Again, you maintain that the "logically determinational role" of "such recognition" cannot be denied and yet I can't even find it! For me it is less a matter of its being denied than my not even missing it (clearly you've fixed your own ideas in this matter quite differently). Your arguments around the interpretant seem absolutely convincing to you, but I have not been able to fully comprehend your argument regarding the logical necessity of this fourth "intuition" of the object as a proxy for the it. Perhaps this originates in my not being
