Frances, I always understood symbolism of words Peirce and you used. And I agree with essence of this evolutionary metaphysical approach to the matters of existence. Your sentence "signs are progressively hierarchical in that each sign will have the combined properties of icons and indexes and symbols to some degree;" shows how much weight word 'sign' caries. My point is to try make language simpler without loosing sophistication and beauty of the concept. In principle, I agree with the big picture you describe in the post. Boris Shoshensky
---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Frances Kelly" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Sign Defined Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 18:00:05 -0400 Frances to Boris... The members of the list have covered a lot of ground in this topical debate over defining signs, but it has been very useful for me to engage in it. The next stage might be a thread on defining the arts as signs. In any event, it is hoped that my dull spears will become sharpened arrows instead of duded bombs. Allow me to therefore drop a number of statements that seem to be relevant here. Peircean pragmatism states that "feeling" is the one thing that permeates anything and everything, and that all mechanic and organic stuff in the world "feels" to some degree. This is a very broad claim, and is likely rejected by most theorists. It seems that it was posited by Peirce to account for his claim that existent phenomenal matter in continuing to evolve is effete mind that engages in quasi thought as it exchanges information via crude signals. It was likely also his way of linking myst with matter and mind, and thus bringing his ontological metaphysics into line with his cosmological physics and epistemological psychics. There is also much dispute in sign theory over whether nonhuman matter and life and even abnormal or immature human life can use signs. The pragmatist position is that everything existing in the world can potentially be a signer engaged in signing with signs to some degree, the least of which might be say atomic particles using raw signals to inform one another. My tendency is to tentatively accept this position; otherwise nonhuman action would be held as other than semiotic, such as purely chemical for example, but nothing other than semiotics seems able to account for the inclined growth of matter by way of disposed tendencies and conducted habits and fated purposes and directed goals. To deny that atomic particles are at least crude signers is to likely deny that they exchange information, because it takes signs and only signs to bear information, yet they clearly do contact one another and exchange information and concur on action. The whole world is generally considered by Peirce to be phenomenal, and under this as an overall umbrella would fall the phanerical as a phantom or fantasy, and then the physical as a technical fact, and then the psychical as a collective law; which tern Peirce further differentiates from the mystical and material and mental, for purposes of certain classifications. There is also a difference in the pragmatist account of phenomena between a phenomenal "phenomenon" as a continuing thing and a phanerical "phaneron" as an existing object, and a phanerical "phanerism" when a phaneron acts as a mechanism or organism. At first glance this unusual jargon seems to be fussy and unnecessary, but upon closer study of the vast worldly system that Peirce attempted to build it does become useful. On the three main kinds of signs given by Peirce as icons and indexes and symbols, it seems that only indexical signals are admitted into the sphere of nonorganic mechanic signers. In regard to nonhuman animals, if they seem to use icons of mimetic similarity, or indexes like cathartic symptoms of illness, or symbols of conventional agreement, their use is actually as signals. It is a mistake under pragmatism to thus hold that only normal humans are signers of all signs, or that nonhuman animals can be signers of icons and symbols, or that nonorganic mechanisms cannot be signers of some signs to some degree. To widen signs and signing and signers in this vast way is still in dispute, even among learned semioticians and pragmatists. There is also a difference in the "referents" of signs, which is between the "objects" of signs as possible and actual and lawful, and then the "contents" of signs as abstract and concrete and discrete, and also the "grounds" of signs as formal and causal and conventional; but it must only be from the actual and the concrete and the causal that all others emerge or are felt and sensed. If they are correctly understood by me, there are some core tenets or key axioms of signs in semiotics that perhaps should be mentioned because they might impact on this discussion. In acts of sign situations or semiosis: the referred objects of signs determine the main kind a sign will be in each situation; signs are progressively hierarchical in that each sign will have the combined properties of icons and indexes and symbols to some degree; only one sign will dominate as the main kind a sign will be in any given situation; all signs must be initially felt or sensed or known as factual token indexes from which all other icons and indexes and symbols will emerge; indexes are made up of icons to which such indexes should conform; symbols will control the conformity of indexes to icons thereby assuring some normality. The task for me now is to make some sense out of this intriguing irresistible maze. Boris wrote... Frances wrote "Pragmatism holds that all matter is phenomenal and potentially a sign that bears information which it feels, and mainly in the form of an index that is a signal". I agree with description in general, except I would not use the word 'feels'. I prefer physical reaction. Boris wrote... The word sign has, to me, too much of a flavor of attachment to human perception. Not enough objective neutrality. This is why all stuff is a signal of a physical presence - existence. ____________________________________________________________ Click now for prescreened plumbing contractors. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2241/fc/BLSrjpYePbkTcfKzWLoQvGLbrAp6ec ykpKwFMxzEevGMeUwId3DhKGSUFZe/
