Dear Cody, John, and Eric, 

 

Thanks for doing The Sign Game for me.  I have another bunch coming in from a 
group at St. Johns, so I will hold off any lengthy comment until next week.  

 

Preliminarily, it struck me that for the majority of your answers, the 
“interpretants” were people, or at least agents of one sort or another.  As I 
read Peirce, the interpretant is a cognition, not the agent.  So in the case of 
the robin, the sign is “intruder”, the object is tuft of read feathers, and the 
interpretant is the range of things that small robin-like creature could be 
before the robin lights on “intruder” as a sign.  

 

One of the things that you have all made me aware of is the role of words in 
all of this.  Whatever sign relation is being described, it is always described 
in words.  This seems to me into offer pitfalls for the unwary.   We have to be 
careful not to confuse the frame with the picture.  

 

Thanks for your help. 

 

NIck

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of cody dooderson
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2016 9:41 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Sign Game

 

I am a total newbie to the sign game. What is considered a correct answer? 

I took a stab at the first question. What do you think?

 

When a male robin enters the territorial male robin’s territory, the owner will 
display,

 

sing, and approach the intruder. Experiments show that any tuft of red cotton 
mounted

 

on brown wires will suffice to elicit this response.

I would say the (S)ign is: A red fuzzy thing

(O)bject: A male robin

(I)nterpretant: Male robins are usually red fuzzy things. 




Cody Smith

 

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 12:09 AM, Nick Thompson <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

Dear Members of the Local Congregation, 

 

There will be a short quiz tomorrow. (};-)] Please see attached. 

 

Nick 


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