Robert, list,
John Deely defines “anthroposemiosis” as “the species-specifically human use of
signs, rooted in language” (Four Ages of Understanding, p. 629). My expression
was not a direct quote, or I would have cited the source as I have here.
Deely generally followed Thomas Sebeok in making an absolute distinction
between human language and the communication faculties of other animals, as he
explained in Chapter 9 of Purely Objective Reality. He also called homo sapiens
“the semiotic species”, because all animals use signs, but only humans know
that there are signs, and therefore only humans do semiotics (i.e. talk about
signs, as we are doing here).
By the way, Paul Cobley mentioned Deely’s term “suprasubjectivity”, which I
didn’t find in Chapter 9 of the book, but it’s in Chapter 2 of Purely Objective
Reality. How that concept relates to what Yuval Harari calls
“intersubjectivity” is a metasemiotic question that I won’t go into here.
Love, gary f.
Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg
} Ecologically speaking, the trouble with the human race is that it's getting
too big for its niches. [gnox] {
<https://gnusystems.ca/wp/> https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{
<https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> Turning Signs
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Robert Junqueira
Sent: 13-Jan-25 07:42
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Cc: Paul Cobley <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Intersubjective Reality
Dear Garry F.,
Should you please let us know where John Deely defines anthroposemiosis as
"human linguistic communication", we would be most appreciative.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Junqueira
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > escreveu (domingo, 12/01/2025
à(s) 17:15):
Paul, list,
Thank you for that pointer to Deely’s Purely Objective Reality! Since I read it
over a decade ago, I’d forgotten all about it, but I dug up my copy hoping to
answer the immediate question on my mind: “intersubjectivity is not enough” for
what? Halfway through Deely’s chapter (page 151, specifically) I realized that
what he meant was this: Intersubjectivity is not enough to account for
anthroposemiosis, or human linguistic communication.
Deely’s reason for saying this is that “intersubjectivity,” for him, is a
relation between organisms, “something that exists in the world, beyond (over
and above) subjectivity, whether or not anybody is aware of its existence; its
reality is “hardcore”, not socially constructed” (p. 151). But Harari’s
definition and examples of intersubjectively created entities show that for him
they are socially constructed (mostly by “stories people tell one another”).
What’s behind this discrepancy is that Deely, like Peirce and unlike Harari,
generally uses the term “subject” as it was used in the Latin age of
philosophy, and avoids the more Kantian sense of “subjectivity.” (See Peirce’s
Century Dictionary entry on “objective”, which is reproduced in Turning Signs
at https://gnusystems.ca/TS/rlb.htm#bjctv. On Peirce’s usage see Objecting and
Realizing (TS ·12) <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/blr.htm#x08> .)
So I don’t think Deely’s chapter really answers the question posed by Gary R.
I’d like to rephrase it as follows: would Peirce recognize some entities as
socially constructed realities? I think I could supply a number of Peirce
quotes that show him doing that, but I’d rather hear what others think on the
question first.
Love, gary f.
Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg
From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf
Of Paul Cobley
Sent: 12-Jan-25 06:01
To: Gary Richmond <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >;
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Cc: Gary Fuhrman <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >; Benjamin
Udell <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Intersubjective Reality
Gary R, list,
Thanks for introducing discussion of this very interesting topic.
One would expect Harari, bearing in mind his main audience, to rely on a
concept such as intersubjectivity.
But, in answer to your question ‘Is Harari’s concept of “intersubjective
reality” compatible with Peircean realism?’, the most direct and extensive
discussion of this issue that I have come across was offered by John Deely
nearly 23 years ago.
John’s conclusions can be found in Chapter 9 of his 2009 book, Purely Objective
Reality (Berlin: de Gruyter). The chapter, aptly, carries the title of the
original 2002 lecture: ‘Why intersubjectivity is not enough’.
There he outlines the concept of suprasubjectivity to explicate what he sees as
compatible with Peircean realism.
Best,
Paul
From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > on behalf
of Gary Richmond <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
Date: Saturday, 11 January 2025 at 21:22
To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> >
Cc: Gary Fuhrman <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >, Benjamin
Udell <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Intersubjective Reality
List,
Gary Fuhrman, whom I sometimes think of as a philosopher of the Anthropocene,
in the course of revising a section of his online book, Turning Signs
[https://gnusystems.ca/TS/], forwarded a link to that section to see what I
thought of his revision (I've read TS online and in its print version, and have
discussed TS often with Fuhrman off List and in his blog).
In the section [linked to below] he remarks that Yuval Noah Harari posits, in
addition to the objective reality and subjective reality we Peirceans are all
fairly familiar with, an intersubjective reality. Fuhrman later sent me a
longer quote which, I think, helps clarify exactly what Harari means by
"intersubjective reality" (I'll give the shorter quote in the context of
Fuhrman's comments on it a bit later) in this post.
"The two levels of reality that preceded storytelling are objective reality and
subjective reality. Objective reality consists of things like stones,
mountains, and asteroids—things that exist whether we are aware of them or not.
An asteroid hurtling toward planet Earth, for example, exists even if nobody
knows it’s out there. Then there is subjective reality: things like pain,
pleasure, and love that aren’t “out there” but rather “in here.” Subjective
things exist in our awareness of them. An unfelt ache is an oxymoron.
"But some stories are able to create a third level of reality: intersubjective
reality. Whereas subjective things like pain exist in a single mind,
intersubjective things like laws, gods, nations, corporations, and currencies
exist in the nexus between large numbers of minds. More specifically, they
exist in the stories people tell one another. The information humans exchange
about intersubjective things doesn’t represent anything that had already
existed prior to the exchange of information; rather, the exchange of
information creates these things."—Harari, Yuval Noah. Nexus (p. 25).
McClelland & Stewart. Kindle Edition.
I think that Peirce, should he have accepted the concept, might include these
intersubjective realities with other symbols inhabiting his Third Universe of
Experience. In the quotation below I've put those that might be examples of
intersubjective realities in boldface.
The third Universe comprises everything whose being consists in active power to
establish connections between different objects, especially between objects in
different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign -- not the
mere body of the Sign, which is not essentially such, but, so to speak, the
Sign's Soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as intermediary
between its Object and a Mind. Such, too, is a living consciousness, and such
the life, the power of growth, of a plant. Such is a living constitution -- a
daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social "movement." CP 6.455
In Turning Signs Fuhrman puts these in the context of language, communication,
information, community, relations and, perhaps especially, dialogue -- but not
truth. See: <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/dlg.htm#ntrsbj>
https://gnusystems.ca/TS/dlg.htm#ntrsbj Here, Fuhrman comments, then quotes
Harari:
Humans are social animals who have used language for millennia to cooperate
with others. Without it, and without the information networks which enable
communication at ever larger scales, they could not have attained the dominance
over life on Earth that we now call the Anthropocene
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene> . Some information networks enable
humans to learn the truth about what they call “objective” reality, which is
what it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it. But every sentient being
has to sense its reality on its own, separately and “subjectively.”
Consequently, both communication and power relations within the community
depend on <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/gld.htm#ntrsb> intersubjective realities,
as Yuval Harari calls them in Nexus (2024, 25): ‘they exist in the stories
people tell one another.’ Not all these stories reflect “objective” reality,
but they can be ‘real powers in the world’ (Peirce
<https://gnusystems.ca/TS/sdg.htm#hsabstr> ), and some information networks
propagate them in order to maintain or modify a social order. The objects
referred to by many symbols are among the intersubjective realities which
people may naively confuse with “objective” truth.
"Contrary to what the naive view of information says, information has no
essential link to truth, and its role in history isn’t to represent a
preexisting reality. Rather, what information does is to create new realities
by tying together disparate things— whether couples or empires. Its defining
feature is connection rather than representation, and information is whatever
connects different points into a network. Information doesn’t necessarily
inform us about things. Rather, it puts things in formation." (Harari 2024, 12)
One question immediately comes to mind: Is Harari’s concept of “intersubjective
reality” compatible with Peircean realism? I’d be interested in hearing list
members' thoughts on this question.
Best,
Gary R
PS My first attempt at sending this email failed as the default address is the
old iupui one, so was undeliverable. Ben,, is there any way to make the new iu
address the default address?
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