Jon, List, In footnote 22 of "Temporal Synechism" you note that Andre de Tienne asks the question "to what extent does the flow of time regulate the flow of signs, and to what extent does the flow of signs influence or determine the flow of time?" This post is meant to begin a discussion of that question.
Several days ago I had an off List exchange with Helmut Ralien which included some comments of mine on an earlier Peirce-L post of his in which he introduced the Spencer-Brown concept of 'reentry' into a discussion of whether the sign (hereafter I'll use lowercase 'sign' to mean 'representamen') was a mere correlate within the object - sign - interpretant triad, or whether *the triad itself in toto* constituted the Sign (uppercase 'Sign' standing for that idea in this post). I thought his introduction of Spencer-Brown's notion into the discussion was brilliant, but I had some trouble following it. So, I made a few suggestions as to how it might otherwise be approached. Here, with some modifications related to the content of the recent thread on Time, is my suggestion of an approach to the Spencer-Brown 'reentry' idea. Some argue, with considerable textual support from Peirce, that sign (representamen), object, and interpretant are but correlates within a triadic semiotic relation, others that the triadic relation itself *is* the Sign: that is, that one could argue that the Sign is not simply the representamen or the representamen plus its object, that the Sign is the whole triadic relation of representamen, object, and interpretant *ensemble.* In this view, these three elements together form an inseparable unity such that if any part were missing, the sign would be incomplete -- just as, if it were possible (which it obviously is not), if any of the three 'parts' of a temporal "durée" were to be missing, there would be no Time. Spencer-Brown’s concept of 'reentry' might help clarify the matter by showing how a distinction can fold back into itself. In *Laws of Form*, 'reentry' means that a distinction reenters the space it marks, creating self-reference and recursion. In Peirce’s semeiotic, the interpretant is itself most typically a new (or modified) sign, so the triad continually regenerates itself in endless semiosis. Seen this way, the Sign is *no*t three static parts, but an active, self-referential loop. Reentry suggests that what makes a Sign is not the mere coexistence of sign, object, and interpretant, but *the dynamic process of the triadic relation reentering itself through the production of further interpretants. Thus, from the standpoint of 'reentry', the sign is the living triadic distinction continually folding back on itself -- not a static correlate, but a process.* In this view, it is only as an analytical contrivance in speculative grammar that the distinction of object - sign - interpretant as correlates holds. Rather, as it is in the *analysis *of Time, the central 'part' of the object - representamen - interpretant triad is 'more present'. That is all. Best, Gary R
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