Gary, Jon, List,
To Andre de Tienne´s question, what regulates or determines what, time signs or vice versa, or both mutually, I remember, that a similar question is about matter and space. That matter requires space is obvious, but maybe without matter there would be no space either? Einstein and Mach have dealt wit this question, Einstein is more accepted than Mach. Einstein has also said, that time is a dimension, like the three spatial dimensions are too, and time and space are transformable with each other (Lorenz-transformation). The therefore required high velocity, close to light speed, shows the extent to which matter is effete mind (signs at work). And so, how and why time for us, who act far below light speed, is of such a different quality than space is for us. It seems, that Peirce somehow has anticipated Einstein, by saying that matter is effete mind.
I see a slight (and I guess, solvable) problem with unifying "reentry" with "continuity". Spencer-Brown said, that reentry is an oscillation. It should be, I guess, because otherwise it would contradict the excluded middle. A sign cannot be not thirdness (firstness, correlate) and thirdness (triad) at the same time. So there must be an oscillation. But what is its frequency, and how does that not contradict continuity? I guess there is a fractal with self-similar time and space scales, maybe going indefinitely small, or stopping becoming smaller at some quantum scale with the Heisenberg-blur. For example, the biggest scale is that of two sequential thoughts, like "Where can I put my bag?" and "There, on the table". A smaller scale might be the firing frequency of neurons, about 50 cycles per second, and a very small scale might be some kind of quantums oscillation. Maybe it is justified to say, that a fractal is quasi-continuous. Another argument, why "oscillation" does not refute "continuity" might be, that (incontinuous) quantum theory too does not refute (continuous) waves-theory, but says. that both models are valid, and it depends on the situation, which model, the discontinuous or the continuous one, expresses itself into reality.
Best regards, Helmut
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 17. Juli 2025 um 00:39
Von: "Gary Richmond" <[email protected]>
An: "Peirce List" <[email protected]>
CC: "Jon Alan Schmidt" <[email protected]>,"Helmut Raulien" <[email protected]>
Betreff: [PEIRCE-L] Spencer-Brown's concept of 'reentry' in consideration of semiosis (after an idea of Helmut Ralient)
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 not 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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