Jack, List: FYI, that entire paper by Silverstein is available online ( https://www.academia.edu/32431007/Indexical_order_and_the_dialectics_of_sociolinguistic_life). I tried reading through it to get a better handle on how it might be relevant here, without much success because it contains a lot of discipline-specific jargon that is unfamiliar to me. It does not mention Peirce at all, instead repeatedly invoking Saussure, suggesting a dyadic rather than triadic conception of signs. Best I can tell, it is concerned only with linguistic instances (tokens) of indexical legisigns (types), such as informal/formal (T/V) second person pronouns in languages that (unlike English) have that distinction--*tu/vos* in Latin, *tu/usted* in Spanish, *du/Sie* in German, etc. I will say that its many references to context seem consistent with Peirce's emphasis on the necessity of collateral acquaintance/observation/experience for identifying the object of any sign, including how we learn words in the first place.
CSP: The subject of a pure symbolic proposition, i.e. one in which no diagram is involved, but only conventional signs, such as words, might be defined as that with which some collateral acquaintance is requisite to the interpretation (the understanding,) of the proposition. Thus the statement, "Cain killed Abel" cannot be fully understood by a person who has no further acquaintance with Cain and Abel than that which the proposition itself gives. Of course, Abel is as much a subject as Cain. But further, the statement cannot be understood by a person who has no collateral acquaintance with killing. Therefore, Cain, Abel, and the relation of killing are the subjects of this proposition. (SS 70, 1908 Dec 14) CSP: A person who says Napoleon was a lethargic creature has evidently his mind determined by Napoleon. For otherwise he could not attend to him at all. But here is a paradoxical circumstance. The person who interprets that sentence (or any other Sign whatsoever) must be determined by the Object of it through collateral observation quite independently of the action of the Sign. ... Another Partial Object is Lethargy; and the sentence cannot convey its meaning unless collateral experience has taught its Interpreter what Lethargy is, or what that is that "lethargy" means in this sentence. ... But by collateral observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the sign denotes. Thus if the Sign be the sentence "Hamlet was mad," to understand what this means one must know that men are sometimes in that strange state; one must have seen madmen or read about them; and it will be all the better if one specifically knows (and need not be driven to *presume*) what Shakespeare's notion of insanity was. ... It is true of both Immediate and of Dynamical Object that acquaintance cannot be given by a Picture or a Description, nor by any other sign which has the Sun for its Object. If a person points to it and says, "See there! *That *is what we call the 'Sun'," the Sun is *not *the Object of that sign. It is the *Sign *of the sun, the *word *"sun" that his declaration is about; and that *word *we must become acquainted with by collateral experience. ... I think by this time you must understand what I mean when I say that no sign can be understood,--or at least that no *proposition *can be understood,--unless the interpreter has "collateral acquaintance" with every Object of it. (CP 8.178-83, EP 2:493-5, 1909 Feb 26) CSP: We must distinguish between the Immediate Object,--i.e. the Object as represented in the sign,--and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term, therefore), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign *cannot *express, which it can only *indicate *and leave the interpreter to find out by *collateral experience*. For instance, I point my finger to what I mean, but I can't make my companion know what I mean, if he can't see it, or if seeing it, it does not, to his mind, separate itself from the surrounding objects in the field of vision. It is useless to attempt to discuss the genuineness and possession of a personality beneath the histrionic presentation of Theodore Roosevelt with a person who recently has come from Mars and never heard of Theodore before. (CP 8.314, EP 2:498, 1909 Mar 14) Presupposition and entailment strike me as corresponding to the antecedent and consequent of a conditional proposition, which are in a definite *logical *sequence. As Peirce says, "The idea of time must be employed in arriving at the conception of logical consecution; but the idea once obtained, the time-element may be omitted, thus leaving the logical sequence free from time. That done, time appears as an existential analogue of the logical flow," i.e., "temporal succession is a mirror of, or framework for, logical sequence" (CP 1.491&496, c. 1896). After all, both are *hyperbolic *sequences--"a unidimensional form in which there is a difference between the relation of A to B and of B to A ... [and] where A and B are different" (NEM 4:127, 1897-8). Unidimensional is a synonym of linear, and hyperbolic is an antonym of recursive--if the antecedent is true, then the consequent is *necessarily *true, but not vice versa; and the past determines the present to determine the future, not the other way around. CSP: You cannot proceed from antecedent to consequent till you reach again your original antecedent (as in the 3rd kind of sequence, the elliptical), nor do you *tend *to such a return (as in the second, or parabolic sequence), but the two are distinct. (ibid.) CSP: A *cycle *is a change which returns into itself so that the final state of things is very similar to the initial state. ... Certain cycles are judged by us, by their relation to the totality of synchronous events, to be such that the portions of time they occupy may be conveniently taken as comparable units. We count these from some one portion of time, during which some exceptional event occurred, and call the instant of the beginning of that cycle, our *epoch*, or zero; and by counting the cycles toward the infinite future with positive numbers, and toward the infinite past with negative numbers; and so attach whole numbers to instants. ... The numbers so attached to instants are called their dates. ... It is an important, though extrinsic, property of time that no such reckoning brings us round to the same time again. (NEM 2:250, 1895) CSP: The Past consists of the sum of *faits accomplis*, and this Accomplishment is the Existential Mode of Time. For the Past really acts upon us, and that it does, not at all in the way in which a Law or Principle influences us, but precisely as an Existent object acts. ... [T]he mode of the Past is that of Actuality. ... [while] everything in the Future is either *destined*, i.e., necessitated already, or is *undecided*, the contingent future of Aristotle. In other words, it is not Actual, since it does not act except through the idea of it, that is, as a law acts; but is either Necessary or Possible ... (CP 5.459, EP 2:357-8, 1905) Likewise, in semiosis, "The object is the antecedent, the interpretant the consequent of the sign," such that "the interpretant is, in some sense, in a *future tense* relatively to the sign, while the object is in a past tense" (R 318:162[18], 1907). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 4:02 AM Jack Cody <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, Gary R, List, > > I had a much longer reply in mind but with respect to time and semiosis I > thought I'd just upload a capture from Michael Silverstein's (must read) > Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life (my own > background situates me firmly within this literature but as many may know, > Silverstein had an enormous interest in Semeiotic). > > The point, regarding that capture, is entailment and from there we come > into the analysis, in this context, of "time" as well as the objects of > experience which, qua consciousness, allow us to understand whatever time > is (Silverstein is always doing more than one thing, theoretical, at once). > > Anyway, instead of a linear (past-present-future) flow, I wonder if you > haven't considered a non-linar (albeit linear to whichever understanding is > involved) "flow" of time. > > I suppose more than my thoughts on the article I'd be interested to hear > the thoughts of others, in fact, on this list, regarding what Silverstein > might add here in temporal terms. He's more concerned with meaning-making > and entailment (presupposition) than time itself but also requires a > temporal model to make sense of this and so it is closely related, in my > opinion, to this discussion. > > Best > > Jack > >
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