Jon, List, Just on indexical meaning. I understanad your point, but I think you are overly harsh. What I mean here is that I think you can understand precisely what Silverstein is getting at without requiring a "purely" orthodox reference delimination. However, within that delimitation I would argue the following.
Peirce's "pure index" (CP 2.306), as you state, forces attention to its object through existential connection without description - like smoke pointing to fire. However, Silverstein's entire point is that "wine talk" operates similarly: the register doesn't describe class but indexically points to it through pure usage, becoming a near-Peircean "degenerate index" (CP 2.283) where the connection is mediated by ideology rather than physics. The key parallel: 1. Peircean pure index: Direct, non-representational pointing (weathervane → wind) 2. Silversteinian indexical order: Mediated social pointing (wine talk → class) 3. Both rely on the sign's ability to "force attention to the object without describing it" (Peirce 1977:36) The difference lies in Silverstein's dialectical layering - where Peirce's indices gain ideological baggage through metapragmatic recursion. What remains Peircean is the core semiotic mechanism: indexical meaning emerges from connection rather than representation. Best Jack ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2025 6:27 PM To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Alan Watts, Henri Bergson, and Charles Peirce (ans St. Augustine) on Time Jack, List: Like I said, I tried to read Silverstein's paper, without much success. I see now that he repeatedly talks about "indexical meaning," but from a Peircean semeiotic standpoint, that term is almost an oxymoron--a pure index, if such a sign were possible, would merely denote something (object) without signifying anything about it (interpretant = meaning). CSP: A pure index simply forces attention to the object with which it reacts and puts the interpreter into mediate reaction with that object, but conveys no information. As an example, take an exclamation "Oh!" The letters attached to a geometrical figure are another case. ... [An icon] gives no assurance that any such object as it represents really exists. The index on the other hand does this most perfectly, actually bringing to the interpreter the experience of the very object denoted. But it is quite wanting in signification unless it involves an iconic part [as a proposition does]. (EP 2:306-7, 1901) You suggest distinguishing "time itself" from "the objects of experience which participate in" it, but according to Peirce, time itself is an object of our direct experience. Again, he maintains that "in the present we are conscious of the flow of time" (NEM 3:126, c. 1893-5), which is how we can have any conception of continuity in the first place. CSP: To imagine time, time is required. Hence, if we do not directly perceive the flow of time, we cannot imagine time. Yet the sense of time is something forced upon common-sense. So that, if common-sense denies that the flow [of] time is directly perceived, it is hopelessly entangled in contradictions and cannot be identified with any distinct and intelligible conception. But to me it seems clear that our natural common-sense belief is that the flow of time is directly perceived. (NEM 3:60, c. 1895) CSP: That this element [continuity] is found in experience is shown by the fact that all experience involves time. Now the flow of time is conceived as continuous. No matter whether this continuity is a datum of sense, or a quasi-hypothesis imported by the mind into experience, or even an illusion; in any case it remains a direct experience. (CP 7.535, 1899) CSP: One opinion which has been put forward and which seems, at any rate, to be tenable and to harmonize with the modern logico-mathematical conceptions, is that our image of the flow of events receives, in a strictly continuous time, strictly continual accessions on the side of the future, while fading in a gradual manner on the side of the past, and that thus the absolutely immediate present is gradually transformed by an immediately given change into a continuum of the reality of which we are thus assured. The argument is that in this way, and apparently in this way only, our having the idea of a true continuum can be accounted for. (CP 8.123n, c. 1902) You go on to advocate being "careful ... that we do not confuse the idea(l) of truth with the objects of experience which participate in the idea(l)." However, this strikes me as instead confusing the objects of signs with their interpretants, something that Peirce warns against--"It is of the first importance in studies like this that the two correlates that are essential to a sign, its Object and its Meaning, or, as I usually call it, its Interpretant, should be clearly distinguished" (R 318:169[14], 1907). In my own paraphrase, truth is the final interpretant of every sign whose dynamical object is reality--whatever is as it is, regardless of what anyone thinks about it. This is consistent with the invariant directionality of semiosis, both overall and in any individual case that we prescind from the real and continuous process as an artifact of analysis--always from the (past) object through the (present) sign toward the (future) interpretant. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 5:28 AM Jack Cody <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jon, List Jon, I appreciate your reply (and the fact that you took the time out to read the paper). Yes, there's a lot of sociolinguistic terminology and socioliinguistic (anthropological) terminology. The key, however, (where this connects with Peirce), is in the notion of "meaning" and Silverstein's diagrammatic illustration of metapragmatics which is akin to something like a dynamic semeiotic — that is, (I don't know if any are familiar with Marshall Sahlins?), we talk in this thread of time and meaning and that is, largely, (in sections of course), what Silverstein is interested in. For example, when we talk of time, are we talking of time itself (very hard to get to that?) or the objects of experience which participate in that idea? First/second/etc. orders of indexical entailment(s) and presuppositions. Silverstein can be read here as deconstructing ideology (meaning, more broadly) within a linguistic (socio) context. He does use Peircean terms and if you (would not ask anyone to go through the man's works) read further you'd see he is very familiar with Peirce and what you see in that article, if more familiar with the man's work, is subtextual. He writes a lot on semiotic and also semeiotic (implicit, sometimes, and explicit, elsewhere). Anyway, do not want to derail but in the above I have paraphrased Socrates (in Plato's Republic) regarding truth: be careful, that is, that we do not confuse the idea(l) of truth with the objects of experience which participate in the idea(l). And that is relevant with respect to Silverstein and also Peirce, of course. Best Jack
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