Jon, List
JAS:
Your first statement below is inscrutable to me, but for "the tree example,"
you initially said the following off-List.
JRKC: Humans may use representational sign-systems but there is zero proof (and
none possible) that trees and so forth do. The tree's reality may have no
"representation" at all. And, insofar as it could, it would always be beyond us
to ever know.
Not surprisingly for someone who has apparently embraced not only Kantian
epistemology and metaphysics, but also Saussurean linguistics, this reflects a
fundamental misunderstanding on your part--experience is a strictly cognitive
phenomenon, but semiosis is not. "It appears in the work of bees, of crystals,
and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is
really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really
there" (CP 4.551, 1906). At this point, I join Peirce in despairing of making
this "broader conception" understood, at least in your case. As you said later,
"we probably diverge and that's fine."
ME: I have highlighted the bold, because that's the part I find
incomprehensible.
If semiosis occurs in crystals, and “experience is ... strictly cognitive...”
but “semiosis is not [cognitive],” then we have a clear contradiction. These
two propositions in the same statement—“experience is... strictly cognitive”
and “semiosis is not [cognitive]”—make no sense together.
If semiosis is not cognitive (as JAS wrote), then by his own definition it
cannot apply to “experience,” which he says is strictly cognitive. So how can
semiosis be part of experience if it is not cognitive? I would add that
"experience" as "strictly" cognitive is one view among a great many. It is
somewhat dualist unless you suppose all is cognition to erase the dualist
distinction, but that is not your position here — though, in that Peirce
passage you quote, it does seem much closer to what Peirce seemed to think:
that semiosis is "cognitive" (signs corresponding with thought — within that
exact citation you provide).
Nonetheless, as for semiosis being present in crystals, I have little to no
idea what that means, and the explanation above does not clarify it. I maintain
that there is no proof that semiosis exists in crystals, however fascinating
the idea is, but more fundamentally, I must now ask JAS this: what exactly is
semiosis if, by what is posted above, it is constrained so it cannot be
cognitive or experiential? What then remains of its meaning?
Edwina is right—definitions provided in the discussion must be much clearer.
Simply citing a series of quotations is insufficient, especially when the claim
itself appears logically contradictory.
JAS, I have to believe you are fundamentally mistaken in your reply—it makes no
sense, regardless of what version of Peirce you might cite. And if you dismiss
the ding-an-sich because it is incognizable, then how can you accept semiosis
when you say it is neither cognitive nor experiential, as such. Unless it's
just a logical mistake whereny you equate experience strictly with cognition
and say semiosis is not [cognitive]?
I add that semiosis in a crystal, to me, is what a person might
"think" is happening with respect to a crystal but need not be what is
actually true at all. I have spoken with people off-list who have helped
clarify what Peirce might mean and I respect their views, but
given the glaring logical contradiction here, I must ask JAS to clarify. To be
clearer in his use of terms. That is, I must be missing
something Jon would otherwise say/mean here, I do not doubt, because those two
propositions in the same statement make no sense, within any
Peircean system I can agree or disagree with, so I merely ask for clarity.
Best wishes,
Jack
________________________________
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of
Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 6, 2025 5:35 PM
To: Peirce-L <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Experience and Representation (was Semiosic Ontology)
Jack, List:
In addition to the List post to which I am replying, you sent me three off-List
messages within 30 minutes last night, followed by a fourth one this morning.
Why not just wait a few hours to get some sleep, collect your thoughts, and
send a single on-List post--the one per thread per day that is currently
allowed--with everything that you wanted to say? I have come to appreciate the
wisdom of that restriction, so that is exactly what I am doing here, quoting
your off-List messages where I address them. I have tried to limit the
resulting length of this post by linking or citing some relevant passages
instead of quoting them.
Your first statement below is inscrutable to me, but for "the tree example,"
you initially said the following off-List.
JRKC: Humans may use representational sign-systems but there is zero proof (and
none possible) that trees and so forth do. The tree's reality may have no
"representation" at all. And, insofar as it could, it would always be beyond us
to ever know.
Not surprisingly for someone who has apparently embraced not only Kantian
epistemology and metaphysics, but also Saussurean linguistics, this reflects a
fundamental misunderstanding on your part--experience is a strictly cognitive
phenomenon, but semiosis is not. "It appears in the work of bees, of crystals,
and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is
really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really
there" (CP 4.551, 1906). At this point, I join Peirce in despairing of making
this "broader conception" understood, at least in your case. As you said later,
"we probably diverge and that's fine."
I previously quoted Kant's own epistemological definition of a priori as
"knowledge that is absolutely independent of all experience" (emphasis mine).
Best I can tell, you are still misapplying that term to the ontological concept
of a thing-in-itself as that which is (supposedly) "beyond all possible
experience" and therefore unknowable. However, you have yet to address Peirce's
simple refutation of this, which I summarized a couple of days ago
(https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-08/msg00008.html) as presented in
the very same paragraph where he refers to Kant as someone "whom I more than
admire" (CP 5.525, c. 1905; see also CP 6.95, 1903). Needless to say, I
continue to agree with him, and thus disagree with you and Kant; again, "we
probably diverge and that's fine."
JRKC: Not to be a pain, but the Gödel part is also wrong. When you demonstrate
complete inequivalence it has a bearing on all possible systems. That includes
all possible meaning making systems--including this one and any possible system
Peirce uses.
I still disagree--Gödel's incompleteness theorems strictly pertain to
sufficiently powerful formal systems as mathematical proofs that draw necessary
conclusions about hypothetical states of things. Applying them in epistemology
and ontology requires showing that both our knowledge and reality itself
conform to every single premiss, including a specific formal system that meets
the stipulated criteria. In other words, complete inequivalence is a
controversial hypothesis, not another established theorem.
JRKC: Any definition of an object through a symbolic system is a function of
the system, not the object.
Objects do not have definitions, words do; and those definitions are indeed
functions of the sign system being employed, not the objects that they purport
to describe. In Peircean terms, the definition of a word is its immediate
interpretant, and whatever conforms to that definition is its (potential)
immediate object when it is incorporated into a proposition. Any description of
something using words is inevitably incomplete because the words themselves and
the concepts that they denote are general and therefore indeterminate. As a
result, "[T]he subject of discourse ... can, in fact, not be described in
general terms; it can only be indicated. The actual world cannot be
distinguished from a world of imagination by any description. Hence the need of
pronoun and indices, and the more complicated the subject the greater the need
of them" (CP 3.363, 1885; see also CP 2.337, c. 1895, and CP 2.536, 1902).
Peirce's Existential Graphs iconically illustrate this. In the Beta part, names
(words) denote general concepts and heavy lines of identity denote indefinite
individuals (objects) to which those concepts are attributed by attaching their
names. The effect of such combinations in various propositions is making the
concepts more determinate and the individuals more definite--ascribing the same
concept to multiple individuals, increasing that concept's logical breadth; and
ascribing different concepts to the same individual, increasing each concept's
logical depth (see the last two CSP quotations in my post at
https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-07/msg00068.html). The product of
these for any particular concept is its information (CP 2.419, 1867), which
increases in both ways.
This finally gets us back to my semiosic ontological hypothesis, which I will
discuss further in a separate post in that thread.
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 Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 11:13 PM Jack Cody
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I can prove that to/through (mediation) the human being, the thing cannot be
what it is in asbentia of that relation nor need it even be similar or remotely
equivalent. I assert it rhetorically here.
Now the tree example below, qua "impossible to know how a tree experiences
anything as the tree does for a human" - this has an obvious bearing on
realities that cannot possibly be represented (unless we mean represented as in
"made-up conceptual stuff which is not true").
As to ontology — and sorry for the double post — Kant's claim is absolutely
ontological for the noumenal is an ontological distinction and use of "apriori"
as beyond experience is catogircally demarcated from his use of it in other
contexts. He means, by the first a priori, that the meaning of the "thing" as
it is is beyond all possible experience and that is what the thing in itself,
generally, refers/corresponds to. That is an ontological distinction (you
cannot merely call it epistemological wheter you accept the ontological
distinction or not).
Best wishes,
Jack
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at
https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at
https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all the links!
► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] .
► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with
UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the
body. More at https://list.iu.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html .
► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and
co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
