Gary R, list, I’d like to pick up where your post ended, Gary:
GR: Can we say that consciousness is, in its 'primitive' form, surd, while mind in its fullest sense is semiosic', that consciousness offers the brute 'given' of existence, while thought supplies the purposive, essentially semiotic structure that consciousness itself cannot provide? GF: Peirce’s remarks about surdity are mostly in the context of Secondness, i.e. dyadic relations. I would say it is the dyadic consciousness that “offers the brute ‘given’ of existence,” and that’s why “real relations” — genuine indexicality — are necessary to ground the ability of triadic or semiotic relations to convey information, or for a proposition to be true. Phaneroscopically, the “pure consciousness” of Firstness lacks that grounding. But this never happens in (what we call) reality! For the sense or feeling of reality to occur in perception, something must be “present to the mind” and other than the mind, external to it or independent of it, in order for words like “true” or “real” to have any meaning. So you can’t have genuine Thirdness without genuine Secondness. Or to put it physiologically, both the perceived object and the perceiver must be embodied, and the quality of the experience is determined by the real relation between the two. The percept is not just a representation of the object, nor is it just an artifact of internal activity within the perceiving mind or brain. It feel rather odd to even be writing this because it seems so obvious and yet feels like beating around the bush when I try to express it verbally. However I just came across an open access article which strikes me as an important application of it. It’s in Philosophy & Technology (2026) 39:9, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-025-00975-5, “Language Models’ Hall of Mirrors Problem: Why AI Alignment Requires Peircean Semiosis,” by David Manheim. Here is the abstract: [[ This paper examines some limitations of large language models (LLMs) through the framework of Peircean semiotics. We argue that basic LLMs exist within a “hall of mirrors,” reflecting only the linguistic surface of training data without indexical grounding in a shared external world, and manipulating symbols without participation in socially-mediated epistemology. We then argue that newer developments, including extended context windows, persistent memory, and mediated interactions with reality, are moving towards making newer Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems into genuine Peircean interpretants, and conclude that LLMs may be approaching this goal, and we identify no fundamental architectural barriers that would prevent this. This lens reframes a central challenge for AI alignment: without grounding in the semiotic process, a model’s linguistic encoding of goals may diverge from real-world values. By synthesizing Peirce’s pragmatic view of signs, contemporary discussions of AI alignment, and recent work on relational realism, we illustrate a fundamental epistemological and practical challenge to AI safety and point to part of a solution. ]] Love, gary f Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Gary Richmond Sent: 2-Jan-26 00:29 To: Peirce List <[email protected]>; Gary Fuhrman <[email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Surdity, Feeling, and Consciousness, was, Truth and dyadic consciousnessg Gary F, List, The material you linked to in Turning Signs on 'consciousness' and 'feeling' is thought-provoking, especially your comments on 'surdity' in relation to 'feeling' and 'consciousness'. I have changed the subject line to show my emphasis on surdity. In TS you write: GF:The truth of a proposition depends on the dyadic or real relation (as opposed to a relation of reason) between that sign and its dynamic object. It must involve ‘action of brute force, physical or psychical,’ of the dynamic object upon the sign, so that the relation between the two is ‘real,’ i.e. surd – no sign can express or describe it. GR: I agree that the real relation between a sign and its object is surd, which concept I'd like to explore a bit in this post. You continued: GF: The Secondness of experience itself is a dyadic relation or dynamic action between two subjects; it is ‘brute,’ ‘surd,’ indicible, ineffable. But a subject capable of both attention and intention can become a host, as it were, of Thirdness, or semiosis, so that another subject can become an ‘object of thought’ (Peirce, CP 1.343, 1903). Now we have a triadic relation involving the object, the sign or ‘thought,’ and the experiencing subject, the system of interpretation or ‘mind.’ This is the essential structure of mental experience. The 1ns of experience would be the pure feeling that there is something other than feeling itself – a world appearing to the subject, and thus becoming an object of attention (emphasis added by GR). This reminded me that Peirce remarked -- and Joe Ransdell emphasized this point in several of his papers, on Peirce-L, and in private conversations -- that there can be no pure icon, which is to say that a qualisign must be embodied in a sinsign in order to be operative at all. So, there are no pure qualisigns in actual semiosis, only qualitative aspects of sinsigns: a qualisign is a 1ns that can signify only by being instantiated as a sinsign and interpreted via a legisign. At bottom consciousness is tied to what is immediate and irreducible, and this is linked to surdity. Consciousness is feeling: “. . . consciousness is nothing but Feeling, in general” (CP 7.365). Feeling is simple, immediate, yet qualitative. It can't infer, intend, or mean anything as it is non-relational and non-purposive. In this primitive (primary?) sense, then, consciousness lacks any internal rational structure: it simply is what it is. This primary consciousness is pure 1ns, a qualitative 'given' of unmediated feeling. This is to say that it is not a sign at all (which, btw, contradicts the pansemiotic views of some theorists). Peirce is careful not to conflate surdity with mentality, so he distinguishes consciousness from mind: consciousness belongs to 1ns as feeling, while mind belongs to 3ns in semiosis. “The mediate element of experience is the mental element, which is semiosic but not necessarily conscious” (CP 7.366). Mentality does not essentially require consciousness since semiosis can -- and often does -- proceed without awareness (the famous example of the growth of a crystal; but there are many others). What defines mind isn't consciousness itself but, rather, final causation, purpose, mind being a living complexus of signs, habits, and consequent effects which these produce. In an essential sense, surdity would seem to take on the form of brute reaction (2ns) which may or may not be conscious. For example, the pain of touching a hot burner is a conscious instance of 2ns, while the reflex of removing the hand from the source of the pain isn't. Can one say that surdity lies in the brute action/reaction itself, while consciousness accompanies surdity only when feeling is present? In contrast, 3ns interprets brute facts and, over time, can make experience intelligible. Yet, I firmly believe that 3ns cannot eliminate surdity without cutting thought off from brute actuality, the hic et nunc. So Peirce argues that thought requires resistance, and that signs require dynamic objects as a kind of check on thought. Consciousness, then, is the ground upon which both semiosis and thought operate. This would seem to resolve an apparent contradiction in Peirce’s use of the term 'consciousness.' In its primary sense, consciousness is feeling, so surd, immediate, so, categorially 1ns. In a looser sense, Peirce speaks of “three modes of consciousness” (CP 8.256): the awareness of feeling, action, law. I would say that this usage represents, at best, a secondary, mediated consciousness. Can we say that consciousness is, in its 'primitive' form, surd, while mind in its fullest sense is semiosic', that consciousness offers the brute 'given' of existence, while thought supplies the purposive, essentially semiotic structure that consciousness itself cannot provide? Best, Gary R
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