Vinicius,
I guess I wasn't clear enough when I said that I found that you said
that by 'purpose' you meant conscious, deliberate purpose. I should add
that I have _/not/_ been using the word 'purpose' in that way. I just
mean an end, a _/telos/_. Every sign has its utility, that for which it
is useful such that it is a sign, and that it is its interpretability,
its potential interpretants; those are its ends. Peirce didn't say, so
far as I know, but I would say, that an immediate interpretant is a
sign's immediate end, a dynamical interpretant is a sign's dynamical
end, and a final or normal interpretant is a sign's final or normal end.
It is hard to think of a single final interpretant of a footprint in the
sand because that footprint does not constitute just a single
unequivocal question.
Best, Ben
On 3/26/2014 3:32 PM, Vinicius Romanini wrote:
Dear Ben, Gary R., Edwina, Kees, list,
Ben wrote:
I agree with Gary about the role of purpose in interpretation.
Vinicius does, however, seem to allow of it in connection with the
final interpretant, and to wish merely that Kees had somehow put it
into those terms. On the other hand, I think Vinicius underplays the
role of purpose. It's hard to see why interpretation would take place
at any level except for an end, bringing standards and norms of value
into play. The world in its thermodynamic decay scrambles
information, and life prospers in sorting some information out as
more important, valuable, to the purpose, for life; some call it
'decoding', which makes sense provided that one remembers that there
is in life a purpose or function of extracting information from mixed
and scrambled signs and sign systems, both as to particular questions
and in general ways that 'add value' (e.g., not just deducing
whatever is deducible, but, since no deduction concludes in anything
really new or complicative, deducing that which nonetheless brings a
new or nontrivial perspective to the premisses). If one conceives of
inference or interpretation as taking place in some more or less
'quasi' way at purely material and dynamic levels, then one still
needs to suppose an end, even if that end merely be thermodynamic
decay or the conservation of certain physical quantities - i.e.,
probable and (in the classical limit) extremal outcomes. These things
do not involve retroactive causation by ends. In inference, aim or
purpose 'solicits' (to borrow a Scholastic term) and guides
determination by the premisses; the reasoner hopes and supposes that
there are ways to do that without stacking the deck, i.e., without
interfering with the determination to truth.
V: Ben, my analysis was quite down to Earth. A footprint found by
chance when your are taking a walk on the beach does not necessarily
carry in itself a lesson to be learned. To believe that every sinsign
must have a purpose is disturbing. Actually, there is a name for this:
schizophrenia. If that were the case, every husband on Earth would
have be right to think that his wife is cheating him when finds a
footprint on the beach near the house, or that the FBI is following
him, or any other purpose that would give a reason for that footprint
a priori.
Another very different thing would be if the husband has already a
belief that he is being cheated and go around looking for evidence. In
this second case, we have inquiry. A self-controlled process. The
husband has a hypothesis, draws a necessary consequence (there might
be vestiges of a lover around the house, probably on the nearby beach)
and them goes out to look for them. Now we see purpose driving the
process.
Ben then wrote:
In the case of the _/question/ _ asked about the weather, Peirce
identifies the purpose with the question's final interpretant and has
it depending in some sense on the asker of the question, but, yes,
one can consider the purpose merely as 'given' with the final
interpretant of a given posed question. Letter to William James, CP
8.314, 1909,
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/*finalinterpretant*
.html
<http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/finalinterpretant.html> :
[....] But the Significance of it, the _/Ultimate/ _, _/Final/
/Interpretant/ _ is her _/purpose/ _ in asking it, what effect
its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day. [....]
V: Again, in this example, the whole semeiotic process is driven by a
doubt and a search for a belief: "How is the weather today?", asks the
wife. The final interpretant is a purpose that will guide the action
of peeping through the window, and given the answer. We have inquiry
going on. The husband will think: "If the weather is good, the window
will show now clouds". Next step: "if I take a look through the
curtain, I will get information". This is drawing the necessary
consequence of the previous hypothesis.
The classes of signs are there to help us make useful logical
distinctions. If every sign had a purpose, every sign would be an
argument.
And there would be only one sign, since the argument is the most
developed and complex of all them.
Best,
--
Vinicius Romanini, Ph.D.
Professor of Communication Studies
School of Communications and Arts
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
www.minutesemeiotic.org <http://www.minutesemeiotic.org/>
www.semeiosis.com.br <http://www.semeiosis.com.br/>
Skype:vinicius_romanini
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