> > Jeff, Jon, list > > Jeff said: Your reference to the Latin and Greek roots of the words 'purpose' and 'object' make me think about the purpose of a theory of semiotics. For the sake of reading Peirce, I've mainly assumed that the purpose is articulated in the science of esthetics and then refined in the science of ethics.
> > The purpose of a theory of semiotics is to foster good reasoning. and one of the logical requisites is a clear distinction among the aspects of the sign involved. The term "purpose" is linked with final causation, with how propositions are able to produce general types of interpretants in self-controlled reasoning. Now, when we talk of objects in semeiosis, we must separate the dynamic object (which is independent of any purpose that I, you or any number of minds could have in our reasoning - the efficient cause of semeiosis), and the immediate object (the aspect that I, you or a community of minds engaged in inquiry must represent inside the sign). It is, then, an internal aspect of the sign, and it must be unconscious. The immediate object is gained by collateral experience, during perception, and do represent esthetic ideals. Being an idea, the habits that the immediate object eventually embodies are always normative ideals. And its correlate *immediate interpretant* is interpretability of these ideals. Not an intellectual purpose, but an non-conscious natural attractiveness towards the qualitative wholeness of what is represented in the mind, by the immediate object. In fact, the immediate interpretant offers the ground for the dynamic interpretants that will be the effective interpretations for the sign. But the *immediate object*, the idea gathered during perception, the familiarity with the real gained in experience, is the ground of representations. If it is quality, the representation is an icon. If it is an existent, the representation can be an index. If it is a habit, the representation can be a symbol (but also a metaphor). A symbol grows when its immediate object grows, and different immediate objects mean different signs. The immediate object is the uberty of semeiosis, the womb where all different signs come from. I have here in the list argued that habitual immediate objects produce the sense of external space, and habitual immediate interpretants produce the sense of internal time. Being connected with esthetics, you know what this means. Vinicius -- Vinicius Romanini, Ph.D. Professor of Communication Studies School of Communications and Arts University of Sao Paulo, Brazil www.minutesemeiotic.org www.semeiosis.com.br Skype:vinicius_romanini
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