Cathy, Jeff, list
Cathy, your question is timely because it helps us understand the
foundations, or else grounding, of the semeiotic process that I was
discussing in my previous message. Or at least how I see it.
Peirce holds that anything beyond immediate perception is a sign, which
means that not everything we might immediately have in the phaneron is a
well-formed sign.
Actually, pure firstness (qualities of feelings) and pure secondness (which
is reaction of feelings) are not signs. They will never become part of our
phaneroscopic conscious analysis, although we cannot deny their reality.
They force themselves against us and produce primitive impressions. They
are percepts. They might well be hallucinations, but since they are non
conscious, we cannot doubt them. They are what they are independent of our
will. Nevertheless, they are mental.
Some say that the percept is just the dynamic object, but this is too
simplistic, as we will see.
We might well say that percepts are firstness and secondness in the
immediate object of a *possible* sign, a sign in formation - a sign that
would appear as a concept in the phaneron if such percepts were
synthetized, or associated, to become a generalized flow of feelings
capable of being consciously represented.
The generalized flow of feelings represented in the mind is the percipuum.
The percipuum is the melting together of all percepts gathered in a
coherent period of time into a sole resulting impression. The percipuum
does to the percepts what a predicate does to the subjects (or objects) in
logic: the reduction of the multitude to the unity of a conception.
This synthesis of percepts is done by the perceptual judgment, a non
conscious hypothesis (abduction) that our mind produce to weld together all
percepts present in the mind. The perceptual judgment correspond to the
immediate interpretant of a sign still in formation.
But no percept is identical the other. If this were true, we would not feel
the flow of time. A percept forces its existence in a way to produce a
difference of sensation which has an infinitesimal duration and then
vanishes. While this first percept is vanishing, a second one is already
forcing itself with similar infinitesimal duration. And while this second
is vanishing, another one, a third, is already pressing. So we have an
intermediate percept what overshadows the first and is overshadowed by the
third.
We have something like this:
P1 P2 *P3*
P1 *P2* P3
*P1* P2 P3
We may call P1 the ponecept, P2 the percept, P3 the antecept
Now, what we call "the present" in the continuous flow of time is nothing
but the conjuncted triad by which all three are altogether melted (the bold
ones). A reverberation of the past ponecept intersect with an expectation
of the antecept, while the percept forces itself.
Note that, since percepts are unconscious, we do not experience them as
separated, which would amount to experience time as discrete. This
separation is logical, not real.
In the perceptual judgement, this primitive triad becomes the percipuum.
But this process is also continuous. We are renewing our metaphors
continuously to give meaning to perception. So we must produce percipua in
a same way percepts come against us.
We have ponecipuum, percipuum and antecipuum flowing as living and growing
metaphors in our minds. They are the continuous predicates that every true
proposition must represent.
Now, since perception is the only door to information, every sign is
ultimately the representation of percepts. But this does not conflate
dynamic object and percept. The word unicorn has for its dynamic object the
idea of an unicorn but you don't have a percept of a unicorn behind it. But
the idea of an unicorn is formed by knowledge gathered in perception. We
perceive horses, we perceive horns. We have predicates for these things and
we can associate them in a new idea in our imagination.
In the final opinion, at the end of inquiry, these predicates must stop
flowing because there will be no novelty anymore, no new percepts, no
irritation of the mind, no doubts. Percept and percipuum will be identical.
At the end of inquiry, the real will be the percept as represented in the
final belief.
Well, that's how I see Peirce's theory of perception. Carl Hausman, Lucia
Santaella, Sandra Rosenthal, Andre De Tienne and others have advanced their
own interpretation but a comparative analysis among them would demand an
essay.
Best
Vinicius
2014-03-27 1:33 GMT-04:00 Catherine Legg <[email protected]>:
> Hello again,
>
> This is a continuation of the thread concerning Peirce's philosophy of
> perception, which was begun under chapter 4 but I think is equally
> relevant to chapter 5.
>
> Vinicius I apologise for not having responded to your fine initial
> postings yet. I currently have my head deep in Peirce's philosophy of
> perception, trying to work it out. I will get there.
>
> Jeff wrote: "As a quick response, I think there is some tension between
> what I've said and the points Peirce makes at 7.19-22. Having said that I
> think my interpretation fits well with what he says a bit later starting
> at 7.25. He's trying to hold a number of ideas together and build an
> account that explains a number of things needed for the sake of the larger
> logical (i.e., semiotic) theory. As a starting point, I'd want to get
> clear on the phenomena that need to be explain and the method being used
> in the analysis. Peirce explicitly says that he's not doing empirical
> psychology."
>
> The questions I currently have, which concern the theory of perception
> presented in "Telepathy and Perception": (CP 7.597-688) are as follows:
>
> - I take it that the percept, perceptual judgement and percipuum are meant
> to be in the order 1-2-3. But then Peirce says that the percept contains
> 1ness and 2ness, and the perceptual judgment has a residual kind of 3ness
> insofar as it purports to represent the percept. So what exactly is the
> difference between the perceptual judgment and the percipuum??
>
> - Sandra Rosenthal's paper "The Percipuum and the Issue of Foundations",
> which Ben referred to a while back, which is really excellent, notes that
> percept and perceptual judgement (and indeed other 'parts' of perception
> such as the antecept and the ponecept) should not be viewed so much as
> objects but more as abstractions for the purposes of theoretical analysis.
> That is fine, but then Peirce says that the relation between percept and
> perceptual judgment is that the percept causes the perceptual judgment
> while not being the source of its content. (Am I right about this?) Now my
> question is how something that is only an abstraction can be a forceful
> cause - ?
>
> Cheers, Cathy
>
>
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--
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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