Vinicius, List, I include below Vinicius's latest post, apparently sent only to me by accident, since it's also addressed to the list.
Vinicius, I'll be responding to a post of Gary's first here shortly, and then, perhaps later today or tomorrow, get to posting a reply to your post. At the least, I just want to thank you now for the thought and time you obviously put into the post, and to let you know that certainly I will respond. Frank, list > Frank, I can only tell how I understand Peirce's mature theory of signs. > > F: I don't believe you had mentioned the immediate interpretant > specifically before. That certainly clarifies things for me. From the > examples you've given, it's seemed like comprehension is lacking; in fact > you've explicitly said that comprehension is lacking in misinterpretation. > Since the immediate interpretant is involved in this, and is given as the > qualities of the signifying object, then I suppose the lack of > comprehension, has to come from either the symbol serving as the sign, and > its immediate interpretant not making sense to an interpreter, and so > requiring a new symbol; or that we are talking about needing a symbol to > interpret the index's immediate interpretant, perhaps in its own immediate > interpretant? Unless there is some third possibility I've totally missed. > I've been trying to figure this one out, but clarification would be helpful. > V: Immediate object and immediate interpretant are intrinsic aspects of every sign. If the sign is a symbol, they are both thirdness. The immediate object of a symbol is all general relations that it represents as a systemic whole. It has an esthetic normative power. It can be understood topologically, as the graphs inscribed on the sheet of assertion producing an icon of the Truth. We may call this general form as a "would-be" The immediate interpretant of a symbol is all conceived general consequences produced by the belief in the symbol. It can be understood as the all the future possible developments of the sign in dynamic interpretants as it develops towards the final interpretant. It has an ethical normative power and deals with our conduct. Immediate object and immediate interpretant are related but distinct. They would become one and the same only at the end of inquiry. Misrepresentation, as connected to the immediate object, is an aesthetic phenomenon. Misrepresentation is not necessarily bad. It is a creative process. All metaphors are misrepresentations. A mathematical equation of a possible world is an intentional misrepresentation. The percipuum is a misrepresentation of the percept. Any idea, if not absolutely true, is in a certain degree a misrepresentation. Since a true idea would be produced only in the final opinion of an ideal process of communication, all our knowledge, at any time, is in some degree a metaphor of the real. We are fallible representatives of the true idea. Misinterpretation, as connected to the immediate interpretant, is an ethical phenomenon. This is so because symbols are the only signs that involve purpose and self-controlled behavior. Symbols can choose which immediate interpretant will be actualized as dynamic interpretant. Symbols govern their conduct because they can predict in some measure their future development. But again, no symbol has information so complete as to determine its interpretants with absolute control. Symbols can fail and usually fail, but it learns with its failure and can retry again. Symbols play a knowlege-game with the real and learn from each move. A man is a symbol. We do what symbols allow us to do. Nothing more, nothing less. A man lives making assertions. When embodied in living beings, symbols grow from experience. This is possible because symbols, as thirdness, involve secondess and firstness. In living situations, hic et nunc, the indexical part of the symbol shades into the percept to denote the object, while the iconic part of the symbol shades into the percipuum to signify the characters of the perceived object. This turns the symbol into a proposition. Better yet, an assertion, which is the perceptual judgment. By their turn, percepts and indices need icons to embody the real form of the object. If the percept does not have a real quality of feeling embodying its manifestation, it is an hallucination. If the index does not have a real icon embodying the form of its object, it points without information. If you look at the stars in sky, or at a yellow chair, you are looking at the past form of the object. The qualities of feeling and icons we perceive or denote are always immediate forms of the past. The same goes for the icon embodied by the index of the weather-cock. In perception or experience, indices always refer to the forms of the past. The past is what is totally determined, and so are indices and percepts. They do not depend on our will, they are what they are. The immediate object is, ultimately, the Form of the absolute, the very form of the laws of nature. The iconic part of our symbols of an assertion are icons of the future. They furnish expectation, inspiration, dreams, meaning. The are teleologically oriented towards the future. That's what immediate interpretants do. They desire to reach the summum bonum. Misrepresentation is lack of information coming from the past. The broken weather-cock fails to tell us how the wind was blowing some instants ago. We don't have intuition about the dynamic object as it is now. We know only through signs. And signs can only bring information from past experiences - either collaterally or perceptually. Misinterpretation is lack of information coming from our hypothesis about our future, near or not. We can't give meaning to what we experience. We don't have familiarity with the situation and can only produce a wild guess - usually wrong because there are thousands of guesses that can apply to a given situation. > > F: Going on a supposition, if I reconceived your position on > misrepresentation and misinterpretation as an explanation of two ways in > which a proposition can be taken wrongly or falsely, misrepresentation > would be a problem on the side of the index, while misinterpretation would > be a problem on the side of the predicating symbol. If the index fails to > point because of lacking an icon, then it's misrepresentation; if the > symbol's immediate interpretant is uninterpretable, then it's a > misinterpretation because we have no idea how to interpret what the symbol > is interpreting, namely the index, because of a problem with interpreting > the symbol itself. > V: OK > But one might imagine a case of misinterpretation where a child is given a > book but has no idea how to read it, or in other words how to interpret it. > In this case, would you still say that there is a proposition here (since, > as you say, "Peirce would consider propositions signs that old logicians > would not"), or do you think misinterpretation is not only applicable to > symbols in propositions? > V: If the child can't read the book, the book itself is just an icon to her. It's like the broken weather-cock when you know it is broken. It cannot be an assertion. > > I want to say what I think of as your intuitive picture of how this all > works. Every symbol has extension and comprehension. Its extension can be > related to its indices, which are effectively directed to the symbol's > object; its comprehension are the qualities or characters to which the > symbol applies, and these constitute its immediate interpretant. > V: So far, so good. > With extension, the indices clearly need icons--the very qualities or > characters that also serve as immediate interpretant for the symbol--and if > an icon isn't there anymore, or it turns out it never was, then the index > it embodied the information of fails, and we have a problem with extension > in the symbol; with comprehension, our problem is finding a symbol that can > interpret an index, so that the symbol's immediate interpretant accurately > portrays the qualities or characters of the index--it's icons? > V: The very qualities or characters that embody the form of the object denoted by the index is NOT immediate interpretant for the symbol. In the perceptual judgement or assertion, they will be part of the "composed image" of the immediate object of the symbol. With comprehension, our minds produce associations independently of our will. These are the hypotheses that will serve as major premisses in an argument. These hypothesis carry our prejudices, instinctual behavior, archetypes and whatever comes "with one's mother milk or even by heredity" (Peirce). > F: In the case of the extension of the symbol, if an index loses its icon > or never had one, then it fails to represent its object, and there is a > case of misrepresentation; in the case of the comprehension of the symbol, > there is simply an index waiting to be interpreted by a symbol which would > accurately interpret the indexed object's qualities or characters as the > index represents them to be through its icons, and until it gets that > symbol, there is a case of misinterpretation. > V: Yes, and every actual interpretation IS indeed a case of misrepresentation because it brings only dynamic interpretants. The final interpretant would be the only that is the TRUE interpretation, but is not reachable by any finite inquiry. > F: The missing icons for the index lead to the index not accurately > representing, resulting in a lack of extension in its symbol; the missing > symbol that would interpret the index results in a lack of comprehension, > meaning the comprehension of the right symbol would contribute to the > interpreting of the index's object in a way that the index itself is not > sufficient to do. > > V: Perfect. We can eventually "fill" the gap. Actually, we do this all the time. We have a blind spot in our vision which is filled up by our interpretation all the time. > F: I hope that's an accurate portrayal of misrepresentation and > misinterpretation, and how they compare. I'm really very much more curious > than anything else. Partly I'm trying to square things with Peirce's early > claim that a symbol's information is the quantity of interpretant, and his > early position that the synthetic propositions in which a term appears, as > either subject or predicate, are what inform it. As I noted at the very > bottom of my last post, I have noticed that in the early theory we always > have two symbols affecting each other to have a growth of information, one > gaining in extension (the predicate term) and the other (the subject term) > in comprehension, as we see here from "Upon Logical Comprehension and > Extension": > > "If we learn that *S* is *P,* then, as a general rule, the depth of *S* is > increased without any decrease of breadth, and the breadth of *P* is > increased without any decrease of depth.*"* > > while in the later theory propositions involve, not two symbols, but one > symbol and an index; that's right, isn't it? > V: In the late theory, everything that is gathered by experience is thrown as the complex object of the proposition. The predicate is just the general form of the relations among the objects, the syntax given by the flow of causation, the continuous feelings that generates meaning, the becoming. The predicate of every proposition is the genuine synthesis of time: Take the Proposition "Cain killed Abel". This is identically the same Proposition as "Abel was killed by Cain"; it is only the grammatical dress that is different. Other things being equal, everybody will prefer the former. Why? Because it is simpler; but why is it simpler? Because in putting the cause before the effect, it in that respect diagrammatizes the truth. What are the Subjects of this Proposition? Cain, first: that is not only a Subject of the Proposition, but is the principal Subject of the Assertion which a historian would naturally make. But in the Proposition Cain and Abel are, as Subjects, on one footing precisely (or almost precisely, for Cain is preponderant in causality). But besides these, "killed" = committed *murder* upon, is a third Subject, since no study of the words alone, without extraneous experience, would enable the Adressee to understand it. What, then that is left to serve as Predicate? Nothing, but the *flow of causation* . It is true that we are made acquainted even with that in Experiences. When we see a baby in its cradlebending its arms this way and that, while a smile of exultation plays upon its features, it is making acquaintances with the flow of causation. So acquaintances with the flow of causation so early as to make it familiar before speech is so far acquired that an assertion can be syntactically framed and it is embodied in the syntax of every tongue. However, it is not because of this physiological fact, that it becomes proper to draw the line between Subjects and Predicates here; neither is it because of the psychical fact that human minds naturally think in a way broadly (i.e a little) similar to the forms of syntax; nor is it even because of the metaphysical truth, that "the order of syntax is the law of Time and of Becoming. This is proved by the facts, first, that it is necessary that Reasoning by which we discover and defend the order of Causation, of human thought, of time, of becoming, themselves presuppose the recognition of the corresponding order in syntax; and secondly, by this, that it has not been Time, or Causation, or the structures of the human mind, nor human anatomy and physiology that have, any or all of them, determined that that ought to be the order of syntax that in fact ought to be so, but precisely the contrary, it is the fact that the order of Syntax ought to be as in fact it ought to be that has determined, first, Real Being, and Time to take the same form, and then that it should become natural to the mind and should be the pattern of physical action. (MS 664, 10-13, Nov. 22, 1910 )
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