Fw: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] recommended reading

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 08:56:30 -0700

Listers - FYI
M.
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Nils-Bertil Thelin
Sent: Apr 29, 2014 11:43 AM
To: Michael Shapiro
Subject: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] recommended reading


Dear Michael,
 
Thank you so much for your two papers on structualism from a Peircean point of view, and now also for your kind announcement of my book to the Peirce-listers.
 
I was glad to have the comment by Edwina Taborsky on my abstract (please, convey my thanks). It would be most encouraging to find support for my model in the works by Koichiro Matsuno cited by her. I didn't know these works nor their author and will certainly check them as soon as I have a chance. I'm afraid Edwina's tentative correlation of my hierarchical-processual steps summarized in the abstract and Peirce's trichotomy of universal categories does not quite match my analysis (developed in detail on pp. 226-230; se also pp. 185, 248). Firstness as immediate perception represents the unreflected and unstructured chaos of visual material before its subjection to Thirdness and its transition to Secondness. Thirdness as Law or Habit comprises the primary metaphors assigning bodily extension and divisible continuity to space and motion. This homogeneous continuity is based on biological rhythmization. Secondness (and here we seem to agree) represents the cognitive level on which time as relational instrument is applied to homogeneously divisible motion for the purpose of perspectival differentiation. On this level continuity is changed into discontinuity by heterogeneous analysis. It is important to distinguish between the original continuity (Thirdness) and the secondary continuity of temporally ordered events resulting from the synthesis following discontinuation/analysis (cf. Peirce's tentative distinction between a "perfect continuity" and an "imperfective coninuity, that is, a continuuum having topical singulatities, or places of lower dimensionality where it is interrupted or divides"; CP 4.642; see my book, p. 157, 172-173). Accordingly, I cannot share Peirce's view that time is continuity and Third. Time, understood as temporal-perspectival analysis, is essentially Second. 
 
Thanks again!
 
Yours, as ever,
Nils
----- Original Message -----
To: Nils
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 3:31 PM
Subject: Fw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] recommended reading

fyi
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Edwina Taborsky
Sent: Apr 29, 2014 8:52 AM
To: Michael Shapiro , CSP
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] recommended reading


There seem to be three basic modes of time. In the abstract you provide
 
 pretemporal, homogeneous continuity effected by biological rhythmization, via pretemporal metonymic (Gestalt), chunk-wise partitioning – as a general precondition for the perception and, based on primary metaphorization, the cognition of things, space and motion – to temporal analysis/discontinuation proper, primarily by aspectual perspective, and the subsequent synthesized, heterogeneous continuity of temporally ordered events. The conception of time, so disastrous for modern temporal logic, i.e., as moving object assigned extension, divisible continuity (‛linearity’) and direction, can be shown to have emerged as a result of secondary metaphorization.
 
That is, the 'pretemporal' (?), which is a homogeneous continuity (Firstness?), then a temporal discontinuous perspective of discrete spatial entities in interaction (Secondness) and then, the notion of continuity (Thirdness).
 
This view of the complex nature of time, a view I strongly support, has been outlined for decades by Koichiro Matsuno.  See his:
 
1998 'Dynamics of time and information in dynamic time'. Biosystems 46, pp 57-71.
1999. 'The clock and its triadic relationship.  Semotica 127, 1/4, pp 433-452.
 
Edwina
 
----- Original Message -----
To: CSP
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 8:35 AM
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] recommended reading

Dear Peirce-Listers,

A book has just come out that may turn out to be truly epoch-making. It recurs to Peirce's ideas at crucial places. You can download the full text at http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:714139 Here are the details:


Abstract

Thelin, Nils B. 2014. On the Nature of Time. A Biopragmatic Perspective on Language, Thought, and Reality. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Slavica Upsaliensia 48. 477 pp. Uppsala.

ISBN 978-91-554-8846-8.

                  This book is a synthesis of more than three decades of research into the concept of time and its semiotic nature. If traditional philosophy – and philosophy of time should be no exception – in the shadow of advancing biology can be said to have reached an impasse, one important reason for this, in harmony with Wittgenstein’s vision, appears to have been its lack of appropriate tools for explicating language. The present theory of time proceeds, accordingly, from the exploration of temporal expressions in language as an evolutionary fact. It derives in a hypothetical, coherent feedback process of hierarchically ordered distinctions the semantics of time from its biologically dictated perceptual and cognitive-pragmatic origins.

                  The corresponding abductive-regulative model is anchored in the assumption of biological rhythmization as the very foundation of perception and mental/physical action. Understood to originate in space and spatial perspective, time reveals itself as an instrument for temporal perspective on motion (events and situations) in a process of analysis, i.e., discontinuation of chaos made divisible and continuous by the rhythmical screen. Whereas traditional philosophy of time paid attention almost exclusively to the temporal category of tense, the biopragmatic model sees strong evidence in the perspectival nature of time for ascribing the decisive, and probably universal, role in temporal analysis to the linguistic category of aspect.

                  Aspect may, according to the present findings, be assumed to partake already of change-of-state and cause-effect analysis without which man’s adaptation to new situations – and precondition for survival – would be inconceivable. The proposed model of space/time cognition, inspired by Hegelian dialectics, Heidegger-Gadamer’s hermeneutic circle and Peircean logic, makes Kantian a priori superfluous and liberates time from its enigmatic appearance.

                  For the first time in temporal studies it thus appears possible to derive hypothetically linguistic expressions of time all the way from pretemporal, homogeneous continuity effected by biological rhythmization, via pretemporal metonymic (Gestalt), chunk-wise partitioning – as a general precondition for the perception and, based on primary metaphorization, the cognition of things, space and motion – to temporal analysis/discontinuation proper, primarily by aspectual perspective, and the subsequent synthesized, heterogeneous continuity of temporally ordered events. The conception of time, so disastrous for modern temporal logic, i.e., as moving object assigned extension, divisible continuity (‛linearity’) and direction, can be shown to have emerged as a result of secondary metaphorization.

Keywords: theory of time, philosophy of time, biopragmatism, perspectivism, linguistic semiotics of space/time, perceptual-cognitive and pragmatic foundations of time semantics, aspect-tense-taxis trichotomy of temporal perspective.

Best regards,
Michael


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