Peircers,
Here is the first passage I wanted to single out for further reflection, from
“3.2. The Extension of the Dicisign Concept”. I have broken out the separate
points of the long paragraph to facilitate study and discussion. As always,
please let me know if you find any typos in my transcription from the book.
<quote>
This more general doctrine of Dicisigns has several important merits.
First, it allows for the consideration of the role played by Dicisigns in
pre-human cognition and communication in biology — and thus to envisage an
evolutionary account for the development of propositions from very simple
biological versions of quasi-propositions and to the much more explicit,
articulated, nested, and varied propositions in human cognition and communication.
Second, it allows for the investigation of a broad range of human Dicisigns
which do not involve language — or which only partially involve language. This
makes possible the study of how pictures, diagrams, gestures, movies, etc. may
constitute propositions or participate in propositions — highlighting how
non-linguistic signs may facilitate reasoning and appear in speech acts taken in
a wider sense, including what could be called picture acts.
Third, it connects propositions closely to perception, cf. Peirce's doctrine of
“perceptual judgments” realized in the act of perception.
Fourth, Peirce's functional definition of Dicisigns liberates them from the idea
that conscious intentions, “propositional stances”, and the like form an
indispensable presupposition for propositions to appear.
And fifth, it embeds Dicisigns and their development in a social setting, Peirce
taking the step from proposition to proposition in thought to be dialogical and
to presuppose the knowledge of a Universe of Discourse shared among dialogue
participants.
This further allows for a plasticity of interpretation of Dicisigns, relative to
the Universe of Discourse in which they partake.
This radical extension of Dicisigns, embracing animal sign use on the one hand
and non-linguistic human semiotics, perception and dialogical reasoning on the
other, does not come without problems, though. The Dicisigns at stake here may
appear more implicit, indirect, and vague as compared to the explicitness of
declarative sentences in the indicative, expressed in human language, ordinary
or formalized, and thus form a notion of propositions which is, in important
respects, deflated.
</quote> (Frederik Stjernfelt, ''Natural Propositions'', p. 52)
--
academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
