Edwina, Gary R,
Gary F, Frederik, list,
In my initial
post I wanted to raise the question of the taxonomic approach mainly because,
from one perspective it is not possible within the dicisign doctrine as it is
laid out in NP. If all real signs partake of arguments, the details of which
are worked out as separate interactions of icons, indices, etc., than these
particular workings out are degenerate or fragmentary and as such are not
"signs" per se and have no individual significance. Therefore to use
the typology of ten for example to classify different kinds of sign actions
would be incorrect.
On this topic Edwina
wrote:
"My own
view is that the symbol is a semiosic relation (that between the Representamen
and the Object) which is confined to human cognition. As a purely artificial
relation, I think that it REQUIRES an artificial means of expression - which is
language or other cognitively constructed media system. Furthermore, I think
that this enabled the human species to free itself from the restrictions of the
physical realm and 'imagine' the world as it 'ought to be' rather than 'as it
is'...This leaves the
non-human realm with the Dicent Indexical Sinsign - a local mechanical
reaction, and the Dicent Indexical Legisign which is, by virtue of its
Legisign, connected to the truths of the Universal and thus, not merely
reactive."
While this is
one way to preserve the taxonomic use of Peirce's theory of signs (e.g. for
distinguishing human from non-human semiosis), it seems to me that the
alternative solution could be just as effective. That alternative solution
would be to cede
symbols to all instances of semiosis (or at least to some non-humans), but to
subdivide them and arguments
according to the typology of 66 signs, where some kinds of symbols/arguments
are applicable to E. coli for
example, and others only occur in the case of verbal language signs.
One reason I
think this approach would be better is that NP already goes beyond the 1903
classification, even if not explicitly. It does so in 3.7 where Frederik
maintains that dicisigns have both immediate and dynamic objects. As Gary
pointed out, this connection of the parts of the dicisign to immediate and
dynamic objects is one of the most interesting portions of the book so far, and
explains in a concrete example how one sign action can possess more than one
relation to an object (can be an icon, index, and/or a symbol), something for
which
the 1903 classification does not accommodate. Another reason to prefer this
solution has to do with the stress Frederik puts on hypostatic abstraction
being the true human semiotic threshold. Hypostatic abstraction is another of
Peirce's terms which, although it is not explicitly articulated within any
known typologies of the 66 types, certainly could be said to only obtain within
one of the six classes of symbolic legisigns (according to Romanini's periodic
table of signs). This is just one way that we could both cede symbols to all
forms of semiosis, while retaining the possibility of taxonomically
differentiating human from non-human semiosis, and would allow us to
disambiguate some of the terms in NP.
On this
disambiguation,
Gary R. wrote, "your
unsettling question concerning the differentiation of proto-propositions from
full fledged propositions surely needs to be addressed if we are to include the
proto-propositions in the kind of thinking just discussed above."
For example we
could possibly distinguish proto-propositions from fully fledged propositions
as those which do not entail hypostatic abstraction.
Though this
solution would be a nice way to preserve the taxonomic use of Peirce's signs,
elsewhere Frederik does maintain,
"that
higher animals are not only at the command of symbols in general, but also of
those most demanding and complex of symbols called arguments and reasonings,
involving diagrams," and
"...there
is probably no upper bound to the complexity of symbol types which higher
animals have access to as single signs," but
"To
Peirce, explicit control is even paramount to reasoning proper -- which is why
animal reasoning despite many similarities to human reasoning only rarely may
qualify as proper reasoning." 245 Diagrammatology
I wonder if he
would also say that there is no "upper bound" to the symbol use of
the E.Coli bacteria? Frederik appears
at once to allow for the taxonomic approach ("My aim here is to render the
semiotic aspects of Deacon's hypothesis -- with which I basically sympathize --
somewhat more precise" [Diagrammatology]), and at the same time to
preclude the possibility that this precision can be articulated in taxonomic
Peircean
terms.
There are two
ambiguities: The degrees of "self control" that distinguish the human
use of signs, and the distinction between proto- and fully fledged propositions.
Can/should they be 'rendered more precise' according to the higher types of
sign?
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
