Tyler, Frederik, Edwina, list, As we all know there are more than one way to skin a cat(fish), but the ultimate goal of doing the skinning the animal is to ENJOY its meat. I think this applies to skinning the Peircean sign as well. Peirce himself experimented with at least 3 ways of skinning/classifying signs 9 types, 10 classes, and 66 classes, etc. But the ultimate goal of classifying signs may be to KNOW what object a sign refers to and how accurately in the mind of some interpreter.
When you go to a restaurant, you dont have to know how to skin a fish to
enjoy your gourmet fish dinner. So it may be that, when we see a sign, we
intuitively KNOW what is the object the sign refers to and how well, even
though we dont know anything about classifying the sign into one or more
of the various sign types and classes, the task of which belonging to
Peircean chefs.
I am attaching a SIGN called the Hofstadter cubes that, I believe, refers
to, assert or inform the RELATION among Bohrs complementarity, the
Peircean sign, and Peircean categories. I cannot yet articulate the name
of the relation, but, if I were allowed to classify this sign, I would say
that it is an ICONIC, INDEIXICAL, SYMBOLIC LEGISIGN, which may or may not
yet be on Pieces fish menu.
With all the best.
Sung
__________________________________________________
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701
www.conformon.net
> 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?
>
>
>
>
>
>
Hofstadter_cubes_sign_replaced_with reprersentamen.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
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