John C., lists,
John, you wrote,
I guess I have trouble making sense of the notion of determination
here. I know you are saying what Peirce says; that isn’t at issue
for me. What bothers me is that without an interpretant there is no
representamen, so the interpretant is necessary for the
representamen. It isn’t sufficient, since there may be two or more
representamens (ma?) with the same interpretant. So if sufficiency
is necessary and sufficient for determination, then the
interpretetant does not determine the representamen. There can be
two representamens (or more) for the same object, so we have the
same situation. So here it seems to me that the object does not
determine the representamen. But then I think, similarly, the same
representamen could have different interpretations, which would
imply different objects, but the object is selected by the
interpretant (isn’t it?) which seems to me to be determination.
So I am no more clear than before. It seems to matter where you
start. Or maybe there is a better notion of determination that
resolves this that I have missed.
On the word 'representamen' (I never miss an opportunity):
"Representamina" (reprəzenTĂmina, rhymes with "stamina") and
"Representamens" (reprəzenTĀmənz, rhymes with "laymen's") are both used
as plurals by Peirce and John Deely.
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/rsources/representamen.htm
<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/rsources/representamen.htm> . These
words come from /repraesentamen, repraesentaminis/, etc., used in New
Latin by Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff, among others.
What is it that somebody once said? - "I didn't have time to write more
briefly." Anyway, something that has what it needs - connection to an
object, resemblance to an object - in order to function as a
representamen is in that sense at least a potential representamen.
Traces of a forgotten language are potentially symbolic expressions to a
mind today, as they actually were to minds past. It is often convenient
to speak of such things as representamina even if they go actually
uninterpreted, they still potentially help to bring truths, true
propositions, to light, from latency to patency, or from potentiality to
actual embodiment in a mind. Peirce somewhat widened the sphere of
semiotic operation with his notion of a quasi-mind.
Really key: Peirce doesn't mean 'determine' in a deterministic sense.
Sometimes he speaks of semiotic determination as an influence. So
'necessary' and 'sufficient' are not the key ideas here. Even where a
premiss set and a conclusion set are sufficient for each other, that's
not enough to determine what inference will actually be made, when
various inferences through equivalences could be made from the same
premisses.
If the same object leads at length to _/conflicting/_ interpretants, the
interpretants can't all be valid or true or corresponding to the object.
One or more of the interpretants may result from noise; they may have an
unrecognized object (the source of the noise). If one has enough
collateral experience, one may recognize that interfering object. The
noise may have been introduced surreptitiously and deliberately. And so
on. Generally interpretation involves selecting aspects of objects and
signs for interpretation. That in and of itself doesn't affect or
determine the dynamical objects as they really are. This comes down to a
familiar ambiguity in words like "determine" and "decide". A jury is
supposed to "determine" the facts of a case, and to "determine" guilt or
innocence on that basis. This does not mean that the jury should cause
or influence the facts or guilt or innocence. The jury is supposed to
let the evidence determine the jury to recognition of the facts and to a
finding of guilt or innocence. If somebody changes focus from one object
to another, one says that they've "changed" their object of attention;
but they haven't thereby altered either of the attended-to objects
themselves. The idea of semiotic determination is simply the idea that
semiosis reflects, is a process of reflecting, reality, sometimes by
mind's or quasi-mind's _/actively/_ arranging for itself (as it were
_/passively/_) to _/be determined/_ by the real to the truth; this
activity involves the temptation to 'stack the deck', interfere with the
object's determining minds to the truth about it. Anyway, material
processes scramble information, life unscrambles not all of it but just
some of it according to selective questions that life comes asking, in
accordance with its own standards of value. If the selection is too
capricious or not up-to-date with current conditions, then the life
involved gets removed from the gene pool; the selective principle must
reflect reality in its way, too.
Best, Ben
On 1/29/2015 1:13 PM, John Collier wrote:
Ben, List,
I guess I have trouble making sense of the notion of determination
here. I know you are saying what Peirce says; that isn’t at issue for
me. What bothers me is that without an interpretant there is no
representamen, so the interpretant is necessary for the representamen.
It isn’t sufficient, since there may be two or more representamens
(ma?) with the same interpretant. So if sufficiency is necessary and
sufficient for determination, then the interpretetant does not
determine the representamen. There can be two representamens (or more)
for the same object, so we have the same situation. So here it seems
to me that the object does not determine the representamen. But then I
think, similarly, the same representamen could have different
interpretations, which would imply different objects, but the object
is selected by the interpretant (isn’t it?) which seems to me to be
determination.
So I am no more clear than before. It seems to matter where you
start. Or maybe there is a better notion of determination that
resolves this that I have missed.
Puzzled,
John
*>From:* Benjamin Udell [mailto:[email protected]]
*Sent:* January 29, 2015 7:23 PM
*To:* [email protected]; 'Peirce-L'
*Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Triadic Relations
John C., Jeff, lists,
John, You're right, in the sense of 'ordered pair' (e.g., such that,
in set theory, _/relation/ _ is defined as ordered pair), it's true
that there's no intuitive sense of 'more' or 'less' or 'earlier' or
'later' to which the relation appeals as a rule. Every arbitrary
sequence is ordered in a sense; the order for the sequence is given
by the sequence itself and it may or may not follow some pattern of
an iterated operation or the like. I thought that Jeff had an
ordering rule in mind but maybe he didn't.
I too said that we should not think of the object, sign, and
interpretant as 'falling dominoes'. It's because falling dominoes are
dyadic in action, while semiosis is triadic. You also say,
I am not at all clear that there is a unique "order of semiotic
determination"
[End quote]
The process of semiotic determination is what _/defines/ _ sign,
object, and interpretant. Some first thing (the sign) is determined
by some second thing (the object) to determine some third thing (the
interpretant) to be related to the second thing (object) as the first
thing (sign) is related to the second thing (object).
The order of semiotic determination directly reflects that. Insofar
as something acts as a _/source/ _ of semiotic determination, it is a
semiotic object. A sign is a kind of means or mediator of semiotic
determination, and an interpretant is a kind of end - usually a
secondary end insofar as in its turn it is usually also a sign, a
mediator toward further interpretation. (Peirce somewhere discusses
the 'ultimate logical interpretant' which brings semiosis to a close
and is not a sign, at least not a sign in the semiosis that leads to
it, but a disposition to conduct thenceforward.)
Best, Ben
On 1/29/2015 3:52 AM, John Collier wrote:
Ben, List,
I believe that a weaker is required for an ordered triple. Any
finite set can be ordered. The Axiom of Choice, which is
controversial, implies that any set including infinite ones can be
ordered. The order need not be anything like 'more' or 'less' in any
intuitive sense. For example in a function, like f=ma, <m,a> is an
ordered pair, one from one domain and another from another domain
such that their product is in another domain which is the range of
the function. Obviously, under the Newtonian interpretation m and a
are not either more or less than the other in any intuitive (or even
nondegenerate) sense. I think that this is worth remembering when
thinking of Peircean triads in particular. I would go further than
saying that we should not think of object, sign and interpretant as
"falling dominos", since I am not at all clear that there is a
unique "order of semiotic determination". This follows from the way
I understand irreducible triads as not fully computable, and hence,
inherently open-ended.
Best,
John
-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Udell
Sent: January 28, 2015 7:07 PM
To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ;
'Peirce-L'
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Triadic Relations
Jeff, Jon, lists,
I think that all that is required for an ordered triple, or an
ordering of any length, is a rough notion of 'more' or 'less', for
example an ordering of personal preferences, and this is enough for
theorems, for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem. Exact
quantities are not required. In the case of object, sign,
interpretant, insofar as the object determines the sign to determine
the interpretant to be determined by the object as the sign is
determined by the object, the order of semiotic determination is
'object, sign, interpretant', although object, sign, interpretant
are not to be understood as acting like successive falling dominoes.
Best, Ben
On 1/27/2015 2:08 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
[....]
Here is the starting question: Doesn't the notion of an ordered
triple require that we already have things sorted out in such a way
that we are able to ascribe quantitative values to each subject
that is a correlate of the triadic relation?
[....]
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