John C., Gary F.,
John, you wrote,
[JC] As far as the process goes, since we have no way to grasp an
object except through signs, it seems very strange to me to say that
the object determines the sign or its parts through a process of any
sort. This is especially true when the object is a general, which is
an abstraction (however real). That would be rather like saying that
the number twelve determines the number of eggs I bought today.
[End quote]
The number twelve doesn't determine or compel you to buy twelve rather
than eleven eggs. But the number twelve does determine (in Peirce's
sense of 'determine') the twelve eggs as a representative instance of
twelve in general - rather than of eleven or thirteen in general - to an
interpreting mind. If a cloud reminds you of a certain person's face,
that person's face does not determine or compel the cloud to physically
shape itself into the appearance of that person's face. Instead that
person's face determines the cloud, in the happenstance shape that it
already has, into being an iconic representamen of the person's face for
you. The person's face achieves this through your individual collateral
experience of the person's face. That's where the "line," as it were, of
triadic causation or determination or influence runs. That cloud is an
icon to you but not the kind that comes already physically attached to
an index designating or pointing to the person's face; your collateral
experience supplies the index in your individual mind.
You wrote,
[JC] As far as Peirces definition of a sign in terms of
determination goes, it certainly doesnt preclude determination
also going in other ways. So we could accept the definition, and
interpret determination as being relevant to or something like
that, and still have determination in all directions. [....]
[End quote]
I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you mean, for example, that each of
two physical objects reacting with each other may be an index of the
other? That's true, though it may be hard to separate out what is
representative of one object and what is representative of the other. It
seems easier to think of both objects as indices of their composite
system; anyway the total object of a representamen is the object's
universe of discourse. Suppose a situation with a mind confined to
observations of only one of the objects, and another mind, a mind
confined to observations of only the other object. Each mind will need,
at some level, to take its observed index as index not exclusively of
the unobserved part, but as an index of the physical system, the object
of which the two separately observed objects are parts in a complexus,
of which the given observed part, the given index, is a part. Likewise a
sample is an index of the totality from which it is drawn. The lines of
object-index determination can run in various ways and one just needs to
keep track of them.
You wrote,
[JC] [....] It seems to me that this is necessary unless there are
multiple mappings (degeneracies) of interpretation and object to
representamen (not sign in my current usage), since there is only
one thing whenever we are talking about a particular sign, which
determines its particular parts. Being a part of the sign is then
determined. By part, of course, I mean the relata of the sign. I was
assuming that we could have the same interpretant and representamen
and object across different signs. If not then determination of one
part by another is trivial by identity and the part-whole
relationship. Which is what I have been worried about all along.
I guess you're taking 'sign' to mean the triad of representamen, object,
interpretant, or as Edwina prefers to think of it, the triad of their
relations. Looking at it that way, I can't see how to see the same triad
members across different signs without just as well being able to say
that one has different cases of the same triad members across different
cases of the same sign. E.g., the wind, turning this way and that,
determining a weathercock, turning this way and that, as a representamen
determining an interpretant thought, interpreting this way and that. The
whole triad as 'sign' then goes this way and that. But one could say
that each turn involves a different object, representamen, interpretant,
and overall 'sign', though of course the particular turns are connected
in the overall event, so likewise the successive representamina are
turns of the more enduring representamen, and so on. But maybe you're
talking about some other kind of thing altogether.
You wrote,
[JC] There are some cases in which the object determines the
representamen in the same way as it determines the interpretant. A
weather vane points a particular way. That is caused by the
direction of the wind, so it is so determined. The pointing of the
weather vane is interpreted as the direction of the wind, the object
of the sign in this case. No problem. Where I have trouble is when
we are dealing with not instances of objects, but generals, as I
have mentioned several times now. The nature of the
determination in this case seems very obscure to me, and I would
not call it determination, since that leads far too easily to what
Putnam called the magical theory of reference popular among
metaphysical realists. I have been concerned about this issue since
I wrote my thesis on incommensurability, through my work against
Putnams rejection of metaphysical realism, up to today, right
now. I dont think things are nearly as clear as you and Ben seem
to think they are.
[End quote]
As far as I can tell, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, what makes
reference magical in Hilary Putnam's scenario of the brain in a vat is
simply that the person claiming to be a (mostly) deluded brain in a vat
has, _/even in principle/_, no way to discover through sufficient
investigation the vat (or some analogue) that the person is supposedly
in and to which therefore the person can refer only magically. This
impossibility of discovery is by Putnam's own magical fiat. Anyway, in
the scenario, one has no way to discover which vat, or what kind of
vat-like thing, what actual analogue to the delusive mere 'vat-images'
to which the brain-in-a-vat is confined to cognizing, what kind of
computer program or computer hologram, what is this absolutely hidden
container's identity, character, measure, location or path, etc. So the
person can't meaningfully make the claim, can at best offer the
proposition as an idle, amusing reverie including an appeal to
incognizability-in-principle.
Now, one's experience includes actually imagining various instantial
embodiments of the number twelve, where one found that the number
insistently follows certain rules, and so on, and found that in those
cases one could see that those rules would always hold as long as one
holds to certain general rules - the terms and conditions of a contract
- a mathematically nontrivial one - made by the imagination. The number
twelve has no single concrete embodiment, no single sensory character,
etc.. Still, one refers through such experiences to the number twelve.
Anybody of sufficient intelligence can have such experiences and people
generally converge quickly to agreement about 12+12=24, and so on. The
natural numbers can serve as a systematic index (or indexical legisign)
of any denumerable well-ordered set. Any living, actual mind will need
to refer such indexical legisigns to individual actual (or actually
imagined) examples in that mind's experience. One cannot imagine the
whole denumerable set distinctly, but one can refer oneself to
experiences of proofs that the rules would apply throughout, and even to
experiences that seeming failures with, say, very large numbers, turned
out to result from calculational error or the like.
Best, Ben
On 1/30/2015 3:20 PM, John Collier wrote:
I am not getting the Peirce list version, but my mail is so messed up
that anything might be happening. The email server I can use to post
to the lists is especially wonky since the power outages.
Gary, I am just going to focus on one thing, since this discussion
seems to me to be expanding without focus. See below in red .
John
*From:* Gary Fuhrman
*Sent:* January 30, 2015 3:27 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Cc:* Peirce List
*Subject:* [biosemiotics:8041] Re: Triadic Relations
John, my responses inserted (and this is going to the Peirce list as
well as the biosemiotics because the thread has been common to both):
*From:* John Collier
*Sent:* 30-Jan-15 5:44 AM
Here is a message I sent Gary when I could not post to the list due to
the fallout of rolling power outages. They are supposed to continue
for at least two years (sigh). The damage to South Africa will be
immense, but at least I can transfer my posting accounts to my
Canadian email. Fortunately my home ISP, unlike the University one, is
very robust.
As I said in my post, I took determine to be being a sufficient
condition for.
gf] Yes, thats the problem.
That gives the right direction, whereas as I pointed out, the
narrowing of conditions (necessary condition) does not. I don't mean
fully determinate by any means. That would be necessary and sufficient.
gf] I dont see how considerations of necessary and sufficient
conditions are relevant to determination in the semiotic sense,
but its evident that trying to apply them to it causes confusion.
Suppose two people read a poem. There is a single representamen, but
their interpretations could be very different, and there would be
different objects.
gf] You can say that there is a single representamen, in the sense
that its the same poem that is printed in every copy of it and read
in every reading of it. I guess what you mean is that different
readers would have different ideas of what the poem is about, and this
is true because each actual reading of a symbol is another instance of
semiosis. This implies that the representamens as well as the objects
and interpretants are different, so your first premiss does not hold.
What the poem is about, at any given reading or performance of it, is
partially determined by the circumstances of the reading: any
indexical component of the symbol can only come from those
circumstances, and thus determine the breadth of the poem (considered
as a proposition), while its depth is determined by the readers
experience and habits.
Alternatively, if we say there is a single representamen in all
readings, its a type of which each reading is a token, and it has a
single object as well but a necessarily vague one, because the
connections between the poem and its object are entirely verbal. Or we
could go even further and say that the object of a poem is created by
the poet, just as a mathematical object is created by the
mathematician. Either way, the dynamic object of that sign does not
vary with the interpretants of the various readings. It might take
several hermeneutic cycles to settle into an interpretation of a
symbol such as a poem, but each reading or re-reading proceeds on the
assumption that the object of the sign does /not/ change. Otherwise
the reader is assuming that the symbol can mean whatever he thinks it
means; in which case its communicative or informative value is zero.
You might say that the /immediate/ object does change as the
circumstances of reading vary, but I dont think that clarifies the
meaning of determine.
Of course there would also be different signs in Peirce's sense, but
we are talking about one part of a sign determining another (in some
way I have yet to determine).
gf] I take it that by part of a sign you mean one of the three
correlates of the triadic relation.
If, if the sign is given then all the parts are fully determined, then
each part determines the others in virtue of being a member of the
(same) sign relation.
gf] Not so, when a sign relation is /defined/ as one in which the
object determines the representamen to determine an interpretant sign
of the same object. Semiosis is precisely that process of
determination; so the sign is /not/ given with all the parts
fully determined.
Once you have a sign, with its three parts, that determines all the
parts. Otherwise it is a different sign. So a particular sign
determines all of its parts. And being parts of the same sign means
the determination of one part of another is symmetric.
As far as the process goes, since we have no way to grasp an object
except through signs, it seems very strange to me to say that the object
determines the sign or its parts through a process of any sort. This is
especially true when the object is a general, which is an abstraction
(however real). That would be rather like saying that the number twelve
determines the number of eggs I bought today.
As far as Peirces definition of a sign in terms of determination goes,
it certainly doesnt preclude determination also going in other ways.
So we could accept the definition, and interpret determination as
being relevant to or something like that, and still have
determination in all directions. It seems to me that this is necessary
unless there are multiple mappings (degeneracies) of interpretation and
object to representamen (not sign in my current usage), since there is
only one thing whenever we are talking about a particular sign, which
determines its particular parts. Being a part of the sign is then
determined. By part, of course, I mean the relata of the sign. I was
assuming that we could have the same interpretant and representamen and
object across different signs. If not then determination of one part by
another is trivial by identity and the part-whole relationship. Which is
what I have been worried about all along.
There are some cases in which the object determines the representamen in
the same way as it determines the interpretant. A weather vane points a
particular way. That is caused by the direction of the wind, so it is so
determined. The pointing of the weather vane is interpreted as the
direction of the wind, the object of the sign in this case. No problem.
Where I have trouble is when we are dealing with not instances of
objects, but generals, as I have mentioned several times now. The nature
of the determination in this case seems very obscure to me, and I
would not call it determination, since that leads far too easily to what
Putnam called the magical theory of reference popular among
metaphysical realists. I have been concerned about this issue since I
wrote my thesis on incommensurability, through my work against Putnams
rejection of metaphysical realism, up to today, right now. I dont
think things are nearly as clear as you and Ben seem to think they are.
You have made some huge leaps in interpreting what I said, Gary, e.g.,
objects arent real. Most pragmatists actually reject this, by the way,
in following James nominalism about generals. In any case I cant
possibly deal with all of them now.
I think that Peirces discussion using determines has been a
disaster, since even those closest to him in his own time got it wrong
(like James). If it is only available to sophisticated initiates, I
think there is a real problem that Peirceans have to come to terms with.
This is trivial, so we need to consider degenerate cases to avoid
triviality and also multidirection determination.
gf] Sorry, youve lost me there! I dont know what you mean by
degenerate cases. Are you implying that a sign given with all
the parts fully determined is a /genuine/ case of semiosis? If so I
disagree.
Your selecting a specific instance of a sign just makes my case for
me. So I assumed that was not what Peirce could have meant (assuming
of course that he meant anything; a wise man once told me that if you
puzzle carefully over something someone said and you still can't make
it out, then it is acceptable to consider the possibility that it does
not make sense -- George Boolos).
gf] Acceptable to consider the possibility, of course. But its more
than acceptable to consider the possibility that it really does make
sense to others who say that it does.
Surely, as in the poem example, it is the interpretant is that
determines the object;
gf] Surely not!
objects aren't around to be grasped independently of how we interpret
whatever signs we come across.
gf] If an object is real, then it is what it is no matter what anybody
thinks about it. Again, this is /definitive/ of reality, at least for
Peirce and for me, and I think for any pragmatist. So youre saying
there are no real objects. In that case I dont think there are any
real signs either.
But if there is only one sign in question, then it determines the sign
as a whole, and the other components as a result. But this is trivial,
as I said.
gf] Trivial maybe, but certainly not true! Not of the sign as defined
by Peirce.
And also multidirectional determining, which was my original worry.
gf] Going out on a limb here, Im going to assume that what you
call multidirectional determining is what others call polysemy, or
ambiguity, which is characteristic of symbols. In my book (/Turning
Signs/ ) I started calling this degeneracy, with the biological
usage in mind. But later I started using that term in the Peircean
(mathematical) sense, and it would have been confusing to use it both
ways, so I invented a new word for it, polyversity the quality
of symbols such as words which enables the same words to have
different meanings and the same meanings to be expressed in different
words. What I learned from Peirce while writing is that the only cure
for polyversity (if its something you worry about) is genuine
indexicality.
Of course, if the multidirectional determining youre worried
about is something different, then my remarks about polyversity are of
no use to you!
gary f.
} Lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.
[Hazlitt] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm <http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> }{
gnoxics
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