Hi, Jerry,
You're welcome again. Now, in Peirce's view, symbols not only are
generals but also do not, of themselves, symbolize anything but
generals, so that excludes individual actions from being symbolized.
Nevertheless, a symbol that incorporates an index (supplied by one's
mind or more physically) makes a sign that can represent an individual
action as an instance of a practice, a form of conduct, a norm, a
general. More generally speaking, to the extent that an individual is an
instance of a general, it is the individual that represents the general,
not vice versa, Peirce's idea here being that generals, norms, etc.,
govern, more-or-less determine, individuals, not vice versa (or not
significantly vice versa); and objects influence, more-or-less
determine, signs to represent them, not vice versa, so the individuals
take the sign role, the generals the object role, in such cases. (I give
an example in an appendix to this message.) A symbol is itself
individually instanced, in Peirce's system, not by a concrete individual
symbol, which doesn't exist in Peirce's system, but instead by a kind of
indexical sinsign that points to one's experience of the symbolized object.
But is the question you're asking something more like: Are there
unconscious, instinctual, merely animal-level symbols? In Peirce's
system, they're certainly allowed, since a symbol is a sign that
represents by norm or disposition of interpretation regardless of
(non-)resemblance or dynamical (non-)connection to its object. Such a
norm or disposition could be instinctual. There are places (I forget
where off-hand) Peirce says that not all symbols are artificial (I mean
in the sense that words are), some are natural in some sense.
Unfortunately I don't remember those discussions well.
Best, Ben
Appendix: So, let's say you have an accurate computer-program model of a
storm. Indices help make the program part of a representation of the
storm; but without the indices, the program is a general diagram, and
the actual storm an individual diagram, of the same object, a
mathematical structure. (It would be an impossibly lucky program, to
have been made without indexical connection to the actual storm yet
mirror the storm so well that indices merely need to be added to make
the result able to represent the storm to an interpretant.)
On 7/23/2015 11:38 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
Thanks again, Ben.
(Where would this list serve be without you?)
After reading this again, it became obvious to me (I am a slow
learner) that the underlying issue here is the origin of symbolization
with respect to biological / human actions.
Ben, do you suppose that instinctual actions (such as those that are
directly comparable to animal behavior, such as fight or flight, or
feeding,) are not symbolized? The quasi-hypotheses being merely
mental patterns of spontaneous neuronal assemblies that manifest the
material reality by activating communication toward the ecosystem
through internal electrical musculatures?
Cheers
Jerry
On Jul 23, 2015, at 10:16 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Hi, Jerry, you're welcome. Yes, some of the pages contain few words.
If something looks wrong, you can check it against the manuscript
online at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOUGH:12486086 (also
linked at my transcription
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/ms831/ms831.htm ) and
please do let me know if something's missing. I don't think I missed
anything but sometimes it takes one a few days to see an error,
because, I guess, of slowness of change of frame of mind.
MS 831 is undated but one can see that it must have been written
after the publication of _Studies in Logic_ (1883) because Peirce
mentions its publication.
Another way maybe to narrow the date down: In MS 831, Peirce uses
the words "inference" and "reasoning" to mean pretty much the same
thing, and uses "quasi-inference" to mean instinctive or otherwise
automatic inference. There comes a time when he uses "reasoning" to
mean "conscious, deliberate inference," thus widening the sense of
"inference" to encompass instinctive inference (quasi-inference in MS
831). I'm not sure how consistent he was about that in later years,
but assembling the dates of later quotes on reasoning and inference
might help suggest a more specific time period during which he wrote
MS 831.
Best, Ben
On 7/23/2015 10:46 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
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