> On Oct 23, 2015, at 9:37 AM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Again, your outline of 'things are so because they are CALLED so' (my > emphasis) is postmodernist nominalism, focusing on the NAME. Whereas, as I > said, Peirce's emphasis is not that 'things are so'...because of their 'name' > but because they have an objective reality. Our task is to, as far as we can > within the semiosic process, get to know that objective reality and to never, > ever, stop at The Name. >
There’s no doubt a lot that went under the rubric of postmodernism was horrible. Much, especially as found in literature departs or the softest sciences, was at best verging upon relativism with an undue nominalism. I’m not sure the key philosophers were guilty as well though. (At a minimum that’s debatable) To my eyes what especially people in English departments missed was that what was important was what escaped the nominalism. I think Gary’s point though was more about the immediate, dynamic and final interpretant. (Forgive me if I misread him) The dynamic interpretant seems very tied up with metaphor. Much as many key figures in the Continental tradition argued. Now I have come to have little patience with the writing styles in the Continental tradition. However I do think the style arose because of recognition of a logic of vagueness. Further it’s a vagueness where sometimes we’re not entirely sure what parts are determinate and what parts are vague due to an iconic relationship in this logic of vagueness. The problem was that a style designed to illustrate this via immanent logical criticism came to take a life of its own. Worse, fans of the later Heidegger or Derrida often descended into a kind of word-mysticism. One could ape a style while missing the phenomenology. That’s why you ended up with things like the Sokal Hoax. It was pure nominalism out of control by people faking a style with no real conception of the content. But while nominalism is a constant threat in this logic of vagueness it needn’t be. As Peirce demonstrates with his logic. The problem is that if there are real mind independent structures how does one put them in language? The traditional approaches starting with Descartes create the the problem of doing correlates between words and things. I know even some Peirceans really like that traditional Cartesian approach and think indices are enough to provide this. The problem that I think Gary raises well is that if we are dealing with language we have to explain how something arbitrary using metaphors can do this. It’s this that was a constant focus of Continental philosophy from the late 60’s through 90’s. While I don’t like the language they used, I by and large think their analysis is correct. However Peirce already offers a solution to this with his notion of truth. For Peirce the nominalist critique doesn’t hold since he sees the final interpretant as related to the dynamic interpretant which in turn arises out of the immediate interpretant. The [Dynamic] Interpretant is whatever interpretation any mind actually makes of a sign. […]The Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of this type: “If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine that mind to such and such conduct.” […] The Immediate Interpretant consists in the Quality of the Impression that a sign is fit to produce, not to any actual reaction. […] [I]f there be any fourth kind of Interpretant on the same footing as those three, there must be a dreadful rupture of my mental retina, for I can't see it at all. (CP8 .315) I think we’ll all recognize that most dynamic interpretants are cast in language and thus hinge on the arbitrary and nominalistic. (That is even if they have an essential index component they also are tied to names) However given the action of reality on a community over time this will become more limited. The range of possible interpretations becomes restricted and eventually stable. That stable sign-system is the final interpretation. But (and I think this is key) it is still based upon names, language, signs and so forth. The whole problem of the inside and outside set up by Cartesian dualism is avoided. We’re talking like with like. This is why the nominalist problem some postmoderns found themselves in isn’t a problem for Peirce. Now there’s still a problem in all this and that is whether Peirce’s notion of truth is just a regulatory concept or something actual. The critique of certain figures in postmodernism is to recognize that we’re always finite beings in a finite community. So even if we have the notion of a final interpretant we can’t know absolutely. (The metaphor is that of a messiah always announced to be coming who never comes) Contrary to claims of relativism this doesn’t get rid of the notion of truth. If our dynamic interpretant matches what is in the final interpretant then we have truth. But we can’t have certainty of that due to finitude. The related notion (and this has been the locus of my own investigation with Peirce the past 20 years) is how icons and indices are related. So a sign indicates its object by a kind of iconic presentation. There is an index in the sign but we discern it via guesses. When the sign is then repeated what gets repeated relative to the sign and icon. (This is pretty key again in Continental philosophy although they don’t put it in those terms unfortunately) I think this is a pretty important thing. At one time years ago we discussed it quite a lot here. Including the ontological nature (or whether there is an ontological nature) of the final interpretant. While my own view has shifted a great deal on this point, it seems quite important.
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