Helmut,
Peirce’s solution to your problem is the distinction between immediate and
dynamic(al) object.
[[ I use the word “Sign” in the widest sense for any medium for the
communication or extension of a Form (or feature). Being medium, it is
determined by something, called its Object, and determines something, called
its Interpretant or Interpretand. But some distinctions have to be borne in
mind in order rightly to understand what is meant by the Object and by the
Interpretant. In order that a Form may be extended or communicated, it is
necessary that it should have been really embodied in a Subject independently
of the communication; and it is necessary that there should be another subject
in which the same form is embodied only in consequence of the communication.
The Form (and the Form is the Object of the Sign), as it really determines the
former Subject, is quite independent of the sign; yet we may and indeed must
say that the object of a sign can be nothing but what that sign represents it
to be. Therefore, in order to reconcile these apparently conflicting truths, it
is indispensable to distinguish the immediate object from the dynamical object.
]] —EP2:477
Gary f.
} The map is not the territory. [Korzbyski] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 25-Oct-15 07:16
List,
I consider as follows the difference between "object" in common understanding,
and the Peircean object: In common sense, an objects main trait is its
permanence, and also its spatial limitation. So it is an entity, something that
is, i.e. exists (limited in space, but not in time). But in the Peircean sense,
an object is part of an irreducible triad: Representamen, object, interpretant.
So it is spatiotemporally limited to this one sign, and therefore not
permanent. On the other hand, Peirce writes, that an interpretant can become a
representamen again, which denotes the same object. This is not consistent, is
it? I might only solve this problem by saying: An object is a temporary limited
clipping/excerpt of an entity, as it appears in one sign. In the following
sign, the object is a different one: Another clipping, but from the same
entity. In a similar manner, a representamen is a spatial clipping from an
event (limited in time, but not in space), and an interpretant a spatiotemporal
clipping from a result, which result is an event again.
A second problem is, that an event can, and usually does, affect more than one
entity. So maybe an object is the sum of all clippings from entities, that
apeear in a Sign, i.e. that are interacting with an event at the same time and
place. The place in the semiosis with a dynamic object is a place in real
space, and the place of a semiosis/Sign with an immediate object is a place in
an imagined space. These proposals at least might make the whole affair
understandable for me.
Best,
Helmut
Supplement: In case of dynamic object, the sign process is a mixing- or
otherwise combining-process of two or more matterginetic entities having been
positioned side by side from the start. This is somehow special, while in the
case of immediate object it is quite regular: More than one entity (eg. ideas
or memory contents), combined in the mind to one objective.
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