> On Oct 25, 2015, at 8:36 PM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote: > > There is reason to think that the sense of the word ''object'' that means > objective, purpose, target, intention, goal, end, aim, and so on is more > fundamental than the more restrictive sense of a compact physical object. > That is in fact one of the most critical insights that comes down to us from > long lines of physical theory and also from the traditions known as “process > thinking”, suggesting that our concepts of physical objects are derivative in > relation to our concepts of process, since they arise from our ability to > discover “invariants under transformations”, that is, the formal constructs > that are preserved by the operations or processes that transform the states > of a system.
Just a quick thought before I have to go silent for a while. We should remember that our current terminology largely arises out of Descartes. Prior to that point the terms object and subject were largely reversed. Given Peirce’s influence from the scholastics and his overreaching critique of Descartes we should always read carefully with the terms. (Of course Peirce being a product of his time also has to use the common vernacular) Typically in passages it’s not that hard to figure out how he’s using the terms. But when reading short snippets it’s easy to get confused. (Or maybe I should say I easily get confused) While I’m skeptical of how well it captures the mature Peirce’s thought, Kelly Parker’s work on Peirce as a neoplatonist is well worth considering here. The origin of Peirce’s cosmology in semiotics tells us a lot about how he conceives of objects. We just have to be careful since most of Parker’s paper deals with texts from early on as Peirce was working out his ideas. > On Oct 25, 2015, at 4:13 PM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote: > > So for Peirce it is communication or extension (what is extension in this > case btw?), and for you it is representation, that makes something (eg. an > object) belong to the sign-sphere. Now I guess, that the concept of > communication can be widened to the concept of interaction- maybe this is, > what Peirce means by "extension"? I think interaction has to be part of it. Consider indexical signs like a weather vane for instance. I think that the notion of communication is wide enough to capture this. Although in practice people tend to use the term more narrowly as just linguistic communication. When we think of communication as the idea of transport then I think Peirce’s notions make much more sense. (Especially the key index and icon aspects of the sign) The quote Gary put up yesterday seems quite good at getting at what Peirce means by quasi-mind. If there are signs there are quasi-minds. The only reason I might quibble between the terms interaction and communication is that the former often refers to secondness while the latter emphasizes the idea of something being communicated between two subjects. This relationship between secondness and thirdness is of course quite important for understanding what goes on.
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