Clark,
I don’t use the term “postmodern” at all, because the Deely usage of it has not
caught on in academic circles, and the usage that is established has more spin
than denotation to it.
I totally agree about the ridiculous pricing of academic books (and the lack of
ebook versions), especially knowing that the authors don’t make much money from
these books anyway. That’s why I took the self-publishing route with my book,
and haven’t even got it printed yet (though I’m working on that). Unfortunately
that’s meant making no money at all from it (so far), but I prefer that to
asking people to pay big bucks to read it.
Gary f.
} Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. [Edward Abbey] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: CLARK GOBLE [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 26-Oct-15 23:04
To: [email protected]
Cc: Peirce List <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing Things : What Makes An Object?
On Oct 26, 2015, at 5:02 PM, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
wrote:
The Deely work I had in mind specifically is Purely Objective Reality (Mouton
de Gruyter, 2009) but he’s touched on the subject (no pun intended!) in a
number of places.
I remembered him discussing it in The Beginning of Postmodern Times: or Charles
Sanders Peirce and the Recovery of Signum. However it had been years since I
read it. Now that I’m home and checked it I think it was an ambiguous memory of
his discussion that may have in part been throwing me off. It’s a great book
and deals in passing with some of the issues we’ve discussed here. I really
ought to reread it when I have time. (Perils of having studied something 10
years ago is you think you remember it only to discover your memories are quite
fallible)
A quote worth giving from his introduction.
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/papers/redbook.pdf
Postmodern times began in philosophy with Peirce’s doctrine of categories. And
Peirce’s doctrine of categories, in turn, is rooted in the Latin doctrine that
relation is unique among the modes of being in being objectively indifferent to
the subjective ground, physical or psychical, which makes the relation actual
under any given set of circumstances. In other words, postmodernity and
semiotics are of a piece, even though “semiotics” is destined to be a permanent
name for the major development of philosophy whose present has arrived in our
lifetimes, while “postmodern” is destined to be a temporary term of fashion
which serves relatively to call attention to the need to make intelligible the
boundary which separates the presemiotic past of modern philosophy from the
semiotic present of philosophy insofar as philosophy is truly contemporary.
I think Deely was writing long after the term “postmodernism” had thoroughly
been corrupted - especially in the United States. (Certainly after Sokal) So I
remember when I first encountered his book how surprised I was he used the
term. I go out of my way now to distance myself from the term even though in my
youth I embraced it. Not because of a significant change in view but just
because of all the negative and unfortunate connotations it came to have due to
sloppy thinkers.
His discussion in depth of subjective and objective starts on page 59.
Unfortunately I don’t have time tonight to reread it (or reread your pages
since I was only able to skim them this morning) Hopefully this weekend. (And
I’ll get back to the points I promised Edwina too hopefully)
I’d check out this newer Deely book but it appears to only be available with
library pricing and with not Kindle/iBooks version available. I also noticed
while looking for it that there’s a John Deely Reader out as well collecting
most of his major papers. Again I’d likely have leapt at it but there’s no
eBook version. I’m constantly surprised how many university publishers in this
day and age don’t offer ebooks. (Especially when they have the text originals)
After my wife grumbled about the size of my library and being a late convert to
eBooks I swore I’d only buy ebooks from now on.
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