Hi Peircers,
I am wondering if there are more than one kinds of *signs*, just as there
are more than one kinds of *particles* in physics, chemistry, and biology.
As I will detail in another post to follow, there is some theoretical
reasons to believe that the principle of "*double articulation*" discovered
by linguists as underlying most, if not all, human languages applies to
the organization of particles in *biology* (e.g., molecules ---> 1 D
polymers ---> 3 D polymers), *physics* (e.g., quarks ---> baryons --->
molecules), and *semiotics* (e.g., 9 sign types ----> 10 sign classes --->
'complex signs' (?)). Applying this idea to the current debate concerning
the nature of "percept", I can offer the following thoughts:
(*1*) "Percept" is a sign, since we are thinking about it and we think in
signs.
(*2*) As a sign, "Percept" may have three levels of meaning -- (i) as one
of the 9 types of signs (e.g., qualisign, sinsign, legisign, icon, index,
etc.), (ii) as one of the 10 classes of signs (e.g., rhematic iconic
qualisign, even 'argument symbolic legisign" ?), and (iii) as one of the
many theories that can be formulated using sophisticated/advanced/ complex
combinations of more basic kinds of signs (e.g, immediate object, dynamic
object, immediate interpretant, dynamic interpretant, final interpretant,
dicent indexical sinsign, rhematic indexical legising, etc.).
(*3*) To resolve some of the challenging problems arising in the Peircean
semiotics, it may be not only helpful but also necessary to borrow
concepts, laws, and principles established in neighboring sciences outside
of the traditional semiotics such as modern physics, chemistry, biology,
neurosciences, linguistics, and information sciences.
All the best.
Sung
On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 6:00 PM, Franklin Ransom <
pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gary F, Jeff, Jon S,
>
> Given Gary's comments in this last post, I think it would be worthwhile to
> quote the passage that is pertinent to some of what Jeff has been
> discussing, and which I discussed with Jeff in our previous discussion.
> From Vol. 4 of the Collected Papers:
>
>>
>> 539. The Immediate Object of all knowledge and all thought is, in the
>> last analysis, the Percept. This doctrine in no wise conflicts with
>> Pragmaticism, which holds that the Immediate Interpretant of all thought
>> proper is Conduct. Nothing is more indispensable to a sound epistemology
>> than a crystal-clear discrimination between the Object and the Interpretant
>> of knowledge; very much as nothing is more indispensable to sound notions
>> of geography than a crystal-clear discrimination between north latitude and
>> south latitude; and the one discrimination is not more rudimentary than the
>> other. That we are conscious of our Percepts is a theory that seems to me
>> to be beyond dispute; but it is not a fact of Immediate Perception. A fact
>> of Immediate Perception is not a Percept, nor any part of a Percept; a
>> Percept is a Seme, while a fact of Immediate Perception or rather the
>> Perceptual Judgment of which such fact is the Immediate Interpretant, is a
>> Pheme that is the direct Dynamical Interpretant of the Percept, and of
>> which the Percept is the Dynamical Object, and is with some considerable
>> difficulty (as the history of psychology shows), distinguished from the
>> Immediate Object, though the distinction is highly significant.†1 But not
>> to interrupt our train of thought, let us go on to note that while the
>> Immediate Object of a Percept is excessively vague, yet natural thought
>> makes up for that lack (as it almost amounts to), as follows. A late
>> Dynamical Interpretant of the whole complex of Percepts is the Seme of a
>> Perceptual Universe that is represented in instinctive thought as
>> determining the original Immediate Object of every Percept.†2 Of course, I
>> must be understood as talking not psychology, but the logic of mental
>> operations. Subsequent Interpretants furnish new Semes of Universes
>> resulting from various adjunctions to the Perceptual Universe. They are,
>> however, all of them, Interpretants of Percepts.
>
>
> Notice that the percept, in one case, is identified by Peirce as a Seme
> and that does in fact make it a sign. Of course, it is also discussed as
> immediate object, and dynamical object, so one needs to be careful as to
> how one interprets this passage when trying to figure out what is going on
> with the percept, and how it is understood differently depending upon what
> its role is in the triadic relation. In any case, it would appear that the
> percept, according to Peirce, can be a sign and classified as a seme
> (a.k.a., rheme), and can have its own immediate object, and have
> interpretants.
>
> For my part, I would suppose that there can be phenomena which we directly
> experience (directly perceive), which can nevertheless serves as signs of
> other perceptual phenomena. I directly perceive smoke. The smoke, while
> perceived in itself, can also be a sign of fire, which can also be directly
> perceived. Perhaps I have failed to understand what Gary meant when he said
> that "it's hard to say how any phenomenon could be the object of a percept"?
>
> -- Franklin
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 4:25 PM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
>
>> Jon A.S.,
>>
>>
>>
>> IF (I say *If*!) we can consider the percept as the subject of the
>> perceptual judgment, then I think *rhematic indexical sinsign* is
>> probably how I would classify it. However, I think we can just as well
>> (maybe better) consider the percept as the *object* of the sign (the
>> perceptual judgment). If we consider the *percept* as a sign, then it
>> must have an object of its own, and it’s hard to say how any phenomenon
>> could be the object of a percept.
>>
>>
>>
>> Remember we’re talking logic/semiotic here, not the *psychology* of
>> perception, which would probably locate the percept in the brain/mind and
>> its object in the external world. But that analysis makes all kinds of
>> metaphysical assumptions that phenomenology eschews. If we stick to
>> phenomenology, we can say that the percept *appears*, i.e. it is a
>> *phenomenon*, but it does not appear to mediate between some *other*
>> phenomenon and a perceiver, as a sign does. It certainly doesn’t *mean*
>> anything.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think your questions are *nice*, in the sense used by Peirce when he
>> wrote in NDTR (CP 2.265):
>>
>> “It is a nice problem to say to what class a given sign belongs; since
>> all the circumstances of the case have to be considered. But it is seldom
>> requisite to be very accurate; for if one does not locate the sign
>> precisely, one will easily come near enough to its character for any
>> ordinary purpose of logic.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Gary f.
>>
>>
>>
>> } Throughout the universe nothing has ever been concealed. [Dogen] {
>>
>> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* 9-Dec-15 13:22
>>
>> Gary, List:
>>
>>
>>
>> Based on the excerpt below, would a perceptual judgment be properly
>> classified as a dicent sinsign? And would the percept itself be a rhematic
>> indexical sinsign? Or is the percept not yet a sign at all?
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>>
>> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
>>
>> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
>>
>> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 11:39 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
>>
>> GF: I can only assume that you are referring to CP 7.619, and observe
>> that Peirce does not say explicitly that the percept serves as immediate
>> object. That proposition seems at best dubious to me, because the percept
>> is precisely the point where the dynamic/immediate object distinction does
>> not apply. In fact it’s difficult to apply the sign/object distinction to
>> the percept. Moreover, Peirce has almost nothing to say about signs in that
>> entire long essay, and the little he does say is in reference to the
>> perceptual *judgment* considered as a kind of natural proposition:
>>
>>
>>
>> 633. The other mode of definiteness of the percept consists in its being
>> perfectly explicit. The perceptual judgment carelessly pronounces the chair
>> yellow. What the particular shade, hue, and purity of the yellow may be it
>> does not consider. The percept, on the other hand, is so scrupulously
>> specific that it makes this chair different from every other in the world;
>> or rather, it would do so if it indulged in any comparisons.
>>
>> 634. It may be objected that the terms of the judgment resemble the
>> percept. Let us consider, first, the predicate, 'yellow' in the judgment
>> that 'this chair appears yellow.' This predicate is not the sensation
>> involved in the percept, because it is general. It does not even refer
>> particularly to this percept but to a sort of composite photograph of all
>> the yellows that have been seen. If it *resembles* the sensational
>> element of the percept, this resemblance consists only in the fact that a
>> new judgment will predicate it of the percept, just as this judgment does.
>> It also awakens in the mind an imagination involving a sensational element.
>> But taking all these facts together, we find that there is no relation
>> between the predicate of the perceptual judgment and the sensational
>> element of the percept, except forceful connections.
>>
>> 635. As for the subject of the perceptual judgment, as subject it is a
>> sign. But it belongs to a considerable class of mental signs of which
>> introspection can give hardly any account. It ought not to be expected that
>> it should do so, since the qualities of these signs as objects have no
>> relevancy to their significative character; for these signs merely play the
>> part of demonstrative and relative pronouns, like “that,” or like the A, B,
>> C, of which a lawyer or a mathematician avails himself in making
>> complicated statements. In fact, the perceptual judgment which I have
>> translated into “that chair is yellow” would be more accurately represented
>> thus: “ is yellow,” a pointing index-finger taking the place of the
>> subject. On the whole, it is plain enough that the perceptual judgment is
>> not a copy, icon, or diagram of the percept, however rough. It may be
>> reckoned as a higher grade of the operation of perception.
>>
>>
>>
>> On that basis, I don’t think we can extract from this passage any good
>> information about what a qualisign is or how it works. What it does make
>> clear is that the perceptual judgment is not iconic. So at this point I’m
>> going to jump down to your concluding paragraph.
>>
>> GF: There is no vagueness in a percept; it’s a singular. So I don’t see
>> how the concept of qualisign can serve the purpose you suggest here. I
>> think the qualisign is simply a necessary result of Peirce’s introduction
>> of the trichotomy of signs based on the sign’s mode of being in itself. It
>> has to be First in that trichotomy.
>>
>>
>>
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--
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701
www.conformon.net
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