Since my blog post for today concerns the relationship between existence and
determination, I’m copying it here under this subject line. The blog version is
at http://gnusystems.ca/wp/2016/05/niche-fulfillment/ .
Gary f.
} Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough, and time. [Annie
Dillard] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
A niche in meaning space <http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/mns.htm#nchmns> insists
on being filled if possible, and determines the form of its occupant, but not
the actual existence of that occupant. It can only select something more or
less vaguely resembling that form and actually existing in the universe where
the system can find it; the act of meaning, the triadic action
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/tpx.htm#trax> of a sign, involves its existence,
its secondness.
There are different kinds of existence. There is the existence of physical
actions, there is the existence of psychical volitions, there is the existence
of all time, there is the existence of the present, there is the existence of
material things, there is the existence of the creations of one of
Shakespeare’s plays, and, for aught we know, there may be another creation with
a space and time of its own in which things may exist. Each kind of existence
consists in having a place among the total collection of such a universe. It
consists in being a second to any object in such universe taken as first. It is
not time and space which produce this character. It is rather this character
which for its realization calls for something like time and space.
— Peirce, CP 1.433 (c. 1896)
In this sense, Secondness as individual existence ‘calls for’ continuity as
Thirdness, while on the other side of the coin of meaning, the niche in meaning
space ‘calls for’ its inhabitation. Semiosic determination, like the
‘imprinting’ of a new hatchling on its parent, is a reciprocal realization.
We know that the newborn chick looking for its mom actually relies on at least
two different neural systems, one for orienting toward stimuli that are good
candidates for being mom, and another for taking whatever it can get, for
storing a memory of anything that the chick might be exposed to. The first
system will choose an adult chick (or even a stuffed duck) over a box as its
go-to-caregiver, but if there’s nothing else around, the second system will
lead the chick to settle for the box.
— Marcus (2004, 104)
The first system here would correspond to the top half of the meaning cycle
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/mdl.htm#meancyc> , the second system to the bottom
half. Likewise, a reader looking for guidance in a turning sign or “scripture”
will ‘seek until he finds’ and then use whatever he finds to guide his practice
(including any further seeking); the niche in meaning space that yearns for
fulfillment will be filled regardless of which text the seeker ‘finds.’
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