> On Jun 23, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Ozzie <[email protected]> wrote: > > First, objects have multiple signs, which the Wikipedia definition above > fails to recognize by mentioning 'the' sign.
Isn’t this caught up with the fact any sign is itself made up of other signs in various ways. So for instance my ability to use any word (such as in this typed sentence) is dependent upon habitual interpretations of the sign-token which are themselves signs. Of course part of this depends upon the type of analysis we’re doing. Are we starting from the object or from the sign-token? Typically in these discussions of signs (especially for an introductory source like wikipedia) it’s best to do the analysis from the perspective of the sign-token and then add in complexities. But you’re completely right that any particular object will have infinite number of signs associated with it. > Second, however, the immediate object in one's mind may actually be an > 'average' version of the object described in textbooks or by a parent, > teacher or boss. If the individual has no relevant prior experience upon > which to draw, the immediate object that appears in his/her mind will > correspond (more-or-less) to this average. It is a generalization, or > stereotype. > > For a person who *does have prior experiences to draw upon, the immediate > object that comes to mind may differ significantly from the social-average > version of that object. An other way of thinking of this is simply to note there are different communities a person is part of. Thinking of the person themselves as a kind of symbol they then are their own community. (In the sense that the me of a day ago is different from the me of now and can be analyzed helpfully in some ways as two different people) This of course leads to problems with signs since we can’t divorce the different sorts of averages we’re a part of. So my community of physicists and my community of casual peers both have a demand upon me that shapes the immediate object I encounter - often in misleading ways. > For this worldly individual, the immediate object will be a complex version > of the object -- encompassing to varying degrees the social consensus > (learned) view, personal experiences with the object and time spent > reflecting upon prior experiences. More recent experiences may be weighted > more heavily than distant ones. Rewarding and painful experiences may be > weighted more heavily than those with no reward or pain attached to them. Yes, and most importantly this will all happen in an unpredictable fashion. I don’t get to control the immediate object I encounter. It comes out of my environment. Some of that comes from our neurology and however the brain picks out interpretations. But what’s key is that the presentation of the immediate object comes already before the function of the sign as such. > This view of the (immediate) object, too, is an average version which resides > inside of a single mind. It is a complex, weighted average that cannot be > represented by a number. I’d prefer to say it’s a quasi-mind that is much broader than any singular mind. This is of course somewhat debatable. Joe Ransdell gets at some of these issues in his “On the Use and Abuse of the Immediate/Dynamical Object Distinction.” http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/useabuse.htm <http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/useabuse.htm> The second half of the paper considers whether Peirce does push all the psychological uses out of the analysis of the immediate object. I think Joe is right that Peirce doesn’t fully move into what I’d call a quasi-mind externalist analysis. He’s still somewhat caught up in more traditional ways of thinking through the issue. But in other places he most definitely does avoid psychologizing. In those places the distinction between the semiosis in the brain (as mind) from the semiosis earlier in the chain from the dynamic object is perhaps not worth maintaining. I think when we look at say his analysis via continuity for how to avoid the traditional Cartesian mind/body problem shows why thinking in terms of psychologizing isn’t a good way to think of the problem. Put simply I think it’s best to think of the immediate object as a kind of habit that is shared in various ways (thus its generality) and encountered phenomenologically as an icon of the dynamic object. Thinking of it as habit not tied to any particular mind rather than a psychology of a particular mind at a particular moment avoids a lot of problems.
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