Helmut, you’ve raised here some of the important questions in biosemiotics, and I won’t attempt to give my answers today because I’m working on something else. Others have dealt with them before, both in print and on this list (or the biosemiotics list), but in order to really understand their arguments one first has to think them through for oneself. Maybe some others on the list are currently engaged in thinking them through …
Gary f. From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de] Sent: 4-Aug-16 08:04 To: g...@gnusystems.ca Cc: 'Peirce-L' <PEIRCE-L@LIST.IUPUI.EDU> Subject: Aw: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Percepts and control Gary f., Jerry, list, thank you both for your responses. I have a proposal about the question, whether thoughts and percepts are only inside an individual, or outside as well. There are two different kinds of information transfer and storage, I think: Wired and not wired. Wired is the nervous system, and representations within this wired system are isolated in it, I would say. But there are also representations outside the nervous system, and even outside the individual: Hormones, pheromones, and also any sign vehicle, that is permanent for a while, like the work of an artist, or any artifact, like a written or recorded word. Maybe also a shared idea. This would lead to the meme theory, but I dont know, if i like it. Wisdom of a soul perhaps is isolated in the soul, but perhaps not, but this would be a religious or romantic question, I guess: Whether souls are connected. Anyway: maybe non-wired representations may be called percepts or thoughts too? Like the pheromone structure in an anthill is a thought of the ant community, and not of an individual ant? Anyway, it seems to me, that the nervous system is able to represent with symbols upon icons, while non-wired representations rather seem indexical to me- communication between plants for example. Best, Helmut 03. August 2016 um 14:42 Uhr g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote: Helmut, my responses inserted: From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de] Sent: 2-Aug-16 15:12 Dear Gary f., list, I think, to this topic suit Peirces three categorical modes of consciousness. Primisense, altersense, medisense: "nd | Forms of Consciousness [R] | CP 7.551 There are no other forms of consciousness except the three that have been mentioned, Feeling, Altersense, and Medisense. [—] Medisense is the consciousness of a thirdness, or medium between primisense and altersense, leading from the former to the latter. It is the consciousness of a process of bringing to mind. Feeling, or primisense, is the consciousness of firstness; altersense is consciousness of otherness or secondness; medisense is the consciousness of means or thirdness. Of primisense there is but one fundamental mode. Altersense has two modes, Sensation and Will. Medisense has three modes, Abstraction, Suggestion, Association." (copied from the Commens dictionary) I think, pure perception is primisense, and thoughts are medisense. What I do not understand, is, why Peirce says that these three parts are parts of consciousness- I would rather think, that they are parts (or modes) of the mind. Gf: These are the three forms (not parts) of consciousness which correspond to the three irreducible elements (or universal categories) of the phaneron, which are not parts of the phaneron or phenomenon but modes of its being. Of course you’re welcome to use words like “mind” in a way different from Peirce’s usage, but I don’t see that substituting the term “mind” for “consciousness” here throws any light on what Peirce was talking about in this lecture. Gary, I do not understand, why percepts and thoughts are not enclosed within our brains or individual minds. Gf: You could say, from a psychological point of view, that percepts and thoughts are brain events, and in fact we know much more about what goes on in the brain than Peirce did in 1903. But Peirce was, as usual, speaking from a logical point of view, and taking his cues from phenomenology, not from neuropsychology. So “thought” for Peirce is primarily Thirdness. The first link in my post of yesterday leads to a part of my book that deals with this. This excerpt from one of his Lowell lectures of 1903 might also be helpful here: Now in genuine Thirdness, the first, the second, and the third are all three of the nature of thirds, or thought, while in respect to one another they are first, second, and third. The first is thought in its capacity as mere possibility; that is, mere mind capable of thinking, or a mere vague idea. The second is thought playing the role of a Secondness, or event. That is, it is of the general nature of experience or information. The third is thought in its role as governing Secondness. It brings the information into the mind, or determines the idea and gives it body. It is informing thought, or cognition. But take away the psychological or accidental human element, and in this genuine Thirdness we see the operation of a sign. (CP 1.537) Is that so, because a thought can be shared? But would it not be better to say, that a concept is the thing that can be shared, while a thought and a percept is confined to an individual mind? Or is there a connection between external (dynamical) object and immediate object? Gf: There is certainly a connection (as well as a distinction) between dynamic and immediate objects, but that’s a semiotic issue, not a psychological one. “Percepts are signs for psychology; but they are not so for phenomenology” (CP 8.300, 1904). Whether they are signs for semiotics is an interesting question, if we consider perception as a kind of semiosis. Suppose we diagram it as a line: do we represent the percept as a point somewhere on the line? If so, does it represent an actual discontinuity in the semiosic process? Or does it just arbitrarily mark a point that wan’t there until we defined it? Is the border between the two blurred? Gf: The immediate object is internal to the sign, while the dynamic object is external to it (to that sign). I think you could say that the percept is the border, i.e. the boundary between the internal and external worlds of semiosis. But whether Peirce would say that is not entirely clear to me. But you speak of mirroring- and a mirror is a clear border, isnt it? Gf: Sorry, I don’t understand your question here. When Peirce says “What passes within we only know as it is mirrored in external objects,” he’s just repeating what he’d been saying consistently since 1868, that what we call “introspection” is not a kind of direct observation but a process of inference from data (percepts) which appear as external objects. Gary f. } Good pitching will always stop good hitting, and vice versa. [Yogi Berra] { <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu <mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . 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