I agree - there isn't a Mind. And yes, 'semiosis itself is
determinative of mind' - though I would also say that mind,
understood not as A Mind, but as the process of Being Mind determines
semiosis-which-determines-Mind-which...and so on.
My focus in Peircean semiosis is the process. I find that a lot of
attention on this list seems to focus on specific and particular
definitions of terms - and I have to say, I'm not terribly interested
in that area. It seems to me at least, mechanical and static. I'm
interested in the process of transforming one morphological form of
matter/concept into another morphological form - which is done by
semiosis. So, the process of transforming one cell to another cell;
the process of transforming information of a Dynamic Object to a
Dynamic Interpretant - which Interpretant can also function as a
Dynamic Object for another Dynamic Interpretant and as well,
transform into the habits-of-form that are vested within the
Representamen. Those are the areas where I feel Peircean semiosis
has a LOT to say.
Edwina
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On Tue 28/03/17 6:36 PM , Clark Goble [email protected] sent:
On Mar 28, 2017, at 4:20 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Clark, list - I think that the point of a primordial symbol is that
it MUST be interpreted to exist even as a symbolic reality.
An other way to put my question is to ask what this “be
interpreted” means. We have to unpack it.
The traditional way in philosophy this is taken is in the Cartesian
or Kantian sense where there is a mind that makes a judgment. I think
that Peirce ultimately rejected this. There isn’t a mind. Rather
semiosis itself is determinative of mind. So the flow from object
through sign to interpretant is what makes a mind. And it’s
precisely that this movement happens throughout the universe that the
universe is mind-like.
So to say an icon is only an icon when interpreted as such read
literally puts a mind like substance doing an interpretation. Instead
we might say an icon is constituent of a part of mind.
There’s some very real ontological issues here.
Again my usual caveat that one need not buy Peirce’s ontology or
cosmology to use his semiotics. They’re controversial for good
reason. It works fine if one prefers to simply think of
interpretation in the more traditional way. However Peirce means
something much more radical in terms of the ontology of objects as
well as the ontology of the relation between signs and objects.
Links:
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[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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