Clark- again, thanks for your comments.
The fact that Mind and consciousness are often used synonymously is
not - as you point out - part of the Peircean analysis. But to inform
readers that you are using Peircean terms - and not 'general audience
terms - is not the same as the focus on this list on and only on
Peircean terms and their singular use in HIS work.
Of course Saussure is static! That's what makes his semiology so
easy to use - and the 'hidden meanings' unveiled by the researcher
are assumed to be static as well...and hidden due to some
psychological trauma of the author/artist or whatever.
Edwina
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On Thu 30/03/17 10:12 AM , Clark Goble [email protected] sent:
On Mar 30, 2017, at 6:30 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
In Peirce, we read about semiosis within protoplasm, within
crystals, within the formation of matter [matter is effete Mind].
None of this deals with terminology but with the pragmatic function
of semiosis - which Peirce sees, as far as I can understand, as the
gradual evolution of Mind. Mind is NOT a synonym of the human mind or
consciousness but of the natural world.
I think this gets at definition problems though. For instance often
mind and consciousness are used synonymously in discourse. As you
note that’s not how Peirce primarily uses it, although he’ll
sometimes slip into other use when speaking more casually.
In contemporary discourse even consciousness is ambiguous since it
can simultaneously mean a kind of first person qualia or awareness of
phenomena or even self-awareness as a kind of reflexive knowledge of a
phenomena and that one is also aware that one is aware of the
phenomena as a self-awareness. The former is pure firstness for
Peirce I think although he’ll also sometimes call it the inner
aspect of the swerve or chance in a sign process. The other aspects
are indexical aspects of signs and simple complexity of signs.
But one quickly sees that keeping ones terminology is important.
While I’m more dubious towards his foundational ontologies it
seems these matters become crucial there. While we’ve discussed
those ontologies a lot of late, it’s mainly been due to other
issues such as Peirce’s sense of truth.
If one focuses only on words and terms, then, it is just as easy,
indeed easier, to use the semiotics of such as Saussure or Morris
..for these are all about 'this' means 'that' - and one can get
readily into the seeming joy of 'hidden meanings'. But Peirce doesn't
deal with this; his semiotics is an active, adaptive and evolving
process of generation of Mind-into-Matter - a much more difficult
analysis.
I’d actually disagree quite a lot with that. I think both miss key
aspects of meaning - particularly Saussure whose structuralism is
quite static whereas Peirce’s thirdness and definition of a sign
anticipates much of post-structuralism. (Indeed one could argue that
indirectly a lot of post-structuralism arises out of Peirce)
Links:
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