Edwina, List: I understand your hesitancy, and appreciate your willingness to offer some comments.
1. Not surprisingly, your analysis makes sense within your model of semiosis, in which a "Sign" is an (inter)action; but not within mine, in which a "Sign" is one of three Correlates in a triadic relation that corresponds to a "Sign-action." Again, what you call "agents" are what I call "Quasi-minds" based on my reading of Peirce in which the utterer and interpreter are individual Quasi-minds that become "welded" in the Sign, which serves as a medium for communication of a Form between them. 2. I do not see how a "perfect Sign" as defined by Peirce can be a mere Rheme, since it is "the aggregate formed by a sign and all the signs which its occurrence carries with it" (EP 2:545n25). It instead must be an Argument, which necessarily *involves* Dicisigns, which necessarily *involve *Rhemes; and its Conclusion is the one Interpretant that this complex of connected Signs produces (cf. CP 250-253, EP 2:292-294; 1903). In Existential Graphs, where the Quasi-mind is the sheet of assertion or Phemic Sheet, "We are to imagine that two parties collaborate in composing a Pheme [Dicisign], and in operating upon this so as to develop a Delome [Argument] ... The two collaborating parties shall be called the *Graphist *and the *Interpreter* ... the *Quasi-mind* in which the Graphist and Interpreter are at one, being ... a Pheme [Dicisign] of all that is tacitly taken for granted between the Graphist and Interpreter" (CP 4.552-553; 1906). I understand its "capacity for adaptive growth of knowledge" to be its "susceptibility of determination" (EP 2:545n25); i.e., its capability for Habit-changes as Final Interpretants upon further determination by additional Signs (learning by experience). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 9:07 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > list - I have hesitated to get into this thread because I don't want to > get into yet another interminable debate over terms - but - I do have a few > concerns about the definition of a quasi-mind and of a perfect sign. > > 1] I understand a quasi-mind as emerging within a local semiosic > interaction between at least two if nor more agents - and it can most > certainly be found in non-human and indeed, material agents. As Peirce > said, "Let a community of quasi-minds consist of the liquid in a number of > bottle which are in intricate connexion by tubes filled with the liquid. > this liquid is of complex and somewhat unstable mixed chemical composition. > It also has to strong a cohesion and consequent surface-tension that the > contents of each bottle take on a self-determined form'...EP; 392. > > That is - a quasi-mind, in my view, is the specific local mental action > that emerges within the semiosic interaction- and since Mind functions in > all material spheres, from the physic-chemical to the biological to the > human conceptual - then, the quasi-mind must emerge in all these realms. > > So, I see the quasi-mind as the existential, local operation of Mind. > > 2] As for the 'perfect sign' - I see it as one particular class of > signs: a Rhematic Indexical Legisign - an individual interpretation of > local stimuli as referenced to a general rule. > > This is, as Peirce points out in EP 545#25, a semiosic action that is rule > based but NOT-static; i.e., has the capacity for adaptive growth of > knowledge as a Legisign; it is 'perpetually being acted upon by its > object' [that's the indexicality]; it brings 'fresh energy [that is its > rhematic nature] > > Edwina >
----------------------------- 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
