Gary F., List: While continuing to ponder these matters, it occurred to me that the Immediate Interpretant (Essential Information as the system of Signs) and the Final Interpretant (Substantial Information as the absolute truth) are basically constant for a given Sign. However, the Dynamic Interpretant varies with every Instance of that Sign, because each interpreting Quasi-mind is always in a different state of Experiential Information from any other--including the same Quasi-mind at a different time. In fact, according to Peirce ...
CSP: All that we know or think is known or thought by signs, and our knowledge itself is a sign. (R 7:1; c. 1903) CSP: There is a science of semeiotics ... and one of its theorems ... is that if any signs are connected, no matter how, the resulting system constitutes one sign ... (R 1476:36[5-1/2]; c. 1904) CSP: The quasi-mind is itself a sign, a determinable sign. (SS 195; 1906) CSP: For any set of Signs which are so connected that a complex of two of them can have one interpretant, must be Determinations of one Sign which is a *Quasi-mind*. (CP 4.550; 1906) A Quasi-mind is the connected system of all the Signs that have previously determined it, such that it "constitutes one sign." Its Informed Breadth is the aggregate of their Dynamic Objects; i.e., everything with which it is *acquainted* through Collateral Experience. Its Informed Depth is the aggregate of the characters *attributed* to those Objects; i.e., the net result of the Dynamic Interpretants of those Signs--feelings, exertions, and further Signs (CP 5.436; 1906). Together, such Breadth and Depth comprise the Quasi-mind's *knowledge*; or rather, because it can be mistaken, its *beliefs*, which manifest as its Habits of Interpretation. CSP: ... a genuine belief, or opinion, is something on which a man is prepared to act, and is therefore, in a general sense, a habit. (CP 2.148; 1902) The Immediate Object of any Sign is the *overlap* of Informed Breadth and Depth that is necessary and sufficient for an interpreting Quasi-mind to *identify* that Sign's Dynamic Object. Any "excess" Depth of the Sign beyond this is its *Signification*, which combines with its Breadth to make up the Experiential Information that contributes to its Dynamic Interpretant in a particular Instance. CSP: Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience. (EP 2:480; 1908) CSP: All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant ... by collateral observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the Sign denotes. (EP 2:494; 1909) A pure Icon would signify something without denoting anything (Depth but no Breadth), and thus could only produce a *feeling*; while a pure Index would denote something without signifying anything (Breadth but no Depth), and thus could only produce an *exertion* (cf. EP 2:307; 1904). A complete Symbol, on the other hand, *both *denotes something *and *signifies something *about* it. CSP: But a symbol, if sufficiently complete, always involves an index, just as an index sufficiently complete involves an icon. (EP 2:318; 1904) That is why every Sign has an Emotional Interpretant (feeling), an Index or Symbol can also have an Energetic Interpretant (exertion), and only a Symbol can also have a Logical Interpretant (further Sign). CSP: In all cases, [the interpretant] includes feelings; for there must, at least, be a sense of comprehending the meaning of the sign. If it includes more than mere feeling, it must evoke some kind of effort. It may include something besides, which, for the present, may be vaguely called "thought." I term these three kinds of interpretant the "emotional," the "energetic," and the "logical" interpretants. (EP 2:409; 1907) Which kind of Dynamic Interpretant an Instance of an Index or Symbol produces depends, at least in part, on the interpreting Quasi-mind's *fallible* Habits of Interpretation. These are subject to change over time due to events including "experiences forced upon" the Quasi-mind, "muscular effort," and deliberate "acts of imagination" (CP 5.478-479; 1907). As I have suggested before ... CSP: Logic [i.e., semeiotic] may be defined as the science of the laws of the stable establishment of beliefs [i.e., habits]. (CP 3.429; 1896) All of this strikes me as fully consistent with Peirce's comments in conjunction with describing a Sign as "a Medium for the communication of a Form." CSP: The Form is in the Object, entitatively we may say ... In the Sign the Form may or may not be embodied entitatively, but it must be embodied representatively, that is, in respect to the Form communicated, the Sign produces upon the Interpretant an effect similar to that which the Object itself would under favorable circumstances. (EP 2:544n22; 1906) Compare this with a similar excerpt from my last post, which Peirce wrote more than 40 years earlier. CSP: ... every genuine symbol relates or purports to relate to some form embodied in its object. This is its *connotation*. It is, in fact, only by means of this reference to a form that a symbol acquires its applicability to the thing ... its denotation is created by its connotation. (W 1:287; 1865) The Form that a Sign communicates is embodied "entitatively" in its Dynamic Object and "representatively" in the Sign itself, as its Immediate Object--which is how the Sign "acquires its applicability to the thing" in the first place. As an interpreting Quasi-mind's *actual *state of Experiential Information increasingly approximates the *ideal *state of Substantial Information, which would correspond to having *infallible *Habits of Interpretation, the effect of any Instance of the Sign--i.e., its Dynamic Interpretant--becomes more and more similar to that which the Object *itself *would have. In Umberto Eco's words, quoted by Bellucci, "To know more (in Peirce's sense) means that, from interpretant to interpretant, the sign is more and more determined both in its breadth and in its depth" (p. 74, note 39). The *telos* of this semiotic process is what Peirce called "the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and so identical,--in such identity as a sign may have,--with the very matter denoted united with the very form signified by it ... The 'Truth,' the fact that is not abstracted but complete, is the ultimate interpretant of every sign" (EP 2:304; 1904). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 9:18 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, list, > > I see you’ve been making some progress, Jon, in your inquiry, though I > don’t have anything very interesting to say about it. My own time has been > split between finishing up my transcription of the Lowell Lectures and > revising the late chapters of my book *Turning Signs* (which is not > primarily *about* Peirce but is becoming ever more Peircean in the > revisions. > > My most recent work on that front is near the top of Chapter 15, “Context > and content,” http://gnusystems.ca/TS/ntx.htm. It sort of fits with your > subject line because it has something to say about *signification*, but > may be of more use to those interested in the overlapping of semiotics with > systems theory, biology and phenomenology. Part of the recent work has been > to insert more links into the text which take the reader back to previous > uses of some key terms (I provide these links instead of a glossary). > Anyway it’s there for anyone who wants to take a look. As for the Lowells, > I should be able to finish up the eighth and last lecture in the next week > or two, making it possible to read the entire series of lectures, more or > less as delivered, from beginning to end. I’m looking forward to that > myself. > > Gary f. >
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