Gary F., List: GF: But evidently you are not testing it in that way, but rather “trying it out” as a proposed *improvement over* Peirce’s actual usage, in the sense that it offers greater clarity and thus facilitates the systematic explication of what is going on whenever an event of concrete semiosis occurs.
Yes, that seems like an accurate summary of what I am attempting to accomplish with my interpretative hypothesis. I have called it that because I believe that understanding all Signs as Types whose Replicas are Tokens recognizable as such by their Tones (or Marks) sheds considerable light on Peirce's late semeiotic as a systematic whole. It certainly has done so for me personally. While he generally did not make the *specific *terminological distinction that I am advocating, as I already mentioned, he did clearly distinguish the third Universe of Signs from the second Universe of Brute Actuality and the first Universe of Ideas. I see this as a development from his 1904 description of a Sign as an Entelechy (3ns) vs. objects as Matter (2ns) vs. qualities/characters as Form (1ns). GF: ... it seems to me that every “event of concrete semiosis” involves a measure of actuality that Types in themselves do not have. I strongly agree; any event or occurrence is something actual (2ns), and an "event of concrete semiosis" is precisely what Peirce called an *Instance *of the Sign. GF: If the Final Interpretant is “that toward which the actual tends,” as Peirce says, there is no way to approach it, or learn what that tendency is, except by way of actual Dynamic Interpretants determined by Actisigns, i.e. Tokens acting as signs in an ongoing dialogue. Again, I agree; we can (and do) increase our Experiential Information, but never achieve the ideal of Substantial Information. However, I would change the last part to "Tokens *embodying *Signs in an ongoing dialogue"; we utter the Sign to produce the Sign-Instance (Replica), just as we scribe the Graph to produce the Graph-Instance. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 9:11 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, > > OK, I think I’ve been misunderstanding the purpose of your “hypothesis.” > I’ve been treating it as an inductively testable hypothesis *about > Peirce’s use of terms*. But evidently you are not testing it in that way, > but rather “trying it out” as a proposed *improvement over* Peirce’s > actual usage, in the sense that it offers greater clarity and thus > facilitates the systematic explication of what is going on whenever an > event of concrete semiosis occurs. > > Personally I don’t find it clearer than Peirce’s late (post-1904) usage in > that respect, but that’s a judgment call which every user of your > “improved” terminology will have to make. So the only way of “testing” it > would be to tally up the number of opinions on each side of the clarity > question. I put “testing” in quote marks because I don’t think such a > tallying up would count as inductive reasoning as Peirce defines it in the > Lowell lectures; and I put “hypothesis” in quotes for the same reason. > > Regarding your belief that Peirce’s reference to Tokens as Signs “was a > form of shorthand,” I think that too is a judgment call. In terms of Peirce > oft-used onion metaphor, you are saying that referring to Tokens as Signs > is the “skin” or outer layer of the onion, and if we take that skin off we > get closer to the core reality of the Sign. But as Peirce says, it’s layers > all the way down; and it seems to me that every “event of concrete > semiosis” involves a measure of actuality that Types in themselves do not > have. If the Final Interpretant is “that toward which the actual tends,” as > Peirce says, there is no way to approach it, or learn what that tendency > is, except by way of actual Dynamic Interpretants determined by Actisigns, > i.e. Tokens acting as signs in an ongoing dialogue. > > Gary f. >
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