Gary, Jon, list,
I dont think that space and time are continuous, because in quantum scale there are steps, e.g. each single graviton providing a certain amount of acceleration. This is not observable in the scale of our perception, so our representation of acceleration is one of continuity. But this representaion is not continuous itself, but a discrete state of consciousness. Discretenesss of states of consciousness: See Edelman/Tononi "A Universe of Consciousness", 2000.
An animal with smaller brain, a coot, moves its head foward and back when swimming, so while it is moving back, the head stands still relatively to the environment to provide not-blurred picture processing.
I guess that semiosis and mind are not happening like one of them in the other, but are the same, like mind being a process too. Edelman/Tononi write that consciousness is a process, so maybe mind is too. But to avoid Zenions paradoxon to say that a process always is continuous would be jumping to a conclusion, I think. I guess, there just is some unsolved question existing about the nature of discrete states or discontinuity.
Best, Helmut
Jon, list,
I've been studying your post for the past couple of days and find your suggestion that, just as time and space are continuous, so is semiosis, most interesting. I have a slight bit of unease with your substitution of Peirce's comment that we ought to say that "we are in thought, and not thoughts are in us" (JAS: "we ought to say that our individual (Quasi-)minds are in semiosis, and not that signs are in our individual (Quasi-)minds"). A more exact substitution would be that "our Quasi-minds are in semiosis and not that semiosis (i.e., the activity of signs) is in our Quasi-minds."
Reflecting on this reminded me that Peirce wrote:
Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded (Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism, 1906, CP 4.551).
I wonder how Peirce's remark that signs requiring "at least two Quasi-minds" which "are. . .welded" "in the sign itself, yet must nevertheless be distinct" (emphasis added) affects your theory. That is, does this distinction between "Quasi-utterer" and "Quasi-interpreter" add a problematic element to your suggestions of the continuous character of semiosis and that of our Quasi-minds being more in semiosis than the other way around? Perhaps your unpacking the Peirce quotation above would help me in this matter.
But further, something vague, which has not yet fully taken form as a question, has been troubling me as regards your suggestion of semiosic continuity. It has to do with Peirce's famous dictum that 'symbols grow'.
Now while it is generally agreed that space is expanding, I'm not sure that one could same the same of time (except in some vague sense in which the piling on of innumerable discrete instances might represent some abstract sort of expansion). But while both are continuous, individually at least, neither can be said, I think, to be growing.
On the other hand evolution (and, generally, life itself) concerns growth and, at least in its biological forms, requires both space and time. Now it seems to me that semiosis is more like evolution than either space or time taken separately even given Einstein's theory of space-time or the solution of famous logical paradoxes.
Well, that's about as far as I've been able to get with this. While the exact question lies below my own conscious threshold. I'm hoping that perhaps you'll be able to discern what it is that's troubling me and address it. And knowing something of your approach to inquiry, I'm hoping that just taking up my vague not-quite-questions might prove to be of assistance in honing your novel theory.
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 11:01 AM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:
List:I have been musing recently on the well-known remark by Peirce that "just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in thought, and not that thoughts are in us" (CP 5.289n1, EP 1:42n1; 1868). He also asserted in the same series of articles that "all thought is in signs" (CP 5.253, EP 1:24; 1868), so by substitution we ought to say that our individual (Quasi-)minds are in semiosis, and not that signs are in our individual (Quasi-)minds.As Peirce recognized, despite not having the benefit of Einstein's insights, Zeno's famous paradoxes are dissolved by understanding continuous motion through space-time as a more fundamental reality than discrete positions in space and/or moments in time. We arbitrarily mark the latter to facilitate measurement and calculation for particular purposes, but space is not composed of points and time is not composed of instants.Likewise, I suggest that semiosis is continuous, and we arbitrarily isolate discrete signs--or rather, Instances of Signs--to facilitate analysis for particular purposes. We can say that a Dynamic Object determines a Token of a Type to determine a Dynamic Interpretant in an individual (Quasi-)mind, treating this as an actual event "occurring just when and where it does" (CP 4.537; 1906). Nevertheless, the Type is not composed of its Tokens.Moreover, every Instance contributes to the Sign's Informed Breadth by adding that Token's Dynamic Object; as Peirce put it, "Breadth refers to the Object, which occasions the use of the sign" (R 200:E87; 1908). Nevertheless, this collection could never amount to the Sign's Substantial Breadth, which (I have argued) corresponds to its General Object. In other words, the Sign (as a Type) and its General Object are both continuous, while each Instance (as a Token) and its Dynamic Object (even if it includes multiple items) are both discrete.In fact, it seems to me that a necessary condition for a Token to be an Instance of a Type is that the Token's Dynamic Object must likewise be an instantiation of the Type's General Object. When I pick something up and say out loud, "This is a vase," the word "vase" that I pronounce is an actual constituent of the real continuum of all potential Tokens of the corresponding Type, which could be in any spoken or written language or other Sign System; and I am asserting that what I now hold in my hands is an actual constituent of the real continuum of all potential vases.Regards,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
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