Le 10/06/2020 à 18:08, John F. Sowa a écrit :
Bernard Morand summarized the meaningful content of this debate in one
sentence plus one image:
BM> In place of the old, often recurring debates on this subject I
propose to muse over a painting from René Magritte entitled "Le sens
des réalités"
That image, which shows a large boulder suspended in the middle of the
clouds, is an excellent illustration of the way JAS assembles
"fireworks of quotations" (RM's phrase) to state a hypothesis (AKA
guess) and defend as if it were gospel truth.
John, List
I was not trying to illustrate the project JAS is persuing.
I wanted to ask by means of the painting: what does "Real" mean ? With
the consequence: What is "Real" in the nature of signs?
This latter question seems to me to be at the core of the Peirce's way
of thinking.
Going back to the Magritte's painting, I think impossible that the
boulder may be "suspended in the middle of the clouds" as John see it.
Because it would be a manifest violation of the law of universal
gravitation. The boulder is falling down to the earth that we see
distinctly on the lower part of the image, may be it is some kind of
meteorite.
So we have from the beginning an image of the Reality: that which will
hurt you -and perhaps kill you- if you stay under the boulder.
But we can imagine some other senses of realities apart this one that
has been derived from the necessity of law.
The boulder is really an event, here and there on the painted scene, -it
is an intrusion- and as such it causes an effect of surprise for the
audience (this effect is also initiated by Magritte himself to make the
spectator think about the scene). This intrusive event is also a sense
of realities: to be able of observation.
Finally one latter sense of reality may consist in the consideration of
the painting as recalling to our memories the extinction of the
dinosaurs. A possibility already envisaged by scientists.
Sure, all of this comment of the Magritte painting is highly
problematic. Many more stories could be presented in illustration of the
painting, probably as much as people commenting it.
Sure, there is in this example nothing which proves that Peirce's
semiotic is a truth. As a matter of fact common sense has already
recognized that "an example is not a proof".
Nevertheless one can see that his semiotic elementary distinctions
-immediate and dynamic object, immediate dynamic normal interpretant,
sign- are there, behind. I just choose to escape technical terms in this
mail.
Nevertheless the Magritte painting is a Sign, a complex one. But it
needs to be perceived in order to act as such, I agree strongly with
Robert on this.
I finish with two questions of which I have quite no answer:
1) If it is possible to speak seriously about signs without referring
explicitely to their technical definitions, what does it mean to pratice
"applied semiotics"?
2) If signs need an observer, who is this observer if not a sign himself?
Regards
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