Gary F:
I was rather astonished to read your comments that you were
interested in both
"the continuity between the processes of semiosis and those of life
itself" and "the recursive and nonlinear nature of those processes";
and
" such real-world (biological/psychological/experiential)
applications of Peircean semiotic/pragmaticism"
I've specifically referred to these issues over the years - and you
have either totally ignored them, or even, on occasion, belittled
them as outside the framework of Peircean thought.
I've mentioned, many times, the work done by people engaged in these
areas and also, specific journal articles that could be used for such
an analysis. For example, the journal Biosystems has special issues
on: 'Code Biology; the study of all Codes of Life [ed M. Barbieri];
'Chasing the Tail: the Emergence of Autocatalytic Networks".
"Representing Life: a natural philosophical project; Ron Cottam.
And the Journal 'Science' has frequent articles examining biological
informational processes.
I will just say that it is difficult for researchers focused in
these areas of pragmatic application of Peircean theories to include
the works of Peirce when they are rebuffed and sidelined by 'the
official Peircean scholars', ie, researchers focused only on the
texts and not on application.
Edwina
On Fri 12/06/20 9:12 AM , [email protected] sent:
Jon A.S. (and list),
That is a very interesting discovery, and I look forward to your
complete transcription of R 787. It occurs to me that much of your
recent contribution to the list and to Peircean scholarship has been
to restore the integrity of Peirce’s manuscripts, which (as the
late John Deely observed) were torn apart by the editors of the
Collected Papers and rearranged thematically. Maybe that was their
only choice for getting the Peirce papers published at all, given the
enormity of his Nachlass, but the effect on scholars was to make it
difficult to follow the development of Peirce’s ideas.
The chronological order of Peirce’s thought has been partially
restored by the Peirce Edition Project, but except for the selections
included in EP2, the project has been stalled for ten years at 1892.
I’ve tried to contribute to the restoration by using the manuscript
images put online by Jeff Downard and the SPIN project to produce an
online edition of the Lowell Lectures of 1903:
http://www.gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm [1] . (The complete Lowell
Lectures have since then been published (
https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/552477 [2] ), but unfortunately
I can’t afford that edition.) Anyway, your work along these lines
has been more thorough, meticulous and diligent than mine, as
exemplified by your contributions to peirce-l in recent years.
You and I have our differences, as we’ve discussed onlist over the
years, but we share the experience of many hours studying and
transcribing the online images of Peirce’s post-1892 manuscripts.
This has given us a sense of the continuity of Peirce’s thought
process — his way of drafting and redrafting his exposition of
semiotic/logic, frequently approaching certain key concepts by
considering them from different angles and in different contexts.
Reading whole manuscripts instead of scattered fragments of Peirce,
and reading them in the context of their chronological order, is an
experience that is not available to those who rely mainly on the CP
edition of his works. It’s as close as we can get to the experience
of following Peirce’s arguments by thinking along with their
process.
One thing I’ve derived from this experience is a deeper sense of
the continuity between the processes of semiosis and those of life
itself (including the experience of living). That connection is the
main subject of my book Turning Signs (
http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/TWindex.htm [3] ), and the central focus
of the book is the recursive and nonlinear nature of those processes.
Peirce did not use those terms, which I’ve drawn from more recent
developments in science, but I’ve tried to show that he anticipated
those developments, implicitly if not explicitly. I’ve occasionally
tried to share this application of Peircean thought on peirce-l —
the post you quote below was one attempt, drawn from my book — but
have pretty much given up on that, as there doesn’t seem to be much
interest here in such real-world
(biological/psychological/experiential) applications of Peircean
semiotic/pragmaticism. I don’t think you are much interested in
that yourself.
Frankly, the only reason I’m still subscribed to the list is that
contributions like yours sometimes cause me to rethink (and sometimes
revise) my use of Peircean concepts in Turning Signs. I’m still
doing that because it has an effect on the way I deal with living in
the Anthropocene, this moment in which life on planet Earth is going
through a relatively sudden and drastic transformation — which is
the main focus of my blog http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ [4] . That shift
of interest is my excuse for ignoring most of the discussion here on
peirce-l. “Communicating an idea” sounds like a promising thread,
though, and I look forward to seeing how it develops.
Gary f
From: Jon Alan Schmidt
Sent: 11-Jun-20 21:06
To: [email protected]
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Communicating an Idea (was commens and commons)
Robert, Gary F., List:
I was intrigued by Robert's quote from CP 2.278 and wanted to take a
look at its context. It turns out that this is one of those places
where unfortunately the arrangement of the material by the CP editors
is highly misleading.
*2.278-280 is from R 787 (c. 1895-6), "That Categorical and
Hypothetical Propositions are one in essence, with some connected
matters."
* 2.274-277 and 2.283-284 are from R 478 (1903), the "Syllabus"
for the Lowell Lectures.
*2.281 is from R 404 (1894), "The Art of Reasoning. Chapter II.
What Is a Sign?"
* 2.282 is from R 595 (1895), "Short Logic."
Although the notes indicate that 2.278-280 actually comes after
2.332-339 in R 787, they fail to mention that Peirce wrote four
additional paragraphs between them that are omitted, along with at
least 15 pages prior to 2.332. There are two more omitted paragraphs
after 2.280, which are followed by 1.564-567, then another omitted
paragraph, and finally 2.340-356. Two manuscript pages originally
missing from R 787 turned up later as R 787(s), and I was delighted
to discover that they include an interesting passage about
"scientific intelligence" that Gary F. quoted in a post [5] a few
weeks ago, citing NEM 4:ix-x where Carolyn Eisele attributes it to an
"unidentified fragment." I am now preparing a complete transcription
to restore the original flow of the entire text of R 787 for further
study, but for now, here is the whole paragraph that concludes with
2.278.
CSP: An idea is called up when an idea sufficiently like it is
called up. A representation of an idea is nothing but a sign that
calls up another idea. When one mind desires to communicate an idea
to another, he embodies his idea by making an outward perceptible
image which directly calls up a like idea; and another mind
perceiving that image gets a like idea. Two persons may agree upon a
conventional sign which shall call up to them an idea it would not
call up to anybody else. But in framing the convention they must have
resorted to the primitive diagrammatic method of embodying the idea in
an outward form, a picture. Remembering what likeness consists in,
namely, in the natural attraction of ideas apart from habitual
outward associations, I call those signs which stand for their
likeness to them icons. Accordingly, I say that the only way of
directly communicating an idea is by means of an icon; and every
indirect method of communicating an idea must depend for its
establishment upon the use of an icon. Hence, every assertion must
contain an icon or set of icons, or else must contain signs whose
meaning is only explicable by icons. The idea which the set of icons
(or the equivalent of a set of icons) contained in an assertion
signifies may be termed the predicate of the assertion. (R
787:22-23[26-27])
The unpublished paragraphs preceding this one reveal that what
Peirce means here by "an idea" is "a dream without a habitat" (R
787:20[24]), seemingly anticipating the first of his "three Universes
of Experience" that "comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to
which the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give
local habitation and a name within that mind" (CP 6.455, EP 2:435,
1908). He adds that "Every idea ... is more or less vague," such
that "An idea cannot accurately be said to have any identity ...
Ideas have no hic et nunc, no hecceity, by which they could be this
and that independently of their likeness to one another ... The
vagueness of every idea deprives it of absolute identity even with
itself" (R 787:21[25]). It is an idea in this sense that according
to Peirce can only be communicated "by means of an icon"; namely,
"the predicate of the assertion."
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [6] - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[7]
On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 2:40 PM robert marty <
[email protected] [8]> wrote:
I agree with you. The stakes seem minor to me; In fact, I subtitled
my book "L'Algébre des Signes" with "Scientific Essay according to
Charles Sanders Peirce" and I made it clear in my introduction that
given the state in which Peirce's work is presented ("The Peircian
Continent" very well described by Jean-Marie Chevallier) it was an
illusion of achieving a perfect harmony with all his writings. By
gathering the thesaurus of 76 definitions of the sign my conviction
was definitively established. However, I have to justify the
"according to Charles Sanders Peirce." That's why at every moment
and whenever it is possible I show that what I assert is what Peirce
said. Hence an important selection of quotes to support my posture.
And you understandt that I choose texts rather mathematics and more
precisely algebraics (CP 2.279) that others avoid carefully, hence a
false image of the works of Peirce (what John Sowa rightly
proclaims).
But Peirce taught us that" The only way of directly communicating
an idea is by means of an icon; and every indirect method of
communicating an idea must depend for its establishment upon the use
of an icon. " (C.P. 2.278) what , in addition, is a necessity that we
can reads in the lattice.
I have an icon-metaphor that allows to understand at a glance the
posture I have just described:
The hypoicône (CP 2.227) define the representation of my personal
approach in the "Peircian continent" by a parallelism in the creation
of a straight line of a linear regression, a basic technique of
statistics that was learned in the first of many scientific courses.
In this image the dots are accumulations of Peirce's texts relating
to the semiotics themes and the straight line is the path I strive to
trace. Initially we have only points defined by their coordinates.
Then we asks the problem: is there a straight line that passes close
to all these points? The aim is to test whether the observed "vague"
variations, given the inevitable errors on the measurements, would be
roughly represented by a straight line. The equation of this straight
line would be then the simple model of proportionality between the
two measured variables. It is obtained by imposing that the sum of
the squares of the distances of the points to the right that one
seeks must be as small as possible.
I constantly have this image in mind ...
Best regards,
Le jeu. 11 juin 2020 à 14:54, a écrit :
Robert and Auke,
I don’t think anyone questions the reality of a pool of
information, published or not, which is not the “private
property” of individual owners but is (or should be) a resource
available to all members of a culture. If we want to discuss its role
in cultural semiosis, why not use an established term such as
“knowledge commons”? (See for instance Hess and Ostrom (2007),
Understanding Knowledge as a Commons.) Peirce had to define his
peculiar term commens precisely because it was (and is) not in common
use. Appropriating Peirce’s technical term to evoke the broader
concept of the commons invites confusion by reading into Peirce a
conception that is only vaguely related to the context of his
argument.
Gary f.
--
Honorary Professor ; PhD Mathematics ; PhD Philosophy
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Marty [10]
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fran%C3%A7ois_Raymond_Marty [11]
semiotiquedure.online [12] ; semioticadura.online [13] ;
hardsemiotics.online [14]
Links:
------
[1] http://www.gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm
[2] https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/552477
[3] http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/TWindex.htm
[4] http://gnusystems.ca/wp/
[5] https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2020-05/msg00160.html
[6] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[7] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[8]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[9]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[10] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Marty
[11]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fran%C3%A7ois_Raymond_Marty?fbclid=IwAR0N4S-t_avO38YlBYcj_-a2YYcsNvl6joIhTkajX0lMQhV8CXRQjQeXXxQ
[12] http://semiotiquedure.online
[13] http://semioticadura.online
[14] http://hardsemiotics.online
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