Gary F., List:
GF: Peirce does not say in CP 4.551 that the two minds are welded in the
uttered sign itself.
JAS: To what other sign could he be referring in that passage?
GF: I’ll quote the entire passage below, but first we have to resolve the
ambiguity introduced with the term "uttered sign."
You did not quote CP 4.551, you quoted EP 2:478. Here is the actual
referenced passage.
CSP: We must here give "Sign" a very wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide
a sense to come within our definition. 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*. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of
human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of
thought should be dialogic. (CP 4.551, 1906)
As I said yesterday, paraphrasing the third and fourth quoted sentences,
every sign has a quasi-utterer and a quasi-interpreter, and those two
quasi-minds are at one in the sign itself--namely, the specific sign that
is uttered by the quasi-utterer and interpreted by the quasi-interpreter.
This is what I mean by the uttered sign, and there really is no
ambiguity--it is clearly a token in this context, not a type. As such, it
is an *individual *sign that determines an *individual *dynamical
interpretant in the *individual *quasi-mind that is the quasi-interpreter,
which is what I sometimes call an *individual *event of semiosis. Here is
Peirce's description earlier in the same article ("Prolegomena to an
Apology for Pragmaticism").
CSP: A Single event which happens once and whose identity is limited to
that one happening or a Single object or thing which is in some single
place at any one instant of time, such event or thing being significant
only as occurring just when and where it does, such as this or that word on
a single line of a single page of a single copy of a book, I will venture
to call a *Token*. (CP 4.537)
Nevertheless, exactly how we mark off each of these *individual *constituents
of semiosis is a somewhat arbitrary artifact of the analysis because the *real
*process is continuous. For example, what we are currently discussing is a
single reading of a single text, which obviously does not *really *occur at
a single place nor at a single instant of time.
GF: I consider the text to be of a lower dimensionality than the dialogue
because the text, having been uttered, is static, while the dialogue is not
...
I can see your rationale here, drawing an analogy to a one-dimensional line
that is marked on a two-dimensional surface. However, as Peirce points out
with his cosmological blackboard diagram (CP 6.203, 1898), a chalk mark is
really an *oval *rather than a true line of zero width, so the
lower-dimensional discontinuity is the *boundary *between the white and
black areas. Likewise, it seems to me that the text--or any other uttered
sign--is a *portion *of the overall dialogue with the *same *dimensionality
as the whole, rather than a *limit *of lower dimensionality that adjacent
portions have in common. After all, we can further mark off an entire book
into chapters, chapters into paragraphs, paragraphs into sentences,
sentences into phrases, and even phrases into words, treating each of these
constituent signs as "the text" with its own object and interpretant.
GF: If we need a name for the legisign or type which is embodied in a *text*,
let’s call it the *Thought*. ... This Thought is what is "conveyed" in a
moment of communication.
If "the Thought" is defined as the *type *that is embodied in a text
serving as its *token*, then I do not see how it could be that which is
"conveyed" in a moment of communication. According to Peirce, "a Sign may
be defined as a Medium for the communication of a Form. ... That which is
communicated from the Object through the Sign to the Interpretant is a
Form" (EP 2:544n22, 1906). He goes on to explain that this Form must be in
the object "entitatively" and in the sign "representatively," such that
"the Sign produces upon the Interpretant an effect similar to that which
the Object itself would under favorable circumstances" (ibid). Accordingly,
it seems to me that the sign conveys a Form from the Thought through the
text to the reader, i.e., the relation between the Thought and the text is
that of object to sign rather than type to token.
GF: Now if we re-read that paragraph from the 1906 letter to Welby with the
understanding that the Thought (and not the utterance or text which
embodies it) is the sign in question, we can more easily see how its three
interpretants are related:
Frankly, I see no basis *in that text itself* for reading it with such an
understanding. Two paragraphs earlier in the same letter, Peirce states the
following.
CSP: I use the word 'Sign' in the widest sense for any medium for the
communication or extension of a Form (or feature). ... In order that a Form
may be extended or communicated, it is necessary that it should have been
really embodied in a Subject independently of the communication; and it is
necessary that there should be another Subject in which the same Form is
embodied only in consequence of the communication. The Form (and the Form
is the Object of the Sign), as it really determines the former Subject, is
quite independent of the sign; yet we may and indeed must say that the
object of a sign can be nothing but what that sign represents it to be.
Therefore, in order to reconcile these apparently conflicting truths, it is
indispensable to distinguish the *immediate *object from the
*dynamical *object.
(EP 2:477, 1906)
I suggest accordingly that the Thought is *not *the sign in question, but
rather its *dynamical *object, and the Form that the sign conveys is
its *immediate
*object as a determination of the Thought. "Now an item of information has
been conveyed, because it has been stated relatively to a well-understood
common experience. Thus the Form conveyed is always a determination of the
dynamical object of the *commind*" (EP 2:478), the commind itself being
created by the sign as it "welds" the otherwise distinct minds of the
utterer and interpreter into that one mind.
GF: In the top-down view of communication which I am proposing, the
*Cominterpretant
*(and the fusing of minds) does not follow *after *the other two
interpretants; nor does the Effectual Interpretant follow the Intentional,
because these "determinations" are not *individual *interpretants any more
than the Thought is an individual sign.
I was under the impression that we were in agreement that the intentional
interpretant is a dynamical interpretant of a *previous *sign as a
determination of the mind of the *utterer*, and thus comes *before *the
uttered sign; while the effectual interpretant is a dynamical interpretant
of the uttered sign *itself *as a determination of the mind of the
*interpreter*, and thus comes *after *that uttered sign--at least
logically, and also temporally unless we treat all these as simultaneous.
On the other hand, I understand the cominterpretant to be the immediate
interpretant of the uttered sign as a determination of the *commind*,
because it is *internal *to that uttered sign. Nevertheless, these are all
*individual *interpretants of those *individual *sign tokens--artifacts of
analysis that result from marking off the uttered sign as a discrete
constituent of the continuous process of semiosis.
GF: That’s why Peirce says that "There is" the Intentional, the Effectual
and the Cominterpretant, without assigning any temporal or logical order to
them.
I believe that the order in which Peirce *presents *these three
interpretants simply reflects the need to introduce the "the mind of the
utterer" and "the mind of the interpreter" *before *mentioning "that mind
into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order
that any communication should take place" (EP 2:478). Again, in my view,
the order in which they *occur*--at least logically, perhaps also
temporally--is intentional (utterer/object), then communicational
(commind/sign), then effectual (interpreter/interpretant).
GF: It is therefore the *object*, and not the shared language, that is the
key constituent of the *commens*, "that mind into which the minds of
utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication
should take place."
As I said above, the uttered sign *creates *the commens by "fusing" the
otherwise distinct minds of the utterer and interpreter into one commind.
As internal to that uttered sign, *both *the immediate object *and *the
immediate interpretant are its key constituents, without which this
"fusing" or "welding" would be impossible and there could be no commind at
all.
CSP: All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting
Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. I
do not mean by "collateral observation" acquaintance with the system of
signs. What is so gathered is *not *COLLATERAL. It is on the contrary the
prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the Sign. But by collateral
observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the Sign denotes. (CP
8.179, EP 2:494, 1909)
Without apprehending the immediate object of the uttered sign by virtue of
"collateral observation," the interpreter has no way of identifying "what
the Sign denotes." Without apprehending the immediate interpretant of the
uttered sign by virtue of "acquaintance with the system of signs" in which
it is expressed, the interpreter has no way of understanding "any idea
signified by the Sign."
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 8:04 AM <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
> Jon AS, List,
>
> GF: Peirce does not say in CP 4.551 that the two minds are welded in the
> *uttered
> *sign itself.
>
> JAS: To what other sign could he be referring in that passage?
>
> GF: I’ll quote the entire passage below, but first we have to resolve the
> ambiguity introduced with the term “uttered sign.” In my view, Peirce is
> referring in that passage to the symbol, the *legisign*, which is
> *embodied* in the “individual sign,” the fully determinate text or
> “utterance,” which is a sinsign. Here I am applying to the *text* a
> distinction which Peirce applies to a *proposition* in this excerpt from
> a 1905 letter to James:
>
> CSP: … according to me, reality is a conception that every man has because
> it is involved in every proposition; and since every man makes assertions
> he deals with propositions. (Of course, I have not fully defined a
> proposition, because I have not discriminated the proposition from the
> individual sign which is the embodiment of the proposition. By a
> proposition, as something which can be repeated over and over again,
> translated into another language, embodied in a logical graph or
> algebraical formula, and still be one and the same proposition, we do not
> mean any existing individual object but a type, a general, which does not
> exist but governs existents, to which individuals conform.) (CP 8.313)
>
> GF: If we need a name for the legisign or type which is embodied in a
> *text*, let’s call it the *Thought*. Since the Thought is dialogic, it is
> continuous with the rest of the *dialogue*, the one sign in which all the
> connected signs (Thoughts) of the dialogue are embedded. I consider the
> text to be of a lower dimensionality than the dialogue because the text,
> having been uttered, is static, while the dialogue is not — and neither is
> the Thought (a portion of the dialogue), because its embodiment is not yet
> *fully* determined. It is *on the way* to its final interpretant, which
> (as we have agreed) is an ideal and not an individual sign that will
> *exist*. This Thought is what is “conveyed” in a moment of communication.
>
> Now if we re-read that paragraph from the 1906 letter to Welby with the
> understanding that the *Thought* (and not the utterance or text which
> embodies it) is the sign in question, we can more easily see how its three
> interpretants are related:
>
> CSP: There is the *Intentional* Interpretant, which is a determination of
> the mind of the utterer; the *Effectual* Interpretant, which is a
> determination of the mind of the interpreter; and the *Communicational*
> Interpretant,
> or say the *Cominterpretant*, which is a determination of that mind into
> which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that
> any communication should take place. This mind may be called the *commens*.
> It consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer
> and interpreter, at the outset, in order that the sign in question should
> fulfill its function. This I proceed to explain.
>
> GF: For now I will just make two more comments on this. First, the
> *commens* consists of all that is well understood between the two
> communicants *at the outset* of the moment of communication. In the
> top-down view of communication which I am proposing, the *Cominterpretant
> *(and the fusing of minds) does not follow *after* the other two
> interpretants; nor does the Effectual Interpretant follow the Intentional,
> because these “determinations” are not *individual* interpretants any
> more than the Thought is an individual sign. That’s why Peirce says that
> “There is” the Intentional, the Effectual and the Cominterpretant, without
> assigning any temporal or logical order to them.
>
> Second, Peirce proceeds to explain the *commens* with this sentence: “No
> object can be denoted unless it be put into relation to the object of the
> *commens*.” As I’ve said earlier in this thread, the *object* of the text
> or individual sign has to be also the object of the Thought, and of the
> whole dialogue, if the dialogue is genuine. This is the object that the
> partners in a dialogue have to direct their joint attention to if they are
> really communicating. It is therefore the *object,* and not the shared
> language, that is the key constituent of the *commens*, “that mind into
> which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that
> any communication should take place.”
>
> Gary f.
>
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