Aw: [PEIRCE-L] Graphical Representations of the Sign by Peirce

[Helmut Raulien]

Edwina, what you wrote, is exactly what I wrote: That determination, or, as you wrote, production, cannot go upward in category number: A sign (1) cannot determin an interpretant (3). Therefore I suggested, that the interpreter´s mind (3) rather is the determining entity. Now I must add, that all "entities" of course are prescinded, as they donot really exist alone, before somebody feels the need of telling me so.

 

Best, Helmut

 

 

Gesendet: Dienstag, 09. Januar 2024 um 17:42 Uhr
Von: "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
An: "Helmut Raulien" <h.raul...@gmx.de>
Cc: "Peirce-L" <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>, "Edwina Taborsky" <edwina.tabor...@gmail.com>
Betreff: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Graphical Representations of the Sign by Peirce

Helmut - I think you have a lot of misunderstandings of Peirce - and can only suggest: Read Peirce.

 

And think: How can an entity organized within Firstness [ pure vague feeling] produce an entity organized within the much more restrictive mode of Secondness [an actual single form]? Think of this situation in terms of ‘information -content. Can an entity with a low information content [ ie, just a feeling]..produce an entity with a higher information content [ a singular thing]?  How? Where does it get that increased  information to form something that is so much more organized?  How does pure indeterminacy [Firstness] produce something determined [ Secondness]. You are moving into magical assumptions!

 

Tha’s why the outline by Peirce in “EP:272 “A Sign , or Representamen, is a First which stands iin such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant”…. 

 

….Has to be understood as referring to ordinal numbers rather than the modal categories. Peirce warned of this error [p 271 note] “The conception of a First, improperly called an ‘object’ and of aSecond, should be carefully distinguished from those of Firstness or Secondness’. 

 

I am aware of a number of people on this list who insist that these words First, Second, Third, refer to he modal categories - but I’ve never understood how they can come to such a conc

 

Again - if you read what he wrote - Peirce was referring to the RELATIONS between the ’nodes’ [Representamen, Object, Interpretant] and to these relations as determinants. He was not referring to their mode-of-being, or the categories.

 

And - just a wee bit of thought - would lead you to realize that something in a. Mode of Firstness [pure indeterminacy] doesn’t have the informational capacity to produce something in a mode of either Secondness or Thirdness with their much more restrictive natures!!!!!

 

Edwina

 

 

 

 

 

On Jan 9, 2024, at 11:08 AM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote:

 

 

Supplement: All in all, I have the feeling, that by trying to distinguish the representamen from the object, and the immediate from the dynamical object, and including memory, then you look at more and more subsigns, the closer you try to analyse. But maybe that doesn´t matter, because with the mind it is the same, you cannot analyse mind by closer and closer looking at it? So, is semiotics rather a matter of somehow hovering over the situation, a matter of "Gestalt" (overall figure)?

 

Another problem I see, is, that the sign determines the interpretant, that would be an upward determination in categoriality- I know that not everybody agrees, that sign-object-interpretant are categorically 1-2-3. This would mean, that the categories do not only apply to modes of being (classification), but also to generalization of triadic composition. I think so, because, well, categories should apply to everything, or at least to triadicity, whether this triadicity is a relation of classification, composition, or determination. Anyway, from this point of view on, an upward determination (from 1ns to 3ns) is odd. So I guess, that what determines the interpretant is not only the sign, but the sign and the interpreter´s mind. Mind, of course, includes 3ns.

 

Gesendet: Montag, 08. Januar 2024 um 19:44 Uhr
Von: "Helmut Raulien" <h.raul...@gmx.de>
An: "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
Cc: "Peirce-L" <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>, "Edwina Taborsky" <edwina.tabor...@gmail.com>
Betreff: Aw: [PEIRCE-L] Graphical Representations of the Sign by Peirce

Edwina, list,

 

ok, I too think, that the DO does not exist without the sign, so the "sleeping" memory, in this case the knowledge, that snow can be shoveled away, is just a memory then. But in the next sign, when the person is aware of a new white, fluffy layer on the lawn and the pathway, the knowledge of new snow is part of the immediate object, because this information is transported by the sign/representamen (while the real snow is not transported, it keeps lying there, so it is the material part of the DO). And the knowledge, that snow may be handled by using a shovel, is not part of the sign, but comes from the memory. Now what is this remembered memory? Is it part of the dynamical object of "snow, actual and general", or is this memorization another representamen, that merges with the other representamen to a blended one? But anyway I am confused now, because the knowledge, that the white, fluffy layer is snow, comes from the memory too. So what is what? Or is it not one sign, but a cascade or cluster of signs with different objects, some from the memory, and others from the real snow?

 

Best, Helmut

 

 

Gesendet: Montag, 08. Januar 2024 um 17:47 Uhr
Von: "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
An: "Helmut Raulien" <h.raul...@gmx.de>
Cc: "Peirce-L" <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>, "Edwina Taborsky" <edwina.tabor...@gmail.com>
Betreff: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Graphical Representations of the Sign by Peirce

Helmut, list

I’m not quite sure if I understand your post - I don’t think that ‘habits’ [sleeping in memory?] are equivalent to Dynamicl Objects - and the Dynamical Object is always a part of the sign; ie, the DO doesn’t exist on its own outside of the semiosic interaction. 

 

With reference to the Interpretant changing the nature of the Object, I’d agree -within the understanding of the reality of evolution. That is, 

 

-  a disease, formerly reduced in its effects by an antibiotic, ….understood as O->reduction in effect, becomes, over time changed by those results [ reduction in effect] to become immune to the antibiotic.

 

- a tree, attacked by insects [ Objects]….which reduces its capacity to live [Interpretant: by the reduction of the leaves]….develops internal chemicals in the leaves  to thwart the insects [O]. But then, the insects develop new immunities to those chemicals!

 

- a word [Object] — such as the word ‘virus’…. Changes its meaning over time…

 

The point is - such changes in the nature of the functioning of the Object in the world [ disease, insects, words] can only take place if the sign vehicle [ the disease, the tree, the word] are functioning in a mode of Thirdness.  And Thirdness is vital to the nature of the universe. 

 

Again, I stress the importance of the categories in the functioning of semiosis.

 

Edwina

 

On Jan 8, 2024, at 10:19 AM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote:

 

Edwina, yes, I agree. Only the model I used is different: While you say, that the representamen grows, I talk about old and new sign. Like the snow situation is a continuous thing in reality, in the mind of the interpreter it serves as a new sign again and again. If you say, the snow situation is the representamen, ok, then it grows, but for me the appearance of the snow situation in the interpreter´s mind is the representamen in either case of noticing it. What grows in the interpreter´s mind, is the object of snow. Whether that is the immediate or the dynamical object, is hard to decide for me: At times of no sign, it still is in the interpreter´s memory: How to handle the snow. But while this knowledge is sleeping in the memory, it is not a part of any sign, so it is dynamical object, i would say. Anyway, it is hard for me to distinguish between immediate and dynamical/real object: An object part may be dynamical in the intentional or effectual interpretant, but immediate in the cominterpretant, and sometimes it may be hard to know the size of the commens, because, especially in the internet, nobody knows who is taking part in a discourse. I know, that the flow of determination can categorally not go upwards. The object determines the sign, the sign the interpretant, and the interpretant changes the object, which is some sort of determination too. And then I guess, as the interpretant serves as a new sign, this sign is, besides by the old interpretant, also determined by the now having changed object. This looks like a redundancy of course, but if the object is changed in a larger context/commens, this change too determines the sign of a smaller (sub-) commens, and in this case, this determination part is not redundant with the information/determination carried by the interpretant in the narrower commens. Like this, i think we might better see the complexity of all this, and how signs interact via object change, if we construct or tell more examples. In signs including physical action, there is an energetic interpretant, and the object change is material as well. The material part of the dynamical object then is easy to identify, as it is spatially defined, it can be marked. But the conceptual part of the dynamical object can not, that is why it is not always easy to exactly tell it from the immediate object, i guess.

 

Best, Helmut

 

 

Gesendet: Sonntag, 07. Januar 2024 um 19:28 Uhr
Von: "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
An: "Helmut Raulien" <h.raul...@gmx.de>
Cc: "Peirce-L" <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>, "Edwina Taborsky" <edwina.tabor...@gmail.com>
Betreff: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Graphical Representations of the Sign by Peirce

Helmut -  I think one has to be clear about terms.  Do you mean that the Interpretant [ which is a relation not a thing-in-itself] becomes a new triad or only a new Representamen?

 

My own view is that the Interpretant, which ‘holds and moulds’ information, contributes to the formation of both a new triad [as, for example, when nutrients from the food-as-object,  contribute to the formation of the cell-as a triadic Sign] ; when information about the weather [as object] contributes  to my Interpretant decision to shovel the snow…and I then, remember in the future what to do when snow arrives..

 

That is, this interpretant would also enhance the knowledge content of the Representamen if it were operating in its mode of Thirdness. That is, Representamens in a mode of Thirdness grow in informational content. 

 

And that’s another reason why it’s difficult to create a visual diagram of the semiosic process - those modalities - which are rarely discussed on this site. 

 

But, just as we acknowledge the semiosic determinative process of 

O-R-I…..and even

DO-IO-R-II-DI-FI.     [and I’m assuming everyone knows what these letters stand for….

 

We also have to acknowledge the modal restrictions, 

It is obvious that a Possible cannot determine anything other than a Possible, and likewise a Necessitant cannot be determined by anything other than a Necessitant (letter to Lady Welby of December 23, 1908 )

 

Essentially this sets up restrictions on the development of the informational nature of the triad. That is, an Object in a mode of 2ns cannot determine/produce an Interpretant in a mode of 3ns. A Representamen in a mode of 2ns cannot produce an Interpretant in a mode of 3ns. 

 

And it gets even more complex when you Bring in the concept of the genuine and degenerate categorical modes. 

 

That is, as an example, there is only one of the ten classes where the Interpretant is in a mode of Thirdness. One has to consider - are all three Interpretants in this mode? But - are they all ‘genuine Thirdness or is there any one of the three that is in a degenerate mode [3-1 or 3-2, ie, Thirdness degenerate in the 2nd degree or first degree]? 

BUT - we have to consider that one cannot move from Firstness to Secondness to Thirdness! Even within another mode - ie, you cannot move from 3-1 to 3-2 to 3-3 without an external ‘assistance from another sign input]. 

 

So- the universe is a complex system.

 

Edwina

 

 

On Jan 7, 2024, at 8:56 AM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote:

 

Cecile, List,

 

I think, the interconnection towards other signs takes place where the interpretant serves as a new sign. Especially, if the commens (e.g. the conversation) is not a closed one, like between two people, but includes some publishing (like in this conversation), then the conceptual dynamical object (the concept´s intension) is changed. Or with an energetic interpretant, then even the physical properties of a material object can be changed. For any sign in any other commens for which the change of object may play a role, the interpretant can serve as a new sign, which, in relation with the object, causes a new interpretant, which again may serve as a new sign in the original semiosis (the spiral).

 

Best, Helmut

 

 

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ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at 
https://cspeirce.com  and, just as well, at 
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► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON 
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► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP;  moderated by Gary Richmond;  and 
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