Gary R., List:
Thank you for your efforts in this slow read. It is instructive.
I am rather reluctant to comment as history dictates that my scientific
approach to reading C S Peirce are idiosyncratic with respect to the surfaces
of philosophy which are used to base these discussions and which, in my
opinion, do not cohere with the mathematical, chemical and empirical roots of
his thinking.
My principle purpose of this post is to point to the role of indexing in the
indexical symbol systems. In these symbol systems, the presupposition is that
the composition of messages (signs of all ilk) is constructed from the
indexical components of the communications system and use purposefully designed
signs to point to the roles of indexing. For example, the transitivity sign or
the equivalence sign. For example, one notes with dismay that indexing
indexical signs are nearly absent from modern set theory. This is, in my
opinion, among the reasons that CSP declined to give set theory serious
consideration for a generalized inductive logic. [ Purposefully, this is a
wide-sweeping statement!]
In this sense, the indexical symbol systems are self - referential.
In this sense, the indexical symbols can be composed into icons and iconic
representations of qualisigns.
In this sense, the indexical symbol systems can operate with a logical grammar
that differs from the usual utterances of the spoken language where the
indexing plays a trivial role.
From my idiosyncratic perspective, the indexical symbol systems are constructed
to communicate with symbols, utterances (sounds) being a secondary mode of
expressing the meaning. Thus, the empirical content of indexical symbol systems
can be used to construct logics that a ostensive with nature. This is to be
contrasted with the alphabetic systems that intrinsically focus on the telic
choices of the utterer, the personal emotional choices of the individual.).
CSP's teleologic perspective was extremely wide and used the concepts of logic
is all three of the trivium, not merely the grammar of the relative pronoun.
Idiosyncratically Yours
Jerry
On Aug 14, 2011, at 4:11 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
> List,
>
> Gary Fuhrman sent me the following response to Section 3 of Joe's paper. He
> will be away from his home and, it would appear "offline" for a few weeks for
> personal reasons, thus unable to participate in the remainder of this slow
> read. He offered this post "on the off chance that it might be of some use"
> in the small read. I think he makes some interesting and controversial
> points regarding especially the treatment of indexicality in Joe's paper.
> I'll only make a very few brief comments as I'm preparing to send my last
> post (Section 4, paragraph 16) on this read to the list tomorrow and need to
> work on that. Gary F. wrote:
>
> GF: With reference to your comment on paragraph 12 of JR's essay, I couldn't
> agree more [[ that indexicality necessarily has a crucial job to perform in
> bringing about the unified object Joe intends (the meaning of his essay),
> never allowing the reader to forget that there is this unified object. ]]
>
> GF: Well, i might prefer to say that the meaning of his essay is the
> interpretant rather than the object of it ... but it's the object, and the
> sign's connection with it through its indexical function, that i'm concerned
> with here.
>
> GR: I would agree with Gary that the "meaning of the essay is the
> interpretant"--I should have written something like Joe's 'purpose' or
> 'purpose in writing the essay' (that is, his own understanding of the meaning
> of the topic of his essay).
>
> GF: Referring to “a complex written sign, such as the present essay”, JR says
> that “the indices proper which this or any such sign contains are themselves
> sinsigns.” But surely there's more to proper indexicality than a sign being a
> sinsign. And i'm wondering whether a verbal sign (signsign or not) can ever
> be a proper index. Consider JR's example:
>
> [[ ... if a child simply says "ball" in the immediate presence of a ball,
> that sinsign--the word "ball" considered as something actually occurring--may
> index that ball even though the legisign it replicates is symbolic rather
> than indexical. If, on the other hand, the ball is indicated with the use of
> a pointing finger or demonstrative pronoun the indexing does indeed occur
> under the control of a specifically indexical legisign. ]]
>
> GF: In the case of a one-word utterance like the example given in the first
> sentence, i think it is questionable whether the word "ball" can properly
> index that ball at all (as a pointing finger can). And if we add “a pointing
> finger or demonstrative pronoun” to the utterance, it's not entirely clear
> what it means to say that “the indexing does indeed occur under the control
> of a specifically indexical legisign.”
>
> GR: At first I didn't think I agreed with Gary F. here, and not only because
> his argument would seem to eliminate one whole class of signs in Peirce's
> classification, namely, rhematic indexical legisigns. In Joe's example, which
> Gary gives above, even without pointing, even without saying "ball," if the
> child were to merely face the ball and--assuming for the moment that it were
> the only object clearly in view in, say, some experimental context--if that
> child only said "that!" it would seem to indicate the ball clearly enough for
> the simple communication being considered. Here the demonstrative pronoun ("a
> specifically indexical legisign") seems to perform the indexing quite nicely
> with or without the pointing finger. But Gary seems to be making a different
> point; he continues:
>
> GF: In general semiotic terms, the larger question here is how (or whether)
> verbal signs can direct attention to their real objects. If they can't do
> this, how does the iconic part of the verbal sign get connected to the real
> object? In the case of JR's paper, the question is how the interpreting
> attention is directed to the object of the paper as a whole.
>
> GF: JR's answer is to that question is here in paragraph 12:
>
> [[ In a sign as complex as the present theoretical paper, the indexical
> legisigns it contains--such general referential devices as relative pronouns,
> for example--obviously play a major role in controlling the referential
> elements in it in such a way as to insure that the object of the paper as a
> whole is always being referred to, directly or indirectly. ]]
>
> GF: But i think this needs some further explanation. Part of the problem here
> is that a word can only function as part of a genuine sign. A single word by
> itself is not a sign at all, because it lacks the power of generating an
> interpretant. It is possible (and not uncommon) for a genuine sign to contain
> only a single word, but i don't think JR's “ball” case is the best example of
> this. Peirce gives several examples in his later works; one is in MS 318
> (EP2:407). His explanation makes it clear that the indexical part of the sign
> is not found in the verbal part, but rather in the situation of utterance,
> the noverbal part of the sign.
>
> GR: At first blush GF seems to contradict himself by saying both that "A
> single word by itself is not a sign at all, because it lacks the power of
> generating an interpretant" and in the very next sentence that "It is
> possible (and not uncommon) for a genuine sign to contain only a single
> word." But what he seems especially concerned with here is that "the
> indexical part of the sign is not found in the verbal part, but rather in the
> situation of utterance, the nonverbal part of the sign." Yet, isn't it the
> purpose of the index exactly to indicate something "in the situation of
> utterance," in the physical or intellectual environment or context? And while
> no single word has the power to generate an interpretant outside of some
> "situation of utterance," someone shouting the single word "Fire!" in a
> theater will certainly generate interpretants. Indeed, the need for context
> (and collateral experience) would seem to be a requisite for all types of
> signs--not just indices--to function as signs, that is, to generate
> interpretants. And, indeed, GF continues:
>
> GF: In that same paragraph on EP2:407, Peirce also considers a very different
> kind of utterance, one more like JR's essay, saying that the indexical
> elements of such a sign, insofar as they are verbal, can only direct
> attention within the context of the essay. “Where the sign is only a part of
> another sign, so that there is a context, it is in that context that the
> [Object of the sign] is likely, in part at least, to be found; though it is
> not absolutely necessary that it should be found in any part of the sign”
> (EP2:407).
>
> GF: But if the indexical function of words can only point within the larger
> verbal sign itself, where in a “complex written sign” can we find an index to
> the Object which is external to the whole sign? Peirce seems pretty clear
> that the Object can only be recognized by “collateral observation” – that is,
> by attending to the existing situation and not to the verbal context. How
> then do words have any indexical function at all? Peirce's answer is on the
> next page: “though a sign cannot express its Object, it may describe, or
> otherwise indicate, the kind of collateral observation by which that Object
> is to be found” (EP2:408).
>
> GF: Words, then, can't really direct our attention – which in the case of
> verbal communication must be joint attention – but they can offer some
> constraints on where attention should be directed. This is an indirect sort
> of indexicality, because it works only to the extent that each party to the
> communicative process already has a similar repertoire of “kinds of
> collateral observation,” each of which can be more or less predictably evoked
> by some verbal pattern.
>
> GF: This indirectness of verbal indexicality introduces fallibility into the
> communicative process even before inquiry commences. In more conventionally
> logical terms, we may think we are agreeing (or disagreeing) about should be
> predicated of a subject, when in fact we aren't even talking about the same
> subject. Actually, communication is probably more successful when we
> disagree, because the disagreement may call into question something that we
> usually and naturally take for granted – that we're talking about the same
> thing – and thus reveals a previously hidden difference between the immediate
> objects of our respective signs. At that point, we either abandon the inquiry
> in despair, or we redirect it with a heightened awareness that it really is a
> bog we're walking on, even if it doesn't seem to be quaking at the moment.
>
> GF: I think this throws a somewhat sobering light on the autonomy of the
> semiotic process where words are involved, because the autonomy of the
> process must depend on indices more genuine than words can be.
>
> GR: There's a great deal, I think, to be reflected on here, but for now I'll
> only say a couple of things. First, I would tend to agree that "communication
> is probably more successful when we disagree" since expressed disagreement
> can uncover, as Gary says, "a previously hidden difference between the
> immediate objects of our respective signs." I recall giving what I thought
> was an excellent talk at a conference a few years. When it came to the Q & A
> there were no questions. I was confused and unsettled by this. Later, at
> dinner, I discovered that a number of my colleagues thought my presentation
> was very good, and that I'd expressed myself so well that there was, in fact,
> no need for questions. For the moment that made me feel much better; but, as
> the week went by and I discussed my ideas with some of these folk, I
> discovered that some of them had misinterpreted key elements of my talk,
> translating, for example, certain terms I used into their own understandings
> of, for example, "pragmatic" (their's based on Morris, mine on Peirce). Our
> communication in these matters improved considerably as this disagreement was
> uncovered.
>
> GR: But as to GF's last point that this communication "bog we're walking on"
> puts the autonomy of the semiotic process into question because semiosis
> "must depend on indices more genuine than words can be" seems to me doubtful.
> I can't argue this just now, but to suggest the direction that argumentation
> might take I would point to the analog of the autonomous organism yet
> situated in and interacting with its environment.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary Richmond
>
> Gary Richmond
> Philosophy and Critical Thinking
> Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
> ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
> 718 482-5700
>
> >>> Gary Richmond <richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu> 8/9/2011 9:13 PM >>>
> Section 3: The interplay of iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity in
> semiosis [12-15]
>
> This section continues the argument begun in Section 2 on the autonomous
> nature of semiosis.
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