Dear List,
Forgive my delay here. I have been effected by power outages on the West Coast
due to high winds and even now, after 72+hrs, still have no power at the
mountain retreat where I live and work.
Continuing the slow read of:
On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic by Joseph
Ransdell
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/paradigm.htm
> [13]
> ... I can illustrate what I am trying to say only by taking a single sort of
> case; but I will take one which would appear prima facie to be especially
> difficult to conceive as exemplifying a scientific or empirical approach,
> namely, the case of a semiotic analysis of a literary text, a story with
> purely fictitious characters.
>
> [14]
> There are many reasons why a literary critic might be interested in a certain
> novel or short story or epic or folk tale or whatever, and many different
> sorts of things a semiotic analysis of it might aim at revealing. Semiotic
> does not prescribe a special agenda in application but rather a putatively
> coherent analytical framework that has to interpreted in application
> according to the intellectual needs of the field of inquiry. But let us
> suppose that the aim is simply that of conveying to others a certain
> interesting reading of the text which the critic has discovered, or at least
> believes to have discovered, and thinks worthy of communicating to others.
> The starting point could be — though this is not suggested as the normal
> starting point, which is up to the literary critic or theorist to decide —
> with the marks, the configurations, on the pages of a text. These marks will
> normally have multiple sign-values of several basically different sorts —
> symbolic, indexical, and iconic — which, when well-interpreted, will reveal
> certain phenomenal objects, such as people, places, situations, events, and
> so forth. (This is the story proper, and it is, as a whole, a phenomenal
> object.) Now these objects are not themselves either physical or mental per
> se: they are simply phenomena which become present to us when we interpret
> the configurations on the page intelligently. (We might say that these
> phenomenal beings are imaginary, but I don't know what this would add to what
> is already assumed when the work is identified as a work of fiction. In fact,
> that is perhaps what we mean in identifying it as a work of fiction: namely,
> that one is to regard the phenomenal entities which compose the story simply
> as phenomenal entities -- at least on the first level of interpretation. ) In
> any case, these phenomenal objects (people, situations, events, etc.) may
> themselves be profitably regardable as signs of various types having various
> sorts of interpretability, and the intelligent interpretation of them will in
> turn reveal or make present a new set of objects. And then it may be that
> some or all of this further set of objects will also be profitably regardable
> as signs the interpretation of which will reveal still further objects, and
> so on, to whatever point it finally becomes unprofitable to seek still
> further objects in this way.
I acknowledge, but ignore for the moment, the comments that have been made by
Gary and Ben regarding the notion of "phenomenal object" and will return to
them in my later remarks.
Ransdell makes remarks here that appear to intuitively identify what the term
"phenomenal objects" may refer to. According to this account the "phenomenal
object" under discussion is "the story proper" and its elements. These
"elements" include, he says, "people, situations and events." I have to say
that this analysis does not satisfy me. It is, perhaps, the set of signs and
relations that appear to the mind, that enter semeiosis, in the course of
apprehending (reading) the story and linger there after. Hence the "objects"
that concern us are distinct differentiations of the story itself and its
parts. But it seems to me that there is not point in which the entire story
with its elements is laid out before us as this account suggests. It is too
static and, perhaps, too absolute. That is, the account of "phenomenal object"
is a convenience, it foregoes the ongoing semeiotic process as the story is
constructed and considered by the apprehender. The nature of these "objects" is
that they play against the landscape of that which is previously apprehended
and established in the mind, such that one individual may apprehend the
elements of the story and another may not, that the "objects" will bring to
mind (draw into semeiosis) previous accounts of a similar kind that will vary
according to the established state of the individual mind. I may, for example,
associate "Beatrice" and her predicament with a girl of my past that the
description may conjure. Similarly, my comprehension of the text may be limited
or shaped by the competencies of language and culture.
Indeed, this is exactly how fiction works. It is not static, nor is it absolute
- and, indeed, nowhere is there an "object" beyond the marks apprehended and
these marks, the text, are merely triggers, evoking the process of semeiosis in
one "direction" or another.
>
> [15]
> Works such as Mann's Doctor Faustus and The Magic Mountain exemplify the sort
> of story which has many levels of profitably interpretable objects, many
> "layers of significance," as we say. On the other hand, there are other
> texts, interesting and valuable in a different way, which, though not very
> "deep," in that sense, offer many alternative possibilities of interpretation
> at a relatively superficial level, all of which may be more or less equally
> valuable in one way or another. And of course these are but two types of
> interpretational potentiality (which are often skillfully combined); for
> there are stories whose objects are signs of other stories or of objects in
> other stories; there are stories whose objects have little or no
> interpretational depth at all, nor afford much leeway in interpretation, but
> which are extraordinary perspicuous or gratifying or instructive to
> contemplate; there are stories whose deeper level objects are historically
> real persons and occurrences, which may in turn be signs of mythical beings,
> which may in turn be signs of abstractions; and so on.
And so there are many "possibilities of interpretation," each dependent on the
"internal landscape" of the apprehender. How are we to measure the value of one
interpretation over another. And surely, my interpretation only has some impact
upon you if I am able to recast the story in this light - at which point the
entire process is begun again in you. At which point this necessarily leads to
your interpretation in the light of your internal landscape.
This leads us necessarily to ask how we may build consensus - for it surely
cannot be by apprehending the text alone. And at this point enters a social
behavior in which dialog plays the principle role in semeiosis, transforming,
affirming, denying our understanding of the text.
>
> [16]
> Now let us suppose, as I have said, that the literary critic is concerned
> only to explain or indicate a certain interpretational path to be taken which
> — so the claim or hypothesis goes — will lead the reader into the presence of
> an object or a domain of objects which no one has previously recognized as
> being available in and through the work. These objects may be anything
> whatsoever. For example, they may simply be such entities as love or death or
> greed in general: not this or that person's loving or dying or greediness,
> but just love or death or greed as phenomena which the text, so interpreted,
> makes present to the reader. Simone Weil's essay on the Iliad, for example,
> explains it as a sign whose deeper object is brute force; that is, her essay
> exemplifies a literary analysis the purpose of which is to teach the reader
> how to so read the Iliad as to have this simple entity — brute force — become
> present to them phenomenally. Now love and death and greed and brute force
> are phenomenal entities of the sort which can appear in various special
> metaphysical contexts: for example, in the metaphysical context of the
> historical order, or in the metaphysical context of biological science, or in
> the metaphysical context of one's own personal life. But as presented in a
> story these phenomena may appear in no special metaphysical context at all
> but merely be present to one as phenomena, without further qualification.
And so now we are led to challenge the very notion of the "phenomenal object"
for it appears to merely to be another term for "concept." This may or may not
be problematic but it seems to me, potentially, to be contrary to the main goal
of this paper, which is the reduction of terms. Ransdell uses the term concept
just once in the phrase "the concept of an hallucination" and numerous times
uses the term "conception," as in "conception of time." How does the
"conception of time" differ from the "phenomenal object of time" as it appears
as the product of any account? Is it, perhaps, too general a notion to qualify
as an "object?" Perhaps we are to take the distinction between one and the
other merely to be that the "phenomenal object" has context. Is it, perhaps, a
way of speaking about concepts as they arise in relation to other concepts?
>
> [17]
> When literary analysts or critics write books or essays with this particular
> sort of purpose, can they be said to be proceeding empirically, in the sense
> of making an appeal to experience and to experiment? Can they be said to be
> practicing empirical semiotics? I would say Yes, they can. In fact, they
> would be doing a rather poor or worthless job of literary analysis if they
> were not. For isn't the substance of a claim such as Weil's, for example,
> simply this, that regardless of what you may think at first, if you follow
> the interpretational path she indicates you will find yourself finally
> compelled by the experience of the object which will reveal itself to you to
> acknowledge that you do, indeed, have before you brute force itself, as an
> object for your contemplation and reflection? There are, of course, other
> ways of directing someone's attention to brute force: hitting them in the
> face, for example, or hitting someone else in the face in their presence. To
> explicate this difference would involve explicating the idea of esthetic
> distance, which I cannot attempt to do here; but it is worth pointing out
> that one may learn something about such a thing as love or death or brute
> force or greed from an esthetic experience which one would not learn by
> active or non-esthetic participation in or experience of them.
An individual that has never been hit in the face and has never seen anyone
else hit in the face is going to have a hard time appreciating the above
paragraph. But all of us that have indeed been hit in the face knows the
experience that Ransdell is referring to. And the respective meaning to each of
us will become manifest when someone attempts to hit us in the face. You and I
may dodge the event, an innocent is likely to be caught unaware. It is not
behavior they will expect.
Our ability to commonly interpret marks rely upon the great uniformity of the
world. In species that uniformity is determined by structure, derived from
genetic reproduction of similar individuals, and modified by the environmental
influences upon us. Individuals of the same species that are "the uncarved
block" will behave alike, individuals whose development subsequently exposes
them to the same influences will behave alike, individuals with diverse
environmental influences will not behave alike.
The disagreement, for example, concerning the interpretation of this paper
results from the differences between myself and the others that have read the
paper. We may eventual be able to resolve these differences by making
ourselves, in the necessarily relevant ways, the same or very similar. Any
continued disagreement will result from our inability to do so. But this does
imply that our agreement deals with what Ransdell intended, only that we concur
on the interpretation of the marks he produced.
> [18]
> Thus, in this sort of case at least, all of the essential elements of the
> experiential and the experimental — hence the empirical — are as present as
> they are in what is more commonly regarded as exemplifying these conceptions.
> Or at least they are so when the analysis is performed and presented
> responsibly. For the critic must explain or indicate in some reasonably clear
> way the procedures the reader of the text is to follow in order to arrive at
> a certain predicted result, and it is surely a matter of fact whether the
> predicted experience occurs or not. I cannot, of course, argue that the same
> is true of all other sorts of semiotic research simply on the basis of this
> one sort of case; but this will, I hope, provide you with an example
> sufficiently clear to enable you to put it to the test yourself in respect to
> your own area of special concern.
And this all leads us, as it does Ransdell, to the assertion that the empirical
is not merely a preference or choice, it is the necessary basis of epistemology
- and semeiotic theory. And further, that the considerations of the humanities
must rest upon the same foundations as those of science. It is, afterall, the
positivist stance.
With respect,
Steven
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