Sun, 05 Feb 2006 19:11:17 +0100, Bernard Morand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
a ecrit:
(originally in response to Charles Rudder, here taken out of context):
Now, I have questions about your idea that "the interpretant represents
the sign as the same sign that it replicates". In fact, the replica is
the sign itself, and the interpretant will become a replica of another
sign....perhaps, sooner or later. My reading of Peirce led me to think
that the interpretant is such that it is in the same relation to the
object as the sign itself is. Nothing makes necessary that the
interpretant be some kind of clone of the sign it interprets, no?
Furthermore I don't understand what you are calling a "rule" in this
context nor the reasons you have to say that "for anything to be a sign
it must be a symbol".
Cher Bernard,
I can��t tell you what your answer to your question is, but I think it is
important
to understand that signs operate in a continuum. Whenever you have before
you as
a sign what you were looking for, you are too late. Semiosis has already
happened
(all you get is replicas). When you are still struggeling to find out what
it is,
you are too early. But you have to be just in time. Though, if you want to
catch
your own thought in full flight and get the ���Ding an sich��� (thing in
itself, mind Kant),
this is impossible. It's a continuous process. So the situation seems to
be hopless.
But it isn��t, provided we stop the game of peeling onions.
You can catch your thought in full flight. But only indirectly. What you
want to do is to form
a hypostatic abstraction: You project out as an object what your thought
is. Now this object
isn't the thing in itself, but it is an arbitrary determination of it
insofar as your thought
is a lawfull process (lawful, not awfull). In a sense you are ahead of
your thought with this,
since your thought wasn't yet quite complete (otherwise you wouldn't have
had the wish to make it
clearer, to ���get at it��� by means of hypostatic abstration).
A little bit of illustration doesn't hurt, so if we shouldn't peel onions
what would be fair game then?
Let's say you want to shoot a bird in full flight with a rifle. No, we had
better take bow and arrow
for fairness' sake. Now you don't aim right at the bird, but you aim at
where the bird isn't: ahead of it
(you do something and the arrow does something quite different then!).
There happen an awful lot of things
in the process as a whole and I can't analyse it all.
But I would like to direct your attention to one other important thing
which often seems to me
to be overlooked or misunderstood when seen and which at first perhaps
sounds mystical,
but in truth isn't: in a curoious way you have to let the bird let hit you
as much as you aim to hit it.
It is this: In order to be a good marksman you don't aim right at the bird
where it isn't.
You intentionally make things still worse! You stripe vaguely above around
over your point
with a curious sort of unintentional intention. The reason is: there is
some tremor in your
arms and hands, there is the pulse of your blood and besides: trying to do
something with
too much determination doesn't help to be relaxed. And even then: there is
also a lot of
mental processing in you too: if you say Now! to yourself in order to
shoot, the tip of
your arrow will not be anymore where you have just seen it right at the
moment.
Thinking takes time and saying Now! means you still have to get things
from your speech
processor in your brain into your muscles (or whatever else you do then).
No satisfaction guaranteed with what I say, but isn't it curious that we
need arbitrary
determination and essential vagueness to precisely catch a bird in full
flight? The strangest
thing is perhaps that it happens on a regular basis. You can get really
good at catching birds
in full flight. With enough experience and hard training perhaps you can
as good as you care or dare.
It just so happens.
Later in the kitchen then with your bird you can make good use of your
onions, by the way.
Sorry, I really don't want to intrude into your very interesting
discussion.
Just some musings as an aside.
Greetings,
Thomas.
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