Joe, list, > [Joe] Ben, you say:
>> [Ben] I don't pose a tetradic reduction thesis applicable to all relations. >> I just say that there's a fourth semiotic term that isn't any of the classic >> three. A sign stands for an object to an interpretant on the basis of a recognition. I think that an increasingly good reason to suppose that recognition can't be reduced to interpretant, sign, and object, is that nobody has done so in any kind of straightforward way. > [Joe] REPLY: > [Joe] Has anybody tried? Well, yes, Gary & Bernard tried, and both of them put some effort into it. Martin Lefebvre also gave it a shot or two. I pondered their efforts for quite some time. It's what I was talking about when I said in my previous post: 66~~~~~~~ - It's been said that recognition & collateral experience are a generalized context, but that context is not what I meant by "recognition" nor what Peirce meant by "collateral experience." I've meant, for instance, your seeing somebody wear a hat just as you expected. Or like somebody talking about a bird and your checking their comments against your experiences of particular birds. - It's been said that recognition & experience are mediated or made of signs & interpretants. Those involve shifts of the semiotic frame of reference, which is a legitimate analytic move, but not a legitimate reductive move. - It's been said that the evolution of a triad -- somehow -- conveys experience without the members of the triad doing so. If there's a relationship among object, sign, interpretant, a relationship which conveys experience of the object, then that relationship IS experience of the object and is not reducible to object, sign, & interpretant -- and we're back at talking about the familiar subject of phenomenology vs. physiological analysis of vision. ~~~~~~~99 The first counterargument above was Gary's, and I agreed that there is a large context of experience collateral in many ways to many things, and it's an interesting and, I find, illuminating line of thought, because there IS a common "solidary" experiential context, the solid intertanglement of the anchorages of one's many recognitions, one which I've come to think is illuminating in regard to assertions. However it's just not what I was talking about in discussing recognitive experience formed as collateral to the sign & interpretant in respect of the object -- such experience is formed in terms of its references to the other semiotic elements, and is quite distinguishable from the generalized context. If I was supposed to be checking whether some water boiled in a pot when I was instead checking whether somebody wore a certain hat as I expected, I will hear a lot about the specific referential differences between those collaterally based recognitions from whomever I promised that I would keep an eye on the pot of water. Gary has also made a more advance form of the argument, in which he said that man is sign, the whole universe is a sign, why does one need "confirmation"? My answer was twofold, one, that by that kind of reasoning, (1) one doesn't even need an interpretant, since one is already the sign, the universe is already the sign, and (2) that most signs and interpretants aren't like that anyway, and that they should not be regarded as false partial versions of the big sign which is oneself or the grand sign which is the universe. We have to deal with signs & interpretants as they commonly are. There was actually more argument related in various ways to this, more of it is coming back to me as I write this, but let me move on. The second counterargument has been made in one form or another by you, Gary, Martin Lefebvre, and others. I addressed it in the passage above and continually throughout the post. My past discussions of phenomonological versus physiological-analytic viewpoints have been addresssed in part to it. The third counterargument was developed by Gary & Bernard in three-way interchange with me. That which I said in the quoted passage above was actually a brief form of a new response by me on it. My other response was that this object-experience-generating relationship should be tracked down in order to test whether it indeed is reducible to object, sign, or interpretant. The triad's integrity, conceived-of as object-experience formed as collateral to sign & interpretant in respect of the object, is the conception of a semiotic fourth without calling it that. Now, if sign & interpretant did not, as such, convey experience, yet some "aspect" or "relation" among them did so, perhaps over time, then we would say that they DO convey experience of the object, in virtue of that very aspect or relation. And if they conveyed object-experience but only after sufficient time and evolution, then, too, we would say that they DO convey experience of the object, just not instantaneously or as quickly as one might like. Peirce says not merely that signs don't convey experience of their objects, he says that whole systems of signs fail to do so, and that the relevant experience of the object is collateral to the system of signs. I really doubt that he means the system only with respect to a brief period of time. And it helps to try to understand WHY Peirce considered collateral experience -- not just in terms of the semiotic function which he ascribed to it, but the underlying semiotic conditions which the conception addresses. The sign is the relate to which its object is the correlate which, for whatever reason, is obscure in some regard. The sign is not the object, though the sign is "almost" the object -- a phrase which Peirce used --, so experience of the sign is not experience of the object, though it may be almost experience of the object, i.e., the sign is informative about the object without being experience of the object. Now, since the sign & interpretant convey no experience of the object, either in virtue of themselves or in virtue of some aspect, relation, or evolution of themselves, but instead represent the object in some respect to which the mind lacks experiential access, then where does the experience of the object in that respect come from? Well, the whole time, the mind is experiencing the sign &/or the interpretant. Is the mind's experience of sign & interpretant the mind's further sign or interpretant of the sign & interpretant already in question? No, because said mind's such second sign & interpretant could not convey, to that mind, experience of the sign & interpretant already in question, or of anything at all. Are we to say that the mind has no experience of its signs and interpretants? That would be a mind in dreamless sleep. At any rate, when I speak of "a mind's interpretant of a sign" and so on, I'm not talking about unconscious brain processes. I mean a mind experiencing an interpretant as an interpretant. If a quasimind, then, in some accordant sense, a quasi-experience. The mind experiences interpretant & sign, and experiences them together, observes them together, or at least checks its past experiences of them, in order to check & learn about them. Intelligent, reasonable semiosis wouldn't happen if the mind didn't do such things. Sometimes the mind also checks their object against them, and usually checks its stored object-experiences against them. Again, reasonable semiosis wouldn't happen if the mind didn't do such things. When everything checks out, stands firm, that's semiotic entelechy, the semiotic holding in completeness, ready to be built-upon and built into ongoingly renovated or new structures. >> [Ben] Basically, signs & interpretants lack experience conveyable to the >> mind. How will you reduce experience of them respecting the object, reduce >> such experience into things that lack experience conveyable to the mind? >> Where did the experience vanish to? You can analyze, but not reduce, >> experience into such by shifting phenomenological gears, semiotic frame of >> reference, etc. > [Joe] REPLY: > [Joe] I don't see anything reductive in assuming that the analysis of > cognition, including recognition, can be done in terms of a signs, objects, > and interpretants as elements of or in cognitive processes, andif this > involves shifting phenomenological gears and semiotic frames of reference > then so be it.. Your suggestion that recognition should be acknowledged to be > a distinctive fourth factor seems to accomplish nothing other than to make it > impossible to analyze recognition at all since the conception of it is > already given, as a sort of logical primitive, prior to its use as an > analytic element. If you really embrace that line of reasoning, then you embrace the reduction of the interpretant to a mere sign, a dyadic relation, because you have permitted the ignoring of polyadic references. If the mind's recognition of object, sign, & interpretant in their respects to each other is not the object, sign, or interpretant, singly, relationally, or collectively, and is not the mind's further sign of them or the mind's further interpretant of them, then what is it? Is it non-semiotic, non-logical? Yet it confirms info about the object, indeed about all three. It is none of them. It is no mere property of or relation among object, sign, &/or interpretant, no property or relation such that one would ascribe to object, sign, &/or interpretant the capabilities exerted by such property or relation. It is of none of their kinds, it is not, as recognition, another object, sign, or interpretant, or is another object only in the sense that the interpretant is another sign. The recognizant (aka recognition) is the experiential subject in contradistinction to the object. The recognition is nothing if not semiotic: It is determined semiotically by object, sign, & interpretant, it depends for its success on being determined by them, it is defined in common terms with them, and semiosis becomes unreasonable without it. What on earth is it if it's semiotically determined by them but not semiotically determined as a sign or an interpretant by them? 1. Everything semiotically determined by the object-qua-semiotic-object is determined as a sign or interpretant sign of the object. 2. The mind's recognition, in the sense in which it is such recognition, is logically, semiotically, determined by the semiotic object (as well as by the sign and interpretant), the recognition submits to them, submits to be determined by them, through their references to each other and through experiences of them, is a firm recognition if & only if it succeeds in so being determined by them, but is not, in the sense in which it is the mind's recognition, the mind's sign or intepretant sign of the object. Recognition is another relation, another role, another status, in that complex of relations. 1. & 2. flat-out contradict each other. I don't know why you don't see it as contradictory and illogical for it not to be a semiotic element. The idea of taking it as "some sort of logical primitive" which you mention reminds me of Peirce's approach to the interpretant. Maybe that's the approach to take. > But the truth is, Ben, that I just don't understand your argument. I just > can/t follow it, and I can't really answer you effectively for that reason. I > guess I will have to leave that to Gary for the time being and hope that I > will in time come to understand what you are getting at. I've already been at work on my response to his post from yesterday. That may take a little longer! > I always take what you say seriously, at the very least. Thank you for saying that! Best, Ben --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [email protected]
