[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?

[Benjamin Udell]

Gary, Joe, list,   I will stoutly ignore further posts until I finish my response to Gary's post from yesterday. It's my top priority now. But first I wanted to respond to this post of his from today, 'cuz the iron is hot, or something like that.   Gary asked how else was the collateral experience produced than by triadic semiosis.   If current experience is produced by objects, signs, intepretants, & collaterally based recognitions, then presumably the earlier experience was likewise produced by objects, signs, interpretants, & collaterally based recognitions.   The collaterally based recognition is determined by the semiosis in question, and by the semiotic object through the semiosis, and also collaterally by the same object. It arises in the course of the semiosis in question. It doesn't happen elsewhere or elsewhen. And from that point onward _any and all_ further development in the semiosis in question is also determined, logically, semiotically, by that recognition and by the object and the other semitic elements via various routes through that recognition. The recognition is a decision point in the semiosis in question, determined by it and now determining its future, inextricably part of it.   The experience on which the recognition is based is not always all in the past. The teacher of the French words, having defined them, proceeds, then, afterward, later, to use them in sentences in order to provide collateral experiences of the words themselves. Scientists develop interpretants and set about acquiring the requisite collateral experience all the time. If one has no specific memory of the semiotic object in the relevant respect, one may look at it, right there, in front of oneself, get up and walk around it, even while one observes the sign about it and while one is caught up in sign-interpretive activity. Outside or beyond the semiosis in question? I don't see how to arrive at such an idea except by conceiving of an old experience apart from its relevance and conveyance into the current semiosis. Such old experience is, at most, a potential recognition, and if it is not brought into the semiosis by the mind despite being relevant, then the actual recognition which it supports does not take place, despite the experience's being collateral to sign & interpretant in respect of the object. If you tell me about somebody, it may be somebody whom I know but whom I fail to recognize as the person about whom your talking. So my experience of that person is collateral to your representations to me about him or her, but I'm totally unaware of that collaterality, and my experience of that person may contribute practically nil to my current semiosis and, if it does contribute significantly, then only through some other relevance and in spite of my ignorance of the collaterality in question. The recognition based on that collateral experience doesn't take place, and such recognition as does take place on the basis of that experience takes place on the basis of some other collaterality or relevance. It could even happen mistakenly (I'm not using "experience" or "knowledge" as an achievement word; rather I regard it as the achievement word of, or acknowledgement by, the mind in question -- the reasonably intelligent mind, certainly the scientific intelligence, is generally aware of itself as distinguishing interpretation from confirmation.). In any case, this is why I'm often careful to speak not just of collateral experience but instead of collaterally based recognition, and -- in the case where experience is being acquired pertinent to sign & interpretant -- of the experience formed AS collateral to sign & interpretant of the object. One might call this issue the issue of the _insufficiency of unrecognized collaterality_ of experience for such experience to be able to contribute to the determination of the semiosis in question_.   Now, if past experience such as IS recalled proves insufficient to support a satisfactory recognition, and if the object is absent, then one may go and seek it out. The semiosis in question awaits the answer and sometimes that's the only pragmatic and prudent thing to do. It's on hold for a while, perhaps trying out candidate interpretants and trains of interpretants, but --  to the extent that it has invested in dependence on the yet-unacquired experience, it basically is awaiting the results of tests, so that it can pragmatically incorporate those results as yet more determination from the object and from semioses determined by the object. Separate semioses could unite. Isn't that what happens when the interpretant supplies its own, separate representation of the object? Some "outside" thread, soever slender, of semiosis gets woven in. I don't think that it's necessarily that the interpretant accesses some separate thought that had already taken place about the particular object in question, though such could happen; it's that in any case the interpretant has re-represented the object in terms fitting that stage of the semiosis, in an adaptation functioning in order to perhaps simply to preserve a sense by a bit of "translating" it, into a context a bit shifted, a bit more developed. But this does involve drawing upon the world of ideas for something suitable for an object of the _kind_ in question, or in the logical relation in question, etc., and thus drawing determination from the object's kind, or logical relation, or etc.   When Grace learns more about Hamlet, it will be through experiences of Hamlet, the experience of reading the play or watching it performed, and, in a fictional, imaginary world or universe of discourse, she will witness Hamlet himself. Either that, or she will learn more from reasonable evidence about Hamlet -- her teacher will tell her about Hamlet and her teacher will in that sense supply or constitute reasonable good evidence about Hamlet. Grace in any case won't just sit there concentrating on some remembered sign of Hamlet and her evolving construals of that sign, she will be developing her idea of Hamlet in the context of testing it against the teacher's remarks as experiential evidence, or the reading or theatrical experience. The collateral experience is certainly not beyond the semiosis in question. And, yes, one has some discretion, some element of freedom, in regard to what to have as recognition and what to have as an interpretant that needs experiential support. I have a feeling that Arrow's & Sen's work on impossibilities may have some application here. Anyway, without some discretionary power, one would be code-bound. But there are practical penalties for making the wrong choice, the whole point of checking is to avoid getting into such trouble, and anyway sooner or later the truth will out, but one would like to be there to see it rather than getting removed from one's opportunities or from the gene pool altogether.   In the experience of the semiosis, one conveys one's relevant memories, be they sufficient or insufficient, or sufficient at least to help formulate tests for the object, one conveys those memories into the experience, that's the power of experience, to impart itself into the experiencing of the semiosis in question and become part of the semiosis in question. The connections with further experience are drawn right in, just as the interpretant's ties to other ideas are pulled right in and the interpretant itself was formed out of related or similar ideas and indeed the interpretant represents the object separately from -- collaterally to -- the sign which the interpretant interprets -- where did that collateral representation come from? -- the problem which you see with collateral experience as being rooted somehow "outside" the semiosis in question afflicts the interpretant itself, with its "separate" representation of the object by the standard semiotic account -- I just don't see it as a problem or an affliction. Nobody sees it as a problem or affliction, instead it's valorized as essential to triadicity. Now of course, if one is interpreting, one will tend to interpret into signs & systems of signs with which one is reasonably familiar, even if one remains unfamiliar with the object in respect of the implied news about it. One brings not only a wealth of experience but a wealth of representations & interpretive ideas to semiosis. Insofar as the separate representation is non-accidentally true to the object, it is logically determined by the object. But, again, why is the interpretant's separate leg to the object "part" of the semiosis, but the recognition's separate leg to the object _not_ "part" of the semiosis in question? That's just inconsistent.  If the interpretant's separate leg to the object is essential to making the semiosis triadic, then why isn't the collaterally based recognition's separate leg to the object essential in making the semiosis tetradic? In fact, that's essential to why semiosis is tetradic. At no stage does semiosis happen in a vaccuum. The criterion of whether something is or isn't part of the semiosis in question is, simply that the thing arise in the course of the semiosis in question and as determined by the semiosis in question at least up to that point, and contribute semiotic determination from its point onward to any further development of the semiosis in question. The recognition arises as determined by the semiosis and in the course of the semiosis, it is determined by the semiosis and by the object and other semiotic elements through the semiosis and collaterally by the object of the semiosis, and from that point onward _any and all_ further development in the semiosis in question is also determined, logically, semiotically, by that recognition. That recognition is a decision point in the semiosis in question. It's part of the semiosis in question, very much so indeed.   Now, after a break, I'll get back to replying to your post from yesterday. I can't keep up with ya!   Best, Ben   Ben, Joe, List, Ben wrote: I don't know why you don't see it as contradictory and illogical for it not to be a semiotic element. It seems to me that Joe is arguing--as Bernard Morand and I and others have--that whatever is held to be collateral knowledge (brought about by collateral observation and 'held' in memory) was itself produced through a process of triadic semiosis. How else? It is not that one may not need collateral knowledge of something in any given new situation--say a discussion of Hamlet--but the question is what does that collateral knowledge amount to? Certainly at the moment of the discussion it lies beyond the specific semiosis in question (the present discussion), but not beyond all semiois, not, for example, the semiosis which originally produced it (so, while it seems unlikely that 5 year old Grace has collateral knowledge of Hamlet, say, when she gains it it will be through a semiotic process). That is why it seems illogical to me to include your fourth as a semiotic element. Gary --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com