Frances, list,
It's a bit hard to respond to this because, though it's okay for you to
disagree with Peirce, you do so in ways that are vague to me; I don't really see
clearly the viewpoint which you hold, so it's hard for me to address it. For
instance, you say things like "...which signs then stand analogously for other
things that may not be objects or signs, such as essences or unicorns or
angels." Peirce is willing to treat, as objects and signs, such things as
essences, unicorns (as objects & signs in a fictional world), and angels
(whether angels would be treated as fiction, fact, or indeterminate, would
depend on the semiotician, but still they would be signs & semiotic
objects). You've clarified your use of the word "synechastic" somewhat, though
not enough, and you still haven't defined "continuent," which is a hard one to
figure out, especially with its anti-etymological "-ent" ending (the form would
normally be "continuant"; I'm not saying that one should always use correct
Latin participle forms, but please define and explain "continuent."). Things
of these kinds make people worry that we're being subjected to a Sokal test
of some kind http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ .
You wrote,
"These guesses of mine about the topical issues at hand may possibly go to
avoiding the logical or semiotical contradictions that your theory of the
recognizant seems fearful."
I don't know how to address them as _*possibly*_
going to avoiding the logical or semiotical contradictions which I've tried to
spotlight. They seem to start from the assumption, that triadicity &
trichotomicality must be preserved, ergo how, possibly, might the recognizant
aka agnoscent (the collaterally based experiential recognition of sign &
interpretant in respect of the object) be accommodated in the triadistic or
trichotomistic framework? I don't know how to respond to them except to say
that, if the agnoscent is logically determined or determining but is not
logically determined or determining in the role of object, sign, and
interpretant, then it is a fourth semiotic element, and that won't be changed by
any shifting of the agnoscent into some other division of logic; rather it
will be "changed," or the idea of it will be defeated, by defeating the idea
that semiotic triadic sufficiency means that anything which is logically
determinational is logically determinational in the role of object, sign, or
interpretant, and/or by defeating the idea that the agnoscent is logically
determinational and/or by defeating the idea that the agnoscent is neither
interpretant nor sign nor semiotic object in the relations in which it is the
agnoscent, and/or by defeating some idea decisively involved with those
ideas. I'm not sure how to respond to a counterargument that neither grants, nor
argues against, the idea that _triadic sufficiency means that anything which
is logically determinational is logically determinational in the role of object,
sign, or interpretant_, and which neither grants, nor argues against, the
idea that _the agnoscent is logically determinational_ and which
neither grants, nor argues against, the idea that _the agnoscent is neither
interpretant nor sign nor semiotic object in the relations in which it is
the agnoscent_.
But let's say that you just aren't ready to grapple so directly with what
I've said. I'm often not ready to grapple directly with ideas with which I
disagree. Why don't I just go along and see what turns up? I have,
indeed, tried. But it is hard for me to follow your reasoning when the framework
which you propose, though it is triadistic/trichotomistic (I once suggested
the word "triastic" for that, but nobody seemed to like it), is
nevertheless not quite Peircean and instead departs from the Peircean in ways
that I have trouble understanding, ways that would be helpfully defined with
some bold plain strokes isolating the key differences from Peirce. Okay, but
I'll try, and we'll see whether I succeeded in not misunderstanding you.
In particular, you keep talking about "non-semiosic representamens." Yet
Peirce introduced a provisional distinction between sign & representamen
exactly in order to account for a case (the hypothetical example of a sunflower
turning as producing another sunflower turning) where at least some elementary
_semiosis_ takes place without the involvement of an
actual mind. The world, said Peirce, is perfused with signs, and the everyday
material world has endless signs, but the everyday world is not perfused with
_embodied processes of semiosis_, and its signs are signs in virtue of
one's mind's being so constituted and arranged as to be addressed by those
signs. But what if a sunflower...? asked Peirce, and he gave a hypothetical
example of a sunflower turning which produces another sunflower turning, and
this is an example of a semiosis, an actually embodied process of
semiosis, without the involvement of an actual mind. So, if anything, in
terms of Peirce's provisional or tentative distinction between sign and
interpretant, it is _physical natural signs_, which are
non-semiosic, except in respect of leading to semioses in minds, and it is the
representamen which is _always_ semiosic.
You wrote,
"...if mind wants to sense or think or know about any phaneron, it must do
it by utilizing signs, which signs then stand analogously for other things that
may not be objects or signs, such as essences or unicorns or angels. Indeed, if
the assumed nomenal or epiphenomenal aspects of the world are to be sensed at
all, it must be only by phenomenal signs that act as analogies."
That signs & interpretants are needed for intelligent perception &
observation, doesn't mean that we have truck only with signs & interpretants
and not with objects themselves. To be a sign or an interpretant or a semiotic
object, is a role. Experience is enriched by being formed as collateral to sign
& interpretant in respect of the object. One enriches & clarifies
experience by bringing interpretants to it, interpretants which will clarify or
fail to clarify and which will be borne out or be overturned, and this is a
process of increasing the soundness of experience. You know the difference
between interpretation and confirmation -- confirmation or disconfirmation is,
at bottom, when you and/or your real connections stand to
be actually, existentially affected by something. Biological
evolution tends to punish bad interpretants by removing the interpreter from the
gene pool. We have brains and try to take that task over from biological
evolution, for we can conduct serious tests without their being tests to our
destruction. Some see in such confirmation mainly brute secondness somehow
involved in triadic semiosis without semiosis' logically determining or being
determined by those confirmations/disconfirmations AS
confirmations/disconfirmations. In the conception of confirmation, however, I
see the stable balancing of forces, into logical structures, stable balances,
bornenesses, entelechies, no more or less different from unbalanced forces,
agencies, and Peircean brute secondness, than matter is from energy, or
_patiens_ is from _actum_. The recognizant (aka agnoscent) is
part of semiosis as a process of logical determination. Etymologically,
"semiosis" says "sign process." But philosophically, semiosis is the logical
process of inquiry, coming to rest with the reasonable elimination of doubt,
a holding-in-completeness, a firmness, _on the basis of which_ one
acts (and further inquires, too). Doubt's reasonable elimination never did,
does, will, or would happen by mere interpretation, but only ever, when at all,
by confirmation, corroboration, verification, etc., etc.
You're saying (or seem to be saying) that we do NOT have direct experience
of objects, and that one experiences one's experiences as drawings or narratives
about things. I do experience things as signs and, in a sense, as drawings or
narratives, about hidden aspects and hidden other things,
but I don't experience _everything_ as hidden that way! It's just
phenomenologically false. I don't experience everything as pure map & no
territory. You're reintroducing the noumenal world which Peirce sought to
banish. Moreover, it leads to an infinite regress of the bad kind. If I
experience things only as signs, then do I experience those signs as the signs
themselves or only as represented by still other signs? So the conception
of phenomena is drawn into the black hole of the conception of
noumena.
There is a difference between the tree itself and some picture of it. I
don't think that an actual tree before me is merely an iconic symbol for a tree.
If we don't hold that there are actual objects which we actually experience,
then we won't be able to reasonably hold that there are actual signs which we
actually experience, either. One will see not an actual picture
of a tree, but an icon of a picture of a tree, though not an actual icon of
a picture of a tree, but merely an icon of an icon of a picture of a tree,
though not an actual icon of an icon of a picture of a tree, but merely an icon
of an icon of an icon of a picture of a tree...etc.
So, as far as I can tell, you preserve semiotic triadicity by eliminating
our experience of objects and, thereby, our existential stakes in the
soundness of our experiences. But it is only in grappling with our experiences
and their objects, in terms of our existential connections and risks, that we
stay in contact with reality -- otherwise the conception of semiosis turns into
a conception of a mirror maze where the object disappears, then the mirrors
too.
Best, Ben
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frances Kelly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2006 10:29 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from
"Peircean elements" topic)
There has been a lot of clarifying here on this topical subject. It does not seem to me however that there is yet any agreement on whether the collateral experience and even in the form of a recognizant is indeed part of semiosis and thus a trichotomic semiosis. In any event, here are a few further comments of mine that may be to the point.
If the semiosic recognizant, as the experience of a sign by any sentient organism, is to be held remaining within semiosis as an object that acts as the sign of another object, and also still be held as collateral in some way, then this collateral idea might be salvaged by assigning the experiential recognizant to the rhetorical or methodeutical division of semiosis, as say the pragmatic response to the grammatical interpretant effect and the critical judgemental worth of the sign. The rhetoric recognizant would then only be collateral or peripheral and marginal to grammatics and critics, but not to semiosics or semiotics as a whole, thereby leaving signs and their experience in tact as being only categorically trichotomic.
If on the other hand, the recognizant is to be relegated as other than a sign in any division of semiosis, but still remain as an existent object, then it might be classed as a representamen that is not an object or sign, and thus fall outside the semiosic arena of phenomena and within the synechastic arena of phenomena. This would make the recognizant collateral to trichotomic semiosis, but would deny it the status of being a sign, although as a synechastic object it would be a preparatory candidate as a sign. The issue then turns on the categorical trichotomic structure of representamen that are not signs but that act to represent themselves intrinsically, and also of synechastic phenomena that may be infinitely continuent as mere fleeting things or existent as brute sporting objects.
In any event and under realist pragmatism, all these aspects or entities would be phenomenal phanerons and representamens, including the recognizant and as either synechastic or semiosic. The evolving nature of the synechastic recognizant as a "dispositional tendency" prior to semiosis might account for its being collateral to semiosis.
In a strict semiotic manner, any phenomenal representamen or thing that is logically determined is an objective construct and properly within semiosis, whereby it acts as an object and a sign of an object. In other words, if mind wants to sense or think or know about any phaneron, it must do it by utilizing signs, which signs then stand analogously for other things that may not be objects or signs, such as essences or unicorns or angels. Indeed, if the assumed nomenal or epiphenomenal aspects of the world are to be sensed at all, it must be only by phenomenal signs that act as analogies. The purpose of phenomenal representamen that act as objects is thus to be assigned naturally as signs and to be reassigned as signs of other objects. The main purpose of signs then is to make the continuent ideals of the world seem existentially real to sense in mind.
If the experiential recognizant is not part of semiosis, then for me its presence in the phenomenal act of representation must therefore be accounted for by other means or in ways other than semiosic. The alternate option would likely be presemiotic or synechastic. To be the object of logical determination, such a synechastic object or thing need only be sensed analogously by semiosis and thus signs. To merely be the object or thing of phenomenal representation in the absence of sense or logic need not require the synechastic object to be semiotic. Even if the synechastic object or thing were on occasion a logical determination, this act alone would not render it intrinsically nor exclusively semiosic or semiotic. In the absence or presence of the recognizant, and with it as a synechastic object, semiotics would thus remain categorically trichotomic.
The act of mind merely engaging in the logical determination of a synechastic representamen does not make that phenomenal thing or object intrinsically a semiosic object, neither finitely nor definitely or indefinitely, because there can be phenomenal representamen that is not a sign.
Considerations of logical determination by mind will place the recognizant within semiosis as a sign, since semiosis is the place of logical determination, but the assigning or reassigning or conferring of such analogous placement with signs by itself does not constitute intrinsic semiosis for the object of signs, because many such objects are intrinsically synechastic and will remain so well after semiosis is exhausted with them.
If you sense some continuent thing or existent object, such as a collateral recognizant for example, that is not logically determined as either a semiosic representamen or object or interpretant, then what is present to mind is not intrinsically a fourth semiosic category or fourth categoric phaneron, but rather is a trichotomic category outside semiotics and inside synechastics. There may be categories of zeroness and enthness other than terness before or beyond phenomenal representamen that are as yet unsensed or unknown, but until they are sensed, then like synechastic things they must be sensed and experienced and recognized analogously only by signs.
It remains my contention that if the recognizant is held to be the synechastic object of a signer, and not simultaneously also the semiosic object of a sign, then there is no contradiction. What is held to exist then is two different states of objects, where one is a synechastic object of which the recognizant may be a direct part acting as a signer, and one is a semiosic object of which the recognizant may not be a part, unless it acts at the behest of a signer indirectly as a sign. Mental recognizants therefore need not be held only as signs, any more than do all objects or existents or representamens or phanerons. The recognizant could possibly be held originally and initially as the synechastic object of a mind, but not also simultaneously as the immediate object of a sign. This likely avoids any categorical confusion.
The phenomenal world of representamen before and outside existent semiosics is of synechastics, which may be existent or continuent in the primordial manner. If any representamen is sensed, then it is an existent fact, and is real in quasi mind or mind. The factuality of phenomena is thus an objective material construct, whether it is sensed or not, but the reality of such phenomena is a subjective mental construct.
These guesses of mine about the topical issues at hand may possibly go to avoiding the logical or semiotical contradictions that your theory of the recognizant seems fearful.
On how to identify the finder or maker or user or whatever of a sign with a fit name, the phaneron in synechastics that engages a representamen to be an object and a semiosic sign of an object might be called a "signer" by me in the absence of some other suitable word. The terms phaneron or "representer" might of course do just as well. The terms "semist" or "semiost" or "semiosist" or "semiosism" as has been musingly suggested fail to be synechastically broad enough; as does the term object; and the term interpreter or "interpretamen" seems to be semiotically too narrow. The term recognizant or its suggested alternate "agnoscent" is supposedly not intended for this identifying purpose. ---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
