France, list > [Frances] My position is to generally agree with Peirce and pragmatism, to > include the trichotomic structure of the phenomenal categories. > One metaphysical thorn for me however is whether all the things in the world > as posited by Peirce are indeed phenomenal, or rather if there is a nomenal > and epiphenomenal aspect of the world that brackets the phenomenal aspect of > the world. If this trident of the menal world were so, then the phenomenal > aspect would be a dyadic dichotomy. > Now, if there were things in the nomenal and epiphenomenal aspects, such as > ephemeral spirits like gods and ghosts and angels or supereal aliens like > unicorns and androids, then the only way they can be sensed and so be real is > analogously as phenomena and then by way of existent objects that act as > representational signs. > Phenomenally, the referred objects of existent signs can be abstract > possibles, or concrete actuals, or discrete necessary agreeables in the > collective sense. This however need not have anything to do with things that > may not be existent or even phenomenal at all. There is another twist here for me in that the dyadic phenomenal world of phanerons and representamens might be held in a Peircean way as synechastically continuent and semiosically existent. > Now, if there are continuent things in the phenomenal world, such as mere > fleeting essences, then the only way these can be sensed and so be real is > analogously as existents and then by way of objects or representamens that > act as signs. > Under such a scheme and to be categorically consistent, phenomenal > continuents would be things as attributed essences, while phenomenal > existents would be objects as manifested synechastic substances and then > objects as exemplified semiotic presences. > This speculative scheme implies to me that there are continuent and existent > representamens that are not signs, and even existent objects that are not > signs. > In the phenomenal world, there are seemingly for Peirce continuent > synechastic representamens that are not signs and there are existent semiosic > representamens that are signs.
No. Peirce said that there might be representamens that are not signs, but he was anything but sure of it. Furthermore the representamen would involve semiosis without a mind's involvement. The sign, on the other hand, is considered to be involved in semiosis only in virtue of the involvement of a mind (or quasimind). Thus the nonliving material world is full of things which count as signs in virtue of the fact that minds or quasiminds do or could interpret them, though the nonliving material world does not embody semioses. So those are signs without semiosis except as continued in observant minds (or quasiminds). It is the _representamen_, not the sign, which has semiosis without a mind and it was only a conjecture by Peirce on the basis of which he allowed of a distinction between sign and representamen which he eventually abandoned. > [Frances] The world is thus perfused with representamens,... Not for Peirce under the sign-representamen distinction, under which the world is perfused with signs and only conjecturably has any non-sign representamens at all -- that the world would, furthermore be perfused with non-sign representamens is much farther-reaching conjecture, one which you're certainly allowed to make, but it is not Peirce's. > [Frances] ...but the world for mind is only "virtually and analogously" > perfused with representamens that are signs. Phenomena and representamens > that are not signs cannot be directly sensed or known by mind to be real, but > rather they must first be sensed and represented and interpreted with signs. > What is unsensed and unknown is not noumena or factuality or existence, but > rather is the reality of those entities. > It is not yet fully clear to me if these suggestions are supported by an > interpretation of Peircean philosophy. They don't really seem compatible with Peircean philosophy since, if by "nomena" you mean "noumena," these are ruled out in Peircean phillosophy. Peirce holds that that, which is hidden, often enough doesn't stay hidden and instead "reaches out and touches" us, indeed strikes us, and that pertains to Peircean Secondness. > [Frances] On the term "continuent" as used by me, it is derived from the > ideas continuendo and continuando. Continuents are things that precede > existents as objects in the evolving world of phenomenal phanerents or > phanerons or phanerisms. They may become embedded or embodied within > existents as attributed qualitative essences, but only if evolution takes > them that far. They are a constituent state of phenomena. As an act of > continuity engaged in by a continuum, the contin[u]ent is a global > continuendo that may also be specified as a particular continuando. All > continuents are the result of a disposed habit in law on the part of > phenomenons or phenomena to continue with purposive action. The continuent as > a general or universal continuendo is the present felt act as it continues > globally in any event and from any infinite source. The continuent as a > special or individual continuando is the present felt act as it is directly > derived from only an immediately preceding act. The continuer is the > phenomenal thing or continuent that continues. If it becomes an existent > object, then it will eventually be a signer. Well, that's all very speculative. If they're neither phenomena, nor approachable as mathematical hypotheticals, then how does one learn about them? What sort of discovery science would take them for its subject matter? Mathematics? Cenosopy? Idioscopy? Or something else? Do you identify them with the subject matter of any current field of research? > [Frances] On your use of the term "determination" in regard to collateral > experiences like your recognizants and agnoscents, it is my understanding > that within realist pragmatism a determination is not a cause or source, but > rather is a limit or ground. I speak of it as a source in the sense of a logical source. As far as I can tell, logical determination means denotative or connotative particularization dependent on the obect, i.e., such that the sign represents the object. I just recently was discussing on peirce-l about indices which are physical causes of their objects, so I don't regard a semiotic object of a sign (indexical or otherwise) as automatically equatable to a physical cause of that sign. > [Frances] The fact that the bounded determination might be logical is > irrelevant, because determination is not disposition or deliberation and > decision. It's relevant because semiotic determination and logical determination are the same thing expressed in two different phrases. I often say "logical determination" instead of "semiotic determination" in order to remind people that the conception of semiotic determination is bound to the conception of logic itself, rather than to some specialized sub-version of logic from which we'd be free to exclude some things even if we were to agree that they should be included in logic. I've never said or meant to suggest that the object's determining is a deliberating. I've often said that the deliberation and decision-making that we do in inquiry is in order for us _to become determined_ by the object, -- all that inquirial & scientific _activity_ is in order to achieve a certain kind of supportational and determinational _passivity_ with regard to the object's determinantness. Then we say that we don't really wish to "decide" the truth, instead we wish to allow and arrange for the truth to do the deciding, to let the truth decide us. But we don't mean that truth or the object will deliberate and exercise volitional choice. > [Frances] Furthermore, if the collateral experience emerges from a nonhuman > organism, like a microscopic bacterium who is consciously aware of their own > existence to some degree, then the determination is still present, albeit > insensible and illogical and irrational. In other words, if a sign is deemed > determined, then a semiosic limit or conforming periphery is determined. To the contrary, if a collateral experience were to occur in a microscopic bacterium, then it would be logical-processual a.k.a. semiosic. However, there is no evidence that bacteria learn and that is a key test of whether there are embodied collateral experiences. The collateral experience is a test, either a first learning or a further (dis)confirmatory test, and one which has practical consequences, the result becomes a basis of further semiosis. Otherwise it couldn't be meaningfully be called a test. If the only "learning" is done by evolution (rather than by the unintelligent organism), and the evolutionary process does not retain the result except in the failure of one prospective interpretant and the success of another, but not in such a way that the learning is then built into further evolution -- e.g., evolution proceeds by trial and error and may keep mindlessly repeating the given test more than could possibly be necessary in order to confirm it -- then it's hard to say that even there there has been an embodied collateral experience, except for an observing mind which might happen to witness the pertinent events. Then the semiosis continues in said mind. But I'm doubtful and hesitant even in this case, because most mutations (as I understand or misunderstand evolutionary theory), considered as "interpretants," are too random even to be considered as meaningful abductive inferences. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Now, if across the vast and impressive panorama of unintelligent biological phenomena there is no embodied semiosis, no fully embodied Peircean thirdness, then one has to regard it as embodying fully only Peircean secondness and firstness -- fate & chance. And I do think that that's a bothersome idea. Peirce ends up putting biology into the physical, non-psychical wing of a two-winged idioscopy. Yet -- yet -- obviously, biological phenomena are telical in the sense that even the most hardened materialist or mechanist will agree that they are -- at the very least -- patently and deeply quasi-telical. Anyway, I do think that biological phenomena involve embodied interpretants. My way of looking at it is that, while there may be no case like that of a sunflower turning which produces another sunflower turning, there are plenty of such events within any given unintelligent organism, and in any organism at the vegetable level. However, as a line of turning sunflowers would not mean any continued increase in interpretant content, and thus amount to a single interpretant spreading, so, likewise may the events in an unintelligent organism be regarded. Signals are interpreted according to codes, but the codes do not themselves evolve except across generations. Yet as an embodied material sign is a sign for the mind or quasimind which does or would continue the semiosis, so, likewise, those embodied non-evolving interpretants in the given unintelligent organism or at the vegetable level, can start a semiotic evolution in an observing mind (or quasimind), and be counted as interpretants, "first salient" interpretants. > [Frances] On valency, the realist pragmatism of Peirce is quite clear that > only triadicity or "triasticity" and then in the form of trichotocity will be > allowed, and that stuff found in the world to be smaller or larger than a > tridential tern can in fact easily be made such. This certainly includes the > collateral experience, and whether it is held to be a synechastic object or a > semiosic object. Peirce's semiotics & realist pragmatism are quite _clear_ about claiming all of that, but no degree of clarity or lucidity is a substitute for confirmation. No degree of validity is a substitute for soundness. The question is, given its conceptions of semiosis and logical determination, whether such a claim can be reasonably upheld. I've been arguing that the claim fails in consideration of the logical aka semiotic determination of and by the collaterally based recognition aka agnoscent as neither object nor sign nor interpretant. > [Frances] On experience, my tentative position is that all phanerons feel > phenomena, and as continuent or existent representamens, whether the > phanerisms are physiotic mechanisms of matter or biotic organisms of life, > but only organisms can experience objects by sense, and only humanisms can > know. What is collateral to semiosis is the experience of representamens that > are not signs. The collateral experience of the signer thus relates to things > and objects that are not yet signs. The experience of representamens that are > signs is not collateral to semiosis, but rather is embodied or embedded > within semiosis, even to the extent that the signer itself is a sign. You've lost sight of the issue of semiotic correlates and the fact that sign, interpretant, and even object, are roles. In the semiotic context, when Peirce says "object," he means _semiotic_ object, that which the sign and interpretant are ABOUT, their subject matter or topic, so to speak. If we are discussing words, for instance, then words, themselves signs, are the semiotic object of our signs and interpretants. Peirce in fact specifically outlines an instance of experience collateral to signs and interpretants in respect to their object which was, in the instance, itself a word, a sign -- "soleil." The teacher discusses the word, i.e., provides signs & interpretants with the word as their object, and proceeds to use the word in French sentences in order to provide collateral experience OF the word as object -- not merely as "physical object" or "physical occurrence," an aural phenomenon, -- but instead collateral experience of the sign "Soleil" in its very signhood, as semiotic object OF the signs and interpretants which the teacher made about it. The collaterality is NOT in respect to semiosis in general, contrary to the way in which you've come to portray it, but instead is a collaterality to specific signs and interpretants (or a specific system of signs & their interpretants) in respect to a specific object. At http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_peircematters_archive.html Scroll down to [5] Peirce: CP 8.183 66~~~~~~~~~~~ ... If a person points to it and says, See there! That is what we call the “Sun,” the Sun is not the Object of that sign. It is the Sign of the sun, the word “sun” that his declaration is about; and that word we must become acquainted with by collateral experience. Suppose a teacher of French says to an English-speaking pupil, who asks “comment appelle-t-on ça?” pointing to the Sun, . . . “C’est le soleil,” he begins to furnish that collateral experience by speaking in French of the Sun itself. Suppose, on the other hand, he says “Notre mot est ‘soleil’ ” then instead of expressing himself in language and describing the word he offers a pure Icon of it. ... ~~~~~~~~~~~99 Best, Ben --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
