Thanks Bill for your comments.
You wrote:
Patrick,
I'm don't know what in my post you're replying to. I don't keep my
posts, so I can't be sure, but I don't recall mentioning an
"expression continuum," "segments" or "meaning continuum." I may
have; I sometimes think I only think I know what I say or mean. My
post (I think) had to do with the confusion/conflation of
independent processes. If that's what you're doing in your last
paragraph, quit it! (I don't have any of those smiley gadget to put
here.)
Cheers,
Bill
Ok, on the last point, you can borrow this smiley here if you like :)
Apropos: "expression continuum" and "meaning continuum" are actually
supposed to be considered part and parcel of one and the same general
continuum of meaning-expression potential that is capable of being
"cut" in various ways, according to Eco's "creative" blending of
Peirce and Hjelmslev's sign functions.
My last paragraph was of course pure speculation, and I apologise if
it seemed to you too arcane, since there are some "flavours" in there
(transitivity) that I pulled in from systemic functional linguistics.
But since I am at present trying (I think) to build/ defend a
position that says that all independent processes, though "discrete",
must always be seen as to some degree presuppositionally linked to
one another in the immediate context of any given current event, I
fear some conflation/ confusion/ overlapping of perspectives is
probably inevitable.
Whether it is actually worth trying to defend such a position is of
course another matter (cf Steven's recent comments on useful and
non-useful hypotheses/ predictions), but that is what (I think) I'm
trying to do.
But actually, I did keep your message, so let's have a look at it in
some more detail.
You wrote:
Patrick: In addition to representing what I have always hoped is
Peirce's developmental teleology, your description of sign function
seems to me to get to the heart of pragmatic discourse analysis in
which conventional sign structures and meanings ("syntactics" and
"semantics") serve principally as orientation to what the situated
discourse is being used to do.
I would only add that it is sometimes useful to recognize that a
number of differentiable processes occur simultaneously within the
great "alpha" process. There is the "action" processes associated
with "life-forms." There is the "motion/matter" processes associated
with "non-life-forms." (I'm using these terms only as gestures,
fingers that point in a given direction, and not as depictions.)
The highly ephemeral acts of sign usage are "real" events in several
related but distinct processes--e.g, those
physical, physiological, psychological and sociological processes
necessary to communication acts.
My point here would be that it may be of interest to try to
investigate/ describe in some more detail the possible relationships
that may obtain or "exist" between salient aspects of the "several
related but distinct processes" you mention above.
In this connection it has occurred to me that the notion of narrative
possible worlds as used by Eco, coupled with a dynamic notion of
transworld identity, where there can be some degree of transmission
or intersection of some salient aspects of actual events as these are
"seen", or made pertinent, by the "inhabitants" of each of the
involved possible worlds.
I sometimes feel that we have developed so specialised languages and
norms of communication in our different disciplinary fields that it
is often more and more difficult to find some common ground about
which we can communicate.
Mathematical and computational models provide one interesting, and
perhaps relevant means of doing this kind of thing.
Mathematics with its high level of abstraction has the advantage of
being open to systematically/ formally describing (or modelling) any
kind of physical or other phenomenon in processual terms.
A problem with this is that any model we make in this way will be
reductive in some sense or other, and we will only be able to
suggest/ grasp a fairly vague idea of what may be going on in some
domain or other of our supposed "whole".
But mathematical models can certainly be used to "predict" and
"confirm" working hypotheses, at least to a certain extent
When computer science is brought in, coupled with narrative,
argumentational or explanatory forms of discourse and dynamic
visualisation technologies, this allows intersemiotic translations of
descriptive models into visual narrative forms that may be easier to
"intuitively" understand for non mathematicians.
It seems to me these different processes often get confused or
conflated. Existential "objects" are also events, but typically in
a much slower process that makes them available to our exteroception
for comparatively vast periods of time, which we think makes them
"empirically" real, extant.
Re-reading this makes me want to ask you what you meant here by
"exteroception"?
I think it is not very useful to speak of signs as existing in the
same process as existential objects, but if we must, perhaps we can
say, "Yes, signs exist, but much faster than objects do."
This I already commented...
Best regards, and thanks again Bill for your stimulating comments.
Patrick
--
Patrick J. Coppock
Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language
Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia
Italy
phone: + 39 0522.522404 : fax. + 39 0522.522512
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www: http://coppock-violi.com/work/
faculty: http://www.cei.unimore.it
the voice: http://morattiddl.blogspot.com
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