[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!

[Benjamin Udell]

Jim, list,   I'm not sure at this point what more limited conclusion it is that we're talking about!   Generally speaking, I don't have a view on any logical valence numbers's being sufficient or necessary for all higher-valence relations. But I'm a bit doubtful that Peirce's trichotomism & triadism are an artefact of his not considering hyperspaces.   The only case of which I know where a "minimum adicity" makes really clear, really simple sense to me is that of Feynman diagrams of which it's said that the "minimum possible event" involves two triadic vertices. I'm able to make sense of it because it's specified that to be such an "event," an interaction has to be capable of showing the conservation of quantities. The corresponding idea in semiosis might not be that of some sort of conservation, however. I would consider that some sort of evolution must be showable. The interpretant is merely a development, a hopeful monster, a construal. Triadic semiosis has no way to learn and keep learning to distinguish sense from nonsense. Real evolution involves not merely development of construals, but their testing against the reality which they supposedly represent.   As to tetrads, I just say that, in whatever sense an interpretant-sign-object relationship can't be reduced to some strictly dyadic sign-object relationship, so, likewise, in that sense, a recognition-interpretant-sign-object relationship can't be reduced to a strictly triadic interpretant-sign-object relationship. Since a collaterally based recognition is logically determined by its correlates and logically determines semiosis going forward, it is a semiotic element. Since it is as experience of the object, that it is a collaterally based recognition, it is neither sign of the object nor interpretant of the object. If it were the object itself, then neither sign nor interpretant would be needed. It is indistinct from the interpretant only when the sign is indistinct from the object; in which case all four are indistinct from one another. (The interpretant's elucidation of 'fresh' info about the object implies a distinction or divergence between sign & object.) We are sufficiently code-unbound to be able to test our signs, interpretants, and systems and "codes" of interpretation. This involves collateral experience. No degree of elucidation, interpretation, or construal, is a substitute for (dis-)confirmation, whereby we take over the task of biological evolution and lessen our risk of being removed from the gene pool as penalty for a bad interpretant.    As regards 4-chotomies, some significant ones are transparently logical and are not subject to any useful kind of trichotomization that I can see. Other 4-chotomies are more or less established, e.g., the special-relativistic light cone, which is a ubiquitous physical instance of a general structure which one might revise to a 5-chotomy or even a 6-chotomy; a trichotomization would be the division into past, present, future, but this is crude for some purposes, including the understanding of communication. Information theory has its division into source, encoding, decoding, and recipient, often compared with that of semiotics up to the stage of "interpretant = decoding." However the comparison fails at the fourth stage (the recipient) and thereby renders quite suspect the comparison as a whole. The collaterally based recognition ("recognizant"), however, is what correlates to the info-theoretic recipient. (Note: Information theory also places channels between the stages, especially between encoding & decoding.)   Best, Ben   ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Piat To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 12:37 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!   Ben wrote:   >>A 3-D object can be so rotated in 4-D space as to turn it opposite-handed. I remember an episode of the original _Outer Limits_ about it -- some man ended up with two right hands :-).>>   My response:   Thanks, Ben.  I'm not surprised to hear from you on this issue four-most importance.   But so quickly -LOL.  Well if you are right (and I imagine you are) it seems to me that this would shed some doubt on the universality of Peirce's claim regarding the nature of triads being sufficient to account for all higher order relations.  Still I think the result holds for three dimensional space (especially with respect to the issue of sterio-isomers requiring in principle only three groups to establish their handedness.  Would you agree with this latter more limited conclusion?  I recall a similar discussion on list years back when the question of whehter Peirces conclucions regarding the sufficiency of triads was merely an artifact of the the fact that we lived in three dimensional space and someone said that the issue had been addressed by some mathematicians and apparently "those" mathematicians felt Peirce was correct.  But I'm in no position to judge.  Seems its a fairly straightforward issue that I would think topologist have,or could, address.    Thanks again.  Ben. Would my blaming my breaking of my vow of holiday silence on you be a some sort of degenerate third or just a plain old garden variety lame excuse.   Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com