Jim, list,
You got me thinking this time!
>Your comment below raises another related thought:
>>I agree about nummbers as othernesses. "Other" is not unlike an ordinal form
>>of the phrase "more".>>
>What I meant to suggest in my earlier remarks was that "other" was akin to the
>notion of quantity as expressed in cardinal numbers and that the notion of
>sequence or order as expressed in ordinal numbers was perhaps more akin to the
>notion of thirdness, mediation, continuity and time. Otherness I associate
>with secondness which I was trying to suggest might be associated with the
>notion of quantity. These notions are far from clear in my mind but I think
>their interdependence (if in fact they are interdependent) may in part be
>explicated by Peirce's categories (as also be the source of some the
>disagreement as to whether or when a sign is a first or a third).
Semiotic elements -- interpretant, semiotic object , & sign -- are thirds. Each
involves reference to an interpretant. That makes each a third.
But, relative to each other, they are third, second, & first, respectively.
There is a thorny problem there, but it is not a problem of whether Peirce
thought that they were third, second, & first, respectively.
The only people who disagree are people who don't even make clear whether they
think (A) that Peirce _did not hold_ that they are third, second, & first
relatively to one another, or (B) that Peirce _wrongly held_ that they are
third, second, & first relatively to one another. They should clarify their
view (e.g., by saying "Peirce thought so and was wrong!"; or "Peirce didn't
think so, Peirce never thought so!"; or "Wow, I just can't figure out what
Peirce thought, he's so gnarly!"; etc.) and defend it. Furthermore they might
consider arguing in terms of the thorniest problem involved.
The thorniest problem is the contrariness of semiotic determination with regard
to the definitions of the categories.
In "Trichotomic":
"First is the beginning, that which is fresh, original, spontaneous, free.
Second is that which is determined, terminated, ended, correlative, object,
necessitated, reacting. Third is the medium, becoming, developing, bringing
about."
If the sign is a first relatively to its object and to its interpretant, then
why is the sign semiotically determined by the semiotic object, instead of vice
versa? Or why isn't the semiotic object the first? And the sign the second?
One might say something like: A semiotic object, _as_ an object, has a
phenomenological secondness, while the sign, which is in one sense or another,
the available 'appearance,' has a kind of phenomenological firstness. But in
terms of semiotic (a.k.a. logical) determination, the semiotic object is first
and the sign is second. The phenomenological first is semiotically second, and
the phenomenological second is semiotically first.
I don't say that, but one has to say _something_, no?
One of Gary Richmond's motivations for his vectors is in order to deal with
that problem. So he says that the vector of semiotic determination is 2, 1, 3.
And he's found bases for various vectors in Peirce's work. Involution,
evolution, etc. Gary went where the fire is burning. There are some Peircean
philosophers whom I much admire, but Gary is the only one of whom I'm aware who
has tried to do something about the basic theoretical architecture. Not only
that, he's keeping it as Peircean as possible. Some people may dismiss Gary's
vectors, and as we know I take a whole other view of the matter, but for those
who hold with Peirce's threes, the question is:
If not Gary's vectors, then what?
Are folks just going to let the semiotic triad lie there in disarray with the
categories? Just "get used to it"? That problem won't just go away and probably
is one of the things holding pragmaticism back. We can blame to our hearts'
content the bottleneck-fondness of philosophers of the phenomenological epoche
and the analytic linguistic turn, and there is indeed something wrong when
philosophy's two biggest schools treat one bottleneck or the other as the port
of entry to a bottle called "philosophy," but I refuse to believe that
philosophers are mostly lost seminarians. The pragmaticist conceptions of the
semiotic triad and the categories are out of correlation. System-builders are
out of fashion in philosophy, yet an encompassing and _consistent_ structure
has broad appeal for good reason. Peirce would want his bones to live, not just
be antiques polished & preserved. Well, that's just my opinion, and Gary is in
Denmark and too busy to caution me on my venting, and of course I want people
to have an uncomfortable awareness of problems in Peirce because I've that
whole other view of the matter.
Taking up your remarks on quantity,
>What I meant to suggest in my earlier remarks was that "other" was akin to the
>notion of quantity as expressed in cardinal numbers and that the notion of
>sequence or order as expressed in ordinal numbers was perhaps more akin to the
>notion of thirdness, mediation, continuity and time. Otherness I associate
>with secondness which I was trying to suggest might be associated with the
>notion of quantity. These notions are far from clear in my mind but I think
>their interdependence (if in fact they are interdependent) may in part be
>explicated by Peirce's categories (as also be the source of some the
>disagreement as to whether or when a sign is a first or a third).
One problem is that apparently mathematicians regard it as a tough question
"where," in mathematics, does number theory belong? Some things about numbers
seem graph-theoretic, some seem enumerative-combinatorial. And maybe Dieudonne
is right and at least arithmetic belongs, more or less, with algebra, in the
big picture of 'pure' mathematics.
Clearly ordinality as a topic seems to belong with the maths of order, which is
where the topic of a set's suitability for mathematical induction belongs. In
other words, ordinality does relate specially to logic, at least insofar as
logic is about proving things. So, as you say, ordinality is akin to Peircean
thirdness.
The problem is that, on one hand, Peircean thirdness seems to be supposed to
belong
perhaps to calculation --------------------------but definitely to proof --
perhaps to algebraic structures ----------------- but definitely to order
structures --
perhaps to (en-, de-)ecoding ------------------ but definitely to inference --
perhaps to information ------------------------- but definitely to logic --
perhaps to "pre-programmed" organismic life -- but probably to evolution &
definitely to intelligence.
Yet, on the other hand, insofar as Peircean thirdness is about the
object-sign-interpretant determinational process, it's the other way around,
even more strongly. Indeed, Peircean thirdness, despite Peirce's & others'
claims to the contrary, can't fairly be said to involve evolution, learning,
and inference to judgments, but only pre-programmed development, coding, and
inference to conceptions and to things like conceptions -- in processes like
calculation, "curve-fitting," etc.
Peircen thirdness is interpretive and construal-making. It's like coding,
especially decoding, as people have often noticed. Meanwhile inference and
reasoning to judgments, i.e, inference and reasoning in their usual strong
sense, involve checking by collateral experience -- they involve confirmations
and recognitions. Establishing, proving, verifying, confirming, is not merely
decoding. Establishing is establishing the decoding.
No amount of interpretation, no degree of elucidation, is a substitute for
(dis)confirmation. No degree of clarity, vibrancy, significance, is a
substitute for firmness and soundness. Not interpretation, but
(dis)confirmatory recognition, reasonably quiets or quells doubt, brings doubt
to reasonable rest.
As long as one thinks that it sounds funny to talk about "confirming" an
interpretant, one has not grasped that the interpretant is a mere construal and
the confirmation means bringing existential consequences in. Bringing them in
at least enough for a test. The point of a little test is that it's not a big
test to destruction -- destruction of the tester -- which is likelier when the
tester just scoots along instead of taking confirmation matters into his or her
own hands (and out of biological evolution's hands, for instance). This sort of
thing is a very big difference between interpretation and confirmation.
At this point a Peircean usually thinks, well, hold it, that's secondness
again, semiosis is thirdness and the interpretant is the thirdest third of them
all, what's this business about semiosis descending back into secondness? --
into the actual world, experiences, confirmations? The habitual intuitions seem
to get crossed up, there's a sting like when one combs one's hair the wrong
way. But considering the abstractness of the semiotic object, the Peircean
should wonder whether that's been the direction all along. The semiotic object
by itself is just anything, the sign places it in a universe, the interpretant
narrows it down, and the experience singularizes it.-- such as it can be
universe'd, narrowed down, and singularized. And all in a manner of speaking.
Now, that secondness of force & reaction is "my" firstness. The semiotic
object, considered formally prior to representation, is just something or
other, anything, _x_; it hit you but you've no idea what it is; it is
proxy-like. The sign shows up, appears, is special, yet, symbol-like,
represents a universe; it 'places' the object in a universe of discourse or
concern. The interpretant evolves through a standard of value and significance,
yet, icon-like, narrows the universe down toward that object and ramifications,
in a truth-semblance addressed to a range of conceivable experiences. The
experience, in logically confirming or disconfirming is, yet, itself singular,
index-like -- your experience, my experience, of a falling stone or a
mathematical diagram or whatever else.
Semiotic object -- 1. determinant, forceful -- yet 4. anything _x_
Sign -- 2. facilitative, shows up, is special -- yet 3. implicitly represents a
whole universe
Interpretant -- 3. clarifying by a standard of value relative to a totality --
yet 2. narrowing down, selecting
Recognition -- 4. establishing logically -- yet 1. singularizing.
So, rough as it is, I'm happy with that picture for the time being. It's
regular.
Expressed abstractly, it sounds like the sign, interpretant, etc., are
determining the object, and in real life we do speak of "determining" the
truth, "determining" what an object was, etc. But what's happening, if things
are working right, is that one has arranged to be determined by the object and
to learn what the object is. That is the common idea on the issue. One doesn't
assume that evolutions, not to mention wild changes, in one's view of the
object reflect changes and evolutions of the object itself.
To believe that interpretation suffices to do the job of reasonably quelling
doubt, is to believe, even more radically than the old positivists or Hawking,
that there is no territory but _only_ maps or models, -- radically, like the
"anti-truth" relativists today.
The main things which have protected Peircean philosophy from being hijacked by
contemporary relativists are, I would hazard, first and foremost, that Peirce
is hard for them to read, and, also, that he plainly holds that reality and
truth are accessible yet are independent of that which you or I or any finite
community think, and, also, that his discussions of the scientific process
include a persistent and knowledgeable emphasis on the importance of
confirmation, verification, etc. (I ought to dig up where Peirce says that, if
he had to put his finger on one thing which distinguishes successful modern
science from the old seminary stuff, it's verification.)
But the weakness of the semiotic triad in capturing the importance of
confirmation in inquiry has, I think, been a contributing factor in the
displacement of Peirce's pragmaticism by a coarse pragmatism which emphasizes
the importance of actual results at the expense of the interpretive stage, to
the point where many mistakenly think that Peirce believed that the meaning of
an idea was its "cash value." Recognition, experiential confirmation, etc.,
are a fourth thing. Nobody has been able to squeeze all four into the triad.
One or another pops out, more or less.
When working with toy-like propositional calculi, one can forget the difference
between drawing out conceptions, which is an interpretive activity, and drawing
out judgments, which is a recognitive activity. Propositions themselves are
more like conceptions than like judgments or assertions. A proposition hardly
differs from the contemporary "sentence" predicated of an unbound variable. The
validity of "term inference" (e.g., "Hx ergo {Hx v Gx}"), helps mask further
the difference between drawing conceptions from conceptions and drawing
judgments from judgments. Drawing conceptions from conceptions --
"conceptiocination" -- differs from drawing judgments from judgments (inference
& ratiocination in their usual strong sense), just as conceptions differ from
judgments. Aristotle didn't notice? Aristotle didn't have algebra, information
theory, or cybernetics before him. Aristotle would have been happy to have such
a broad, deep way to distinguish between rational living things and the rest of
living things -- the rest of living things being the ones that merely process
information and arrive instinctively at construals (interpretants) which are
their responses and which can be called "interpretants" in virtue of the fact
that they do embody species-based selective standards of importance & value
inhering habitually (instinctually) in the interpreter (the stimuli's meanings
are defined by how they will be "interpreted") and in virtue of the related
fact that they are further interpretable by minds (e.g., ours), though they
embody no ongoing semiotic process within the individual vegetable-level
organism.
Best, Ben
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
