|
Joe, Gary, Jim, list,
Well, your response certainly poses a challenge, Joe. I'll try. Then I must
go and, well, eat.
From your transcription from Letter to Lady Welby Dec 23, 1908 (in
_Semiotics and Significs: Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and
Victoria Lady Welby_, ed. Charles Hardwick, Indiana U. Press, 1977, p.83) http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_peircematters_archive.html :
66~~~
It is usual and proper to distinguish two Objects of a Sign, the Mediate
without, and Immediate within the Sign. Its Interpretant is all that the Sign
conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral
experience.
~~~99
That is the sense in which I mean that the sign does not convey
experience, acquaintance, etc., with its object. "Its Interpretant is all
that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral
experience."
That is because one's experience of the sign is not one's experience of the
object. And that, in turn, is because the sign is not the object. The sign is
merely _almost_ the object, enough to convey information, but not enough
to be the object itself (except in the limit case), not enough that one's
experience of the sign would be one's experience of the object.
- One's experience of the object is not one's sign of the object.
- One's experience of the sign is not one's sign of the sign.
- One's experience of the interpretant is not one's sign of the
interpretant.
One has experience of something as a semiotic object at least insofar as
one is experiencing it as the focus of one's interest rather than as a sign or
interpretant of some other thing in the focus of interest. It's not "simple
dyadic" experience of the object, because one is experiencing the object
nevertheless in light of other things as signs and interpretants about it, and,
by one's intention or not, one is thereby testing the signs & interpretants.
However, when one experiences something as a sign about something else, what is
learned along that path also becomes further learning about the thing which
served as a sign. Certainly if we're discussing a person, one's experience of a
person behaving as a deliberate sign tells one a lot about that person as,
himself, a subject matter, a topic, a semiotic object.
When I say that my verification is not merely my sign, I mean that my
(verificative) experience of (for instance) a sign X, is not itself sign X, nor
is it my sign Y of that sign X. My experience OF that verificational experience
is not my experience of a sign. Etc.
Why is that? Because, as Peirce says repeatedly, having a sign of something
is not having an experience of that thing. To me that says the same thing as
"get out into the labs and the field" -- not in order to bypass and eschew
signs, but instead in order to test them.
One moves among things, deals with them, and one notices that things tell
one about other things -- the objects are also signs -- and one notices that one
has sometimes alternate interpretations of the same signs, and one needs
sometimes to verify. One notices that one can arrange for oneself to have
experiences of objects, signs, interpretants. One ends up with experiences
about experiences. One is capable of that kind of layered reflexivity. I think
of the experience, in its verificatory aspect, as a second object -- the
"subject" as when we say "the subject perceives the object" -- though perhaps I
should say that the experience is the subjectness, the subjectedness. Experience
is a kind of subjection. As the sign's cryptic _night_ is
converted into the interpretant's clarifying _dawn_, so the
object's _dusk_ which led to the sign's night, is converted into
the experiential subject's _day_ as the confirmation of the
interpretant's dawn. The semiotic object is the determinant force at the start;
the experiential subject is what logically stabilizes that force.
Object, sign, and interpretant are indeed elements of experience, and often
enough, though not always, one has conscious experience OF them. The
mind as we know it is certainly rich enough to involve unconscious inference
processes which go beyond mere information processing. But we need to start from
the basis of what one _does_ experience.
When sign and interpretant convey information and clarification of the
object in some respect that goes beyond one's experience of the object -- far
enough beyond to occasion doubt -- then one resorts, if possible or convenient,
to an experience of the object, an experience determined and informed by
interpretant, sign, and the object both as represented through them and as
already familiar, an experience determined and informed by them _as_ a
test of them. One may dig the requisite experience up from memory. Or one may
seek to acquire it. Either way, at some point the experience is formed into a
recognition logically determined by object, sign, and interpretant. From the
case where the experience is retrieved from memory, we can change analytic
direction and draw the formal lines tighter for cases where a
retrieval moment is not experienced and where interpretant and
recognition come together. (Note: Where they really are one, there it
seems to me that object and sign are one, and that all four are effectively one;
perhaps this amounts to some sort of implicit recognition of itself by an
experience, I'm not sure; I'm disinclined to conceive such a case in a way that
deprives such recognition of content. I'm thinking in the direction of an icon
as self-representative, an index as self-representative, etc.; I'm thinking that
the self-representative sign is very near to the conception of a given sign as a
_versatile_ general standard for locating, measuring, translating,
and testing -- signs as guides (like the polestar), measures, keys,
criteria.)
Well, what _is_ this recognitive experience? Since it is logically
determined by semiosis and determines semiosis going forward, semiotics should
be able to characterize it in semiotic terms. It's not the object, the sign, or
the interpretant, yet _is determined by them_. It is the
experience OF the object and OF the sign as sign of the object and OF the
interpretant as interpretant of sign and its object. If you say that it's
an interpretant, I say, no it's not one's interpretant of the object,
it's one's experience of the object in light (light being tested) of
sign and interpretant. Peirce has already clearly distinguished between the two
and done so with, I think, good reason, founded in consideration of what a sign
is in the first place. Moreover the recognitive experience is one's experience
not only of the object but also of the sign and of the interpretant itself, as
well. It is determined by all three, determined twice over so to speak:
It's an experience which began as an incomplete experience of object and of
sign and interpretant in respect of the object. That's the "first" wave of
determination. In 'renewing' such acquaintance as mind has with the object, and
in doing so in a way determined by the sign and interpretant, the mind's
experience is developed in such a way as learn more about all three _in
respect of_ one another and indeed, in respect of experience -- experience
of objects and of signs and of interpretants and even _of_ experiences of
whatever.
Now, maybe you keep thinking, but the experience is made of objects,
signs, interpretants, so, what is supposed to be this experience which is more
than them?
But the experience which is "more than them" was always there, always "more
than them," helping make them what they are -- evolutionary. Even unconscious
inference to a conclusion involves recognition, unconscious recognition and an
unconscious version of experience. Sometimes we learn or mis-learn from things
without even (consciously) knowing it, at least without knowing it until later.
Maybe it's a recognition which the conscious mind would not embrace but would
instead renounce. And maybe the conscious mind would be right and maybe it would
be wrong, to do so.
The point is that Peirce characterizes semiosis with reference to
(collateral) experience of the object in such a way that said experience
_can't be diagrammed as object, sign, or interpretant_ in those
relations in which it is experience of object and of sign and of interpretant,
and yet one needs to diagram it since _it is determinational in
semiosis_.
There is this experience, of them collaterally to one another, which seems,
for its part, the experience, to rely on mediation by some unconscious substrate
such that one's experience of object, sign, and interpretant is direct but
mediated. But if this unconscious substrate does not itself involve unconscious
recognition and unconscious experience, then it is a mistake to suppose it to be
an inferential, semiotic process at all -- it is instead at best an information
process basically vegetable-organismic in kind, further analyzable into material
and mechanical processes, though, at every stage of the reduction, we know that
something is lost. However, as I said, there seems good reason to think
that there _are_ unconscious inference processes. My guess is that they "work
their way down" pretty deep, and get rather strange, but are still inference
processes.
Consider the recipient in the info-theoretic scenario. Here are the
correlations -- not equations, but correlations:
source -- object
encoding -- sign
decoding -- interpretant
recipient -- recognizant
The recipient, like the perceiving _subject_, is the one to
whom any task of verification falls, along with the task of determining
redundancy of the message's information with respect to information from outside
the message or set of messages. How does the recipient do this? Presumably with
some resort to info from alternate information channels, indeed, _an
indefinite totality of alternate info channels_, not depicted in the
standard diagram. That doesn't mean that it makes sense to drop the recipient
out of the picture and replace the recipient with a "grand decoder." The
decoder, in any usual sense, doesn't test the system itself or redesign it,
rearchitect it, guide its evolution on the basis of learnings. That "totality of
alternate channels" and sources, encoding, decodings, the same recipient
behaving variously across those channels but also other recipients as
sources, etc., -- is the world with its existential consequences; the recipient
is the one who takes on the challenge of dealing in terms of those consequences
and seeks to shape them and learn from them and evolve, intelligently let
himself be shaped by them, allowing and even actively arranging for truth
itself to decide many things. In all those alternate info channels, the
recipient is there too. They get omitted from the standard diagram because
they're not in question at the time. Some of them seem so transparent to the
recipient that they hardly seem worth calling "channels." Some of them are so
clear and also so sure and sound that they are anchorage. That sureness and
soundness is on the basis of existential consequences arising from the
recipient's total world and is something for the recipient to learn, not the
decoder (though of course one could imagine a decoder being evolved, however
long it might take, into a nontrivial recipient). The accumulation of anchorage,
a totality of sure 'channels,' sources, encodings, decodings, and
recipience, combined into that "earth" to which we refer in the phrase
"down to earth," is the job of the recipient; and the recipient is an element in
each of those channels too.
I hope that there is some clarification in my example above. I also think
that the example points a way to building bridges between semiotics and
information theory. Not that I'm interested in a "reduction" of semiotics
to information theory. Information theory is not really _about_ the
recipient's design activity, so far as I can tell, though plenty of information
theory and cybernetics are about how to design and improve systems. To
turn around and study those designers, that is another thing. As subject matter,
self-reference, the ongoing redesign of systems, intelligent evolution, a
consequential self-testing of the system at every moment -- such things
lead into the business of semiotics and philosophy.
You also seem to see a problem in the notion that I conceive the act of
verification as singular. Just because you or I "verify" something, just
because you or I do some reasonable corroboration (I'm using "verify" as the
forest term for all the trees of "confirm," "corroborate," "prove,"
etc.), doesn't mean that it is _really_ true. You seem to be
looking in my talk of verification for a conception which would do the job of a
final interpretant. But I wouldn't look for _that_ kind of verification
as being actually available to you or me or any finite community of
investigators. I have already used other ways to distinguish verification from
interpretation, and have no need or desire for a _final_ attainment of
truth to be part of it. I remain as steadfast as ever against the
"consensus" truth theory mis-ascribed to Peirce. Instead I conceive of a
final recognition along with Peirce's final interpretant, as a limiting
idea at least, the final recognition of the final interpretant, etc., which
research _would_ be destined to reach sooner or later if pushed
indefinitely far.
Best, Ben http://tetrast.blogspot.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Ransdell
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 8:31 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph"
metaphor Ben:
JR: I must say that I think you are missing my point because of
some mistaken assumption that I can't identify. The reason I gave the
simple example of a common sense verification was to make as clear as I could
that there is no deep logical point involved. Consider again my simple
example: You see something and tell me about it and I take a verifying
look. I see what I expect to see given what you told me to expect and
that's enough for me. That is a verification. It doesn't follow that
either of us grasped the truth of the matter, but if you did indeed grasp it by
taking a look as you passed by the object and I did indeed grasp it by
taking another look then we are both correct. But where in all
of that is this all important difference you keep talking about between mere
interpretation and experience" There was no more or less experience in my
look than in yours, and no more or less interpretation, as far as that goes,
other than the memory that the reason I took a look myself was because I wanted
to see if what you saw is what you thought it to be, which I am willing to
credit if, after taking a look myself, the description matches up.
There is no denial of verification involved in any of this. It is an
imaginary account of a very simple case of verification.
JR: Now you can complicate it as much as you want, turn the look at a
macroscopic object requiring no special instruments of vision (a burning
fire) into, say, the look at the object which is involved in the case of
scrutinizing a bunch of measurement data gathered from cranking up a particle
accelerator at CERN with the help of a thousand other people, and the basic idea
of verification or disverification is unchanged except for being required to be
vastly more sophisticated, given the enormously different conditions of
perceptual access to the object, and of course given the equally enormously
greater amount of inference involved in the one case than in the other when
we move from understanding the perceived object to be a burning building to
the compared case of understanding the perceived object to be, say, a quark
doing its thing under this and those conditions. Exactly the same
sort of gross macro description of it applies as semiotically
construed: an object is perceived as manifesting this or that, which,
semiotically, is talked about in the same terms regardless of the difference
between being an object with manifest qualities functioning
as representations interpreted as being a burning fire or quark doing
whatever quarks do.
JR: So I just don't get it, Ben. Of course there is much
of philosophical interest, at a specialized level, if one wants to deal with
highly complex experiences instead of simple ones. I am not denying
that. I assumed that you would understand that. You say:
BU: One might make similar remarks on abductive inference, which is
belief-laden and context-sensitive and would require getting into lots of
details and variation case by case. Note that the kind of hypotheses which
inferential statistics characteristically produces are "statistical hypotheses"
rather than explanatory ones, and it is not as if statisticians never had an
interest in the subject; a few years ago one statistician wrote here at peirce-l
about being interested in general approaches to the production of the content of
hypotheses which go beyond the usual statistical kind. Statistics deals with
phenomena in general and, though often applied in idioscopy, is not itself about
any special class of phenomena. Yet one does, in at least some
philosophy, attempt and pursue general
characterizations _of_ abductive inference and this is
because abductive inference is a logical process of a general kind and
is therefore part of philosophy's subject matter.
JR: Yes, of course, but why would I deny any of that? You then
say:
BU: Verification is also a logical process of a general kind. The
question is, is it some kind of interpretation, representation, or
objectification, or combination thereof? Or is it something else? JR: Now that baffles me. Of course it is some kind of
"interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination
thereof." Why would you even say such a thing? Is it something
else? Well, it is supposed to be all of that considered as occurring
subsequent to some prior instance of "interpretation, representation, or
objectification, or combination thereof", relating to that prior instance as
sufficient like it (or in some other way relevant to it) to count as
something that might verify or disverify a claim made that cited the prior
instance as evidential relative to that claim. Yes, it is one thing to be
a verification and quite another to be that which is verified. But what is
all of this talk about the one being a mere sign and interpretant whereas the
latter is an experience? Both are equally describable in semiotic terms
and are equally experiential. And then you say:
BU: Now there are two more questions here: Did Peirce think
that verification was important and determinational in inquiry? (Yes). Did
Peirce think that verification is a distinctive formal element in semiosis?
(No.)
JR: Yes, well that is what I said, too. But I thought that is
precisely what you disagreed with? I don't get it, Ben. And
then you say:
BU: Your discussion of an emphasis on verification as reflecting a
pathology of skepticism, a search for infallible truth, etc., goes too far in
de-valorizing verification, certainly to the extent that you may be ascribing
such a view to Peirce.
JR: Ascribing such a view to Peirce? I was doing no such thing, nor
was I "devalorizing verification" but only saying that there is nothing
happening in verification that requires the isolation of some analytical element
not already available in the basic semiotical structure that Peirce
delineates. Next, you provide a long quote from Peirce on verification, as
follows;
.
BU quoting Peirce:
34. Mr. George Henry Lewes in his work on Aristotle(1) seems to
me to have come pretty near to stating the true cause of the success of modern
science when he has said that it was *_verification_*. I
should express it in this way: modern students of science have been successful
because they have spent their lives not in their libraries and museums but in
their laboratories and in the field; and while in their laboratories and in the
field they have been not gazing on nature with a vacant eye, that is, in passive
perception unassisted by thought, but have been *_observing_* --
that is, perceiving by the aid of analysis -- and testing suggestions of
theories. The cause of their success has been that the motive which has carried
them to the laboratory and the field has been a craving to know how things
really were, and an interest in finding out whether or not general propositions
actually held good -- which has overbalanced all prejudice, all vanity, and
all passion. Now it is plainly not an essential part of this method in general
that the tests were made by the observation of natural objects. For the immense
progress which modern mathematics has made is also to be explained by the same
intense interest in testing general propositions by particular cases -- only the
tests were applied by means of particular demonstrations. This is observation,
still, for as the great mathematician Gauss has declared -- algebra is a
science of the eye,(2) only it is observation of artificial objects
and of a highly recondite character. Now this same unwearied interest in testing
general propositions is what produced those long rows of folios of the
schoolmen, and if the test which they employed is of only limited validity so
that they could not unhampered go on indefinitely to further discoveries, yet
the *_spirit_*, which is the most essential thing -- the motive,
was nearly the same. And how different this spirit is from that of the major
part, though not all, of modern philosophers -- even of those who have
called themselves empirical, no man who is actuated by it can fail to perceive.
~~~99 [bold & italics at the Website]
JR: There is nothing in that quote that cuts against my view,
Ben. It is mostly concerned with stressing the importance of active
observation in experimental work, but all of that is as true of the original
observation on the basis of which the research claim is made as it is of the
observation that goes on in verificational procedures. There is nothing in
there to suggest that one is only about signs and inferences but is not
experiential whereas the other has to do with experience, supposedly unlike the
first. You then say:
BU: Can there be any serious doubt that Peirce did indeed think that
verification has a determinational role in inquiry, that it settles questions in
ways the support the further advance of inquiry?
JR: No, but who said anything about doubting that?
Dropping on down, you say:
BU: I point out that verification involves, and is a kind of,
experience/observation of a thing, and that , so a verification is not a sign or
interpretant in those relations in which it is a verification.
JR: Now I find that sentence just unintelligible, something is
conceptually askew in it, e.g. in the phrase "sign and interpretant
convey information but not experience of the thing", which involves what is to
me an unintelligible contrast. The conceptions of "sign" and
"interpretant" are used in the analysis of experience. Any time you have
an experience there is, if one is regarding it semiotically, a sign and an
interpretant and an object, too, and whenever there is occasion to make use of
the conceptions of sign, object, and interpretant there is some implicit
reference to experience. Why? Because the representation
relation is a categorial -- hence universally present -- element of
experience. It is an aspect of an experience, any experience. And
you go on to say things like:
BU: But my verification is not, for me, merely a sign, but instead an
experience,
JR: "merely a sign"? "but instead an experience"?
"merely"? "instead"? I just don't get it. Ben I
don't mean to ridiculing you in any way in saying this sort of thing, but am
trying in doing so to isolate the misunderstanding which I think must be
underlying the production of sentences that I find puzzling as grammatical
constructions, given my understanding of the uses of semiotic terminology.
From this point on I would just be repeating myself, I think.
So let me close this message at this point.
Joe
---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com |
- [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" meta... Benjamin Udell
- [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph"... Benjamin Udell
- [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph"... Joseph Ransdell
- [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph"... Benjamin Udell
- [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph&q... Jacob Longshore
- [peirce-l] Doctoral Defense Vin�cius
- [peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense Mariane Cara
- [peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense Gary Richmond
- [peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense Joseph Ransdell
- [peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense Arnold Shepperson
- [peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense Jacob Longshore
- [peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense Claudio Guerri
- [peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defens... Vin�cius
