[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 17:01:30 -0700

Charles, Joe, Gary, Jim, list,
 
Currently, I'm focused on answering Joe's recentest post to me, particularly in regard to the question of how to argue that some very complicated complexus of objects, signs, and interpretants will not amount to a verification. My focus there has as much to do with trying to restrain my prolixity as anything else!
 
Still, I'd like to attempt at least a brief response here.
 
A point which I'll be making in my response to Joe, and which may be pertinent here, is that the "reflexivity" involved in semiosis is not just that of feedback's adjusting of behavior but instead that of learning's effect on the semiotic system's very design -- solidifying it or undermining it or renovating it or augmenting it or redesigning it or etc.
 
Generally, I'd respond that that which Peirce overlooks in connection with verification is
 
-- that verification is an experiential recognition of an interpretant and its sign as truly corresponding to their object, and that verification (in the core sense) involves direct observation of the object in the light (being tested) of the interpretant and the sign. "In the light (being tested)" means that the verification is a recognition formed _as_ collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object. Experience, familiarity, acquaintance with the object are, by Peirce's own account, outside the interpretant, the sign, the system of signs.
 
-- and that, therefore, the recognition is not sign, interpretant, or their object in those relationships in which it is the recognition of them; yet, in being formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object, it is logically determined by them and by the object as represented by them; it is further determined by the object separately by observation of the object itself; and by the logical relationships in which object, sign, and interpretant are observed to stand. Dependently on the recognitional outcome, semiosis will go very differently; it logically determines semiosis going forward.  So, how will you diagram it? You can't mark it as object itself, nor as sign of the object, nor as interpretant of the sign or of the object. What label, what semiotic role, will you put at the common terminus of the lines of relationship leading to it, all of them logically determinational, from the sign, the object, and the interpretant?
 
 
If, as verification, it is logically determined by object, sign, and interpretant, and is neither the object itself, or sign or interpretant of the object, then *_what_* is it in its logically determinational relationship to object, sign and interpretant?
 
My answer is that verification is just that, verification, a fourth semiotic element on a part with object, sign, and interpretant.
 
The content of your summary seems at first glance generally correct, except that I would not call it so much a summary as a placement of Peirce's discussion of transuasion into an appropriate further Peircean context.
 
Previously on peirce-l, I think it was over a year ago, I addressed the issue of induction and verification in a general way:
 
[peirce-l] Re: [Arisbe] Re: Critique Of Short -- Section 4 --Discussion
Benjamin Udell Sun Jan 2 23:55:43 CST 2005
66~~~~~
> [Joe:] The purpose of the collateral knowledge is not to "confirm the meaning" but to identify the object independently of its identification in the sign.

The latter, not the former, was Peirce's purpose, but it amounts to the same thing, & takes on importance since there would be no other way to confirm the meaning. For instance, the experimentation which conveys collateral acquaintance with the object to the experimenter's mind is, by that very stroke, not an interpretant or sign.in the relevant relations. It's an induction which concludes not in an interpretant but in a recognition -- some degree of recognition -- though it certainly will also conclude in an interpretant to the extent that the interpretant goes beyond the recognition & represents the object in respects in which collateral experience has not been furnished. The progression continues. But at some point I will address how this works when the collateral experience is conveyed only weakly & how it is that we are satisfied with that which we call evidence when the evidence is not the object itself freshly observed.
~~~~~99
 
(The way in which I eventually addressed the issue was in terms (a) of a general evidentiary power of signs in virtue of their deserving recognition on the basis of experience, and in particular of a kind of sign, classificationally seated alongside index, icon, & symbol, a sign _defined_ in terms of the recognition which it would deserve and which I call the "proxy" and (b) a certain slack and experimentability which the mind has in understanding and practicing the difference between an interpretant and a recognition/verification, not a distinction such that the mind "makes" the distinction and employs it as an option tied neither to penalty nor to reward, but, instead, a distinction such that the mind _learns_ how to practice it.)
 
Another way to put it is that, given the rule is that experience with the object is outside the interpretant, then an interpretant takes form as a _conception as reached by inference_, not as a judgment as reached by inference, even if it takes the form of a proposition (or even of an argument).
 
It is a conception as inferred-to consciously or unconsciously. In the case of a conception unconsciously inferred-to, the interpretant conception (or its embodiment as a commonly perceptible sign) may be a sign formed "from life," like a painting of an actual person, and intended more as an occasion for interpretation and less as an outcome of interpretation.  (Most of us, and most artists, will rightly not regard such a painting as actually an "uninterpretive" sign; W.C. Williams' novel _White Mule_ is not mere "slice of life" writing; but even when one is aware of its interpretive aspects, there are very likely even more aspects that could be fairly called interpretive than those of which one is aware).  The interpretant is the idea, the clarification, the elucidation, that one comes up with from the sign; the recognition is the establishment, in greater or lesser firmness, of said idea, and takes form as a judgment as reached by inference, a concluding judgment.
 
The inferred-to conception may be vibrant to the mind and important to it, etc. I agree with the view to which Peirce came, that even a name can reasonably have something like assertoric force, influencing the mind.
 
I've called the conscious inference to a conception "conceptiocination," though that is not a general enough term.  Given that in commonsense perception one can form a perceptual judgment, I would tend to regard that as involving percepts rather than perceptual "conceptions."
 
It is perfectly possible to act upon an unverified -- or an inadequately verified -- interpretant, and this is experimentation. It also may be bold and may be rash or brave. It does, when deliberate, involve at least the conscious recognition of the interpretant _as_ an interpretant, and this is a kind of recognition which we experience, observe, and practice every day. Somebody says, "well that's just your interpretation," and the addressee says, "well, yes, but I believe that I'll be able to prove it this afternoon." Coming up with an idea is one thing, establishing it is another.  That's common sense, and the burden is on critical common sense if it wishes to reject the common sense.  A recurrent problem , as Peirce pointed out in regard to pre-modern science, is mistakenness about verification itself, not some lack of verificatory spirit; and, as Peirce wrote elsewhere, everybody thinks himself or herself already sufficiently good at logic.  There is an order of being, whereby we explain things by inferred objects, laws, etc., and an order of knowledge, whereby we verify; in that sense, the explanatory "ultimates" means what is farthest from the mind, while verificational "ultimates" means what is nearest to the mind and most familiar.  So it's natural to believe oneself to have little of worth yet to learn about logic unless one truly believes oneself to be low in intelligence by some standard which one actually holds.
 
The question in the current discussion seems now to be revolving over the issue of whether establishment and verification are a formal logical element on a par with object, sign, and interpretant, though Joe's recentest post raises the idea once again (if it was ever really left aside) of whether a verification might be merely some complexus of objects, signs, and interpretants in considerable multiplicity.
 
Best, Ben Udell
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 12:08 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
 
Ben, list:
 
Ben,
 
I am struggling to understand exactly what it is you are saying Peirce overlooks in connection with verification.  In an effort to get some further clarification of your position, I am including a statement of my understanding of some of what Peirce says on the subject followed by some questions.
 
I. Peirce on Verification
 
 TRANSUASION (CP 2.98):  A Transuasive Argument, or Induction, is an Argument which sets out from a hypothesis, resulting from a previous Abduction, and from virtual predictions, drawn by Deduction, of the results of possible experiments, and having performed the experiments, concludes that the hypothesis is true in the measure in which those predictions are verified, this conclusion, however, being held subject to probable modification to suit future experiments. Since the significance of the facts stated in the premisses depends upon their predictive character, which they could not have had if the conclusion had not been hypothetically entertained, they satisfy the definition of a Symbol of the fact stated in the conclusion. This argument is Transuasive, also, in respect to its alone affording us a reasonable assurance of an ampliation of our positive knowledge. By the term "virtual prediction," I mean an experiential consequence deduced from the hypothesis, and selected from among possible consequences independently of whether it is known, or believed, to be true, or not; so that at the time it is selected as a test of the hypothesis, we are either ignorant of whether it will support or refute the hypothesis, or, at least, do not select a test which we should not have selected if we had been so ignorant. (END QUOTE)
 
I take the word "verification" as a synonym for the consequences of Peirce's transuasive arguments (distinguishable from abductive and deductive arguments) that set out the conditions under which individuals will be most likely to agree to act as if statements referring to perceptual events and relations between and among perceptual events are true.  I say "act as if" because I understand Peirce to say that "belief" necessarily entails both cognitive and behavioral action.  Granting that there are semiosical antecedents to one's being able to name and otherwise classify perceptual events like seeing a burning building, any physically and psychologically normal person who sees a burning building will most likely voluntarily or quasi voluntarily agree to report seeing or having seen a burning building as a consequence of their experience's compelling them to act as if they are or were in the actual presence of a burning building.  The cognitive assent in agreeing to say there is or was a building burning in which Thirdness is predominant is inseparably connected to a nonvoluntary inability dominated by Secondness to act as if seeing a burning building is or was an hallucination, optical illusion, etc.  To refuse to report or to quibble over reporting that a building is or was burning would be an instance of "paper doubt."  Say what you will, the consequences of acting as if there is or was no building burning are identical to what we conventionally mean (the import of Peirce's pragmatic maxim) by saying that a building is burning is true.  Peirce's transuasive argument does not set out conditions under which all rational individuals ought to agree, but conditions under which, over time, most people will in actual fact agree as a consequence of an inability to act as if what is predicted will not occur.  Belief has the character of a wager.  Whatever a person's state of mind, relative to present states of information the odds favor acting as if the conclusions of  transuasive arguments are true.
 
II.  Questions
 
1.  Do you generally agree with my summary of Peirce's transuasive argument?  If not, where in your opinion have I gone astray?
 
2.  If you do generally agree with my account of transuasion, what does Peirce's transuasive argument fail to address in connection with verification?
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