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

[Charles F Rudder]

Ben, Joe, list:   Following up on Joe's saying:   JR: "If I am understanding you correctly you are saying that all semeiosis is at least incipiently self-reflexive or self-reflective or in other words self-controlled AND that the adequate philosophical description of it will REQUIRE appeal to a fourth factor (which is somehow of the essence of verification) in addition to the appeal to the presence of a sign, of an object, and of an interpretant, allowing of course for the possibility of there being more than one of any or all of these, as is no doubt essential for anything of the nature of a process.  The appeal to the additional kind of factor would presumably have to be an appeal to something of the nature of a quadratic relational character.  To be sure, any given semeiosis might involve the fourth factor only in a triply degenerate form, just as the third factor might be degenerate in a double degree in some cases, which is to say that the fourth factor might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis, just as thirdness might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis."   and your saying:   BU: "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?"   CR: I am still trying to find out if I have any grasp at all of what you think the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits.   Suppose I am given a photograph to use as a means of finding a person whom I have never seen.  As far as I can see there would be nothing "tested" in my looking for the person unless I fail to find the person, in which case, assuming that the person was present, I might wonder if the photograph is recent, if the person has gained or lost weight, grown or shaved a beard, etc.  That is, I might question what I sometimes fall the "fidelity" of a sign or how precisely the Immediate or Semiosical Object of the sign represents its Dynamical Object--in this illustration how closely the features of the photographic image resemble the features of the person photographed.  Having failed in an attempt to use a sign, I might and actually have questioned its usefulness as a sign.  When, for instance, I introduce an _expression_ like "fidelity of a sign" I think about how other people might interpret it in an effort to evaluate and predict its usefulness as a means of representing what I have in mind.  When, as I have here, I use the _expression_, I am both trying to represent what I have in mind and, if light of any response I may get, trying to evaluate its usefulness--the "fidelity"of its "correspondence" to an Object--as a means of representing what I am thinking.   Does what I have set out above come anywhere close, Ben, to characterizing and illustrating the kind of circumstances in which you think something more than Peirce's (Interpretant - Sign - Object) is involved?   In any case, it appears to me that there is a reflexivity in what I have described in so far as in my using the _expression_ "fidelity of a sign" in an attempt to engage in conversation with you and others on the list, I am also in conversation with myself about using the _expression_.  It also seems to me that I am using the _expression_ as a sign with its interpretant to represent an object other than the sign while at the same time I am making the _expression_ an object of a different sign and interpretant; which is to say that the reflexivity is semiosical or part of a semiosical process that may be fully characterizable in terms of signs, interpretants of signs, and their objects.  That is, what you describe as collateral and extrasemiosical could be characterized as one semiosical process becoming the object of signs in a different and possibly more developed semiosical process such as Peirce describes in his accounts of the growth of signs.   Charles  --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com