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

[Benjamin Udell]

Charles, Joe, Gary, Jim, Jacob, list,   The occasion here is that Charles wrote, "I am still trying to find out if I have any grasp at all of what you think the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits." The idea that one can't even grasp what I'm saying leads me to make one last try.   What do I think the relation omits?  I think that the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits recognition, verification, establishment.  I mean "recognition," "verification," "estabishment," and the like, in a pretty commonsense way.  I'm trying to think of how to get the tetradic idea across.   First, I'd point out that the difference between interpretation and verification can be taken in a common-sense way with which we are all familiar. That common-sense way is at the basis of how I mean it.  But I've pointed that out in the past.  I've even brought the plot of _Hamlet_ (because peirce-l is classy :-)) into the discussion.  Now, there's a weak sense of the word "understanding" where one says "well, it's my _understanding_ that Jack is going to come" -- one is saying that one doesn't _know_ whether Jack is actually going to come -- one hasn't _verified_ it, even to oneself -- one means that, instead, it's _merely one's interpretation_.  I think that we're all familiar with these ways of talking and thinking.  I talk and think that way, and my impression is that most people talk and think that way.  Those ways of talking and thinking are quite in keeping with object-experience's being outside the interpretant.  An interpretation is a construal.  An unestablished, unsubstantiated interpretation is a _mere_ construal in the strongest sense of the word "mere." (In a similar way, one should think of a sign which is unsubstantiated in whatever respect as a _mere_ sign, a _mere_ representation, in that respect.)  One should not let the _word_ "interpretant" evoke anything stronger in such a case, but, instead, one should stick with the common notion of interpretation.  Even a biological mutation, considered as an interpretant, should be considered as a construal and as a random experiment which "experience" or actual reality will test.  Research and thought had thousands of years to show that one can make much progress by merely making representations and construals about other researchers' representations and contruals and by, at best, verifying representations and construals _about_ representations and construals -- doing so via books about other books and by researchers' going back and checking the originals and considering the ideas presented there.  This sort of thing in the end makes little progress when the subject matter is not thought itself but instead, say, physics or biology.  One needs to verify by experiences of the subject matter.  The logical process must revisit the object, somehow, some way.   Second, I'd point to the analogy between decoding and interpretation, an analogy which has been referred to and alluded to often enough, e.g., in David Lodge's "Tout décodage est un nouvel encodage."  I'd point to the extended analogy, and ask, why does triadic semiotics have no analogue for the recipient?   source ~~~ object encoding ~~ sign decoding ~~ interpretant recipient ~~ ?   Is it merely that in early scenarios the decoding was usually mechanical and the recipient a human?  Why does a recipient notice redundancies and inconsistencies which a decoder does not notice?  What is the difference in function between a decoding and a "recipience"?  Why, at the fourth stage, does the analogy suddenly break down between information theory and triadic semiotics?  Does one of them have the wrong scenario?  Which one?  Is it normal or is it a warning alarm, when a tenable analogy just suddenly goes bad?  If the interpretant is analogous both to decoding and to recipient, what functions analogous to theirs does it combine?  Should a semiotic philosopher be concerned about such questions?  Especially a Peircean one accustomed to tracing extensive analogies and correlations, a philosopher who believes in doing that sort of thing? But I've pointed this all out in the past.   Third, I'd point out the following logical stream of thought:   Peirce says that to represent an object is not to provide experience or acquaintance with the object.  There are good reasons to agree with Peirce about this, which I've discussed in the past.  It is rooted in the fact that, except in the limit case of their identity, the sign is not the object but only, merely, almost the object.  However, in being almost the object, it does convey information about the object; however, acquaintance with the object can't be gained from the sign.   Now, when one forms an acquaintance or experience with an object, what does that give to one, that a sign, indeed, acquaintance with a sign, does not give to one?  Why is object acquaintance or object experience involved with confirming something about an object?  The core of verification is experience of the elements involved -- experience which establishes object, sign, and interpretant as indeed being in the relationships which the interpretant represents them to have.   Now, does this confirming affect semiosis in some way which interpretation does not affect semiosis?  If I am conscious of forming an interpretation and conscious of _not_ confirming it, will I not consciously think and behave differently than if I am conscious of forming an interpretation and conscious of _indeed_ confirming it -- if the issue in question is of practical meaning to me?  Of course I will think and behave differently.  Then it would appear that this confirmation, both in its content and by being a confirmation rather than a sign or interpretant, logically determines semiosis going forward.   Is the confirmation affected in its character by the objects, signs, and interpretants leading up to it?  If I form an interpretant that there's a horse on the hill, is not the confirmational test thereby logically determined to consist in looking for a horse on the hill?  Is the confirmation itself not logically determined by the semiotic object's presence on the hill in confirmatory accordance with sign, interpretant, and object as represented through them?  So the confirmation is logically determined by the semiosis leading up to it.  Even the need for the confirmation arises from the unconfirmedness of the interpretant.  Why indeed would we even need interpretants if they did not tend to go beyond that which prior experience already gives us?   So the confirmation, the confirmatory experience about the object, object experience which Peirce says one does not have in having a sign of an object, is, in its confirmatoriness, logically determined by semiosis and logically determinant of semiosis.  Triadicism means that logically to determine or be determined, is to be in the role of semiotic object, sign, or interpretant.  That's all, those are the three options. Yet -- the confirmation, as per the foregoing, is not object, sign, or interpretant. Therefore, it must be some fourth semiotic role.   Indeed, what is logic if it is not definitively addressed to verification?  What is logic if it does not contribute logical determination to verification and if it does not receive logical determination from verification?   To say that establishment or verification are a fourth element is to say that, in being mediated by signs and interpretants, experience is also mediated -- or is, at any rate, structured and restructured -- by establishments and verifications, in the small and in the large. There should be nothing mysterious about this if we find nothing mysterious in the idea of arranging "special experiences" or in the idea of our experience with those experiences. It never made sense to think of reducing verification to mere signs and interpretants except by the same kind of viewpoint shifts which accompany reductions to material and statistical processes, etc.  The relations among any semiotic elements when established in particular cases as truly, validly, etc., relating to one another, are just that -- _established_.  Since establishment is a dimension of semiosis, it will be present at unconscious levels where the other dimensions are present.  And it makes sense to think of it in that way.  For of course one _recognizes_ some signs as interpretants of others.  Not always consciously but sometimes consciously -- recognizing, for instance, that the definition representing the word "soleil" also is working as an interpretant of the sign "soleil" about the sun in the teacher's examples providing collateral experience of the word.  The standards of truth, validity, rigor, etc., on which we do such things, are themselves not arbitrary constructs but instead are aspects of real and general things about which we learn, because, like the old saying goes, in the real world it's "truth or consequences."   But I've pointed this sort of thing out in the past, too. I can certainly go into more detail, but if all the foregoing does not get the idea across sufficiently to the reader to feel that he or she has grasped it well enough at least to agree or disagree with it, then I don't know what to say.   Best, Ben http://tetrast.blogspot.com/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com