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

[Benjamin Udell]

Joe, list,

 

Joe, I don't know why it seems to you like I'm suddenly releasing a "tirade of verbal dazzle." The prose there looks pretty mundane to me and I certainly didn't mean it intimidate you. Generally when I write such prose I'm just trying to present links in arguments, keep from being confusing, and keep the internal cross-references clear. I try (not always successfully) to avoid trying to write "dazzling" prose because often enough when I've looked at it months later it seems a bit stilted and labored. My editing consists most of all in replacing pronouns with nouns and phrases, even though it leads to repetition, because it worked very well for Fritjof Capra in his _The Tao of Physics_, and he pushed that sort of writing about as far as it can reasonably go, to excellent effect.

 

As for showing that there's no subtle weird complex way that one could reduce verification to the triad, I don't know why you were expecting such in my response to Jim.  I've said earlier that I was working on something, and that it would take maybe a week.  Then you soon posted to me on other stuff in regard to verification, and that led to the current discussion, so I don't know where you think that I'd have found the time to work on the no-reduction argument. And when I said that I've practical matters also to attend to, I wasn't just making it up.  Now, I didn't see any reason to rush the kind of argument which you asked me to make, since it would be the first time that I'd made such an argument on peirce-l.  And I see it as dealing with more challenges than you see it as dealing with, for I don't seem able, even after all this time, to get you to _focus_ on analyzing the verificatory act, for instance, of checking on what a person says is happening at some house. You refer to such an act but you don't look at it.

 

Somebody tells me there's a fire at a house, I form an interpretation that there's a fire at that house, I run over and look at it, and looka there, it's on fire! Feel the heat! Look at the fire trucks! Cross to the other side of the street in order to get past it. Verification, involving experience of the object(s). Now, if that experience merely represented the house to me, the smoke, its source, etc., then it wouldn't be acquainting me with the house as the house has become.  Doubts about this lead to the interesting question of _what are signs for, anyway_? Meanwhile, if the house really is on fire, then subsequent events and behaviors will corroborate the verification. Once, from around 16 blocks away, I saw billowing smoke rising from the vicinity of my building. I rushed up to the elevated train station but couldn't get a clearer view. Finally I ran most of the way to my building, where I observed that the smoke was coming from a block diagonally away -- the Woolworth's store was aflame and my building was quite safe and sound. I hadn't sat around interpreting a.k.a. construing, instead I had actively arranged to have a special experience of the objects themselves, an experience logically determined in its references and significances both prior and going forward, by the interpretation that my building was afire; and the experience determined semiosis going forward as well, and was corroborated in my interactions with fellow witnesses and by subsequent events, including the gutting and rebuilding the store.

- Was the experience the object in question?

- No.

- Was it the sign?

- No.

- Was it the interpretant?

- No.

- Was it determined logically by them?

- Yes.

- Was it, then, another interpretant of the prior interpretants and their object?

- No, because it was not an interpretant of the object, instead it further acquainted me with the object.

Now, if you don't see a problem for triadicism there, then I'd say that you've set the bar exceedingly high for seeing a problem. And if you reply that you don't find that sequence of questions and answers convincing of anything, even of the plausible appearance of a problem, without pointing to just where the logic breaks down, then I'll conclude that you've merely skimmed it, and haven't reasoned your way through it at all.

 

Yes, generally I point out that sign and interpretant don't give experience of the object and that verification involves experience of the object.  There's a cogent general argument right there.  But if you see no problem for semiotics in the question of signs and experience, no problem that can't be "taken care of" later, some time, when somebody gets around to it, meanwhile let somebody prove beyond this doubt, then that doubt, then another doubt, that there's some sort of problem there that needs to be addressed, well, then, you'll never feel a burden of need to deal with it.  Generally I''m okay with this, because it leads to my exploring interesting questions.

 

In response to my points about collateral experience, some asked, among other things -- "but how does that make 'recognition' or confirmation be _part_ of semiosis, part of an inference process?"  A surprising doubt, but, like the oftener unsurprising doubts raised, certainly _interesting_.  Indeed, what would be a criterion for something's being a basic semiotic element?  So, after a while, I developed ways to discuss how a verification is involved qua verification in the process of logical determination, involved both as determined by it and as determining it. I took my time and thought it through in some detail. I've learned a lot from doing it. I really liked doing it. Now, does triadicism mean that everything logically determined or determinant is so as object, sign, or interpretant?  It seems to me to be obvious that triadicism means that. But if people aren't sure about it, then for people it's a _question_ rather than a commonly obvious statement, one which seems at least important and which I've discussed one way or the other at least a dozen times and probably more,  and still I've no idea what your view is on it or on any number of important questions.  You know, the answer to that question goes to the question of whether verification is something on a par with object, sign, and interpretant. It's a question which forms at least part of the question of the _criterion_ for whether something is a basic semiotic element.  If I recall rightly, nobody besides myself has plainly, or even tentatively, explicitly affirmed or denied it. Then you say that I'm _avoiding_ making some argument. 

 

But what do you really think the odds are that there is such a reduction?  One would think that you or somebody could have produced an example by now.  I mean, if you think that it can be reduced, then do it -- reduce it.  Show me the diagram wherein a verification relation consists of nothing but objects, signs, and interpretants. 

 

Why would I expect that there is even a small burden of such on you at all?  If there really were such a reduction, _one would expect examples of how verification is really made of nothing but objectification, representation, and interpretation to be readily forthcoming_.  One would even have some degree of expectation that it would make at least plausible sense in a pretty common-sense way, rather than only after the clarification of deep murky areas of complication.  In the absence, after all this time, of such examples, the chances of there being such a reduction have to be considered pretty slim. Yes, I certainly doubt that you or anybody else can do it, but what surprises me a little is that you, of all people, hardly even try. Recently you verbally partly outlined how such a diagram would work, and I responded quite specifically on how it seemed that it would work and posed you a question about it, and haven't heard about it from you since then.

 

Best,

Ben Udell

http://tetrast.blogspot.com/

 

>> BU:   However, my argument has been that, when one pays sufficient attention to the relationships involved, one sees that a verification is _not_ a representation, in those relationships in which it is a verification, -- just as an object is not a sign in those relationships in which it is an object. Even when a thing-in-its-signhood is the object, the subject matter, then it is _in that respect_ the object and not a sign, though it wouldn't be the object if it were not a sign (and indeed every object is a sign in some set of relationships). These logical distinctions don't wash away so easily.

 

> JR:  That is right, but none of this shows that recognition -- or cognition -- is not capable of being analyzed and explicated in terms of complexes of sign-object-interpretant relationships -- along with the secondness and firstness relationships they presuppose -- as they structure a process the peculiar complexity of which is made possible by the changing identities and differences of the entities in the process that occur and recur in it.  Your unleashing of your verbal abilities at this point in your response in a tirade of verbal dazzle, where you should be focusing your efforts in a careful analytical way instead, is blinding you to the task at hand. 

 

> That is  how what you say from this point on in your message appears to me, Ben.  This is positively my last response to you on this particular topic.  If others are persuaded that you have actually shown what needs to be shown instead of burying it verbally, that will no doubt impress me.  But at this time I don't see it and have a strong sense of being intimidated verbally rather than reasoned with. Perhaps I am merely being obtuse.  I recognize this as a possibility but I find no tendency in myself to believe it.  Perhaps at another time things will appear differently to one of the two of us.

 

> Jim below says things pretty near to that which I'm saying in terms of the distinction between object and sign, and it seems that the "bad regression" stuff that I've said about his previous stuff no longer applies.

 

Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction, not a metaphysical or physical or material or biological or psychological distinction, though it takes on complex psychological relevance insofar as a psyche will be an inference process and will not only develop structures which manifest the distinction, but will also tend consciously to employ the distinction and even thematize it and make a topic (a semiotic object) out of it (like right now).

 

However, my argument has been that, when one pays sufficient attention to the relationships involved, one sees that a verification is _not_ a representation, in those relationships in which it is a verification, -- just as an object is not a sign in those relationships in which it is an object. Even when a thing-in-its-signhood is the object, the subject matter, then it is _in that respect_ the object and not a sign, though it wouldn't be the object if it were not a sign (and indeed every object is a sign in some set of relationships). These logical distinctions don't wash away so easily.

 

Meaning is formed into the interpretant. Validity, soundness, etc., are formed into the recognition.

 

Meaning is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of interpretants. Validity, soundness, legitimacy, is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of recognitions. 

 

One even has some slack in "making" the distinction between interpretant and verification -- it's a slack which one needs in order to learn about the distinction so as to incorporate those learnings into oneself as a semiosic sytem and so as to employ the distinction in a non-reckless but also non-complacent manner.

 

(For everything -- (a) boldness, (b) confident behavior, (c) caution, (d) resignation --
there is a season -- (a) bravery, (b) duely confident behavior, (c) prudence, (d) "realism" --
& an out-of-season -- (a) rashness, (b) complacency, (c) cowardice, (d) defeatism.)

 

In a sense the distinction (interpretant vs. verification) which I'm discussing is an aspect of the ancient one traceable between

 

meaning, value, good, end (telos), actualization, affectivity

 

and

 

factuality, validity, soundness, true, entelechy, reality,  establishment, cognition.

 

To make it four-way:

 

1. object ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. interpretant
2. sign ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. recognition, verification

 

1. strength, dynamism ~ ~ ~ 3. vibrancy, value, good
2. suitability, richness ~ ~ ~ 4. firmness, soundness, truth etc.

 

1. will & character ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. affectivity & sensibility
2. ability & competence ~ ~ 4. cognition & intelligence

 

1. agency ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. act, actualization
2. bearer ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. borne, supported

 

1. beginning, leading, arche ~ ~ 3. end, telos, culmination
2. middle, means ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. check, entelechy

 

1. multi-objective optimization process ~ ~ 3. cybernetic process
2. stochastic process ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. inference process

 

1. forces ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. life
2. matter ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. intelligent life

 

Best, Ben
http://tetrast.blogspot.com/

 

----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Piat
To: Peirce Discussion Forum
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 1:54 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Charles Rudder wrote:

 

>> That is, there is an immediate--non-mediated and, hence, cognitively autonomous relation between cognizing subjects and objects consisting of phenomena and/or things in themselves who are in some sense able to "see" or "recognize" objects and relations between and among objects as they are independent of how they are represented by signs and their interpretants.  On this account of cognition, signs and systems of signs are "instrumental" auxiliaries to cognition and their semiosical instrumentality is subject to being and is consciously or unconsciously continuously being extrasemiosically evaluated, validated, or "verified" by cognizing subjects; a process which Peirce, who makes cognition and cognitive growth an exclusively semiosical process, ignores.>>

 

Dear Charles, Folks

 

Here's my take --

 

That one has some sort of non-representational "knowledge" of objects against which one can compare or verify one's representational or semiotic knowledge does seem to be a popular view of the issue of how reality is accessed or known.   But I think this is a view Peirce rejected in the New List. 

 

However this is not to say that there is no practical distinction between what is meant by an object and what is meant by a representation of an object.  An object is that which is interpreted as standing for (or representing) itself.  A sign is something that is interpreted as standing for something other than itself.  Thus one can compare one's interpretation of a sign of a collateral object with one's interpretation of the referenced collateral object itself even though both the object of the sign and the collateral object are known only through representation.  The collateral object and the object of some discussion of it are in theory the same object.  The distinction is between one's direct representation of the object vs it's indirect representation to one by others.  In both cases the object is represented. 

 

There are no inherent distinctions between those objects we interpret as objects and those we interpret as signs  -- the distinction is in how we use them.  The object referred to by a sign is always collateral to the sign itself unless the sign is referring to itself in some sort of convoluted self referential fashion.  The distinction between direct (albeit mediated) knowledge of an object and the sort of second hand knowledge one gains from the accounts of others poses no special problems.  There is nothing magic about direct personal knowledge that gives it some sort of special objective validity over the accounts of others.  What makes such personal aquaintance valuable is not their imagined "objectivity"  but their trustworthiness (in terms of serving one's own interests as opposed to the interests of others).  OTOH multiple observation gathered from different "trustworthy" POVs do provide a more complete and thus more reliable and useful (or "true"as some say) account of reality. 

 

And finally,  verification (conceiving a manifold of senuous impressions as having some particular meaning) IS representation -- at least for Peirce (as I understand him). 

 

Just some thoughts as I'm following this discussion. 

 

Best,

Jim

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