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

[Benjamin Udell]

Gary, Charles, Joe, Jim, Jacob, list,   >>[Ben] Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction   >[Gary] As I see it,  it's not that simple because of the dynamical object, the fact of inter-communication as well as internal inference, etc.   I didn't say that logic doesn't go deep, much less that it's something with which we merely decorate the world. It's about attaining the truth, and is a way for one to arrange for oneself to be determined by truth, so it must have something to do with the world, be of it and not just on it. This also goes to the question of what it means for reality to depend on the final interpretant. I guess I'd say that I think that the distinction between object and sign is more basic and general than idioscopic distinctions, in that sense in which cenoscopy is more basic and general than idioscopy. I don't think that, as roles, they are strictly arbitrary or entirely subject to conscious deliberate whim, and that also seems to involve my thinking of them also as statuses, though I'm not sure what that adds to the idea of their not being quite arbitrary; for the time being, the status element's contribution is just a sense that I have. And special phenomena do seem to vary in their capacity to serve as signs -- e.g., we've generally regarded it as a question whether biological phenomana _embody_ semioses and, in connection with that, to what extent they can be considered to embody interpretants. I've even said that mechanical systems, or at least some of them, from a certain perspective, could be considered to embody only objects. Whether that is or isn't the case, it shows that I do think that logical distinctions end up rooting themselves in some sense into the concrete, idioscopic world. I think that they do so in such ways, for instance, as to help motivate, justify, and reward the conception of a quasi-mind. However, I think that the assignment or "belongingness" of such roles to things is a relationship in the mind or quasi-mind for which things are signs and objects, and to the extent that that mind or quasi-mind is particularized from out of set of possibilities, likewise the object-sign relations get particularized. The capacity of many given things to serve both as objects and as signs is part of why it is that we have such freedom to focus on them in either way and to let our further semiosis about them be governed by general logical considerations. But where the freedom seems so great that the logic seems "decorative" -- no, I don't go along with that, though I can see how I may seem to when I emphasize that the sign-object distinction is a logical one rather than a physical, material, biological, or psychological one. Peirce emphasizes the importance of distinguishing logical conceptions from psychological conceptions, and something like that spirit is what I had in mind.   >[Gary] Charles may mean something somewhat different from what I'm taking his two semiosical triads to be referring to (I hope he'll comment further on them at some point), but I'll show how I see the two through an example diagramming them in relationship to each other. [Btw, I would  recommend an analysis Charles posted 12/1/05--his "as if" post--in which he considers certain Peircean passages which brought him to his inner/outer notion] This is admittedly only a very preliminary analysis and I may see things differently as I consider the two triads further (I may be conflating some of the inner and outer aspects, or not connecting them properly--it appears, not surprisingly, to be a very complex relationship indeed)   >[Gary] ---------- outer semiosical triad:   The sign in this case is a particular line spoken in a particular production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing by a particular actor at one outdoor performance in a New York City park.   |>  The audience members hearing it spoken are these (selected) interpreters: (a) a young acting student who is studying the given role, (b) an 8 y.o. child attending her first live play, (c) a Spanish speaking man without much English language skills dragged to it by his girlfriend. (d) the director of the play   The dynamical object is whatever meaning/emotion Shakespeare, the actor, the director mean to convey/express in that line, through its delivery, etc. ----------   >[Gary] However this sign as reflected in semiotic processes of the various audience members are naturally very different semioses ( a, b, c and d) at the moment of their each hearing and "following the meaning" of the line:   >[Gary] ---------- inner semiosical triad [read 1/2/3]:   1. The sign is pretty much whatever the line spoken is heard as (given educational backgrounds, language skills, the coughing of someone next to one interpreter, a thought of the need to pay a bill at just that moment) and what each takes it to mean, possibly accompanying thoughts, etc.   1/2/3 |>  3. The  interpretant also will be very different for each (much could be said about the various interpretants, but not in this diagram!)   2. The  immediate object varies considerably for each (you'll have to imagine what this might entail, but there is enough difference to suggest what I have in mind) ----------   >[Gary] Although this is perhaps different from how Charles sees the two relating, I connected them in the following way in a recent post [this kind of analysis "back and forth" between two communicators within the context of a real world of experience is also Peirce's approach in the "Stormy Day" letter to William James which, btw, has  pertinence to the present discussion] >[Gary] ------- outer semiosical triad:  .   .   inner semiosical triad: .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  sign sign:   .    .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  |> interpretant |> interpreter .   .   .   .   .   .     immediate object dynamical object --------   Generally, I don't see that there is anything in this that contradicts what I said about (the conception of) an interpreter not introducing something unaccounted for, in terms of basic semiotic elements, in the object-sign-interpretant trichotomy.  If, however, this is in some sort of relation to an conception of recognition as "really" being an interpreter, a grand interpretant, I've addressed it a lot more explicitly and with arguments in past posts.   >[Gary] Well, whether or not this particular analysis will hold, the point is to connect the sign with the inferences of living, breathing, thinking, feeling, human intelligences (Man as symbol) and as this occurs in the world of experience where object and sign are not just roles. As for the individual as he is involved in these complex patterns of semioses:   >[Gary] CP 7.583  We have already seen that every state of consciousness [is] an inference; so that life is but a sequence of inferences or a train of thought. At any instant then man is a thought, and as thought is a species of symbol, the general answer to the question what is man? is that he is a symbol.  . .   I hope I've already clarified that I don't regard logical roles as roles in a mereness sense. However, I don't see where you've addressed the question of how an experience receives logical determination from semiosis such as to be a recognition of the consistency, truth, validity, soundness, etc., of object, sign, interpretant in respect to one another, and how the experience would do this without being an interpretant that, contradictorily to Peircean semiotics, acquaints or further acquaints the mind with the object.   >[Gary] Ben gives the inference process as a fourth element.   >>[Ben] --------- 1. multi-objective optimization process ~ ~ 3. cybernetic process 2. stochastic process ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. inference process ---------   >[Gary] But there is no need for a fourth semeiotic element to explain such inference in the way of looking at matters as suggested by 7.583.   Well, I hope you haven't gotten the idea that I think that the four semiotic elements are to be equated rather than merely correlated to those processes mentioned in my table. The point was inter-table correlations across to various other tables in my post [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor, August 20, 2006 (August 21st at gmane, http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1325 ). In any case, you've made an assertion, not an argument, and I've made arguments, including many on this thread. Rather than improvising a rehash of them to a very general assertion, I refer you to them.   Best, Ben http://tetrast.blogspot.com/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com