----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 5:17
PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite
photograph" metaphor
Joe,
Let's just say that I misunderstood what you were saying and read too
much into it about inquiry priorities. It certainly was not a "blatant
diversionary tactic." It was what I thought at the time.
If neurons have a lot of triadicity, that's fine with me. At some level,
we're biological information processes and I wouldn't expect to see a
recipient/recognizant role distinctly embodied all the way down.
It's clear to me at this point that you have some recondite conception of
verification. I really don't know what you're thinking of in regard to it.
I have specified that I'm using "verification" as a "forest" term for the
various "trees" of confirmation, corroboration, proof, etc.
Maybe you think that I'm talking only of a conscious deliberate act, or
some sort of counterpart thereto at a neuronal level. I have already specified
otherwise.
Any time you enter a situation with some conjectures, expectations,
understandings, memories, etc., you are testing them, whether that's your
purpose or not. And you're always entering a situation with such orientations.
And you see what happens, and are surprised, unsurprised, etc. As an
intelligent system, you learn from the result and accordingly revise, even if
only slightly in particular cases, the system which you are. That is
evolution (as opposed, say, to pre-programmed development).
The "universal category" of _accidens_ involved is that of
consistency, truth, validity, soundness, legitimacy, etc.
Now, looking at the four (the first three are similar to Peircean
ones):
1. reaction, force, connection ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. meaning, importance,
import, good/ill
2. aptness, tendency, etc. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. truth, legitimacy, etc.
You can see that I'm actually relating categories and semiosis back to
more traditional philosoophical structures. Or maybe you can't see it, haven't
thought about the four causes and related conceptions that much, don't "get" a
strong-apt-good-true 4-chotomy, just aren't familiar enough with those byways
to see the structure there, and so on.
But actually I've argued these subject matters all in much more detail
elsewhere. I'm growing tired of this.
Best,
Ben
Ben, let's focus on the following interchange:
[JR] The universal categories are analytical elements involved in all
cases alike and any individual case must already be fully constituted as being
of the nature of a cognition of some sort before the question of its
verificational status can even arise. The verificational factor therefore
cannot be on par with the sort of universal element we are concerned with when
we are concerned with the categories.
[BU] In other words, never mind pointing out a contradiction in semiotics
and arguing for a given solution as most common-sensical and accordant with
general experience, though it would undermine the category theory, instead, do
a whole new category theory before critically looking at semiotics.
REPLY: No, those are not other words for the same thing, but merely
a blatant bit of diversionary rhetorical ploy.
[BU continuing] Even for those for whom Peirce's category theory is
_that well established_, that argument should not be valid, at least as it is
formulated, since the truth is that a problem arising in a special area can
_lead_ to revisions in a more general area; it really depends on the case, and
no theory is allowed such sheer monolithicism as to immunize it from revision.
REPLY: The specific point I made is simply ignored in favor of
inveighing against a supposed commitment of mine to some general thesis about
special cases and general areas which is supposedly designed to immunize
Peirce's view from all criticism. Come on, Ben.
[BU continuing:] But Peirce's category theory is not even well
established among philosophers generally, so this sort of requirement has that
much less credibility.
REPLY: What sort of requirement? You say nothing about what I
actually said. Skipping over a paragraph about a past message in which
you outlined "an alternate category theory", you then go on to say:
[BU]: But where Joe really goes wrong is in saying _that a cognition must
be fully constituted before the question of its verificational status can even
arise_. At this point I have no idea what Joe means by "verification," surely
he doesn't think that it's something that only professional scientists do.
It's something, instead, that children do every day, and shout about, often
enough. "Prove it!" "Yeah, I don't need to prove it!" "Oh yes you do!" And so
on. On some subjects their standards of verification will leave something to
be desired, but standards indeed they do have. Even a dog can learn to check
whether a stick has actually departed from the throwing hand. Anybody who
thinks that a cognition can be fully constituted without a verificational
aspect which helped form it, is saying that cognition is nothing but whistling
in the dark. If verification is not a dimension of cognition, then we're mere
vegetable organisms, blindly and quasi-robotically pursuing ends which don't
evolve in one's lifetime. Of course, if we state a genuinely human end in a
most general form, as being, for instance, "the good in its rational
character," then we can say, lo, the end evolves not. But that's just a
trick.
REPLY: If you were actually to say anything about how verification does
and must plays a role in every cognition, it would be to the point, Ben.
But how many cognitions do you suppose have occurred in your thinking or mine
just in the last ten minutes, let us say? Hundreds, thousands, tens of
thousands? You know of course of the mind-boggling complexity of the
neural system and how much processing at an unconscious level must be going on
in the nervous system which, even in ten minutes time, will underlie what must
be hundreds or thousands of more or less conscious perceptions that are going
on at a low level of perceptual consciousness. Of course one might be
dozing off and nothing much is happening consciously, but if one is conscious
at all, how many distinguishable cognitions might one discern over even a
brief period like ten minutes. To the extent that those occurrences
really do or should count as cognitions it should be possible to analyze them
relying upon the categorial conceptions for the basic structural order of them
considered as processes. I can imagine (vaguely) the possibility of
coming up with a persuasive reason for saying that the elementary conceptions
of firstnes, secondness, and thirdness, with the latter understood as a
sign-object-interrpetant structure, and with those conceptions further
distinsuishable in accordance with the many trichotomic distinctions that he
makes in the sign classification part of his theory -- given all of that, I
can still imagine someone saying "Not enough; a tetradic relationship related
to Peirce's triad as it relates to the dyad, etc., must also be involved" and
giving a good reason for thinking that there must be some such additional
factor which Peirce overlooked. And that even goes for a claim about a
necessary five-place relation, too, though I have no idea why anyone would say
it. I am by no means cloaed to these possibiliteis. But what
I do not understand is why you would think that in fact there will be for
every discriminable cognition something called a verification involved in it
implicitly, which is what would be required for it to be a categorial element
in the relevant sense of "category".
As far all the rhetoric about us otherwise being mere vegetable
organisms, "whistling in the dark" (whistling vegetables?): the fact is that
we are merely "whistling in the dark" in most of our understanding of things,
and your rhetoric about that so far overshoots its mark as to be a reductio ad
absurdem even as rhetoric. We need not turn to low-level
micro-perceptions for cases of cognition showing no apparent trace of anything
that could be called verification, but need only turn on the evening news to
see how entire nations can fall into the hands of leaders with university
degrees who work systematically at making sure that no idea of theirs is ever
subjected to verification until its stupidity has insured that the catastropic
consequences of acting upon it forces refutation of the bloodiest sort upon
them, and even then find it difficult to appreciate it AS such. Of
course verification is humanly important. But there is surely good
reason to say that it is not of the nature of a UNIVERSAL categorial
conception, and I do not find the kind of argument you have been giving
persuasive because it does not seem to address what is most implausible about
proposing it as such.
Joe
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