Ben,
A few precisions which my initial text had overlooked, all along your
comments.
Benjamin Udell a écrit :
Bernard, Joe, list,
[Joe] The only thing that presently interests me about Ben's thesis about
verification concerns it as a claim made about taking it into account in the
basic category theory. When you broaden it to being about experimenal
procedure instead that broadens it quite beyond my concern.
[Bernard] OK. I will try to answer Ben on the categorial aspect of the matter
further. However my point was precisely that in order to don't throw too
roughly verification into a category of its own, it is necessary to put it into
its proper context. This context is I think the scientific method and in the
same way as nobody would make of -say- the effects of a conception a category
of its own, the same goes for verification. But there is something in Ben's
argumentation that deserves interest, namely the role of recognition and
experience in the flow of living signs as well as their involvement in the
basic theory of signs. In short, I think that if the solution of the collateral
experience does not consist in the invention of a new category, yet the problem
remains.
[Bernard] In a sense your response below (see after my message) shows that
either you consider the problem as being concerned by the communication theory
properties of scientific exchanges or you consider it as not being a problem at
all.
[Bernard] I strongly agree with you on the fundamental role of trust in recognition (and
I read trust as Firstness: something which is as it is without needing anything else).
The reason is that since "all evolution of thought is dialogical" a
precondition for the dialogue can take place is trust. I often muse over the following
passage from Peirce, which I think says just the same concerning the dialogue of our
reason with the universe:
[Bernard quoting Peirce] " Our Reason is akin to the Reason that governs the
universe, we must assume that or despair of finding out anything. Now despair is always
illogical, and we are warranted in thinking so, since otherwise all reasoning will be in
vain" (NEM, Vol 3). In other words we can trust a familiarity, affinity of our
reason with the world, and this trust is logical Peirce adds. The same goes for
argumentation.
[Bernard] Now the fact that the dialogue is supported by trust, the fact that as you are
saying there is a normal presumption of credibility in human communication, does not give
an account of the ways in which the dialogue itself develops: it is just a prerequisite
for the dialogue to take place. Collateral experience is a dialogue between two signs: a
sign of an object for an interpretant on the one side and another sign (which is nothing
but the previous interpretant) of the SAME object on the other side. I say "another
sign" because experience, as thought, is in signs
[Ben]Your scenario implies that a mind gets object-acquaintance from a sign
(the previous interpretant) to that same mind about the object. It's okay for
you to disagree with Peirce on that issue, but you should come out and say so.
(Do you, in fact, agree or disagree with Peirce about it?). However, as far as
I can tell, you're simply trying to use hidden semiotic reference frame shifts
as a legitimate basis for reasoning. You're saying, that experience is mediated
by signs, ergo a mind X's experience of an object is mind X's sign of the
object. But it's only for another mind Y, or for the same mind X qua other mind
Y, that the experience of the object may be merely a sign of the object. Mind
X's experience of the object is mind Y's sign of the object. That happens often
enough. It doesn't mean, willy-nilly and in a blur of illation symbols, that
mind X's experience of the object is mind X's sign of the object.
I don't know if Peirce saw the matter as I see it myself but I have not
found in the sources something that contradicts my own idea of that.
Nevertheless, I try to be more precise because it seems that you did not
understand my point. The keypoint is that we are working here with a
particular level of semiotics, the level of the evolution of signs in
actu or semiosis. Thus the "dynamic" aspect of the relationship between
successive actualized signs of the same object is essential. And I see
the question of collateral experience of the object as another way of
saying that you can't determine the identity of a moving body (the
actual sign of some object) at the instant t without knowing its
previous trajectory. To put it by means of a mathematical image,
collateral experience can be figured by the partial integral of a curve
to which the actual sign comes to complete with a "delta" (hence the
phrasing "perhaps a much more developped sign" for the interpretant).
It is true that to my knowledge Peirce does not say exactly so but the
schema of integral and differential calculus is everywhere in his work
when he is speaking of evolution. This view permits also to make room
for two important topics that are not very elaborated in the work of
Peirce. I am thinking to the role of memory which evidently is required
in order for collateral experience to be active. I am thinking too of
the social tenets of semiotics: collateral experience is not necessarily
individual experience of a singular object. I see the whole knowledge
written in books, conveyed by customs, myths and so on, as collateral
experience of objects too. I think that this is a way to clarify the
question you are posing: individual minds as well as individual
experiences depend in part on social ones in my opinion.
[Bernard] [To Ben's attention: you are probably familiar with second order
cybernetics as stated by von Foerster that made a special status for the
system's observer. I believed this theory for a long time but one of the main
lessons I have learned from Peirce is that there is no such special thing as
the observer or the recognizant: they just are signs like other signs].
[Ben]Where in Peirce did you learn that there is no such special thing as the observer, the recognizant, the observation, the object-experience collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object, etc.?
By "special" I intended to say a "particular status" : observer,
recognizant, "experiencer", thinking beings, etc, all are signs. This is
a consequence of the formula according to which "all thought is in
signs". There is a kind of washing brain to do when we encounter percian
semiotics : signs are not in front of us , waiting for us to catch them.
On the contrary we are locked up in signs because we are signs too. I
used to think the matter of collateral experience in these terms: what
happens when two signs of the same object follow one another?
[Ben]It would mean that he wrote a very late passage wherein he renounces most
of his previous remarks on collateral experience/observation, and argues for
some form of the radical revision of his conception of signs which such a
renunciation would entail. How would he revise his ideas about mathematical
diagrams and the importance of their observability and experimentability? One
can only wonder.
I don't know what you are refering too. I would be surprised that Peirce
renounced to something on collateral experience. As far as I understand
the subject he did not develop this aspect of his sign theory, he just
mentioned it in passing, not because it was not important but because it
was not a priority in his agenda. This is an interpretation of mine for
what it is worth.
[Bernard] So we have two triads both under an actualized form. Starting from
this several directions are possible:
[Bernard] - stating that we have two communicating triads, which tends to make
the problem fit into an independant theory of communication (independant from
sign theory). It seems to be the way that Joe is suggesting but it seems to me
that it lets open the question of how two signs can have the SAME object in
common. Peirce did not address directly this question as far as I know but I
think that he considered that this sameness was part of the sign definition
(straight away from the New-List), so it is a part consubstantial with the
logical doctrine of signs and not a part of an independant communication theory.
[Bernard] -stating that two triads, it is one in surplus, and thus that's not
the right amount. This is how I understand Ben's proposal of a special figure
with fourthness. the weakness of making the sign's theory within its triadic
character some provisional construct. Ben throws it on the fire.
[Bernard] -sure I would prefer a third way :-) two triads can enter within
another triad the role of which would be to unify the critical theory of signs
with the rhetorical or methodeutical one. Peirce did not achieve that but it is
not a reason for trying something like that.
[Ben] What you've done is contradict Peirce on collateral experience in order to construct these two triangles in dialog with each other, and _still_ you couldn't account for the logically determinational relationship which I've been discussing.
I don't understand what you are writing here....
[Ben]I suspect that in various ways you and Joe are both trying to reach through the conception of
trust to things like in Peirce's example where a person X trusts some of his friend's
representation about a boat enough to count it as his own (person X's) acquaintanceship with the
the boat and counts the rest of it as a representation about that boat. I've addressed this
question about the slack which allows learnability about the distinction between interpretation and
verification. I don't know where you could go with this except to a rephrasing which would require
the rewriting of various passages in Peirce without changing the basic structure of the issue.
You'd end up crossing out "experience" and similar words where they appear and replacing
them with "really trusted representation," not omitting those passages where Peirce so
carefully distinguishes between even a forceful index of the object and one's acquaintanceship with
the object. I think it would prove itself to be mostly a playing with words, but still an
illuminant playing. Supposing that you do it --
It couldn't be done without recognizing that the idea of a basic trust as a kind of human default setting is quite like
the idea of a core of experiences, _in terms of the question of how one extends them_ -- signs and interpretants which
are not of the "really trusted" variety lead beyond the really trusted, and then semiosis goes and checks in
terms of representations which it can "really trust." (In fact one often does check in terms of things which
one regards as signs but still as trusted signs.) This in turn leads to an idea of that which has been checked and
holds up, and an idea of the checked, tested, verified, which is not merely that of that which is "really
trusted," because it differs in structure and in logical quantity in a respect which I've discussed in the past.
Then looking back over the process one sees that the verificational or "trust-ificational" structures run
back far and deep. One also notices that the automatic trust is itself an aspect of the mind's character and thus
amounts to a quasi-recognition reached not by the mind itself but by the mind or quasimind of that process which
produced it, a process presumably evolutionary, not insofar as it must be biological, since of course in principle it
could be technological, but insofar as advanced inference systems, presumably, very seldom just pop out of the void or
just suddenly assemble themselves from their components.
Now, your statments that "It seems to me that it has in common with the previous position the weakness
of making the sign's theory with its triadic character some provisional construct. Ben throws it on the
fire." are a roundabout way of saying that my position has the weakness of disagreeing with Peirce.
However, where you go very wrong is in saying that I "throw it on the fire." It may feel to you
like that's what you would be doing if you thought like I do, but that's emotionalism. In fact,
"throwing it on the fire" would mean switching to dyadic semiology or worse. To the contrary, I
argue for the retention of the object-sign-interpretant structure and for the _recognition_ that -- via the
characterization of the interpretant and via the Pragmatic Maxim and via the characterizations of sign and
semiotic object dependently on the characterization of the interpretant --the object-sign-interpretant
structure already is based, thoughout itself, on the appeal to a fourth element, practically relevant
experience which would tend to support or overturn interpretant and sign with respect to the obect.
This is important Ben. Because if you maintain the S-O-I structure as
Peirce conceived it, it seems to me that it will be impossible to add a
fourth element while maintaining its meaning (particularly the sign
definition)
[ben] It still remains unclear to me what you and Joe mean by "category theory." Normally I would take that to mean theory about, first of all, the cenopythagorean categories 1stness, 2ndness, 3rdness. But both of you seem to be talking only about the object-sign-interpretant triad. This matters because it is not clear whether you, and whether Joe, currently hold that there is a one-to-one correlation between the cenopythagorean categories and the basic semiotic elements, and whether either of you currently has a definite view on the question at all.
The phrasing category theory is perhaps not the best. Because it is not
properly speaking a "theory". It is much more (to my sense) a founding
principle grounded on an analysis and a revision of the kantian
categories the justification of which relies on a basic assymetry in our
capacities to think: the rules of prescission. In a sense the categories
function as the basic axiom of the whole percian logic (my understanding
one more time). As such the categories of Firstness, Secondness and
Thirdness not only rule S-O-I in this order but I think that they also
rule grammar, critical logic and rhetorics in this order.This is this
latter view that your Fourthness tends to dismiss: passing from the
logical characters of the sign to its actual manifestations needs,
according to your arguments, a change in the axiom. I think that it is
an unnecessary luxury
Bernard
For my part, the cenopythagorean categories are quite relevant and belong in
one-to-one correspondence with the basic semiotic elements just as they are
with various kinds of signs (icon, index, symbol). But it's that much harder,
for instance, to argue about the final interpretant, the final recognizant, and
their particular importance (and I do hold with those ideas), if people remain
undeclared on their views about the relevance of the cenopythagorean categories
to the basic semiotic elements.
Best, Ben
http://tetrast.blogspot.com/
[Joe] I should say, though, that I think that verification in science is motivated in the same say
as in ordinary life, namely, by the occurrence of a real question being at least pertinent or
justifiable if not actually raised about a given claim made. In practice, scientists tend to
accept research claims made by those they regard as peers as unquestioningly as one does in
ordinary life in regards to claims made by ordinary life peers. Huaan relationships depend
importantly on this: someone who thinks that everything anyone else says is questionable prima
facie is living in hell (which, unfortunately, does indeed occur all too frequently in human life,
as the daily news testifies). Peirce's brief discussion of "credenciveness" in the New
Elements paper (in Essential Writings 2) is very suggestive in this respect, and I note that Peirce
is responsible for the definition of "credencive" in the Century Dictionary, though I
can't check up on that right at the moment while in process of composing this message. But, to put
the point in brief, I think Peirce reognizes the fundamental importance of there being a normal
presumption of credibility in human communication: the recognition of the speech acts of assertion,
statement making, etc., is a theoretical understanding of that pre-theoretical practice in daily
life and in science as well. It is a recognition of the fundamental role of trust.
----- Original Message ----
From: Bernard Morand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 1, 2006 5:48:29 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben, Gary, Joe, Charles and list
I followed the discussion about verification with interest and while I don't
think that the question of verification calls for a fourth category, some
arguments from Ben deserve to be studied carefully. As an example I will take
a passage out of the last reply from Joe, a short extract in order to limit
the subject to one point that I think to be important.
Joe writes :
"Scientific verification is really just a sophistication about ways of checking up on something about
which one has some doubts, driven by an unusually strong concern for establishing something as
"definitively" as possible, which is of course nothing more than an ideal of checking up on
something so thoroughly that no real question about it will ever be raised again. But it is no different
in principle from what we do in ordinary life when we try to "make sure" of something that we think
might be so but about which we are not certain enough to satisfy us."
It seems to me that the Peirce's quote given by Ben makes clear that scientific
"verification" is NOT the same as checking something in ordinary life as Joe
puts it. I reproduce a fragment of the quote :
Mr. George Henry Lewes in his work on Aristotle(1) seems to me to have come
pretty near to stating the true cause of the success of modern science when he
has said that it was *_verification_*. I should express it in this way: modern
students of science have been successful because they have spent their lives
not in their libraries and museums but in their laboratories and in the field;
and while in their laboratories and in the field they have been not gazing on
nature with a vacant eye, that is, in passive perception unassisted by thought,
but have been *_observing_* -- that is, perceiving by the aid of analysis --
and testing suggestions of theories. The cause of their success has been that
the motive which has carried them to the laboratory and the field has been a
craving to know how things really were, and an interest in finding out whether
or not general propositions actually held good -- which has overbalanced all
prejudice, all vanity, and all passion. (CP 1.34)
The main differences are:
- the originator of the verification: according to Joe, an individual being
doubting of something ; according to Peirce a group of students motivated by a
desire to know. Doubt isn't an essential part of the verification motive in
science.
- the goal of the verification: the fact that no real question will be raised again on the subject according to Joe ; wether or not a GENERAL proposition ACTUALLY holds good with regards to a PARTICULAR fact according to Peirce
- the means of the verification: our own satisfaction (I suppose) according to Joe ; observation ("perception by the aid of analysis") for Peirce.
In scientific "verification" we take advantage of theories to be tested. Is there the same, or some equivalent in ordinary life conduct? I don't know but perhaps psychologists could answer. However I don't see why it would be required that the same goes for ordinary life conduct and scientific activity.
In fact "verification" is the word borrowed by Peirce from G.H. Lewes here but I think that we would better say today "experimental method" of which the strict verification is but one little stage. As already said it requires what Peirce calls a general proposition and what we would call today a "model" or a theory and what is ascertained with the help of the method is an actuality.
Hence the verification step needs reiterations on several cases in order to calculate the probability that they fall under the general law. In turn these reiterations call for protocol definitions as well as tools and instruments for observing. A large part of the progress of science is owed to the improvement of these instruments.
The word "experimental" is itself subject to a large spectrum of interpretations from empirism to a mere mondane consequence of some theory. However we dispose of a more precise equivalent, at least on this list: the pragmatist method
So it seems to me that it is only by restricting the subject to the verification step that it can appear as a matter of ordinary life. I wonder whether this very restriction is not also the mistake of Popper when he ends with turning verification into falsification. But Charles is certainly better informed than me on this.
Regards
Bernard
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