Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 5. Semeiotics, or the Doctrine of Signs
Vinicius, I also don't see how all signs must be hypostatic abstractions, for doesn't that assume, as you point out, the existence of almost, a final or even, a dynamic interpretant? Doesn't the internal immediate interpretant, which is a part of the sign, eg, that alien message, or that fossil fish, suffice to create the triadic sign? Edwina - Original Message - From: Vinicius Romanini To: Jon Awbrey Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 1 Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 1:14 PM Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 5. Semeiotics, or the Doctrine of Signs Jon A. I fully agree that theoretical enterprise needs hypostatic abstraction, and these are signs. But if we confine signs to hypostatic abstraction only, then whatever is not part of the human inquiry is not a sign? Do not plants make their living by uttering signs, for instance? Or a message sent by aliens living in a distant planet and that has not arrived on Earth yet. Is this a sign already, or will it be a sign only when some human mind decipher it? best, Vinicius 2014-03-25 10:28 GMT-04:00 Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net: Vinicius, One does not engage in any sort of theoretical enterprise at all without invoking hypostatic abstractions. To speak of the letter a or the word apple is already to speak of hypostatic abstractions, a fact going back to Aristotle's observation that knowledge is only of generals. But we always deals with generals as represented by their concrete representatives. Regards, Jon Vinicius Romanini wrote: Dear list members, In this second message I will comment on Kees' excursion on Peirce's definition of signs and its elements: the representamen (or the sign prescinded from the other correlates), the object the sign professes to represent and the interpretant as the effect of the action of the sign. Kees gives us a rather succinct overview and avoids going too much into questions still open to scholar debate, sometimes with very strong disagreements (that's what I would do too, by the way, if I were to write a panoramic text). Actually, I have never found two Peirce scholars who would totally agree when it comes to Peirce's theory of signs - and I would not expect this will happen during this seminar either. I myself have some disagreements with Kees in minor details but also on some at least one important example of applying the above mentioned analysis of the correlates. As we know, Peirce wrote dozens of different definitions for sign in his more than 40 years of work around the subject and it seems that he ended his life never totally satisfied with any, for his last MS's, from 1908-11, are full of tentative definitions to accommodate his commitment to pragmatism, the reality of the three categories but also his further division of the three correlates into ten a aspects. These variations use verbs like represent, determine , affect, influence, cause, specialize etc. Although written in different wordings, all of them have the same fundamental goal which is to define what a genuine triadic relation is. Since there are three correlates, one can choose how to punctuate this triadic relation. Kees explains all this and also warns us that Peirce would sometime write a definition that he thought would be more intelligible. He would use for example the term interpreter instead of the more logical interpretant - a word that Peirce himself created to eliminate traces of psychologism in his logic. Having the above in mind, I two disagreements with Kees' account: - The first is that Kees suggests that all signs might be hypostatic abstractions (either entia realis or rationis) but I do not see why. Although hypostatic abstractions are certainly signs (such as the relations among the objects of a proposition), there might be signs which are not abstractions. Since any cognizable can be a sign, this would include real possibilities and existents not yet cognized. For example, I recall Peirce saying that a fossil fish is thought (and hence a sign) even if not yet found by anyone. Maybe Kees could clarify what he meant. - The second objection is the example he offers on page 80: Thus we can say that, though any object, say a footprint on the beach, can give rise to a great variety of signs (human presence, the firmness of the sand, etc.), and though any sign can give rise to a variety of interpretations (a spouse's infidelity, the movement of the tide), each object limits, or determines, what may be a sign of it, and each sign similarly limits what may be an interpretant of it. Peirce's account suggests that what is picked out as a sign and how it
[PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:5623] Re: What kind of sign is a gene?
Ulysses asked: Could you elaborate on the connection you see(5623-1) between context and arbitrariness? All I was trying to say was that the meaning of a sign is not just the function of the sign itself(with all its elaborate structures described by Peirce) but also of the context in which the sign is used. Hence the meaning of a word is undefinable or arbitrary without its context being taken into account. A similar relation seems to exist between a system and its environment: They are of equal importance in determining the function of a system. In other words, the function of a system is not determined by the system alone but by the combination of a system and its environment, for which I coined a new word, systome in [biosemiotics:4003]: Function --- Systome = System + Environment(5623-2) Similarly, it may be useful to coin a word, X, that fits the following eqaurtion: Meaning --- X = Sign + Context(5623-3) If anyone on this list has any suggestion for a short name for X, please let me know. One possibility that came to mind is X = signtext (read as sign + text) (5623-4) but there must be more poetic ones than this. If the definition given by 5623-3) is aadopted, then the arbitrariness of sign would be much reduced, if not totally eliminated. In other words, Signtexts are less arbitrary than signs.(5623-5) Or, Signtexts carry more information than signs. (5623-6) In conclusion, I would predict that If signtexts are used instead of traditional (5623-7) signs in human communications, the probability of misunderstanding will be greatly reduced and many unnecessary debates will be eliminated. With all the best. Sung ___ Sungchul Ji, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers University Piscataway, N.J. 08855 732-445-4701 www.conformon.net Sung, list Sung: Peirce himself, I fear, may have over-emphasized the triadic structure of a sign at the neglect of the fundamental role that the context plays in determining the meaning of a sign, thereby missing the semiotic significance of the Principle of the Arbitrariness of Signs that was first clearly recognized by Saussure. Could you elaborate on the connection you see between context and arbitrariness? If context is required to reach an interpretation, then the required context is an element of whatever sign afforded that interpretation. The word this doesn't mean much without context. However, if the word is coupled with a gesture, such as pointing to an apple, one might reach the conclusion that this means apple in the given context. The sign that led to that interpretant is not merely the word this but the two part sign of this AND the gesture of pointing to the apple. It is not context in general that determines the meaning of context dependent signs, but *relevant* aspects of the context. These aspects must be selected and incorporated into a more developed sign as part of the semiotic process in order to produce a more developed interpretant. The type of sign relation that points to relevant aspects of the context is called an index. ---Ulysses On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 12:59 AM, Vinicius Romanini vinir...@gmail.comwrote: Thanks Edwina for your careful reading and comments. I think we agree in most of our opinions but disagree on the very ontological status of a symbol. Since we both have sorted this out, we can focus on applying Peirce's semeiotic to the riddle of life knowing well the limits of our agreement. All the best, Vinicius 2014-03-24 16:21 GMT-04:00 Edwina Taborsky tabor...@primus.ca: Thanks - I've lifted a few sentences from the Peircean introduction. 1) A symbol is something which has the power of reproducing itself, and that essentially, since it is constituted a symbol only by the interpretation. Again, I'm referring to the symbol only within three classes; the Dicent Symbol, the rhematic symbol and the argument. Those are the only three triads that include the symbol relation. And I agree - it is constituted a symbol only by the interpretation. And that interpretation rests within the community-of-users. 2) This interpretation involves a power of the symbol to cause a real fact; I've got no problem with the above. Such Arguments as 'the Golden Rule' cause real factual behaviour. The rhematic symbol of 'honour' causes real factual behaviour. 3) Now it is of the essential nature of a symbol that it determines an interpretant, which is itself a symbol. A symbol, therefore, produces an endless series of interpretants. Again, I've no problem with the above. 4) But the universe is intelligible; and therefore it is possible to give a general
