[PEIRCE-L] How images can be used to develop philosophical understanding, talk June 29 at 5pm CET
Tomorrow Wednesday June 29, at 5pm CET I will give in Paris a talk related to my paper "Imaging Philosophical Discourse" http://www.jyb-logic.org/IMAGING-PHILOSOPHY explaining how images can be used to develop philosophical understanding. It is possible to attend on-line. Link https://u-paris.zoom.us/j/86017416105?pwd=RR9dIbk414Ucl9uV2NECyEf0a-nDLQ.1 ID of the messting : 860 1741 6105 Password : 632958 Jean-Yves Beziau University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro https://sites.google.com/view/miaou-rio/jyb _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
Aw: [PEIRCE-L] corrected post on meaning
Gary F., List,
About the three modes of being in Peirces below Text: What about myths? They are neither products of the universal intelligible force, nor of brute action, nor of a feeling. In your text("by entering “meaning site:gnusystems.ca/TS” into your search engine"), you speak of confabulation, and also of entelechy (the seed metaphor). Myths are confabulations, as you said due to a person´s lack of memory, but also due to incomplete information along with the need for explanation-as-justification for actions of dominance. I guess that myths usually are produced by the prophetical branch of a religion, and entelechies (true turning signs?) discovered by the spiritual branch of a religion. The spiritual parts of religions are much more similar with each other than the prophetic ones.
Is the sad situation of our planet, you describe at the beginning of your chapter, also the result of myths (like humans have to conquer the world, the economy must always grow)?
In my post I said, that for a subject, the meaning of an object is given to the past. A system is also a subject. Now the question above is, is the history of an object constructed (myth), or reconstructed (entelechy, spirituality)? And why does a system, that produces myths, not fail? System theories say, that a system has intentions, like growth, complexity, viability, integration...(Luhmann, Maturana, and others). But a system does not care for truth, only for viability. If this can be achieved with myths, the system does so.
With the universal system (Tapped with spirituality) it is different of course. So I think it is good to analyze cultural concepts´ meanings and ask, whether their generalities are structural parts of the benevolent universal system (the living intelligence), or a careless other system.
Best Regards
Helmut
28. Juni 2022 um 15:38 Uhr
g...@gnusystems.ca
wrote:
(My previous attempt to post this was hit by the dreaded whiteout syndrome, so here’s a corrected version.)
Helmut, the project of integrating a systems view of meaning with Peircean semiotics and phaneroscopy (or “category theory”) is one that is also undertaken in my netbook Turning Signs. Since you can sample it any time by entering “meaning site:gnusystems.ca/TS” into your search engine, I won’t reproduce any of it here. Instead I’ll offer an extended quote from Peirce which I think is especially relevant to this project: it’s from 1909, CP 6.338-343.
The two points I would emphasize here are (1) that meaning in its fullest sense is a combination of denotation and signification, and (2) that the difference between the two is grounded in the “modes of being” of their “matter.” I think you’ll see that Peirce’s “modes of being” apply his “categories” in a very different way from the application of them in your post.
___
All thinking is dialogic in form. Your self of one instant appeals to your deeper self for his assent. Consequently, all thinking is conducted in signs that are mainly of the same general structure as words; those which are not so, being of the nature of those signs of which we have need now and then in our converse with one another to eke out the defects of words, or symbols.
These non-symbolic thought-signs are of two classes: first, pictures or diagrams or other images (I call them Icons) such as have to be used to explain the significations of words; and secondly, signs more or less analogous to symptoms (I call them Indices) of which the collateral observations, by which we know what a man is talking about, are examples. The Icons chiefly illustrate the significations of predicate-thoughts, the Indices the denotations of subject-thoughts. The substance of thoughts consists of these three species of ingredients.
The next step consists in considering why it is that thoughts should take those three different forms. You will observe that each kind of sign serves to bring before the mind objects of a different kind from those revealed by the other species of signs. The key to the solution of this question is that what we think of cannot possibly be of a different nature from thought itself. For the thought thinking and the immediate thought-object are the very same thing regarded from different points of view. …
We must conclude, then, that the reason why different things have to be differently thought of is that their modes of metaphysical being are different.
Aristotle, however, failed to strike the nail squarely on the head when he said that generals are known by reason and singulars by sense. Generals are predicates. Now while the structure, not only of predicates, but of all kinds of thought, is known by reason, that is, by symbols, like words, the matter of predicates, simple predicates, is not known by reason, but by the senses and by other feelings. A subject of every judgment — and it is the subject par excellence — is a singular; and every singular, as Aristotle himself says, is a
[PEIRCE-L] corrected post on meaning
(My previous attempt to post this was hit by the dreaded whiteout syndrome, so here’s a corrected version.) Helmut, the project of integrating a systems view of meaning with Peircean semiotics and phaneroscopy (or “category theory”) is one that is also undertaken in my netbook Turning Signs. Since you can sample it any time by entering “meaning site:gnusystems.ca/TS” into your search engine, I won’t reproduce any of it here. Instead I’ll offer an extended quote from Peirce which I think is especially relevant to this project: it’s from 1909, CP 6.338-343. The two points I would emphasize here are (1) that meaning in its fullest sense is a combination of denotation and signification, and (2) that the difference between the two is grounded in the “modes of being” of their “matter.” I think you’ll see that Peirce’s “modes of being” apply his “categories” in a very different way from the application of them in your post. ___ All thinking is dialogic in form. Your self of one instant appeals to your deeper self for his assent. Consequently, all thinking is conducted in signs that are mainly of the same general structure as words; those which are not so, being of the nature of those signs of which we have need now and then in our converse with one another to eke out the defects of words, or symbols. These non-symbolic thought-signs are of two classes: first, pictures or diagrams or other images (I call them Icons) such as have to be used to explain the significations of words; and secondly, signs more or less analogous to symptoms (I call them Indices) of which the collateral observations, by which we know what a man is talking about, are examples. The Icons chiefly illustrate the significations of predicate-thoughts, the Indices the denotations of subject-thoughts. The substance of thoughts consists of these three species of ingredients. The next step consists in considering why it is that thoughts should take those three different forms. You will observe that each kind of sign serves to bring before the mind objects of a different kind from those revealed by the other species of signs. The key to the solution of this question is that what we think of cannot possibly be of a different nature from thought itself. For the thought thinking and the immediate thought-object are the very same thing regarded from different points of view. … We must conclude, then, that the reason why different things have to be differently thought of is that their modes of metaphysical being are different. Aristotle, however, failed to strike the nail squarely on the head when he said that generals are known by reason and singulars by sense. Generals are predicates. Now while the structure, not only of predicates, but of all kinds of thought, is known by reason, that is, by symbols, like words, the matter of predicates, simple predicates, is not known by reason, but by the senses and by other feelings. A subject of every judgment — and it is the subject par excellence — is a singular; and every singular, as Aristotle himself says, is a subject. But to say that a singular is known by sense is a confusion of thought. It is not known by the feeling-element of sense, but by the compulsion, the insistency, that characterizes experience. For the singular subject is real; and reality is insistency. That is what we mean by “reality.” It is the brute irrational insistency that forces us to acknowledge the reality of what we experience, that gives us our conviction of any singular. The mode of being of the composition of thought, which is always of the nature of the attribution of a predicate to a subject, is the living intelligence which is the creator of all intelligible reality, as well as of the knowledge of such reality. It is the entelechy, or perfection of being. So, then, there are these three modes of being: first, the being of a feeling, in itself, unattached to any subject, which is merely an atmospheric possibility, a possibility floating in vacuo, not rational yet capable of rationalization; secondly, there is the being that consists in arbitrary brute action upon other things, not only irrational but anti-rational, since to rationalize it would be to destroy its being; and thirdly, there is living intelligence from which all reality and all power are derived; which is rational necessity and necessitation. A feeling is what it is, positively, regardless of anything else. Its being is in it alone, and it is a mere potentiality. A brute force, as, for example, an existent particle, on the other hand, is nothing for itself; whatever it is, it is for what it is attracting and what it is repelling: its being is actual, consists in action, is dyadic. That is what I call existence. A reason has its being in bringing other things into connexion with each other; its essence is to compose: it is triadic, and it alone has a real power.
