[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor

[Charles F Rudder]

Ben, list,

Ben,

With this post which exhausts all I am incluned to say in this context, I 
too will probably "go quiet."


On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:58:50 -0400 "Benjamin Udell" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  Charles, list,
  
  I guess it's hard for me to let any remarks about my ideas go by without 
  response, but I still am inclined, as I've put it, to "go quiet."
  
  Charles wrote, 
    [I would say that Ben’s “Recognition” is included in (not 
  outside) the Interpretant as an element of the Interpreter’s contribution to 
  its determination.] 
  
  The recognition or recognizant, in thecore narrow sense,is 
  _defined_as object-experience (of the acquaintance kind) formed 
  collaterally to sign and interpretant in respect of the object; the 
  recognizant is defined as something which, Peirce (usually)says, is not 
  gotten from the sign and isoutside the interpretant. So you're simply 
  contradicting the definition. 
  


I have said 
nothing that I see as contrary to what Peirce says about the role of collateral 
experience in sign processes. In 
the situation where you saw smoke and went looking for a fire, seeing smoke 
functioned as a sign that you took as representing something other than smoke at 
at least two levels, a general and a singular. Before you found and actually saw the 
fire, you interpreted seeing smoke (the sign itself, a sinsign, distinguishable 
from its objects and interpretants) according to a general rule (a legisign), 
something like, “Wherever there is smoke there is fire.” and according to a 
“singularization” of the rule something like, “With the smoke I presently see 
there is presently a fire.” As 
Peirce points out, smoke would be uninterpretable as a sign of fire apart from 
your prior acquaintance with fire (and smoke also for that matter), but seeing 
smoke prompting you to look for fire and a particular fire was “mediated” by 
rules with which you were also already acquainted and apart from which you would 
not have “known” to look for fire. 
I agree that a singular instance of seeing smoke and interpreting seeing 
smoke as a sign of fire occurs by means of collateral experience that would 
include “recognizing” smoke as smoke and not a cloud of steam or dust, fire as 
fire, etc. in which the interpretant of seeing smoke in its capacity as a 
singular sign played no part—outside, as you say, the interpretant. But the collateral experience would also 
include having learned to act and acting as if a rule is true apart from which 
smoke, insofar as it is suited to function as a sign, could not be interpreted 
as a sign. What I have been trying 
to say is that acts of interpretation which include recognition are semiosical, 
and that recognizing is an interpretant or included in interpretants of a sign or signs that are collateral to the 
interpretant of any particular sign.

Beyond the 
primitive perceptual event “seeing” a virtually meaningless “something,” any 
meaning that accrues to seeing something by means of which it is recognizably (a 
classification) and recognizable as (a singularization of a clsssification) 
smoke rather than steam (which for a young child it might not) is 
semiosical. Apart from acting as if 
rules that are linguistic and/or embedded in habits are in some sense true or 
valid, neither you nor I nor anyone else seeing smoke would look for fire, and 
no particular instance of seeing smoke, following it to its source, and, sure 
enough, seeing fire, can “verify” that a rule of thumb like, “Wherever there is 
smoke there is fire.” is true. What 
if you had been unable to find a fire before the smoke disappeared? Would you have then concluded that your 
seeing smoke was an illusion of some sort? 
Would you have concluded that the rule of thumb, “Wherever there is smoke 
there is fire.” is false?

I believe 
that you may be conflating Peirce’s distinction between signs and replicas of 
signs by criticizing his theory of signs in terms of experience and conduct 
mediated by signs together with sign replicas about which Peirce has relatively 
little to say. I also believe that 
you are ignoring Peirce’s critique and rejection of the possibility of universal 
doubt—as if doubting were as easy as lying—in his discussions of the relation 
between doubt and belief. In short, 
it appears to me that you are interpreting Peirce “nominalistically.”

Charles 

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

[Benjamin Udell]

Sorry, I forgot to compensate for an MS Outlook Express problem which 
involves URLs not getting copied properly. Now taken care of.

Charles, list,

[Charles] With this post which exhausts all I am incluned to say in 
this context, I too will probably "go quiet."

[Charles] On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:58:50 -0400 "Benjamin 
Udell"writes:

[Ben] Charles, list,
 I guess it's hard for me to let any remarks about my ideas go by 
without response, but I still am inclined, as I've put it, to "go quiet."
 Charles wrote, 

[Charles]  [I would say that Ben’s “Recognition” is 
included in (not outside) the Interpretant as an element of the Interpreter’s 
contribution to its determination.] 

[Ben] The recognition or recognizant, in thecore narrow 
sense,is _defined_ as object-experience (of the acquaintance kind) 
formed collaterally to sign and interpretant in respect of the object; the 
recognizant is defined as something which, Peirce (usually) says, is not gotten 
from the sign and isoutside the interpretant. So you're simply 
contradicting the definition.

[Charles] I have said nothing that I see as contrary to what Peirce 
says about the role of collateral experience in sign processes. In the 
situation where you saw smoke and went looking for a fire, seeing smoke 
functioned as a sign that you took as representing something other than smoke at 
at least two levels, a general and a singular. Before you found and 
actually saw the fire, you interpreted seeing smoke (the sign itself, a sinsign, 
distinguishable from its objects and interpretants) according to a general rule 
(a legisign), something like, “Wherever there is smoke there is fire.” and 
according to a “singularization” of the rule something like, “With the smoke I 
presently see there is presently a fire.” As Peirce points out, smoke 
would be uninterpretable as a sign of fire apart from your prior acquaintance 
with fire (and smoke also for that matter), but seeing smoke prompting you to 
look for fire and a particular fire was “mediated” by rules with which you were 
also already acquainted and apart from which you would not have “known” to look 
for fire. I agree that a singular instance of seeing smoke and 
interpreting seeing smoke as a sign of fire occurs by means of collateral 
experience that would include “recognizing” smoke as smoke and not a cloud of 
steam or dust, fire as fire, etc. in which the interpretant of seeing smoke in 
its capacity as a singular sign played no part—outside, as you say, the 
interpretant. But the collateral experience would also include having 
learned to act and acting as if a rule is true apart from which smoke, insofar 
as it is suited to function as a sign, could not be interpreted as a sign. 
What I have been trying to say is that acts of interpretation which include 
recognition are semiosical, and that recognizing is an interpretant or included 
in interpretants of a sign or signs that are collateral to the 
interpretant of any particular sign.

(Assuming that you intend no practical difference made by differences 
between "recognizing" and "recognition" etc.) -- Insofar as "recognizing" in the 
current discussion is defined as "forming an experience as collateral to sign 
and interpretant in respect of the object," you're saying that an experience 
formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object 
isan interpretant of that object. That's just a contradiction, both 
internally and to Peirce.

It is notan interpretant in Peirce's view,which is that 
acquaintancewith the object is not part of the interpretant about that 
object. 

From C.S. Peirce, Transcribed from Letter to Lady Welby Dec 23, 1908 (in 
_Semiotics and Significs: Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and 
Victoria Lady Welby_, ed. Charles Hardwick, Indiana U. Press, 1977, p.83) http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/interpretant.html 
also at http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_peircematters_archive.html 
. Quote:
Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: 
acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral 
experience.
End quote.

Note that Peirce does _not_ say that _collateral_ 
acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience. Peirce is 
not stating such a truism. Instead he says that acquaintance, any acquaintance 
at all, must be gained by collateral experience.

There is good reason for Peirce to hold that view, since experience of the 
sign of an object is not experience of that object, which in turn is because the 
sign is (usually) not the object, and part of the whole point of signs is to 
lead the mind to places where, in the relevant regard,experience and 
observation have not gone yet but could conceivably go.

This is as true as ever even when the experienced object is a sign 
experienced in its signhood or an interpretant sign experienced in its 
interpretancy. It is not clear to me whether you are tacitlydisputing 
Peirce or believe that you are