[peirce-l] Re: Peirce on personality, individualism and science

[Bill Bailey]

Joe,
There's never time to say it all, and I often say it sloppy.  

Bill, you say:BB:  Were Arjuna of right mind, he would be dead to 
self and all earthly cares,his mind clearly fixed on the 
Absolute.REPLY:JR:But according to my understanding of the Gita the 
idea is that to be of the right mind is to clearly fixed on your earthly task, 
on what you are doing right now, like any craftsman at work in his craft.  
That is a very different matter than  being "fixed on the Absolute", which 
does not seem to me to be recommended anywhere in the Gita.  What could 
that mean in Hinduism?  Of course, the objection is obvious, given my 
interpretation, namely, who says what your task is?  Well, Arjuna was a 
general; and the dramatic context provides the task there:  be a general 
and do what that dictates now. 

  
  
  
  BB
  More appropriately, I should have said "dead to ego 
  and all its earthly desires."  The task before Arjuna is not an 
  earthly task, although it occurs on earth.  As Krishna makes plain, 
  this battle has nothing to do with Arjuna as a personality, but with 
  Arjuna in his incarnated role as a general.  Krishna has already 
  ordained the battle deaths and outcome; that will not change.  
  Only Arjuna's social face is at stake in his actions; he may act 
  according to his dharma and win glory, or he may not, and spend a few 
  lifetimes as an Untouchable for his penance and edification.  The 
  utimate enlightenment in Hinduism is the full identification of 
  the eternal self with the Absolute--Aman is Brahman.  In that 
  identification, there is no room for ego, the perishing self, nor its 
  willful assertion in "conscience."  There's no contradiction between 
  a mind fixed on the absolute and one's dharma.  Here's I'm using 
  "dharma" duty arising from the structures of social role into which Arjuna has 
  been incarnated.  As the Caste system indicates, those roles and duties 
  are an intrinsic part of the divine order.   
   
  JR: But then in real life that is frequently the way it is.  Wriggle 
  around any way you like, at times; there is no getting around what your  
  task appears to you to be, unless you are in the business of rejecting all 
  obligations in principle. Now, Arjuna might well be  faulted for 
  never having  asked himself before  that  moment, when  
  all the troops are lined up, whether he really thinks he ought to be try to be 
  a general, instead of raising that question at the last minute.   
  But then he might have said, well, but is there no legitimate occasion ever to 
  be a general, the task of whom is precisely to slaughter the enemy at certain 
  times, no matter who the enemy is?  And then we would have a wholly 
  different kind of moral reflection going on.  But do you think the point 
  the Gita makes is simply wrong, regardless of context, or isn't it right in 
  saying, in effect, "Hey, the world contains many unspeakably vile things, 
  never to be justified by any reasoning based on practical worldly 
  consequences.  There is no solution at the level of this-worldly 
  understanding, and no conclusion to be drawn about this world except that it 
  is constructed in an unspeakably vile and unjust way, if you try to assess it 
  in calculative terms of good and bad produced.  But in fact these armies 
  are drawn up and are going to be slaughtering one another regardless of what 
  you decide now.  But don't confuse yourself with the being that decided 
  that the world would be like this, if it makes sense to say that there is any 
  such being."
   
  There is something that simply passes the possibility of a mere stance of 
  moral self-righteousness about such situations.   And sometimes there is 
  nothing to do but what is wrong, any way you want to look at it. (He is not, 
  after all, being urged to slaughter needlessly -- any more than, say, he is 
  being urged to torture people by proxy, as generals and commanders-in-chief 
  frequently are, Western and Eastern alike.   Would that the products of 
  Western civilization and the Christian religion could be expected to rise 
  routinely to the level of a sincere and intelligent devotee of the Gita and 
  just do their job instead of exploiting its power! )   So the only way 
  out, when you are in such a situation of moral impossibility is just to do 
  your job, assuming you know what your job really is." 
   
  BB:  Well, assumedly, the general can order his troops out of 
  battle--declare retreat or whatever, and let another commander come in--and 
  have the virtue of following his conscience's dictates, even if disgraced and 
  drummd out of the military.  The eastern case is different because there 
  is not supposed to be any individual conscience to salve.  He is not to 
  do "what is wrong, anyway you look at it."  He is to do the only 
  right thing, and without regard for his or any mortal moral 
  premise.  It is his holy duty.  It is not even with "God 

[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Gene,
Let me say first of all, that I meant to specifically reject that 
Hobbesonian notion of man in "a state of nature," man as feral, and to 
affirm that the "state of nature for the human is to be socialized and 
"languagized."   Looking back upon what I wrote, I think it must have been 
the sloppiness of those last two paragraphs below that gave that impression. 
I should have put "feral" in quotes, and it needed to be clearer that I 
thought the "savage mind"  Levi-Strauss described as categorizing things in 
his environment in terms of usage, what they were good for, was merely the 
everyday mind of everyone everywhere.  That strikes me as merely basic human 
pragmatics, and I don't think it's that far apart from what you and 
Csikszentmihalyi describe as the pragmatics of the everyday mind in _The 
Meaning of Things_.  (I might want to put more of the latter's concept of 
"flow" into that universe of use, or action than he would; I'm not sure.)  I 
don't see how that is antithetic to either an ecological orientation or 
being a sophisticated naturalist.


Regarding my statement "To be socialized means to be locked into belief 
systems based upon tenacity and authority, initially those you are born 
into," I'll stick with what I said.  I don't have Sam Johnson's stone to 
kick, so perhaps I can simply say, Well, here we are!  How do we escape?  I 
don't see that anything I said implies society is an assembly line of human 
products.  I am also perfectly comfortable with all you wrote regarding what 
it means to be fully human and the dangers of getting drunk on 
metaphors--especially the machine metaphor.  (I grew up around those drunks 
in the early days of communication theory.)  We are locked into a social 
order, but that, and communication, may be the condition of our freedom.


To close:  I much enjoyed _The Meaning of Things_.
Bill Bailey


Levi-Strauss argues that there is no real difference in terms of 
complexity

between "primitive" and scientific thought; he found the primitive's
categories and structurings in botany, for example, to be as complex as 
any
western textbook might offer.  The difference he found was that the 
primitive

botany was based upon use--what plants were good for.

I still think Levi-Strauss erred in being driven by the concerns of his 
day,

possibly responding to developmentalists like Heinz Werner, and was out to
prove "primitives" were not "simple."  But what he ended up describing as 
the
primitive mind is the everyday mind of socialized people 
everywhere--habits of

willful tenacity and authority.

I don't accept the notion of "man in a state of nature."  What few
studies/examples of feral children and social isolates there are suggest,
unless rescued before puberty, they do not achieve normal human 
development.
I don't know what "laws" there are governing the human mind, but whatever 
they
are, they're largely social.  To be socialized means to be locked into 
belief
systems based upon tenacity and authority, initially those you are born 
into.

These two social requisites of belief are perfectly capable of the most
radical kinds of error and monstrosity.  They have historically supported 
all
sorts of superstition, tyranny, genocide--you name it--along with the 
heights

of human achievement. end Bailey quotation


Dear Bill,

You describe Levi-Strausss claim that primitive can often
match scientific knowledge in areas such as botany, though primitive is
not disinterested. And how sometime later you acknowledged how scientists 
too

are filling needs, have uses for their systems. So far Im with you. One
might even state it differently: scientific naturalists can tend to be
focalized exclusively on a research question, whereas hunter-gatherers can
tend to view a particular question as an aspect of ecological mind. Jared
Diamond gives a great example of ornithological field work in New Guinea 
where

his focus on identifying a particular rare bird limited him from seeing it
ecologically: his aboriginal guide had to show him how one version of the 
bird

is found low in branches, the other in higher branches. Diamond was only
looking at the bird itself, isolate. The question I would pose is: who was
more scientific, the aboriginal or the focused Diamond?

But your idea that man in a state of nature is feral, if I
understand you, seems to me to be a basic misreading of the life of 
hunter-
gathering through which we became human, as is your idea that the 
primitive

mind is the everyday mind of socialized people everywhere. Im not a fan of
Levi-Strausss way of boiling people down to his structural conception of
mind. But the anthropological record reveals hunter-gatherer peoples 
typically

to be highly sophisticated naturalists.

Consider Paul Shepards words, from his boo

[peirce-l] Re: Peirce on personality, individualism and science

[Bill Bailey]

And if you
investigate Mahayana Buddhist texts seriously

   gary F.


:=) 
Bill Bailey


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[peirce-l] Re: Peirce on personality, individualism and science

[Bill Bailey]

Gary F.
I don't doubt your sincerity, only your California style dharma.  You might
find Dan Leighton's Compassionate Faces more useful than Dogen; I don't know
how you got from Dogen to here.  In any case, Leighton precedes you in the
New Age applied bodhisattva conception by noting several recent
inductees/nominees, among them Mother Theresa, Bobby Dylan, Gloria Steinem,
Muhammad Ali, and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Best,
Bill Bailey

Bill Bailey


Bill,

I'm on this list because i read Peirce and take him seriously as a
writer whose concepts have some bearing on the conduct of a life -- any
life -- and my working assumption is that others are here for similar
reasons. Likewise, my interest in the bodhisattva concept arises from my
reading of texts which represent it in a context relevant to the actual
conduct of a life (or a sentient being, to use the Buddhist term). These
texts include the Lotus Sutra and a broad range of Buddhist writers and
translators ancient and modern (especially Dogen) who also take the
concept seriously. I don't profess to be a Buddhist, just as i don't
profess to be a scientist or any kind of specialist, because i don't see
such professions as being relevant: i'm here as a reader, and if i'm
going to discuss any concept drawn from my reading, the discussion will
have to be based on the texts in question. In those terms, i don't see
our exchange here as very relevant either, so pardon me if my responses
are abrupt.

Bill [re the Gita]: It is not a politico telling Arjuna what his social
duty is; it is a god telling a human what his duty is to God.  I suppose
gods tend to be a bit totalitarian, but that's just the way they are.

gary: Gods do tend to come across that way in the monotheistic Abrahamic
traditions; whether that transcendent alpha-male quality should be read
into the immanent gods of the Vedic tradition is another question.
(Hmmm, now i seem to be the one making an East/West distinction; isn't
that odd? But maybe you also consider the Abrahamic religions as
"Eastern"; that would be reasonable, since their region of origin is
what we now call the "Middle East", but it's not what i thought you had
in mind.)

Bill: ... you gut the doctrine of all its stringencies, as if they were
yours to explain away, and leave only a pale image of Buddhism.

gary: From here, it looks like you're the one who doesn't take the
bodhisattva vow seriously or recognize the stringencies involved in
living by it.

What i am referring to under that name is simply a person who
has taken the bodhisattva vow and is actually living as if he means
it.


Bill: Why don't you try bouncing this conception off a traditional
Buddhist and see if he or she recognizes it.

gary: My conception is drawn directly (with some rewording) from the
likes of Dogen, Thich Nhat Hanh, etc. I'm sure there are many who call
themselves Buddhists and see the concept differently, but if that's what
you mean by a "traditional Buddhist", i don't see their testimony as
relevant. (Likewise i'd rather read Peirce than consult a "traditional
Peircean".) The point here is not at all to describe what the Buddhist
masses believe.

Bill: What if, for example, Buddhist logic is not rooted in the social
principle? Would that affect your claim?  Or is it, as I feel, just the
general similarity that you are interested in.

gary: If Buddhist "logic" were so different from Peircean logic as to be
"not rooted in the social principle", then nobody could understand or
use it at all -- including you and me. And yes, it is the general
similarity that i'm interested in; but as Peirce says, you must
"consider that, according to the principle which we are tracing out, a
connection between ideas is itself a general idea, and that a general
idea is a living feeling" (EP1, 330). Starting with a general
similarity, you can always make distinctions, but doing so doesn't
always advance the inquiry.

   gary F.

}Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. There are already
enough names. One must know when to stop. [Tao Te Ching 32
(Feng/English)]{

gnoxic studies }{ http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/gnoxic.htm


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[peirce-l] Re: Peirce on personality, individualism and science

[Bill Bailey]

ibute to its development.

Peirce also emphasized that science and logic both demand and depend on
"identification of one's interests with those of an unlimited
community." (For the source and context of the Peirce quotes i'm giving
here, see http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/Peirce.htm .) This is what lies
behind his statement that "He who would not sacrifice his own soul to
save the whole world, is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his
inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the social principle." This
is where the Peircean ideal of science and the Buddhist ideal of the
bodhisattva coincide.


Here again it seems to me you assert equivalency, or coincidence, without
any real elaboration of that ideal in the Buddhist context.  What if, for
example, Buddhist logic is not rooted in the social principle?  Would that
affect your claim?  Or is it, as I feel, just the general similarity that
you are interested in.



I hope this answers your question
[[ How can there be personal responsibility in selfless action?
...
Was Ghandi deficient in conscience?  If he had one, yes.  Arjuna had a
conscience, and that was his problem. ]]

Your usage of "conscience" -- an interesting word in its etymology and
history -- strikes me as peculiar; i don't think you'd claim it is
Peircean, would you? Anyway, Arjuna's problem is that he was only
concerned about the fact that he was about to take the battlefield
against his own relatives. He was not yet capable of identifying his
interests with those of "an unlimited community." And i don't think that
Peirce meant that phrase to be read as hyperbolic. He's talking about an
ideal community, not any that have actually appeared in history or are
likely to appear in the future.


No, I would not claim my use of "conscience is "Peircean."  You didn't ask
me about Peirce, you asked me if Ghandi was deficient in conscience, and I
replied appropriately for both Hindu and Buddhist religions.  Conscience is
a western concept of an individual attribute.  You say of Arjuna "He was not
yet capable of identifying his  interests with those of "an unlimited
community."  As seen through whose communitarian interests?  Peirces?  I can
assure you Krishna has none.  Arjuna is putting his individual
conscience--an gross error of ego--against what the Absolute (in the avatar
of Krishna) has ordained.  Where does Krishna speak of community values???
Were Arjuna of right mind, he would be dead to self and all earthly cares,
his mind clearly fixed on the Absolute.

Now you are, obviously, free to view whatever you want through a Peircean
lens.  But, ignorant as I still am about Peirce's work, I can't believe he'd
want the lens to be a dark glass.  I hope I've made my objection both
reasonable and clear because I see nothing left but a piling up of chapter
and verse on Hinduism and Buddism, which I'm not going to do.
Best,
Bill Bailey




There's more to say, but this will do for now. As mentioned above, i've
collected a few Peirce passages relevant to this thread at
http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/Peirce.htm . So i'll shut up now and let
Peirce speak for himself, while i catch up on your exchange with the
other Gary.

   gary F.

}Our duty is to strive for self-realization and we should lose ourselves
in that aim. [Gandhi]{




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[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Gary:  How Emersonian.  As I said, I am too ignorant to make pronouncements
on Peirce.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Peirce was a man of his
times--and that he obviously spent too much time with Emerson's godson.  :=)
Should you find any Swedenborgian passages in Peirce, please don't tell me.
If Peirce's ideal of scientific method parallels the bhodisattva ideal . . .
well, so be it; oxymoron is the food of faith.

Gary R wrote, in part:

I thought perhaps that Gary had such a passages as this in mind when he
suggested that there might be parallels between Peirce's ideal of
scientific method and the Boddhisattva ideal:


CP 1.673. . .. the supreme commandment of the Buddhisto-christian
religion is, to generalize, to complete the whole system even until
continuity results and the distinct individuals weld together. >



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[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Gary R.
The bhodisattva relinquishes escape from the great wheel of death and birth
and union with the Absolute to help others achieve enlightenment.  Thus the
bhodisattva is reborn again and again into the world of suffering with no
reward except doing the work.  About the only western equivalent I can think
of is a Christian refusing at death to go to heaven so long as there lost
souls in Hell, and going to Hell to save them.  Such selflessness is
probably beyond most westerners unless they become a Buddhist monk or
priest, preferably at an early age.  And if they became bhodisattvas, we'd
never know; the existence of such persons is an article of faith.  From what
I've read, Peirce doesn't strike me as being of the bhodisattva temperament,
but I'm a long way from making competent pronouncements about Peirce.

I think the appropriate thing for the list is for Gary F to elaborate on the
close parallels he finds between Peirce's ideal of scientific method and the
bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism.  As you point out, that is very much
on topic.
Bill Bailey


Bill and Gary,

Bill Bailey wrote:


This is not the venue for debating the similarities and contrasts between
traditional Occident and Orient.


However, Gary's comment that he sees  a close parallel to Peirce's ideal
of scientific method (or of the motivation for it) in the bodhisattva
ideal of Mahayana Buddhism" suggests that there may indeed be reasons for
continuing this discussion here.

In any event, it has been a most interesting discussion so far with
excellent points made by both of you. As it stands it feels to me to be
something of a draw. So I hope you will both consider continuing your
discussion here (you might try changing the Subject of the thread if you
do).

Gary R.





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[peirce-l] Death of Arnold Shepperson

[Bill Bailey]

My condolences to those on the list who have lost a 
friend and colleague.  I knew only Arnold Shepperson's posts which 
seemed motivated by erudition and good will, certainly attributes to be 
treasured on any list.
Bill Bailey
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[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Gary:

This is not the venue for debating the similarities and contrasts between 
traditional Occident and Orient. I'll respond as briefly as I can, and we 
can proceed through personal e-mails if you like. First, an agreement: if 
you abstract all particularity--an example would be Huxley's The Perennial 
Philosophy--then, yes, most of the world's religious world views look 
somewhat alike. They all encourage us to get our egos out of the way to 
serve the Absolute, whether God or Brahma. But I suggest when you get down 
into the trenches, into the details where the devil lurks, the differences 
do matter. If you really believe that the "deepest currents of culture in 
East and West differ mostly in accidental respects such as terminology, and 
it behooves us to see through the differences," in spite of all that has 
been written to the contrary by both eastern and western scholars, I doubt 
that anything I say will change your view.


To deny what I said of the Bhagavad Gita, you have to deny what is written 
there. I've seen Ghandi's commentary, and whether he liked the Gita or not 
is irrelevant. He, in fact, treated the Mahabharata War as allegorical. But 
would he assert that the principle of selfless action as illustrated is 
wrong? If a real Arjuna argued with a real Krishna that killing all those 
people was unthinkably wrong, should he go with his ego rather than with 
god-defined dharma? Even as allegory, my point remains: Arjuna was not the 
author of the deaths of his kinsmen and others on the battle field, and had 
no responsibility for "his" actions. There was no him or his. That is all 
maya, an illusion of ego. How can there be personal responsibility in 
selfless action? But Ghandi's life provides a good illustration of the 
difference between East and West. Imagine the difference in outcome of his 
passive resistance had he not been dealing with the British but with an 
Arjuna of his own religion.  Was Ghandi deficient in conscience?  If he had 
one, yes.  Arjuna had a conscience, and that was his problem.  Conscience is 
a western ego-thing.  Dharma knows no conscience.


I should add, I don't think religion defines a culture. Ego is a human 
phenomenon; after all, eastern wisdom literature wasn't aimed at westerners, 
but at its own people. Enlightenment is probably as rare in the East as 
saints are in the West. But as ideals, different religions make  great 
cultural differences.  One of the most persistent mistakes the West makes in 
foreign relations is the "pigs is pigs" fallacy:  people are people.


I don't think there are any easy moral equivalencies to be made between 
traditional East and West. Obviously as secularization and western-style 
industrialization of the East proceeds (rapidly), the differences shrink. In 
my own views, I'm probably more Taoist than anything else, and I certainly 
don't think western culture is the Way to go. On the other hand, I think it 
is the western view of the individual life as valuable and to be nurtured in 
self actualization rather than exploited by the state that has given rise to 
the idea of human/civil rights/liberties that was not present in the 
traditional Orient.


Bill

Gary F wrote, in part:


Bill, & list,

I'm surprised to see this part of your message though:

[[ One of the strong-holds of the unitive world-view you seem to prefer
has been the traditional Orient, where life has historically been
cheaper than dirt and mass exterminations of humans nearly routine.  A
modern example is Maoist purges and the rape and pillage of Tibet.  Mao
and Stalin each surpassed Hitler's atrocities. ]]

So did the European invasion of what we now call the Americas. History
does not at all bear out your suggestion that genocide is an "oriental"
phenomenon or that life is cheaper on the other side of the world.

[[ For the human to assume responsibility is an act of hubris.  Isn't
that the message of the Bhagavad Gita?   So kill away, oh nobly born,
and forget this conscience thing, an obvious lapse into ego. ]]

No, that is not the message of the Bhagavad Gita. You might have a look
at Gandhi's commentary on it -- Gandhi (1926), ed. John Strohmeier
(2000), The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley
Hills). Gandhi acknowledged the Gita as the main inspiration for his
life and work. Would you say that he was deficient in conscience?

As i hinted in my previous message, i see a close parallel to Peirce's
ideal of scientific method (or of the motivation for it) in the
bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism, which is simply that one vows to
work for universal enlightenment, not for private salvation or personal
attainment of nirvana. The more i study them, the more i'm convinced
that the deepest currents of culture in East and West differ mostly in
accidental respects such as terminology, and it behooves us to see
through the differences.

However i don't cling to this thesis tenaciously ... if you can present
evidence to the con

[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Jim,
I'd be the first to characterize the reports on the 
feral children as "iffy."  But have you read the account of "Genie"?  
 She was a California child who was kept in isolation in an upstairs 
room, strapped for hour to a potty (whether I spell it with a "Y" or an "IE," it 
doesn't look right) chair because her father was ashamed of her because of 
some deficit he assigned to her hip.  I was fortunate enough to be in 
Arizona when the World Health Organization had its convention there, 
and it featured an early report on Genie by the psychologist who was 
also a foster-family member for her.  There followed a book by the language 
therapist, Susan Curtiss, who worked with Genie.  As I recall, it was 
titled Genie.   The professionals describing Genie's 
behavior and progress--or lack of it--are remarkably similar to the lay reports 
of "feral" children.  I think there is a time frame for language 
learning. 
 
As for your post, it wasn't my intention to provide any 
form of corrective; I'm not competent to do that.  I was simply noting my 
response to the discussion and saying that Peirce's "laws" made sense to 
me.   However, I will question this statement in your response:  
"I attribute the sometimes horrors we do not to common sense but to a degenerate 
form of representation that tries to treat the relational 
symbolic world as comprised of discrete unrelated things."  One of the 
strong-holds of the unitive world-view you seem to prefer has been the 
traditional Orient, where life has historically been cheaper than dirt 
and mass exterminations of humans nearly routine.  A modern example is 
Maoist purges and the rape and pillage of Tibet.  Mao and Stalin 
each surpassed Hitler's atrocities.  I would argue that it is the 
traditional value  of the autonomous individual by the western world which 
causes us angst over an atrocity that would not raise an eyebrow even today in 
some "all is one" parts of the world.  Where all is one, no aspect of 
the whole is of much consequence.  For the human to assume responsibility 
is an act of hubris.  Isn't that the message of the Bhagavad 
Gita?   So kill away, oh nobly born, and forget this 
conscience thing, an obvious lapse into ego.
 
Bill 
Bailey 

- Original Message - 

  From: 
  Jim Piat 
  
  To: Peirce Discussion Forum 
  Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 5:25 
  PM
  Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental 
  psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
  
  Dear Bill,
   
  As always I enjoyed your straightforward, 
  informative and wise comments. You have a way of keeping my feet on the 
  ground without destroying the fun of having my head in the clouds (to 
  pick one of the nicer places I've been accused of having my 
  head).   I hope I did not create the impression that I devalued 
  any of the methods of fixing belief that Peirce described.  I don't think 
  he intended to devalue them either. Nor did I mean to put science on a 
  pedestal. Not that it needs any commendation from me.   I think 
  science is a formalization of the method of common sense which (to 
  borrow Joe's apt description) includes the distinctive elements 
  of each method.  I believe that common sense is the way all 
  humans in all cultures have at all times represented and participated in 
  the world.  We are all symbolic creatures and we all feel, will, 
  and interpret the world with symbols whether we call one 
  another primitive or advanced.  I attribute the sometimes horrors we do not to common sense but to a 
  degenerate form of representation that tries to treat 
  the relational symbolic world as comprised of discrete 
  unrelated things.  A form with no feeling is a phantom, an other 
  with no resistence does not exist and thought that does not mediate is empty 
  verbiage.   The danger arises out of our ability 
  to misrepresent.  We are all fundmentally alike and cut from the 
  same cloth.  LOL--I'm of a 
  mind to go off on a swoon about the commonality of humanity but I fear getting 
  called on giving facile lip service to something I don't practice.  
  
   
  Oh, the feral children.  Hell,  I don't 
  even believe the accounts.  Well I should say I don't believe the 
  labels.  Most of them sound to me like accounts of severely retarded 
  children who have been hidden away by families. Countless severely retarded 
  children have grown up in relatively caring institutions with the same 
  outcome.  But I agree with your point,   IF a child could survive 
  past a week alone in the woods or a closet,  the 
  child still would not develop language etc  --   It's the 
  preposterous  IF that makes me dismiss these as crack pot accounts 
  that have somehow emerged from the tabloids for 15 mins of manistream 
  press. And occassionally the 

[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Jim, Joe, List:
This discussion brought to mind the comparison by Claud 
Levi-Strauss of "primitive" thought and that of western science.  I think 
the discussion is in The Savage Mind.  Levi-Strauss argues that 
there is no real difference in terms  of complexity between "primitive" and 
scientific thought; he found the primitive's categories and structurings in 
botany, for example, to be as complex as any western textbook might offer.  
The difference he found was that the primitive botany was based upon use--what 
plants were good for.  My response upon first reading this was, leave it to 
a structuralist to miss the obvious (I was young and arrogant).   
Structural complexity was not the defining feature of western science.  And 
what plants were good for was based upon subjective relevance whereas the 
essence of western science was objective classification with empirically 
verifiable criterial features.  A few years down the road, (humbler if 
no wiser) I re-read The Savage Mind and wondered, well, what 
classification system isn't based upon relevance?  Western scientists 
aren't a bunch of uninterested schizoid types; they too are filling needs, have 
uses for their systems.  I still think Levi-Strauss erred in being driven 
by the concerns of his day, possibly responding to developmentalists like Heinz 
Werner, and was out to prove "primitives" were not "simple."  But what he 
ended up describing as the primitive mind is the everyday mind of socialized 
people everywhere--habits of willful tenacity and authority.   If you 
think of all the complex, unconscious structures guiding our behavior through a 
single day, they would largely be driven by relevance and pursued out of 
social habits of mind.  Once habit is established socially, authority 
is necessary to break in and change it.  We get in our cars to drive 
to work, motivated only by the function--getting to work.  Authority says 
"New law:  must wear seat belts, and to insure you develop the habit, 
you'll be punished if you don't wear them.  The authorities may be 
motivated by the lobbying and election campaign contributions of insurance 
companies, but the ostensible reason is to save lives and reduce financial 
costs.  Most of us (who would never do anything like get into an accident) 
probably buckle up more to avoid getting a ticket than to reduce 
injury.
 
I don't accept the notion of "man in a state of 
nature."  What few studies/examples of feral children and social isolates 
there are suggest, unless rescued before puberty, 
they do not achieve normal human development.  I don't know what 
"laws" there are governing the human mind, but whatever they are, they're 
largely social.  To be socialized means to be locked into belief systems 
based upon tenacity and authority, initially those you are born 
into.  These two social requisites of belief are perfectly 
capable of the most radical kinds of error and monstrosity.  They have 
historically supported all sorts of superstition, tyranny, genocide--you name 
it--along with the heights of human achievement.  
I think this is why Peirce devalues them and valorizes science.  Until 
the age of nuclear  and grant money it was easy to see scientists as 
passionately disinterested, objective seekers of truth, and I think that is 
the image Peirce holds as the ideal for his community of 
investigators.  The mode of scientific belief is rooted in the 
subject-object distinction, our ability to differentiate between what something 
is in disinterested observation from what we subjectively experience.  
We live socially in an objective world, and we must separate the 
objectively real from subjective desire to survive.   It should be 
noted that it is to the social universe of subjective tenacity and 
authority that the scientist returns when he/she takes off the lab coat and 
goes home--perhaps to be an autocrat, an abuser, a molester, but most likely a 
loving and caring family member.  One thing the scientific method does not 
support is a social system of relationships which value spontaneity and 
emotional involvement.  The habits of tenacity and authority are required 
to provide the glue for the cohesion that defines a social 
group.  
 
I think Peirce is probably right to represent 
these three requisites of social belief as "laws," but they seem 
to me more sociological than psychological.  We could use other, more 
modern, terms, but the point is that we'll end up covering the same 
ground. 
Bill 
Bailey 
 
Jim Piat wrote:
 
I agree with your characterization of the 
scientific method as including the distinctive elements of the other 
three.  You have clarified the issue in a way that is very helpful to 
me.  I agree as well that taken individually each of the lst 
three methods (tenacity, authority and reason)  can lead to 
disaster.  So, wi

[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Kristi, Joe, list:
 
The human is a social animal, born into a social group 
which typically has a full array of habits, customs in place.  That strikes 
me as a given.  "We've always done it that way, and that's the way it will 
be done" seems to me what Peirce is talking about as tenacity propped up by 
authority.  And that too strikes me as a given, even in this empirical, 
secular society where tenacity and authority are currently clashing over 
Pluto.  Peirces "community of investigators" (is that his term?), 
the astronomers, settled it with a vote.  The experiential evolution in the 
conception of Pluto as a planet can be described as the new information that 
surprised even the scientists.  This scenario seems to me to fit pretty 
well Peirce's sketch of the way things necessarily happen in social 
groups.  But it also involves features I wonder how Peirce would work 
out in the terms of his sketch,  In some news source, I saw the vote 
of the astronomers hailed as a triumph of science over romance.  And so it 
appears at first glance.  But what we have an instance of tenacity ("This 
is how we have always defined a planet,") propped up by the authority of 
science, the community of investigators. We can certainly say there has 
been an advance in information.  But has there been an evolutionary advance 
in the mode of conception, or just a shift in whose conceptions are 
valued?
 
 
 
Dear Joe,Thanks for your response and the quote. On second 
thoughts, informed with the quote you provided, some kind of evolution seems to 
be involved. But, being evolution of a conception, it must be of logical nature. 
I can't see how it could hold as a hypothesis of evolution of either individual 
or social development. Social comes first, no question about it.But it 
might be fruitful to think of the principle of ordering the methods this way in 
terms of critical thought involved. The method of tenacity, by definition, 
involves none. The method of authority may involve some, though not necessarily 
by the believer, but by the authority. It is not excluded, by definition, that 
the authority in question may have arrived at the belief by a process involving 
critical thought, as well as having gained the authority for a reason. 
Well, I don't know. Don't remember Peirce ever writing along these 
lines. But it is an ordering of "intellectual enditions". So the method of 
tenacity would imply a conscious belief, in contrast to all the beliefs forced 
upon us by experience which we are not aware we are holding. CP 5.524 
""...For belief, while it lasts, is a strong habit, and, as such forces the man 
to believe until some surprise breaks the habit."

  Kirsti 
Määttänen<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>25.9.2006 
  kello 02:02, Joseph Ransdell kirjoitti:Dear 
  Kirsti::
  I'm 
short on time today and can't  really answer you until tomorrow, but I 
ran across a llater passage in Peirce in wihch  he describes what he 
was doing earlier, in the Fixation article, as follows.   (I'm 
just quotting it, for what \it's worth , at the moment and will get back 
with  you  tomorrow, when I have some free time again.In 
a manuscript c. 1906 which was printed in the Collected Papers at 5.564, 
Peirce describes "The Fixation of Bellief" (1877) as starting out from the 
proposition that "the agitation of a question" ceases only when satisfaction 
is attaned with the settlement of belief, and then goes on to consider how: "...the 
conception of truth gradually  develops from that principle under the 
action of experience; beginning with willful belief, or self-mendacity [i.e. 
the method of tenacity], the most degraded of all intellectual cnditions; 
thence rising to the imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized 
society [the method of authority]; then to the idea of a settlement of 
opinion as the result of a fermentation of ideas [the a priori method]; and 
finally reaching the idea of truth as overwelmingly forced upon the mind in 
experience as the effect of an independent reality [the method of reason or 
science, or, as he also calls it,in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, the method 
of  experience]."My 
words are in bracketsJoe 
Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED]- 
Original Message From: 
Kirsti Määttänen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: 
Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: 
Sunday, September 24, 2006 8:50:46 AMSubject: 
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Joe 
& Bill,Joe, 
I agree with Bill in that I do not see any reason why the order of the 
methods of tenacity and that of authority should be reversed. But that 
wasn't the impulse which caused me to start writing this response :). 
It was "the two fundamental psychological laws" on the title you gave, 
which caught my attention. Anyway, you wrote:> 
JR: "...exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the >

[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Joe, thanks for your response.  I "get it" 
now.
 
Festinger came to mind because "selective exposure" as 
a mode of dissonance avoidance was a major topic in communication 
research.  I haven't read that literature in years--and I didn't 
particularly buy into it then--so don't trust me now.  As I recall, one 
mode of dissonance reduction was similar to the pre-dissonance 
mode:  "selective perception," or "cherry picking"--selecting only the 
data consonant with the threatened belief or behavior.  
"Rationalization" was a dissonance reduction means, I think, though it 
seems nearly tautological.  In terms of Festinger's smoking-health 
dissonance I remember it in this form:  "We're all going to die of 
something."  There is also the heroic, the transcendent "We all owe a 
death."  Simple denial is a common means:  "If smoking causes cancer, 
most smokers would get it, but in fact most don't."  Researchers turned up 
so many techniques of  dissonance reduction I no longer remember which were 
originally proposed by Festinger and which came later.  
 
Some, by the way (I think Eliot Aronson among them), 
argued cognitive dissonance was not a logical but a psychological 
phenomena, and that humans were not rational but rationalizers.  And, 
relevant to your remarks below, some argued that the need to reduce the 
dissonance resulted not from logical tensions, but from the social concept of 
the self.  For example, the argument goes, if it were only a logical 
tension operating, there'd be no tension experienced from telling a lie for 
money.  It would make logical sense to say anything asked of you for either 
a few or many bucks.  The tension arises only as a result of social 
norms:  "What kind of person am I to tell a lie for a lousy couple of 
bucks."  In my personal experience with smoking, I could have cared less 
about the dissonance between my smoking and the health information.  It was 
simply desire; I didn't want to quit.  I became involved in "dissonance 
reduction" behaviors only when socially challenged or when I thought about 
dealing such challenges. 
 
As regards the argument that social consciousness is 
prior to the consciousness of self, doesn't "social consciousness" 
somewhat load the dice?  Social consciousness requires some degree of 
"exteriorizing," creating an "out there" of objects through processes of 
representation that must be acquired through learning and language.  
A parallel consciousness of self would necessarily be a consequent and 
never an antecedent development.  Now, I believe that is the case for the 
"consciousness of . . . " modality of mind in which the self is a 
representational construct.  But from what did all that construction 
arise?  I think we are necessarily forced to accept a more primary mode of 
information processing, the more autistic or "child-like" consciousness in which 
feelings, actions, and perceptions are merged in a single plane of 
experience.  I view the learned social consciousness as a 
secondary overlay onto the primary mode--which persists throughout out 
lives as our everyday mind.  In the primary mode, events and object 
are experienced pretty much in terms of their immediate relevances--what we are 
feeling and doing.  The contents of the acquired secondary mode are 
assimilated into the primary mode of information processing.  Hence we can 
very subjectively find beauty and enjoyment in the spontaneous elaboration of 
theories that cause freshmen, stumbling along in the secondary mode, 
acute headaches.   
 
Isn't it the imposition of social consciousness which 
forces upon us rationalization if not rationality 
itself?   Even those who live in 
literature and want to eat the fruit from still life paintings must rationalize 
the irrational.   (I think the "irrational" in human 
behavior is seldom the opposite of "rational,"  but more nearly 
something like "autistic," "narcissistic," or "egocentric," and as such more 
nearly the opposite of "social.")
 
Bill Bailey
 
"Joe, I don't understand why you think the order 
might be reversed.  To resort to authority is essentially to cease thinking 
and to unquestioningly accept.  There's no cognitive 
dissonance avoidance necessary.  But if we begin with trying to avoid 
dissonance, and society forces us to confront it, then authority is one possible 
resort.   (Leon Festinger's school of research would 
suggest still other possibilities of dissonance 
reduction.)"REPLY:Well, I was thinking of the argument one might 
make that social consciousness is prior to consciousness of self, and the method 
of tenacity seems to me to be motivated by the value of self-integrity, the 
instinctive tendency n

[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?

[Bill Bailey]

Joe, I don't understand why you think the order might be 
reversed.  To resort to authority is essentially to cease thinking and to 
unquestioningly accept.  There's no cognitive dissonance avoidance 
necessary.  But if we begin with trying to avoid dissonance, and society 
forces us to confront it, then authority is one possible resort.   
(Leon Festinger's school of research would suggest still other 
possibilities of dissonance reduction.)
 
Bill Bailey

  
  
  In "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce says that "a man may go 
  through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change 
  n his opinions, and if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on 
  two fundamental psychologicl laws -- I do not see what can be said against his 
  doing so".    This is in Part V, where he is explaining the 
  method of tenacity, where he then goes on to say that "the social impulse" 
  will nevertheless somehow cause him, at times, to face up to some 
  contradiction which impels recourse to adopting the second method, which is 
  the method of authority.  His explanation of this is very 
  unsatisfactory, far too sketchy to be very informative, and I wonder if anyone 
  has run across any place where he says anything that might flesh that out or, 
  regardless of that, whether anyone has any plausible explanation themselves of 
  exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the second 
  method.   One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have the 
  order wrong:  might it not be argued that method #1 should be authority 
  and method #2 tenacity?  I wonder if anyone has ever tried to justify his 
  ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't recall anyone ever trying 
  to do that, but then I don't trust my memory on this since it has not always 
  been a topic in which I had much interest until fairly recently.  That he 
  has somehow got hold of something right in distinguishing the methods can be 
  argued, I believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as 
  plausible?  Joe 
  Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED]---Message 
  from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  
  

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

[Bill Bailey]

Ben,
Thank you for your response.  I suppose at the crack of doom humans will
still be wrestling with definitions.  These exchanges are useful for
egocentrics like me who assume their terms mean the same as someone else's.
When I think of "immediate," I think of something very like Peirce's
"immediate state of consciousness."  In the prior post I used the example of
an infant's experience of a hunger pang or hurt.  That also seems to me to
be compatible with Peirce's A is immediate to B formulation.  But when we
clip the prefix from "immediate" I think I leave the definitional camp.
When I speak of mediation, I'm talking about the use of a medium, some
constrained/limited system which we use informationally, such as the sensory
system or language. From the standpoint of information, the medium is not an
obstructive intermediary, but the necessary if often unconsciously used
means of information processing.  So I may be at odds with you and Peirce as
regards the concept of "mediation."


- Original Message - 
From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 1:15 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor


Bill, list,

Peirce does disgtinguish between "direct" and "immediate." See Joe's post
from Feb. 15, 2006, which I reproduce below. It's not very clear to me at
the mmoment what Peirce means by "without the aid of any subsidiary
instruments or operation." -- which is part of how he means "direct." I know
at least that when I say "direct" I mean such as can be mediated, and I've
thought that Peirce meant "direct" in that sense too. So by "direct" I guess
I mean something like -- if mediated, then such as not to create
impediments, buffers, etc., and such as instead to transmit "brute" or
unencoded, untranslated determination of the relevant kind by the shortest
distance. (I.e., insofar as the mediation means an "encoding," it's not the
relevant kind of determination anyway).

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 8:36 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: immediate/mediate, direct/indirect - CORRECTION


I did a check against an aging photocopy of the MS of the quote from Peirce
in my recent message,  and found some errors of transcription, and also a
typo of punctuation that needed correction as well.  I also include in this
correction an indication of the words which are underlined in the original
(using flanking underscores). I show one illegible word as a set of six
question marks enclosed in brackets because the illegible word appears to
have six letters, maybe seven.

Here is the passage again,  corrected (though not infallibly):

A _primal_ is that which is _something_ that is _in itself_ regardless of
anything else.

A _Potential_ is anything which is in some respect determined but whose
being is not definite.

A _Feeling_ is a state of determination of consciousness which apparently
might in its own nature (neglecting our experience of [??] etc.)
continue for some time unchanged and that has no reference of [NOTE: should
be "to"] anything else.

I call a state of consciousness _immediate_ which does not refer to
anything not present in that very state.

I use the terms _immediate_ and _direct_, not according to their etymologies
but so that to say that A is _immediate_ to B means that it is present in B.
_Direct_, as I use it means without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or
operation.

--  MS 339.493; c. 1904-05   Logic Notebook

Joe Ransdell

- Original Message - 
From: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 2:40 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor


Jim, List:
I cannot accept the notions "direct acquaintance" or "direct experience" if
those terms mean "unmediated," or generally assume a human sensory system
that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any
observer.

Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules.
That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical.  It obviously
is, or we would have perished.  But isomorphism is no more necessary to
veridicality than it is to the analogical relationships between mathematical
formulae and the physical world.

The most direct experience we have, and it seems to me Peirce supports this
contention, is a strong affective state.  For the baby, it's a hunger pang,
a physical hurt, or more happily, being fed or swaddled.  What is felt is
all there is; stimulus and response are essentially

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

[Bill Bailey]

I reply to myself to note that I left off a paragraph:  Through habituation,
as with the rest of our information processing, we deal also with the
acquired objective social reality in the primary mode of processing until we
get into trouble.  Because we have supporting groups for that "reality,"
it's sometimes difficult to get off and fix a social reality with the wheels
coming off.  I think of "intersubjectivity" as primary level social
information processing.  Scientific investigation, or Peirce's community of
investigators is what I consider the acme of secondary level social
information processing.



- Original Message - 
From: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 12:40 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor



Jim, List:
I cannot accept the notions "direct acquaintance" or "direct experience"
if
those terms mean "unmediated," or generally assume a human sensory system
that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any
observer.

Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules.
That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical.  It
obviously
is, or we would have perished.  But isomorphism is no more necessary to
veridicality than it is to the analogical relationships between
mathematical
formulae and the physical world.

The most direct experience we have, and it seems to me Peirce supports
this
contention, is a strong affective state.  For the baby, it's a hunger
pang,
a physical hurt, or more happily, being fed or swaddled.  What is felt is
all there is; stimulus and response are essentially unitive.  It takes
awhile for a child to learn to mediate between that systemic relevance and
the identity that is commonly called "objective."  Developmental
psychologists have commented upon the beginnings of perception in
relevance.
For example:  an urban infant commonly sleeps through all sorts of traffic
noises--sirens, crashes, horns, etc., but wakes up when mother enters the
room.  And relevance continues to direct us in our adult, everyday lives
where things and events have the identies and meanings of their personal
relevances--what we use them to do and how we feel about them.  The
wonderfully bright and sensitive colleague who stopped by our office to
chat
yesterday is inconsiderate and intrinsically irritating today with his
endless yammering while we are trying to meet a paper deadline.

There is some physiological evidence that meaning precedes
perception--i.e.,
that the relevance of a sensory response is responded to in the brain's
cortex before differentiation of the stimulus identity. Contrary to
experience, we've been brought up and educated to believe we perceive and
identify the object and then have responses--which, if it were so, would
have promptly ended evolution for any species so afflicted.  You couldn't
dodge the predator's charge until after you'd named the predator, the
attack
and what to do.

For most of our lives, the subject-object relationship analysis only
enters
when things go wrong, when the ride breaks down and we have to get off to
fix it.  The rest of the time the perceptual information/data that we
treat
as "objective" is submerged in our comparatively "mindless" states of
feeling and doing. We write or type instead of moving our fingers and
hands
to produce selected results.  We drive three quarters of the way to work
and
"wake up" to realize we've no memory of the prior two miles.  Or we come
home angered by someone at work and yell at spouses and kids.

That's the everyday world we live in, and in that world the organic unity
of
the sensory system means responses to environmental impingments
(exteroception) are inherently conditioned by what we are feeling and
doing--by interoception and proprioception.

I understand this primary level of information processing to be
essentially
what Peirce means by "firstness."  I don't think we can get to secondness
until there can be some degree of separation in the so-called subjective
and
objective elements of experience can be separated.  We may discover,
contrary to our desires, alas, we cannot eat rocks without the pain.  But
it
is only in thirdness that we can represent experience to ourselves and
ultimately through communication work out an objective social reality.  It
is in thirdness, a secondary level of information processing, that we
mediate between objective reality and how we feel about it.  It is this
secondary level of information processing that we (sometimes) fix the
wagon
when the wheels come off.  Other times we may just kick and brutalize the
damnably perverse inanimate object.

I'd be delighted to have any errors pointed out in my application of
Peirce.
Cheers,

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

[Bill Bailey]

Jim, List:
I cannot accept the notions "direct acquaintance" or "direct experience" if
those terms mean "unmediated," or generally assume a human sensory system
that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any
observer.

Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules.
That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical.  It obviously
is, or we would have perished.  But isomorphism is no more necessary to
veridicality than it is to the analogical relationships between mathematical
formulae and the physical world.

The most direct experience we have, and it seems to me Peirce supports this
contention, is a strong affective state.  For the baby, it's a hunger pang,
a physical hurt, or more happily, being fed or swaddled.  What is felt is
all there is; stimulus and response are essentially unitive.  It takes
awhile for a child to learn to mediate between that systemic relevance and
the identity that is commonly called "objective."  Developmental
psychologists have commented upon the beginnings of perception in relevance.
For example:  an urban infant commonly sleeps through all sorts of traffic
noises--sirens, crashes, horns, etc., but wakes up when mother enters the
room.  And relevance continues to direct us in our adult, everyday lives
where things and events have the identies and meanings of their personal
relevances--what we use them to do and how we feel about them.  The
wonderfully bright and sensitive colleague who stopped by our office to chat
yesterday is inconsiderate and intrinsically irritating today with his
endless yammering while we are trying to meet a paper deadline.

There is some physiological evidence that meaning precedes perception--i.e.,
that the relevance of a sensory response is responded to in the brain's
cortex before differentiation of the stimulus identity. Contrary to
experience, we've been brought up and educated to believe we perceive and
identify the object and then have responses--which, if it were so, would
have promptly ended evolution for any species so afflicted.  You couldn't
dodge the predator's charge until after you'd named the predator, the attack
and what to do.

For most of our lives, the subject-object relationship analysis only enters
when things go wrong, when the ride breaks down and we have to get off to
fix it.  The rest of the time the perceptual information/data that we treat
as "objective" is submerged in our comparatively "mindless" states of
feeling and doing. We write or type instead of moving our fingers and hands
to produce selected results.  We drive three quarters of the way to work and
"wake up" to realize we've no memory of the prior two miles.  Or we come
home angered by someone at work and yell at spouses and kids.

That's the everyday world we live in, and in that world the organic unity of
the sensory system means responses to environmental impingments
(exteroception) are inherently conditioned by what we are feeling and
doing--by interoception and proprioception.

I understand this primary level of information processing to be essentially
what Peirce means by "firstness."  I don't think we can get to secondness
until there can be some degree of separation in the so-called subjective and
objective elements of experience can be separated.  We may discover,
contrary to our desires, alas, we cannot eat rocks without the pain.  But it
is only in thirdness that we can represent experience to ourselves and
ultimately through communication work out an objective social reality.  It
is in thirdness, a secondary level of information processing, that we
mediate between objective reality and how we feel about it.  It is this
secondary level of information processing that we (sometimes) fix the wagon
when the wheels come off.  Other times we may just kick and brutalize the
damnably perverse inanimate object.

I'd be delighted to have any errors pointed out in my application of Peirce.
Cheers,
Bill

- Original Message - 
From: "Jim Piat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 10:50 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor



Dear Ben, Folks--

Thanks for the reassuring clarification,  Ben.  Here's my thought on the
matter for today.

The distinction between the knowledge we gain from direct acquaintance
with an object verses the knowledge we gain of the same object through a
symbolic sign of that object is that direct aquaintance is mediated by an
actually indexed icon of the object whereas indirect symbolic aquaintance
is mediated by an imputed icon of the object.  The meaning of symbols
depends in part upon the reliability of linguistic conventions, customs
and habits.  The meaning of icons depends primarily upon the reliability
of direct observation.

Ideally the meanings we assign to our symbols are rooted in aquaintance
with the actual objects to which they refer,  but customs take on a life
of their own and are notoriou

[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate

[Bill Bailey]

Ben,
I think you must be right, especially with regard to my not feeling the 
force of an objection to bad logical regression.  Indeed, I'm not only 
insensitive, but too ignorant to see that I've made any incursion into a 
logical regression.


Thanks, I'm familiar with Merleau-Ponty.  I enjoyed him when I read him, but 
I tend more toward the empirical-physiological analyses of perception.  If I 
must have phenomenology rearing itself in information processing, I confess 
I prefer to get it from a sociological perspective, say from an Alfred 
Schutz type--a contemporary of Merleau-Ponty, as I recall.  But, as I'm sure 
you understand, the program of phenomenolgy--bent upon the "what" of 
experience, as it were, rather than the how and why, doesn't wear well with 
the more analytic questions of information processing.  I think I've noted 
before on this list Gregory Bateson's observation that the two contemporary 
universes are the Newtonian universe of objects and the communication 
universe of information.  To take either as starting point excludes you from 
the other; in the communication universe, there are no objects, only 
information.  I assume this plays a major role in our "talking past each 
other."


Bill,

Geez, I think that we're talking mostly past each other at this point. You 
don't seem to feel the force of an objection to bad logical regression, in 
particular. Whatever philosophy may be, a quintessential philosophical move 
has been to apply the philosophical claims to the philosophizing itself.  It 
may be that you are familiar with the philosophical phenomenological 
approach and don't think that it is quite that important. But if you're not 
particularly familiar with it, then Merleau-Ponty is a good place to get it 
in concentrated dosage, especially in _The Structure of Behavior_ and _The 
Phenomenology of Perception._  Merleau-Ponty, in addition to being a 
philosopher, was a child psychologist who kept current with the perceptual 
and neurological work being done in his time.


Best, Ben Udell

- Original Message - 
From: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 6:48 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate


Ben, and whatever list members are still reading,

I'm going to do some pruning; if necessary, we can always go back.  Again,
BB for me, BU for you


BU:  Sorry. One little correction of a phrase which would otherise be very
confusing. - Ben



BU:  If we never can apprehend an existent object, then we never can
apprehend any existent signs of it, either.



BB:  I don't see how that follows.  My point only argues that all our
experience of the object is mediated in and through our sensory system, and
therefore we do not experience the object as it existentially is, but as
our sensory system responds to it and in terms our minds can make sense of
it.


BU:  The conception of "sign" is much more general than that of
"sensory-system event." "Sign" just means something that conveys information
about something. What reason could there be to think that perception is both
impossible of the existent source of info and yet still possible of the
existent conveyor of info?  It seems quite arbitrary. If one makes a general
statement that we never perceive existent objects, that applies to them
whether they are serving as semiotic objects, or as signs, or as whatever
else.

BB:  Well, one reason is that the sensory system event (the conveyor of
info. in the above paragraph) is the perceptual event; all that is
experienced of the existential object occurs in and through that sensory
system--the information medium.  That sensory system is comprised of
electrochemical events that are not the result of "inputs" into the system,
but are rather systemic responses to impingements upon the system.  Stimuli
do not cause responses; rather they occasion them.  So in short, the medium
of information is "all its own stuff," and whatever isomorphism there may be
between it's stuff and the existential world is surely more informational
construct than "direct" experience--whatever that could mean.

BU:  One will more thoroughly perceive a thing if one perceives it as both
source of its own and as conveyor others' info, and indeed in whatever
semiotic role it fills. In particular, why would you think that a
sensory-system event can [CORRECTION] be perceived [END correction] but
other concrete objects/events can't?  Sensory-system events are, if
anything, harder to perceive, since they try to stay "in the background," be
like the glass in the window or like the lens, the fluid, or the cornea of
the eye. Sensory-system events come into relief when one is struggling a bit
with some distortive effect, say in waking up, when

[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate

[Bill Bailey]

Ben, and whatever list members are still reading,

I'm going to do some pruning; if necessary, we can always go back.  Again, 
BB for me, BU for you


BU:  Sorry. One little correction of a phrase which would otherise be very 
confusing. - Ben


BU:  If we never can apprehend an existent object, then we never can 
apprehend any existent signs of it, either.


BB:  I don't see how that follows.  My point only argues that all our 
experience of the object is mediated in and through our sensory system, and 
therefore we do not experience the object as it existentially is, but as 
our sensory system responds to it and in terms our minds can make sense of 
it.


BU:  The conception of "sign" is much more general than that of 
"sensory-system event." "Sign" just means something that conveys information 
about something. What reason could there be to think that perception is both 
impossible of the existent source of info and yet still possible of the 
existent conveyor of info?  It seems quite arbitrary. If one makes a general 
statement that we never perceive existent objects, that applies to them 
whether they are serving as semiotic objects, or as signs, or as whatever 
else.


BB:  Well, one reason is that the sensory system event (the conveyor of 
info. in the above paragraph) is the perceptual event; all that is 
experienced of the existential object occurs in and through that sensory 
system--the information medium.  That sensory system is comprised of 
electrochemical events that are not the result of "inputs" into the system, 
but are rather systemic responses to impingements upon the system.  Stimuli 
do not cause responses; rather they occasion them.  So in short, the medium 
of information is "all its own stuff," and whatever isomorphism there may be 
between it's stuff and the existential world is surely more informational 
construct than "direct" experience--whatever that could mean.


BU:  One will more thoroughly perceive a thing if one perceives it as both 
source of its own and as conveyor others' info, and indeed in whatever 
semiotic role it fills. In particular, why would you think that a 
sensory-system event can [CORRECTION] be perceived [END correction] but 
other concrete objects/events can't?  Sensory-system events are, if 
anything, harder to perceive, since they try to stay "in the background," be 
like the glass in the window or like the lens, the fluid, or the cornea of 
the eye. Sensory-system events come into relief when one is struggling a bit 
with some distortive effect, say in waking up, when one is a bit dizzy, or 
via the ingestion of alcohol or other drugs which will reveal to the mind, 
under abnormalized conditions, by the resultant contrast what an amazing job 
its systems do under normal conditions. It seems no easier and instead 
rather harder, to perceive sensory-system events from outside, as events in 
a nervous system, in such a way that one can perceive the 'objective' event 
in its connections to the experienced distortion as the experienced 
distortion's "other side."


BB:  Except in the data of sensory events, in what do you think the 
experience of the object is constituted?  The sensory events are hardly 
limited to nausea and migraine!


BU:  Now, a sensory perception scientist might say, "all we really perceive 
are sensory-system events." S/he means that it's all mediated through 
sensory-system events. S/he is concerned with the mechanisms involved, not 
with what _perceiving_ is. For many expository purposes of that person, the 
verbal confusion of the medium or channel with the object not only causes 
little problem, but is actually rather convenient, putting the audience's 
focus on events which, in order to let other events shine through, try to 
keep from standing out themselves. In this sense, his/her deviant use of the 
word "perceive" actually _depends_ on its deviance for its special force, 
and I remember feeling clever and jazzy (and rightly so) the first time I 
myself said it back many years ago...well, never mind that. It's definitely 
an intellectual thing to say, "stop the world, we're all deceived," turning 
everything upside down or inside out by the flick of a semantic switch. If 
it's not an actual index, it's very much like one, wrenching the semantics 
so as to get the audience to wrench its heads to look _at_ something which 
it usually looks _through_. One breaks through a clotted or hardened 
habitual linguistic medium by that kind of talk. What's not to like? It just 
isn't exactly true, is all.


BB:  I think I'm beginning to see some of our difference.  Yes, I am saying 
exactly what the "sensory perception scientist" would say.  And that is 
indeed the medium of all information processing.  I wonder if what you are 
calling the "concrete object/event" is what I call the phenomenological 
object/event, though I don't think there is anything very concrete there. 
In any case, let us go there for awhile.  In that frame of refer

[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate

[Bill Bailey]

Ben, Jim, list,
I'm going to change the sign posts to BB for me and BU for Ben this time 
around


[Bill] I pretty well agree with the following two paragraphs [by Jim, much 
further down now -- Ben].  I'd like to make some friendly amendments, 
however.  I don't think one sign carries more evidential weight than 
another, but then I'm not clear on what you mean because I don't understand 
how abstraction is related nor what your conception of it is in the 
sentences below.  Do you mean a visual experience of a the tree is more 
particularized in terms of data than the visual or auditory experience of 
the word tree?  To say one of those is more or less abstract than the other 
seems strange to me.


[Bill] What I miss in your post, and in Ben's response, is a fuller 
recognition of *usage* in sign function.   You get to it at the end of 
first paragraph below,  in connection with abstraction, but you need to put 
it to use at a more basic level.


[Bill] I agree that all we know (or know that we know) is mediated by 
signs, including trees.  We never apprehend the existential object we call 
"tree."


BU:  For my part, I'd need some more examples of what you mean by usage in 
sign function.


BB:  As Jim was offering his personal take on semiosis, I did the same, with 
no concern for Peirce.  (I hope if I stay here long enough and read enough, 
I may someday be able to represent his views.)  By "usage" I mean that a 
sign is necessarily an act of using something as something other than what 
it empirically is.  As with any act, the function is what the instruments of 
the act are used to do.


BU:  I think you may be setting the bar too high for what constitutes 
apprehension of an existential object.


BB:  "Apprehension" was Jim's term, which I picked up.  I'd prefer 
"perception of an existential object," which seems to me to better locate 
the activity within the perceiver.  So I'd probably set the bar even higher 
than my post implied.


BU:  If we never can apprehend an existent object, then we never can 
apprehend any existent signs of it, either.


BB:  I don't see how that follows.  My point only argues that all our 
experience of the object is mediated in and through our sensory system, and 
therefore we do not experience the object as it existentially is, but as our 
sensory system responds to it and in terms our minds can make sense of it.


We apprehend an existent object as something which tends to withhold much of 
itself from us, some of it actual but hidden beneath surfaces, some of it 
hidden in potency. Some things which are not parts of the object can still 
be signs about the object. Creating or destroying those things does not, per 
se, augment or diminish the object. So they are not parts of the object. 
Some things which _are_ parts or samples of the object, can also be signs 
about the object. Whether the aspect or face of it which is patent to us is 
the object perspectivally viewed or is a sign about the object, is a matter 
of whether we are asking about the greater object a question on the basis of 
the patent aspect as a sign about it. In respect of such question, the 
patent aspect is a sign. "Semiotic object," "sign," etc., are roles in logic 
and inquiry, roles assigned in terms of inquirial relationships arising in 
the study of the given subject matter.


BB:  I think I can agree to all of that--I'm not too sure about an "object 
withholding itself"--and all that follows:  none of it seems to refute my 
position that all information is necessarily mediated, and in the human's 
case, by the sensory system and the use made of it by the mind.



[Bill] We have only instances of signs of "treeness," which are not emitted 
by trees, but which we learn to use as signs.  Our information processing 
system rather favors abstraction.


The apprehension of a concrete object means 'intending' it as unabstracted, 
and means not intending some abstraction of it. It does not mean actually 
possessing all that information; it doesn't mean being able to make the 
tree's constituents all dance like puppets. It means possessing the relevant 
information for the given purpose, and it means that the object figures 
large enough to be counted as an object and as a significant source of 
semiotic determination. "Apprehension" is a bit vague of a word, or I would 
risk more on the question of actual contact with the object. You take the 
object as it comes to you -- nature's abstraction is not your abstraction. 
"Abstraction" & decay are everywhere -- with matter and thermodynamics, 
everything is imperfectly represented in a sense. An object's parts are 
imperfectly represented to one another. How can it even be an object? If we 
flatly equate info-decrease, abstraction in every possible sense, and 
representation, then we will have let deep and fecund parallels become a 
wash of self-defeating skepticism, swirling down logical drains of infinite 
regressions, leading to...gee, I wish I coul

[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate

[Bill Bailey]

Jim, list:

I pretty well agree with the following two paragraphs.  I'd like to make 
some friendly amendments, however.  I don't think one sign carries more 
evidential weight than another, but then I'm not clear on what you mean 
because I don't understand how abstraction is related nor what your 
conception of it is in the sentences below.  Do you mean a visual experience 
of a the tree is more particularized in terms of data than the visual or 
auditory experience of the word tree?  To say one of those is more or less 
abstract than the other seems strange to me.


What I miss in your post, and in Ben's response, is a fuller recognition of 
*usage* in sign function.   You get to it at the end of  first paragraph 
below,  in connection with abstraction, but you need to put it to use at a 
more basic level.


I agree that all we know (or know that we know) is mediated by signs, 
including trees.  We never apprehend the existential object we call "tree." 
We have only instances of signs of "treeness," which are not emitted by 
trees, but which we learn to use as signs.  Our information processing 
system rather favors abstraction.  The psychologist George Miller has a 
delightful essay called "The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" which 
toys with the research finding that our short term memory can only deal with 
seven items, plus or minus two, at a time.  If you think about that, and how 
we process a sentence, such as "The boy threw his ball into the forest where 
it rolled to the foot of a tree" you have conclude that our dealing with 
concepts is not richly particularized.  We really don't (can't) get involved 
in the particulars of signs; they exist as possibles, potentials of the 
processing, but not as actuals.  That is, we may take for granted the ball 
was round, tree had branches, roots and leaves--possibly of the Oak type.  I 
tend to think in terms of "contextual potentials."  For example, if I ask 
you if you've ever been to Siberia, and you haven't, you don't have to 
search your memory for the experience of not being there.  It's simply not a 
potential of your information context.


To speak of experiencing a tree as an object apart from semiosis seems to me 
to speak of a transcendental experience; the tree is not the source of 
signs, but the product of them.  There are some very disciplined ascetics in 
the traditional Orient who lay claim to "pure" experience and I believe some 
of them.  For the rest of us lay persons, a tree is the product of our use 
of sensory data in the creation of signs and constructs.  We have to learn 
to use sensory data to have any meaningful experiences; even a purely 
aesthetic experience--should such a event occur--could never be purely 
sensory.  It would be merely chaotic.  No matter now effortless semiotics 
may seem, signs are a product of usage.  So is "experience" to the extent 
that it is anything more than meaningless variance in some kind of 
sensorium.


As for verification, it seems to me that is the heart of pragmaticism: 
verification occurs as we operationally determine that a diamond will 
scratch more things than it is scratched by.  While that is a truth relative 
to the operation, within the operation it is an absolute.  In my mind the 
pragmatic maxim means that we approximate truth to the point where whatever 
variances may occur make no difference to the operation performed.  In other 
words, we get a consensus or a congruence good enough or close enough that 
the differences don't make a difference.  That is certainly the case in 
communication; there is no better possibility.





I think all our conceptions and knowledge of our experience is through 
signs.  That, for us,  all the world is signs.  But I will concede that in 
certain situations for certain purposes some signs carry more evideniary 
weight (both literally and figuratively) than others.   Not all signs are 
equally abstract.  The sign that we typically call a tree in the forest is 
less abstract than the sign we typically call the word tree.  The word 
tree has abstracted most of the form from the substance of the tree 
growing in the forest.  To mistake one sign of a tree for another is a 
mistake we make at our own peril.  But to suppose that reality is neatly 
divided into objects and signs of those objects is I think a mistake that 
Peirce was trying to correct.  So called concrete objects are no more real 
than their abstract cousins.  Nor vice versa.  One emphasizes substance 
the other orm  -- each has its place but there exists neither pure 
substance nor pure form.  And ultimately both form and substance are 
conceptualized only through signs.  The distinction between a sign and an 
object is a matter of usage not a distinction that by which god has carved 
up reality.  One man's sign is another man's object.  The distinction 
between signs and objects is closer to the distinction between verbs and 
nouns than folks suppose.  It's a matter of usage.

[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!

[Bill Bailey]

Patrick,
My responses are interspersed below.

- Original Message - 
From: "Patrick Coppock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Cc: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 9:26 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!



Thanks Bill for your comments.

You wrote:


Patrick,
I'm don't know what in my post you're replying to.  I don't keep my posts,
so I can't be sure, but I don't recall mentioning an "expression
continuum," "segments" or "meaning continuum."  I may have; I sometimes
think I only think I know what I say or mean.  My post (I think) had to do
with the confusion/conflation of independent processes.  If that's what
you're doing in your last paragraph, quit it!  (I don't have any of those
smiley gadget to put here.)
Cheers,
Bill


Ok, on the last point, you can borrow this smiley here if you like :)


I'd be the first to argue that the more abstract--"featureless"--sign works
best (I'm not a perceptual cognitivist  ( :) ), but I'll have to pass.


Apropos: "expression continuum" and "meaning continuum" are actually
supposed to be considered part and parcel of one and the same general
continuum of meaning-expression potential that is capable of being "cut"
in various ways, according to Eco's "creative" blending of Peirce and
Hjelmslev's sign functions.


I've never been much of an Eco fan;  in my view, his creative blending tends
to bend Peirce to mend Saussure's linguistics based-semiology.   But maybe
I'm too provincial.


My last paragraph was of course pure speculation, and I apologise if it
seemed to you too arcane, since there are some "flavours" in there
(transitivity) that I pulled in from systemic functional linguistics.


I think you can see why I might twit you on that paragraph from the above
response.  I'm not much for linguistic approaches to semiotics; however, my
comments on your post were absolutely sincere.  I very much liked the
pragmatic "attitude" of your post.  But I'm not sure you can carry it to
fruition in your theoretical enterprise.  Gregory Bateson once commented
that there are two mutually discrete universes--the Newtonian universe of
objects and the communication universe of information.  If you start in one,
you can never reach the other.  Similarly, I think, we might distinguish
between the two universes of signs and language, and arrive at the same
conclusion.


But since I am at present trying (I think) to build/ defend a position
that says that all independent processes, though "discrete", must always
be seen as to some degree presuppositionally linked to one another in the
immediate context of any given current event, I fear some conflation/
confusion/ overlapping of perspectives is probably inevitable.

Whether it is actually worth trying to defend such a position is of course
another matter (cf Steven's recent comments on useful and non-useful
hypotheses/ predictions), but that is what (I think) I'm trying to do.

But actually, I did keep your message, so let's have a look at it in some
more detail.

You wrote:


Patrick:  In addition to representing what I have always hoped is Peirce's
developmental teleology, your description of sign function seems to me to
get to the heart of pragmatic discourse analysis in which conventional
sign structures and meanings ("syntactics" and "semantics") serve
principally as orientation to what the situated discourse is being used to
do.

I would only add that it is sometimes useful to recognize that a number of
differentiable processes occur simultaneously  within the great "alpha"
process.  There is the "action" processes associated with "life-forms."
There is the "motion/matter" processes associated with "non-life-forms."
(I'm using these terms only as gestures, fingers that point in a given
direction, and not as depictions.) The highly ephemeral acts of sign usage
are "real" events in several related but distinct processes--e.g, those
physical, physiological, psychological and sociological processes
necessary to communication acts.


My point here would be that it may be of interest to try to investigate/
describe in some more detail the possible relationships that may obtain or
"exist" between salient aspects of the "several related but distinct
processes" you mention above.

In this connection it has occurred to me that the notion of narrative
possible worlds as used by Eco, coupled with a dynamic notion of
transworld identity, where there can be some degree of transmission or
intersection of some salient aspects of actual events as these are "seen",
or made pertinent, by 

[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!

[Bill Bailey]

Patrick,
I'm don't know what in my post you're replying to.  I don't keep my posts,
so I can't be sure, but I don't recall mentioning an "expression continuum,"
"segments" or "meaning continuum."  I may have; I sometimes think I only
think I know what I say or mean.  My post (I think) had to do with the
confusion/conflation of independent processes.  If that's what you're doing
in your last paragraph, quit it!  (I don't have any of those smiley gadget
to put here.)
Cheers,
Bill
- Original Message - 
From: "Patrick Coppock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" 
Cc: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 10:46 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!



Hi Bill, you wrote:


I think it is not very useful to speak of signs as existing in the same
process as existential objects,  but if we must, perhaps we can say, "Yes,
signs exist, but much faster than objects do."


Well yes I guess so. The sign function may be construed (rather
simplistically) as an event where some "segment" of "expression continuum"
is perceived as entering into, or being brought into, relation with some
"segment" of "meaning continuum".

If we are considering any kind of culturally contingent sign processes we
normally will have to try and take into account the varying amounts of
time and energy consumption and different forms of effort that are
associated with our semiotic "use" of the many different possible forms
and mediums of expression that may be brought into play during the course
of sign production and interpretation processes.

Thought is just one of these.

Thoughts flash by, words take longer to speak, and even longer to write
down - especially if we want others to understand what they are supposed
to mean.

The production of cinema, theatre and ballet performances, each will have
their own specific time and energy consumption requirements.

Diagrams, sketches and pictures written on paper have their own time and
energy consumption requirements, "digital" variants of the same objects
theirs.

But it seems to me that if we adopt a process perspective on semiosis,
what becomes central is that the "existence" of both signs and objects
becomes conceivable of as a transient form of "reality" (of varying
durability and speed), and it also seems feasible that the inherent
transience of signs and objects, and the various types of transitivity
that may be attributed to them in the course of the (intersubjective, or
other)  negotiation of their potential meanings in different situations
and contexts must be closely interrelated aspects of this "reality" and/or
"existence".

Best regards

Patrick
--

Patrick J. Coppock
Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language
Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia
Italy
phone: + 39 0522.522404 : fax. + 39 0522.522512
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www: http://coppock-violi.com/work/
faculty: http://www.cei.unimore.it
the voice:  http://morattiddl.blogspot.com

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[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!

[Bill Bailey]

Patrick:  In addition to representing what I have always hoped is Peirce's
developmental teleology, your description of sign function seems to me to
get to the heart of pragmatic discourse analysis in which conventional sign
structures and meanings ("syntactics" and "semantics") serve principally as
orientation to what the situated discourse is being used to do.

I would only add that it is sometimes useful to recognize that a number of
differentiable processes occur simultaneously  within the great "alpha"
process.  There is the "action" processes associated with "life-forms."
There is the "motion/matter" processes associated with "non-life-forms."
(I'm using these terms only as gestures, fingers that point in a given
direction, and not as depictions.)  The highly ephemeral acts of sign usage
are "real" events in several related but distinct processes--e.g, those
physical, physiological, psychological and sociological processes necessary
to communication acts.  It seems to me these different processes often get
confused or conflated.  Existential "objects" are also events, but typically
in a much slower process that makes them available to our exteroception for
comparatively vast periods of time, which we think makes them "empirically"
real, extant.  I think it is not very useful to speak of signs as existing
in the same process as existential objects,  but if we must, perhaps we can
say, "Yes, signs exist, but much faster than objects do."

Bill Bailey

Patrick Coppock wrote, in part:


According to Peirce's developmental teleology, these three "aspects" of
the sign (function), by way of which we are able to "experience" or
"recognise" the "presence" of any given (manifest for someone or
something) sign, are destined to keep on "morphing" into one another
continuously, emerging, submerging and and re-emerging again as the
meanings we singly or collectively attribute to the signs we encounter
from day to day continue to grow in complexity -- at different rates of
development, of course, depending on the relative "strength" of the habits
(mental or otherwise) that "constrain" Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness
and allow them to "oscillate"/ "morph" in relation to one another at
different "rates" in different situations and contexts, and allow them to
be conceived of by us as "conventionally" (or otherwise) representing
"signifying" (or culturally meaningful, if you like) units/
configurations/ events/ states of affairs.

Every culturally significant "event" that we are able to conceive of as a
sign (objects, thoughts, actions etc.) may then be seen to "embody" or
"posess", to a greater or lesser degree, and more or less saliently, all
three qualities/ aspects of the sign (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness)
at any given time in the ongoing flow of semiosis.




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[peirce-l] Re: Entelechy

[Bill Bailey]

Vinicius,
Thank you.  I'd very much appreciate knowing when and where 
the translation is available.  Just skimming over your 
sources and their juxtapositions intrigued me.

Bill

Vin¨cius Romanini wrote:

Bill,
Interestingly, this is my main concern too - and I agree the quotes 
given by Joe go straight to Peirce¨s late definition of Sign as a medium 
for communication. I have explored a bit these ideas in an article (in 
Portuguese) in which Peirce¨s definiton of Perfect Sign in terms of 
Entelechy is related to the dispute between Poincar¨ and Boltzmann (and 
how all this relates to Prigogine¨s ideas)
 
http://www.eca.usp.br/caligrama/n_2/1%20ViniciusRomanini.pdf
I might have it translated into English in some weeks, if you are 
interested. 
Best,

Vinicius
 



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[peirce-l] Re: Entelechy

[Bill Bailey]

Joe,
Thank you for the below post--which I've cut away all but 
it's identification.  I don't find entelechy of particular 
interest, but I'm in awe of Peirce's conception of 
communication and mediation.  It's ready to bottle and label.

Bill Bailey
For the benefit of those who don't have a copy of Essential Peirce 2, here 
is the passage referred to by Vinicius Romanini in which Peirce appears to 
be defining "perfect sign" in such a way as to make it synonymous with 
"entelechy" (Peirce's emphasis shown here by use of capital letters):



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[peirce-l] Re: Peirce and Prigogine

[Bill Bailey]

Ben:
Someone back in the dark ages of cybernetics and system theory remarked that 
there was no way of knowing whether entropy was a feature of the universe or 
of  our information regarding the universe.  And about the same time Colin 
Cherry wrote, "Mind is real; matter is mystery."  I decided then that the 
cause-effect conception is itself the relativity of viewpoint, as are the 
indeterminancy and relativity conceptions.  And so, I had better make peace 
with my mind.  Once done, I slept nights.  My ulcers healed.  The world was 
really, actually, truly, patently beautiful.  :=)

Bill Bailey

Ben wrote:
"I'm not actually so pleased with the idea of the cause-effect conception's 
dissolving into a relativity to viewpoint, but I take some comfort in the 
fact that relativity theory is itself somewhat less relativistic then some 
suppose."



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[peirce-l] Re: Peirce and Prigogine

[Bill Bailey]

Ben,
I liked your post.  In any analysis of process, cause-effect relationships 
are created by our puctuations--which in turn inevitably result from our 
local (space and time) interests.  Time slices can be so misleading. 
Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson (Pragmatics of Human Communication) wrote of 
such punctuation in analysis of communication.  The wife nags and the 
husband withdraws.  Ah!  Cause and effect.  However, had we sliced the 
transaction a bit earlier, we'd have seen the husband's withdrawn attitudes 
toward the wife precede the nagging.  So how do we locate cause and effect 
in a system?  In some some applications, such as communication systems, it 
is better to talk about the hows rather than the whats of the system.  It's 
about the same as describing the increase of body temperature as the normal 
response of the body to invading bacteria rather than saying bacterial 
infections "cause" a fever.  Unless the nature of the system is understood, 
all sorts of false causes may lurk behind the conventional cause-effect 
assignments.


Ben wrote, in part:
"Now, the Peircean idea is that the laws followed by agents are the ends, 
and are defining and general -- as if a particular end were some sort of 
oxymoron. I think it simply hamstrings analysis, if one rigidly conflates 
the four causes with distinctions between individual & general rather than 
drawing, at best, parallelisms founded in some underlying relationship, and, 
as always, I wonder what possible basis or justification there could be for 
appealing, in basic issues, to a distinction between individual & general 
without also taking into account a distinction betwen universal & special.


Now, If every system always decayed, then it would make less difference 
(than it actually does) to talk about a particular system or a larger system 
containing it. But wherever we look for a final cause in _distinct_ 
operation, it is in the case of a system which "upgrades" instead of 
degrades, even as the larger system does decay. It is only in such cases 
that the final cause exhibits a capacity to distinctly "govern" the process 
(through so-called "loopholes" in dynamic & material principles)."



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[peirce-l] Re: naming definite individuals

[Bill Bailey]

Ben, Jim, list,
I'm clearly not understanding Ben.  You seem to give with 
one hand, and take away with the other.  If the index is "in 
real reaction or resistance with its object," how then do we 
describe indexicality as a "role, which does not get glued 
to a physical object"?  Isn't it through the real resistance 
or reaction relation that it functions as an index for 
Peirce?  I understand "role" as essentially an assigned (and 
possibly arbitrary) function.  I am comfortable with that 
conception of index; because a sign functions only through 
being used as something other than it empirically is, all 
signs seem to me to involve some degree of arbitrariness in 
the assigned function.  But that is not how I've understood 
Peirce.


Benjamin Udell wrote:

Bill, Jim, list,

Peirce defines the index as being in real reaction or resistance with its 
object, not more specifically as being cause or effect of its object.

Indexicality, like every signhood, is a role, which does not get glued to a physical 
object, e.g., the physical object serving as a weathervane. The determination which 
indexicality involves is _logical_ and founded logically in habit, even though 
indexicality is involved in reactional & resistantial determination, causal 
determination & causal habit. If the northward wind correlates habitually with the 
northward weathervane, then the northward weathervane logically determines the 
northward wind as its sign for that mind which observes the northward wind directly and 
is aware of the weathervane's being there though blocked from view by a hill. And how 
else would you account for this sign relation? Would the northward wind be an icon or a 
symbol of the unseen northward weathervane? It's hard to see what the northward wind 
would be in such a case other than an index. And the seed of the tree to come, likewise.

Best, Ben

Bill Bailey wrote,

Ben, Jim, list:
I've been following the discussion--or rather limping along behind--with some 
puzzlement.  I've always assumed that when Peirce speaks of index as a type of 
sign, he is speaking of a sign function within his system of logic.  It seems 
to me that in the actual word of communication, a particular sign might be an 
index, icon, and/or symbol, depending upon its usage in a particular context, 
and, to complicate matters, it might be one thing to the sender and another to 
the receiver.  So for me, what I thought I understood turns to fog when you 
illustrate with real life examples.  I would have assumed that Peirce could 
treat the weather vane only as index, effect, in his system.
Bill

Benjamin Udell wrote:


> [Jim] Peirce says that there is an "assocation of ideas operating to cause the symbol to 
refer to the object."  But with natural events we run causality from the object to the index.  
The symbol refers to the cause. Does a natural index "refer?" Better yet, we use symbols to 
refer to both the natural index and the cause.

Actually I should qualify my "yep." I do think of there as being a vague 
resemblance between object-index and cause-effect but it's not a strict parallel.

Suppose I'm walking northward, and I feel the wind blowing northward. I feel 
reasonably assured, from that, that over the next rise I will see the 
weathervane pointing northward. The wind, which causes it, was my index of the 
weathervane's direction. Either the cause (the wind's blowing northward) was 
index to the effect (the weathervane's pointing northward), or one effect (the 
northward wind which I felt) of the cause (the general wind's blowing 
northward) was index to another effect (the weathervane's pointing northward) 
of the cause. And the seed can serve as an index to the tree that may grow. 
Since in all cases, the index points to what one _/will/_ find, maybe, maybe 
cause-effect is actually the better semblance of index-object than vice versa! 
I don't know, this is one of those things about which I wonder from time to 
time. There are elements of pattern in it that seem to promise more pattern.

Best, Ben 




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[peirce-l] Re: naming definite individuals

[Bill Bailey]

Ben, Jim, list:
I've been following the discussion--or rather limping along 
behind--with some puzzlement.  I've always assumed that when 
Peirce speaks of index as a type of sign, he is speaking of 
a sign function within his system of logic.  It seems to me 
that in the actual word of communication, a particular sign 
might be an index, icon, and/or symbol, depending upon its 
usage in a particular context, and, to complicate matters, 
it might be one thing to the sender and another to the 
receiver.  So for me, what I thought I understood turns to 
fog when you illustrate with real life examples.  I would 
have assumed that Peirce could treat the weather vane only 
as index, effect, in his system.

Bill
Benjamin Udell wrote:
 > [Jim] Peirce says that there is an "assocation of ideas operating to 
cause the symbol to refer to the object."  But with natural events we 
run causality from the object to the index.  The symbol refers to the 
cause. Does a natural index "refer?" Better yet, we use symbols to refer 
to both the natural index and the cause.
 
Actually I should qualify my "yep." I do think of there as being a vague 
resemblance between object-index and cause-effect but it's not a strict 
parallel.
 
Suppose I'm walking northward, and I feel the wind blowing northward. I 
feel reasonably assured, from that, that over the next rise I will see 
the weathervane pointing northward. The wind, which causes it, was my 
index of the weathervane's direction. Either the cause (the wind's 
blowing northward) was index to the effect (the weathervane's pointing 
northward), or one effect (the northward wind which I felt) of the cause 
(the general wind's blowing northward) was index to another effect (the 
weathervane's pointing northward) of the cause. And the seed can serve 
as an index to the tree that may grow. Since in all cases, the index 
points to what one _/will/_ find, maybe, maybe cause-effect is actually 
the better semblance of index-object than vice versa! I don't know, this 
is one of those things about which I wonder from time to time. There are 
elements of pattern in it that seem to promise more pattern.
 
Best, Ben 
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[peirce-l] Re: Alfred Korzybski

[Bill Bailey]

I've read _Science and Sanity_.  I think the book would have 
been difficult to avoid for anyone educated in the fifties 
with a degree of intellectual curiosity .  He is vastly 
better than any of his popularizers--S. I. Hayakawa, Stuart 
Chase, etc.  (As I recall, Max Black's has an excellent 
critique _Language and Philosophy_ of Korzybski's general 
semantics.)  For my part--as a Peirce novice reading here to 
gain an understanding of Peirce--I have reservations about 
trying to understand Peirce through a Korzybskian lens, as I 
would have about understanding Korzybski through Whitehead, 
Popper or Bridgman lenses--or through the lenses of any of 
his disciples whose popularizations did him great 
disservice.   Peirce strikes me as having much in common 
with the major tenets of many "process thinkers," but 
soluble in none.


Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen wrote:

Dear list,

 

I have some relevant questions that I am wondering about to the people 
on this list.


The question are the following:

1)   How many people on this list actually heard of the name Alfred 
Korzybski?


2)   How many people actually really read his book “science and sanity”

3)   The people who read Peirce and Korzybski, I would like to ask 
which great books/texts of which intellectuals are in same line of 
thoughts have to do with semiotic and/or semantic issues. I mean the 
really great books no reflections on either Peirce or Korzybski.


 

I ask the first 2 questions because I am sure the thoughts of Korzybski 
add a lot to better understanding of Peirce. At least the excellent 
discourse in “science and sanity”. Besides that I am just wondering for 
this book how many philosophers here have read it. So I would highly 
appreciate that EVERY list member here who did read Korzybski to at 
least send me a mail answering my questions on [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
. Best would be with reflections on the what 
they think major issues from the “science and sanity” discourse.


 

Tips regarding the 3) question are also very welcome at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
.


 


Kind regards,

 


Wilfred Berendsen

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[peirce-l] Re: What's going on here?

[Bill Bailey]

Jim Piat wrote:

> So the notion of similarity is not something that we 
merely recognize intuitively but can not define,  but rather 
>something that is at the core of our idea of identity. 
Objects that simultaneously share qualities but not the same 
space are >called copies. Copies share the same essence so 
to speak.  When we represent the essence of things we have 
finally got to the >heart of the matter and have begun to 
deal with the truth of what is going on --


Is it that similarity that "is at the core of our idea of 
identity," or that identity is at the core of our idea of 
similarity?  I'm not sure of either idea.  If we are talking 
about the world as we are given it, it seems to me that 
ignoring differences to predicate sameness may be more 
intrinsic to categorical identities than similarity.  And to 
a great extent that is equally true of 
recognizing/identifying the same object.  Much of what we 
think of as existential in identity is really informational. 
 Who is the brain-dead patient on life support?  I remember 
the wife of a man with a brain tumor who went from a loving 
husband and father to a hostile and violent stranger, and 
her struggle to explain to the children:  "It's not your 
father, it's the sickness."  We have to put "continuity 
patches" upon identity to maintain the stability of our 
information, and such patches usually ignoring differences 
to predicate sameness.  I think when we get to the heart of 
the matter, Jim, identity and similarity are just so much 
informational bricolage.

Cheers,
Bill


Now this is not a proof in the sense that we are familiar with today - 
and one might argue that it is the observation of an axiom and not a 
proof at all. IOW, it is not constructive but a base observation.


This is a rather like Rudolf Carnap's later (and more systematic) 
assertion of his "Basic Relation" as "the recognition of similarity" in 
semeiosis (in LSotW), if you accept that premise and conclusion present 
a tautology.


With respect,
Steven
 
Dear Steven, Folks--
 
The conception of similarity (whether perceived through an icon or 
imputed in a symbol) seems to carry a good bit of the burden by which 
representation is achieved.   As I understand the term, similar means 
almost, but not exactly, the same.More specifically I would say that 
what makes any two objects or functions similar is the degree to which 
they share the very same qualities.  So the notion of similarity is not 
something that we merely recogonize intuitively but can not define,  but 
rather something that is at the core of our idea of identity.  
Objects that simultaneously share qualities but not the same space are 
called copies. Copies share the same essence so to speak.  When we 
represent the essence of things we have finally got to the heart of the 
matter and have begun to deal with the truth of what is going on --
 
I don't mean to suggest that you disagree with this view Steven,  
although you may.  It's just that your comments reminded me of the 
importance of the notion of similarity in Peirce's account of 
representation and semiosis and I am curious as to how folks view its 
role and definition. 
 
BTW, the only vagueness I associate with the concept of similarity is 
the arbitrariness of assigning more than a relative degree of similarity 
since doing so, it seems to me,  would depend upon counting the 
abosolute number of qualities in common which I'm not convinced is 
something that is fixed from one situation to another.  It seems to me 
that what counts as a quality depends in part upon what is being 
attended to and the purpose at hand.  It's as though qualities can only 
be compared quantitatively within an arbitrary framework.  Change or 
expand the frame of reference and qualities can be expanded indefinately 
-- or so our ever expanding world of partical physics seems to be 
indicating.
 
So for me its no mystery that folks respond to similar objects as though 
they were the same.  In so far as the are the same they elicit the same 
response.  The mystery would be why the same quality elicited a 
different response.  To the extent that copies share similarity of form 
or qualities they both represent the same essence and are interchangeble 
in this regard.   A tree growing in the forest is as much an iconic 
symbol of the word tree as vice versa.  Though one is better for 
building houses and the other for communicating -- due not to what they 
have in common,  but to what other properties they don't share (mass for 
example).
 
Cheers,

Jim Piat
 
 
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[peirce-l] Re: "What is nothiing?" (was, Introduction)

[Bill Bailey]

Darrel, list:

Well, I can't resist the subject any longer:  my take on 
raising children is that it completes us as adults by 
forcing us through all of life's cliches we were convinced 
we were too sophisticated to experience, and further humbles 
us as we discover ourselves, contrary to our vows, behaving 
much as our parents did in raising us.


Darrel Summers wrote:

Arnold, List
 
Arnold said:
 
...one never bullshits one's way out of a childish question:  kids 
remember what you tell them, and it would seem to be one of the laws of 
bullshit, not covered by Harry Frankfurt, that it is supremely 
difficult, if not impossible, to extricate oneself from one's earlier 
bullshit without liberal doses of subsequent bullshit.  Put another way, 
dishonesty breeds dishonesty, and there is something in the way one 
loses a child's trust with dishonest answers that seems to me to poison 
their whole future in a mean-spirited way if one tries to bullshit a way 
through the difficulties of questions like `what is nothing?', or `why 
do we have cops?'. 
 
This is probably the most prudent bit of parenting advice I have heard 
in quite some time. I can attest to the brutally accurate memory of a 
child. Were it a requirement that as a prerequisite to parenting one 
should have to take a brief course on common sense I do believe we would 
have a world of happier, healthier children.
 
Best to all,

Darrel

- Original Message -
*From:* Arnold Shepperson 
*To:* Peirce Discussion Forum 
*Sent:* Tuesday, February 14, 2006 3:38 AM
*Subject:* [peirce-l] Re: "What is nothiing?" (was, Introduction)

Gary, Darrel, List
 
Having a child in the house does put one's adulthood between a rock

and a hard place, sometimes.  My partner's grandson has been living
with us for about six years (he's 10 now), the arrangment having
become permanent since his dad died of AIDS two years ago.  Although
he hasn't quite got to the issue of Nothing as yet, our most
enduring conversation since he began speaking English confidently
(he is from a Zulu-speaking family, BTW) has been about Justice. 
One's adult status in this kind of situation seems not to involve

any sort of capacity for providing authoritative answers, but the
ability (and patience) to negotiate the rapids, rocks, and shoals
that questions of this sort habitually throw up (yuck!  I wrote
that?). 
 
I think the earliest lesson this little guy taught me was that one

never bullshits one's way out of a childish question:  kids remember
what you tell them, and it would seem to be one of the laws of
bullshit, not covered by Harry Frankfurt, that it is supremely
difficult, if not impossible, to extricate oneself from one's
earlier bullshit without liberal doses of subsequent bullshit.  Put
another way, dishonesty breeds dishonesty, and there is something in
the way one loses a child's trust with dishonest answers that seems
to me to poison their whole future in a mean-spirited way if one
tries to bullshit a way through the difficulties of questions like
`what is nothing?', or `why do we have cops?'. 
 
In a way, part of the issue that Darrel has raised may be addressed

by Peirce in his distinction between the practical forms of
reasoning, and the differences between sham and fake reasoning.  I'm
not suggesting that Darrel should regale Grace with a formal
disquisition on this, any more than I should read chapter and verse
to Eddie-Lou.  On the other hand, the distinction, and what Peirce
has to say about it, seems very relevant to the way we speak to
ourselves when we see ourselves close-up while shaving in the
morning ...
 
Cheers
 
Arnold
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[peirce-l] Re: "What is nothiing?" (was, Introduction)

[Bill Bailey]

Darrel, Gary, list:
I'm reminded of the saying:  "Nothing never happens." 
Appropriate to that observation, the "Great Nothing," 
presumably to come in the form of entropy, won't be a 
nothing but an absolute something, a totally homogeneous 
distribution of whatever the basic matter/energy is 
throughout space.  Informationally,  infinite continuity of 
substance is as much a "nothing" as infinitely random 
variance. In either case, we won't know nothing.


Darrel Summers wrote:

Gary,
 
One the best parts of sharing with a child is the unique childhood 
ability of absolute belief. Although I see doubt creeping in on a daily 
basis (I am afraid the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, etc have a short 
window of opportunity in our modern times), she still can see the 
absolute possibility / plausibility in anything (something, nothing, 
everything).
 
That being said, tangent control may be an issue:
 
So we discussed the word first. When she says she has "nothing" to play 
with she knows that she actually has more toys gadgets & gizmos than any 
child really needs but is not currently interested in any of them. So 
there are different kinds of nothing. Now we are getting somewhere until 
she breaks my straight line approach with a wrinkle
 
Below, explained carefully, answered the wrinkled question, "why do 
people even care about what nothing is?"
 
"Well someone cares, such as you my Dear, because didn't you ask me? 
Others ask too. When a lot of people ask we can get closer to the answer 
and do some amazing things along the way."
 
Specifically as stated by Pierce below,
 
"Who would have said, a few years ago, that we could ever know of what 
substances stars are made whose light may have been longer in reaching 
us than the human race has existed?"
 
AND
 
"And if it were to go on for a million, or a billion, or any number of 
years you please, how is it possible to say that there is any question 
which might not ultimately be solved? "
 
And here not much more than 100 years later what have we accomplished - 
walks on the moon, pictures from the far reaches of our Solar System.
 


From:


How to Make Our Ideas Clear 

Popular Science Monthly 12 (January 1878), 286-302.
 
Do these things not really exist because they are hopelessly beyond the 
reach of our knowledge? And then, after the universe is dead (according 
to the prediction of some scientists), and all life has ceased forever, 
will not the shock of atoms continue though there will be no mind to 
know it? To this I reply that, though in no possible state of knowledge 
can any number be great enough to express the relation between the 
amount of what rests unknown to the amount of the known, yet it is 
unphilosophical to suppose that, with regard to any given question 
(which has any clear meaning), investigation would not bring forth a 
solution of it, if it were carried far enough. Who would have said, a 
few years ago, that we could ever know of what substances stars are made 
whose light may have been longer in reaching us than the human race has 
existed? Who can be sure of what we shall not know in a few hundred 
years? Who can guess what would be the result of continuing the pursuit 
of science for ten thousand years, with the activity of the last 
hundred? And if it were to go on for a million, or a billion, or any 
number of years you please, how is it possible to say that there is any 
question which might not ultimately be solved?


 
 
So we can get back to the original question, maybe for a few minutes 
anyway, while she has "nothing" to do.
 
 
Regards,
 
Darrel Summers


- Original Message -
*From:* Gary Richmond 
*To:* Peirce Discussion Forum 
*Sent:* Monday, February 13, 2006 9:06 AM
*Subject:* [peirce-l] Re: "What is nothiing?" (was, Introduction)

Darrel,

You wrote that: 


 Grace thinks it is quite amusing that so many "smart grown-ups
are worried about nothing..."  (I think when she says worried she
means fascinated)


"From the mouths of babes. . ." Sometimes I worry  too that
grown-ups are "fascinated about nothing" by which I mean that they
haven't necessarily got their values straight and so worry about the
wrong things (such as keeping up with the Joneses, defending their
egos, being "entertained," grabbing as much stuff as they can
because "the guy who has the most stuff when he dies wins the game,'
etc.) Of course when people prioritize such "nothings" then they've
limited the time and energy that might be deployed for the
development of "somethings," that is, some things of value, raising
children properly, contributing to more Truth and Justice occurring
in the world, promoting truly independent inq

[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS (KAINA STOICHEIA) available at Arisbe

[Bill Bailey]

Jean-Marc Orliaguet wrote:
> Yes, but the question is not whether one "understands 
what is being
> seen". This is another issue. Interpretation of what is 
seen is a

> different process.

Interpretation wasn't the issue; it was the extent of the 
requisite mediation.





Bill Bailey wrote:

J-Mo:  > interesting notion in this context. Adding glasses or 
telescopes between

> the perceiver and the object perceived does not make the act of
> perception more or less direct in its nature.

Well, I guess it becomes a question of degree at some point.  The 
telescope or microscope might or might not be exactly what we would 
see with the naked eye were it much more powerful, but, certainly, an 
electron microscope yields results that must be interpreted "as if" a 
visual instrument "saw" them.  What is important is what we must know 
about the electron microscope in order to understand what is being 
seen.  That seems to me to be a highly mediated level of knowledge 
that would deserved to be called "indirect."   I do think we need the 
notions of  "immediate" and "mediated," "direct" and "indirect" for 
theoretical discussions.  All we need keep in mind, as I think Peirce 
surely did, that the baseline of information is the medium of some 
type necessary to sign function.




Yes, but the question is not whether one "understands what is being 
seen". This is another issue. Interpretation of what is seen is a 
different process.


compare:

New Elements:
"... We have also direct knowledge of qualities in feeling, peripheral 
and visceral ..."


CP 1.593
"... A peculiar quality of feeling accompanies the first steps of the 
process of forming this impression; but later we have no direct 
consciousness of it. ..."


there is no contradiction because we are comparing different phenomena: 
i.e. direct experience and the memory of the experience.


/JM

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[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS (KAINA STOICHEIA) available at Arisbe

[Bill Bailey]

J-Mo:  > interesting notion in this context. Adding glasses 
or telescopes between
> the perceiver and the object perceived does not make the 
act of

> perception more or less direct in its nature.

Well, I guess it becomes a question of degree at some point. 
 The telescope or microscope might or might not be exactly 
what we would see with the naked eye were it much more 
powerful, but, certainly, an electron microscope yields 
results that must be interpreted "as if" a visual instrument 
"saw" them.  What is important is what we must know about 
the electron microscope in order to understand what is being 
seen.  That seems to me to be a highly mediated level of 
knowledge that would deserved to be called "indirect."   I 
do think we need the notions of  "immediate" and "mediated," 
"direct" and "indirect" for theoretical discussions.  All we 
need keep in mind, as I think Peirce surely did, that the 
baseline of information is the medium of some type necessary 
to sign function.


Jean-Marc Orliaguet wrote:

Bill Bailey wrote:

JR, J-MO, List:  All information occurs in a medium of some kind, so 
immediacy must ultimately be understood more as theoretical than 
actual.  The radiant energy of light striking our eyes is not what the 
optical nerve carries to the brain, but rather electro-chemical 
analogues of it.  It does even make much sense to speak of isomorphism 
between the electro-chemical events of our physiological system and 
the external events that occasion them.  I don't have the expertise to 
claim anything for Peirce, but I can't believe that he meant 
"immediacy" in the sense of wholly unmediated.  I would think he meant 
the term to be understood as "the immediacy of sensory response."  In 
that view, I would think "direct" would refer to knowledge derived 
from perceptual experience and "indirect" would  refer to something 
like the mediation of instrumentation.





Yes, obviously this is why I'm saying that the physical, optical, 
physiological, chemical, materialistic (..) view of perception is not an 
interesting notion in this context. Adding glasses or telescopes between 
the perceiver and the object perceived does not make the act of 
perception more or less direct in its nature.


This is not what Peirce had in mind in New Elements anyway, when he 
wrote "we have direct knowledge of things ...".


/JM

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[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS (KAINA STOICHEIA) available at Arisbe

[Bill Bailey]

Let me correct something:  for "perceptual experience" 
substitute "immediate sensory data."


Bill Bailey wrote:
JR, J-MO, List:  All information occurs in a medium of some kind, so 
immediacy must ultimately be understood more as theoretical than 
actual.  The radiant energy of light striking our eyes is not what the 
optical nerve carries to the brain, but rather electro-chemical 
analogues of it.  It does even make much sense to speak of isomorphism 
between the electro-chemical events of our physiological system and the 
external events that occasion them.  I don't have the expertise to claim 
anything for Peirce, but I can't believe that he meant "immediacy" in 
the sense of wholly unmediated.  I would think he meant the term to be 
understood as "the immediacy of sensory response."  In that view, I 
would think "direct" would refer to knowledge derived from perceptual 
experience and "indirect" would  refer to something like the mediation 
of instrumentation.






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[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS (KAINA STOICHEIA) available at Arisbe

[Bill Bailey]

JR, J-MO, List:  All information occurs in a medium of some 
kind, so immediacy must ultimately be understood more as 
theoretical than actual.  The radiant energy of light 
striking our eyes is not what the optical nerve carries to 
the brain, but rather electro-chemical analogues of it.  It 
does even make much sense to speak of isomorphism between 
the electro-chemical events of our physiological system and 
the external events that occasion them.  I don't have the 
expertise to claim anything for Peirce, but I can't believe 
that he meant "immediacy" in the sense of wholly unmediated. 
 I would think he meant the term to be understood as "the 
immediacy of sensory response."  In that view, I would think 
"direct" would refer to knowledge derived from perceptual 
experience and "indirect" would  refer to something like the 
mediation of instrumentation.



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[peirce-l] Re: Fw: question for Peirce list (if appropriate)

[Bill Bailey]

> analysis, film or otherwise. I'd even be interested in
> stretching or building onto Peirce if necessary to do the 
job.


> the movie legitimizes capitalism by stretching an 
allegory too far.


No comment.

Joseph Ransdell wrote:

*FORWARDED TO PEIRCE-L BY JOSEPH RANSDELL*
** 
- Original Message -

*From:* Norbert Wiley 
*To:* Joseph Ransdell 
*Sent:* Tuesday, January 10, 2006 6:05 PM
*Subject:* question for Peirce list (if appropriate)

954 Mesa Road
Monterey, CA 93940

Dear Peirce List,

I'm looking for usable Peirce concepts (and precedents) for a film 
analysis One thing I'd like to do is translate Roland Barthes'
notion of mythology as second order semiotic into Peircian language. I'm 
treating my film as a kind of mythology.
But I'd also like to find someone who has used Peirce for narrative 
analysis, film or otherwise. I'd even be interested in

stretching or building onto Peirce if necessary to do the job.

Here's my movie case, which is now a question rather than an answer.

***
_Cinderella Man and the Great Depression: A Disingenuous Allegory_

The film Cinderella Man concerns the 1930’s prize fighter, Jim Braddock. 
Braddock’s career, as the movie continuously suggests, more-or-less 
parallels that of capitalism. He does well in the late twenties, crashes 
at the end of the decade, gets reduced to poverty in the early thirties, 
experiences a comeback in the mid thirties and coasts with wealth and 
fame in the late thirties.


The parallel with capitalism works fairly well for the most part, except 
for the comeback. Braddock’s comeback was due to his personal efforts, 
sheer grit, commitment to his family, honesty, etc. The implicit message 
of the film was that capitalism’s comeback too was due to these 
laudable, Protestant Ethic-like virtues. But history tells us the 
Depression was ended by the approach of World War II and its revival of 
demand. It ended “by accident” so to speak, and not because of moral 
efforts. So
the movie legitimizes capitalism by stretching an allegory too far. The 
movie
does this by exploiting the viewer’s willing suspension of disbelief and 
sneaking in an ideological fallacy under cover of that suspension.


***

Any suggestions will be welcome.

Yours, Norbert Wiley
Professor emeritus, sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana



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