[peirce-l] Re: Neuroquantology Journal
Arnold, list, My apologies: here the Peirce quote from his "coda" to The Basis of Pragmaticism in the Normative Sciences" that I forgot to paste in at the end of my last message, after I wrote This he ends as follows: -- quote Peirce MS 283 - EP2: 396-397 -- Nobody, however, has ever found any law, reason, or rhyme according to which such and such points of the heavens are occupied with stars, or for any other fact of existence. Existence can be traced back to a metamorphosis, but the existence did not begin with the metamorphosis; and there is no single instance in which any law has ever been found to regulate with precision the when and where of existence. That the chemical elements of the atmosphere should have low atomic weights and that the elements of high atomic weights should be rare in the earth's crust is roughly true, as a mere consequence of the association of specific weight with atomic weight; but to suppose that there is any exact law as to arrangements of existents is a well-recognised mark of a mind not sanely loyal to truth of fact. Men's minds are confused by a looseness of language and of thought which leads them to talk of the causes of single events. They ought to consider that it is not the single actuality, in its identity, which is the subject of a law, but an ingredient of it, an indeterminate predicate. Consequently, the question is, not whether each and every event is precisely caused, in one respect or other, but whether every predicate of that event is caused. For instance, a man bets upon the toss of a coin. He wins his bet. Now the question is whether there was any circumstance about the toss of that coin which necessitated this character of it; namely, its accordance with his bet. There are those who believe that such predicates are precisely determinate; but rational proof fails them. The majority of men call such things uncaused; and this opinion is powerfully supported by the utter failure of every attempt to base predictions of such occurrences upon any specified law. The class of predicates is one of which every man on earth for several thousand years has had multiplied hourly experience; and since in no case there has been any promising appearance of approach to a law, we are more than justified in saying that precise dependence upon general conditions apppears to be limited to a category of predicates, without undertaking to say what category is that. -- end quote Peirce MS 283 - EP2: 396-397 -- To those on holiday, wherever, enjoy your break! Patrick PS Jim, thanks for your -- 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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Neuroquantology Journal
Arnold, thanks for a long and rich respnse. For now I'll just confine myself to resonding to your brief "coda" -- which as any conversational discourse analyst - canonically in this case William Labov - will tell you, is when the speaker - in this case writer AS - tries to connect the possible world of the "tale" just told to the actual world, or common ground of everyday experience. Labov's idea is that this particular communicative act has the function of legitimising (or attempting to) for the audience the possible pragmatic relevance of the tale he or she has just told (but it could also be an argument, an explanation, a joke, whatever, and essentially too, as a way of thanking the others for the gift of being "conceded the floor" for the period of time necessary to recount the tale. In your "coda" you wrote: AS: I won't take this further for now, because I suspect I'm going to start blathering on without getting all my ducks in a row first. But I guess that what I wanted to suggest to Patrick and the List is that the "trend in our time" need not be accepted as fatalistically as all that. It does, after all, represent perhaps 100-150 years' of debate in a tradition going back maybe 2500 years or more (I mean: how long ago did the distinction between naturwissenschaften and geisteswissenchaften enter the conversational lexicon of academia?). Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but surely it won't take that long for the fashion to fade away? Couldn't agree more, and I passionately share your hopes in this respect. I also believe that in any case some degree of "oscillation" between different degrees of "intimacy" and "distance" is a quite healthy and natural part of the growth and development of any ongoing "relationship". Isn't this kind of oscillation between being and becoming what the notion of indeterminacy in quantum physics is all about really? Even more, I think it would also be a wonderful idea of we could manage to get it into our individual and collective heads that ALL sciences are first and foremost HUMAN enterprises, and that we will in any case always be talking about "Human Sciences", whether we are talking about maths, philosophy, physics, chemistry psychology or the applied sciences and arts... Where we differ most, of course, are in the different symbol systems and languages we use, and in the different practices, methodologies ands technologies we develop and use in order to to try to winkle our way in towards the "truth" of the matter (sic.) as well as we possibly can. This, I think, is essentially what Peirce essentially was onto when he wrote his "The Basis of Pragmaticism in the Normative Sciences" (EP: 371-397) This he ends as follows: Best regards Patrick PS If we try "getting all our ducks in a row" before we start trying to share our nascent ideas with others, we might never actually get started on that delightful journey of (self)discovery... P Pat, List Pat Coppock (PC) wrote: PC: I do sometimes feel that science, the humanities and the arts have become rather "estranged" from one another these days, and I personally think that is unfortunate, but it seems to be a trend in our time for now. PC: The kinds of constructive falsifiable predictions that are possible to make and test systematically in in the physical/ applied/technological sciences are of course far more difficult to make and test in the human sciences and the arts. AS: In developing my PhD dissertation proposal, I make the point that the Humanities, primarily, and a significant (although not a major) constituency in the social sciences, seem to take it as a given that `science' (they always use scare quotes!) is somehow fundamentally `reductionist' because of its basis in measurable phenomena and the logic of computation that follows from inquiry into these. AS: However, I sometimes wonder whether developments in mathematics over the last century or so have not encouraged the rather restricted public understanding of math as a sort of `theory of computation'? Peirce and his father both treated mathematics as the `science of necessary reasoning', of which computational matters constituted a rather restricted sub-field within the broader endeavour. Humanities academics (as quite distinct from Humanities scholars), especially, seem to have taken for granted the following line of reasoning: THAT: 1) mathematics is an essentially computational enterprise, and 2) the `sciences' (I'm sort of caricaturing their way of arguing, here) either operate directly by measurement and calculation or by using technical devices that derive from such activity, AND FURTHER, THAT 3) human experience involves measurable phenomena only to a small degree, the most fundamental sources of experience being essentially emotional and individual, hence escaping generalization through measurability; IT NECESSARILY FOLLOW THAT 4) the Human Scienc
[peirce-l] Re: Neuroquantology Journal
Popper and Peirce would seek. The second class, all other hypotheses, are those that are not constructive and do not make falsifiable predictions. Science pursues the former and rapidly dismisses the latter. It is certainly foolish today to base research programs and public science expenditure on premises that clearly fall into the latter class - as is happening today in the USA and EU. The provisional nature of scientific hypothesis does not excuse or condone the acceptance of hypotheses clearly of the second kind - and the "market of ideas" is not served by including them. A belief in God by any inherited convention falls manifestly into the second class. Even if the proposed God turned up and said "I did it" this would still not be science since a priori predictions based on the premise are not falsifiable. Science simply cannot take God's word for it. If there is such a God then science is simply a pragmatic understanding God's will. This view would still not excuse the intellectual laziness that is the invention of emergence and identity theories - or change the irrational nature of an intuition that a God exists in the first place. It does not block inquiry to insist on sound premises and good reason. This is not to say that there is not something unknown and equally remarkable about the universe. But if there is, and I certainly believe that there is in the unexplained presence of experience in the world, then it is for science to discover. My reference to Christophe Koch is meant with the greatest respect - I admire what he has written and that he has written openly about his beliefs. And my observation remains a valid one. Scientists that adhere to any conventional notion of God, of there being something "extra" to the universe beyond science, are necessarily predisposed to accept the magic of today's emergence and identity theories. Mid 20th century logicians threw the baby out with the bath water by ignoring experience and not taking it seriously as a phenomenon (as Peirce did). Their dismissal of it has left a hole that has been filled by the very same irrational propositions they sought to counter. With respect, Steven Patrick Coppock wrote: Hi Steven, --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[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 :)
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.
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.
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 the "inhabitants" of each of the
involved possible worlds.
I sometimes feel that we have developed so specialised languages and
norms of communication in our different disciplinary fields that it
is often more and more difficult to find some common ground about
which we can communicate.
Mathematical and computational models provide one interesting, and
perhaps relevant means of doing this kind of thing.
Mathematics with its high level of abstraction has the advantage of
being open to systematically/ formally describing (or modelling) any
kind of physical or other phenomenon in processual terms.
A problem with this is that any model we make in this way will be
reductive in some sense or other, and we will only be able to
suggest/ grasp a fairly vague idea of what may be going on in some
domain or other of our supposed "whole".
But mathematical models can certainly be used to "predict" and
"confirm" working hypotheses, at least to a certain extent
When computer science is brought in, coupled with narrative,
argumentational or explanatory forms of discourse and dynamic
visualisation technologies, this allows intersemiotic translations of
descriptive models into visual narrative forms that may be easier to
"intuitively" understand for non mathematicians.
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.
Re-reading this makes me want
[peirce-l] Re: Neuroquantology Journal
Hi Steven,
You wrote:
Koch is fairly religious (Catholic) - and has recently written about
his religion on his web site - and without making aspersions upon
his integrity I do find that a number of scientists in the field
that are prepared to accept such magic are also religious. As a
result they may, in fact, be predisposed to the argument that "God
did it."
My own view is that these appeals to magic as the product of
intellectual laziness. :-)
You are of course entitled to your own views, but I feel you are
being a bit harsh on scientists/ philosophers who might happen to
hold personal religious beliefs in your comments, especially when you
mention people by name, as you do above.
Seems lkike a bit of a "blow beneath the belt" to me.
Both Peirce and Whitehead certainly believed that holding religious
beliefs and maintaining a responsible and coherent scientific
attitude were fully compatible with one another.
Now, it may not be absolutely necessary to believe in God in order to
do good science or philosophy, but on the other hand, it is not
absolutely necessary either to believe passionately in science in
order to live our lives and do our daily work well, and treat other
people with tolerance and respect.
Belief in science and religious beliefs have each their different
potentials and each fulfill their own specific human/social functions
- for good and for bad (remember Giordano Bruno and eugenics)
I think where serious problems often arise is when the sentiments or
passions that might move people to believe in God (or not) become
confused with the sentiments that might move people to believe (or
not) that a consciencious pursuit of scientific practice in the
course of time will provide us with the objective or "true" knowledge
about the world that we desire/ need in order, not only just to
survive, but also to live our lives together well...
As Peirce put it (all good) "logic is based on a social principle",
since for him, any workable logic presupposes ethics, which in its
own turn presupposes aesthetics.
I would consider either agnosticism or athieism to be valid
metaphysical positions based on specific sentiments that may be as
strongly held as those metaphysical positions based on specific
sentiments that may valorise religious beliefs.
You wrote too:
Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis" (the name of Crick's book on the
subject) is emergence and identity theory - and the continuing focus
of Crick's younger partner (Crick himself died recently) Christophe
Koch at CalTech is neuronal according to Koch's recent book (as I
recall).
All theories dependent on emergence and identity are essentially
appeals to magic - despite the wide popularity of the argument
(including the popular appeals by Wolfram, Kurzweil et al.).
However, in the generally accepted scientific paradigm (when it
works), any hypothesis ("astonishing" or not) will always come to be
"read" as a very provisional assertion regarding some (presumably
reasoned and argued) opinion, or set of opinions, about "the way
things may well be...".
The current norms of the community of science hold that the practical
consequences of any such assertions must be shown to hold
consistently over time on the basis of some future systematic
empirical inquiry in order to be taken seriously.
If not, the hypothesis in question is not likely to become widely
accepted as potentially valid/useful by the wider community of
inquiry.
Whether any given theory is "an appeal to magic" -- a term which I
would provisionally take to mean "potentially appealing to the
eye/sentiments/mind but also potentially deluding -- or not, it is
often only time -- coupled with the degree of individual and
collective interest and energy the scientific community actually
turns out to devote to systematic inquiry into the problem in hand --
will show.
I always tend to hold with Peirce that we should never try to "block
the way of inquiry", however wild other people's speculations may
seem to be. But of course we need some kind of filters that help us
sort out the chaff from the wheat.
So, in a sense, we will always have to put our trust in the wider
"market of ideas" (assuming that all ideas can flow and be discussed
as freely as possible), and in the informed common sense of our
"peers"
Best regards
Patrick
At 12:03 -0700 28-06-2006, Steven Ericsson Zenith wrote:
Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis" (the name of Crick's book on the
subject) is emergence and identity theory - and the continuing focus
of Crick's younger partner (Crick himself died recently) Christophe
Koch at CalTech is neuronal according to Koch's recent book (as I
recall).
All theories dependent on emergence and identity are essentially
appeals to magic - despite the wide popularity of the argument
(including the popular appeals by Wolfram, Kurzweil et al.).
Koch is fairly religious (Catholic) - and has recently written about
[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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Jerry, thanks for your comments,
Sorry for my rather slow reply, but family and
some university-political obligations have taken
quite a lot of time the last few days.
In any case, I can see I'll have my work cut out
to be brief in replying to your notes, since
brief though they may be, they are also fairly
"dense" in "content". terms, at least if I try to
read between the lines..
Hope to find time over the next few days to
respond in some more detail to other list members
comments too (and thanks to all involved for
those)
You wrote:
My take on the distinctions between Peirce and Whitehead is rather different.
In early Peirce (1868), the analogy with
distance functions and branching was the given
basis for distinguishing paths of logic,
relation to chemical valence and the more
general concept of extension. The later
writings of Peirce describing "division" of a
sign in natural language is not a crisp way of
looking at the concept of extension. (One might
substitute for the term "division" such terms as
partition, trichotomy, lattice, subtraction,
incomplete parts, lack of additivity, and so
forth; but I do not see how that would create a
coherent concept of relational extension.)
Well, first off, I personally think it is very
important that "early" and "late" Peirce's are
seen as part and parcel of one and the same
philosophical project, that developed (emerged)
over a considerable time period, but always with
the key notion of synechism ("the tendency to
regard everything as continuous") at its base.
Kelley Parker's work on Peirce's continuity is a
useful point of reference here.
I know there are many and varying opinions on
this, but I have always tended to sympathise /
empathise most with readings like those of Murray
Murphey who argues in his "The Development of
Peirce's Thought" for a kind of continuous,
recursive, trial-and-error oriented development
by Peirce of his philosophical "architectonic".
He pushes the envelope of his basic project all
the time, changing a bit here and there in order
to integrate new ideas and currents from then
contemporary scientific and philosophical debate
and knowledge, allowing it to grow and develop
continuously, while at the same time always
keeping a firm hand on his triadic, synechistic
and other keystones...
This type of reading argues for a
process-oriented "experimental" philosophical
approach on Peirce's part, a methodology/ way of
working that he embarked upon right from his very
first readings of Kant at aboout 15 and which he
carried on with right up to the development of
his more articulated cosmological model that
incorporates the notion of a "developmental"
teleology, where the combination of tychastic,
anacastic and agapastic modes of evolutionary
process is the ground for the "growth of concrete
reasonableness" (In this connection Carl R.
Hausman's work on Peirce's evolutionary
philosophy is still a good read) in the last ten
or so years of his life.
Of course, this latter part of his life's work
depended a lot on his readings of and reflections
on the evolutionary theories of Darwin, Lamarck
and others, and of course could not have been
developed by him on this particular basis before
these works actually became available. But it is
also interesting to note how easily he is able to
mesh them in, avoiding, too the trap of reducing
of D's extremely complex notion of natural
selection to a simplistic instrumental conception
like the "survival of the fittest" (which is
generally attributed to Herbert Spencer and not
to Darwin himself, though he did apparently
incorporate it in the title of one of his later
editions of "The Origin of the Species")...
When you write that "The later writings of Peirce
describing "division" of a sign in natural
language is not a crisp way of looking at the
concept of extension", I think I'll have to ask
you for a bit more detailed explanation of what
you mean by that...
In late Whitehead, Process and Reality, he gets
into bed with set theory and never re-emerges
from this highly restrictive view of extension.
In modern chemistry, a multitude of
possibilities for extension exist . (The flow
of passions in a bed are great, but they should
not be conflated with the light of reason. :-)
Regarding "early" and "late" with regard to
Whitehead, the same considerations as above
regarding the recursive, stepwise development of
Peirce's architectonic, I think also holds for
Whitehead. From the beginning he was a
mathematician (and education theorist) more than
a philosopher (and in fact, like Peirce, he never
"formally" studied philosophy apart from his own
personal readings of other philosophers' work),
but process and reality is built round ideas
developed in his many other philosophical
writings, such as "Adventures of Ideas", "Science
and the Modern World" -- in my opinion a good
starting point for people wh
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
At 9:19 -0400 28-06-2006, Jim Piat wrote: In any case, what I'm doing here is asking a question and would love for someone to attempt to sort through how the terms real, existent and true are related. That's the big one Jim! I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as "that object for which truth stands" Regarding what is real, I think Peirce would say that we all have our opinions, more or well founded about what is real, or what the real is, and there is always a cheerful hope that we shall develop some further opinions on the matter that are even more well developed in this some respect or other. But of course, we are fallible, and thus no none, however well read, can claim any kind of absolute monopoly on the truth, so it's better to always keep an open mind (bearing in mind too, that some matters have been reasonably well settled for the time being) and keep on asking questions and making (courageous) speculations about how matters that cause us puzzlement may best be answered on the basis of what we already know, or at least think we know. Regarding existent, I think that Peirce always keeps fairly close to the whiteheadian notion of "actual occasions" in his conceptions of this, and again on this matter I think it is most profitable to make reference to his notion of matter as "effete mind", and Objects as Things or Existents that are characteristic for our experience of Secondness as a "Modality of Being". In a letter to Lady Welby (See EPII: 479), and talking of Secondness (which he actually refers to in this particular connection as "Another Universe", distinguished by a particular "Modality of Being"), Peirce writes: "Another Universe is that of, first, Objects whose Being consists in their Brute reactions, and of second, the facts (reactions, events, qualities etc.) concerning these Objects, all of which facts, in the last analysis, consist in their reactions. I call the Objects, Things, or more unambigously, Existents, and the facts about them I call Facts. Every member of this Universe is either a Single Object subject, alike to the Principles of Contradiction and to that of Excluded Middle, or it is expressible by a proposition having such a singular subject." 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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Hi Jim, and thanks for your comments. You wrote: At 8:47 -0400 28-06-2006, Jim Piat wrote: Dear Patrick, Folks-- Whitehead, yes -- and also Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance. Signs, like thought are more or less continuous and resist our attempts to pigeon hole them. OTOH contrasting mere intellectual associations with triadic thought Peirce says, "But the highest kind of synthesis is what the mind is compelled to make neither by the inward attractions of the feeling or representations themselves, nor by a transcendental force of haecceity, but in the interest of intelligibility, that is, in the interests of the the synthetising 'I think' itself; and this it does by introducing an idea not contained in the data, which gives connections which they would not otherwise have had". Connections, yes, in the habit-forming, relational aspect of Thirdness, but retaining always the possibility of chance being operative in the universe as an active element that can introduce novelty into the world and into the reality of our experience of the world, as an integral part of it. In a sense, we are the world and the world is us, but we also have the possibility of thinking about it, and about ourselves, and exchanging thoughts with one another so they can grow and develop, and that's a great ol' thing! Later in that same paragraph (from A Guess at the Riddle) Peirce continues with a further good word for those who attempt to sort and categories experience saying "Intuition is regarding of the abstract in a concrete form, by the realistic hypostatisation of relations; that is the one sole method of valuable thought. Very shallow is the prevalent notion that this something to be avoided. You might as well say at once that reasoning is to be avoided because it has led to so much error; quite in teh same philistine line of thought would that e and so well in accord with the spriit of nominalism that I wonder some one does not put it forward. The true precept is not to abstain from hypostatisation, but to do it intelligently". Yes, exactly, but then when I see presumably intelligent people getting so worked up about defending their own particular point of view on reality (or let's say on Peirce's view of reality) that they start insulting others in the process, then I often start to wonder if they haven't become momentarily "blinded" to the possibility of realty having many many "facets", as Joe often likes to put it, and that in order to get a firmer grip on as many as possible of these facets, then we all have to do a bit of grass-like "bending in the wind", just moving with the flow, so to speak, from time to time... Cheers Patrick Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Thanks for your comments Arnold, and yes indeed, what Peirce and Whitehead probably have most in common is their respective competencies in mathematics, and the way in which they use these competncies to consolidate and explicate their respective philosophical projects. It's their maths that lets them try building a bridge between physics, phenomenology and metaphysics, if you will. One of my great frustrations is that I am no theoretical mathematician myself, and cannot read or make sense of anything rather than really quite simple mathematical proofs, so I basically have to take on trust anything that Peirce or Whitehead might have used mathematical forms of argumentation in order to "demonstrate" in detail. If you read around the lives and works of both these talented authors, you can see from many qualified commentators that both were fairly well respected in the international mathematical communities of their times for their mathematical musings. In any case, it seems quite clear to me that any philosophical or other project that is trying to really get a handle onto what they were talking about in all the various corners of their work, and to put it all into perspective needs must be a fairly inter- or transdisciplinary one... Peirce-l always seemed to me right from the beginning to be that kind of community... Best regards Patrick Jean-Marc, Patrick Patrick has a point in that Peirce's categories are such that in representation the higher-order presupposes the lower (is that the way to use `presuppose, by the way?). Jean-Marc equally has a point in noting that Peirce became a `Three-Category Realist' in his later thinking. Both points seem to highlight the role of transitivity in Peirce's thought, and perhaps the more solid sources for understanding this may be found in his mathematical writings, I would guess. Also, the Logic Notebook perhaps has more pertinent material than the CP, the editorial dismemebrment of which is well enough known. Cheers Arnold Shepperson --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Thanks JM for your brief comments, I still think we need some way of distinguishing between that which is for us phenomenologically or experientally real and that which is (enduringly) existent in the world. Peirce and Whitehead both operate with notions that postulate some kind of relational continuity between what we call "mind" and "matter". In this connection Whitehead introduces into the cartesian (epistemological) chasm between mental and material substance his notions of "actual occasion" or "organism", while Peirce handles the same problem with his conception of matter as "effete mind". For both, "being" is in some sense always "becoming" -- the actualisation of a potential for what Peirce often referred to as "the growth of concrete reasonableness", and what Whitehead refered to as "satisfaction", or in one of his definitions of that notion: "the culmination of concrescence into a completely determinate matter of fact" both of which I think, can be tied to the notion of "entelecheia", which was discussed at some length here on the list previously. I may well be wrong here, of course -- indeed, I haven't been working with Whitehead's ideas so long myself, and trying to see these in relation to those of Peirce is actually quite a daunting task -- so it would be interesting to hear some opinions from other Peirce listers too... Best regards Patrick Patrick Coppock wrote: At 0:11 -0400 25-06-2006, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: I will be at the Whitehead Conference in Salzburg next week so I do not anticipate much time for replies. ... However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually "exist", beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" in Whitehead's terms. Not at all. Peirce was a "three-category realist", acknowledging the reality fo Firsts, Seconds and Thirds early on. What you call "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" is just another word for "nominalism" in that context. Peirce was not a nominalist. Peirce acknowledge the reality of actuality or of secondness (around 1890). Look for "outward clash", or "Scotus" in the CPs and his criticism of Hegel's idealism. He acknowledged the reality of firsts (the universe of possibility), and of course the reality of thirdness (the universe of thought or signs) I don't have the exact references, but that's not too difficult to find if you go through the Collected Papers, look for "nominalism", "realism", "idealism" ... However he wrote that some thirds and seconds are degenerate, meaning that they have no real existence. Regards /JM --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
At 0:11 -0400 25-06-2006, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: I will be at the Whitehead Conference in Salzburg next week so I do not anticipate much time for replies. Talking of Whitehead, whose process philosophy, or "philosophy of organism" is surely an interesting and challenging read for any Peirce student or scholar, it strikes me that in all the talk on the list of late of lattices and diagrams, firsts, seconds and thirds, ordered or non ordered systems of relations, we seem along the way to have lost something of the essentially processual character of the peircean notion of semiosis. Perhaps it's the seemingly "concrete" nature of the diagrams/lattices themselves that has been leading us a bit astray? Let me try speculating a bit by merging a few notions from a Whitehead'ian process perspective with a Peircean one. This is all very sketchy and speculative, so I'm naturally open for all forms of positive or negative criticism. In the interests of saving time and energy for one and all, however, it would probably be a good idea if respondents could keep their comments fairly brief and to the point... OK, as pointed out by Joe and others here a number of times (also recently), the (phenomenological) category of Thirdness will always presuppose Secondness, which in turn presupposes Firstness, but none of these three more "basic" categories (or any of their ten or more "fine-tuned" variants as these can be seen to emerge in any form of narrative traversing of the various triadic configurational "rooms" represented in the tables of sign classes) can actually be said to "exist" as pure, or static forms or entities. They always emerge as part of a process, which could be described roughly in terms of an ongoing narrative (or argumentation, if you like) 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. However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually "exist", beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" in Whitehead's terms. The categories/ classes are essentially functional event-states that must be seen as potentially transitory and recursive all along the line in any given semiosic process. They can pass from one to another "at will", or better "as needs be", only to "reappear" again, perhaps in a different giuse or configuration (class) on some later occasion. The specific "charactistics" that "make" Firsts appear to us as Firsts, Seconds as Seconds and Thirds as Thirds, i.e. Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, are able to emerge transitorily and make themselves "subjectively known" to us at any given moment in any given "event" (the two latter ""'ed notions I've taken from Whitehead, rather than from Peirce) that forms part of any given semiosic process, which by default must be seen as open-ended and as possessing only a potential for limits. It strikes me that might be more profitable if we were to try thinking dynamically of the ten "classes" of signs as possible emergent events that may arise as a result of any given ongoing semiosic process, and that they are all inter-related with one another, and that each "class" must possess a "subjective" organic potential for having more or less "stable" periods of duration, according to the relative strength of the specific habits or laws that (have) become culturally/ contextually associated with any given configuration/ class at any given time... It also occurred to me that someone well versed in Category Theory (cf some earlier discussions here on the list) might well be able to realise some kind of visual, dynamic model in t
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign
Title: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign Ben, I wonder, have you, Gary or any of the others looked at and evaluated any of the potential of the modelling applets mentioned below (this comes from the Digital Peirce online site)? http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/p-intfar.htm Interactive diagrams for Charles Peirce's classifications of signs Priscila Farias This article presents some results of an ongoing program of research on new strategies for the visualization of sign processes and structures --something I am proposing to call 'sign design'. The current focus of this research are the various (3-, 10-, 28- and 66-fold) classifications of signs described by Peirce. The main issue addressed here is how computer graphics and design methodology may help us to build dynamic and interactive models that serve as tools for the investigation of sign theory. Two models are presented. One of them concerns specifically the 10-fold classification, while the other deals with the deep structure of Peirce's various trichotomic classifications. The first is '10cubes', an interactive 3-D model of Peirce's 10-fold classification. The second is '3N3,' a computer program that builds equivalent diagrams for any n-trichotomic classification of signs, allowing us to analyze and compare different hypothesis regarding those classifications. Keywords: Peircean semiotics, graphic design, sign design, dynamic diagrams, interface design, HCI It would be interesting to hear your opinions. Best 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 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
