Frances to Mike and others at some length... My last post and many prior posts that have semiotic or pragmatist statements in them are deliberately technical in character. None of this of course may matter to most members on this present list, but please allow me the liberty. Now to your message copied below; and my replies to it, if your comments are understood correctly by me.
On grammatics, under Peircean pragmatism grammar is a label that identifies the first of three grand divisions for all signs within the formal theoretic science of semiotics. It is a regrettable label because it is ambiguously applied to both nonlingual signs that are not of linguistic languages, and also to lingual signs that are of linguistic languages. For clarity, the label quasi grammatics or informatics is thus often applied to only nonlingual signs. At this initial grammatic stage of semiosis all signs are held to bear some information. On interpretants, under Peircean pragmatism the interpretant is a label that identifies the informative terms and propositions and arguments that all signs such as images and words can go on to bear; and under Morrisean pragmatism they fall under what he called pragmatics as the third of three main dimensions of the first grand division for semiotics and signs. The representant vehicle and the referred object and the interpretant effect are all needed in semiotics for signs, which must be a tridential construct. On determinations, under Peircean pragmatism a determination is not a cause or origin or source nor a will or ability, but is a relate and a ground and a limit. In acts of semiosis, the referred object determines the main kind a sign will be as an icon or index or symbol, while this moderating sign vehicle then determines the main kind an interpretant will be as say a term or proposition or argument in verbal languages. (The interpretants in nonverbal language systems and in nonlingual signage systems are called by other names that need not be stated here.) The object and the sign therefore determine or limit the boundaries of relations. In art under pragmatism the empowered form of an ordinary object and not the form alone, where the form has the power to reflect worthy aesthetic values and to evoke intense aesthetic responses, is found what determines the object to be an extraordinary aesthetic object and a unique or original and genuine artistic work, so that the determined interpretant in effect is art. The determining ground or limit of art is hence found in the form, and not in say a referent or institute or industry or polity. (This raises an intriguing point as to how an inanimate object like an artifact can "have" power in its form, or can "have" the will to act, but that is perhaps the subject of another topic.) The situation here for semiotic analysis is assumed to be a nonverbal and nonlingual sign event, in that the government has some private fear of art, and thus sets about publically with their police to intrude in art and to interfere by restricting it through brute force. The fear motivates the incursion, thus the incursion is a sign to percipients that refers to the fear as the object of the sign, so that the fear as an object is a cause that determines the incursion as a result and a sign. The determination in being motivated by a cause is not however a source or origin, but rather is a ground and limit. The object or fear determines the contextual boundaries that the sign or incursion will lay within. The act of incursion as a moderating sign then goes on to determine the interpretant effect the act or sign has on signers within the eventual situation. The causal object and the resultant sign are connectively joined together as poles in this ground, but it is the consequential interpretant effect of this relation that controls their conformity with each other, so as to provide some assurance of informative normality to percipients about the event. If the incursion seems informatively or "grammatically" wrong and excessive or abnormal, within its semiotic and semiosic venue, then the interpretant effect will show this to percipient signers. It is like a lingual proposition as a grammatic interpretant effect failing for users because it has elements that are false, laying in say its terms as an antecedent or in its declarative sentences as an assertion or its predication. The term hence has the grammatic purpose to act as an immediate interpretant effect and so statically and syntaxically control the conformity of its letters and words to their composed sentences, by which say nouns or verbs and questions or statements are the immediate object. The purposive act of a term is to ensure words conform to each other in sentences by the rules of syntax. The grammatical effect of this act is to give regulatory control to the term. The interpretant of the act is adequate and appropriate composition. The proposition hence has the grammatic purpose to act as an intermediate interpretant effect and so dynamically and energetically control the conformity of its terms to their referred intermediate objects. The proposition thus controls the related conformity of at least the terms to the signs being mainly icons or indexes or symbols of the objects and their contents. The argument hence is the final mediate interpretant or effect, in which propositions act under its control as premises, to yield inferences and endure conclusions. The event of polity mentioned above as it occurred is a nonlingual sign situation, while any talk about it is a lingual sign situation, but both situations of semiosis are acts that involve signs, making them both the proper subject matter of semiotic address. All of this informative grammatic action furthermore is logically an objective semiotic construct. Using this semiotic process of analysis it is easy to see how national governments can be found justly wrong regarding their acts of incursion into the arena of art, aside from any unwarranted fear that might motivate them. Mike (MM) wrote to Frances (FK) recently with his interlined comments... FK > The instrumental interpretant effects are thus a > reactive consequence such as relief that is determined by the moderating > vehicle. In monitoring the relation between the vehicular result and the > stimulating objects, the effects act to control the conformity between > them so as to assure signers of some normality. MM I am still struggling with your explanation of "interpretant" as the "grammatical effect" of a term. Take the term "act" in the second sentence above. Grammatically it is the verb, but what is its "grammatical effect"? To give "monitoring" power to control conformity? If we set about to interpret the term "act" above, what is the interpretant? FK > The determination of art is found in the empowered form > of aesthetic works, and not in such peripheral factors as their content or > meaning, or value or worth, or context or function or usage, or owner or > intent or effect. These factors are marginal to art, and at best are extra > aesthetic. MM If "determination" is not used in the sense of overcoming adversity through perseverance, but the power to determine whether an object in the set of things that are "art", then it seems as though you are proposing an institutional form of art with the twist that the institution is not the artworld but the political power structure. If that is what you mean, and I have not misunderstood, then perhaps we should be reading Foucault instead of Ranciere.
