List, I've hesitated to enter this thread because, while it's had much to say about signs, interpretants, inquiry, intelligence and (perhaps) communication, it hasn't said much about dynamic objects. But as Ahti Pietarinen said in his open access article (p. 10), “Without the facts of the matter, which from the semiotic point of view comprise signs’ dynamical objects, there would be no shared meaning in communication.”
According to Peirce, engagement with the dynamic object involves experience of it as something other than, but dynamically connected with, the sign itself. As he wrote in a 1909 letter to William James: [[We must distinguish between the Immediate Object,— i.e. the Object as represented in the sign,— and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term, therefore), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience. For instance, I point my finger to what I mean, but I can't make my companion know what I mean, if he can't see it, or if seeing it, it does not, to his mind, separate itself from the surrounding objects in the field of vision.] EP2:498] Peirce also defines the Dynamic Object of a Sign as “that with which it presupposes an acquaintance in order to convey some further information concerning it” (CP 2.231, 1910). Clearly this prior acquaintance can only be supplied by experience of that object. My question is: under what circumstances can a chatbot or any AI be said to be experiencing a dynamic object? Obviously it cannot get collateral experience of an object from the database on its server, because that consists entirely of signs which are no longer (if they ever were) dynamically connected with a real object. While Jon was saying that what goes on within an AI is entirely “dyadic,” it seems to me that it's not nearly dyadic enough to function indexicallly, which it must do in order to convey information in the Peircean sense, or to “share meaning in communication.” Love, gary f.
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