Lots of comments so I’ll just pick a few posts and include my comments in a single post. My sense is that there’s a lot of miscommunication going on because it’s not clear when people are following Peirce and when they aren’t.
> On Jul 31, 2014, at 1:35 PM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote: > > I suppose that their could be signs that are not manifested, but I would call > these possible signs. The possibilities are real, and are most likely thirds. > I don't think that a possible x is an x. So I find it a bit odd to talk about > signs that "manifest[s] as tokens their Secondness must enter the world of > physics”. Put an other way the question is, are possible signs signs with a substance of pure possibility rather than material tokens? That’s not the only non-material sign of course. Consider the implication of a law. The laws are generals and not material and what is signified is also a general. The approach of Soren and Sungchul seems to be that this general -> general as a sign process still needs a material substrate which is far from clear to me if we adopt a more thoroughgoing ontology than simple materialist ones. > So I think Søren is right in saying that sign tokens are subject to > thermodynamics, and in particular it takes work for them to appear. They also > tend to dissipate, and to overcome that requires work as we.. And so does > recognizing them for what they are. I’ve not read your link yet so I’ll hold off commenting on this beyond thinking there’s quite a bit assumed here - at a bare minimum a materialist ontology of some sort. Kelly Parker’s work on the early ontology of Peirce is rather interesting here. Again one need not buy into Peircean ontology here. As I recall you had some troubles with aspects of Peirce’s indices and icons so it might be that’s at play here? > On Jul 31, 2014, at 1:40 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > > I'm saying that you, who has not read Peirce and yet who constantly chooses > to use Peircean terms in your outline of semiosis, and to inform us of 'what > these terms mean', then, you HAVE to have read Peirce and you have to use > them as he used them. I do think it would be helpful for clarity for everyone to be clear when one is using (or mining) Peirce and when one is breaking from Peirceanism. There’s nothing wrong with breaking from Peircean orthodoxy (or debating about what Peirce did or did not mean). I just think for clarity of communication it’s helpful to be clear what we are doing. > On Jul 31, 2014, at 2:14 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > > I think this is the basic distinction between the Representamen, the habits > of formation, which are 'real' but not existentially particular - and the > existentially particular unit or token (the Object and Interpretant) - and > the relation between the two modes: the habit and the existential. This > relationship, the relationship of mediation, is active, and thus, does > involve work and exchanges of energy/information. So, I disagree that Peirce > did not work on this aspect of semiosis; it's the basis of his semiosis - > that constant networking of the Representamen with other Representamens (the > action of generalization); the constant networking of the Sign, in its > triadic sense, with other Signs. > > i don't agree with Sung's outline, which is a postmodernist nominalism, > because it ignores both that objective reality exists outside of the > perception of humans and it ignores a fundamental nature of Peircean > semiosis; that the sign exists - in its own interactions; that is, objective > reality exists on its own. For example, the word on the page is, as a > material unit, a sign. It exists as ink-on-paper. It does not have to be > read by a human in order to exist. Honestly I can’t even figure out what postmodernism means anymore so I’ll avoid that term. I think it’d lost its sense well into the 80’s when so many disparate movements were put under the same rubric (often with gross misreadings by both proponents and opponents). It does appear that there’s nominalism at work here though. The consideration of a general signifying a general as I mentioned to John above seems a good example. If I have John and Sungchul correct they would argue that this could at best be the representation of a general signifying the representation of a general with all of this possible only on a material substrate undergoing physical change. That is the representation always has a materialistic token. That’s clearly nominalism as I understand it. Again, while merely appealing to Peirce proves nothing, I think Kelly Parker’s work on Peirce’s neoPlatonic aspects is rather helpful here. The question then becomes whether these ideas persisted into his mature era when his thought arguably took a more Hegelian turn. > On Jul 31, 2014, at 2:30 PM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote: > > Clark, I don’t think something can be a sign unless it is habitual. How could > it make any sense otherwise? There’s a surprising amount to unpack here. Gary addresses this later and I agree with his answer about the legisign and other types of signs. I think we have to be careful to distinguish the sign undergoing semiosis from knowledge of the sign. That’s why yesterday I emphasized that epistemological aspect with unknowables from physics. Interestingly this is again a point in Kelly Parker’s article. To use the language of Eco we have to distinguish between the sign and the code for that sign. (The code being a legisign to allow us to interpret the sign and guess at its object to return to Peircean terminology) Conflating codes and signs ends up leading to problems in my view. Most of Parker’s article is available on Google Books since he took down the online copy he used to have up. http://bit.ly/1s7V8pV A key passage which should settle the question of material (actuality) in signs is the following. I do not mean that potentiality immediately results in actuality. Mediately perhaps it does; but what immediately results in actuality. Mediately perhaps it does; but what immediately resulted was that unbounded potentiality became potentiality of this or that sort - that is of some quality. Thus the zero of bare possibility, by evolutionary logic, leapt into the unit of some quality. (CP 6.220) Also The evolutionary process is, therefore, not a mere evolution of the existing universe, but rather a process by which hte very Platonic forms themselves have become or are becoming developed. (CP 6.194) Again to keep constantly repeating there’s no reason to adopt Peirce’s views here. But we should be clear what we are appealing to.
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