At 05:52 PM 2014-08-10, Gary Richmond wrote:
Forwarded at the request of Claudio Guerri. GR
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Claudio Guerri < [email protected]>
Date: Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 9:25 AM
Subject: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:6231] Re: biosemiotics is the basis for
To: Gary Richmond <[email protected] >
-------- Mensaje original --------
Asunto: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:6231] Re: biosemiotics is the basis for
Fecha: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:17:22 -0300
De: Claudio Guerri <[email protected]>
A: [email protected]
Gary, John, List,
Firstness is really a complex aspect of the sign... but the more important and difficult aspect for knowledge...
"Symbols grow" and so, First is last... but not least...
and Firstness is essential to all Design disciplines, because related to Form: conception of form (Math, Geometry...), concrete representation of form (graphic languages...), aesthetic strategy of form (Renaissance, Cubism...).
I think that some good should come out of considering a concrete sign instead of an abstract approach to what can be considered First (examples are not easy to give, Peirce not excluded from that difficulty).
Everything can be considered a sign, and all signs have to be considered in its triadic aspects: Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.
But, Firstness can not be considered in its own, but related to the other two aspects. Considering a very abstract sign, Firstness can be a feeling and a Qualisign: redness...
But 'redness' needs a word, so it involves Thirdness, and it can not exist without the experienced "brute force" of lots of red objects, so Secondness is also present.
Verbal language is tricky... 'is' and 'are' should not be used for subsigns or aspects of a sign. The Gioconda IS not an Icon, but a complete SIGN, from which I can legally emphasize the iconic aspect in a sentence without naming specifically the other two logically necessary aspects. In this sense, Louis Althusser is very helpful by stating: some aspect can be "dominant".
The sign Architecture is an 'easy' example... Somewhere in the old e-mails in the List there should be a complete Semiotic Nonagon of the 'sign Architecture'. Resuming:
The three aspects of Architecture are: Design (1ness), Construction (2ness) and Habitability (3ness).
At his time, Vitruvius considered also three aspects, but naming the three values or 3ness's of the three aspects (in his own order): Firmitas (Dicisign), Utilitas (Argument) and Venustas (Rhema).
In the case of architecture, I would not say that Design is a 'feeling'... it should be (normally) something very concrete, even if only the 'possibility' of being constructed and inhabited.
By deepening in the 3 aspects of Design (always simplifying), we have: Geometry, Graphic Languages and Gestalt Theory (for the Qualisign); plans/drawings, models and texts (for the Iconic aspect); and an aesthetic value of that proposal (for Rhema). And I would not dare to say that even Geometry can be considered a 'feeling', except in a very metaphoric way...
In this example, Geometry is not considered as a sign in itself, but as a 1ness of 1ness of 1ness of Architecture, and, since it is considered in the context of Architecture it is also related unavoidably to Projective Geometry (2ness, the different graphic languages: Perspective, Monge System and TSD) and to Gestalt Theory (3ness). Though, Geometry IS not something concrete and stable but is an aspect of itself, depending on the context in which it appears.
So, given any sign or aspect of a sign all three Categories will be there necessarily, in a way or an other, explicitly or not, by cognitive consciousness or not...
The troglodyte that killed the neighbor to get his 'better' cave (the equivalent to a better building today) had no IDEA, was not conscious about DESIGN to decide to kill his neighbor, but, according to Peirce's proposal, he had to have SOME idea about 'forms' of caves (design, 1ness), some idea of the of materiality of caves (construction, 2ness) and some idea of the usability (3ness) of that space, called 'cave'.
It seems to me that it is not completely correct, or say, misleading, to say "that those direct 'feels' are not thoughts, that they are unanalyzed experiences of qualities" or are "ineffable", because to say so, we have to imply all knowledge of concrete materialized experiences and use all our symbolic knowledge of speech to say that, in THIS case, "this is ineffable"... but actually meaning: after having reviewed all what I know, I can not recognize the immediate object nor its symbolic meaning. As far as I can think, there can not be a pure 1ness, nor a pure 2ness nor a pure 3ness, but there is always SOME presence of the three categories... perhaps with an emphasis on one aspect.
This is my understanding. I think it is very difficult, If not impossible, to concentrate on firstness alone (see below, response to Gary R.)
The aspects of 1ness, are not always very ethereal, ineffable, or a mere sensation... it depends of the sign considered.
I apologize for my English and the length of the writing after so long absence...
All the best
CL
--
Prof. Dr. Arch. Claudio F. Guerri
Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Home address: Gral. Lemos 270 (1427) Buenos Aires Argentina
Telefax: (0054-11) 4553-4895 or 4553-7976
Cell phone: (0054-9-11) 6289-8123
E-mail: [email protected]
Gary Richmond said the following on 06/08/2014 11:19 a.m.:
John,
You wrote:
Your last sentences are, I think, key towards resolving this issue. My point would be that those direct 'feels' are not thoughts, that they are unanalyzed experiences of qualities. The analysis--should it happen at all--happens after the fact.
- I am aware that Peirce can be interpreted as thinking we can be aware of firsts as unclassified feels. This is what I think led C.I. Lewis (among other considerations) to describe uninterpreted experiences as ineffable. I dont see the sense of this, but I do think we can abstract firsts as real from our experience, but I dont think we ever experience them directly. I previously suggested some experiences that get us closer to them, but I think some version of representationalism is correct. In fact I think that this is required if all thought is via signs (emphasis added).
An example: I remember once being in an apple orchard on one of the autumn days when the wind briskly moves stratocumulus clouds across the sky, creating all sorts of rapidly changing shadows on the earth. Upon reflection I analyzed the colors of the apples as I'd experienced them as bright red, dark red, cherry red, almost purple, almost black, etc., the last 'color' experience ('almost black') being the most remarkable for me.
I had an experience like this after taking some DMT some chemist friends whipped up for me from a recipe I provided. I experienced a shade of green unlike any I had experienced before. The shade sort of took over my experience. A friend claims that he found DMT was good for this sort of immediate experience.
Indeed, in the totality of my phaneron I recall that I wasn't even experiencing 'colors' as such so that my sense of them was just what it was, and that experience could only be (inadequately and partially) analyzed after the fact as experience of firsts as qualities, at times changing so very rapidly and melding into other hues so subtly that I couldn't have analyzed them--couldn't have found descriptive adjectives to name the colors--had I tried (the only reason that I had tried at all was that the 'black'-red apple sensation shocked me into a moment of analysis). At such moments of pure experience nothing is being represented at all. I wouldn't and couldn't think of all those hues as having color-names as they were experienced and, in some cases, even upon reflection I couldn't (that color between 'almost purple' and 'almost black' doesn't have a name for me).
So, all thought is via signs, but the experience of a quality is not a thought. So, I do not see why you say that you "don't think we ever experience them (qualities, firsts) directly." Isn't my example one of the direct experience of qualities before analysis?
If thoughts are propositional, I would have to agree, but I have never thought that (being an avid student of John Locke).
I think you would have to agree that experiencing firsts is at least very difficult and something that we do not usually do. In particular, because of this, they cannot be the ground of other experiences. If so, then this is the point I have been trying to make.
John
Professor John Collier [email protected]
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
Http://web.ncf.ca/collier
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