Comments intertwined. Thanks for the effort, but it doesn’t really help with what is worrying me.
From: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com] Sent: January 31, 2015 7:08 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:8047] Re: Triadic Relations John C., Gary F., John, you wrote, [JC] As far as the process goes, since we have no way to grasp an object except through signs, it seems very strange to me to say that the object determines the sign or its parts through a process of any sort. This is especially true when the object is a general, which is an abstraction (however real). That would be rather like saying that the number twelve determines the number of eggs I bought today. [End quote] The number twelve doesn't determine or compel you to buy twelve rather than eleven eggs. But the number twelve does determine (in Peirce's sense of 'determine') the twelve eggs as a representative instance of twelve in general - rather than of eleven or thirteen in general - to an interpreting mind. If a cloud reminds you of a certain person's face, that person's face does not determine or compel the cloud to physically shape itself into the appearance of that person's face. Instead that person's face determines the cloud, in the happenstance shape that it already has, into being an iconic representamen of the person's face for you. The person's face achieves this through your individual collateral experience of the person's face. That's where the "line," as it were, of triadic causation or determination or influence runs. That cloud is an icon to you but not the kind that comes already physically attached to an index designating or pointing to the person's face; your collateral experience supplies the index in your individual mind. Quite, Ben. But it doesn’t get at what worries me. Your cloud example suggests that there could be any number of generals. As I said to Gary in my recent reply to him, if there are any numbers of generals then we might as well be nominalists. My approach to cardinal numbers, which is not that odd historically, says that it is all the twelve numbered sets that determine the number twelve, not the other way around. The way you put it is too Platonic for my taste. You wrote, [JC] As far as Peirce€™s definition of a sign in terms of determination goes, it certainly doesn€™t preclude determination also going in other ways. So we could accept the definition, and interpret determination as €˜being relevant to€™ or something like that, and still have determination in all directions. [....] [End quote] I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you mean, for example, that each of two physical objects reacting with each other may be an index of the other? That's true, though it may be hard to separate out what is representative of one object and what is representative of the other. It seems easier to think of both objects as indices of their composite system; anyway the total object of a representamen is the object's universe of discourse. Suppose a situation with a mind confined to observations of only one of the objects, and another mind, a mind confined to observations of only the other object. Each mind will need, at some level, to take its observed index as index not exclusively of the unobserved part, but as an index of the physical system, the object of which the two separately observed objects are parts in a complexus, of which the given observed part, the given index, is a part. Likewise a sample is an index of the totality from which it is drawn. The lines of object-index determination can run in various ways and one just needs to keep track of them. No, I was just saying that determination in one direction does not preclude determination in another, in the sense of ‘being relevant to’, or ‘constraining’. You wrote, [JC] [....] It seems to me that this is necessary unless there are multiple mappings (degeneracies) of interpretation and object to representamen (not sign in my current usage), since there is only one thing whenever we are talking about a particular sign, which determines its particular parts. Being a part of the sign is then determined. By part, of course, I mean the relata of the sign. I was assuming that we could have the same interpretant and representamen and object across different signs. If not then determination of one part by another is trivial by identity and the part-whole relationship. Which is what I have been worried about all along. I guess you're taking 'sign' to mean the triad of representamen, object, interpretant, or as Edwina prefers to think of it, the triad of their relations. As an irreducible triadic relation among object, representamen and interpretant. Looking at it that way, I can't see how to see the same triad members across different signs without just as well being able to say that one has different cases of the same triad members across different cases of the same sign. Neither can I, actually. But this makes determination in all directions in virtue of being parts of the same thing. In Particular it seems to me intuitive that the interpretant determines the object, though I am willing to allow that they are mutually determining. I see the interpretant as acting like a sort of filter that constrains what the object could be. The object can be taken easily to have the same effect on the interpretant, as you and Gary have argued. You wrote, [JC] There are some cases in which the object determines the representamen in the same way as it determines the interpretant. A weather vane points a particular way. That is caused by the direction of the wind, so it is so determined. The pointing of the weather vane is interpreted as the direction of the wind, the object of the sign in this case. No problem. Where I have trouble is when we are dealing with not instances of objects, but generals, as I have mentioned several times now. The nature of the €œdetermination€ in this case seems very obscure to me, and I would not call it determination, since that leads far too easily to what Putnam called €œthe magical theory of reference€ popular among metaphysical realists. I have been concerned about this issue since I wrote my thesis on incommensurability, through my work against Putnam€™s rejection of metaphysical realism, up to today, right now. I don€™t think things are nearly as clear as you and Ben seem to think they are. [End quote] As far as I can tell, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, what makes reference magical in Hilary Putnam's scenario of the brain in a vat is simply that the person claiming to be a (mostly) deluded brain in a vat has, _even in principle_, no way to discover through sufficient investigation the vat (or some analogue) that the person is supposedly in and to which therefore the person can refer only magically. This impossibility of discovery is by Putnam's own magical fiat. Anyway, in the scenario, one has no way to discover which vat, or what kind of vat-like thing, what actual analogue to the delusive mere 'vat-images' to which the brain-in-a-vat is confined to cognizing, what kind of computer program or computer hologram, what is this absolutely hidden container's identity, character, measure, location or path, etc. So the person can't meaningfully make the claim, can at best offer the proposition as an idle, amusing reverie including an appeal to incognizability-in-principle. No, you are wrong. He invokes the magical theory of reference as one held by metaphysical realists whether brains in vats or not. The idea is that we can sort of triangulate the reference of our terms by constraining what the external world is like. Putnam argues we can’t do that. That is the intended function of his brain in the vat argument and his models and reality argument. A similar argument to the latter was made to Russell’s structuralism in the early 30s by MAH Newman. It works against views that attribute more to reality than structure, but not Russell’s view. Russell never replied. Now, one's experience includes actually imagining various instantial embodiments of the number twelve, where one found that the number insistently follows certain rules, and so on, and found that in those cases one could see that those rules would always hold as long as one holds to certain general rules - the terms and conditions of a contract - a mathematically nontrivial one - made by the imagination. The number twelve has no single concrete embodiment, no single sensory character, etc.. Still, one refers through such experiences to the number twelve. Anybody of sufficient intelligence can have such experiences and people generally converge quickly to agreement about 12+12=24, and so on. The natural numbers can serve as a systematic index (or indexical legisign) of any denumerable well-ordered set. Any living, actual mind will need to refer such indexical legisigns to individual actual (or actually imagined) examples in that mind's experience. One cannot imagine the whole denumerable set distinctly, but one can refer oneself to experiences of proofs that the rules would apply throughout, and even to experiences that seeming failures with, say, very large numbers, turned out to result from calculational error or the like. Yeh, as I said I don’t have the same view of numbers. I put cardinality first rather than the more common ordinality (a set of ordered indexes). Best, John
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