John C., Gary F., lists,
Whew, I don't like to write posts where I figure I'm wearying people by
trying to fill in gaps that I discern in my previous posts. But here goes -
I should add that, if the brain in a vat faces only a practical
impossibility, not a theoretical impossibility, of discovering the vat,
then the person claiming to be such a brain has a practical
impossibility of comparing, in a practically meaningful way, the
absolutely hidden container (the vat) to anything in the person's
experience, which '"actually" includes no physical containers, but only
container-images, and images of container images, and so on, along which
logical train they try to imagine back an extra step. At most, that
person could confine the question to terms of pure math and deductive
logic and try to rule out self-inconsistent scenarios, not that this
would result in discovery of facts about positive phenomena. If that
person's experiences of pure math and deductive logic are also generated
hallucinations, then that person's very selfhood may be a generated
hallucination, and one wonders what is having the hallucination. These
scenarios are multipliable without limit, so we can just hope that
they're not true, and anyway there's no particular reason to pick one
over another.
Anyway, here the reference to the vat is only 'practically' magical, not
theoretically magical, and I don't see why metaphysical realism would
hinge on it.
Peirce's realism, as a principle of the reasoner's self-regulation, is
that the real is discoverable in principle and is independent of
particular opinion (such that we're fallible), not that any actual
investigators will unconditionally and infallibly discover it no matter
how little they actually investigate or practically can investigate.
Beyond the regulatory principle itself, he at least once sketched an
argument, which as I've said he seems not to push, that mathematical
being is real, and he does argue that there are real generals.
Best, Ben
On 1/31/2015 12:07 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
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.
You wrote,
[JC] As far as Peirces definition of a sign in terms of
determination goes, it certainly doesnt 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.
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. 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. E.g., the wind, turning this
way and that, determining a weathercock, turning this way and that, as
a representamen determining an interpretant thought, interpreting this
way and that. The whole triad as 'sign' then goes this way and that.
But one could say that each turn involves a different object,
representamen, interpretant, and overall 'sign', though of course the
particular turns are connected in the overall event, so likewise the
successive representamina are turns of the more enduring
representamen, and so on. But maybe you're talking about some other
kind of thing altogether.
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 determination 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 the 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 Putnams rejection of
metaphysical realism, up to today, right now. I dont 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.
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.
Best, Ben
On 1/30/2015 3:20 PM, John Collier wrote:
I am not getting the Peirce list version, but my mail is so messed up
that anything might be happening. The email server I can use to post
to the lists is especially wonky since the power outages.
Gary, I am just going to focus on one thing, since this discussion
seems to me to be expanding without focus. See below in red .
John
*From:* Gary Fuhrman
*Sent:* January 30, 2015 3:27 PM
*To:* biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
*Cc:* Peirce List
*Subject:* [biosemiotics:8041] Re: Triadic Relations
John, my responses inserted (and this is going to the Peirce list as
well as the biosemiotics because the thread has been common to both):
*From:* John Collier
*Sent:* 30-Jan-15 5:44 AM
Here is a message I sent Gary when I could not post to the list due
to the fallout of rolling power outages. They are supposed to
continue for at least two years (sigh). The damage to South Africa
will be immense, but at least I can transfer my posting accounts to
my Canadian email. Fortunately my home ISP, unlike the University
one, is very robust.
As I said in my post, I took determine to be being a sufficient
condition for.
gf] Yes, thats the problem.
That gives the right direction, whereas as I pointed out, the
narrowing of conditions (necessary condition) does not. I don't mean
fully determinate by any means. That would be necessary and sufficient.
gf] I dont see how considerations of necessary and sufficient
conditions are relevant to determination in the semiotic sense,
but its evident that trying to apply them to it causes confusion.
Suppose two people read a poem. There is a single representamen, but
their interpretations could be very different, and there would be
different objects.
gf] You can say that there is a single representamen, in the
sense that its the same poem that is printed in every copy of it
and read in every reading of it. I guess what you mean is that
different readers would have different ideas of what the poem is
about, and this is true because each actual reading of a symbol is
another instance of semiosis. This implies that the representamens as
well as the objects and interpretants are different, so your first
premiss does not hold. What the poem is about, at any given reading
or performance of it, is partially determined by the circumstances of
the reading: any indexical component of the symbol can only come from
those circumstances, and thus determine the breadth of the poem
(considered as a proposition), while its depth is determined by
the readers experience and habits.
Alternatively, if we say there is a single representamen in all
readings, its a type of which each reading is a token, and it has a
single object as well but a necessarily vague one, because the
connections between the poem and its object are entirely verbal. Or
we could go even further and say that the object of a poem is created
by the poet, just as a mathematical object is created by the
mathematician. Either way, the dynamic object of that sign does not
vary with the interpretants of the various readings. It might take
several hermeneutic cycles to settle into an interpretation of a
symbol such as a poem, but each reading or re-reading proceeds on the
assumption that the object of the sign does /not/ change. Otherwise
the reader is assuming that the symbol can mean whatever he thinks it
means; in which case its communicative or informative value is zero.
You might say that the /immediate/ object does change as the
circumstances of reading vary, but I dont think that clarifies the
meaning of determine.
Of course there would also be different signs in Peirce's sense, but
we are talking about one part of a sign determining another (in some
way I have yet to determine).
gf] I take it that by part of a sign you mean one of the three
correlates of the triadic relation.
If, if the sign is given then all the parts are fully determined,
then each part determines the others in virtue of being a member of
the (same) sign relation.
gf] Not so, when a sign relation is /defined/ as one in which the
object determines the representamen to determine an interpretant sign
of the same object. Semiosis is precisely that process of
determination; so the sign is /not/ given with all the parts
fully determined.
Once you have a sign, with its three parts, that determines all the
parts. Otherwise it is a different sign. So a particular sign
determines all of its parts. And being parts of the same sign means
the determination of one part of another is symmetric.
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.
As far as Peirces definition of a sign in terms of determination
goes, it certainly doesnt 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. 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.
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 determination 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 the 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 Putnams rejection of
metaphysical realism, up to today, right now. I dont think things
are nearly as clear as you and Ben seem to think they are.
You have made some huge leaps in interpreting what I said, Gary, e.g.,
objects arent real. Most pragmatists actually reject this, by the
way, in following James nominalism about generals. In any case I
cant possibly deal with all of them now.
I think that Peirces discussion using determines has been a
disaster, since even those closest to him in his own time got it wrong
(like James). If it is only available to sophisticated initiates, I
think there is a real problem that Peirceans have to come to terms with.
This is trivial, so we need to consider degenerate cases to avoid
triviality and also multidirection determination.
gf] Sorry, youve lost me there! I dont know what you mean by
degenerate cases. Are you implying that a sign given with all
the parts fully determined is a /genuine/ case of semiosis? If so I
disagree.
Your selecting a specific instance of a sign just makes my case for
me. So I assumed that was not what Peirce could have meant (assuming
of course that he meant anything; a wise man once told me that if you
puzzle carefully over something someone said and you still can't make
it out, then it is acceptable to consider the possibility that it
does not make sense -- George Boolos).
gf] Acceptable to consider the possibility, of course. But its more
than acceptable to consider the possibility that it really does make
sense to others who say that it does.
Surely, as in the poem example, it is the interpretant is that
determines the object;
gf] Surely not!
objects aren't around to be grasped independently of how we interpret
whatever signs we come across.
gf] If an object is real, then it is what it is no matter what
anybody thinks about it. Again, this is /definitive/ of reality, at
least for Peirce and for me, and I think for any pragmatist. So
youre saying there are no real objects. In that case I dont think
there are any real signs either.
But if there is only one sign in question, then it determines the
sign as a whole, and the other components as a result. But this is
trivial, as I said.
gf] Trivial maybe, but certainly not true! Not of the sign as defined
by Peirce.
And also multidirectional determining, which was my original worry.
gf] Going out on a limb here, Im going to assume that what you
call multidirectional determining is what others call polysemy,
or ambiguity, which is characteristic of symbols. In my book
(/Turning Signs/ ) I started calling this degeneracy, with the
biological usage in mind. But later I started using that term in the
Peircean (mathematical) sense, and it would have been confusing to
use it both ways, so I invented a new word for it, polyversity
the quality of symbols such as words which enables the same words to
have different meanings and the same meanings to be expressed in
different words. What I learned from Peirce while writing is that the
only cure for polyversity (if its something you worry about) is
genuine indexicality.
Of course, if the multidirectional determining youre worried
about is something different, then my remarks about polyversity are
of no use to you!
gary f.
} Lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.
[Hazlitt] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm <http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> }{
gnoxics
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