Yes, Vinciius, that is what I intended. Thanks for the catch. James called our basic impressions a “blooming, buzzing confusion”, but I doubt that even babies experience things that way.
John From: Vinicius Romanini [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: April 27, 2015 5:09 PM To: [email protected] Cc: Peirce-L Subject: [biosemiotics:8500] Re: Natural Propositions, John, I assume you wanted to say that "perceptions without judgements seem to be pretty near IMpossible", isn´t that right? I agree. Percepts contain only firsts and seconds - a "hodge-podge of colours and shapes" which constitutes the perceptual fact. The perceptual judgement stating that you see a telephone pole involves an inference by which a predicate (telephone pole) is thought hypothetically (the percipuum generated abductively) as pertaining to the object of your perception, while the perceptual fact is left just as seen (the thought of). The process is carried out non consicously, and the moment of the perceptual judgement is also the moment you get conscious information about what you see. Vinicius 2015-04-27 16:49 GMT-03:00 John Collier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: I find I read the same passages as supporting my position. It is, of course, possible that Peirce is deeply ambiguous here. As I said to Stan, neurophysiology indicates that our visual experiences, at least, come preclassified in a pretty general way. Combining biosemiotics with regular semiotics this implies to me that they already involve judgments (classifications) at the level they first appear to us as conscious signs. Such signs are already integrated into our understanding, and hence cannot be pure firsts. In my case, at least, as I have said several times before, perceptions without judgements seem to be pretty near possible, except maybe in some extremely altered states of consciousness. I look out the window, and I can’t help but see a telephone pole, not a hodge-podge of colours and shapes. Our seeing is of specific things in general classifications, at least almost always. Anything that suggests there is something on which that is based is a hypothesis, or at least an act of thought that ignores the generalities and concentrates on the specificities. It is not an easy act of thought, either. It takes considerable effort or training in most cases. John From: Gary Richmond [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: April 27, 2015 4:32 PM To: Peirce-L Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [biosemiotics:8496] Re: Natural Propositions, John, Lists, You wrote: I am not denying 1ns. Never have. I claim it does not stand on its own, and as a result cannot itself be foundational. It requires further mental actions to pick out 1ns. It is not manifested in itself. It is not “given”. It cannot be the foundation for an epistemology. But no one has suggested here, I don't think, that 1ns can "stand on its own"--that's exactly the point of Peirce's involutional argument in "The Logic of Mathematics" and in Frederik's post (the one which included diagrams). It doesn't stand alone but is caught up in "three universes of experience" as Peirce phrased it, while, as Nathan Houser discusses it in "The Scent of Truth," it is "given" as the percept in the perceptual judgments. He writes: "[A]ccording to Peirce, perceptual judgments are the result of a process that is too uncontrolled to be regarded as fully rational, so one cannot say unequivocally that perceptual judgments arise from sensations (or percepts, as the sensory component of perception is called) by an act of abductive inference, but Peirce insisted that 'abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them' and that 'our first premisses, the perceptual judgments, are to be regarded as an extreme case of abductive inferences' (CP 5.181). This helps explain Peirce's commitment (somewhat reconceived) to the maixm: 'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu,' (CP 5.181) (N. Houser, The Scent of Truth, 462) And, I guess, I'm saying that 1ns is an essential component of that which is in sensu, and that facet of the perceptual judgment is not an abstraction in your sense. Here's one of the several relevant passages from the 1903 Lectures on Pragmatism: On its side, the perceptive judgment is the result of a process, although of a process not sufficiently conscious to be controlled, or, to state it more truly, not controllable and therefore not fully conscious. If we were to subject this subconscious process to logical analysis, we should find that it terminated in what that analysis would represent as an abductive inference, resting on the result of a similar process which a similar logical analysis would represent to be terminated by a similar abductive inference, and so on ad infinitum. This analysis would be precisely analogous to that which the sophism of Achilles and the Tortoise applies to the chase of the Tortoise by Achilles, and it would fail to represent the real process for the same reason. Namely, just as Achilles does not have to make the series of distinct endeavors which he is represented as making, so this process of forming the perceptual judgment, because it is sub-conscious and so not amenable to logical criticism, does not have to make separate acts of inference, but performs its act in one continuous process (CP 5.181, Turrisi, 241). I have just read Ben's remarks and would tend to agree with them (there's some contradiction in comparing some of the quotes Ben offers, but I think this is only apparent). Best, Gary [Gary Richmond] Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York C 745 718 482-5690<tel:718%20482-5690> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 2:33 PM, John Collier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I am not denying 1ns. Never have. I claim it does not stand on its own, and as a result cannot itself be foundational. It requires further mental actions to pick out 1ns. It is not manifested in itself. It is not “given”. It cannot be the foundation for an epistemology. You seem to still be misunderstanding my use of “abstraction”. I am using it in the time honoured way initiated by Locke as partial consideration. Berkeley missed this and thought of ideas as little pictures, so we can’t have an idea of man because every man has specific characteristics. Locke had already answered this. Yesterday I saw a man in the bushes. I did not see his colour, the number of limbs (though it was at least two) or a bunch of other things. I have no problem saying this was a perceptual experience. But it must have involved judgment. I know there must have been things that I experienced that led to this, but I couldn’t well say what they were, since that would bring them under generalities, which aren’t 1ns. But I further maintain that 1ns is useless for thought, because thought requires generalities. Perhaps that is what you don’t like. John From: Gary Richmond [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: April 27, 2015 2:12 PM To: Peirce-L Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:8485] Re: Natural Propositions, John, You first wrote: "the experience of firstness. I maintained there is no such thing in itself (except as an abstraction)." But now you say that you agree with Frederik's analysis. But I do not think that Frederik is saying that there is "so such thing in itself" as an "experience of firstness," but that we must prescissively abstract it out if we are to "focus" on in certain analyses. Frederik has just written that he does not deny 1ns. You however seem to to saying that it is merely "an abstraction," has its being as an abstraction, has no other reality than that. Again, this does not appear to me to be how Frederik sees it (he'll correct me, I'm sure, if I'm wrong). All he seems to be saying is that for some analytical purposes it is helpful to prescissively abstract 1ns from the other two categories. Best, Gary [Gary Richmond] Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York C 745 718 482-5690<tel:718%20482-5690> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 9:13 AM, John Collier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Agreed, Frederik. I think this is really important. John From: Frederik Stjernfelt [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: April 26, 2015 6:41 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; Peirce-L 1 Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:8466] Re: Natural Propositions, ps - Peirce's three distinctions are subtypes of partial consideration - F Den 26/04/2015 kl. 18.37 skrev John Collier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> : Gary, I would say it is an abstraction from the perceptual judgment, where abstraction is understood as Locke’s partial consideration. At least that is the way I seem to experience things myself. Perhaps others are different. John -- Vinicius Romanini, Ph.D. Professor of Communication Studies School of Communications and Arts University of Sao Paulo, Brazil www.minutesemeiotic.org<http://www.minutesemeiotic.org/> www.semeiosis.com.br<http://www.semeiosis.com.br/> Skype:vinicius_romanini
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