Clark, List,
I thought, that "final interpretant" had something to do with truth. But you wrote, that it rather has to do with power. Well, I do not see any positive connection between truth and power. I have just read Herrmann Popitz: "Phänomene der Macht" (phenomenons of power). It is very interesting, but very depressing: Power everywhere, and truth nowhere. Yawn. I do not like reality, if reality really is like that. I also dislike Nietzsche. I rather like Kant. But now I am out of arguments- read and write you all later!
Best,
Helmut
"Clark Goble" <cl...@lextek.com>
On Oct 23, 2015, at 12:31 PM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote:Hi! This is all very confusing to me. Language, words, versus reality: Is this the real contradiction? Is truth, expressed with language/words something that has been there in the far past: "In the beginning there was the word" (logos) (Bible), or something in the far future: "Final interpretant" (Peirce)?
To clarify both Peirce and Derrida think something is true if the objects determine a sign that is the same kind of sign as the final interpretant. So we know the truth now but what truth means is this future sign. (Here you can see Peirce applying the pragmatic maxim for meaning)
The reason Peirce avoids the problem of Descartes is because there’s no having to explain correlation between mental signs and physical objects with an absolute divide. Rather his semiotics is inherently externalist as opposed to internalist. So objects determine their interpretants via the sign. So long as the interpretant is the same as the final interpretant you have truth in mind. You’re comparing items of the same category unlike Descartes.
So neither religion, nor Peirce, is something that I have a use for, looking for truth. Lest it is not different: a final interpretant is not something in the far future, but something that occurs regularly anytime when somebody is convinced of something.
Yes, it’s this that I think Peirce (and many of the rest of us on the list) would call nominalism since truth is just a finite mind being convinced or persuaded. This quickly (IMO) justifies sophistry since sophistry can convince people of things.
This is a temporary truth, when this convincement might later possibly be falsified. A truth becomes truer and truer, the more time passes without falsification. But only in a society that allows falsification. This sounds like relativism, so there must be added, that there may also be "synthetic apriori statements" (Kant). What about these? Can they give us some truth here and now? I guess so.
Once you go all in with this sort of nominalism then Quine’s critique most definitely also applies. This is I think what many took out of Continental philosophy as postmodernism. (I tend to try to distinguish the two)
That is if we have nothing but “temporary truth” what matters? However I’d note Derrida in particular says,
I am not a pluralist and I would never say that every interpretation is equal but I do not select. The interpretations select themselves. I am a Nietzschean in that sense. You know that Nietzsche insisted on the fact that the principle of differentiation was in itself selective. The eternal return of the same was not repetition, it was a selection of more powerful forces. So I would not say that some interpretations are truer than others. I would say that some are more powerful than others. The hierarchy is between forces and not between true and false. There are interpretations which account for more meaning and this is the criterion. "Literary Review" (Vol 14.18 April - 1 May (1980):21-22)
This selection by more powerful forces is precisely what Peirce means with the development of the final interpretant.
The Final Interpretant is the ultimate effect of the sign, so far as it is intended or destined, from the character of the sign, being more or less of a habitual and formal nature." (MS 339, 1906 Oct. 23, p.288r, 289r = SEM III, p.224 f.).
…the Final Interpretant is the one Interpretative result to which every Interpreter is destined to come if the Sign is sufficiently considered. [—] The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual tends. (Letters to Lady Welby SS 110-1)
Of course the immediate interpretant is of possibility rather than actuality. The actuality is the dynamic interpretant. The final interpretant is a kind of teleological event of “would be.” There are on the final interpretant still a lot of disagreement. In particular the list originator Joe Ransdall and T. L. Short have had some disagreements on this.
I should add that while I adopt a realist interpretation of Derrida this is not the main interpretation of him. The difference ends up being on this final interpretant. Is there a “would be” or not? That is what is the nature of the final interpretant even if there is a logic of the final interpretant. I think Derrida can’t be separated from this Niezschean view of power where the final interpretant is a “would be.” If you do separate it from Nietzsche then I think you get the more nominalistic popular view of Derrida.
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