> On Mar 28, 2017, at 3:56 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > My initial response is that we do need to distinguish between the sign itself > and the character by virtue of which it represents its object. After all, it > seems plausible that the same sign can serve as an icon, and as an index, and > as a symbol--all at the same time, and perhaps even to the same > interpretant--by virtue of the different characters that it possesses.
Don’t we here have to distinguish between the mark and the sign? Two signs can’t be the same sign unless they also have the same interpretant and object, can they? Now it’s true that any sign can typically be broken up into constituent signs which may be symbols, icons or indexes. Likewise the same mark can function in a sign that’s an icon or symbol. Indeed that’s fairly common. The real question is the the question of realism here I think. Does the icon have its character really or merely as interpreted? That’s the very question that divides nominalism from realism. While I tend to agree that it’s not a substantial difference functionally most of the time, it is I think key for understanding Peirce here. > On the other hand, can something truly be a sign--rather than just a > potential sign--if it is never actually interpreted as such? In other words, > it has an Immediate Interpretant, a range of possible interpretations, but no > Dynamic Interpretant. This is a sincere question; I am likewise curious as > to what you and others think. This gets at the language problem. What do we mean by “interpreted as such” versus having an interpretant. Again this may be where I’m just plain wrong. So I hope others chime in. My sense is that Peirce’s concern is with volition. It’s the old joke of someone saying don’t think of blue. You immediately think of blue in some sense. What I think Peirce is after in his semiotics is a determinative function where signs aren’t fully volitional. Thus the emphasis on the object determining. In most philosophy you have judgments as interpretations made volitionally in some sense. CP 2.435 “The Short Logic” is useful here. A judgment is an act of consciousness in which we recognize a belief, and a belief is an intelligent habit from which we shall act when occasion presents itself. Of what nature is that recognition? It may come very near action. The muscles may twitch and we may restrain ourselves only by considering that the proper occasion has not arisen. But, in general, we virtually resolve upon a certain occasion to act as if certain imagined circumstances were perceived. This act which amounts to such a resolve, is a peculiar act of the will whereby we cause an image, or icon, to be associated, in a peculiarly strenuous way, with an object represented to us by an index. This act itself is represented in the proposition by a symbol, and the consciousness of it fulfills the function of a symbol in the judgment. Suppose, for example, I detect a person with whom I have to deal in an act of dishonesty. I have in my mind something like a "composite photograph" of all the persons that I have known and read of that have had that character, and at the instant I make the discovery concerning that person, who is distinguished from others for me by certain indications, upon that index at that moment down goes the stamp of RASCAL, to remain indefinitely. I think the idea (and this goes to his cosmology as well) is that we’re talking about habits not choices of interpretations. Thus the icon functions as an icon because of a habit with the habit tied to resemblance along some character. But the resemblance for that habit to function in an iconic form has to be real. It’s not just a free judgment of a human mind but a real regularity. This definitely is a subtle point and language runs us aground when we talk about interpret. Since of course for a sign to be a sign it has to have an interpretant and an interpretant typically implies an interpretation.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
