Von: "Gary Richmond" <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
Edwina:I am probably going to bow out of this conversation now, because otherwise I fear that it is going to get contentious. You keep pressing me on where to "locate" collateral experience and habits of interpretation, when the whole point of this thread is that I am trying to figure out exactly that--I do not have a firm opinion yet. Nevertheless, I continue to find your very definitive answer unpersuasive, since it directly contradicts my understanding of how Peirce explicitly defined the Representamen.On my reading of Peirce, all propositions are Symbols (although Dicisigns need not be), and every Symbol has a Dynamic Object, Immediate Object, and Representamen that is general--i.e., Symbols can only be Collective Copulative Legisigns (Types), as EP 2:481 and EP 2:484-489 (1908) make abundantly clear. Furthermore, in his late writings Peirce associated form (qualities/characters) with 1ns, matter (subjects/objects) with 2ns, and entelechy (signs/thought) with 3ns; e.g., NEM 4:292-300 (c.1903?), EP 2:304 (1904), CP 6.338-344 (1909).Perhaps you and Gary R. can carry on from here and have a fruitful discussion. Enjoy the sponge cake! :-)Regards,Jon S.On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 9:19 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:Jon - but you still haven't brought the habits into the semiosic process. How does the single semiosic action contact the habits?
And you reduce the Representamen to merely being a 'representation' of the external stimuli. I consider that this action of representation belongs to the Interpretant.
You haven't defined WHERE in the semiosic process the contact with the 'memories and habits' takes place. I consider that such contact is the function of the Representamen, which mediates, by this contact, with the incoming sensate data of the DO...and interprets it into the Interpretant.
I also disagree that the DI 'cannot be a cognitive proposition since that is a Symbol'. I disagree that all cognition takes place as 'symbolic'. After all, as Peirce said - Mind does not involve consciousness and takes place within crystals. Do you consider that the habits of chemcial formation which develop a crystal from various chemcial...understanding the crystals' development as the Dynamic Interpretant of the chemicals...do you consider that this action is SYMBOLIC?
I also disagree that a symbolic interpretation requires a general DO. If I hear that loud sound..and finally think/say: That loud sound was the oak tree falling...that DI [which itself is a full triad] is a SYMBOLIC articulation of the physical event. Nothing general about that Dynamic Object; it was the single tree falling in a local, particular place.
Again - Form is not in a mode of Firstness, since Form is MIND - and Mind is an action of Thirdness.
And now - must go and bake a sponge cake....I'll check in later.
Edwina
On Mon 05/02/18 9:59 AM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com sent:Edwina, List:As anticipated, I cannot agree with this analysis, since I understand the Representamen to be limited to whatever stands for (i.e., represents) the loud sound in the human's mind. The Representamen does not itself include the person's memories and habits; instead, the latter are what enable him/her to recognize the sensate data as the result of a tree falling (IO), and then infer that it corresponds in this case to a particular tree falling (DI). Another complication is that if the (singular) loud sound is the DO (Concretive), then the DI cannot be a cognitive proposition, since that is a Symbol, which can only have a general DO (Collective); so this is another sense in which I concede that 3ns must come into play somehow.In the bird example, I see the Rhematic Indexical Sinsign as the single semiosic event that includes the loud sound (Dynamic Object) and the bird's response of flight (Dynamic Interpretant). Again, I agree that the bird's habits play a role in the process, somewhere between those two stages.Regards,Jon S.On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 7:48 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:Jon, Gary R, list:
OK - let's try a human example, but it won't be different:
DO: loud sound. It happens to be the old oak tree falling but I don't know that.
IO: my hearing of the loud sound. IF I am partly deaf, I hear it differently than my cat or dog or children or...
R: the Representamen consists of both my physiological and cognitive MEMORIES. Some are innate [the neurological; some are learned]. This Representamen accepts the sensate data from the IO and, according to its full knowledge base....interprets that data.
II: this is my internal interpretation. It's 'honed and constrained and organized by the combined memories of the Representamen...and I become conscious of an external disturbance. ..ie.. I become aware that it is not a dream; that it is existent and that it is outside of me and that..it might be familiar...
DI: I am articulate, conscious that this external force is outside of me, is existent and is, since I've heard these noises before..the sound of a tree falling and dredging up more of my memories from the Representamen...I decide.."It's that old oak tree'.
Now - the only difference between the bird and the human - is the Representamen is more powerful in its stock of habits; and thus, sets up a cognitive rather than physical reaction. The bird's DI is to flee. The human will come up with a conceptual interpretant...
Again - I emphasize the necessity of the semiosic action including the action of habits. Jon's outline doesn't seem to include this and I don't understand how any Interpretation can take place, except an almost purely mechanical one, that doesn't include this force.
Certainly, the classes of signs that do NOT include Thirdness [habit-taking] DO exist, but only as a short-term event...and even they, are 'nestled' within the body of something that DOES function within habits....
That is - Jon's suggestion that the bird-event is a rhematic indexical sinsign only refers to the single event of the loud sound. This is, as Gary R explains, the focus on the EXTERNAL. But - when we add in the RESULT, the bird's flight - we must include the neurological habits of the bird, which are: 'run from danger' - and so, the Interpretant is: flight.
Edwina
Edwina
On Mon 05/02/18 8:33 AM , Edwina Taborsky tabor...@primus.ca sent:Jon, Gary R - I thought Gary R's quotes were excellent, pointing out the necessity for memory/habits and their function in semiosis. What carries out this function of habit? The Representamen.
Edwina
On Sun 04/02/18 10:31 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com sent:Gary R., List:Welcome back! I hope that your recovery is going well, and that you will soon be able to elaborate on these selectively highlighted quotes, because frankly I am having trouble seeing how they bear on our current non-human, non-cognitive example.Regards,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran LaymanOn Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 9:05 PM, Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:Edwina, Jon S, list,At the moment I would tend to agree more with Edwina's interpretation than with Jon's. But I'm beginning to see the problem, feel the tension in this matter. I'm not quite yet up to arguing *why* I agree, but I'll offer a few quotes hints towards a direction I think might be fruitful (emphasis added by me in all cases).1910 | The Art of Reasoning Elucidated | MS [R] 678:23… we apply this word “sign” to everything recognizable whether to our outward senses or to our inward feeling and imagination, provided only it calls up some feeling, effort, or thought…
1902 [c.] | Reason's Rules | MS [R] 599:38A sign is something which in some measure and in some respect makes its interpretant the sign of that of which it is itself the sign. [—] [A] sign which merely represents itself to itself is nothing else but that thing itself. The two infinite series, the one back toward the object, the other forward toward the interpretant, in this case collapse into an immediate present. The type of a sign is memory, which takes up the deliverance of past memory and delivers a portion of it to future memory.
1897 [c.] | On Signs [R] | CP 2.228A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen. “Idea” is here to be understood in a sort of Platonic sense , very familiar in everyday talk; I mean in that sense in which we say that one man catches another man’s idea, in which we say that when a man recalls what he was thinking of at some previous time, he recalls the same idea, and in which when a man continues to think anything, say for a tenth of a second, in so far as the thought continues to agree with itself during that time, that is to have a like content, it is the same idea, and is not at each instant of the interval a new idea.
1873 | Logic. Chap. 5th | W 3:76; CP 7.355-6… a thing which stands for another thing is a representation or sign. So that it appears that every species of actual cognition is of the nature of a sign. [—]
Best,Gary RGary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New York
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