BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Robert, John, list
I very much like the concept of the representamen referring to the
'universe of possibilities' [which I refer to in my own work as
non-local semiosic processes] - while the 'sign' refers to the
'incarnate form' - ie, the local semiosic process.
And again, as Robert points out, the principle of indeterminacy
means that an 'unreal sign' cannot determine anything since it is, in
itself, confined to 'being possible' - which means, 'not open to the
principle of contradiction'.
And yes, as John points out, moving from the possible to the actual
will result in s loss of information - at this time, in this context.
A different interaction might produce a different actualization.
And I think it's an excellent point to suggest that the Final
Interpretant, which JAS puts as a primal logical force before the
Immediate and Dynamic, sets up a situation where the FI has no
'information' gathered from the semiosic experiences of the Immediate
and Dynamic Interpretants, on which to work - and thus - change its
habits. The Final Interpretant has to be seen, not as an a priori
Platonic Pure Form which logically guides the less competent
Immediate and Dynamic Interpretants -- , but as an evolving habit
which learns from experience.
Edwina
On Tue 16/06/20 11:33 AM , "John F. Sowa" s...@bestweb.net sent:
Robert,
That's an excellent summary of the issues. For my comments, I
divided it in three parts:
> The representamen should therefore be rehabilitated in order to
confine it to the universe of possibilities andthe term sign should
be reserved to the incarnate form. This is the reason why in my
formalization process, I called these possible signs "protosigns".
Protosigns are the a priori forms of all possible signs and the
distinction must be made carefully with the "actual" signs that are
these incarnate signs.
And it's essential to note that the possible signs include all the
hypotheses (patterns) in Peirce's universe of possibilities. Because
of continuity, that universe is uncountably infinite. But the set of
available words for incarnating signs is finite. Therefore, the
process of incarnating signs will always lose information: a many
to one mapping cannot preserve distinctions among the many.
> The question will be: "Are we talking about the forms a priori in
the universe of possibilities or of these same forms inscribed in
the real world"? The form can only be represented by becoming a
sensitive form in the real world and be perceived to be communicated.
Yes. And that communication depends on a mapping from an
uncountable infinity to a finite set of words. The exact meaning in
any particular context depends on an open-ended variety of
"collateral experience" shared by the speaker and listener in any
particular context. Since no two contexts and the people in them can
be identical, discrepancies are inevitable. (The metaphor of "mind
fusion" is too vague to be useful in this discussion.)
> This shows how literalism can function as an obstacle to a truly
scientific approach, disconnecting Peirce's semiotics from its
pragmatism through conceptualist arguments and offering alternatives
devoid of practical applications.
Yes. The principle of "charity" implies that the listener must make
some allowance for the inevitable ambiguities. That allowance is some
implicit, context-dependent proposition. But no two occurrences of a
word have exactly the same context, even in a single document. If
we're lucky, those implicit propositions may be small enough to be
irrelevant. But when the sentences occur in different documents,
written on different occasions for different purposes, we can't
depend on luck.
Fundamental principle: The meanings of words depend on context.
Charity may provide some useful background information, but there is
no guarantee that the charitable information will be identical for
different sentences, even in the same document. For different
documents, written on different days, months, years, differences are
inevitable. Any information contributed by charity must be made
explicit, and it must be carefully analyzed for relevance and
reliability.
John
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
► 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 no subject, and with the sole line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of
the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
► PEIRCE-L is owned by The PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and
co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
