Jerry R, Jon AS, list, I’m looking forward to Jon’s paper on the various interpretants, which will surely bring his usual precision to the subject. I must confess, though, that my own internal context for thinking about these matters is weighted toward the psychological perspective on them. Peirce was always careful not to base his logic, or his semeiotic, on psychological theories — but his work “betrays” plenty of psychological insight. Jerry’s response to my earlier post gave added emphasis to this one: “In the first place, your neighbors are, in a measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in psychology, you would believe” (EP2:2). Another one appears here:
CSP: Men seem to themselves to be guided by reason. There is little doubt that this is largely illusory: they are much less guided by reason, much more guided by instinct, than they seem to themselves to be; because their reasonings are prominent in their consciousness, and are attended to, while their instincts they are hardly aware of, except later when they come to review their conduct. Even then, they are so immersed in instinct that they are hardly able to perceive it. (R 410:1–2, c. 1894) In our time, cognitive science and social psychology have taken this a step further with the study of “motivated cognition” and “motivated reasoning <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning> ”, which shows that our conscious reasoning itself is driven by subconscious motivations and intentions, or “instincts” as Peirce called them. Jonathan Haidt encapsulates this in the metaphor of the elephant (instinctive motivation or intuitive judgment) and the rider (reason): the rider may think he controls the elephant, but much of our reasoning is a more or less desperate attempt to rationalize our actions or our intuitive beliefs. And many of our intuitive beliefs are determined by conformity to the beliefs of some group that we belong to, or wish to belong to. This is one reason why your neighbors are yourself, as Peirce put it. “Motivated reasoning” often leads to the “hypocrisy” that Jerry mentioned, among other effects on communication between humans. For an obvious example, just consider a typical campaign speech by any politician. But we all act this way in matters that we care about, and getting to the Truth (or Final Interpretant) is not always our prime motivation, even in a process of inquiry. Often it takes some effort to make it prevail over other motivations. With all this in mind, I have a tendency to associate the word “immediate” with spontaneous, unconscious or uncontrolled mental processes. When it comes to Immediate Objects and Immediate Interpretants, this bias of mine may be hard to reconcile with Jon’s more purely semiotic definitions. JAS: As I see it, the immediate interpretant is always internal to the sign. As I have said before, in the case of a text, it is the range of possible understandings in accordance with the definitions of the words that comprise it, along with their arrangement in accordance with the syntax and other rules of grammar for the language in which it is written. GF: OK, that fits with the Firstness and indeterminacy of the first in a triad of interpretants. But what I call the “internal context” of an interpreter reading a text also includes some motivations or intuitions that will determine what gets selected from that “range” when the dynamic interpretant is generated. And that selection itself tends to be pre-conscious or “immediate” in my psychological sense of the word. The reader may even be subconsciously motivated to overlook “the syntax and other rules of grammar” and the external context of the text when constructing a dynamic interpretant. Peirce's theories and applications of those theories, whether directly quoted, paraphrased or summarized, come out of a context which (for us) is the whole body of Peirce's extant work. That work came out of an even larger context, which is the whole body of scientific discourse extending at least from the time of Aristotle up to Peirce's lifetime. In order to situate his work in that larger context, Peirce had to internalize it, to develop an implicit understanding of it which served as the internal context of his explicit thoughts. Likewise, students of Peirce internalize an understanding of Peirce which is vastly simplified in comparison with the totality of Peirce's work. It may include a few familiar quotations which are represented in memory more or less accurately, but onboard memory is limited. Attentively reading or re-reading the texts themselves in their original context will normally modify, in some measure, the reader's internalized understanding of the author – unless the reader is more motivated to find confirmations <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias> of his or her prior understanding. As for the Intentional Interpretant of a Peirce text, I agree that it can’t be the Final Interpretant; but it can very well be the motivation of his participation in the dialogue in which he was currently engaged (remember he considered all thought to be dialogic). It is thus the Immediate Interpretant of whatever received signs he had in mind when constructing the dynamic interpretant of that stage of the dialogue or inquiry, that dynamic interpretant being the external sign which is the text we now have. All intentions are future-oriented, and that dynamic interpretant was his way of aiming at the Final Interpretant of the whole dialogue which included his text. He really believed that there is such a “thing” as Truth, and I think his work deserves our respect and close attention because his prime motivation was to work toward it. Gary f. } A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet. [Tao Te Ching 64 (Feng/English) { <https://gnusystems.ca/wp/> https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ living the time From: peirce-l-requ...@list.iupui.edu <peirce-l-requ...@list.iupui.edu> On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: 24-Oct-21 16:34 To: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A key principle of normative semeiotic for interpreting texts Gary F., List: I apologize for the length of this post, but the thread is already getting a lot of my wheels turning. GF: The Immediate/Dynamic/Final triad of interpretants may be the basic one for logic, but that doesn't render the other triads useless. I agree, and I have even written a paper that has been accepted for publication by Semiotica, entitled "Peirce's Evolving Interpretants," which discusses three such trichotomies--immediate/dynamical/final, emotional/energetic/logical, and intentional/effectual/communicational. I will post a link and the abstract whenever it appears online. GF: ... an Intentional Interpretant as Peirce defines it can be internal both to the sign itself and to the utterer, so that it is an Immediate Interpretant as well as an Intentional Interpretant. Any interpretant is always an interpretant of a particular sign, because it must be determined by that sign in order to be its interpretant. I take Peirce's point in the Logic Notebook entry to be that what he had been calling "the intentional interpretant" is not determined in any way by the sign that is currently being communicated from the utterer to the interpreter. Again, as "a determination of the mind of the utterer," I believe that it is instead a dynamical interpretant of a previous sign. The interpreter thus has no direct access to it and can only apprehend it to the extent that it is "betrayed" (Peirce's word) in the sign itself as the immediate interpretant. The second definition of "betray" in Google's online dictionary is "unintentionally reveal; be evidence of," so a sign "betrays" the utterer's intention only insofar as the sign serves as evidence of that intention, regardless of whether the utterer intended his/her intention to be so revealed. GF: The same Immediate Interpretant of the same sign can also be part of the interpreter's internal context, as his more or less intuitive sense of what the utterer's intention was in uttering the sign. As I see it, the immediate interpretant is always internal to the sign. As I have said before, in the case of a text, it is the range of possible understandings in accordance with the definitions of the words that comprise it, along with their arrangement in accordance with the syntax and other rules of grammar for the language in which it is written. A reader's dynamical interpretant of the text, his/her actual understanding of it--whether an "intuitive sense" or a result of subsequent reflection--ought to be a sincere attempt to discern the author's intended meaning, not in the abstract, but as expressed in the text. In the words of William J. Abraham (https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421 <https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421&context=asburyjournal> &context=asburyjournal, p.20), "Hermeneutics is not so much the study of what an author intended as the study of what the author achieved. If meaning has an equivalence, it is to be located less in intention and more in achievement." Accordingly, I now recognize that the author's intention is not the final interpretant--again, the ideal aim of interpretation, how the sign necessarily would be understood after infinite inquiry by an infinite community. Instead, it seems to me that there is a sense in which the author's intention is the object of the text as a sign, much like the object of the command to "ground arms" is "the will of the officer" (CP 5.473, 1907). Again, Peirce describes the intentional interpretant as "a determination of the mind of the utterer," and he similarly describes the object as "the essential ingredient of the utterer" (EP 2:404, 1907), going on to add the following. CSP: For, after all, collateral observation, aided by imagination and thought, will usually result in some idea, though this need not be particularly determinate; but may be indefinite in some regards and general in others. Such an apprehension, approaching, however distantly, that of the Object strictly so called, ought to be, and usually is, termed the "immediate object" of the sign in the intention of its utterer. (EP 2:409, 1907) As I see it, the immediate object is also always internal to the sign. However, in a communicative context, the commens is "that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place" (EP 2:478, 1906). What is its essential ingredient? "It seems best to regard a sign as a determination of a quasi-mind" (EP 2:391, 1906). "Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded" (CP 4.551, 1906). In other words, the sign itself "fuses" or "welds" the otherwise distinct minds of the utterer and interpreter into "one mind" such that the immediate object and interpretant, being internal to the sign, are also internal to this "commind." GF: If a semiosic process is continuous, as you have argued in another thread, then the boundaries between sign and interpretant are artifacts of analysis: they are not as real as the process of which they are parts. Naturally, I agree in accordance with my recent post on semiosic synechism (https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2021-10/msg00204.html). For me, this entails that any "individual" sign, "its" object, and "its" interpretant are all entia rationis--products of analysis resulting from the exertion of some will for a particular purpose. As such, the internal/external distinction is one that we create within the analysis--again, the immediate object and interpretant are conceived as internal to the sign, while the dynamical object and interpretant are conceived as external to the sign. Hence, the reader of a text contributes nothing to its immediate interpretant, only its dynamical interpretant as "a determination of the mind of the interpreter." In fact, what I sometimes call an "event of semiosis"--again, an ens rationis "marked off" by analysis in retrospect, not a real constituent of the ongoing continuous process--occurs whenever an individual dynamical object determines an individual sign token to determine an individual dynamical interpretant. However, I have always struggled to figure out the exact role within Peirce's semeiotic of an interpreter's previously established habits of interpretation--what I take to be your "internal context"--in explaining why different interpreters can be and often are determined to different dynamical interpretants by the same sign, which by definition has the same immediate and final interpretants. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
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