Gary, I believe that the word 'interpretant' is a good label for the way humans and other living things interpret a sign.
I also believe that his theories of semeiotic and his classification of signs and sign types are extremely valuable. But I would ask you, please identify any notable Peirce scholar who said that Pierce's incomplete theories about how to go beyond the first step are integral to his semeiotic. My point is that his inability to complete those theories is a warning sign. If he couldn't complete them and the best Peirce scholars can't show how to complete them, I have strong doubts about any claims that go farther. I am not saying that anybody should stop talking about any topic that Peirce chose to write about. But I am just saying that all Peirce did was to label the first step. For mathematics and mathematical logic, Peirce learned how to go infinitely far. But for commonsense reasoning, his recommendations could just go one step at a time. See that file Section7.pdf, which I circulated a few days ago. Can anybody say more? John ---------------------------------------- From: "Gary Richmond" <gary.richm...@gmail.com> Sent: 2/2/24 5:22 PM John, Jon, Edwina, Helmut, List, JFS (1/31): "I don't want to discourage anybody from discussing interpretants." JFS (2/2): "Let his writings on interpretants rest in peace (RIP)." and "Conclusion: Neither Peirce nor anybody else ever developed the theory to make useful predictions about anything." I would like to suggest that merely because Peirce's writings on interpretants -- which he worked on until near the end of his life and which many scholars see as an integral aspect of his semeiotic -- have not been fully developed is no reason to think that may not be in the future; and no reason for those who remain interested in the possibility of their development to cease their inquiry. "[W]e see arguments that Peirce’s later typology is crucial to a full understanding and application of semiotics (see Quieroz 2012), or claims that it whilst underdeveloped, it holds promise and deserves serious effort and attention (see Houser 1992 and Jappy 2017). [I would especially recommend: Houser, N., 1992. “On Peirce’s theory of Propositions: A response to Hilpinen” GR]. Transactions of Charles S. Peirce Society. 28:3, 489–504.] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/#DivIntot And Edwina's post -- which I just read -- points to the potential value of all three semeiotic elements "for analysis of both biological and societal systems." I agree. My recommendation: Let scholars pursue the inquiries which interest them and which they see potential value in pursuing. To suggest otherwise is to "block the way of inquiry." Best, Gary Richmond On Fri, Feb 2, 2024 at 4:30 PM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: Edwina, Jon AS, Jon A, Helmut, List, Peirce made immense contributions to 21st century research in all the branches of cognitive science. But he never found any informative or useful applications of his writings on interpretants. He was struggling with the ideas up to the end. Peirce scholars never built any extensions to his writings on interpretants because Peirce himself was unable to produce a useful system. He couldn't convince anybody, not even himself. See the end of this note for the citation and quotations from the Stanford article. Conclusion: Neither Peirce nor anybody else ever developed the theory to make useful predictions about anything. In short, I wouldn't say that Peirce's writings on interpretants are wrong -- just that they are so vague that nobody has been able to use them to do or say anything useful. Recommendation: Let his writings on interpretants rest in peace (RIP), and focus on the great body of work that is at the forefront of the latest developments in cognitive science. John ---------------------------------------- From: "Edwina Taborsky" <edwina.tabor...@gmail.com> John, list Regardless of the terminology, which I acknowledge obscures the analysis, I think that one can conclude that Peirce’s view is that there are three Interpretants. One is Individual Internal; the next is Individual External, and the last one is Collective External. And- each of these three ’nodes’ can be in any one of the three modal categories. That’s how I see it. Edwina On Jan 31, 2024, at 6:37 PM, John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: I rarely comment on discussions of interpretants, because nobody, not even Peirce, had a complete, coherent, and decisive theory of interpretants. Perhaps some Peirce scholars have developed theories that go beyond what Peirce wrote. That is possible, but nobody can claim that their theories are what Peirce himself had intended. On these issues, I recommend the article by Albert Atkin in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first version in 2006 and major update in 2022: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/ Atkin has a thorough list of references for anybody who intends to study this topic. See below for some quotations from the end of the article that show how incomplete, indefinite, and uncertain Peirce's own writings happen to be. I don't want to discourage anybody from discussing interpretants. But since Peirce himself was uncertain and indecisive, nobody can claim that their interpretation is what Peirce had intended. John _______________ As is common with all of Peirce’s work in philosophy, various changes in terminology and subtleties with accompanying neologisms occur from one piece of work to the next. His work on interpretants is no different. At various points in his final accounts of signs, Peirce describes the division of interpretants as being: immediate, dynamic and final; or as emotional, energetic, and logical; or as naïve, rogate and normal; or as intentional, effective and communicational; or even destinate, effective and explicit. As Liszka (1990, 20) notes, “the received view in Peirce scholarship suggests that the divisions of interpretant into immediate, dynamic, and final are archetypal, all other divisions being relatively synonymous with these categories.” There are, however, some dissenters from this view. In discussing the interpretant, Peirce describes one of the trichotomies above as follows: In all cases [the Interpretant] includes feelings; for there must, at least, be a sense of comprehending the meaning of the sign. If it includes more than mere feeling, it must evoke some kind of effort. It may include something besides, which, for the present, may be vaguely called “thought”. I term these three kinds of interpretant the “emotional”, the “energetic”, and the “logical” interpretants. (EP2. 409). . . Peirce describes the dynamic interpretant as deriving its character from action (CP8 .315 1904), but later says, “action cannot be a logical interpretant” (CP5 .491 1906). This seems to make the two inconsistent. (See Liszka (1990, 21) for more on the problems with Fitzgerald’s claim). Moreover, this inconsistency seems to suggest a problem for Short’s view since his account also suggests that the dynamic interpretant should include the logical interpretant as a subdivision (Short 1981, 213). Short, however, claims textual support for his own view from instances where Peirce mentions the emotional/energetic/logical trichotomy alongside the apparently separate claim that signs have three interpretants. (Short sites (CP8 .333 1904) and (CP4 .536 1906). Short takes this as suggesting that the two should be treated as different and distinct trichotomies. (Short 2004, 235). How far the textual evidence on the matter will prove decisive is unclear, especially given the fragmentary nature of Peirce’s final work on signs. However, one or two things militate in favor of the “received view”. First, Peirce is notorious for experimenting with terminology, especially when trying to pin down his own ideas, or describe the same phenomenon from different angles. Second, it is unclear why trichotomies like the intentional/effectual/communicational should count as terminological experiments whilst the emotional/energetic/logical counts as a distinct division. And finally, there is little provision in Peirce’s projected sixty-six classes of signs for the kind of additional classifications imposed by further subdivisions of the interpretant. (For more on this discussion see, Liszka 1990 and 1996; Fitzgerald 1966; Lalor 1997; Short 1981, 1996, and 2004).
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