Gary et. al.,
It's just occurred to me that there's another reciprocal pair of semiotic
principles corresponding to that mutual relationship of logic and "the social
principle" where each is "rooted" in the other. The other reciprocal pair is
this: (1) All thought is in signs (EP1:24), and (2) All signs are in thought.
The latter is not a direct quotation but a paraphrase of Peirce's statement
(EP2:273) that "thought is the chief, if not the only, mode of representation",
in a paragraph which has just stated that only a representamen "with a mental
interpretant" is a sign. Of course "one must not take a nominalistic view of
Thought as if it were something that a man had in his consciousness. ... It is
we that are in it, rather than it in any of us” (CP 8.256; see also EP2:269,
etc.) -- and the same goes for this usage of "mental". Biosemiotics would seem
to be rooted in the principle that all living beings are "in thought" in this
Peircean sense.
I hope this isn't too obvious to be worth mentioning to Peirceans, because some
of the implications of this thought/sign reciprocity have yet to be fully
explored (if they can ever be fully explored!) ... indeed they are related to
the subject of Intelligence Augmentation which the still current slow read is
dealing with. They are also related to Terrence Deacon's observation in
_Incomplete Nature_ that recursive or reciprocal processes are essential to
teleodynamics and thus to life and sentience. I'm wondering now whether a
reciprocal relation between *different* recursive loops is essential to
Thirdness itself. Perhaps we can take this up along with Deacon's book.
Gary F.
} Our duty is to strive for self-realization and we should lose ourselves in
that aim. [Gandhi] {
www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce
-----Original Message-----
Sent: January-09-12 2:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in
logic, was, [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote
Kirsti, List,
I hope you are feeling much better when you read this, Kirsti. You
wrote:
KM: I've never thought the concept of 'ground' in Gestalt theory is, or could
be, the same or even nearly the same as in Peirce's philosophy.
GR: I agree with and never meant to imply that you might think that the two
concepts of ground were the same or "even nearly the same." Perhaps I meant
simply to suggest that since in a philosophical analysis we are free to use
'ground' in the vernacular sense, or as it is used in psychology, or in a
Peircean sense, that we--including myself, of course!--need to be especially
careful not to conflate concepts when the language used to express them is
similar or even identical (and as there may indeed be ways in which their
meanings overlap to some extent--certainly the etymology of the 3 usages of
'ground' just mentioned is the *earthy* one!) Again, this seems especially
important when we imagine that a term such as 'ground' as used in psychology
"may be useful in philosophy," as you wrote. So I hope we are in agreement here.
KM: Anyway, I look forward to reading your thoughts on Zeman.
GR: This has already been posted, I believe in the same message to which you're
responding, namely, that of 1/6/12,
KR: Then, to your trichotomics. - I think there still are some problems.
GR: No doubt! As Peirce wrote, his categories and trichotomies are meant mainly
to be suggestive, heuristic if you will. Although it is certainly possible to
diagram a trichotomy wholly *incorrectly*, yet even when *correct*, there could
never be a single trichotomic diagram which could approach its subject--its
object--in any more than a schematic way.
In any event, diagram observation--trikonic or otherwise--is ultimately more a
social matter (a scientific tool for the community to use) than it is an
individual one, while I am quite certain from my own experience, that diagram
creation and observation benefits the individual's understanding too. As for
the philosophical or scientific community, through our critical commonsense we
affirm, or correct, or further develop the diagram.
So, again, the trichotomies individuals set forth, even Peirce's, are meant to
be reflected upon, corrected, developed. Peirce himself modified any number
richotomies he himself devised, a (very) few even radically. For example, on
this list we once discussed how for most of his logical career he saw deduction
(as necessary thinking) in the place of thirdness, and induction at 2ns. But
for a (very) few years he reversed those categorial positions, returning to his
original analysis late in the 19th century, and staying with it until his death
(you can read about this reversal, then reversal of the reversal, in the
Turrisi edition of the 1905 Harvard Lectures, 276-277).
Still, there are trichotomies which, once posited, Peirce didn't change at all
(for one simple example, rheme/dicent/argument). And this is the case not only
for tricategorial *elements*, but as regards certain vectorial *paths*
throughgiven trichotomies. For example, moving for a moment into metaphysics,
he stated once for all the categorial path of biological evolution such that
chance sporting, 1ns, is followed by habit-taking, 3ns, sometimes resulting in
a structural change in the organism, 2ns).
Yet, for us positing 'new' trichotomies, there is surely the danger of being
wrong, or even when 'right' needing the community to 'tweak' our diagrams a
little or a lot. So, you wrote: "Trichotomies, in Peircean semiotics, apply to
divisions of signs, sign classifications in the first place." Continuing, you
quoted the trikonic diagram I provided, then commented:
KM: Taking the standpoint of the utterer first is not the same as putting the
utterer the first in the diagram. - It means thinking out what the first - from
this particular standpoint - actually - and even
necessarily- is. // Well, think about it.
I have thought about it, but I'm not at all sure what your intended meaning is
here. Perhaps the confusion comes from the terms I used in my diagram. Indeed,
it seems to me that an attempt to apply such language ("utterer" or
"interpreter") to, for example, a biosemiotic analysis would be illegitimate
in, for example, Deacon's sense of introducing a kind of homunculus (a little
man-mind) into the analysis of a natural biological process. Peirce's
expressions, 'quasi-utterer' and 'quasi-interpreter' (CP 4.551) are better than
my simple 'utterer' and 'interpretant', while it remains exceedingly difficult
to devise a scientific language expressing all aspects of semiosis such as they
occur in nature (code-semiotics not fully treating of the triadic semiosic
relations involved in emergence, for example).
Still, as Peirce remarks, and in consideration of the need to include natural
as well as human signs, "Must not every sign, in order to become a sign, be
uttered?" (CP 8.348). So, perhaps one could say that there is in nature a kind
of semiotic utterance, but no utterer as such, a kind of semiotic
interpretation, but no interpreter as such, etc. Still, the 'quasi-uttering'
is, as I see it placed correctly in the position of firstness.
Best,
Gary
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L
listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to
[email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the
message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
