MessageAuke, list, >[Auke] Ben I have the feeling that much of your uneasyness is a consequence of >the way in which you use the terms. It seems as if you promote the semiotic >aspects that can be discerned (are involved) in signs to full fledged signs. I >try to make this clear between the lines.
>[Auke] BU: >>There is a qualisign which is the English word "red," and which consists in >>the appearance and/or sound of the word as written/printed/uttered. The >>qualisign "red"'s semiotic object is the sinsign "red" which is the single >>actual appearance of the word "red" on the page or its single utterance. The >>sinsign "red" is a replica of the symbol "red" (and is an index). This >>bothers me because the semiotic object of both the legisign and sinsign >>"red"s is the red thing or redness (dependently on context), but the semiotic >>object of the qualisign "red" is the sinsign "red," because a qualisign is >>always an icon and can have for its object only that which it resembles. --- >[Auke] I would state things differently like: the English word "red" involves >the qualisign aspect. With "qualisign aspect" we draw attention to the >qualities of a sign, its appearance or sound when written, printed, uttered, >part of thought or perceived, to the exclusion of all other aspects. It seems six of one or half a dozen of the other. >[Auke] Since 'qualisign' is a possible and not an existent it needs the >sinsign aspect for its embodiment. Without embodiment it will never be able to > function as a sign and will have object nor interpretant. >[Auke] Only when we engage in a study of the process by which mind processes >signs it makes some sense to ask for the object of a qualisign (aka emotional >interpretant). "Only?" I'm not sure what makes you think that I don't have such a process in mind, and what you say sounds arbitrary and limiting. Any time when it is claimed that something is a sign, can be a good time to ask what is its semiotic object. You can make explicit the theme of involved mental process in order to enrich the context, not to replace the context. I think that it is wrong to say that the qualisign is equated with the emotional interpretant. >[Auke] One of the objects in the range of possibilities is the sinsign that >arouse the feeling. We must be aware however that the sign in this case is not >"red", but the "feeling of red" and the object is not "the object of the >sinsign red", but the "sinsign red" itself. Here we have one of the possible >sources of error in the process by which signs generate their meaning effects. The sign in this case is not "feeling of red" but "feeling of 'red' " i.e. the appearance of the _word_ "red." I think I've already made clear that I'm talking about the appearance of the word "red" such that the sinsign "red" is its semiotic object and that I haven't erroneously held that its semiotic object is something else. I've been arguing, moreover, that that is a problem. >[Auke] The sinsign 'red' is not a replica of the symbol red, it is a replica >of the legisign "red". The symbol "red" is by its very symbolicity a legisign; it's not an accidental relationship. It's not that the symbol "red" is in some composite sense also a legisign, like an added sidecar. Qua symbol it _is_ a legisign, and the replica of such legisign is replica of such symbol. >[Auke] The symbol "red" is as you state indexically connected with the replica >sinsign. But since it is a habit, it must be a symbolical idexical aka replica >indexical relation. >[Auke] The relation material word - word form differs from the relation word - >meaning. >[Auke] BU: >> And actually, I don't understand how it is that the sinsign "red," -- when >> used mainly as a replica of the symbol (and not used indexically with an >> implicit "over there!") -- can be regarded as having redness or something >> red as its semiotic object. If its semiotic object is redness or something >> red, because it is a replica, then I don't see why a qualisign "red" should >> not have redness or something red as its semiotic object by virtue of being >> a kind of qualisignal version of a replica of the symbol. I'd rather say >> that the single utterance/appearance of "red" is simply a symbolic sinsign >> (or "sinsignal symbol") and that the qualisign "red" is simply a symbolic >> qualisign. >[Auke] The sinsign can only have something as its object if it is not only >recognized as a sinsign but also as a replica sinsign (legisign) with a symbol >attached. If we prescind from that for the sake of analysis, we attribute >other objects. It is akin to what happens if we shift from a syllogism and its >object to one of the propositions and its object. This is the first time that I've heard that every sinsign is a replica with a symbol attached. Does Peirce say that somewhere? What you say in the paragraph's remainder is vague. >[Auke] The, in a sinsign embodied, qualisign can only involve the legisign and >symbol if there is an established habit that determines such involvement. It >is more safe to assume the lower sign types (the 10 types resulting from the >three triads of aspects) involved in the higher, than to assume the higher to >be present in the lower. A symbolic sign involves qualisigns, but a qualisign >is not on its own account a symbolic sign. There very much seems to be an established habit among those familiar with the words, whereby the appearances of words like "red" and "horse" are interpreted as involving the general ideas (close enough to "the legisignal symbols") of the red and the horse, not to mention mental icons & images of red and of horses. So I think that it is _safe_ to assume that such things happen. English-speakers are responding _to_ the look and sound of the words, and not merely to those words which happen to have the requisite looks and sounds. It is hard to see why a qualisign needs to be a symbol "on its own account" in order to be a symbol on one or another account at all. A legisign needs to be general on its own account. A symbol needs to have a certain effect on the interpretant independently of what the symbolic sign resembles or points at. If the sinsign word "red" is an index because of its real, historical connection through linguistic history with red things or through its connection in one's personal history with red things, then all meaningful natural resemblances are really indices too, bound up with the history and initial conditions of our Big Bang universe. At this point, every concretely embodied sign in the concrete world is "really" an index. As it happens, I look at these classifications in a two-dimensional way whereby there's actually some truth to that last statement. But it's not the Peircean way to look at it, and, insofar as this is where the idea that the sinsign "red" is an index leads, it's a problem for Peircean semiotics. It seems to me to be an everyday phenomenon that some appearances are symbols to minds, in the everyday sense of the word "symbol." What you have drifted away from confronting is my point that we have a strange irregular detouring of accounts, and you simply restate the very principles which I'm arguing are called into question by the convolutions of explanations. Again, these convolutions are -- that the sinsign which seems symbolic is explained as the indexical replica of a symbol and as somehow thereby having as its indexical semiotic object that which is the semiotic object of attached symbol -- and that, meanwhile, the appearance which seems symbolic is explained as an iconic qualisign of that replica and as having the replica as its semiotic object because it can have only that which resembles it for its semiotic object. So the symbol-replicant index indicates that which the symbol symbolizes but the replica-iconic qualisign resembles or portrays the symbol-replicant index. I don't think that you're confronting the subject by suggesting that this is not a legitimate context in which to ask about a sign's semiotic object. It's certainly okay if you want to enrich the context by explicitly involving the question of how a mind processes signs, but so far you seem to be replacing the context with another, rather than confronting the first context with an enrichment. And the depicted mental process seems like a semiotic "mechanics" to which much effort is devoted to making it work on paper while it drifts away from the idea of corresponding to common experience. >[Auke] BU: >> The only purpose that I can see in the constraints which eliminate these >> options is to maintain a rule which restrains the multiplication of signs >> but does little else except to multiply problems, having us adding little >> detours and curlicues like the conception of the "replica" and like the >> qualisign's being an icon of an indexical sinsign which is a replica of a >> symbol. >[Auke] I see an other purpose. Every distinction is justified by its ability >to discern sources of error. The idea of a detour arises if we assume meaning >aspects to be present when they are in fact not present. A qualisign is, still, a sign and therefore can be expected to be caught up fully, in its every phenomenological aspect, in the metaboly of signs. I think that the concern to avoid attributing higher phenomena to lower ones is adequately met by that consideration. Sometimes the idea of a detour arises because there is a detour. Again, I think that you've not pointed out any error, but have merely repeated Peircean semiotic principles and distinctions, as if error consisted simply in not following them, and you haven't addressed the points which I've raised, which are troublesome for some of those principles. I think I've pointed out vitiative irregularities at least suggestive of error in accounting for symbolic relations with indices & icons Even leaving aside animal phenomena in which some colors are "interpreted" or at least decoded as embodying certain meanings & values as requiring certain responses in virtue of what they mean to the animal's or to its species' weal or ill, -- even leaving those phenomena aside, there is "color coding" in heraldry, traffic lights, movies (for better or worse), and many other things. In various movies (e.g., _The Day After_) about the end of the world, when the end comes, the notes of _Dies Irae_ are played. The words go unsung in Latin or any other language. The tune symbolizes Judgment Day. This is an established habit among professional movie score composers which they all recognize as a habit of interpretation even if they don't all use it in composing. The tune could hardly symbolize Judgment Day if it did not share qualities of ominousness and foreboding commonly associated with Judgment Day. But the reference is much more specific than that. Is it an index? Well, it's an index of thoughts about Judgment Day. Every replica could be taken as an index of a thought. But then the semiotic object of the replica is not Judgment Day but instead a thought about Judgment Day. Then replicas are indices of thoughts legisigned, while the general appearance of a replica is a qualisign whose semiotic object is such replica in general. The problem here is that none of this gibes with experience. It sounds like an attempt to fashion a semiotic "mechanics" that works on paper but doesn't match life. The tone and the token make me think about Judgment Day and only secondarily about my thoughts about Judgment Day or about somebody's thoughts about Judgment Day. The use of the _Dies Irae_ tune in classical music to refer to Judgment Day goes back at least to Berlioz and Lizst. The charging up of themes with symbolic signification was taken to a high pitch by Wagner. Are we to explain these all as icons of dream-versions of Judgment Day or of whatever? Are we to explain the symbolicly significant qualisign "horse" as really an icon of a linguistic version, a linguistic "appearance," of the horse itself? That explanation would be _too_ powerful, as the phrase goes. And it would also be a revision of Peirce whom it was supposed to defend. It would make of every replica either a linguistic aspect of the semiotic object itself, or an icon of a linguistic aspect of the semiotic object. And it would undermine the need for a conception of symbols. And it would be just plain far-fetched. I see no basis for holding that symbolic meaning aspects are absent from qualities, to which "The idea of a detour arises if we assume meaning aspects to be present when they are in fact not present" seems to allude. As for the phaneroscopic account whereby qualities are simply and only themselves, I don't think that that gibes with common experience, I describe how it seems not to gibe, and I ask how it would gibe. I see a motivation to maintain the triangle-building idea that qualities are somehow too primitive for the mind to treat them as symbols. I think that there is a contradictory spirit in simultaneously holding that every symbol leads to an icon with an index attached, but cannot be embodied singularly or qualitatively _as_ a symbol. If there is no "pure" realm of symbols, much less a "pure" realm of "pure symbols," why are we so concerned to keep the symbolic power from inhering in resistances and qualities for minds? Best, Ben >> In everyday language and thought we think of such qualities as colors as >> quite capable of being symbolic in certain typical contexts, and certain >> appearances such as that of the English word "horse" are so tied habitually >> with specific symbolic significations that I think it's just strange to say >> that it's false that the qualisign "horse" has for its semiotic object not a >> horse but an individual utterance, writing, or printing of the word "horse." >> Now, suppose I define a kind of sign which I call an "evocant," and define >> it as any sign which is either a symbol or a replica of a symbol. The >> distinction between sinsign & legisign is not abolished by this. Instead, >> the replica becomes simply the sinsignal evocant and the symbol is the >> legisinal evocant. Well, it wouldn't be enough. If I define the evocant >> simply as either symbol or replica, then I've defined it as either symbol or >> a kind of index whose significative power I've already found problematic. >> Instead I have to argue that a singular thing is capable of "evoking" and I >> have to define this as a power much like symbolizing. I'd have to argue that >> the habits which constitute symbols can be tied to qualisigns in such a way >> as to embody themselves in sinsigns such that the qualisign "horse"'s >> object, the sinsign "horse"'s object, and the legisign "horse"'s object, are >> all the horse, insofar as all three evoke the horse in the interpretant >> mind. Now is it really false that the qualisign, the appearance, "horse" >> evokes a horse in its interpretant's mind? I think that the appearance of >> the word does evoke a horse in my mind at least, because of the habitual >> connection of that appearance with an idea of a horse. Furthermore the >> interplay of singular utterances, qualitative appearances, and habits, do >> affect the symbol in its habitual character. >> Best, Ben Udell --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
