Jim, list:
I pretty well agree with the following two paragraphs. I'd like to make
some friendly amendments, however. I don't think one sign carries more
evidential weight than another, but then I'm not clear on what you mean
because I don't understand how abstraction is related nor what your
conception of it is in the sentences below. Do you mean a visual experience
of a the tree is more particularized in terms of data than the visual or
auditory experience of the word tree? To say one of those is more or less
abstract than the other seems strange to me.
What I miss in your post, and in Ben's response, is a fuller recognition of
*usage* in sign function. You get to it at the end of first paragraph
below, in connection with abstraction, but you need to put it to use at a
more basic level.
I agree that all we know (or know that we know) is mediated by signs,
including trees. We never apprehend the existential object we call "tree."
We have only instances of signs of "treeness," which are not emitted by
trees, but which we learn to use as signs. Our information processing
system rather favors abstraction. The psychologist George Miller has a
delightful essay called "The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" which
toys with the research finding that our short term memory can only deal with
seven items, plus or minus two, at a time. If you think about that, and how
we process a sentence, such as "The boy threw his ball into the forest where
it rolled to the foot of a tree" you have conclude that our dealing with
concepts is not richly particularized. We really don't (can't) get involved
in the particulars of signs; they exist as possibles, potentials of the
processing, but not as actuals. That is, we may take for granted the ball
was round, tree had branches, roots and leaves--possibly of the Oak type. I
tend to think in terms of "contextual potentials." For example, if I ask
you if you've ever been to Siberia, and you haven't, you don't have to
search your memory for the experience of not being there. It's simply not a
potential of your information context.
To speak of experiencing a tree as an object apart from semiosis seems to me
to speak of a transcendental experience; the tree is not the source of
signs, but the product of them. There are some very disciplined ascetics in
the traditional Orient who lay claim to "pure" experience and I believe some
of them. For the rest of us lay persons, a tree is the product of our use
of sensory data in the creation of signs and constructs. We have to learn
to use sensory data to have any meaningful experiences; even a purely
aesthetic experience--should such a event occur--could never be purely
sensory. It would be merely chaotic. No matter now effortless semiotics
may seem, signs are a product of usage. So is "experience" to the extent
that it is anything more than meaningless variance in some kind of
sensorium.
As for verification, it seems to me that is the heart of pragmaticism:
verification occurs as we operationally determine that a diamond will
scratch more things than it is scratched by. While that is a truth relative
to the operation, within the operation it is an absolute. In my mind the
pragmatic maxim means that we approximate truth to the point where whatever
variances may occur make no difference to the operation performed. In other
words, we get a consensus or a congruence good enough or close enough that
the differences don't make a difference. That is certainly the case in
communication; there is no better possibility.
I think all our conceptions and knowledge of our experience is through
signs. That, for us, all the world is signs. But I will concede that in
certain situations for certain purposes some signs carry more evideniary
weight (both literally and figuratively) than others. Not all signs are
equally abstract. The sign that we typically call a tree in the forest is
less abstract than the sign we typically call the word tree. The word
tree has abstracted most of the form from the substance of the tree
growing in the forest. To mistake one sign of a tree for another is a
mistake we make at our own peril. But to suppose that reality is neatly
divided into objects and signs of those objects is I think a mistake that
Peirce was trying to correct. So called concrete objects are no more real
than their abstract cousins. Nor vice versa. One emphasizes substance
the other orm -- each has its place but there exists neither pure
substance nor pure form. And ultimately both form and substance are
conceptualized only through signs. The distinction between a sign and an
object is a matter of usage not a distinction that by which god has carved
up reality. One man's sign is another man's object. The distinction
between signs and objects is closer to the distinction between verbs and
nouns than folks suppose. It's a matter of usage.
For some purposes we prefer the more abstract object of a sign. For other
purposes we prefer the more concrete objects of signs. For example it is
easier to speak of or think about how to build a house out of abstract
trees than to actually do the the trial and error of using less abstract
trees. Conversely it is much easier to live in a house built of the more
substantial variety of trees. I might add too that our conception of a
tree in the forest is more problematic and abstract than we generally
suppose. What for example is the difference between a grasses, bushes and
trees
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