Sorry, Ben, for the garbled message. I sent it off accidentally before
rereading it to pick up on rewordings without corresponding correction of
the syntax. The first sentence should read: I'm wondering if you are
acquainted with the paper "Fourthness," by Herbert Schneider in the 1952
collection of essays _Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce_,
ed. Wiener & Young (Harvard U Press)?
Joe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 6:55 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben,
It is sometimes referred to retrospectively as the "First Series"
since a volume subsequently appeared which is also called "Studies in the
Philosophy of CSP", but differentiated from the first by being called the
Second Series of this collection. It was published, however, by the
University of Massachusetts Press in 1964 and edited by Moore and Robin.
Schneider calls the supposed fourth factor "importance" (which he
distinguishes from "import") and explicates it in terms of "satisfaction",
which seems to have much the same logical function as what you discuss in
terms of "verification". I am not saying that I see your view in his
exactly but rather that I seem to see some similarity with your view in his
explication of it as being required in order to account for the universal as
"concrete" rather than merely an abstraction. (Peirce does talk somewhere
of "concrete reasonableness" as being a fourthness while denying at the same
time that this introduces something not formally resolvable in terms of the
other three factors. That is, I seem to recall this, but I can find nothing
in my notes that says where that passage is. Does anyone else recall this,
I wonder, or have I merely hallucinated it?)
Joe Ransdell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:10 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Jim, list,
>>[Ben] That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or
>>acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the
>>common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that
>>expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they
>>will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from
>>books. There is good reason for this.
>>[Ben] The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The
>>experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of
>>experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you
>>stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about
>>math problems and working those math problems yourself.
>[Jim] Dear Ben,
>[Jim] Thanks for another helpful and interesting post!
>[Jim] You seem to be saying that we can have two types of acquaintance with
>objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation
>of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety
>of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make
>sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct
>aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of
>representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning?
Yes and no.
No: "Direct" and "unmediated" don't mean the same thing. There's lots of
"sub-logical" or "sub-semiotic" stuff going on. I don't mean "illogical,"
instead I mean, "not inference-processing." We perceive directly, but
there's lots of "mediation" by things -- dynamic, material, biological --
which we don't perceive. Likewise in conscious experience there are
contributions by unconscious inference processes. If we order by principles
of knowledge, principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know
thing, then experience comes first. When we analyze experience, we start
breaking it down into elements whereby we explain what we do experience.
We can break experience down into, for instance, dynamic processes (in which
I've said in the past that we should look for the involvement of 'inverse'
or multi-objective optimization), material stochastic processes, and
vegetable-level information processes. In idioscopy, if we order by
explanatory principles then we will put physics first, as usual. If we order
by knowledge principles, we will put inference processes first (in
idiosocopy this means the sciences of intelligent life). The maths are
typically ordered in the "order of knowledge" rather than an "order of
being" -- ordered on principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we
know things, and structures of order and deductive theory of logic are
usually considered more basic and foundational. This is the opposite of the
situation in idioscopy.
Anyway, recognition, interpretation, representation, and objectification are
elements in a logical a.k.a. semiotic process. If we order by "explanatory
principles" aka the traditional "order of being," which corresponds to the
order of semiotic determination, then we explain by the object. Yet there is
more than objects in semiosis, and there is more than forces and motion in
the concrete world.
Yes: One can experience things (1) as semiotic objects and (2) as signs and
(3) as interpretants and (4) as recognitions. So make that four "kinds" of
experience instead of two. I don't really think of it as resulting in four
_kinds_ of experience, though. One can experience things as being,
respectively, (1) sources of semiotic determination, (2)
conveyers/facilitators/"encodings" of semiotic determination, (3)
clarifiers/"decodings" of semiotic determination, and (4)
establishers/"recipients" of semiotic determination. It can be noted here
that, when Peirce says that by "collateral experience" he does not refer to
experience with the sign system itself, he is not saying that there is no
such thing as experience with the sign system itself. The most thorough
confirmatory experience will be experience not exclusively of the object but
also of the signs & interpretants representing it, and indeed one checks
that which was the immediate object as well. One checks one's assumptions,
premisses, everything that one can. If one could not experience things as
serving in all the various elementary semiotic roles, then it would severely
limit semiosis's reflexivity, self-accessibility, self-testing power, its
capacity to develop higher-order and "meta" structures (semiosis about
semiosis itself, etc.). I regard higher-order structures as the rule, not
the exception, in semiosis. E.g., I regard sciences and maths as disciplines
of knowing in or on what light or basis one knows things; affective arts as
disciplines of understanding in what effects one feels things; political,
military, and "power" affairs as "arenas" of deciding (or its getting
decided) who or what gets to decide things; etc., etc. So one can focus on a
sign and treat it, in its very signhood, as a subject matter, a semiotic
object, of a higher-order or higher-intentional semiosis which constitutes
one's study of that sign.
When one experiences a thing directly, one experiences it in a recognition
formed collaterally to signs and interpretants which are thereby tested. If
one experiences it in defiance of prior expectations, then things which one
took as signs & interpretants are disconfirmed. When we stop and examine our
experience, we can notice a lot of this, I think, and it seems like
mediation to me. I also spoke of the idea of an "unassimilated shard of
brute experience" which I imagine as breaking through environing experience
in such a way as to cause a semiosis breakdown of some sort. I mean that I
don't expect experience always to be "nice and refined.".
>[Jim] Is it your view that even without signs (or the process of
>representation) that experience would be meaningful to us?
No. I mean, I don't think that experience is an "alternate channel," as if
semiosis were AM radio & experience were FM radio. I think that experience
is unconsciously mediated by all kinds of things, including but not limited
to inference processes, and that a mind is capable of experiencing things as
serving in any basic logical/semiotic role.
>[Jim] Is it your view that that signs and the process of representation are
>(merely) tools for comunicating or thinking about our experience but are
>otherwise not required for experience to be meaningful?
No, that's not my view.
>[Jim] Personally I don't think Peirce meant that we can conceive of objects
>without engaging in representation. ....
I, too, don't think that Peirce meant that and for my part I don't mean that
either.
>[Jim] .... We may have aquaintance with objects in the same sense that two
>billiard balls are aquainted when they collide but this is not triadic
>aquaintance for the billiard balls and conveys no meaning to them.
Well, I hope I've made clear at this point that I don't regard experience in
that way. I regard it as tetradic, not dyadic, and as formed collaterally to
sign and interpretant in respect of the object, and both determining
semiosis going forward, and, in its collaterality, determined logically by
sign and interpretant, and also by the object, both by the determination
running through the sign and interpretant, and by the collateral experience
of the object itself. This fourthness is the balancement & stability of
forces in a system, it is structure. It is not by any amount of
interpretation or elucidation, instead it is by collaterally based
recognition, that one brings doubt reasonably to stable rest on which one
can act and build. Experience is one's undergoing and supporting (or failure
in supporting) of forces acting on one. The treatment of secondness, as
indifferently, unbalanced force and balanced resistance, is an unfortunate
conflation, just as if matter and action/energy had been conflated. Force
and structure are equivalent and complementary in the same sense that matter
and energy are equivalent and complementary.
This collateral accessing of the object is itself an experiential
recognition collateral to signs and interpretants, but is not _in question_
at the time, so we don't analyze it down into signs and interpretants. It
may be of a very different kind than the signs and interpretants in
question -- its inferential elements may be barely conscious or largely
unconscious and it may "feel" a lot less mediated -- phenomenologically the
object _is_ and you _know_ it. That's people's favorite way. Check against
those "channels" which are surest and most habitual. In the same way, an
interpretant's separate representation of the object doesn't come from
nowhere but is itself a semiotic product, quite possibly the product of a
collateral semiosis -- it's a collateral understanding -- but such
collateral semiosis just doesn't happen to be _in question_ in the analysis
at the time, and so we draw a straight leg of the triangle running directly
from intepretant to object, though, by analysis, we could add nodes along
that leg and break the leg down into sign, intepretant, interpretant, etc.
One doesn't fashion an interpretation in an interpretive vacuum. One arrives
at an interpretant or a theory in a larger interpretive or theoretical
context.
In information theory, the recipient is that for which the information
emerging from the decoding is redundant or not and is true or not, etc. The
recipient tests against the totality of information received through "other
channels." What other channels? They aren't drawn in the elementary diagram.
They're not in question. But they're there. Why does this recipient rather
than a "second, and bigger decoder" have this role? The decoder is more or
less pre-set, a result of evolution or design -- quite a lot of variability
and responsiveness presumably can be built in, too. But the recipient is, or
counts as, the one who would test and evaluate the information system
itself, redesign it, even junk it. The recipient becomes ultimately the
architect and the "evolutionator" :-). So it is with the recognizant as
opposed to the interpretant.
>[Jim] For me, all meaningful experience is triadic and representational.
>That one conception of an object is taken as foundational for a particular
>discussion does not priviledge that object as the "real object" but merely
>as the object commonly understood as the criteria against which the
>validity of assertions will be tested. Its as though the discussants were
>saying that the object ultimately under discussion is "that one over there"
>or "the one described in this sentence" or whatever -- but hopefully
>always one which all participants to the discussion have at least in theory
>equal access. The issue of what constitutes a collateral object rests less
>on the distinction between direct aquaintance vs aquaintance through signs
>but one of private vs public access to the object.
>[Jim] A useful collateral object is one to which all discussants have equal
>access. The question being raised by collateral experience is really one
>of public vs private experience. The question is not whether the
>collateral object is known through representation or somehow more directly
>through dyadic aquaintance because (in my view) all meaningful experience
>(even so called direct experience) is mediated through signs.
That's not as Peircean as it may seem. The difference between private &
public is important in terms of what _can_ be shared or not, and not in
terms of what happens to be shared or not. If somebody complains of seeing a
talking turkey and nobody else can see it even though they look all around,
the talking turkey is, with a vanishingly small uncertainty, a delusion.
That's a question not just of actual sharedness but of sharability.
When one has various experiences and interpretations, etc., one is a commind
of various sub-minds; one is a particularly tight community. If I arrive at
some notion by a particular approach but I find myself unable to arrive at
it by any other approach, I start to think that I've made a mistake,
because, in effect, I can't share the notion even with myself.
The point is whether what we or I or you think true is really true or not.
We have these interpretants, these construals. Are they valid and true? The
interpretants formed in terms of conceivable experience which would have
conceivable practical bearing. Peirce says that repeatedly. Well, then, in
order to check them, we have to check experience -- rummage through past
experience and/or go about acquiring further experience. The interpretants
themselves invite us to do so. But no finite community is assured of
reaching the truth. When I assure myself that such-&-such is the case, I do
so in a way which I expect would convince other people following the same
steps. In other words, I apply a general standard of confirmation. None of
us runs out and grabs our neighbors to help us check and be sure whether the
coffee is really ready or not, and so on.
A old man who sometimes drank heavily in my building insisted that there was
an occasional leak from his bathroom ceiling. His apartment was such a mess
that who could be sure? Our Superintendent and our managing agent's
investigator both looked and couldn't find evidence of it, and the
investigator made fun of him to us. Most of us (on the board of directors)
laughed. I still had my doubts -- on the basis of having known the man for a
while and on the basis of experience with groupthink. One day the man called
me into his apartment and there the leak was, drip, drip, drip from the
ceiling. I went and dragged the co-op's president in to look at it, because
I didn't want to hear later that I was "just imagining things." And so we
finally got a plumber to find the source and do the repairs. Groupthink can
be quite deluded.
Peirce decidedly disagrees that the real is that imagined thing which
conforms to others' imagined things. This follows from the fact that no
finite actual group of individuals has an assured access to truth or
knowledge of reality. Peirce decidedly disagrees that the real is defined
as, or amounts to, that about which you agree with the people around you or
that about which you agree with all the people on Earth. As a clinical
psychologist, you're aware that sometimes that coarse kind of epistemology
is the only way to get some people "back to earth" and a way for a
psychologist to characterize non-delusionality in simple social terms. It's
also a way for the psychologist to keep himself or herself from getting lost
among the weirdos -- take the more general social norms as the standard
reference system. But it is a coarse tool, not a workable philosophy, and in
some cases it goes terribly wrong, as described in the old book
_Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds_. Did you know
that Newton himself ridiculed one of the early financial bubbles as a sure
loser, but ended up investing in it? If I remember correctly, Newton ended
up losing money on it too. A delusion may be just a lot of hot air, but
build the right balloon, and the balloon does rise for a while, and it's
tempting to people to try to make a buck on it even if in the end one
believes that balloon will come down. And consider the popular, once nearly
universal belief in witchcraft, with attendant violence against accused
witches. That's covered in that old book, too.
>[Jim] The difference between reading about something and doing it is not a
>matter of representational vs non representational aquaintance but
>between two different representations of the same object. There are folks
>who can read about pro football who can not play it and there are folks who
>can play pro football who can not read. Representation of experience is
>required for both activities. The common object represented is neither the
>football-done nor the football-read but the quality of football that is
>common to and inheres in both. Some of the habits acquired in mastering
>one respresentation or conception are not the same as required for
>mastering the other.
To the contrary, books about football are only secondarily about
football-as-written-about. They are primarily about football actually
played. Football actually played is only secondarily about
football-as-written-about ("If we run this play, the reporters will call us
geniuses. Why not give it a shot?"). People who can play football may, some
of them, be unable to read about it, but, one way or another, they can be
told about it. The rendering equivalent of experiences with objects to
experiences with the faintest representations of them, would leave the mind
lost at sea. The given object ends up nowhere and everywhere. And it's a
package deal. If objects can't be grappled with, then signs can't be
grappled with, because now you're grappling with a sign of a sign of
...(insert infinite series of "sign of" here) of the sign on which you were
supposedly focused. I think that you need to address and confront logically
the infinite regression which you set up. The way which you distance
yourself from objects results in your distancing yourself from any
representations through which you could still access them.
>[Jim] I don't mean for these last two paragraphs above to leap frog your
>answers but more as guides to what is troubling me and what I mean by my
>questions. Thanks again for your comments, Ben. I am still studying them,
>but want to make sure I'm understanding you as I go. Making sure I
>understand your distinction between direct aquaintance and sign mediated
>aquaintance seems an important lst step.
Well, let's hope there isn't another electrical blackout, or else this
discussion will pause. Or maybe let's hope that there is another blackout,
because I seem to have turned suddenly all too prolific! :-)
Best, Ben
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