Bill, Geez, I think that we're talking mostly past each other at this point. You don't seem to feel the force of an objection to bad logical regression, in particular. Whatever philosophy may be, a quintessential philosophical move has been to apply the philosophical claims to the philosophizing itself. It may be that you are familiar with the philosophical phenomenological approach and don't think that it is quite that important. But if you're not particularly familiar with it, then Merleau-Ponty is a good place to get it in concentrated dosage, especially in _The Structure of Behavior_ and _The Phenomenology of Perception._ Merleau-Ponty, in addition to being a philosopher, was a child psychologist who kept current with the perceptual and neurological work being done in his time.
Best, Ben Udell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 6:48 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Ben, and whatever list members are still reading, I'm going to do some pruning; if necessary, we can always go back. Again, BB for me, BU for you >>BU: Sorry. One little correction of a phrase which would otherise be very >>confusing. - Ben >>BU: If we never can apprehend an existent object, then we never can >>apprehend any existent signs of it, either. >BB: I don't see how that follows. My point only argues that all our >experience of the object is mediated in and through our sensory system, and >therefore we do not experience the object as it existentially is, but as >our sensory system responds to it and in terms our minds can make sense of >it. BU: The conception of "sign" is much more general than that of "sensory-system event." "Sign" just means something that conveys information about something. What reason could there be to think that perception is both impossible of the existent source of info and yet still possible of the existent conveyor of info? It seems quite arbitrary. If one makes a general statement that we never perceive existent objects, that applies to them whether they are serving as semiotic objects, or as signs, or as whatever else. BB: Well, one reason is that the sensory system event (the conveyor of info. in the above paragraph) is the perceptual event; all that is experienced of the existential object occurs in and through that sensory system--the information medium. That sensory system is comprised of electrochemical events that are not the result of "inputs" into the system, but are rather systemic responses to impingements upon the system. Stimuli do not cause responses; rather they occasion them. So in short, the medium of information is "all its own stuff," and whatever isomorphism there may be between it's stuff and the existential world is surely more informational construct than "direct" experience--whatever that could mean. BU: One will more thoroughly perceive a thing if one perceives it as both source of its own and as conveyor others' info, and indeed in whatever semiotic role it fills. In particular, why would you think that a sensory-system event can [CORRECTION] be perceived [END correction] but other concrete objects/events can't? Sensory-system events are, if anything, harder to perceive, since they try to stay "in the background," be like the glass in the window or like the lens, the fluid, or the cornea of the eye. Sensory-system events come into relief when one is struggling a bit with some distortive effect, say in waking up, when one is a bit dizzy, or via the ingestion of alcohol or other drugs which will reveal to the mind, under abnormalized conditions, by the resultant contrast what an amazing job its systems do under normal conditions. It seems no easier and instead rather harder, to perceive sensory-system events from outside, as events in a nervous system, in such a way that one can perceive the 'objective' event in its connections to the experienced distortion as the experienced distortion's "other side." BB: Except in the data of sensory events, in what do you think the experience of the object is constituted? The sensory events are hardly limited to nausea and migraine! BU: Now, a sensory perception scientist might say, "all we really perceive are sensory-system events." S/he means that it's all mediated through sensory-system events. S/he is concerned with the mechanisms involved, not with what _perceiving_ is. For many expository purposes of that person, the verbal confusion of the medium or channel with the object not only causes little problem, but is actually rather convenient, putting the audience's focus on events which, in order to let other events shine through, try to keep from standing out themselves. In this sense, his/her deviant use of the word "perceive" actually _depends_ on its deviance for its special force, and I remember feeling clever and jazzy (and rightly so) the first time I myself said it back many years ago...well, never mind that. It's definitely an intellectual thing to say, "stop the world, we're all deceived," turning everything upside down or inside out by the flick of a semantic switch. If it's not an actual index, it's very much like one, wrenching the semantics so as to get the audience to wrench its heads to look _at_ something which it usually looks _through_. One breaks through a clotted or hardened habitual linguistic medium by that kind of talk. What's not to like? It just isn't exactly true, is all. BB: I think I'm beginning to see some of our difference. Yes, I am saying exactly what the "sensory perception scientist" would say. And that is indeed the medium of all information processing. I wonder if what you are calling the "concrete object/event" is what I call the phenomenological object/event, though I don't think there is anything very concrete there. In any case, let us go there for awhile. In that frame of reference, I would agree that the sensory event qua medium is more difficult to access than phenomenological events/objects. For one thing, the phenomenological events/objects are conventional social constructs. The use of a medium, however, requires that the act of usage be forgotten, be "unconscious." It's why self-consciousness is so counterproductive to speech production. We can occasionally break through to the medium level in language when a word suddenly looks or sounds silly. And, of course, the medium level is all we experience of a language we don't speak. However, that does not mean the medium is transparent--only that we ignore its materiality. BB: Let's discuss the "deviant" use of the word "perceive" and the confusion of the channel and the object. As a non-philosopher here, I realize I'm a good candidate for the appellation "deviant," but I've read quite a number of perception studies and found a considerable variance in the use of the term "perception." That I could be deviant relative to that wide variance is kind of scary. But maybe so. BB: In any case, let me rush to deny that I confuse "channel" and "object." For one thing,"channel" doesn't really apply to organic systems of information processing, but if it did, what is traditionally called "object" would be assigned to occur in the exteroceptive "channel"--those elements of the sensory system responding to environmental impingements. However, if we're dealing in "objects as they are actually experienced," the phenomenological ones, well those are very often a mix of very unobjective stuff. How we actually perceive objects (those exteroceptive constructs) depends very much upon how we are feeling and what we are doing. The mix of sensory data from other "channels," such as drive states and affect greatly determine what constitutes the actually perceived, phenomenological object. The notion that we "see through" the sensory system is on a par with trying to explain how the eye works like a camera. The stuff of the sensory system is part and parcel of our information constructs, our "objects." BB: From a practical point of view, any "object" of perception is largely a social artifact. We "see" the object "cow," which means we see the object as conventionally defined by our social systems. The "real" object "cow" consists of the essential attributes dictated by the social reality for cow. We are allowed certain subjective variances from that. If we vary too much, especially in our behavioral responses, we may get locked up. Maybe even more especially so if we had lived in India a couple of hundred years ago. There is no "concrete" object of perception, only a social convention. In following that convention we necessarily ignore our personal variances of experience from the social "norm." For example, to the extent we experience beauty in conjunction with sunsets or vistas, we experience the beauty as intrinsic to the object/event. But we are quite willing to accept the maxim that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in the name of good will, even if we never experience it that way. The objective sunset is defined by social convention, not phenomenological perception. BU: The object as it is even in its self-integratedness into an object is subject internally among its parts to the same barriers which you see between the perceiving subject and the perceived object. So how can it be an object itself, at all? Yet it's the natural way. We don't access things in spite of media but instead through them. Something which gives us information which is not necessarily firm enough for us to stand on and count as acquaintance with the info's subject matter, is called a mere sign about the subject matter (the semiotic object) rather than called the semiotic object itself. It's because of that, that it's the sign and not the object, rather than because it is not the whole object revealed inside & out, accessed, furthermore, somehow without intermediation. Sometimes things access us so forcefully and directly -- which is _not_ to say "unmediatedly" -- that it's as if they've seized and incorporated the medium, made it part of themselves, at least for a while. To ask of apprehension that there be no medium between it and the object, is to subject oneself to a conceptual "Big Rip" which ultimately tears every object apart, including those serving also as signs and interpretants. BB: I'm not sure I understand all of the above. That I do think I understand, I agree with. BUT, I've learned not to take issue with things explained as "the natural way." :=) Bill --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
