[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor

[Gary Richmond]

Ben, Joe, Jim, List Benjamin Udell wrote: I don't see how the logically determinational role of such recognition [as represented by a fourth proxy element] can be arguably denied and so I will stop trying to so argue. But I don't see it. Let me at least give an attempt at a definitive parting _expression_ of my position in this matter. I'll begin by saying that it seems peculiar to me that  in his voluminous work on logic as semeiotic that Peirce would have missed exactly the *logical* element (see 4. proxy -- logic, substantiation, etc. in Ben's schema below) and notably exactly at the place Ben finds it, in relation to collateral knowledge (not forgetting that Peirce makes quite a bit of the distinction of collateral knowledge from the system of signs itself as Ben correctly noted). My modus operandi in consideration of a personal "economy of research" has been centered around my sense that as an increasing number of folk are beginning to see the power of Peirce's triadic and trichotomic philosophy and wish to further it (for example, as opposed to the dyadic semiotic which has until recently dominated even computer semiotics) it would be best to emphasize its strengths and powers first before entertaining more complex hypotheses (such as Ben's).  Yet, and not denying the need for a critical stance in all these matters, Ben seems to have suggested recently that in the light of his understanding, which cannot be "arguably denied", that this kind of triadic and trichotomic thinking represents some sort of blindness or, perhaps, group-think. It does seem most likely and natural that there are a number of corrections and additions to be made in regard to Peirce's theories. For example, Ben points to the need for contemporary research fields to find their places within Peirce's classification of the sciences. But first folk have got to see the power of such an approach to classification, a matter which Kelly Parker admirably discusses at length in relation to continuity/triadicity in one of the early chapters of his book (the revisions that Ben has suggested to Peirce's classification seem to me idiosyncratic; and certainly any such revision of the classification ought not be one person's "take" on the matter anyhow). A powerful idea is (paraphrasing Peirce) like a child--it needs care and nurturing. With friends suggesting the child is a kind of partially formed monster, who needs enemies?  Certainly were I ever to become convinced that there were indeed other than three universes of experience, three categories, three semeiotic elements I would immediately be forced on pragmatic principles to modify my view radically. But that has not happened, and the 3 universes, categories, and semeiotic elements continue to be confirmed in my own experience and thinking. As regards Ben's thinking in this matter, I have not yet been convinced by his arguments that, say, collateral experience on the one hand, or coding/decoding on the other, necessitate adding a fourth semeiotic element or analog. Until that happens I personally will  concentrate on promoting the healthy growth of a *child* who seems to me most remarkable, most promising,  who continuously inspires my own creative work, etc. But moving along, as  you've written before, Ben, your 1st is a kind of 2nd, and your fourth is in a sense another form of the object. Here you give your semeiotic four in outline form. 1. index -- extremality, force, shortest distance, etc. ~ ~ ~ 3. symbol -- information, coding, importance, etc. 2. icon -- probability, likelihood, etc. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. proxy -- logic, substantiation, legitimacy, etc. Besides the probably insignificant point that commencing with a kind of secondness, and having two object-like elements seems to me to weight your four-fold structure with too much secondness, as well as my sense (from studying your Tetrast diagrams) that index, icon, and symbol in your system  represent some aspects of Peirce's categories, but also much else which seems alien to Peirce's understanding of these three (so that they are really not the same animals), I again just ask: how could Peirce--and many brilliant interpreters--have missed the 4th, the proxy, your "logic itself" (as in your schema above--there the symbol seems reduced to mere coding of information and to have no inferential or generative power of its own vs Peirce where "symbols grow")? Again, you maintain that the "logically determinational role" of "such recognition" cannot be denied and yet I can't even find it! For me it is less a matter of its being denied than my not even missing it (clearly you've fixed your own ideas in this matter quite differently). Your arguments around the interpretant seem absolutely convincing to you, but I have not been able to fully comprehend your argument regarding the logical necessity of this fourth "intuition" of the object as a proxy for the it. Perhaps this originates in my not being able to find it unmediated in my experience (as phenomenologist, as semeiotician, as ordinary "muser" etc.) But you say you cannot see how it is possible to argue logically for anything except a categorial schema which includes this putatively necessary fourth element that is so obvious to you, but a mystery to me. Jim in particular, but others including myself have argued that we *see* objective-experience (which you say needs confirmation, verification, etc.) as thoroughly mediated by signs. It seems to me that we have no direct "intuition" of the objective world because we are the objective world ("the eye cannot see itself" the zen Buddhists say), that is, we are individually and as a race a living, breathing, evolving symbol of it and swimming in it, with body and emotions and an intellect which endure over time, develop over time. How could one confirm or disconfirm that? When anything is "recognized" by me it seems upon analysis to have expressed itself as an icon of the "composite" experiences I've had of some object, say a rock or Western Philosophy (and such a memory of a history of experience necessarily includes various semeiotical - logical - existential - qualitative associations). There is for me no direct intuition, no need for an unmediated *proxy* of the object to *verify* it, and even the most immediately present  experiences seem to me mediated by signs within an *infinite semiosis* within which I seem to swim along with the rest of the cosmos.  Everything, as Jim has repeated argued, seems mediated by signs, and I *experience* all events (excepting certain brutal momentary existential shocks) in this tri-categorial way. Again, I have virtually no experience of a fourth element. [I've appended a recent example of a personal experiment, a phenomenological musement, I made below my signature to illustrate this point, but  I will report that I again did not experience anything except 1ns, 2ns and 3ns and that whatever "collaterally emerged" from my memory immediately joined the semeiotic flow.] So, as regards 4ns: I seem to have no experience of it and apparently no intellectual need for it. I have never gotten your arguments "intuiting" it as a "recognition" of the object of which it is %proxy*. This, again, seems to me from my experience to be the case because all experience seems triadic and appears to be mediated by signs-this for all facets and aspects of my physical, emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual life including, of course,  philosophical reflection upon what are for me the universes of experience which present themselves to me. Also, this trichotomic way of looking at things seems to me to become increasingly important as we progress beyond mathematics, phenomenology, and semeiotics (seeing things with Peirce as essentially triadic & trichotomic) to then pursue metaphysical researches, applying what was discovered  in semeiotic now  to metaphysical inquiries. Finally one can even see large portions of science of review (e.g. the trichotomic explication of Peirce's classification of the sciences--whatever work it may need to contemporize it) and what I consider to be significant practical sciences (e.g.,  developing Peirce's applied science of trichotomic in a diagrammatic form suitable for collaborative inquiry, which trikonic makes an attempt at, all this pure, applied, and review science itself seems permeated by thirdness (under a kind of existential reduction thesis)  I would have to assume that your experience, Ben, is decidedly different and that you experience this fourth confirmational/proxy realm as distinct from the others (btw, although I may be deluding myself that this is not trichomania on my part, I was certainly thinking triastically long before I was ever exposed to Peirce. and so did not "catch" it from him). As for the thrust of Hookway's conclusions that the "composite photograph" metaphor tends to reaffirm the trichotomic notion that  Ideas are iconic signs  |>  Ideas are general Ideas are composed from cases experienced I can only say I would tend to concur but do not make too much of it (except to remark that it seems clear to me now why Joe, for example, is inquiring so deeply into the iconic aspect) Your argument from the inadequacy of the interpretant to include collateral knowledge and therefore the  requirement of a fourth category has not yet resonated in me; I mean, I still just don't get what seems to you so obvious (even as, for example, I agree that collateral knowledge is not part of the system of signs). Perhaps I will eventually be proved wrong to cleave to 3 categories/3 semeiotic elements/3 universes of experience and finally have to admit some fourth kind of experience (I know, Ben, that I've stressed the phenomenological & experiential more than the semeiotical in this message, but for my purposes today it seemed simpler to do that, plus this is exactly the approach of Kelly Parker in his book on Peirce and continuity, to see that these 3 run straight through Peirce's oeuvre, and that this teridentity undergirds the classification of the sciences, for prime example). For now I seem to myself to be an evolving symbol of the particular intellect that I am, swimming in a more or less continuous stream (including my individual and our corporate time-space memories) in this historical era, on this lonely little planet where, yet,  I agree with you that it would be wise for us to attempt to avoid being removed from the gene pool: [BU ] the test of a novel interpretant or of an old interpretant under novel conditions is not deliberate or careful but instead quite possibly a test to destruction of the creature (and even the object) involving punishment of the creature's genes by removal from the gene pool. But testing does not require a fourth categorial/semeiotic element as I see it but seems rather already enmeshed necessarily in a semiosis involving all three categories situated in a person or community, not just a matter of the interpretant (rather, of the "living" symbol). But as you so far seem to refuse a place for this existentially situated symbol, for the person as sign within a universe perfused with signs, and seem to deny the crucial place of living-situated-memory in our experience (or perhaps make a fourth category of it?), we continue to talk past each other. Well, I've now offered all that I'm capable of offering as argument knowing full well that none of it will be acceptable to you. So I must move on. Even we who value Peirce's  essentially trichotomic "Guess at the Riddle" (and to deny the triadic and trichotomic element running throughout Peirce seems to me to totally vitiate the most important element of his philosophy) have not thoroughly or adequately tested it yet. However, Peirce scholarship in some ways and in some places seems to me to be evolving in some very interesting and desirable ways. For example, Kelly Parker reminds us how a piece of Peirce's metaphysics includes not just a theory of chance mutation, a tychastic evolutionary theory like Darwin's--which Peirce saw in his own time as already degenerating into a social Darwinism where the "fittest" are self-conceived as the economically/politically ruling elites); while including a form of Darwinianism, that is chance  as firstness,  tychasm, as well as a kind of mechanical-evolutionary secondness, ananchasm, Peirce includes within the psychical branch of metaphysics an agapastic theory representing continuity as a tendency of generalizing our feelings. As I see it, the only sin is to stand in the way of that evolutionary tendency. Peirce concludes his essay "Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic" thus: We are in the condition of a man in a life and death struggle; if he have not sufficient strength, it is wholly indifferent to him how he acts, so that the only assumption upon which he can act rationally is the hope of success. So this sentiment is rigidly demanded by logic. If its object were any determinate fact, any private interest, it might conflict with the results of knowledge and so with itself; but when its object is of a nature as wide as the community can turn out to be, it is always a hypothesis uncontradicted by facts and justified by its indispensableness for making any action rational. Peirce's great "guess at the riddle" seems to me to be not only directed towards the furtherance of the community, but is "a hypothesis uncontradicted by facts"--at least not by the facts by which I represent my own experience to myself. It is not yet clear whether or not Peircean pragmatism can be seen to be "justified by its indispensableness for making any action rational", but I am hopeful even in this matter. But one should not conclude that this veritably religious way of viewing things is at all naive, while even the atheist, as Peirce notes, hopes for the best in some way. Yet, There cannot be a scintilla of evidence to show that at some time all living beings shall not be annihilated at once, and that forever after there shall be throughout the universe any intelligence whatever. But until that moment arrives when, say, the sun dies and life on earth ceases to exist, we may individually & together hope to promote reasonableness and love in our dealings with each other and in the world as a whole. For now and in the economy of my own research, I have decided to concentrate all my energy towards testing Peirce's powerful hypothesis. Gary A phenomenological experiment: Sunday, at one point I was alone at a viewing spot on one of the low mountains often described as the foothills of the Catskill Mountain Range, and overlooking that great expanse of water--a veritable sea--that the Hudson River becomes at the Tappan Zee Bridge, I was thinking of these semeiotic matters, and off for a moment by myself was able to make a simple phenomenological experiment.  Sitting on a tree stump I tried a little of the *musement* that Peirce recommends in The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God, whereas one simply opens to the phenomena and perhaps eventually begins to find connections between the different "universes of experience".The experiment: I simply looked at what was directly in front of me noticing first colors, looking through a thicket of vegetal growth and especially trees on the cliffside,  seeing, perhaps, blue first, then green, and white, finally brown predominating as colors. At first I couldn't see through the trees to the river  and was surprised to discover that the patch of blue I was looking at was NOT sky, but the river bend looking the same color blue as the sky. So I was already far beyond firstness at that point when a breeze "struck me"--I had been totally into my attempt at grasping what I could of "unsymbolized" colors as phenomena of firstness (but how vain an attempt to even prescind the phenomena from the continua) when I was jolted by this shocking breeze which came up from the river suddenly (quite delightful on a hot afternoon). This immediately brought about  a recognition of that second universe of experience to which I could only react, was more or less submissive to (not that I had any trouble submitting as I recall a broad smile crossing my face as the delightful breeze cooled me). Well, of course, in no time at all I was plunged into thirdness, comparing and contrasting qualities and reactions, adding cultural meanings as I began to consider the distant faint & near-Impressionistic images forming of homes and other buildings across the  Tappan Sea,  thinking then of the diminishing place of nature in my life, in so many of our lives, the implications of a trichotomic philosophy impacting this and much else: in short,  I was again "lost in thought"--but not unhappily so. But musement as such was over (I'd mused for perhaps 15-20 minutes at most). Conclusion: all I experienced was firstness, secondness, and thirdness. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com