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

[Gary Richmond]

Ben, Joe, Jim, list, Ben, not having gotten your argument for a putative necessary fourth semeiotic element earlier--and I've certainly tried--your most recent comments have also not helped me get any closer to what you apparently find near-obvious, or at least "simple." You write: [BU] It really should be setting off one's philosophical alarm bells if one finds oneself denying that experience, recognition, verification, have a logically determinational role.  I wouldn't disagree that experience, recognition and verification  have their logical roles which appear to me to occur as semeiotic events in the Peircean, that is, triadic sense (allowing for an extra-semiotic dynamical object, and that one can build up collateral experience which "points" to such a reality which simply is what it is, etc.) You write: BU: I don't understand how anybody could argue that a claim does not logically determine the character of its verification (in the sense that, e.g., a claim that a horse is on the hill determines a verification consisting in looking for a horse on the hill) or that the claim's verification does not logically determine further inference involving the claim (e.g., a horse was confirmed to be on the hill, and it's good news that a horse is nearby, and it's also good news that the semiosis leading up to the verification was faring quite well, and Joey the horse-spotter was right again, and so forth, and all those items factor determinatively into semiosis going forward, a semiosis which would go _very differently_ if it had been dis-confirmed that a horse was on the hill). I don't understand how anybody could argue such, but I'm willing to examine such an argument if one is offered. Again, it's a matter of one's  understanding of the semiotic role of "verification." No one--and least of all Peirce--has argued against verification, experience, collateral knowledge as important. But I see verification as a stage in a given semiosis, just as the writing (or reading) of Hamlet would have stages (of recognition, for example, as  Hamlet begin to see the intimate relationship of Gertrude to the villainous king). I don't think I would say with you that it logically determines the character of its verification as meaning for it appears to me part of an existential-semeiotic thread which intertwines with the rest of the threads of the evolving cable/symbol. In short it is a stage, albeit a significant stage, in some semeiotic event. I thought that this was a part of Joe's point too (in both his earlier response and his more recent and expanded one)  Joe quoted you then commented: [BU] I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively.   REPLY:   [JR] I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben.  It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. I agree with Joe that "verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry." You say it is up to us argue against something which for me at least isn't even there as "a distinctive formal element in inquiry"--as I've remarked, I cannot find it to argue against it. You say it is there; I (we?) say it is not.  So while this is very simple (and obvious) to you, to me it remains a mystery. You wrote:  [BU] <>Now, the following seems simple to me:  __The object does not, of itself, convey experience or even information.  The sign & interpretant convey information but not experience of their object.  Those considerations settle in the negative the question of the adequacy of a triad of interpretant, sign, and object, for verificative purposes. Verification, qua verification, has a determinational role in logic.__ I don't know why any of this doesn't seem simple to others. Well, I've simply come to another conclusion: the immediate object is involved in the semeiosis, and "verification, qua verification" points exactly to its involvement in the growing symbol, the richer, truer meaning--say, perhaps, of my life as a sign-user and whatever role I might play in my society as a result of my seeing that object more clearly. Perhaps I don't think verification is "determinative" in the way you say it does. "The object determines the sign for the interpreter" and there is both a dynamical and an immediate object determining. Verification seems a more complex phenomenon  You wrote:  [BU] Experience is the teacher; by experience we confirm, verify, disconfirm, etc. Verification is a kind of experience of the object, or of something recognized, on an experiential basis, as counting for experiential purposes as the object. All intelligent, inferentially adequate experience is formed as a recognition of object (or of its object-experientially legitimate sign) collaterally to sign and interpretant. The idea that doubt would be reasonably quelled by nothing more than a sufficient amount of interpretation, should be another alarm-bell moment. The logically determinational character of such experience, such recognition, is that of the _reasonable quelling of doubt_, for which no degree of elucidation and interpretation is a substitute. Of course the "quelling" (your word)  or the "settling" (to use Peirce's) of doubt and opinion  is arguably the principal goal & purpose of pragmatism, and Peirce famously says as much in "The Fixation of Belief."  It is certainly a logical element, at least until the moment that it becomes a habit which one does "without thinking," for example, when I sit down, as I sometimes do, to improvise at the piano: I've learned a lot in learning to play the piano--but now it's "second nature"--all habit despite the difficult disciplines involved in learning to play. I would say that a scientific experiment involves something similar but perhaps more "intellectual" than my fingers-brain moving over the keyboard. Consider, say, physical scientists more or less agreeing that their doubts are settled in regard to, say, a great deal of the laws governing mechanical force. Even high school students can learn to settle their opinions in that matter! Moving down a bit you wrote: BU: I don't know what sort of "direct 'intuition'" you're talking about. You may be mentioning it because I discussed off-list the subject of intuitions, but, as I said subsequently, I meant "intuition" in the contemporary sense of the word, which is closer to that which Peirce called "instinct" than to that which Peirce called "intuition." I was discussing the 'intuitions' or 'instincts' which one cultivates in employing categorial schemata, the guiding "feelings" which one develops about, for instance, quality, reaction, and representation. I think you are right that our off-list discussion of intuition confused the matter for me and  I see that your "direct 'intuition" concerns a kind of "instinct". all right, and as I've tried to argue before, all my 'instincts' in the sense that I hope we now agree upon, cause me to reflect that I experience only Three Universes,  all the other trichotomies that follow, most especially in phenomenology and logic as semeiotic as the consequence of this being a tricategorial World of Experience. Joe's succinct & simple statement  "that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing" makes perfect sense to me, while I have not been able to grasp your alternative arguments, even the "simple" one I quoted above. You are also probably correct that at places I've confused your "proxy" with your "recognition". Your chart brought this all home. <> [BU] index ~~~ object icon ~~~~ sign symbol ~~ interpretant proxy ~~~ recognizant You concluded: I'll try to continue this later. I'm getting all worn out! I wonder whether anybody is even reading any of this. I said I'd go quiet but, instead, I'm like a cross between Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn, getting both louder and talkier. I'm worn out too. And I may be the only one reading at least this which is our lengthy exchange (but I am reading it!) Nevertheless, it appears to me that for now I have said all I have to say and am beginning to repeat myself. I'll leave you with the last word. Gary --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com