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

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:07:30 -0700

Charles, Joe, Gary, Jim, Jacob, list,
 
>[Charles] Following up on Joe's saying:
 
>>[Joe] "If I am understanding you correctly you are saying that all semeiosis is at least incipiently self-reflexive or self-reflective or in other words self-controlled AND that the adequate philosophical description of it will REQUIRE appeal to a fourth factor (which is somehow of the essence of verification) in addition to the appeal to the presence of a sign, of an object, and of an interpretant, allowing of course for the possibility of there being more than one of any or all of these, as is no doubt essential for anything of the nature of a process.  The appeal to the additional kind of factor would presumably have to be an appeal to something of the nature of a quadratic relational character.  To be sure, any given semeiosis might involve the fourth factor only in a triply degenerate form, just as the third factor might be degenerate in a double degree in some cases, which is to say that the fourth factor might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis, just as thirdness might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis."
 
Note for anybody reading at http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu/maillist.html : I find that a few recent posts from me and Joe didn't get posted at mail-archive.com. They can be found here:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1312 (post from Joe Ransdell August 19, 2006)
 
>[Charles] and your saying:
 
>>[Ben] "Generally, I'd respond that that which Peirce overlooks in connection with verification is
>>[Ben] -- that verification is an experiential recognition of an interpretant and its sign as truly corresponding to their object, and that verification (in the core sense) involves direct observation of the object in the light (being tested) of the interpretant and the sign. "In the light (being tested)" means that the verification is a recognition formed _as_ collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object. Experience, familiarity, acquaintance with the object are, by Peirce's own account, outside the interpretant, the sign, the system of signs.
>>[Ben] -- and that, therefore, the recognition is not sign, interpretant, or their object in those relationships in which it is the recognition of them; yet, in being formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object, it is logically determined by them and by the object as represented by them; it is further determined by the object separately by observation of the object itself; and by the logical relationships in which object, sign, and interpretant are observed to stand. Dependently on the recognitional outcome, semiosis will go very differently; it logically determines semiosis going forward.  So, how will you diagram it? You can't mark it as object itself, nor as sign of the object, nor as interpretant of the sign or of the object. What label, what semiotic role, will you put at the common terminus of the lines of relationship leading to it, all of them logically determinational, from the sign, the object, and the interpretant?
 
>[Charles] I am still trying to find out if I have any grasp at all of what you think the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits.
 
>[Charles] Suppose I am given a photograph to use as a means of finding a person whom I have never seen.  As far as I can see there would be nothing "tested" in my looking for the person unless I fail to find the person, in which case, assuming that the person was present, I might wonder if the photograph is recent, if the person has gained or lost weight, grown or shaved a beard, etc.  That is, I might question what I sometimes fall the "fidelity" of a sign or how precisely the Immediate or Semiosical Object of the sign represents its Dynamical Object--in this illustration how closely the features of the photographic image resemble the features of the person photographed.  Having failed in an attempt to _use_ a sign, I might and actually have questioned its _usefulness_ as a sign.  ....
 
Inference may be deliberate, conscious, controlled (and that's reasoning or ratiocination) or nondeliberate, unconscious, uncontrolled. The question of whether inference or testing or such things take place, is not the question of whether one is conscious of inferring or testing or such things and of learning thereby, but rather of whether intentionally or unintentionally, indeed consciously or unconsciously, one so infers or tests such that, intentionally or unintentionally, and consciously or unconsciously, one learns.
 
It is quite natural to look back on experiences and realize that they involved trials whereof one was unaware or only confusedly aware at the time. The point is whether one incorporates and practices one's learnings from them, whether or not one is aware of having done so. Not every system is of _such a nature as to characteristically undergo a process whereby it learns_, such as to reinforce or reform the system's structure and design and habits. Whether one knows it or not, everything which one does or suffers is a test of one not only in one's particular involvement but also of one as a whole. What counts is whether one is so constituted as naturally to learn from it.
 
>[Charles] When, for instance, I introduce an _expression_ like "fidelity of a sign" I think about how other people might interpret it in an effort to evaluate and predict its usefulness as a means of representing what I have in mind.  When, as I have here, I use the _expression_, I am both trying to represent what I have in mind and, if light of any response I may get, trying to evaluate its usefulness--the "fidelity"of its "correspondence" to an Object--as a means of representing what I am thinking.
 
>[Charles] Does what I have set out above come anywhere close, Ben, to characterizing and illustrating the kind of circumstances in which you think something more than Peirce's (Interpretant - Sign - Object) is involved?
 
When I think of the idea of fidelity of a sign, I think first of all about whether the sign faithfully corresponds to its object, and not only in a social semantic sense -- i.e., not just in the sense of whether people will attribute to a symbol the same connotation or intension which I attribute to the symbol. I also think, for instance, of whether a manual on the installation of a boiler faithfully represents the right way to install a boiler, not just in terms of whether people will read it the same way, but in terms of whether they will tend to injure or kill themselves or not, by following the manual's directions. I think of whether a book or movie faithfully represents the facts and affective qualities of its subject matter. And so forth.
 
>[Charles] In any case, it appears to me that there is a reflexivity in what I have described in so far as in my using the _expression_ "fidelity of a sign" in an attempt to engage in conversation with you and others on the list, I am also in conversation with myself about using the _expression_.  It also seems to me that I am using the _expression_ as a sign with its interpretant to represent an object other than the sign while at the same time I am making the _expression_ an object of a different sign and interpretant; which is to say that the reflexivity is semiosical or part of a semiosical process that may be fully characterizable in terms of signs, interpretants of signs, and their objects.  That is, what you describe as collateral and extrasemiosical could be characterized as one semiosical process becoming the _object_ of signs in a different and possibly more developed semiosical process such as Peirce describes in his accounts of the growth of signs.
 
Unless higher-order or higher-intentional semiosical process has _some_ way to check on the semiotic object of the first semiosical process, I see no reason to suppose that it can produce confirmation of the first semiosical process's signs and interpretants merely by taking them or their process as its objects.  All the higher level's construing (interpreting) won't, by itself, establish anything about the first level's semiotic objects, dynamic, immediate, or some gradation in between. In fact, perhaps a few social studies might benefit by exploring more carefully the relationship between the semioses which they study and the kind of correspondence (true, probable, improbable, specifically distorted, etc.) which those semioses' signs and interpretants have to their semiotic objects.  The occasional social study which egregiously fails to do so ends up establishing more about its own troubled relations to facts than about the studied semioses.  (I don't mean a study using, say, careful phenomenological methods, instead I mean a study which builds on mistakenly taking for granted the nature of the correspondence of the studied semioses' signs and interpretants to their objects).  The higher-level semiosis may end up doing some of the confirmation which the first semiosis should have done, but which it failed to do perhaps on account of lacking some fresh perspective, fresh interpretant, arising in the higher-level semiosis and brought to bear on the first semiosis.  In fact, it seems useful to look at some more sophisticated kinds of abductive inference as involving the attempt by such a first-level semiosis to arrange for the fresh perspective from outside or as if from outside -- "outside the box" as they say.
 
Best, Ben
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