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

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:59:21 -0700

Charles, list,
 
I guess it's hard for me to let any remarks about my ideas go by without response, but I still am inclined, as I've put it, to "go quiet."
 
Charles wrote,
> .... [I would say that Ben’s “Recognition” is included in (not outside) the Interpretant as an element of the Interpreter’s contribution to its determination.] ....
 
The recognition or recognizant, in the core narrow sense, is _defined_ as object-experience (of the acquaintance kind) formed collaterally to sign and interpretant in respect of the object; the recognizant is defined as something which, Peirce (usually) says, is not gotten from the sign and is outside the interpretant. So you're simply contradicting the definition.
 
Now, in the movie _What's Up, Tiger Lily?_, the hero is told that something "_is_" his adversary's house. The hero replies, "You mean he lives in that little piece of paper?" His interlocutor tells him, _No! ... It's just a map!_ That map does not acquaint the hero with his adversary's house; it provides him with no experience of his adversary's house. Yet it is representative of his adversary's house; it is almost his adversary's house. It provides information about his adversary's house, provides it in a form which does not carry the assurance which experience of the house itself would carry. This is the sense, which is the common sense of most people, in which one says that acquaintance and experience of the object are not conveyed by the sign, much less by the interpretation of the sign.
 
More substantial than contradicting a definition would be to criticize the definition itself and, for instance, to deny that I can define something as object-experience formed as collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object. However, this would necessarily lead you to deny that there is such a thing as object experience collateral to sign and interpretant in respect of the object. There your argument would be against Peirce. Also, it would imply the denial that there are scientific experiences.
 
Now, one might prefer to embrace the one discussion where Peirce says that collateral experience is an index, as opposed to the other discussions, where he says collateral experience is needed in order for the index to convey information to the mind, just as in order for any sign to convey information to the mind. It's simpler, however, to treat a single conflicting discussion as the anomolous one. Moreover, it's helpful and probably necessary in such a case to pursue establishing which of the two views is more consistent with the general conception of signs and their purpose. A sign (also an interpretant sign) is not its object (except in the limit case in which they're the same thing), but is, as Peirce says, "almost" the object. Thus the sign conveys information (its interpretant) about the object but not acquaintance with the object; acquaintance with its object must be gained by collateral experience; as Peirce put it: "Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience."
 
I quote Mats to point out that the "collateral experience = index" passage is in conflict with the other passages. But Mats' solution also doesn't do the job. A reagent is not a piece of collateral experience. It something which one experiences, indeed, but (A) a reagent is not one's experience of the object; (B) one's experience of the reagent is not one's experience of the object (except in the limit case where the sign (reagent) and object are one and the same thing); and therefore (C) the reagent or one's experience of the reagent are not one's object-experience as collateral to any sign & interpretant in respect of the object (except, again, in the limit case of their all being one and the same thing, such that their distinctions are merely formal).
 
Something X (the object) determines Y (the sign) to determine Z (the interpretant) (1) to stand in the same relation to X in which Y itself stands to X, and (2) to determine W (the recognizant) to stand to further semiosis in the same relationship in which X (the object) stands to further semiosis.
 
Given that the recognition is where the mind, in the _reasonable settling of doubt_, confirms itself as having attained, in some respect, the dynamic object, the recognition has, though fallibly, reached that a provisional form of that final semiotic stage on which the real depends; if that amounts to a kind of equivalence with the object, then perhaps one could, more radically, say furthermore that something X (the object) determines Y (the sign) to determine Z (the interpretant) (1) to stand in the same relation to X in which Y itself stands to X, and (2) to determine W (the recognizant) to stand to Y and Z in the same relationship in which X (the object) stands to Y & Z (though obviously not in a "chronology of semiosis" sense). However it is kind of radical, and it involves a kind of building into semiosis of a movement to higher-intentional or higher-order structures without the rigid hierarchicalism which pre-assures avoidance of paradoxes. I don't know whether I'm going to stand by this idea. On the other hand, I find some appeal in its treating object & recognizant as more "spacelike" and sign & interpretant as more "timelike"
 
Again, I guess it's hard for me to let any remarks about my ideas go by without response, but I still am inclined, as I've put it, to "go quiet."
 
I append quotes relevant to the above discussion below.
 
Best, Ben Udell
APPENDIX: Quotes
 
From C.S. Peirce, from A Letter to William James, EP 2:492, 1909 http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/sign.html . Quote:
A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized, _bestimmt_) by something _other than itself_, called its Object....
End quote.[emphases in original]
 
From C.S. Peirce, CP5.309 "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities Claimed For Man" 1868 http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/conseq/cn-main.htm#CP5.309 . Quote:
What is here said of association by resemblance is true of all association. All association is by signs. Everything has its subjective or emotional qualities, which are attributed either absolutely or relatively, or by conventional imputation to anything which is a sign of it. And so we reason,
 
The sign is such and such;
[Ergo,] The sign is that thing.

This conclusion receiving, however, a modification, owing to other considerations, so as to become --
 
The sign is almost (is representative of) that thing.
End quote.
 
From C.S. Peirce, Transcribed from Letter to Lady Welby Dec 23, 1908 (in _Semiotics and Significs: Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby_, ed. Charles Hardwick, Indiana U. Press, 1977, p.83) http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/interpretant.html also at http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_peircematters_archive.html . Quote:
Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience.
End quote.
 
From C.S. Peirce: CP 8.178-179 A Letter to William James, EP 2:493-4, 1909 http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/interpretant.html also at http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_peircematters_archive.html . Quote:
All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. .... It is...the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign.
End quote.
 
We must distinguish between the Immediate Object, -- i.e. the Object as represented in the sign, -- and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term, therefore), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience. For instance, I point my finger to what I mean, but I can't make my companion know what I mean, if he can't see it, or if seeing it, it does not, to his mind, separate itself from the surrounding objects in the field of vision.
End quote.
 
From C.S. Peirce, CP 6.338, "Some Amazing Mazes, fourth curiousity" Dated as 1908 at http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/quotes/iconrole.htm ; dated as c. 1909 at http://peircematters.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_peircematters_archive.html Quote:
All thinking is dialogic in form. Your self of one instant appeals to your deeper self for his assent. Consequently, all thinking is conducted in signs that are mainly of the same general structure as words; those which are not so, being of the nature of those signs of which we have need now and then in our converse with one another to eke out the defects of words, or _symbols_. These non-symbolic thought-signs are of two classes: first, pictures or diagrams or other images (I call them _Icons_) such as have to be used to explain the significations of words; and secondly, signs more or less analogous to symptoms (I call them _Indices_) of which the collateral observations, by which we know what a man is talking about, are examples. The Icons chiefly illustrate the significations of predicate-thoughts, the Indices the denotations of subject-thoughts. The substance of thoughts consists of these three species of ingredients.
End quote.
 
From post from Mats Bergman to Peirce Discussion Forum, Tue, 1 Jun 2004, [peirce-l] Re: Mats Bergman's paper
Quote: The passage you quote is curious, for there Peirce does indeed state that collateral observation = index. However, it seems to me that the passage is somewhat anomalous, for instance by making icons and indices to be thought-signs (very 1860s...). One question that arises is whether we should not distinguish collateral observation from collateral experience. Peirce does not seem to put forth such a distinction. Instead, Peirce distinguishes three kinds of indicatively effective signs, and mostly holds all of these separate from the relation s that form collateral experience. End quote.
Quote: I would formulate the relationship between a reagent and collateral experience as follows: a reagent is a bit of collateral experience (environment, for instance) employed semiotically as an index, but typically based on previous experiences. This is not elegantly put, but I hope it is possible to catch my idea. End quote.
Quote: This I do not quite see. What _semiotic_ relation have I treated as dyadic? The index? Where precisely?
I indeed hold that collateral experience is primarily of the character of secondness, a position that seems to clash with the passage you quoted but not necessarily with the one I quoted above ("a reagent can indicate nothing unless the mind is already acquainted with its connection with the phenomenon it indicates"). I do agree that it may be wise not to overemphasise the gap between the index and collateral experience; I may have been careless with in this respect. I would say that the index is precisely a sign that is capable of bringing collateral experience within the semiotic sphere. But - and this is my concern - this does _not_ mean that the brute secondness of the experience would thereby be subsumed into the world of thirdness. I think this is precisely Peirces' criticism of the Hegelians and their tendency to "aufhoben" less complex forms of experience, but a trap into which he himself seems to have fallen by asserting that "all is representative" or by the unqualified statements to the effect that the object is always also a sign. End quote.
 
From post from Benjamin Udell to Peirce Discussion Forum, sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 3:22 PM, [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Quote: Peirce's purpose in the conception of collateral experience was to account for how the mind knows, indeed as a precondition, to what the signs refer; but even his own example of the word "soleil" is one of somebody's gaining collateral experience regarding an object (the word "soleil") about which the person has already had signs (the teacher's definition of the word "soleil"). This is not a light example, and it is a dramatization of that which teachers and large dictionaries do systematically; it is a normal order of learning. These learning experiences about signs & objects already acquired are not limited to cases where the teacher is a human professional teacher of French. Experience itself is the great teacher. These learning experiences, testing, as they do, the sign & interpretant systems themselves, are decision points in the _evolution_ of the given semiosis and of the given mind. Moreover, the conception of such learning experience is how one accounts for semiosis' capacity to correct itself and learn the difference between sense & nonsense, both in hopeful-monster interpretants and in typical interpretants under changing conditions. One learns from experience. Otherwise the picture of semiosis depends on a radical coherentist faith, probably not observed or espoused anywhere, that the process, along with its assumptions and premisses, is already perfected, i.e., infallible. End quote.
 
From post from Benjamin Udell to Peirce Discussion Forum, sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 3:21 AM (ET), [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1313 also at http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu/msg01261.html
Quote:  In the examples, across his various discussions, [Peirce] usually talks about collateral observations and experiences of the object, not collateral signs and interpretants of the object. It doesn't sound like he means that the core way to check on a book is to read some other book or books (except when the first book is _about_ the other book(s)). His theory of inquiry involves getting into lab and field.  When Peirce discusses experience of the object, he means something qualitatively different from signs of the object and from experiences of signs of the object. (The clear general dis-equation.) Signs are what help us go beyond experience such that experience can more or less follow. Why would Peirce talk about how no index of an object can be sure of leading you to the object if doesn't make sense to plainly distinguish between an index which you observe of the object and your observation of the object? If all that Peirce really meant by experience and acquintance with the object were that "you've heard of it before," what would all this business about direct observation, getting into lab and field, etc., be about?  End quote.
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com

Reply via email to