Gary F, list
Heh- that was fun. Actually, no, I don't think that your outline is
a pragmatic analysis of what I wrote; it's simply an ad hominem
attack on me. A pragmatic analysis would actually examine the
meaning of my posts - and not just the physical text - ie, what you
did was your own 'cherry-picking'. Very superficial. That's what
makes it fun.
However, I don't expect, unfortunately, anything other from this
list - as its focus seems to be primarily either 'essentialist' in
the sense of a confinement to' the Words of Peirce; and no other word
can be used' with a strange reductionism of the meaning of these
words - and 'We can't examine the framework of Peirce in any
functioning of the real world; we can only discuss His Words'....
So- what are the options? We [a very general 'we'; I'm not going to
name names] will have to continue to either sneer at and condemn
those who explore Peirce-in-the-real-world and contemptuously define
them as 'misinformed' or 'meant to intentionally disinform'....or
better yet - why not just ignore and delete? I'd say the latter might
be more relaxing.
Because we who do examine Peirce in the real world, and use words
from other disciplines to show how these ideas are valid in those
disciplines - aren't going to vanish in the night. I'm not going into
'ad populum' but - there ARE a myriad of 'those of us', and not just
in the various sciences - but- even in philosophy - who are exploring
not merely different terms which mean the same thing - but- the
functioning of the Peircean framework in both different disciplines
and using different terms.
My advice - since you reject my analyses is: just delete my posts.
That's a semiosic action - powerful - all in itself.
Edwina
On Sun 28/03/21 10:45 PM , [email protected] sent:
List,
Just to give a concrete example, I’ll venture here a
phenomenological analysis of a paragraph of text that was posted to
the list recently. You will notice in this text the familiar
phenomenon of cherry-picking quotations to reinforce an argument, but
the phenomenon I’d like to analyze here is less common and less
visible to the casual reader. Here’s the text, exactly as it
appeared on the list:
And since matter-is-mind within Peircean analysis, then, this
triadic process is operative throughout the physical, chemical,
biological and conceptual realms. 'Matter is effete mind" 6.25. And
"what we call matter is not completely dead bu is merely mind
hidebound with habits" 6.158. "he whole action of the mind [is] a
part of the physical universe" 6.61
Obviously the element of Thirdness is predominant in this item, as
it is in any text, especially a symbol composed of words. (It is also
an “intellectual construction,” to use a term that has occurred
repeatedly in this thread.)
Its Secondness consists primarily in its reactivity to other actual
texts (i.e. Secondness to them), but also in its specific references
directing our attention to one of the texts to which it is Second,
Volume 6 of the Collected Papers of C.S. Peirce. These (shorthand)
references are symbols functioning indexically.
Its Firstness is its ‘theme’ or unifying idea, which does not
exist in the strict Peircean sense until it is embodied. I’ll use
“matter-is-mind ” as a shorthand for its verbal embodiment in
this text. The next phrase, “within Peircean analysis”, might
represent the Firstness of the Secondness of this text, as it
presupposes the prior (and continuing) existence of a discipline
called “Peircean analysis” and situates matter-is-mind as
characteristic of that discipline, without giving us any further
information about it.
Now we can turn to the “less common and less visible” phenomenon
which occurs in this text. For that purpose I’ll begin with the
indexical citation at the very end of the text. If we actually look
up the prior text it refers to, we find it embedded in an 1892 text
by Peirce entitled “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined,” Peirce's
attack on the determinism which was very much in vogue at the time,
and the article where he introduced his anti-necessitarian doctrine
tychism (see the introduction to CP 8 for details). The paragraph
cited in the text above, CP 6.61, begins with one of many reasons
Peirce gives for rejecting the doctrine of the necessitarians:
“Necessitarianism cannot logically stop short of making the whole
action of the mind a part of the physical universe.”
But in the text we are analyzing, this text is “quoted” as
follows: "he whole action of the mind [is] a part of the physical
universe" 6.61.
The missing first letter of “the” is just an ordinary typo, but
the “quote” as a whole exemplifies the phenomenon of
misquotation. It not only represents the original text inaccurately,
it represents Peirce as asserting an idea which in fact he was
ascribing to the necessitarians, against whose doctrine he was
arguing. (The rest of Peirce’s paragraph goes on to explain why
that idea is untenable.)
A further question arises when we focus on the Thirdness of this
phenomenon, because then we have to consider the interpretant of the
text we are examining (as well as its putative object, “Peircean
analysis,” and the idea which it predicates of that object,
“mind-is-matter.”) If we take the interpretant as the information
conveyed to the reader, we ought to ask whether this particular
misquotation belongs to the species of misinformation or
disinformation. This distinction has become a matter of public debate
lately, especially in the U.S., where it makes a crucial pragmatic
difference whether a disseminated untruth is merely mistaken or was
actually intended to deceive. Donald Trump’s lies about the
“stolen election” are a paradigmatic example: were they “honest
mistakes” (because he was himself misinformed) or were they criminal
acts intended to subvert American democracy? Should disinformation
sites be shut down by the social media platforms on which they
appear?
The question is nowhere near so consequential in the case of the
misquotation we are analyzing, but it still makes a pragmatic
difference. If it was just an “honest mistake” on the writer’s
part, an honest scholar would own up to it when it was flagged, and
perhaps correct it. But if it deliberately misrepresented Peirce’s
views as conforming to the writer’s own idea, then it would be much
more damaging to the scholar’s reputation for trustworthiness, at
least among those familiar enough with Peirce’s writings to
recognize the misrepresentation. And if that kind of
“disquotation”, to coin a term, emerged over time as a
recognizable pattern in the writer’s work, especially within a
pattern of quoting only phrases out of context and rarely whole
sentences, trust would simply evaporate.
This was an attempt to begin with a Peircean phenomenological
analysis of a text-as-phenomenon and develop it step by step into a
semiotic (and informational and pragmaticistic) analysis. I’m not
sure whether it’s the kind of analysis that other contributors to
this thread have been suggesting, but it’s about as close as I can
come, for now anyway.
Gary f.
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