subject:"Re\: \[PEIRCE\-L\] Seeing things"

Hi! This is all very confusing to me. Language, words, versus reality: Is this the real contradiction? Is truth, expressed with language/words something that has been there in the far past: "In the beginning there was the word" (logos) (Bible), or something in the far future: "Final interpretant" (Peirce)? I would like to experience some truth (of course expressed with words, as these are the means I can handle: This is not nominalism, but just a lack of other, directer means) here and now. Because I have not been living in the year one of the bible, possibly the big bang, and I will not still live, when every mind will have agreed with some final interpretants. So neither religion, nor Peirce, is something that I have a use for, looking for truth. Lest it is not different: a final interpretant is not something in the far future, but something that occurs regularly anytime when somebody is convinced of something. This is a temporary truth, when this convincement might later possibly be falsified. A truth becomes truer and truer, the more time passes without falsification. But only in a society that allows falsification. This sounds like relativism, so there must be added, that there may also be "synthetic apriori statements" (Kant). What about these? Can they give us some truth here and now? I guess so.

Best,

Helmut

"Clark Goble"

On Oct 23, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Clark - yes, the Heidegger-Derrida mysticism of The Word. That was/is - truly terrible! Pure nominalism - but made authoritative by the aspatial and atemporal mystic essentialism of The Word.

Yes, I just don’t think Heidegger and Derrida were doing word mysticism. Just that a lot of people who missed the key phenomenology part were able to ape the language. To me both Heidegger and Derrida were realists in the same mold as Peirce (albeit with a very different style of language focused on metaphor). To see this one need only look at the place of key scholastic realists on the thought of Heidegger and Derrida.

And yes - Peirce's outline of the Final Interpretant - which is how 'every mind' would act. Perfect. But nominalism instead rejects this Final Interpretant and instead, focuses strictly on the Immediate Interpretant. Is it tied up with metaphor? I think the dynamic interpretant can be aligned with metaphor. And agreed - that we may never reach the 'final truth' - but Peirce was well aware of that as you know.

The real issue are what are the implications for philosophy of the final interpretant being at best off in an infinite future.

I think in particular the problem for Derrida was that most of philosophy at the time thought that the final interpretant was here in the present in our presence. This is key for say the positivists but is really part of what Descartes introduces as epistemology. I don’t think we appreciate in these years where few are epistemological foundationaglists just how widespread this view affected philosophy.

Arguably the whole reason Peirce critiques most philosophy as nominalistic is wrapped up with this legacy of Plato and Descartes. The idea of a present final interpretant. If under Descartes we have thoughts that correlate with things then the immediate thoughts take the place of the final interpretant. However if you recognize the problem with this then all you’re left with are the names in the mind. That is the immediate and dynamic interpretant without the final interpretant is nominalism. Nominalism arises because of how the mind is cut off from reality. The combination of shifting the nature of truth plus scholastic realism avoids all this.

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

2015-10-23 Thread Thomas

Gary, List ~ 
"The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names."

I like how this quote points to the physical presence of objects and 
interpretants in the brain, and the habitual paths connecting relevant neurons. 
 However, I would have liked it more if your quote had been less lyrical, and 
instead had described the physical mechanism by which a collection of neurons 
form an object-interpretant relationship in the brain. 

I certainly believe they do that.  

Steve Jobs likened creativity to "connecting the dots" in useful ways that 
other people haven't before.  Those 'dots' are neurons (grey matter) and they 
rely on electrochemical energy to connect via the brain's white matter.  As 
they make connections with more neurons over the passage of time, some neurons 
grow larger/dominant and subsequently receive and send out electrochemical 
signals more efficiently than the others.  Thereafter, connections between 
those enlarged neurons form 'paths' in the physical brain (object+interpretant 
relationships), so those larger/connected neurons are more likely to contribute 
to logical deductions in the future. 

I believe that brain researchers have identified all of the physical mechanisms 
mentioned above. Identifying the larger/connected neurons as 
object-interpretant relationships is my perspective (i.e., abduction).  
Relationships between neurons are 'habits' nourished over time by a flow of 
electrochemical energy.  In solving today's puzzle the energy may flow from 
neuron A to B, but in solving tomorrow's puzzle it may flow from B to A.  The 
object and interpretant status of neurons is ever-changing, and varies with the 
Pragmatic objective. 

Regards,
Tom Wyrick 




On Oct 23, 2015, at 8:01 AM,   wrote:

We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.
 
A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called 
so. 
— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)
 
The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.
 
Gary f.
 
} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Agreed - that immediate/dynamic interpretant as cut off from the final 
interpretant is nominalism. But, i still see Derrida as the ultimate 
kabbalistic mystic, with The Word as the 'primal cause'; that is, it isn't 
speech and its 'presentness' that is primary but the non-present 'writing' 
...existing outside even of the 'differance' between words..As we know, Derrida 
rejected logic (i.e., reason) as the basis of language and instead opted for 
'utterances' in actual discourse. He obviously wasn't that interested in the 
objective world. I'm not an expert on Derrida, having been turned off by his 
rejection of logic and reason and the objective worldso - the above are 
only my vague memories of my readings on him.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Clark Goble 
  To: Edwina Taborsky ; Peirce-L 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 1:44 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things




On Oct 23, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:


Clark - yes, the Heidegger-Derrida mysticism of The Word. That was/is -  
truly terrible! Pure nominalism - but made authoritative by the aspatial and 
atemporal mystic essentialism of The Word.


  Yes, I just don’t think Heidegger and Derrida were doing word mysticism. Just 
that a lot of people who missed the key phenomenology part were able to ape the 
language. To me both Heidegger and Derrida were realists in the same mold as 
Peirce (albeit with a very different style of language focused on metaphor). To 
see this one need only look at the place of key scholastic realists on the 
thought of Heidegger and Derrida.


And yes - Peirce's outline of the Final Interpretant - which is how 'every 
mind' would act. Perfect. But nominalism instead rejects this Final 
Interpretant and instead, focuses strictly on the Immediate Interpretant.  Is 
it tied up with metaphor? I think the dynamic interpretant can be aligned with 
metaphor. And agreed - that we may never reach the 'final truth' - but Peirce 
was well aware of that as you know.


  The real issue are what are the implications for philosophy of the final 
interpretant being at best off in an infinite future.


  I think in particular the problem for Derrida was that most of philosophy at 
the time thought that the final interpretant was here in the present in our 
presence. This is key for say the positivists but is really part of what 
Descartes introduces as epistemology. I don’t think we appreciate in these 
years where few are epistemological foundationaglists just how widespread this 
view affected philosophy. 


  Arguably the whole reason Peirce critiques most philosophy as nominalistic is 
wrapped up with this legacy of Plato and Descartes. The idea of a present final 
interpretant. If under Descartes we have thoughts that correlate with things 
then the immediate thoughts take the place of the final interpretant. However 
if you recognize the problem with this then all you’re left with are the names 
in the mind. That is the immediate and dynamic interpretant without the final 
interpretant is nominalism. Nominalism arises because of how the mind is cut 
off from reality. The combination of shifting the nature of truth plus 
scholastic realism avoids all this. 




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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

2015-10-23 Thread Stephen C. Rose

"things are so because they are called so."

 That does sound a trifle nominalist. Would not Peirce say something like
things are so because over time a community has concluded that the
inferences of persons multiply to into of consensus. Perhaps that is what
you mean as well. In which case I am guilty, like Rep. Jordan, oe
extracting a sentence to represent a whole thought.

I think some things are so, the most important ontological things, because
they are so, independent of what anyone calls them. I think Peirce agrees.

Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU Art: http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl
Gifts: http://buff.ly/1wXADj3

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 10:47 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:

> How my post sounds to you, or how you choose to label it, is not an issue
> for the Peirce list, Edwina. If there is an issue for the list, it’s
> probably the distinction between dynamic and immediate objects. You have
> said nothing about that issue, or about anything relevant to what my post
> as a whole actually says, nothing that calls for a response. I’m only
> posting this because you chose to copy to the list a casual response that I
> sent to you offlist.
>
>
>
> Gary f.
>
>
>
> } Abyss calls to abyss in the roar of Your channels (Psalms 42:8). [Zohar
> 1:52a] {
>
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>
>
>
> *From:* Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
> *Sent:* 23-Oct-15 09:55
> *To:* g...@gnusystems.ca; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things
>
>
>
> Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to
> the issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure
> postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on
> the objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that
> objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are
> called so'!
>
>
>
> Edwina
>
> - Original Message -
>
> *From:* g...@gnusystems.ca
>
> *To:* 'Edwina Taborsky' <tabor...@primus.ca>
>
> *Sent:* Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM
>
> *Subject:* RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things
>
>
>
> That sounds to me like Edwina.   J
>
>
>
> *From:* Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca <tabor...@primus.ca>]
> *Sent:* 23-Oct-15 09:25
>
> Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.
>
>
>
> Edwina
>
>
>
> - Original Message -
>
> *From:* g...@gnusystems.ca
>
> *To:* peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
>
>
>
> We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual
> field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its
> interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition
> continues with emergence of relations from the phaneron, now that *things*
> <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/cns.htm#thing> have emerged from the phaneron.
>
>
>
> *A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are
> called so. *
>
> — Chuangtse <http://gnusystems.ca/meanlist.htm#tao> 2 (Watson 1968, 40)
>
>
>
> The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing
> what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite
> rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts
> from itself and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor
> reverses the process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer
> and stranger relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors
> ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – *immediate* objects.
> Naming is creation, metaphor recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is
> made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.
>
>
>
> Gary f.
>
>
>
> } Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {
>
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> -
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to
> peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L
> but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the
> BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
> .
>
>
>
>
>
>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Gary F - I did indeed comment on your post - I said it was postmodernist 
nominalism/relativism. That's clear in itself. Your response was to insult me 
privately - and I don't accept that. You may call it a 'casual' response but 
this ignores its content.

Again, your outline of 'things are so because they are CALLED so' (my  
emphasis) is postmodernist nominalism, focusing on the NAME. Whereas, as I 
said, Peirce's emphasis is not that 'things are so'...because of their 'name' 
but because they have an objective reality. Our task is to, as far as we can 
within the semiosic process, get to know that objective reality and to never, 
ever, stop at The Name.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 
  To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 10:47 AM
  Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things


  How my post sounds to you, or how you choose to label it, is not an issue for 
the Peirce list, Edwina. If there is an issue for the list, it’s probably the 
distinction between dynamic and immediate objects. You have said nothing about 
that issue, or about anything relevant to what my post as a whole actually 
says, nothing that calls for a response. I’m only posting this because you 
chose to copy to the list a casual response that I sent to you offlist.

   

  Gary f.

   

  } Abyss calls to abyss in the roar of Your channels (Psalms 42:8). [Zohar 
1:52a] {

  http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

   

  From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
  Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:55
  To: g...@gnusystems.ca; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

   

  Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to the 
issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure 
postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the 
objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that 
objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called 
so'!

   

  Edwina

- Original Message - 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca 

To: 'Edwina Taborsky' 

Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM

Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

That sounds to me like Edwina.   J

 

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25

Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.

 

Edwina

 

  - Original Message - 

  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 

  To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 

   

  We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

   

  A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are 
called so. 

  — Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

   

  The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing 
what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.

   

  Gary f.

   

  } Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

  http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

   


--

   



--



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Stephen R - The meaning of, let's say, 'what is a good way to behave in a store 
line-up' etc, i.e., societal behaviour, is based on, as you say, social 
consensus. 

But what objective reality 'is', can't be based on how we 'name' it, but as you 
point out - Peirce's focus was that this objective reality exists regardless of 
what anyone thinks of it (or names it)...and our task as rational scientific 
beings, is to get as close as we can within the semiosic process, to 'knowing' 
what it is - and this has nothing to do with what we 'name' it.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Stephen C. Rose 
  To: Gary Fuhrman 
  Cc: Peirce List 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 10:55 AM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things


  "things are so because they are called so."



   That does sound a trifle nominalist. Would not Peirce say something like 
things are so because over time a community has concluded that the inferences 
of persons multiply to into of consensus. Perhaps that is what you mean as 
well. In which case I am guilty, like Rep. Jordan, oe extracting a sentence to 
represent a whole thought. 


  I think some things are so, the most important ontological things, because 
they are so, independent of what anyone calls them. I think Peirce agrees.


  Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU Art: http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl 
  Gifts: http://buff.ly/1wXADj3



  On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 10:47 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:

How my post sounds to you, or how you choose to label it, is not an issue 
for the Peirce list, Edwina. If there is an issue for the list, it’s probably 
the distinction between dynamic and immediate objects. You have said nothing 
about that issue, or about anything relevant to what my post as a whole 
actually says, nothing that calls for a response. I’m only posting this because 
you chose to copy to the list a casual response that I sent to you offlist.



Gary f.



} Abyss calls to abyss in the roar of Your channels (Psalms 42:8). [Zohar 
1:52a] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway



From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:55
To: g...@gnusystems.ca; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
    Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things



Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to 
the issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure 
postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the 
objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that 
objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called 
so'!



Edwina

  - Original Message - 

  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 

  To: 'Edwina Taborsky' 

  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM

      Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things



  That sounds to me like Edwina.   J



  From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
  Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25

  Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.



  Edwina



- Original Message - 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca 

To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 



We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the 
visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its 
interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues 
with emergence of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged 
from the phaneron.



A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are 
called so. 

— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)



The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells 
doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite 
rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts 
from itself and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor 
reverses the process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and 
stranger relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create 
new objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, 
metaphor recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking 
on it; things are so because they are called so.



Gary f.



} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway










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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

2015-10-23 Thread Eugene Halton

Dear Gary F.,

I would add that it is not only metaphor that, “reverses the process by
unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger
relationship,” as you put it. This is also the essence of aesthetic
experience. Dewey termed this “perception,” where the qualitative immediacy
of the object determines the interpretation, rather than the habits of
interpretation brought to the situation by the interpreter, which Dewey
termed “recognition.” In Dewey's use of these terms, recognition is
arrested perception, where full openess to the object is foreclosed by
habituation. Fuller openness to the qualities of the object can indeed
unmake a familiar distinction to reveal a richer and perhaps stranger
relationship, such as Peirce’s example of snow in shade as actually
appearing blue.

Aesthetic experience in this sense, as a potential element in all
experience, involves an openness, a vulnerability to experience.
 Gene

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http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .

Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

See my responses below.

  - Original Message - 
  From: Helmut Raulien 
  To: tabor...@primus.ca 
  Cc: g...@gnusystems.ca ; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 11:21 AM
  Subject: Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

  Dear Edwina, Gary F., List,
  Maybe the problem is, that we cannot say, that before there were humans who 
were able to call something somehow, there were no things. 

  EDWINA: Obviously, there were things before humans! Not sure of your point.

  So I propose to amplify the "being-called-" condition towards "application-" 
or "interaction-" condition. I think, that there are three conditions, that 
together make a thing: Material condition (cateory 3), form condition (category 
2), application- or interaction condition (category 1). Application or 
interaction with a thing is a possibility, because the thing is a thing still, 
when no interaction is actually taking place- "quality, reference to a ground" 
("On a new list of categories", Peirce), so category 1. Form is a "relation" 
with the environment (border..), "reference to a correlate", so category 2. 
Matter is structure that grants continuity, so category 3. However, I cannot 
find, that matter is "representation, reference to an interpretant". Or can one 
say so, by fetching a bit far? Anyway. Matter- and form-condition is my 
renaming of Aristotles causa materialis and causa formalis, which I interpret 
not as causes, but as conditions.

  EDWINA: Again, I'm not sure of your point. After all, a leaf on a tree is a 
'thing' and existed long before humans - and is ALWAYS in interaction with its 
surroundings, whether it be with the air (release of oxygen); or with the sun; 
or with the deer that is eating it.

  Best,
  Helmut

   "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>

  Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to the 
issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure 
postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the 
objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that 
objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called 
so'!

  Edwina
- Original Message -
From: g...@gnusystems.ca
    To: 'Edwina Taborsky'
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

That sounds to me like Edwina.   J

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25

Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.

Edwina

  - Original Message - 

  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 

  To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 

  We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

  A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are 
called so. 

  — Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

  The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing 
what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.

  Gary f.

  } Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

  http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

--

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.

Edwina

  - Original Message - 
  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 
  To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:01 AM
  Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

  We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

  A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called 
so. 

  — Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

  The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.

  Gary f.

  } Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

  http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

--

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to the 
issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure 
postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the 
objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that 
objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called 
so'!

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 
  To: 'Edwina Taborsky' 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM
  Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things


  That sounds to me like Edwina.   J

   

  From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
  Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25



  Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.

   

  Edwina

   

- Original Message - 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca 

To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 

 

We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

 

A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are 
called so. 

— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

 

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing 
what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.

 

Gary f.

 

} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 




 

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PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
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RE: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Bev, it probably does relate to Rosenthal’s book (which I found very cogent 
when I read it), but I’m not prepared to say exactly how it relates. Maybe you 
could have a go at that?

 

Gary f.

 

} Certainty closes down one's mind and heart. [Robert Theobald] {

  http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 

From: Bev Corwin [mailto:bevcor...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 12:05



 

Wondering if any of the current discussions re: "seeing" might relate to 
Pragmatic Pluralism?: https://books.google.com/books?id=xYYbJ47JlTgC 

 =charles+sanders+peirce+pluralism ? Thoughts?


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Aw: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 
 
 


Supplement: Your objection to my statement, that it is possible for a thing not to interact is ok, but I have used it merely to show, that it is of category 1, possibility. Ok, a leaf on a tree always interacts somehow, but at night it consumes oxygen and gives off CO2, but it still has the possibility to do the opposite thing again the next day. So, whether or not it always interacts or sometimes ceases to do so (when it is frozen, or whatever), interaction has to do with possibility, category 1.

Edwina,

I think, the obvious can be a point, if there are anthropocentrism, radical constructivism, nominalism, whatever, that doubt the obvious. Doubting the obvious is ok, I think, because there are concepts, that seem obvious, but are wrong. In this case, though, I think that it is not so. My main point was to amplify the anthropocentric "being-called-condition" of a thing towards the universal "interaction-condition", in accord with your response.

Best,

Helmut



"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
 



See my responses below.

 


- Original Message -

From: Helmut Raulien

To: tabor...@primus.ca

Cc: g...@gnusystems.ca ; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu

Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 11:21 AM

Subject: Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 


 

Dear Edwina, Gary F., List,

Maybe the problem is, that we cannot say, that before there were humans who were able to call something somehow, there were no things.

 

EDWINA: Obviously, there were things before humans! Not sure of your point.

 

 

 

 

So I propose to amplify the "being-called-" condition towards "application-" or "interaction-" condition. I think, that there are three conditions, that together make a thing: Material condition (cateory 3), form condition (category 2), application- or interaction condition (category 1). Application or interaction with a thing is a possibility, because the thing is a thing still, when no interaction is actually taking place- "quality, reference to a ground" ("On a new list of categories", Peirce), so category 1. Form is a "relation" with the environment (border..), "reference to a correlate", so category 2. Matter is structure that grants continuity, so category 3. However, I cannot find, that matter is "representation, reference to an interpretant". Or can one say so, by fetching a bit far? Anyway. Matter- and form-condition is my renaming of Aristotles causa materialis and causa formalis, which I interpret not as causes, but as conditions.

 

EDWINA: Again, I'm not sure of your point. After all, a leaf on a tree is a 'thing' and existed long before humans - and is ALWAYS in interaction with its surroundings, whether it be with the air (release of oxygen); or with the sun; or with the deer that is eating it.

 

 

Best,

Helmut



 "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
 



Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to the issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called so'!

 

Edwina


- Original Message -

From: g...@gnusystems.ca

To: 'Edwina Taborsky'

Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM

Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 


That sounds to me like Edwina.   J

 



From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25
 




Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.



 



Edwina



 




- Original Message - 



From: g...@gnusystems.ca 



To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 



 


We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

 

A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. 

— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

 

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.

 

Gary f.

 

} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusys

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 9:37 AM, Edwina Taborsky  > wrote:
> 
> Again, your outline of 'things are so because they are CALLED so' (my  
> emphasis) is postmodernist nominalism, focusing on the NAME. Whereas, as I 
> said, Peirce's emphasis is not that 'things are so'...because of their 'name' 
> but because they have an objective reality. Our task is to, as far as we can 
> within the semiosic process, get to know that objective reality and to never, 
> ever, stop at The Name.
> 

There’s no doubt a lot that went under the rubric of postmodernism was 
horrible. Much, especially as found in literature departs or the softest 
sciences, was at best verging upon relativism with an undue nominalism. I’m not 
sure the key philosophers were guilty as well though. (At a minimum that’s 
debatable) To my eyes what especially people in English departments missed was 
that what was important was what escaped the nominalism. 

I think Gary’s point though was more about the immediate, dynamic and final 
interpretant. (Forgive me if I misread him) The dynamic interpretant seems very 
tied up with metaphor. Much as many key figures in the Continental tradition 
argued. 

Now I have come to have little patience with the writing styles in the 
Continental tradition. However I do think the style arose because of 
recognition of a logic of vagueness. Further it’s a vagueness where sometimes 
we’re not entirely sure what parts are determinate and what parts are vague due 
to an iconic relationship in this logic of vagueness. The problem was that a 
style designed to illustrate this via immanent logical criticism came to take a 
life of its own. Worse, fans of the later Heidegger or Derrida often descended 
into a kind of word-mysticism. One could ape a style while missing the 
phenomenology. That’s why you ended up with things like the Sokal Hoax. It was 
pure nominalism out of control by people faking a style with no real conception 
of the content.

But while nominalism is a constant threat in this logic of vagueness it needn’t 
be. As Peirce demonstrates with his logic.

The problem is that if there are real mind independent structures how does one 
put them in language? The traditional approaches starting with Descartes create 
the the problem of doing correlates between words and things. I know even some 
Peirceans really like that traditional Cartesian approach and think indices are 
enough to provide this. The problem that I think Gary raises well is that if we 
are dealing with language we have to explain how something arbitrary using 
metaphors can do this. It’s this that was a constant focus of Continental 
philosophy from the late 60’s through 90’s. While I don’t like the language 
they used, I by and large think their analysis is correct. However Peirce 
already offers a solution to this with his notion of truth.

For Peirce the nominalist critique doesn’t hold since he sees the final 
interpretant as related to the dynamic interpretant which in turn arises out of 
the immediate interpretant. 

The [Dynamic] Interpretant is whatever interpretation any mind actually makes 
of a sign. […]The Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any 
mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it 
consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of 
this type: “If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine 
that mind to such and such conduct.” […] The Immediate Interpretant consists in 
the Quality of the Impression that a sign is fit to produce, not to any actual 
reaction. […] [I]f there be any fourth kind of Interpretant on the same footing 
as those three, there must be a dreadful rupture of my mental retina, for I 
can't see it at all. (CP8 .315)

I think we’ll all recognize that most dynamic interpretants are cast in 
language and thus hinge on the arbitrary and nominalistic. (That is even if 
they have an essential index component they also are tied to names) However 
given the action of reality on a community over time this will become more 
limited. The range of possible interpretations becomes restricted and 
eventually stable. That stable sign-system is the final interpretation. But 
(and I think this is key) it is still based upon names, language, signs and so 
forth. The whole problem of the inside and outside set up by Cartesian dualism 
is avoided. We’re talking like with like. This is why the nominalist problem 
some postmoderns found themselves in isn’t a problem for Peirce.

Now there’s still a problem in all this and that is whether Peirce’s notion of 
truth is just a regulatory concept or something actual. The critique of certain 
figures in postmodernism is to recognize that we’re always finite beings in a 
finite community. So even if we have the notion of a final interpretant we 
can’t know absolutely. (The metaphor is that of a messiah always announced to 
be coming who never

Aw: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

Edwina,

I think, the obvious can be a point, if there are anthropocentrism, radical constructivism, nominalism, whatever, that doubt the obvious. Doubting the obvious is ok, I think, because there are concepts, that seem obvious, but are wrong. In this case, though, I think that it is not so. My main point was to amplify the anthropocentric "being-called-condition" of a thing towards the universal "interaction-condition", in accord with your response.

Best,

Helmut



"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
 



See my responses below.

 


- Original Message -

From: Helmut Raulien

To: tabor...@primus.ca

Cc: g...@gnusystems.ca ; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu

Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 11:21 AM

Subject: Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 


 

Dear Edwina, Gary F., List,

Maybe the problem is, that we cannot say, that before there were humans who were able to call something somehow, there were no things.

 

EDWINA: Obviously, there were things before humans! Not sure of your point.

 

 

 

 

So I propose to amplify the "being-called-" condition towards "application-" or "interaction-" condition. I think, that there are three conditions, that together make a thing: Material condition (cateory 3), form condition (category 2), application- or interaction condition (category 1). Application or interaction with a thing is a possibility, because the thing is a thing still, when no interaction is actually taking place- "quality, reference to a ground" ("On a new list of categories", Peirce), so category 1. Form is a "relation" with the environment (border..), "reference to a correlate", so category 2. Matter is structure that grants continuity, so category 3. However, I cannot find, that matter is "representation, reference to an interpretant". Or can one say so, by fetching a bit far? Anyway. Matter- and form-condition is my renaming of Aristotles causa materialis and causa formalis, which I interpret not as causes, but as conditions.

 

EDWINA: Again, I'm not sure of your point. After all, a leaf on a tree is a 'thing' and existed long before humans - and is ALWAYS in interaction with its surroundings, whether it be with the air (release of oxygen); or with the sun; or with the deer that is eating it.

 

 

Best,

Helmut



 "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
 



Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to the issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called so'!

 

Edwina


- Original Message -

From: g...@gnusystems.ca

To: 'Edwina Taborsky'

Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM

Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 


That sounds to me like Edwina.   J

 



From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25
 




Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.



 



Edwina



 




- Original Message - 



From: g...@gnusystems.ca 



To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 



 


We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

 

A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. 

— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

 

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.

 

Gary f.

 

} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 




 



- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .






- PEIRCE-L

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Gene, thank you for that very salient comment! Do you mind if I copy it to my 
blog (with attribution to you of course)?

 

Your point about “metaphor” is well taken; I’m using it here very broadly. Or, 
if we take the narrow meaning as the baseline, my “metaphor” is actually a 
synechdoche for Dewey’s “aesthetic experience.” 

 

As for recognition, habituation is certainly one aspect of it, one side of the 
coin … but I also see a recreative side in recognition (when it’s prompted by a 
creative metaphor), and that’s the side I’m focusing on in this context.

 

Phaneroscopically, the point is that the Firstness involved in Thirdness keeps 
it alive.

 

Gary f.

 

} Where there are humans, you'll find flies and Buddhas. [Issa] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 

From: Eugene Halton [mailto:eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 11:44
To: Peirce List <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

Dear Gary F.,

I would add that it is not only metaphor that, “reverses the process by 
unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship,” 
as you put it. This is also the essence of aesthetic experience. Dewey termed 
this “perception,” where the qualitative immediacy of the object determines the 
interpretation, rather than the habits of interpretation brought to the 
situation by the interpreter, which Dewey termed “recognition.” In Dewey's use 
of these terms, recognition is arrested perception, where full openess to the 
object is foreclosed by habituation. Fuller openness to the qualities of the 
object can indeed unmake a familiar distinction to reveal a richer and perhaps 
stranger relationship, such as Peirce’s example of snow in shade as actually 
appearing blue.

Aesthetic experience in this sense, as a potential element in all experience, 
involves an openness, a vulnerability to experience.
 Gene


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 9:43 AM, Eugene Halton  wrote:
> 
> I would add that it is not only metaphor that, “reverses the process by 
> unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
> relationship,” as you put it. This is also the essence of aesthetic 
> experience. Dewey termed this “perception,” where the qualitative immediacy 
> of the object determines the interpretation, rather than the habits of 
> interpretation brought to the situation by the interpreter, which Dewey 
> termed “recognition.” In Dewey's use of these terms, recognition is arrested 
> perception, where full openess to the object is foreclosed by habituation. 
> Fuller openness to the qualities of the object can indeed unmake a familiar 
> distinction to reveal a richer and perhaps stranger relationship, such as 
> Peirce’s example of snow in shade as actually appearing blue.
> 
> Aesthetic experience in this sense, as a potential element in all experience, 
> involves an openness, a vulnerability to experience.
> 
I think this is completely right. This is also tied to Heidegger’s notion of 
truth as unveiling in a kind of re-experiencing of a think in a new originary 
way. That was in large part why the Continental tradition took up the metaphor 
so strongly. I think it ended up undermining their clarity of writing and 
thought. But there were very good reasons for what they did initially.

To Heidegger as we become habituated to things they withdraw themselves in 
various ways. Especially as we come to use them as tools for our purposes. His 
famous example was hammering with a hammer. We only see the hammer again when 
something goes wrong in our practice. He also sees this in the everyday 
interpretations and practices we find ourselves embedded in. The "das Man” or 
they-self as he calls it. For Heidegger the das Man isn’t really a thing but a 
kind of ambiguous part of social reality that determines how we see things. 
It’s breaking out of seeing things in that way that metaphor (among other 
things) enables.

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Clark - yes, the Heidegger-Derrida mysticism of The Word. That was/is -  
> truly terrible! Pure nominalism - but made authoritative by the aspatial and 
> atemporal mystic essentialism of The Word.

Yes, I just don’t think Heidegger and Derrida were doing word mysticism. Just 
that a lot of people who missed the key phenomenology part were able to ape the 
language. To me both Heidegger and Derrida were realists in the same mold as 
Peirce (albeit with a very different style of language focused on metaphor). To 
see this one need only look at the place of key scholastic realists on the 
thought of Heidegger and Derrida.

> And yes - Peirce's outline of the Final Interpretant - which is how 'every 
> mind' would act. Perfect. But nominalism instead rejects this Final 
> Interpretant and instead, focuses strictly on the Immediate Interpretant.  Is 
> it tied up with metaphor? I think the dynamic interpretant can be aligned 
> with metaphor. And agreed - that we may never reach the 'final truth' - but 
> Peirce was well aware of that as you know.

The real issue are what are the implications for philosophy of the final 
interpretant being at best off in an infinite future.

I think in particular the problem for Derrida was that most of philosophy at 
the time thought that the final interpretant was here in the present in our 
presence. This is key for say the positivists but is really part of what 
Descartes introduces as epistemology. I don’t think we appreciate in these 
years where few are epistemological foundationaglists just how widespread this 
view affected philosophy. 

Arguably the whole reason Peirce critiques most philosophy as nominalistic is 
wrapped up with this legacy of Plato and Descartes. The idea of a present final 
interpretant. If under Descartes we have thoughts that correlate with things 
then the immediate thoughts take the place of the final interpretant. However 
if you recognize the problem with this then all you’re left with are the names 
in the mind. That is the immediate and dynamic interpretant without the final 
interpretant is nominalism. Nominalism arises because of how the mind is cut 
off from reality. The combination of shifting the nature of truth plus 
scholastic realism avoids all this. 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Clark - yes, the Heidegger-Derrida mysticism of The Word. That was/is -  truly 
terrible! Pure nominalism - but made authoritative by the aspatial and 
atemporal mystic essentialism of The Word.

And yes - Peirce's outline of the Final Interpretant - which is how 'every 
mind' would act. Perfect. But nominalism instead rejects this Final 
Interpretant and instead, focuses strictly on the Immediate Interpretant.  Is 
it tied up with metaphor? I think the dynamic interpretant can be aligned with 
metaphor. And agreed - that we may never reach the 'final truth' - but Peirce 
was well aware of that as you know.


  - Original Message - 
  From: Clark Goble 
  To: Edwina Taborsky 
  Cc: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 12:52 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things




On Oct 23, 2015, at 9:37 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:


Again, your outline of 'things are so because they are CALLED so' (my  
emphasis) is postmodernist nominalism, focusing on the NAME. Whereas, as I 
said, Peirce's emphasis is not that 'things are so'...because of their 'name' 
but because they have an objective reality. Our task is to, as far as we can 
within the semiosic process, get to know that objective reality and to never, 
ever, stop at The Name.




  There’s no doubt a lot that went under the rubric of postmodernism was 
horrible. Much, especially as found in literature departs or the softest 
sciences, was at best verging upon relativism with an undue nominalism. I’m not 
sure the key philosophers were, although that’s clearly debatable. To my eyes 
what especially people in English departments missed was that what was 
important was what escaped the nominalism. 


  I think Gary’s point though was more about the immediate, dynamic and final 
interpretant. (Forgive me if I misread him) The immediate interpretant seems 
very tied up with metaphor. Much as many key figures in the Continental 
tradition argued. 


  Now I have come to have short patience with a lot of the writing styles in 
the Continental tradition. However I do think the style arises because of 
recognition of a logic of vagueness. Further it’s a vagueness where sometimes 
we’re not entirely sure what parts are determinate and what parts are vague due 
to an iconic relationship in this logic of vagueness. The problem was that a 
style designed to illustrate this via immanent logical criticism came to take a 
life of its own. Worse it enabled especially fans of the later Heidegger or 
Derrida to descend into a kind of word-mysticism where one could ape a style 
while missing the phenomenology. That’s why you ended up with things like the 
Sokal Hoax. It was pure nominalism out of control by people faking a style with 
no real conception of the content.


  But while nominalism is a constant threat in this logic of vagueness it 
needn’t be, as Peirce demonstrates with his logic.


  The problem is that if there are real mind independent structures how does 
one put them in language. The traditional approaches starting with Descartes 
create the the problem of doing correlates between words and things. I know 
even some Peirceans really like that traditional Cartesian approach and think 
indices are enough to provide this. The problem that I think Gary raises well 
is that if we are dealing with language we have to explain how something 
arbitrary using metaphors can do this. It’s this that was a constant focus of 
Continental philosophy from the late 60’s through 90’s. While I don’t like the 
language they used, I by and large think their analysis is correct. However 
Peirce already offers a solution to this with his notion of truth.


  For Peirce the nominalist critique doesn’t hold since he sees the final 
interpretant as related to the dynamic interpretant which in turn arises out of 
the immediate interpretant. 


The [Dynamic] Interpretant is whatever interpretation any mind actually 
makes of a sign. […]The Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which 
any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it 
consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of 
this type: “If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine 
that mind to such and such conduct.” […] The Immediate Interpretant consists in 
the Quality of the Impression that a sign is fit to produce, not to any actual 
reaction. […] [I]f there be any fourth kind of Interpretant on the same footing 
as those three, there must be a dreadful rupture of my mental retina, for I 
can't see it at all. (CP8 .315)


  I think we’ll all recognize that most dynamic interpretants are cast in 
language and thus hinge on the arbitrary and nominalistic. (That is even if 
they have an essential index component they also are tied to names) However 
given the action of reality on a community over time this will become more 
limited. The range of possible interpretations becomes rest

Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Clark, List,

I thought, that "final interpretant" had something to do with truth. But you wrote, that it rather has to do with power. Well, I do not see any positive connection between truth and power. I have just read Herrmann Popitz: "Phänomene der Macht" (phenomenons of power). It is very interesting, but very depressing: Power everywhere, and truth nowhere. Yawn. I do not like reality, if reality really is like that. I also dislike Nietzsche. I rather like Kant. But now I am out of arguments- read and write you all later!

Best,

Helmut

"Clark Goble"

On Oct 23, 2015, at 12:31 PM, Helmut Raulien wrote:

To clarify both Peirce and Derrida think something is true if the objects determine a sign that is the same kind of sign as the final interpretant. So we know the truth now but what truth means is this future sign. (Here you can see Peirce applying the pragmatic maxim for meaning)

The reason Peirce avoids the problem of Descartes is because there’s no having to explain correlation between mental signs and physical objects with an absolute divide. Rather his semiotics is inherently externalist as opposed to internalist. So objects determine their interpretants via the sign. So long as the interpretant is the same as the final interpretant you have truth in mind. You’re comparing items of the same category unlike Descartes.

So neither religion, nor Peirce, is something that I have a use for, looking for truth. Lest it is not different: a final interpretant is not something in the far future, but something that occurs regularly anytime when somebody is convinced of something.

Yes, it’s this that I think Peirce (and many of the rest of us on the list) would call nominalism since truth is just a finite mind being convinced or persuaded. This quickly (IMO) justifies sophistry since sophistry can convince people of things.

This is a temporary truth, when this convincement might later possibly be falsified. A truth becomes truer and truer, the more time passes without falsification. But only in a society that allows falsification. This sounds like relativism, so there must be added, that there may also be "synthetic apriori statements" (Kant). What about these? Can they give us some truth here and now? I guess so.

Once you go all in with this sort of nominalism then Quine’s critique most definitely also applies. This is I think what many took out of Continental philosophy as postmodernism. (I tend to try to distinguish the two)

That is if we have nothing but “temporary truth” what matters? However I’d note Derrida in particular says,

I am not a pluralist and I would never say that every interpretation is equal but I do not select. The interpretations select themselves. I am a Nietzschean in that sense. You know that Nietzsche insisted on the fact that the principle of differentiation was in itself selective. The eternal return of the same was not repetition, it was a selection of more powerful forces. So I would not say that some interpretations are truer than others. I would say that some are more powerful than others. The hierarchy is between forces and not between true and false. There are interpretations which account for more meaning and this is the criterion. "Literary Review" (Vol 14.18 April - 1 May (1980):21-22)

This selection by more powerful forces is precisely what Peirce means with the development of the final interpretant.

The Final Interpretant is the ultimate effect of the sign, so far as it is intended or destined, from the character of the sign, being more or less of a habitual and formal nature." (MS 339, 1906 Oct. 23, p.288r, 289r = SEM III, p.224 f.).

…the Final Interpretant is the one Interpretative result to which every Interpreter is destined to come if the Sign is sufficiently considered. [—] The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual tends. (Letters to Lady Welby SS 110-1)

Of course the immediate interpretant is of possibility rather than actuality. The actuality is the dynamic interpretant. The final interpretant is a kind of teleological event of “would be.” There are on the final interpretant still a lot of disagreement. In particular the list originator Joe Ransdall and T. L. Short have had some disagreements on this.

I should add that while I adopt a realist interpretation of Derrida this is not the main interpretation of him. The difference ends up being on this final interpretant. Is there a “would be” or not? That is what is the nature of the final interpretant even if there is a logic of the final interpretant. I

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 1:19 PM, Edwina Taborsky  > wrote:
> 
> Thomas - I think that Gary F's outline is, as I said, postmodernism - 
> grounded in Derrida's 'differance' and 'presence'...and 'rhetoric' [taking 
> names].  Nothing to do with Peirce and I don't see that Derrida was a scholar 
> of Peirce (he was more firmly Saussurian).

???

Derrida’s whole point was that Saussure was wrong and Pierce was right. The 
whole first half of On Grammatology, one of his most famous works, is just 
about this.

Even if you dislike Derrida and that style of philosophy, I think the first 
half of On Grammatology is worth reading. 
http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_3997.pdf 
  (Sorry, this seems to be 
OCRed and is pages 49 - 50)

In his project of semiotics, Peirce seems to have been more attentive than 
Saussure to the irreducibility of this becoming-unmotivated. In his 
terminology, one must speak of a becoming-unmotivated of the symbol, the notion 
of the symbol playing here a role analogous to that of the sign which Saussure 
opposes precisely to the symbol:

Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, 
particularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons 
and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature; 
the symbol parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it 
is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new 
symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbol. 

Peirce complies with two apparently incompatible exigencies. The mis-take here 
would be to sacrifice one for the other. It must be recognized that the 
symbolic (in Peirce’s sense: of “the arbitrariness of the sign”) is rooted in 
the nonsymbolic, in an anterior and related order of signification: “Symbols 
grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from 
icons, or from mixed signs.” But these roots must not compromise the structural 
originality of the field of symbols, the autonomy of a domain, a production, 
and a play: “So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne 
symbolum de symbol.”

But in both cases, the genetic root-system refers .from sign to sign. No ground 
of nonsignification—understood as insignificance or an intuition of a present 
truth—stretches out to give it foundation under the play and the coming into 
being of signs. Semiotics no longer depends on logic. Logic, according to 
Peirce, is only a semiotic: “Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I 
have shown, only another name for semiotics (semeiotike), the quasi- necessary, 
or formal, doctrine of signs.” And logic in the classical sense, logic 
“properly speaking,” nonformal logic commanded by the value of truth, occupies 
in that semiotics only a determined and not a fundamental level. As in Husserl 
(but the analogy, although it is most thought-provoking, would stop there and 
one must apply it carefully), the lowest level, the foundation of the 
possibility of logic (or semiotics) corresponds to the project of the 
Grammatica speculativa of Thomas d’Erfurt, falsely attributed to Duns Scotus. 
Like Husserl, Peirce expressly refers to it. It is a matter of elaborating, in 
both cases, a formal doctrine of conditions which a discourse must satisfy in 
order to have a sense, in order to “mean,” even if it is false or 
contradictory. The general morphology of that meaning 10 (Bedeutung, 
vouloir-dire) is independent of all logic of truth.

The science of semiotic has three branches. The first is called by Duns Scotus 
grammatica speculativa. We may term it pure grammar. It has for its task to 
ascertain what must be true of the representamen used by every scientific 
intelligence in order that they may embody any meaning. The second is logic 
proper. It is the science of what is quasi-necessarily true of the 
representamina of any scientific intelligence in order that they may hold good 
of any object, that is, may be true. Or say, logic proper is the formal science 
of the conditions of the truth of representations.. The third, in imitation of 
Kant’s fashion of preserving old associations of words in finding nomenclature 
for new conceptions, I call pure rhetoric. Its task is to ascertain the laws by 
which in every scientific intelligence one sign gives birth to another, and 
especially one thought brings forth another.

Peirce goes very far in the direction that I have called the de-construction of 
the transcendental signified, which, at one time or another, would place a 
reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign. I have identified 
logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence as the exigent, powerful, 
systematic, and irrepressible desire for such a signified. Now Peirce 
con-siders the indefiniteness of reference as the criterion that allows us to 
recognize that we are indeed dealing with

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 2:12 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Clark- I  have his Of Grammatology; and his Speech and Phenomena, also his 
> Limited Inc.
>  
> The way I read Derrida (and I admit, some time ago) in his 'Linguistics and 
> Grammatology' and 'The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing', they 
> were filled with Saussurian terms (signifer and signified;  distinction 
> between language and speech) which he didn't seem to question. And his focus 
> on Peirce was only a few pages - he never examines the triadic semiosic 
> action. He seems more to focus on the symbol - but this is not the semiosic 
> action. That is, for Derrida, the focus is on rhetoric - which is all about 
> 'signs' - but not the triadic semiosic action. Derrida even calls the 'thing 
> itself' (which i take to be the Dynamic Object) as a 'representamen'!! (Of 
> Grammatology, p 49). 
>  

Edwina, I have to run so it may be a few days before I can reply in a 
worthwhile way. (And my apologies for all the typos in what I’ve written today 
- I’ve quickly written everything while doing a ton of other things) I’ll admit 
it’s been quite a while since I’ve last studied Derrida in depth. But he was 
quite key in my philosophical development with Peirce.

Quickly off the top of my head (so beware errors on my part) what Derrida means 
by rhetoric is what Peirce calls speculative grammar. (I’ll see if I can’t 
write more on this later)

On Grammatology is filled with Saussurian terms because it’s a critique of 
Saussure. He’s showing how Saussure’s ideas are problematic. Derrida’s whole 
move is the post-structuralist move against Saussurian based structuralism. For 
Derrida this isn’t just the formal structuralists in psychiatry, history, “myth 
criticism” or anthropology but extends to all things he sees as structuralist 
in this sense of dualism. He sees the origin in Descartes and certain readings 
of Plato. (Other readings he embraces and some of his key terms actually come 
out of the Timaeus)

The thing itself comes out of Husserl/Heidegger but things (objects in Peirce’s 
sign sense) has in part a representational part. This all gets into the issues 
we discussed with Frederik Stjernfelt when he was here. (It’s been a while but 
I think I raised the Derrida/Heidegger issues in those discussions) The place 
of the copula in Peirce’s semiotics is pretty important here. Derrida isn’t 
saying things are only representations but that our thinking is purely in signs 
(which is Peirce’s point).

Again the more complete explanation will have to wait.

As for the triadic relation I completely disagree he doesn’t deal with this. 
The whole point is that Saussure offers only a dualistic relationship of the 
sign in opposition to Peirce’s triadic relationship. This then becomes key to 
Derrida’s difference which arises out of the problem of there not being an 
absolute difference. For any two categories that are raised as differences his 
focus is on what enables this difference which it turns out is the sign and the 
essential sign-relation of Perice’s semiotics. Even in later works when he 
stops talking about Peirce this triadic relationship and the problem of 
absolute divides he’s still focused on this logic of continuity and triadic 
nature of the sign. It’s just that Derrida is usually doing an immanent 
critique using the language of whatever philosopher he’s engaged with. But 
fundamentally he’s just playing up the difference between a dualism notion of 
sign versus Peirce’s semiotics.

Now as I said earlier today one can still reject Derrida as a realist and see 
him as a nominalist. (And Stjernfelt made a similar critique here on Peirce-L) 
If there is no final interpretant (to use Peircean language) and that the very 
notion of a teleology is wrong then Derrida ends up much more as a nihilist 
opposed to Peirce. I fully acknowledge this is the common reading of Derrida. 
That is that all we have are signs and representations with nothing behind 
them. This to me is quite odd since Derrida, especially in his later phase of 
the 90’s onward, is incessantly concerned with what escapes this kind of 
deconstruction. Justice is one of the notions that can’t be deconstructed but 
there are others. 

That’s partially why I brought up force of law. It’s just wrong I think to say 
he’s a nihilist where there’s nothing but test. To be is to be a text (to be a 
sign). That’s the nature of being. But the other to the text, what is 
marginalized, seems to be his prime concern. Those portraying Derrida as a 
nihilist or nominalist seem to miss the role Levinasian ethics play in his 
thought.

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

2015-10-23 Thread Thomas

Edwina ~
I agree the original quote represented a nominalist perspective of logic - 
which I previously called a black box whose contents forever remain a mystery.  
But that quote 'almost' painted a picture of the dynamics of connecting objects 
to interpretants in the brain, so I touched up the image with a few facts from 
Wikipedia. 

More broadly, the philosopher's perspective of logic is (appropriately) 
different from that of one who uses logic as a tool for Pragmatic purposes.  
Sometimes, failing to make that distinction leads to misunderstood comments 
about logic. 

Philosophers almost never observe logic until after the deed is done.  They 
always use words. Sometimes they express ideas about logic in 
lyrical/rhetorical ways to persuade others their insights are true. It is 
possible to 'win' a debate among philosophers while actually being wrong, so 
the search for truth may be long delayed. 

Those who use logic as a tool have a more dynamic perspective. They're 
concerned with solving several puzzles simultaneously, looking ahead rather 
than behind, mediating between different objectives, abducting on the fly. 
Errors are quickly exposed by a Pragmatic universe that does not yield to false 
beliefs. 

Regards,
Tom Wyrick 



On Oct 23, 2015, at 2:19 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

Thomas - I think that Gary F's outline is, as I said, postmodernism - grounded 
in Derrida's 'differance' and 'presence'...and 'rhetoric' [taking names].  
Nothing to do with Peirce and I don't see that Derrida was a scholar of Peirce 
(he was more firmly Saussurian).
 
Edwina
- Original Message -
From: Thomas
To: g...@gnusystems.ca
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 2:39 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Gary, List ~ 
"The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names."

I like how this quote points to the physical presence of objects and 
interpretants in the brain, and the habitual paths connecting relevant neurons. 
 However, I would have liked it more if your quote had been less lyrical, and 
instead had described the physical mechanism by which a collection of neurons 
form an object-interpretant relationship in the brain. 

I certainly believe they do that.  

Steve Jobs likened creativity to "connecting the dots" in useful ways that 
other people haven't before.  Those 'dots' are neurons (grey matter) and they 
rely on electrochemical energy to connect via the brain's white matter.  As 
they make connections with more neurons over the passage of time, some neurons 
grow larger/dominant and subsequently receive and send out electrochemical 
signals more efficiently than the others.  Thereafter, connections between 
those enlarged neurons form 'paths' in the physical brain (object+interpretant 
relationships), so those larger/connected neurons are more likely to contribute 
to logical deductions in the future. 

I believe that brain researchers have identified all of the physical mechanisms 
mentioned above. Identifying the larger/connected neurons as 
object-interpretant relationships is my perspective (i.e., abduction).  
Relationships between neurons are 'habits' nourished over time by a flow of 
electrochemical energy.  In solving today's puzzle the energy may flow from 
neuron A to B, but in solving tomorrow's puzzle it may flow from B to A.  The 
object and interpretant status of neurons is ever-changing, and varies with the 
Pragmatic objective. 

Regards,
Tom Wyrick 




On Oct 23, 2015, at 8:01 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:

We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.
A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called 
so.
— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)
The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.
Gary f.
} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {
htt

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

No, Sung, the Representamen is not a 'name'. You can come up with all the 
diagrams in the world, and it won't validate your assertion. 

Furthermore, a symbol (which is a 'name') is also not  a Representamen. And a 
symbol is not defined by an objective reality. Therefore, your 'false' and ' 
true' name notion is equally - your private view and is not Peircean and I 
certainly don't use it.

No such thing as triadic nominalism. Nominalism is, by definition, a view about 
'universals' and it rejects their reality, though nominalists 'might' accept 
the notion of abstract ideas. The point about nominalism is its focus on 
current time/space and particular subjective experiences. ...and, its 
rhetorical focus, which is also why I define Derrida as a nominalist.

Edwina


  - Original Message - 
  From: Sungchul Ji 
  To: PEIRCE-L 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 2:53 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things


  Edwina,  Gary F, Helmut, lists,


  "Peirce's emphasis is not that 'things are so'...because of their 'name' but 
because they have an objective reality. 
  Our task is to, as far as we can within the semiosic process, get to know 
that objective reality and to never, ever, 
  stop at The Name."


  (1) The critical question would be "Can we get to know objective reality 
without naming it?".  I don't think so, because, according to Peirce, 'name' 
(also called representamen) is an essential part of a sign.  That is, no sign 
can function without it:, i.e., no sign can be triadic without representamen, 
as evident in Figure 1: 



 f g
 Object  ->   Representamen ->  Interpretant
 |   (or Name)^
 |  
|
 |  
|
 |__|  

  h


  Figure 1.  A diagrammatic representation of the Peircean sign.
 f = sign production; g = sign interpretation; h = grounding




  'False names' ('nomialist names' ?) are dyadic in the sense that their 
interpretants are not constrained by (or free form) Object, i.e., h is 
non-existent.  In contrast, 'True names' ('realistic names" ?) are triadic 
because their interpretants are constrained by (and hence grounded in)  




  (2)  It may be necessary to distinguish between two kinds of names -- the 
true names and the false names.  False names' ('nomialist names' ?) are dyadic 
in the sense that their interpretants are not constrained by (or are free from) 
Object, i.e., h is non-existent.  In contrast, 'True names' ('realistic names" 
?) are triadic because their interpretants are constrained by (and hence 
grounded in) Object, i.e., h is active.  

  I think Gary F was probably referring to 'true names' in his post, while 
Edwina might be warning us against 'false names' that plague human 
communication.  Edwina is right in pointing out that 'false names' have nothing 
to do with Object, since it can induce Interpretant but this Interpretant is 
not connected to Object due to lack of h. Names are true if and only if they 
are triadic, meaning that all three arrows, f, g and h, must be engaged in 
their semiosic actions. 



  (3) If my interpretation proposed above is right, the ITR (Irreducible 
Triadic Relation) template shown in Figure 1 may be useful in resolving some of 
the heated debates on the relation between nominalism vs realism that we see 
often on these lists.  One possible ITR-based solution might be to recognize 
two kinds of nominalisms -- the triadic nominalism which is true and the dyadic 
nominalism which is false. 



  All the best.


  Sung






  On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 11:37 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

Gary F - I did indeed comment on your post - I said it was postmodernist 
nominalism/relativism. That's clear in itself. Your response was to insult me 
privately - and I don't accept that. You may call it a 'casual' response but 
this ignores its content.

Again, your outline of 'things are so because they are CALLED so' (my  
emphasis) is postmodernist nominalism, focusing on the NAME. Whereas, as I 
said, Peirce's emphasis is not that 'things are so'...because of their 'name' 
but because they have an objective reality. Our task is to, as far as we can 
within the semiosic process, get to know that objective reality and to never, 
ever, stop at The Name.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 
  To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 10:47 AM
  Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things


  How my post sounds to you, or how you choose to label it, is

Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Supplement: Not Herrmann, but Heinrich Popitz: "Phänomene der Macht" 1992 means: Phenomenons of power. I hope they have translated it into English. It is very good.

Clark, List,

Best,

Helmut

"Clark Goble"

On Oct 23, 2015, at 12:31 PM, Helmut Raulien wrote:

That is if we have nothing but “temporary truth” what matters? However I’d note Derrida in particular says,

This selection by more powerful forces is precisely what Peirce means with the development of the final interpretant.

I should add that while I adopt a realist interpretation of Derrida this is not the main interpretation of him. The difference ends

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 12:54 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Agreed - that immediate/dynamic interpretant as cut off from the final 
> interpretant is nominalism. But, i still see Derrida as the ultimate 
> kabbalistic mystic, with The Word as the 'primal cause'; that is, it isn't 
> speech and its 'presentness' that is primary but the non-present 'writing' 
> ...existing outside even of the 'differance' between words..

Right, but a Kabbalistic mystic really is a variant of neoPlatonism and the One 
as both origin and end (alpha and omega) entails a strong type of realism. I’d 
also say that the Kabbalist sees the Word as a sign and thus one can’t separate 
the Word from its object and interpretant. 

The question then becomes, as it often is in Platonism, is how to view the 
relationship of time to origin. There are two ways to do it. One is when 
Platonism is used as a foil or straw man to attack the idea of permanent 
complete objects always before us. The other way looks at time is a different 
way that is closer to what I see Derrida and Peirce doing.

Again Kelly Parker’s "The Ascent of Soul to Noûs: Charles S. Peirce as 
Neoplatonist” is a must read here.

http://agora.phi.gvsu.edu/kap/Neoplatonism/csp-plot.html

> As we know, Derrida rejected logic (i.e., reason) as the basis of language 
> and instead opted for 'utterances' in actual discourse. He obviously wasn't 
> that interested in the objective world. I'm not an expert on Derrida, having 
> been turned off by his rejection of logic and reason and the objective 
> worldso - the above are only my vague memories of my readings on him.

Again one has to be careful here. Derrida rejected a particular view of reason 
as the basis of language. Effectively what he rejects is logic/language as 
being non-vague. He sees language not as determinate but as signs in the 
Peircean sense. (In On Grammatology he even explicitly makes this connection) 
So Derrida isn’t rejecting logic but saying logic is really signs. Further what 
grounds logic is ethics (which should be very familiar to Peirceans). Now how 
Derrida sees ethics is wrapped up in the Levinasian demand of the other, but 
its still an ethics. So effectively what Derrida is doing is taking this 
ethical ground quite seriously. (You can see this in particular in his famous 
paper “Force of Law” which distinguishes the relationship of law and justice — 
this applies to practical law but he intends it much more broadly)

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Thomas - I think that Gary F's outline is, as I said, postmodernism - grounded 
in Derrida's 'differance' and 'presence'...and 'rhetoric' [taking names].  
Nothing to do with Peirce and I don't see that Derrida was a scholar of Peirce 
(he was more firmly Saussurian).

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Thomas 
  To: g...@gnusystems.ca 
  Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 2:39 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

  Gary, List ~ 
  "The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing 
what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names."

  I like how this quote points to the physical presence of objects and 
interpretants in the brain, and the habitual paths connecting relevant neurons. 
 However, I would have liked it more if your quote had been less lyrical, and 
instead had described the physical mechanism by which a collection of neurons 
form an object-interpretant relationship in the brain. 

  I certainly believe they do that.  

  Steve Jobs likened creativity to "connecting the dots" in useful ways that 
other people haven't before.  Those 'dots' are neurons (grey matter) and they 
rely on electrochemical energy to connect via the brain's white matter.  As 
they make connections with more neurons over the passage of time, some neurons 
grow larger/dominant and subsequently receive and send out electrochemical 
signals more efficiently than the others.  Thereafter, connections between 
those enlarged neurons form 'paths' in the physical brain (object+interpretant 
relationships), so those larger/connected neurons are more likely to contribute 
to logical deductions in the future. 

  I believe that brain researchers have identified all of the physical 
mechanisms mentioned above. Identifying the larger/connected neurons as 
object-interpretant relationships is my perspective (i.e., abduction).  
Relationships between neurons are 'habits' nourished over time by a flow of 
electrochemical energy.  In solving today's puzzle the energy may flow from 
neuron A to B, but in solving tomorrow's puzzle it may flow from B to A.  The 
object and interpretant status of neurons is ever-changing, and varies with the 
Pragmatic objective. 

  Regards,
  Tom Wyrick 

  On Oct 23, 2015, at 8:01 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:

  We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

  A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called 
so. 

  — Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

  The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.

  Gary f.

  } Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

  http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

> On Oct 23, 2015, at 2:34 PM, Clark Goble  wrote:
> 
> As for the triadic relation I completely disagree he doesn’t deal with this. 
> The whole point is that Saussure offers only a dualistic relationship of the 
> sign in opposition to Peirce’s triadic relationship. This then becomes key to 
> Derrida’s difference which arises out of the problem of there not being an 
> absolute difference. For any two categories that are raised as differences 
> his focus is on what enables this difference which it turns out is the sign 
> and the essential sign-relation of Perice’s semiotics. Even in later works 
> when he stops talking about Peirce this triadic relationship and the problem 
> of absolute divides he’s still focused on this logic of continuity and 
> triadic nature of the sign. It’s just that Derrida is usually doing an 
> immanent critique using the language of whatever philosopher he’s engaged 
> with. But fundamentally he’s just playing up the difference between a dualism 
> notion of sign versus Peirce’s semiotics.

To add to this differánce ends up being a pun because it is really Peirce’s 
sign. There’s first a temporal difference where the meaning of the object of 
the sign is tied up with semiosis and thus time. It’s also caught up with the 
structuralist (and especially Saussurean) notion of having a field of 
differences rather than pure references to absolute things. But to make this 
difference requires a trichotomy not a dualism. (thing 1, thing 2, and the 
difference) So if things are given in differences and that givenness comes as a 
hint due to the nature of signs you have these double aspects to the sign.

Now it’s true Peirce doesn’t focus on the objects as differences part of this 
analysis. Part of Derrida’s point is an immanent criticism of Saussure in terms 
of this role of difference in terms of Peirce’s semiotics.

Again there are a slew of reasons to critique Derrida. The strongest place ends 
up being the place (or absence) of indices in Derrida’s use of Peirce. He 
emphasizes far more symbol types of signs. Now I don’t think this critique ends 
up being sound, but it is a definite place where one can (and many have) 
critiqued the relationship.

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Clark- I  have his Of Grammatology; and his Speech and Phenomena, also his 
Limited Inc.

The way I read Derrida (and I admit, some time ago) in his 'Linguistics and 
Grammatology' and 'The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing', they were 
filled with Saussurian terms (signifer and signified;  distinction between 
language and speech) which he didn't seem to question. And his focus on Peirce 
was only a few pages - he never examines the triadic semiosic action. He seems 
more to focus on the symbol - but this is not the semiosic action. That is, for 
Derrida, the focus is on rhetoric - which is all about 'signs' - but not the 
triadic semiosic action. Derrida even calls the 'thing itself' (which i take to 
be the Dynamic Object) as a 'representamen'!! (Of Grammatology, p 49). 

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Clark Goble 
  To: Edwina Taborsky 
  Cc: PEIRCE-L 
  Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 3:33 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things




On Oct 23, 2015, at 1:19 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:


Thomas - I think that Gary F's outline is, as I said, postmodernism - 
grounded in Derrida's 'differance' and 'presence'...and 'rhetoric' [taking 
names].  Nothing to do with Peirce and I don't see that Derrida was a scholar 
of Peirce (he was more firmly Saussurian).


  ???


  Derrida’s whole point was that Saussure was wrong and Pierce was right. The 
whole first half of On Grammatology, one of his most famous works, is just 
about this.


  Even if you dislike Derrida and that style of philosophy, I think the first 
half of On Grammatology is worth reading. 
http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_3997.pdf  (Sorry, this seems to be 
OCRed and is pages 49 - 50)


In his project of semiotics, Peirce seems to have been more attentive than 
Saussure to the irreducibility of this becoming-unmotivated. In his 
terminology, one must speak of a becoming-unmotivated of the symbol, the notion 
of the symbol playing here a role analogous to that of the sign which Saussure 
opposes precisely to the symbol:


  Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, 
particularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons 
and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature; 
the symbol parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it 
is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new 
symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbol. 


Peirce complies with two apparently incompatible exigencies. The mis-take 
here would be to sacrifice one for the other. It must be recognized that the 
symbolic (in Peirce’s sense: of “the arbitrariness of the sign”) is rooted in 
the nonsymbolic, in an anterior and related order of signification: “Symbols 
grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from 
icons, or from mixed signs.” But these roots must not compromise the structural 
originality of the field of symbols, the autonomy of a domain, a production, 
and a play: “So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne 
symbolum de symbol.”


But in both cases, the genetic root-system refers .from sign to sign. No 
ground of nonsignification—understood as insignificance or an intuition of a 
present truth—stretches out to give it foundation under the play and the coming 
into being of signs. Semiotics no longer depends on logic. Logic, according to 
Peirce, is only a semiotic: “Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I 
have shown, only another name for semiotics (semeiotike), the quasi- necessary, 
or formal, doctrine of signs.” And logic in the classical sense, logic 
“properly speaking,” nonformal logic commanded by the value of truth, occupies 
in that semiotics only a determined and not a fundamental level. As in Husserl 
(but the analogy, although it is most thought-provoking, would stop there and 
one must apply it carefully), the lowest level, the foundation of the 
possibility of logic (or semiotics) corresponds to the project of the 
Grammatica speculativa of Thomas d’Erfurt, falsely attributed to Duns Scotus. 
Like Husserl, Peirce expressly refers to it. It is a matter of elaborating, in 
both cases, a formal doctrine of conditions which a discourse must satisfy in 
order to have a sense, in order to “mean,” even if it is false or 
contradictory. The general morphology of that meaning 10 (Bedeutung, 
vouloir-dire) is independent of all logic of truth.


  The science of semiotic has three branches. The first is called by Duns 
Scotus grammatica speculativa. We may term it pure grammar. It has for its task 
to ascertain what must be true of the representamen used by every scientific 
intelligence in order that they may embody any meaning. The second is logic 
proper. It is the science of what is quasi-necessarily true of the 
representamina of any scientific intelligence in order that they may hol

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

2015-10-23 Thread Bev Corwin

And not seeing through disharmonics of multiverses?

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 10:47 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:

> How my post sounds to you, or how you choose to label it, is not an issue
> for the Peirce list, Edwina. If there is an issue for the list, it’s
> probably the distinction between dynamic and immediate objects.
>
> *From:* Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
> *Sent:* 23-Oct-15 09:55
> *To:* g...@gnusystems.ca; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things
>
>
>
> Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to
> the issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure
> postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on
> the objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that
> objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are
> called so'!
>
>
>
> Edwina
>

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Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

Dear Edwina, Gary F., List,

Maybe the problem is, that we cannot say, that before there were humans who were able to call something somehow, there were no things. So I propose to amplify the "being-called-" condition towards "application-" or "interaction-" condition. I think, that there are three conditions, that together make a thing: Material condition (cateory 3), form condition (category 2), application- or interaction condition (category 1). Application or interaction with a thing is a possibility, because the thing is a thing still, when no interaction is actually taking place- "quality, reference to a ground" ("On a new list of categories", Peirce), so category 1. Form is a "relation" with the environment (border..), "reference to a correlate", so category 2. Matter is structure that grants continuity, so category 3. However, I cannot find, that matter is "representation, reference to an interpretant". Or can one say so, by fetching a bit far? Anyway. Matter- and form-condition is my renaming of Aristotles causa materialis and causa formalis, which I interpret not as causes, but as conditions.

Best,

Helmut



 "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
 



Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to the issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called so'!

 

Edwina


- Original Message -

From: g...@gnusystems.ca

To: 'Edwina Taborsky'

Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM

Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 


That sounds to me like Edwina.   J

 



From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25
 




Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.



 



Edwina



 




- Original Message - 



From: g...@gnusystems.ca 



To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 



 


We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence of relations from the phaneron, now that things have emerged from the phaneron.

 

A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. 

— Chuangtse 2 (Watson 1968, 40)

 

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so.

 

Gary f.

 

} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 




 



- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .





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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Stephen,

 

Peirce did not say, and I presume would not say, that "things are so because 
they are called so."

But he did say this (CP 6.341, 1909):

[[ The mode of being of the composition of thought, which is always of the 
nature of the attribution of a predicate to a subject, is the living 
intelligence which is the creator of all intelligible reality, as well as of 
the knowledge of such reality. It is the entelechy, or perfection of being. ]]

Of course that too is taken out of context, but the context is accessible to 
Peirceans.

 

Gary f.

 

} Sometimes I am, sometimes I think. [Paul Valéry] {

 <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 

From: Stephen C. Rose [mailto:stever...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 10:55
To: Gary Fuhrman <g...@gnusystems.ca>
Cc: Peirce List <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

"things are so because they are called so."

 

 That does sound a trifle nominalist. Would not Peirce say something like 
things are so because over time a community has concluded that the inferences 
of persons multiply to into of consensus. Perhaps that is what you mean as 
well. In which case I am guilty, like Rep. Jordan, oe extracting a sentence to 
represent a whole thought. 

 

I think some things are so, the most important ontological things, because they 
are so, independent of what anyone calls them. I think Peirce agrees.




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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

How my post sounds to you, or how you choose to label it, is not an issue for 
the Peirce list, Edwina. If there is an issue for the list, it’s probably the 
distinction between dynamic and immediate objects. You have said nothing about 
that issue, or about anything relevant to what my post as a whole actually 
says, nothing that calls for a response. I’m only posting this because you 
chose to copy to the list a casual response that I sent to you offlist.

 

Gary f.

 

} Abyss calls to abyss in the roar of Your channels (Psalms 42:8). [Zohar 
1:52a] {

 <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:55
To: g...@gnusystems.ca; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

Never mind the ad hominem - and the  smiley face is irrelevant. Stick to the 
issue. Again, the issue is that your outline sounds to me to be pure 
postmodernist nominalism/relatavism. The opposite of Peirce's insistence on the 
objective reality of objects - regardless of what anyone thinks of that 
objectwhereas you are saying that 'things are so because they are called 
so'!

 

Edwina

- Original Message - 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>  

To: 'Edwina Taborsky' <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca>  

Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 9:39 AM

Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

That sounds to me like Edwina.   :)

 

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 09:25

Sounds to me rather similar to postmodern relativism/nominalism.

 

Edwina

 

- Original Message - 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>  

To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu <mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>  

 

We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the visual 
field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its interpretant. 
Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition continues with emergence 
of relations from the phaneron, now that  
<http://gnusystems.ca/TS/cns.htm#thing> things have emerged from the phaneron.

 

A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called 
so. 

— Chuangtse <http://gnusystems.ca/meanlist.htm#tao>  2 (Watson 1968, 40)

 

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names. But a metaphor reverses the 
process by unmaking a familiar distinction, revealing a richer and stranger 
relationship. By thus renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new 
objects’ (Jaynes 1976, 50) – immediate objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking on it; 
things are so because they are called so.

 

Gary f.

 

} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 


  _  


 


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

2015-10-23 Thread Ozzie

Gary ~
Thanks!  I will look at it.
Regards,
Tom Wyrick 


> On Oct 23, 2015, at 5:24 PM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
> 
> Tom W.,
>  
> The question of how the brain does semiosis is an interesting one, to which I 
> devoted quite a bit of the research that went into my book Turning Signs. The 
> major sources I consulted are listed at 
> http://www.gnusystems.ca/meanlist.htm#brain (scroll both up and down from 
> there). What I gleaned from this research is woven into several chapters of 
> the book and I won’t even try to summarize it here. My blog posts like this 
> one, on the other hand, are more like applications of (or footnotes to) the 
> more systematic presentation in the book. If you want my description of how 
> the brain does semiosis, you can try the middle chapters of the book.
>  
> } I'm not young enough to know everything. [J.M. Barrie] {
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
>  
> From: Thomas [mailto:ozzie...@gmail.com] 
> Sent: 23-Oct-15 14:40
> To: g...@gnusystems.ca
> Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things
>  
> Gary, List ~ 
> "The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing 
> what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
> patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from 
> itself and proliferates as the branches take names."
> 
> 
> I like how this quote points to the physical presence of objects and 
> interpretants in the brain, and the habitual paths connecting relevant 
> neurons.  However, I would have liked it more if your quote had been less 
> lyrical, and instead had described the physical mechanism by which a 
> collection of neurons form an object-interpretant relationship in the brain. 
> 
> 
> I certainly believe they do that.  
> 
> 
> Steve Jobs likened creativity to "connecting the dots" in useful ways that 
> other people haven't before.  Those 'dots' are neurons (grey matter) and they 
> rely on electrochemical energy to connect via the brain's white matter.  As 
> they make connections with more neurons over the passage of time, some 
> neurons grow larger/dominant and subsequently receive and send out 
> electrochemical signals more efficiently than the others.  Thereafter, 
> connections between those enlarged neurons form 'paths' in the physical brain 
> (object+interpretant relationships), so those larger/connected neurons are 
> more likely to contribute to logical deductions in the future. 
> 
> 
> I believe that brain researchers have identified all of the physical 
> mechanisms mentioned above. Identifying the larger/connected neurons as 
> object-interpretant relationships is my perspective (i.e., abduction).  
> Relationships between neurons are 'habits' nourished over time by a flow of 
> electrochemical energy.  In solving today's puzzle the energy may flow from 
> neuron A to B, but in solving tomorrow's puzzle it may flow from B to A.  The 
> object and interpretant status of neurons is ever-changing, and varies with 
> the Pragmatic objective. 
>  
> Regards,
> Tom Wyrick 
>  
> 
> -
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON 
> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu 
> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu 
> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at 
> http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
> 
> 
> 
> 

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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

Tom W.,

 

The question of how the brain does semiosis is an interesting one, to which I 
devoted quite a bit of the research that went into my book Turning Signs. The 
major sources I consulted are listed at 
http://www.gnusystems.ca/meanlist.htm#brain (scroll both up and down from 
there). What I gleaned from this research is woven into several chapters of the 
book and I won’t even try to summarize it here. My blog posts like this one, on 
the other hand, are more like applications of (or footnotes to) the more 
systematic presentation in the book. If you want my description of how the 
brain does semiosis, you can try the middle chapters of the book.

 

} I'm not young enough to know everything. [J.M. Barrie] {

 <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 

From: Thomas [mailto:ozzie...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 23-Oct-15 14:40
To: g...@gnusystems.ca
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

 

Gary, List ~ 

"The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells doing what 
they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into definite rhythmic 
patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. Presence parts from itself 
and proliferates as the branches take names."





I like how this quote points to the physical presence of objects and 
interpretants in the brain, and the habitual paths connecting relevant neurons. 
 However, I would have liked it more if your quote had been less lyrical, and 
instead had described the physical mechanism by which a collection of neurons 
form an object-interpretant relationship in the brain. 





I certainly believe they do that.  





Steve Jobs likened creativity to "connecting the dots" in useful ways that 
other people haven't before.  Those 'dots' are neurons (grey matter) and they 
rely on electrochemical energy to connect via the brain's white matter.  As 
they make connections with more neurons over the passage of time, some neurons 
grow larger/dominant and subsequently receive and send out electrochemical 
signals more efficiently than the others.  Thereafter, connections between 
those enlarged neurons form 'paths' in the physical brain (object+interpretant 
relationships), so those larger/connected neurons are more likely to contribute 
to logical deductions in the future. 





I believe that brain researchers have identified all of the physical mechanisms 
mentioned above. Identifying the larger/connected neurons as 
object-interpretant relationships is my perspective (i.e., abduction).  
Relationships between neurons are 'habits' nourished over time by a flow of 
electrochemical energy.  In solving today's puzzle the energy may flow from 
neuron A to B, but in solving tomorrow's puzzle it may flow from B to A.  The 
object and interpretant status of neurons is ever-changing, and varies with the 
Pragmatic objective. 

 

Regards,

Tom Wyrick 

 


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to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

2015-10-23 Thread Matt Faunce

In this lecture  Dr. Ramachandran tells 
how to create an illusion. It goes like this:


Have someone place both arms and hands out straight on the table in 
front of him. Place a rubber hand from the Halloween shop, (or a glove, 
or even bare table will work), in between his hands but close to the 
left hand. Place a mirror between his left hand and rubber hand, such 
that when he looks in the direction of his left hand he'll be looking at 
the reflection of the rubber hand. Prime his brain by stroking both his 
left hand and rubber hand with the same motions. Then after a while, 
stroke just the rubber hand, not his actual hand, and he'll feel it in 
his left hand.


His sense of sight is reinforcing his sense of feel so much that he can 
be fooled to think he feels something based on his sight alone. So, each 
sense works as a reinforcement to each other sense, when applicable. I 
believe that language, at any arrested stated in a person's development 
of it, acts as a reinforcing agent in the same way.


Matt

On 10/23/15 9:01 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:


We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the 
visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its 
interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition 
continues with emergence of relations from the phaneron, now that 
/things/  have emerged from the 
phaneron.


/A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they 
are called so. /


— Chuangtse  2 (Watson 1968, 40)

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells 
doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into 
definite rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. 
Presence parts from itself and proliferates as the branches take 
names. But a metaphor reverses the process by unmaking a familiar 
distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship. By thus 
renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 
1976, 50) – /immediate/ objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking 
on it; things are so because they are called so.


Gary f.

} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ /Turning Signs/gateway




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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things