[peirce-l] Re: What
he fourth method. But that is very different from thinking of the fourth method as incorporating the method of self-enslavement. And so forth. JP: OK -- I think I've got you now. I think we may be closer than it appears. Or that I am in greater agreement with you than I've been able to make clear. I think our differences are more a matter of emphasis than substance. Yes, certainly stubborn obstinance is no part of genuine mediation. Quite the contrary as you point out. Likewise for the method of authortarianism. And yet behind these methods is an element of the truth in so far as they reflect some misplaced emphasis upon either feeling, willing or thinking (which are traditional psychological terms for Peirce's modes of being that form the relational nature of all representations) JR (continuing): . One mistake Peirce makes, by the way, is in talking about the method of authority as if from the point of view of the enslaving authority rather than that of the authority-seeking individual, depicted by Peirce as turning to authority because the self-persuasional attempt has failed. That is a mistake because he loses the continuity of the second first with the second method when he does this without noting to the reader that he has shifted his perspecitval stance. JP: I think I follow you. Did you mean to omit the word "second" that starts the next to the last line? The main thing I take from this comment is that you believe Peirce intended for there to be some logical or perhaps psychological -- but either way some meaningful -relationship among the methods. Some conceptual link -- and I think his categories are one way of exporing those relationships. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Emailing: books
Folks, For those interested in Peirce's contributions to experimental psychology and its connection to the work of Fechner this looks like an excellent reference. The book is called The Wave Theory of Difference and Similarity. I have not read it myself but have been skimming some of it on line. If you go to this site you can read the pages on Peirce's work. Good stuff! Jim PiatThe message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:Shortcut to: http://books.google.com/books?id=L7Vy85ZFtjIC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA15&dq=comparison+of+weber%27s+and+fechner%27s+laws&sig=-wU93-NXk5n5AYutH5cQpYZLr8INote: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail security settings to determine how attachments are handled. books.url Description: Binary data --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What
. Clark Goble wrote: I honestly don't recall Peirce addressing the problem of competing and contradictory beliefs. Does anyone know off the top of their head anything along those lines? The closest I can think of is the passage of 1908 to Lady Welby where he talks about the three modalities of being. Relative to the first, that of possibility, he talks of Ideas. One might say that the *idea* of infidelity, for example, can be accepted as well as its contradiction. So perhaps that's one way of dealing with it. Dear Clark, I'm tempted to say, facetiously, that Peirce often wrote of two fundamental laws of psychology. One of course being the law of association of ideas and the other being what he called a "general law of sensibility" or Fechner's psycho-phsical law. But I won't -). Fechner's law as you may recall states that the intensity of any sensation is proportional to the log of the external force which produces it. However, on page 294 of Vol III of _The Writings of Charles S Peirce, A Chronological Edition_ I did stumble accross something that may relate to what you have in mind. There Peirce writes that "It is entirely in harmony with this law [Fechner's] that the feeling of belief shoud be as the logarithm of the chance, the later being the _expression_ of the state of facts which produce the belief". He continues, "the rule for the combination of independent concurrent arugments takes a very simple form when expressed in terms of the intensity of belief, measured in the porposed way. It is this: Take the sum of all the feelings of belief which would b e produced separately by all the arguments pro, substract from that the similar sum for agruments con, and the remainder is the feeling of belief which we ought to have on the whole. This a a proceeding which men often resort to, under the name of balancing reasons". BTW, all of this occurs in his 1878 essay on Probability of Induction which apparently was published Popular Science Monthly. Cheers, Jim Piat The question then becomes how inquiry relates to these ideas. I'd suggest, as you do, that it would cut off inquiry, but not because of knowledge. Rather, as Joe said earlier, it is the individual doing what they can to stave off the loss of a threatened belief. I think this is that they don't *want* discussion to leave the world of possibility and move to the realm of facts (the second of the three universes). It is interesting to me how many people do *not* want to move from possibilities (how ever probable) to the realm of facts or events. I think rather that tenaciousness is, as Joe suggested, more closely related to appeals to authority and their weakness. I'd also note in The Fixation of Belief that Peirce suggests that doubt works by irritation. "The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle *inquiry* though it must be admitted that it is sometimes not a very apt designation." (EP 1:114) To me that suggests something like a small boil or irritation on ones skin or small cut in ones mouth. One can neglect it but eventually it will lead to a change in action. As Peirce notes it may not seem like what we call inquiry. Thus his "sometimes not a very apt designation." But so long as it changes our habits, even if it takes time and is slow, then inquiry is progressing. It might be an error to only call a process of inquiry what we are conscious of as a more directed burden of will. Which I believe was Jim W's point a few days ago. Clark Goble ---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What
Dear Joe and Jeff, I looked at some of the drafts in the Chronological edition Vol III page 33-34 --. Could it be that the laws he may be referring to are the law of association and something like a law of sensory impressions? Also I got the impression he may have intended these two laws to also operate in the fourth method of fixing belief but that the method of tenacity was distinquished by its being mostly limited to emphasizing these laws. Peirce referring to the laws as fundamental makes me wonder if he views them as operating in all methods of fixing belief. That what distinguishes the other methods form the method of tenacity is that in fixing belief the other methods emphasize modes of being in addition to one's personal feelings and associations of ideas related to them. So -- the method of tenancity emphasizes the law of sensory impression (something akin to the direct perception or the felt impression of similarity) and one's almost instantenous ideational associations, whereas the other methods place greater emphasis on the additional modes of will, reason (and ultimately in the fourth method) a balance of the lst three. It's hard for me to suppose that even someone using the lst method is absent all influence from secondness and thirdness (will, and representation). Or that methods other than tenacity exclude feelings. After all, each method is a matter of representation. Don't mean any of this in a contentious way. Just trying to raise a question on the fly. I know I'm rehashing my earlier bit about combining the lst three to form the fourth, but in this case I'm doing so just to suggest how the law of association and of sensory impression (if there is such a law) might apply. Maybe I'm just being overly commited to what I feel is the case --unwilling to acknowledge either fact or reason. Jim Piat - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2006 1:10 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What Jeff Kasser (JK) says:JK: First, I'm not sure what sort of special relationship the two psychological laws in question need to bear to the method of tenacity. If they're in fact psychological (i.e. psychical) laws, then it would be unsurprising if the other methods of inquiry made important use of them. I thought that the only special connection between the laws and tenacity is that the method tries to deploy those laws simply and directly.REPLY (by JR = Joe Ransdell):JR: Peirce says, of the tenacious believer: ". . . if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychological laws . . .". That seems to me plainly to be saying that the method of tenacity is based on two fundamental psychological laws. It would be odd for him to say "basing his method, like every other is based, on two psychological laws" in a passage in which he is explaining that method in particular. And if he wanted to say that this method is different from the others in that it applies these laws "simply and directly" whereas the others do not then I would expect him to say something to indicate what an indirect and complicated use of them would be like. Also, to say that use of such laws (whatever they may be) occurs in all four methods would contradict what he frequently says in the drafts of the essay and seems to think especially important there but which does not appear in the final version of the paper except in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", where it is not emphasized as being of special importance, namely, that in the fourth method the conclusions reached are different from what was held at the beginning of the inquiry. This is true in two ways. First, because in the fourth method one concludes to something from premises (the starting points) which are not identical to the conclusion with which the inquiry ends; and, second, because, sometimes, at least, the starting points of different inquirers in the same inquiring community in relation to the same question will be different because the initial observations which function as the basis for the conclusions ultimately drawn are different (as in the passage two or three pages from the end of "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" about investigation into the velocity of light.) Great weight is put upon that sort of convergence as at least frequently occurring in the use of the fourth method. Moreover, the third method is not one in which use of the two laws is characteristic since it depends upon a tendency for people to come to agreement in the course of discussion over some period of time though they do not agree initially. (There is no convergence toward truth but only toward agreement, since use
[peirce-l] Re: What
Dear Jim W, Thanks for these comments. Seems folks commonly suppose human behavior to intentional and the behavior of merely physical systems to be non intentional. I'm not convinced that human and so call mere physical behavior differ in this respect. I think the distinction between the human and the merely physical (the intentional vs. the non intentional) is more a matter of our level of analysis. Conceived as merely physical nothing is intentional but understood in the larger intentional context of the universe everything is intentional in the sense of tending toward some end. So in part my explorations with the notion of the things tending toward the average was an attempt to suggest some of the ways that this conceptual divide between the seemingly merely physical and mental could be bridged (starting from either direction). You also raise the matter of complexity and unpredictability of human behavior. No substantial disagreement from me on this one either. I meant my comments about the parallels between feeling, will, and reasoning to be merely suggestive and hopefully useful ways of exposing some aspects that might otherwise be overlooked -- or rather that I had been overlooking. As I think Joe was pointing out in one of his recent posts, observations have both an object related component and an observer related component. The observer variables are so complex and to often defy classification much less prediction. Human actions are the final product of a complex interaction of very subtle factors. The brain/mind has a way of multiplying the effects of certain variables in ways that make a seeming small physical difference (as measured in the merely physical world so to speak) have an enormous effect on the actual behavior produced. As a result predicting these behavior is extremely difficult. For example the response of billiard balls is not altered much by their history whereas one's stored memories can have an enormous effect upon how some physical event will effect our response. We have yet learned how to measure stored memories and their effects -- so there is this big unknown in predicting human behavior (or for that matter any complex system that would store information in a analogous way). Again, speaking loosely because of course I have insufficient facts and understanding to speak otherwise. So bottom line -- yes, I agree with your comments and those of Joe. Just trying to process them a bit. Thanks again, Jim Piat Jim P, Thanks for the response. I think that if you allow for the evolution of the mean and stick to the scientific method, then there are strong parallels to Peirce's theory of truth in the "long run." There is a convergence towards the "least total error." This may work for scientific theories. (Although Peirce's theory has in general come under a lot of criticism) But practical beliefs, and their supposed underlying psychological laws, which we have been considering lately, are an example where the distribution of behavioral patterns does not seem to have the "bite" that predicting the position of the planets has. If we suppose all men have real doubts and inquire at some time time or another, what does the distribution of behavioral "outputs" show? It would seem to show the preferred method of inquiry. We might then track which method is winning out in some domain of inquiry. But suppose we want is to assign a specific psychological law to a specific method of inquiry. We would have to have a set of descriptions for isolating the data into four groups. We could then take the "tenacious" individuals and try to explain their behavior. But we already have the set of descriptions in place for isolating the tenacious individuals. So, what we want to know is why some people "cling spasmodically to the views they already take." Answers to this question can be distributed with the "least total error" representing the winning answer. But are descriptive laws with respect to behavior as convincing as physical laws are with respect to the position of the planets? ! Are descriptive laws with respect to behavior just an illusion? Why do we take an "intentional stance" towards some systems and not others, disparaging the former as lacking theoretical "bite." Jim W -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 6:14 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What Dear Jim Willgoose, Opps, I goofed. I think you are right. In an earlier version of my post I had included the possibility that in an open system new energy, information and possibilities were being added (or taken away) that would change the mean of the system and thus accoun
[peirce-l] Re: What
But for the moment I would myself prefer to stick with further leisurely musement about the four methods of the Fixation article, and I don't think your thesis works for that. Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Joe, Thanks for those comments. I think you and Jim Willgoose are right about the shortcoming of my "averaging" approach. I'm still intrigued with the idea of looking for helpful parallels between Peirce's methods and categories. The idea for example that tenacity is related to an overemphasis upon the iconic felt component of experience, authority to will, and the a priora to rationation. With the fourth perhaps representing a proper balance or non-degenerative triadic relating of the lst three. Thinking along these lines suggests to me some ways of understanding icons, indexes and symbols that I had previously overlooked. The idea for example that the icon is the mode by which feelings are elicited, the reaction the mode by which will is expressed, rationatic the grammar of representation and science, common sense and the like examples of fully triadic representation as manifested in social activity. So just thinking about the fixation paper along these lines has been helpful and fun for me. I've also profited from the attempts to clarify the notion of a psychological law and in what sense the methods can be understood as such. I agree, most of my stuff about "averages" hasn't proven very useful. So be it. Much still to discuss and many interesting ideas still on the table. It's fun to return to a topic after discussing some new topic -- often discussion of the new topic provides fresh insights that can be applied to the old topic. So I like it when we periodically revisit old discussions. Thanks again, Jim Piat - Original Message From: Joseph Ransdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 10:10:02 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What Jim:I think your thesis about the truth being the average, in the sense you describe, is an instance of a partial truth in that it probably does work for some class of truths, but it really only applies to those in which the diversity of opinion is opinion based upon observation. The first three methods, though, are not about opinions arrived at by observation. Indeed, the third is conspicuously not composed of any opinions arrived at by observation, .The second could at mos be construed as being about observation in the case where the authority arrived at the opinion that way; but the person who adopts the method of authority is, insofar, NOT basing his or her opinion on observation. And as regards the first, the only observation the tenacious thinker is making is about his or her own feelings, but the opinion adopted is not about his or her own feelings of conviction. So you are at best right only about some cases of settlement by the fourth method. But even there I do not recognize in it the formal structure of the fourth method itself. I think you start to go wrong when you say that "Each of the three methods for fixing belief is valid in so far as it goes". "Valid" must mean "valid as a way of getting truth", but there is simply no basis for saying that, so far as I can see. One CAN say that any of the four methods can yield a truth, and one can perhaps make a case for saying that there may be describable classes of cases where the conviction yielded by this or that non-fourth method is a better way of getting truth than the attempt to use the fourth method would be. When I taught using this paper, usually in intro classes, I regularly assigned the students the task of considering various kinds of cases where we form opinions about something and then making a case for the method they thought most reliable, by and large, for getting at the truth about the matter in this case and that.. I uuually just cited such sorts of cases as those where we are arriving at ethical opinions, at esthetic opinions, religious ones, poliical, scientific (when we are oot ourselves scientists), opinions about wha other people are like, opinions about ourselves, and so on. And I often got very interesting and plausible claims made about the value of this and that non-fourth method.. But none of that srrengthens your view. On the other hand, I think that, as regards cases where indeed observation is involved, there may be a generalization to be drawn along the lines you suggest/ Since it does not appear to require all of the elements of the foruth method, thouoh, it looks to me like it might actually be a fifth method. So it was a thesis well worth trying out, at the very least.Joe[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: J
[peirce-l] Re: What
Dear Jim Willgoose, Opps, I goofed. I think you are right. In an earlier version of my post I had included the possibility that in an open system new energy, information and possibilities were being added (or taken away) that would change the mean of the system and thus account for evolution of the mean (and why variation about the mean is so important and included in nature's plan). Otherwise, yes, the average represents the "least total error" of a distribution and moreover is in some ways an abstract "fiction" as for example the average family size of 2.3 people. Still, as long as we are dealing with generalization about multiple observations that in reality vary about a mean (and I can't think of any actual observations that don't) then the mean remains the characterization of the group of observations that produces the least total difference from all the other observation comprising the data set. And what is our notion of truth if not the example with the least error? Along with Peirce, and statistical measurement theory, I think of every observation as containing a combination some universal truth and individual error. The average of a distribution of observations contains the least percentage of individual error because that is what the math of achieving the average produces. The "truth" of a whole distribution is the distribution itself. The least erroneous generalization about the distribution is its average. I don't think truth lies outside the data. I take the view that every method, observation or imaginable thing contains some truth but only a part of the truth along with individual error. Each of the three methods for fixing belief is valid in so far as it goes (and of course as examples of themselves perfectly true). So I would describe them as producing partial truths. All observation are individual matters. But idividual observations are wrong in so far as they lack the validity that only multiple individual POVs can provide. The whole truth requires simultaneous observations from multiple POVs which can only be achieved through the existence of others. And the multiple observations must be combined rationally (as for example the simple average) in order to cancel rather than multiply or add error. All of this multiple POV business being required because the universe extends in both space and time and there is no way any individual can achieve a POV from which to grasp its totality. As to the flat earth example -- I'd say "the world is flat" was not so much a wrong conclusion as it was an only partially true conclusion. For the purpose of most local everyday walking distances (the main mode of transportation at the time the view was popular, though never universally accepted) the idea that the earth was a bumpy (hills and valleys) flat surface was effectively true. Granted, as we expand our horizons and the distribution of observation to include previously excepted outliers the mean shifts accordingly. An error you have correctly noted in my account. I incorrectly spoke as if my world were the whole world and we all lived in a locally closed and fixed system. A common false assumption of the tenaciously narrow minded such as myself. BTW some empirical studies of cultural ideals of human facial beauty point to the conclusion that the population average (based upon actual measurements of facial features) is the most favored. This seems to tie in with Peirce's suggestion (as it survives my personal filter) that aesthetics is the basis for ethics and ethics for truth. And yes -- in the final analysis all of what I've proposed is not only old hat but so limited in its generality as to be little more than a crank opinion. I realize this. Yet for me individually pluralism has been a big part of my small personal conception of how truth is approached. So I appreciate your taking the time to comment, Jim. Your helpful suggestions have, I believe, already brought me a bit closer to courtroom ideal of "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". I've been learning a little about the history of common law recently . In a way the common law system with its constant honing and development based upon reason and evidence has produced a quasi scientific body of knowledge about human behavior that is in my view every bit the equal or superior of that produced by other social science approaches. A psychologist who wants to understand interpersonal relations and our society at large could do worse than to study contract and property law. Best wishes and thanks, Jim Piat Jim Wilgoose wrote: Interesting. But if all the scientist did was "average" three defective modes of inquiry, wouldn't we be stuck with the "least total error," ye
[peirce-l] Re: What
Dear Folks-- I'm trying to think of some sort of non psychologistic sounding way of describing or accounting for the drive to settle doubt. I'm thinking that doubt represents uncertainty (a measure of information) and uncertainty poses risk. In general, dynamic sytems tend toward equilibriums around their mean values. Perhaps the behavior we call inquiry is a form of this "moderation in all things". The mean is the point in every distribution which yields the least total error if taken as the value for every member of the distribution. The mean is also the point of dynamic random equilibrium. Maybe doubt is a form of dynamic disequilibrium and inquiry a form of "regression to the mean". In a pluaralistic universe -- truth is the mean or that which mediates between extremes. Not the extremes that we imagine separate our truth from the falsehood of others, but the extremes that actually exist each from another and of which our point of view of truth is but one. Truth is what drives consensus and is common to all POVs -- the lowly average. The tenacious think feeling is truth, the authoritarian will, the rationalist reason and the scientist the 'average' of em all. Mostly I'm trying to get a better handle on some non psychologistic sounding ways of thinking about doubt, inquiry and belief. Maybe I've just substituted one set of mis-used words for another -- without any real progress in understanding. Curious what others might think of these borrowed (and probably misapplied) ideas. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: Arnold Shepperson
Hi, Jim, I read at gmane about Arnold Shepperson's death. Would you do me a favor and tell peirce-l that I too am shocked and saddened by this. I've just re-read some off-list correspondence that I had with him back in February, and I'm not quite sure at the moment what either one of us was saying, but I have the impression, as I did at the time, a pleased impression that he was getting somewhere. Arnold was a genial and brilliant man with a future. Best, Ben --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson
Arnold was always so kind, encouraging and enthusiastic in his post. And always bubbling with interesting ideas. Like so many others I will miss him. And remember him as an ideal to follow. Thanks for informing us John. My sympathies to you and Arnold's family and friends. A sad day. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Dear Joe, What you say below is all very interesting to me. I hope you do give another go at writing up how lst three methods exemplify some of the major ways in which our problem solving goes astray. I think the three methods (while each having an attractive virtue) if used exclusively or even in some sort of mechanistic combination often cause more problems then they solve. They are pseudo solutions to lifes problems because each denies some fundamental aspect of reality -- either the self , the other or what mediates between the two. Or to put it another way -- feeling, will, or thought. In anycase you seem to be in an inspired mood and I hope you press on. Just now for example the whole country seems at a loss for what to do about the Mid East. I wonder how the approach you are thinking about might be applied in trying to solve problems on that scale as well as in analyzing the problems of our individual lives. And not just interpersonal problems, the problems we face with our enviroment as well. Best wishes, Jim Piat - Original Message - I think we may be getting close to the rationale of the four methods with what you say below, Jim. I've not run across anything that Peirce says that seems to me to suggest that he actually did work out his account of the methods by thinking in terms of the categories, but it seems likely that he would nevertheless tend to do so, even if unconsciously, given the importance he attached to them from the beginning: they are present in the background of his thinking even in the very early writings where he is thinking of them in terms of the first, second, and third persons of verb conjugation (the second person -- the "you" -- of the conjugation becomes the third categorial element). But whether he actually worked it out on that basis, the philosophically important question is whether it is philosophically helpful to try to understand the four methods by supposing that the first three correspond to the categories regarded in isolation and the fourth can be understood as constructed conceptually by combining the three methods consistent with their presuppositional ordering. That remains to be seen. In other words, I do think we can read these factors into his account in that way, and this could be pedagogically useful in working with the method in a pedagogical context in particular, but it is a further question whether that will turn out to be helpful in developing his thinking further in a theoretical way. It certainly seems to be worth trying, though. If the overall improvement of thinking in our practical life seems not to have improved much from what it was in antiquity, when compared with the radical difference in the effectiveness of our thinking in those areas in which the fourth method has been successfully cultivated, it may be because we have failed to pay attention to the way we handle our problems when we take recourse to one and another of the other three methods, as we are constantly doing without paying any attention to it. I started to write up something on this but it quickly got out of hand and I had best break off temporarily and return to that later. I will just say that it has to do with the possibility of developing the theory of the four methods as a basis for a practical logic -- or at least a practical critical theory -- of the sort that could be used to teach people how to be more intelligent in all aspects of life, including political life -- and I will even venture to say, in religious life: two areas in which intelligence seems currently to be conspicuously -- and dangerously -- absent. One potentiality that Peirce's philosophy has that is not present in the philosophy and logic currently dominating in academia lies in the fact that he conceived logic in such a way that rhetoric -- the theory of persuasion -- can be reintroduced within philosophy as a theoretical discipline with practical application in the service of truth. One can expect nothing of the sort from a philosophy that has nothing to say about persuasion. Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Bill, I included some comments in the middle -- Jim, I'd be the first to characterize the reports on the feral children as "iffy." But have you read the account of "Genie"? She was a California child who was kept in isolation in an upstairs room, strapped for hour to a potty (whether I spell it with a "Y" or an "IE," it doesn't look right) chair because her father was ashamed of her because of some deficit he assigned to her hip. I was fortunate enough to be in Arizona when the World Health Organization had its convention there, and it featured an early report on Genie by the psychologist who was also a foster-family member for her. There followed a book by the language therapist, Susan Curtiss, who worked with Genie. As I recall, it was titled Genie. The professionals describing Genie's behavior and progress--or lack of it--are remarkably similar to the lay reports of "feral" children. I think there is a time frame for language learning. --- Dear Bill, I think you are probably right about there being a critical period for the acquisition of language. And I appologize for the flip tone of my comments on impaired children and those who care about them. Everyone is precious and I admire those who are devoted to helping others. Even while being a bit of a self centered SOB myself. I think you are also right about the dangers of a world view that doesn't repect the individual. However I'm not convinced that a high regard for what we all have in common (or mostly in common), is to blame for Mao's or Hitler's horrific conduct. I think these folks suffered from a degenerate form of respect for the individual -- the only individuals they respected were themselves and to a lesser degree those others in whom they saw a reflection of themselves. I think they lacked a respect for humanity in general as well as for most other individuals. I think both the individual and the group are worthy of respect. We are individuals and members of a species. Neither aspect of us can survive without the other. I think I my earlier post was unbalanced. I just reread your comments below. I don't think preaching humility equates with condoning murder. Or that non westerners lack a concern for individual suffering. I think the key to peaceful relations is respect for others -- individually and collectively. Westerner and non westerner alike. Still, to conclude on a balanced note -- I agree that I went too far in the direction of stressing our commonality in my last post. And that your comments here are awelcome corrective (intended as such or not). Thanks Bill for another interesting informative and fun post. Jim Piat As for your post, it wasn't my intention to provide any form of corrective; I'm not competent to do that. I was simply noting my response to the discussion and saying that Peirce's "laws" made sense to me. However, I will question this statement in your response: "I attribute the sometimes horrors we do not to common sense but to a degenerate form of representation that tries to treat the relational symbolic world as comprised of discrete unrelated things." One of the strong-holds of the unitive world-view you seem to prefer has been the traditional Orient, where life has historically been cheaper than dirt and mass exterminations of humans nearly routine. A modern example is Maoist purges and the rape and pillage of Tibet. Mao and Stalin each surpassed Hitler's atrocities. I would argue that it is the traditional value of the autonomous individual by the western world which causes us angst over an atrocity that would not raise an eyebrow even today in some "all is one" parts of the world. Where all is one, no aspect of the whole is of much consequence. For the human to assume responsibility is an act of hubris. Isn't that the message of the Bhagavad Gita? So kill away, oh nobly born, and forget this conscience thing, an obvious lapse into ego. Bill Bailey --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Dear Bill, As always I enjoyed your straightforward, informative and wise comments. You have a way of keeping my feet on the ground without destroying the fun of having my head in the clouds (to pick one of the nicer places I've been accused of having my head). I hope I did not create the impression that I devalued any of the methods of fixing belief that Peirce described. I don't think he intended to devalue them either. Nor did I mean to put science on a pedestal. Not that it needs any commendation from me. I think science is a formalization of the method of common sense which (to borrow Joe's apt description) includes the distinctive elements of each method. I believe that common sense is the way all humans in all cultures have at all times represented and participated in the world. We are all symbolic creatures and we all feel, will, and interpret the world with symbols whether we call one another primitive or advanced. I attribute the sometimes horrors we do not to common sense but to a degenerate form of representation that tries to treat the relational symbolic world as comprised of discrete unrelated things. A form with no feeling is a phantom, an other with no resistence does not exist and thought that does not mediate is empty verbiage. The danger arises out of our ability to misrepresent. We are all fundmentally alike and cut from the same cloth. LOL--I'm of a mind to go off on a swoon about the commonality of humanity but I fear getting called on giving facile lip service to something I don't practice. Oh, the feral children. Hell, I don't even believe the accounts. Well I should say I don't believe the labels. Most of them sound to me like accounts of severely retarded children who have been hidden away by families. Countless severely retarded children have grown up in relatively caring institutions with the same outcome. But I agree with your point, IF a child could survive past a week alone in the woods or a closet, the child still would not develop language etc -- It's the preposterous IF that makes me dismiss these as crack pot accounts that have somehow emerged from the tabloids for 15 mins of manistream press. And occassionally the attention of some devoted researcher who ends up wanting to adopt the child. But I don't mean to be cruel. Fact is, I don't know the detailed facts of any of these cases. And I digress --- unaccustomed as I am to public digressions Best wishes, Jim Piat - Original Message - From: Bill Bailey To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 2:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Jim, Joe, List: This discussion brought to mind the comparison by Claud Levi-Strauss of "primitive" thought and that of western science. I think the discussion is in The Savage Mind. Levi-Strauss argues that there is no real difference in terms of complexity between "primitive" and scientific thought; he found the primitive's categories and structurings in botany, for example, to be as complex as any western textbook might offer. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Dear Joe, I agree with your characterization of the scientific method as including the distinctive elements of the other three. You have clarified the issue in a way that is very helpful to me. I agree as well that taken individually each of the lst three methods (tenacity, authority and reason) can lead to disaster. So, without going into all the details let me just sum up by saying I agree with you and that includes your cautions about my misleading metaphors, etc. Thanks for two very helpful posts. Picking up on your suggestion of a possible hierachical relationship between the methods I have been thinking about some of their possible connections with Peirce's categories. Again, my ideas on this are vague and meant only to be suggestive and I look forward to your thoughts. First, very roughly, it strikes me that iconicity is the crux of direct apprehension of reality. In essence perception is the process by which one becomes impressed with (or attunded to) the form of reality. In effect a kind of resonance is established by which subject and environment become similar. This I think accounts for the conviction we all have that in some fundamental way what we perceive "is" the case -- which I think is in part the explanation for the method of tenacity. Second is the notion of otherness or dissimilarity. The existance of resistance which we experience as the will of others or as the limits of our own wills. Third is the notion of thought or reason by which one is able to mediate between these two modes of existence. Unfortunately, as you point out, one can get lost in thought (or without it) and thus we are best served not by some form of degenerate representation (minimizing either the iconic, indexical -- or mediative component) but by a full blown common sense form of reasoning or inquiry that has been formalized as the scientific method. So, to recap -- method one is a form of overly iconic settlement, method two a over-reaction in the direction of excessively referentially settlement, and method three an overly rationalistic form of settlement at the expense of the other two. I think that Peirce did not intend that we take the lst three methods as examples of belief fixation which folks actually employ in their pure form. By itself each method is not a example of symbolic or representational thought but of something more akin to a degenerative form of representation. So, I think Peirce intended them as exaggerations in order to illustrate degenerative ways of representation and inaequate ways of belief fixation or settlement of doubt. What he did was to describe the three modes of being involved in representation (the fourth method) as isolated forms of belief settlement. The result of course was a bit of a stretch or caricature of the degenerative ways in which we distort common sense in the settlement of our doubts. Because we are in fact symbols using symbols we can in theory come up with all sorts of false possiblities -- which is part of what makes thinking about thinking so difficult. Even erroneous thinking or representation involves representation. Sometimes we build sand castles in the air and pretend we are on the beach pretending the waves will never come. Again, just some vague notions -- I can't help but feel that in the case of Peirce his categories are properly and consistently the foundation of all he says. Jim Piat --- Joe wrote: "But I would disagree with this part of what you say, Jim. Considered simply as methods in their own rights, I don't think one wants to speak of them as being incorporated AS methods within the fourth method. As a methodic approach to answering questions the method of tenacity is surely just a kind of stupidity, and it seems to me that the turn to authority, not qualified by any further considerations -- such as, say, doing so because there is some reason to think that the authority is actually in a better position to know than one is -- apart, I say, from that sort of qualification, the turn to authority as one's method seems little more intelligent than the method of tenacity, regarded in a simplistic way. The third method, supposing that it is understood as the acceptance of something because it ties in with -- coheres with -- a system of ideas already accepted, does seem more intelligent because it is based on the properties of ideas, which is surely more sophisticated than acceptance which is oblivious of considerations of coherence. But it is also the method of the paranoid, who might reasonably be said to be unintelligent to a dangerous degree at times. But I think that what you say in your other message doesn't commit you to regarding the methods themselves as "building blocks", which is a mistaken metaphor here. It is rather that what each of them respec
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Dear Folks, Part of what I'm trying to say is that its not as though the scientific method were an entirely independent alternative to the other three methods. On the contrary the scientific method is built upon and incorporates the other three methods. The lst three are not discredited methods they are the building blocks of the scienfic method. What gives sciences its power is that in combining the three methods (plus the emphasis upon observation -- which can or can not be part of the method of tenacity) it gives a more reliable basis for belief than any of the other three methods alone. But as for one and two -- yes I'd say they are the basis of the whole structure. Tenacity and authority can both include reason and observation. So if we include reason and observation in the lst two then we have all the elements of the scientific method. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Dear Folks, I notice that Peirces lst three methods of fixing believe are part of the fourth or scientific method. Science is basically a method that gathers multiple beliefs and combines them with reason to produce warranted belief. Individual belief (without resort to any authority other than oneself) is the method of tenacity -- I belief X because it is believable to me. When individual beliefs are combined the authority of others is introduced as a basis for belief. When these multiple beliefs (or one's individual beliefs) are combined in some reasonsed or logical way (for example taking their average) then one has has achieved the a priori or method of taste. Finally if one bases all beliefs not merely on unexamined conviction but instead relies on observation of events -- and combines multiple such observational beliefs in a reasoned way, the method of science has been achieved. In other words the three issues being juggled as a basis for belief are (1) single vs multiple beliefs (2) observation vs spontaneous conviction (3) reasoned vs unreasoned combining of beliefs. I haven't said this well but what I'm trying to get at is that the scientific method relies on multiple observation combined in a reasoned way. And this method incorporates all the essential aspect of each of the three prior methods. Science rests ultimately on combined unwarranted beliefs of individuals. At some point there must be an observation taken as face valid and this is the core of the individual observation. We know however that individual observations are inadequate because they only include one POV. So we combine multiple individual observations. I say observation, but the term observation is just a way of directing individual beliefs to a common focus. The reasoned part of the scientific method has to do with the manner in which beliefs or observations are combined. Basically this is the logic of statistics. The simplest example being taking an average. I notice too that Peirce's discussion of knowledge provided by Joe touches on some of these same issues. BTW I don't mean for my sketchy account to be definitive -- just suggestive. So in conclusion I would say the FOB paper describes the the components of the scientific method -- mulitple, individual observations or beliefs comined in a reasoned way. The basic foundation of all individual beliefs or observation is a kind of unexamined individual realism taken at face value (tenacity). Countered by the beliefs of others (based on the same tenacity) provides the method of authority. Combining these beliefs in a reasoned way adds the third "a priori" method. And finally insisting that these combined three methods focus on the same question introduces the notion of objectivity vs subjectivity which completes the elements of the scientific method for fixing belief. Sorry for the repitition. Don't have time just now to clean this up but wanted to put my two cents in the discussion. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Pragmatic inquiry == "the love of learning"
And finally, a related perceptual matter. You've probably seen this before, but it's always somewhat amazing to me (does anyone have a theory as to why it's iprmoatnt taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae? Dear Gary, There is a lot of research showing the importance that primacy (coming first) and coming last (as in the last word) have upon the general significance we attach to events in a series, which events we recall, and how we act in response to them. This is makes sense does it not? First impressions and last impression are the most important. First impression orient and last impressions conclude. Our attitudes and actions are mostly based upon our orientations and conclusions. Moreover in the case of recognizing words, first and last letters set their visual boundaries and the number of letters between seem to serve mainly as a way of sorting words into important (short) and bullshit (long). Try this: I b_t y_u c_n r_ _ d e_ _ n t_ _s s_ _ _ _ _ _ e. OK -- maybe not LOL. Right now I'm writing a rather too longish response to Joe! Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Pragmatic inquiry == "the love of learning"
My six year old daughter (who posed a question about "nothing" some time ago) has been reading at a six year olds level for about a year now (thankfully unremarkable). She came to me recently and said "I learned that words are made of letters at school today". I said "Grace, you have been reading for some time now, and you have known the alphabet for three years, you knew that letters were in words". She replies "But, I didn't know that words were made (I am unsure how she perceives "made") of letters". Knowing that words have letters does not, in the eyes of a six year old, necessarily mean that words are made of letters. Dear Darrel, This is a priceless exchange. Your daughter strikes me as a born philosopher and so does her dad. Not that I know either what makes or is in a philosopher. Inquiry maybe. Best wishes and thanks for keeping us Peirce listers posted, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Pragmatic inquiry == "the love of learning"
Way cool graphic! Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Until later (was "Re: The roots of speech-act theory in the New List")
I know the feeling, Ben. I look forward to your return. All the best! Let me know if I can be of any practical help. Jim Piat - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 4:14 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Until later (was "Re: The roots of speech-act theory in the New List") Jim, list, This remains interesting, but, generally, this forum is too addictive for me! I have to get on with practical matters which are, at this point, getting over my head. So I'm unsubscribing for a few months. Thanks for people's interest, Gary, Joe, Jim P., Jim W., Bernard, and any others, for discussing/arguing with me. More generally, keep peirce-l bustling. Best, Ben Udell http://tetrast.blogspot.com/ - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 3:50 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The roots of speech-act theory in the New List Ben, You say, "Saying that the NLC 'theory' of cognition (which seems to me no more a cognition theory than Peircean truth theory is an inquiry theory even though it references inquiry) is sufficient except when we talk about possibility, feasibility, etc., is -- especially if that list includes negation (you don't say) -- to deny that there is an issue of cognizing in terms of alternatives to the actual and apparent, etc., even though then logical conceptions of meaning and implication become unattainable. " (END) It is not a sufficient theory. I see it as asking "what are the most general elements in a process by which the mind forms propositions." The example is a simple case of perceptual data. But, it is not a complete theory of knowledge. In fact, it is more of a chapter in the history of cognitive psychology. It is a logical description of a psychological process;some parts of which may be empirically established. (For instance, Peirce thinks it is questionable what the then current results of empirical psychology have established with respect to acts of comparison and contrast.) If the paper is coupled with some theses from the JSP series, it seems clear to me that a theory of cognition emerges that could be of interest to psycholinguists and cognitive scientists working in language formation and even speech-act theory. Does it handle all epistemic interests, propositional attitudes, modalities? No. But it is not a special science since the results uncovered are precisely the most general elements used in any inquiry. It is more nearly what the 1901 Baldwin entry suggests, namely, erkenntnislehre, a doctrine of elements. Peirce struggled with where to assign this study. Is it a part of logic or pre-logical? There doesn't seem to be much of the normative concern that later demarcates logic proper. But there is a law-like element that is presupposed in so far as "one can only discover unity by introducing it." That transcendental point could easily mark a historical divide between naturalists such as Quine and "static" modelists such as Chomsky. In some sense, grammar is the issue, although generalized to the utmost. Both could take the spirit of the paper and do things, Chomsky in the specialized application to syntactic structures and transformational grammar, and Quine, in so far as the theory is empirically testable, as shedding some light on know Modern epistemology cannot even get off the ground with this NLC paper unless the enterprise is so naturalized that the theory (historical curiosity or not) is used to guide research in the relevant special sciences. The specific perceptual cognition and cognitive assertion under discussion meet none of the criteria for knowledge in the "classical" picture. The assertion "this stove is black" need neither be justified, true, or even believed. The paper, at least in part, is merely explanatory, if only insufficiently, of what is required to even begin the classical assessment. You say, "But the point in philosophy is not rephrasability, but instead to understand the result and end of such procedures, in which the description of signs is a _means_ to _transformations_ of extension and intension, transformations which themselves are a means to represent real relationships. The research interest of smoothing and smoothly "encoding" cognitions into common convenient keys or modes guides deductive maths of propositions, predicates, etc.; but does not guide philosophy, which is more interested in the corresponding "decoding." Philosophy applies deductive formalisms but is no more merely applied deductive theory of logic than
[peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity"
REPLY: I would say that his theory of representation has to be capable of articulating that distinction or there is something wrong with it, but I don't think that it is to be looked for merely in the distinction between the dyadic and the triadic but rather in something to do with the different functions being performed by icons, indices, and symbols, and that the distancing or detachment you are concerned with is to be understood especially in connection with the understanding of the symbol as involving an "imputed" quality. What this says is, I think, that we do not interpret a symbol as a symbol unless we are aware both that the replica we are interpreting is one thing and that what it means is something other than that, namely, the entity we imagine in virtue of its occurrence. Explicating that will in turn involve appeal to the functioning of a quality functioning as an icon of something the replica indexes. Dear Joe, Thanks for the thoughtful and suggestive reply. I'm looking forward to thinking about it during the coming week. In the meantime here are some initial impressions just by way of saying thanks -- One, I very much like the idea of expanding the issue to include the icon. I think you are right that the phenomenon of observation (for the lack of a better word) is one of representation and involves all three categories. And yes as well to the suggestion of looking at the notion of imputation. I take "imputation" as another word for representation. To impute is to represent the sign for what it is -- the functional mode of being. Pretending, playing, taking an "as if" stance and the like -- all examples of the process of representation or seeing the world triadicly. I'm not looking to introduce something new. It's more like housekeeping -- trying to tidy up some notions, put all the same color socks together and separate the things to do list from the things themselves. Also hope to pick up Black Elk's contemplative book from Amazon. Watching the news these days one hungers for just such an account. Current world events are upsetting enough in their own right, but it's the hectoring account of them that is truly driving me crazy. Cherry picking the facts and premises to fit a preconceived conclusion -- on both sides of the political spectrum. More later after I've had more time to digest your post and the comments for Martin and Arnold. Thanks again, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity"
Title: [peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity" Dear Folks -- I apologize for mistakenly including all those prior posts in my last post! Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity"
Title: [peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity" Dear Martin, Thanks for these comments. You may well be right that I am introducing an unnecessary psychological overlay to my account of representation. What follows are some of my initial thoughts as I begin the process of studying your very interesting and helpful comments. Could it be that, although it is not necessary to be conscious in order to interpret a symbol, it is, nevertheless, the triadic nature of symbols (or thirdness in general) that makes observation possible? I'm thinking about the distinction between reacting and interpreting. Reaction, it seems to me, affects both the acting and reacting participants in equal but opposite ways. OTOH interpretation is asymetrical in that it affects the interpretant without any corresponding affect on the symbol or the object. Interpretation is more like what we call observation and reaction is more like what we call participation. I am not offering the notions of participation and observation as psychological explanations or causes of dyadic and triadic relations but rather the opposite. I'm saying that a dyadic relation is at the root of what we call the everyday experience of raw (ie un-observed) participation and that a triadic relation is at the root of of observation. So often the act of observation is mis-taken as something that is independent of the object and its sign (or measurement), but as quantum physics teaches they are an irreducible triad and can not be built from or reduced to any combination of participations in dyadic reactions. That said I'm still very unsure of myself on this and you may be right that I am mostly just putting unneccessary psychological clothes on the naked truth. (Not your words I know but I couldn't resist once they popped into my head). But still, there is something about a concern for modesty that physics and logic lack in a way that psychology as the study of humans' being can not. What I take Peirce (a notable psychologist in his own right) to have rejected about the some of the psychologizing of his day was the tendency of some to suppose that labeling a puzzling phenomena with a familiar psychological name somehow provided an adequate explanation. But I am not trying to give a psychological account of representation. On the contrary I am trying to give a semiotic account of the psychological experience of observation. Ah, a quick aside on consciousness as awareness of interpretation. It seems to me that there is something fundamentally faulty about the sorts of explanations that attempt to account for consciousness by a series of reactions to reactions (responding to responding, knowledge of knowledge etc). Off hand I can't think of a term for this sort of analysis but it smacks of an infinite regress and I don't find it persausive as an argument either for or against some explanation. The point is a triadic relation is the basis for all these supposed infinite regressions and triads only go three levels deep before they cycle back and repeat the same process. Not as an infinite regression but as a cycle completed. I say three levels deep on a intuitive hunch. There are only three elements involved and the analysis can only take three POV. If a phenomenon is triadic that is enough said about its recursive nature. Talk of an infinite regression neither adds nor detracts from the analysis. But these comments are just an speculative aside. Ha, who am I kidding, my whole post is just a speculative aside! In any case, Martin, thanks very much for your comments. I'm will continue to ponder them. And I look forward to Joe's take as well. I'm wondering in particular how this issue might relate to the distinction between the act of assertion and that which is asserted. Seems to me a mere fact is dyadic whereas an asserted fact is triadic. The problem is we assume that what we observe are "mere" facts but we have no access to mere givens without representation/observation. We are trying to build the explanation of a phenomena using building blocks that include the phenomena itself. Which is why I am so often talking in circles. On a good day. Best wishes, Jim Piat Jim, At first glance, your comment gives me the impression that you are "psychologizing" semiosis by introducing the sign user (and his consciousness) into the equation. (Something Charles Morris will do). I don't have ready access to the CP right now, but I recall that Peirce later criticized the fact that NL can lead to a psychological understanding, though this was not his intent at the time. Considering that sign processes take place in nature (the Universe's growth being the unfolding of an Argument) we cannot reduce semiosis to psychology (though psy
[peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity"
Great question, Jim! I can't even get started on an answer today, but I will be at work on it tomorrow and try to get at least a start at an anwer before the day is out. Joe Oh thanks Joe. I'm relieved to hear that! Reflecting a bit more I see that I should have focused primarily on the triadic (standing for to) aspect of the sign and not the dyadic indexical (referential) aspect. But I'm glad you found my question worth addressing and I'm looking forward to your comments. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity"
Dear Joe, Thanks for your informal and very helpful response. I think I was misunderstanding the introductory passage in the New List. So I have a few more questions. First some background. My understanding is that signs refer to and stand for the meaning of objects. In standing for objects signs can be useful tools for communicating about objects as well as for conducting thought experiments about objects. But it is their function of referring to objects that I want to focus upon and ask you about. It seems to me that in defining signs as referring to objects part of what this definition implies is that the sign user is in the position of standing outside (or perhaps above and beyond) the mere reactive world of the object being referred to and observed. IOWs the sign user has a POV with respect to the object that is beyond a mere indexical relationship. That being an "observor" or spectator requires a level or dimension of detachment that goes beyond the level or dimension of attachment that is involved in "participation with" or reacting to an object. And so I'm thinking that an indexical representation is more than just a tool for indexing an object or giving voice to one's sub or pre-representational understanding of an object. I'm thinking that representation is also (and perhaps most importantly) the process by which one achieves the observational stance. Or, to put it another way, that the capacity to step back from the world of objects and observe them as existing is one and the same as the capacity to represent objects. That, in effect, the ability to represent is the foundation of being an observor in a world of existing objects as opposed to being merely a reactive participant in existence. . Actually, as I think about this a bit more, maybe it is not simply the sign's function of "referring" but also the signs function of "standing for" that creates, presumes or makes possible the "observor" POV. But however one cuts it I don't see how a sign can represent without there being an observor role which is functionally distinct from the role of mere participant. So anyway that's my question -- is Peirce's theory of representation and the sign meant to imply or address this issue of an observor or am I just misreading something into it that is not there. I will be greatly dissapointed if such a notion or something akin to it is not part of what is intended by the idea of a triadic relation as being above and beyond that of a mere dyadic relation. But then there are those Peirce comments about consciousness being a mere quality or firstness so I'm not so sure. OK -- I hope I have made clear the nature of my concern and look forward to any comments you might have. I realize I'm drifting a bit from the initial question that started this exchnage but I for me the questions are very much related. I'm trying to get at and understand the relation of the sign as carrier of meaning and as that which gives rise to the feeling we have of being not simply participants in a world (like colliding billiard balls) but of also being observors of this participation -- aware of our nakedness and so on. The notion that in the beginning (of awareness) was the word. Thanks again -- I look forward to any comments, advice and suggestions you or others might have. I am very eager to get clear on this point. So drop whatever you are doing ... Best wishes, Jim Piat - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, September 09, 2006 12:23 AM Subject: [peirce-l] "reduction of the manifold to unity" Jim and list: This is just a repeat of my previous message, spell-checked and punctuated correctly, with a couple of interpolated clarifications, and minus the unphilosophical paragraphs at the beginning and end: (I will try to state it better in a later message.) As regards your question: I will try to respond to it, but I can only talk about it loosely and suggestively here, in order to say enough to convey anything at all that might be helpful, and you will have to tolerate a lot of vagueness as well as sloppiness in what I am saying. If I bear down on it enough to put it into decently rigorous form it will not get said at all [because of the length], I'm afraid. But then this is just a conversation, not a candidate for a published paper. Okay, that self-defense being given in advance, I will go on to say that I think that one of the things that is likely to be misleading about the New List is that it is easy to make the mistake of thinking of the Kantian phrase "reduction of the sensuous manifold to unity" which Peirce uses at the very beginning of the New List t
[peirce-l] Re: Dennett
Dear Steve, I did not meant to convey that I thought Dennett favored the theater of the mind metaphor, but it would not surprise me if Peirce found Dennett's view simplistic. Personally I mostly have to content myself with just the surface of the debate though I'm always hoping to grasp the issues on a deeper level. So I appreciate your raising some of those issues and challenging me to think more deeply about them. I find the Peirce-L endlessly fascinating, but see myself participating more as one of its kibitzer/gadflies than as one of its heavy lifters. A legitimate, albeit small and sometimes annoying, role in the grand scheme --I hope. But four posts is enuff of me for now so, with thanks and best wishes to all, I'll shut up for a while. Cheers, Jim Piat I do not believe that comparing theories by abstracting their general statements about reality is sufficient. Dennett's theater of the mind argument argues against the homunculus and the theater. IMHO, Dennett makes arguments against which Peirce would rebel fiercely - in both its content and methodology. In particular, I do not see Peirce accepting heterophenomonology which argues naively that being objective is the best we can do in science. Dennett does not take experience seriously as a phenomenon of the world, and therein lies the core of the problem - which is theoretical and has more to do with his ability to reason than it does with objective observation. In short, Dennett simply denies his ability to make any observation. With respect, Steven On Sep 8, 2006, at 7:43 AM, Jim Piat wrote: Jeffrey Grace wrote: >>It struck me as Peirceian because, if I'm not mistaken, Peirce denied that there was such a thing as "introspection". He also seemed to affirm the idea that individuals are "less real" than generality... or rather that all individuals are instances of general categories and therefore less real as individuals. I also get the impression that what we call mind or subjective experience is more objective or public than we realize... and this seems to coincide with Dennett's heterophenomenology...the idea that an objective observer might be able to read someone's subjective experience better than the subject him/herself>>. Dear, Jeffrey, I can't find the Justice Holmes quote about the plain meaning of words vs one's subjective intent that I thought was so apt to your comments -- but do want to say I think you make a very good point. In fact, recently I was thinking about Dennett's homunculus/theater of the mind metaphor in conjunction with the "infinite regression" criticism sometimes leveled against Peirce theory of signs. My idea was that a theater of the mind need only go three levels deep to cover all the possiblities (but that's for another discussion and only tangentially related to the point you are making). Just now I merely want to say that I think you capture something very important about Peirce's views and also maybe something about Denett's that he may not realize himself. Surely Peirce's ideas on pragmatism gave impetus to the objective thrust that so captured law, psychology and philosophy in the early 1900s. And Dennett is indebted to this tradition. All said with respect and admiration for the counterpoints of Steven and Gary. That's part of what I find so appealing and impressive about Peirce -- that he identified both what is best and what is worst in behaviorism. Cheers, Jim Piat---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Pragmatic inquiry == "the love of learning"
Dear Gary, I like what you've said about teaching and learning from a Peircean POV. My best teachers were those who encouraged learning by setting a good example of it themselves and also showed a genuine interest in my desires. The teacher and the student are much the same. I also think one can neither teach nor learn without love and it's kissin-cousin enthusiasm. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Epistemological Primacy in Peirce NLC
Dear Joe, I've been reading the quotes you supplied with interest. I'm trying to formulate a good question but can't. Could you say a bit about what you think are some of the main issues, points of interest or conclusions to be taken from these passages. If you have the time and inclination I'd be very interested in your thoughts. I'm struggling with how much meaning is inherent in the sensuous impression vs how much of meaning is a matter of interpretation -- just to give you an example of a bad question! Maybe that's what I'm seeking from you -- can you give provide me better question to guide my inquiry into these exeprts? What is fundamentally at issue here from Peire's standpoint? Thanks, Jim Piat Steven:I append to this message some quotes from Peirce that might be helpful as regards cognitive synthesis, for what it's worth. (I picked them up from a string search of the CP on "synthesis" and they looked like they might be pertinent.)Joe Ransdell --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Dennett
Jeffrey Grace wrote: >>It struck me as Peirceian because, if I'm not mistaken, Peirce denied that there was such a thing as "introspection". He also seemed to affirm the idea that individuals are "less real" than generality... or rather that all individuals are instances of general categories and therefore less real as individuals. I also get the impression that what we call mind or subjective experience is more objective or public than we realize... and this seems to coincide with Dennett's heterophenomenology...the idea that an objective observer might be able to read someone's subjective experience better than the subject him/herself>>. Dear, Jeffrey, I can't find the Justice Holmes quote about the plain meaning of words vs one's subjective intent that I thought was so apt to your comments -- but do want to say I think you make a very good point. In fact, recently I was thinking about Dennett's homunculus/theater of the mind metaphor in conjunction with the "infinite regression" criticism sometimes leveled against Peirce theory of signs. My idea was that a theater of the mind need only go three levels deep to cover all the possiblities (but that's for another discussion and only tangentially related to the point you are making). Just now I merely want to say that I think you capture something very important about Peirce's views and also maybe something about Denett's that he may not realize himself. Surely Peirce's ideas on pragmatism gave impetus to the objective thrust that so captured law, psychology and philosophy in the early 1900s. And Dennett is indebted to this tradition. All said with respect and admiration for the counterpoints of Steven and Gary. That's part of what I find so appealing and impressive about Peirce -- that he identified both what is best and what is worst in behaviorism. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Epistemological Primacy in Peirce NLC
Thanks Jim. What do you conclude is Peirce's position in NLC? With respect, Steven Dear Steven, As I think about it and am coming to better appreciate your question I'm inclined to share your conclusion that unifying the sensuous impression is best understood as a kind of differentiation which occurs within the context of the meaningfulness which we, as signs, bring to all experience. And this, for the moment, is my current take on what Peirce means in NLC. I'd guess that the particular meaning or usage of "unifying" that Peirce employs in this passage may have been taken from a similar usage by Kant in his account of how his categories functioned. Unifying in the sense of bringing under the control of a single concept. And I suppose further (as implied by your question) that unification in general can be achieved among diverse elements under the principle of either sharing a common difference with their context or by sharing something in common independent of their context. But all this is very tentative in my mind as you have pointed out an issue that I had not previously appreciated and I'm just beginning to grapple with its implications. Best wishes, Jim On Sep 7, 2006, at 6:48 AM, Jim Piat wrote: ... I just reread this and your exchange with Patrick, and realize that part of your concern may be whether one's conception of a particular event is differentiated out of the totality of one's experience or if the totality of one's experience is built out of the integration of discrete events. Viewed in this was I'd say the former. We differentiate. We begin by swiming in a continuum of meaning from which we gradually discern and differentiate various nuances. When I say "we begin by swiming ..." what I mean is that at some point we awaken biologically and socially to meaning and it is this awaking that I take as the beginning. Perhaps there is a mode of being beyond what we call meaning -- but what that could possibly mean is inconceivable to me. Best wishes, Jim Piat---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Epistemological Primacy in Peirce NLC
- Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 12:54 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Epistemological Primacy in Peirce NLC Dear Jim, I will use your argument to make a simple observation: You see, Jim has made the second of the two interpretations I observe in NLC - the integrative one. Dear Steven, I'm still puzzling over the question you've raised about that opening paragraph in the New List. When we conceive do assemble or differentiate? Imagine an array of dots. After staring at it a while you "conceive" a pattern resembling a tree emerging near the center of the array. In so doing have you differentiated those dots constituting the tree from the greater array or have you integrated them within the greater array? The larger question (and probably the one you are asking and I am missing) is whether the pattern I'm so glibly calling a tree is in the dots or in the conception of them. At this point I'd say a bit of both. Threre is form and substance in the dots prior to their conception as a tree, but there is no inherent meaning in them because meaning goes beyond mere form and substance. Meaning involves not just the pattern itself or even my reaction to the pattern. Meaning requires the introduction of a third element against which my relation to the pattern can be compared. So conception brings something to the pattern not inherent in the pattern itself. Conception brings meaning beyond mere reaction. That is the real significance of representation -- it is the meaningful mode of being that goes beyond mere reaction to stimuli or sensuous impressions. In one sense I suppose that representation can not really be separated from any mode of being -- it is merely the most complete account of being. When we say an event is mere reaction we are strickly speaking (as I understand Peirce) not quite correct. What we should say is I attach no meaning to that interaction because I have not yet conceived of where that event fits into the overall pattern. Conception is not something we impose on being -- it is something in which we participate. Conception and representation (which are the same) are not parts of being they are the most complete modes of being and therefore all that has mere form and substance participates in them rather than vice versa. I guess another way to put this is that I think the choice between integration or differentiation obscures the deeper question of whether meaning is in the senuous impression or in the conception of them. I think Peirce clearly comes down on the side of meaning as part of conception. So "being" has three modes (feeling, sensation and thought) and it is only in thought (conception or representation) that if being is fully realized. All offered merely in the spirit of discussion -- hoping to learn. >>I do not have time currently to slow read NLC - maybe next year.>> Well, hopefully, but I'm glad you have raised this issue now. >>I know Kant is the obvious source for this reference - and I am checking that - are there others? >> Oh, sorry about that. Frankly I wasn't even sure about the Kant reference and I'm glad to have it confirmed. >>With respect, Steven>> Likewise, and thanks. And I apologized if I've missed your point and digressed wildly. I just reread this and your exchange with Patrick, and realize that part of your concern may be whether one's conception of a particular event is differentiated out of the totality of one's experience or if the totality of one's experience is built out of the integration of discrete events. Viewed in this was I'd say the former. We differentiate. We begin by swiming in a continuum of meaning from which we gradually discern and differentiate various nuances. When I say "we begin by swiming ..." what I mean is that at some point we awaken biologically and socially to meaning and it is this awaking that I take as the beginning. Perhaps there is a mode of being beyond what we call meaning -- but what that could possibly mean is inconceivable to me. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Epistemological Primacy in Peirce NLC
Dear Steven, Your questions are very interesting to me as well. I view the conceptions Peirce speaks of as signs and was just about to write something to that effect to Ben and might yet. I read Peirce as saying their are various sensations that impinge upon us which we organize in such a way as to constitute signs of objects -- these signs being conceptions. And that we ourselves are signs standing for a point of view or object we call ourselves. I don't mean by this to imply that this is all just a matter of neurology -- I think coordination with other signs is fundamental to the process by which signs are established and do their work. So I take it that the most complete organization of being is as signs and that this triadic being (of which we partake as signs) can at least conceptually be understood as comprised of a nesting of signs within which are signs, reactions and qualities. So I would say primacy belongs to the sign of which quality, reaction (distinction) and continuity are inherent parts. Sensations I take to be reactions. Of course I'm not sure any of what I'm saying here is correct. I am joining you in calling for a discussion of the New List and the questions it raises. So, I'm not really clear on the question you are asking (the difference between the two interpretations you are putting forth), but I think the theory Peirce is referring to is the work of Kant in his critique of Pure Reason but I'm not at all sure. In any case if you are taking on The New List paragraph by paragraph and are interested in discussing each paragraph as you go I'd like to join you and hope others will as well --- I've been hoping for a systematic review of this work on the list for some time. It would be very helpful to me. Best wishes, Jim Piat From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 8:34 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Epistemological Primacy in Peirce NLC Dear List, I want to make sure that I have interpreted Peirce correctly from his statements in On A New List of Categories (NLC). I am comparing this argument with the notion of epistemological primacy put forward by Rudolf Carnap in his The Logical Structure of the World. In the first paragraphs of NLC Peirce says: (CP1.545) Sec. 1. This paper is based upon the theory already established, that the function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity, and that the validity of a conception consists in the impossibility of reducing the content of consciousness to unity without the introduction of it. (CP1.546) Sec. 2. This theory gives rise to a conception of gradation among those conceptions which are universal. For one such conception may unite the manifold of sense and yet another may be required to unite the conception and the manifold to which it is applied; and so on. Here are my questions: Carnap argues that the entire experience of an individual holds epistemological primacy. This could be taken to concur with Peirce's argument in CP1.545 but there appear to be two interpretations possible. The source of my doubt is Peirce's use of the term "unity" in the above paragraph and his comments in the following paragraph. I want to be sure that I understand how he is using the term "unity." He may mean that concepts are differentiated in the landscape of experience and that the "manifold of sensuous impressions" is a whole and not constituted of distinctions, that distinctions in that "manifold" are what he calls "the function of conceptions." These distinctions fit my definition of "signs" and so an interpretation of CP1.545 could read that the "function of conceptions" are signs (i.e., differentiated experiences). An alternative point of view would argue that Peirce is saying the opposite of what I have said before and that he means that distinct "sensuous impressions" are brought to together as a function of conceptions. In this last case he would need an integrative mechanism for semeiosis and give epistemological primacy to "conceptions." This provides significant problems. Finally, where is the theory "already established" to which Peirce refers - in his own work or is he referring to someone else? Sincerely, Steven -- Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith INSTITUTE for ADVANCED SCIENCE & ENGINEERING Sunnyvale, California http://iase.info ---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The roots of speech-act theory in the New List
Dear Folks-- poking about I found that much of what Peirce says about perception relevant to our discussion of verification. (I think what makes verification possible within representation is that the capacity to respond to secondness is inherent in representation -- Peirce didn't say that but I think it's so). But Peirce did say this: "Whatever Comte himself meant by verifiable, which is not very clear, it certainly ought not to be understood to mean veifiable by direct observation, since that would cut off all history as an inadmissile hypothesis. But what must and should be meant is that the hypothesis must be capable of comparing perceptual predictions deduced from a theory with the facts of perception predicted, and in taking the measure of agreement observed as the provisional and approximative, or probametric, measure of the general agreement of the theory with fact. It thus appears that a conception can only be admitted into a hypothesis in so far as its possible consequences would be of a perceptual nature; which agrees with my original maxim of pragmatiism as far as it goes." (Source EP II page 225 -The Nature of Meaning) Well, whether the observation is direct or otherwise it does seem that Peirce views verification as comparing an prediction with an "observed" outcome. And elsewhere in discussions of perception/observation he seems to make it clear that secondness is involved in perception and perception is involved in cognition. And also from EP II pages 24 and 26 respectively: "It thus appears that all knowledge comes to us from observation. A part is forced upon us from without and seems to result from Nature's mind; a part comes from the depths of the mind as seen from within, whcih by an egotistical anacoluthon we call 'our' mind". . . . "The remark that reasoning consists in the observation of an icon will be found equally important in th theory and the practice of reasoning". None of the above intended as proof of anything -- just an interesting line of inquiry. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben, I don't understand why a person can't represent two signs as either alike or unlike without resorting to some sort of representation that is outside of representation as represented by Peirce. I encounter a sign of an object in some context where the object is not present. I interpret that sign. Later I go find the actual collateral object that the I originally interpreted the sign to stand for. I observe that collateral object -- which is to say I conceive the collateral object through the process of representing as having some meaning or consequences. Later I compare my original interpretation of the object's meaning that I derived from the sign with my interpretation of the collateral object's meaning that I based upon observing the object itslef. I do this by representing the a new object which I call the difference or similarity between the object of the original sign and the object which I observed. I'm trying to address two issues here. The first issue is what I take to be the fact that even observation involves representation. The second issue is that comparison is also a matter of representation. Enjoying and hopefully learning from your challenging arguments! Not sure you'd agree that I'm learning anything, but I do see a subtle evolution in your argument in response to the comments of others -- and this I find to your credit! Jim Piat - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 3:15 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Bill, list, Peirce does disgtinguish between "direct" and "immediate." See Joe's post from Feb. 15, 2006, which I reproduce below. It's not very clear to me at the mmoment what Peirce means by "without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or operation." -- which is part of how he means "direct." I know at least that when I say "direct" I mean such as can be mediated, and I've thought that Peirce meant "direct" in that sense too. So by "direct" I guess I mean something like -- if mediated, then such as not to create impediments, buffers, etc., and such as instead to transmit "brute" or unencoded, untranslated determination of the relevant kind by the shortest distance. (I.e., insofar as the mediation means an "encoding," it's not the relevant kind of determination anyway). Best, Ben - Original Message - From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 8:36 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: immediate/mediate, direct/indirect - CORRECTION I did a check against an aging photocopy of the MS of the quote from Peirce in my recent message, and found some errors of transcription, and also a typo of punctuation that needed correction as well. I also include in this correction an indication of the words which are underlined in the original (using flanking underscores). I show one illegible word as a set of six question marks enclosed in brackets because the illegible word appears to have six letters, maybe seven. Here is the passage again, corrected (though not infallibly): A _primal_ is that which is _something_ that is _in itself_ regardless of anything else. A _Potential_ is anything which is in some respect determined but whose being is not definite. A _Feeling_ is a state of determination of consciousness which apparently might in its own nature (neglecting our experience of [??] etc.) continue for some time unchanged and that has no reference of [NOTE: should be "to"] anything else. I call a state of consciousness _immediate_ which does not refer to anything not present in that very state. I use the terms _immediate_ and _direct_, not according to their etymologies but so that to say that A is _immediate_ to B means that it is present in B. _Direct_, as I use it means without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or operation. -- MS 339.493; c. 1904-05 Logic Notebook Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Jim, List: I cannot accept the notions "direct acquaintance" or "direct experience" if those terms mean "unmediated," or generally assume a human sensory system that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any observer. Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules. That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical. It obviously is, or we would have pe
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Dear Bill, I did not mean to suggest that direct aquaintance with an object was unmediated by signs . I was trying to make just the opposite point -- that all meaningful conceptions are mediated by signs whether we are in direct contact with the object or indirectly as when the object is represented by a symbol. My further point was that direct contact permitted actual iconization of the object based upon direct observation whereas the symbol only provided an imputed icon which depended in part upon community conventions. So I think I am more in agreement with your position that I made clear in my earlier posts. I even agree with the thrust of your argument that meaning guides perception rather than vice versa. We do not perceive truly unknown objects that are meaningless to us. An unfamiliar object that is a member of a familiar class is of course not instance of a meaningless object becuase we have a framework in which to perceive its broad outlines. But a truly unknown object would escape our notice because it has no meaningful contours. As to firstness -- I seem to be in a mininority around here as to what constitutes a feeling, a quality or a firstness. I say we have no conception of firsts (other than as firsts of thirds) because without the sign we have no conception of anything. In the beginning is the word. Sorry I have not responded more directly to your comments. I find them interesting as always but just now I'm in a big rush. Still I could not resist a comment or two of my own. Best wishes, Jim Piat - Original Message - From: "Bill Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Jim, List: I cannot accept the notions "direct acquaintance" or "direct experience" if those terms mean "unmediated," or generally assume a human sensory system that is isomorphic with the universe as it exists independently of any observer. Electro-chemical events in the system must follow their own system rules. That is not to say human sensory experience is not veridical. It obviously is, or we would have perished. But isomorphism is no more necessary to veridicality than it is to the analogical relationships between mathematical formulae and the physical world. The most direct experience we have, and it seems to me Peirce supports this contention, is a strong affective state. For the baby, it's a hunger pang, a physical hurt, or more happily, being fed or swaddled. What is felt is all there is; stimulus and response are essentially unitive. It takes awhile for a child to learn to mediate between that systemic relevance and the identity that is commonly called "objective." Developmental psychologists have commented upon the beginnings of perception in relevance. For example: an urban infant commonly sleeps through all sorts of traffic noises--sirens, crashes, horns, etc., but wakes up when mother enters the room. And relevance continues to direct us in our adult, everyday lives where things and events have the identies and meanings of their personal relevances--what we use them to do and how we feel about them. The wonderfully bright and sensitive colleague who stopped by our office to chat yesterday is inconsiderate and intrinsically irritating today with his endless yammering while we are trying to meet a paper deadline. There is some physiological evidence that meaning precedes perception--i.e., that the relevance of a sensory response is responded to in the brain's cortex before differentiation of the stimulus identity. Contrary to experience, we've been brought up and educated to believe we perceive and identify the object and then have responses--which, if it were so, would have promptly ended evolution for any species so afflicted. You couldn't dodge the predator's charge until after you'd named the predator, the attack and what to do. For most of our lives, the subject-object relationship analysis only enters when things go wrong, when the ride breaks down and we have to get off to fix it. The rest of the time the perceptual information/data that we treat as "objective" is submerged in our comparatively "mindless" states of feeling and doing. We write or type instead of moving our fingers and hands to produce selected results. We drive three quarters of the way to work and "wake up" to realize we've no memory of the prior two miles. Or we come home angered by someone at work and yell at spouses and kids. That's the everyday world we live in, and in that world the organic unity of the sensory system means responses to environmental impingments (exteroception) are inherently conditioned by what we are feeling and doing--by interoc
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Dear Ben, Folks-- Thanks for the reassuring clarification, Ben. Here's my thought on the matter for today. The distinction between the knowledge we gain from direct acquaintance with an object verses the knowledge we gain of the same object through a symbolic sign of that object is that direct aquaintance is mediated by an actually indexed icon of the object whereas indirect symbolic aquaintance is mediated by an imputed icon of the object. The meaning of symbols depends in part upon the reliability of linguistic conventions, customs and habits. The meaning of icons depends primarily upon the reliability of direct observation. Ideally the meanings we assign to our symbols are rooted in aquaintance with the actual objects to which they refer, but customs take on a life of their own and are notoriously susceptible to the distorting influence of such factors as wishful thinking, blind allegiance to authority, tradition and the like. Science and common sense teach us that it is useful to periodically compare our actual icons with our theories and symbolic imputations of them. Symbols provide indirect aquaintance with objects. Actual observation of objects provides direct aquaintance. However in both cases the aquaintance (in so far as it provides us with a conception of the object) is mediated by signs. In the case of direct aquaintance the sign is an icon. In the case of indirect aquaintance the sign is a symbol with an imputed icon. Whenever we make comparisons we do so with signs. Mere otherness is basically dyadic. Comparison is fundamentally triadic. "A is not B" is not a comparison but merely an indication of otherness from which we gain no real sense of how A compares to B. On the other hand the analogy that "A is to B as B is to C" is a comparison which actually tells us something about the relative characters of the elements involved. Comparing a collateral object with a symbol for a collateral object is really a matter of comparing the meaning of an actual icon with the meaning of an imputed icon. We are never in a position to compare an actual object with a sign of that object because we have no conception of objects outside of signs. Sometime I think, Ben, that you are just blowing off the notion that all our conceptions of objects are mediated by signs. You say you agree with this formulation but when it comes to the collateral object you seem to resort to the position that direct aquaintance with the collateral object is not "really" mediated by signs but outside of semiosis. But what Peirce means (as I understand him) is that the collateral object is not actually iconized in the symbol that stands for it but is merely imputed to be iconized. To experience the actual icon we must experience the collateral object itself. That is the sense in which the collateral object is outside the symbol but not outside semiosis. One of the recurring problems I personally have in understanding Peirce is that I am often unsure in a particular instance whether he is using the term sign to refer to a symbol, an icon or an index. Morevover when it comes to icons and indexes I am often unclear as to whether he means them as signs or as degenerate signs. Maybe this is where I am going astray in my present analysis of the role of the collateral object in the verification of the sign. In anycase I continue to find this discussion helpful. Best wishes to all-- Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Dear Ben, Joe, Folks -- Ben, are you saying that Peirce's categories (including representation) are inadequate to account for comparisons between knowledge gained from direct aqauintance with a collateral object and knowledge gained from a sign of a collateral object? That when we make these sorts of comparisons we engage in some category of experience (such as checking, recognition. verification or the like) that is not accounted for in the Peircean categories? Is that basically what you are saying or am I missing your point? I want to make sure I'm stating the issue to your satisfaction before I launch into further reasons why I disagree with that view. I fear we we may be talking past one another if we don't share a common understanding of what is at issue. So I want to make sure I'm correctly understanding what you take to be at issue. When and if you have the energy and interest, Ben. I admire your stamina and good cheer. And yours, too, Joe. I think that dispite its frustrating moments this has been a worthwhile discussion. For me the notion of what we can know and how we know it is at the core of Peirce's philosophy. Each time the list revisits this issue in one form or another I gain a better understanding of what is a stake -- and also of some erroneous assumptions or conclusions that I have been making. Thanks to all -- Jim Piat Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 3:15 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, list, >[Joe] I was just now rereading your response to Charles, attending particularly to your citation of Peirce's concern with verification, and I really don't see in what you quote from him on this anything more than the claim that it is the special concern for making sure that something that someone -- perhaps oneself -- has claimed to be a fact or has concluded to be so (which could be a conviction more or less tentatively held) really is a fact by putting the claim or acceptation of that conclusion to the test, in one way or another. This verificational activity could involve many different sorts of procedures, ranging from, say, reconsidering the premises supporting the claim as regards their cogency relative to the conclusion drawn to actively experimenting or observing further for the same purpose, including perhaps, as a rather special case, the case where one actually attempts to replicate the procedure cited as backing up the claim made. Scientific verification is really just a sophistication about ways of checking up on something about which one has some doubts, driven by an unusually strong concern for establishing something as "definitively" as possible, which is of course nothing more than an ideal of checking up on something so thoroughly that no real question about it will ever be raised again. But it is no different in principle from what we do in ordinary life when we try to "make sure" of something that we think might be so but about which we are not certain enough to satisfy us. The purpose (http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu/msg01288.html also at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1344) of my quoting Peirce on verification was to counter Charles' claim that verification amounts to nothing more than one's acting as if a claim were true, and Charles' making it sound like there's something superfluous about verification, that it's somehow meaningless to think of really verifying or disverifying a claimed rule like "where there's smoke, there's fire," meaningless insofar as it supposedly involves indulging in Cartesian doubt and insofar one has already done whatever verification one can do, by acting as if the claimed rule were true -- as if the way to understand verification were to understand it as a piece of symbolism about a rule only hyperbolically doubtable, understand verification as an act which stands as symbol (or, for that matter, as index or whatever) to another mind, rather than as an observing of sign as truly corresponding to object, and of interpretant as truly corresponding to sign and object. Verification does not need to be actually public and shared among very distinct minds, though it should be, at least in principle, sharable, potentially public in those ways. (Of course, _scientific_ verification has higher standards than that.) I quoted Peirce on verification to show that, in the Peircean view, the doubting of a claimed rule is not automatically a universal, hyperbolic, Cartesian doubt of the kind which Peirce rejects, especially rejects as a basis on which (a la Desca
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Charles Rudder wrote: >> That is, there is an immediate--non-mediated and, hence, cognitively autonomous relation between cognizing subjects and objects consisting of phenomena and/or things in themselves who are in some sense able to "see" or "recognize" objects and relations between and among objects as they are independent of how they are represented by signs and their interpretants. On this account of cognition, signs and systems of signs are "instrumental" auxiliaries to cognition and their semiosical instrumentality is subject to being and is consciously or unconsciously continuously being extrasemiosically evaluated, validated, or "verified" by cognizing subjects; a process which Peirce, who makes cognition and cognitive growth an exclusively semiosical process, ignores.>> Dear Charles, Folks Here's my take -- That one has some sort of non-representational "knowledge" of objects against which one can compare or verify one's representational or semiotic knowledge does seem to be a popular view of the issue of how reality is accessed or known. But I think this is a view Peirce rejected in the New List. However this is not to say that there is no practical distinction between what is meant by an object and what is meant by a representation of an object. An object is that which is interpreted as standing for (or representing) itself. A sign is something that is interpreted as standing for something other than itself. Thus one can compare one's interpretation of a sign of a collateral object with one's interpretation of the referenced collateral object itself even though both the object of the sign and the collateral object are known only through representation. The collateral object and the object of some discussion of it are in theory the same object. The distinction is between one's direct representation of the object vs it's indirect representation to one by others. In both cases the object is represented. There are no inherent distinctions between those objects we interpret as objects and those we interpret as signs -- the distinction is in how we use them. The object referred to by a sign is always collateral to the sign itself unless the sign is referring to itself in some sort of convoluted self referential fashion. The distinction between direct (albeit mediated) knowledge of an object and the sort of second hand knowledge one gains from the accounts of others poses no special problems. There is nothing magic about direct personal knowledge that gives it some sort of special objective validity over the accounts of others. What makes such personal aquaintance valuable is not their imagined "objectivity" but their trustworthiness (in terms of serving one's own interests as opposed to the interests of others). OTOH multiple observation gathered from different "trustworthy" POVs do provide a more complete and thus more reliable and useful (or "true"as some say) account of reality. And finally, verification (conceiving a manifold of senuous impressions as having some particular meaning) IS representation -- at least for Peirce (as I understand him). Just some thoughts as I'm following this discussion. Best, Jim --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
g, evolving verification of nature's inherent purpose. In any case I've enjoyed your comments, Ben, though I don't have the background (or stamina!) to follow all of your fourfold analyses. And I will support (to the last parenthetical remark-) your right to pursue them -- just as you have so often and patiently indugled my own explorations. Thanks again and Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben Udell wrote: That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from books. There is good reason for this. The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about math problems and working those math problems yourself. >> Dear Ben, Thanks for another helpful and interesting post! You seem to be saying that we can have two types of aquaintance with objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning? Is it your view that even without signs (or the process of representation) that experience would be meaningful to us? Is it your view that that signs and the process of representation are (merely) tools for comunicating or thinking about our experience but are otherwise not required for experience to be meaningful? Personally I don't think Peirce meant that we can conceive of objects without engaging in representation. We may have aquaintance with objects in the same sense that two billiard balls are aquainted when they collide but this is not triadic aquaintance for the billiard balls and conveys no meaning to them. For me, all meaningful experience is triadic and representational. That one conception of an object is taken as foundational for a particular discussion does not priviledge that object as the "real object" but merely as the object commonly understood as the criteria against which the validity of assertions will be tested. Its as though the discussants were saying that the object ultimately under discussion is "that one over there" or "the one described in this sentence" or whatever -- but hopefully always one which all participants to the discussion have at least in theory equal access. The issue of what constitutes a collateral object rests less on the distinction between direct aquaintance vs aquaintance through signs but one of private vs public access to the object. A useful collateral object is one to which all discussants have equal access. The question being raised by collateral experience is really one of public vs private experience. The question is not whether the collateral object is known through representation or somehow more directly through dyadic aquaintance because (in my view) all meaningful experience (even so called direct experience) is mediated through signs. The difference between reading about something and doing it is not a matter of representational vs non representational aquaintance but between two different representations of the same object. There are folks who can read about pro football who can not play it and there are folks who can play pro football who can not read. Representation of experience is required for both activities. The common object represented is neither the football-done nor the football-read but the quality of football that is common to and inheres in both. Some of the habits acquired in mastering one respresentation or conception are not the same as required for mastering the other. I don't mean for these last two paragraphs above to leap frog your answers but more as guides to what is troubling me and what I mean by my questions. Thanks again for your comments, Ben. I am still studying them, but want to make sure I'm understanding you as I go. Making sure I understand your distinction between direct aquaintance and sign mediated aquaintance seems an important lst step. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
tions. Nor is there such a thing as validity independent of usage or purpose. Verification or validity is limited to the purpose at hand. BTW, my apologies, Bill, if I've misapplied your point. Well, I've rambled a good bit and I'm not sure the above comments are all that relevant to your discussion or exactly what questions I'm trying to raise or answer -- so let me just conclude by saying thanks for your very ineresting, informative and fun discussion. I look forward to reading more. Jim Piat - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 4:16 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Joe, list, Thank you for your response, Joe. Comments interspersed below. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Jerry, I agree my attempt to explained handedness was faulty. Here is the Peirce reference to the issue. Glad the conference was such a success. Best wishes, Jim Piat "Take any fact in physics of the triadic kind, by which I mean a fact which can only be defined by simultaneous reference to three things, and you will find there is ample evidence that it never was produced by the action of forces on mere dyadic conditions. Thus, your right hand is that hand which is toward the east when you face the north with your head toward the zenith. Three things, east, west and up, are required to define the difference between right and left. Consequently chemists find that those substances wich rotate the plane of polarization to the right or left can only be produced from such [similar] active substances" Quoted from The Principles of Phenomenology -- page 92 of Buchler's _The Philosophical Writings of Peirce_. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Jerry, I agree my attempt to explained handedness was faulty. Here is the Peirce reference to the issue. Glad the conference was such a success. Best wishes, Jim Piat "Take any fact in physics of the triadic kind, by which I mean a fact which can only be defined by simultaneous reference to three things, and you will find there is ample evidence that it never was produced by the action of forces on mere dyadic conditions. Thus, your right hand is that hand which is toward the east when you face the north with your head toward the zenith. Three things, east, west and up, are required to define the difference between right and left. Consequently chemists find that those substances wich rotate the plane of polarization to the right or left can only be produced from such [similar] active substances" Quoted from The Principles of Phenomenology -- page 92 of Buchler's _The Philosophical Writings of Peirce_. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The Guerri graph about some sign relations.
Dear Ben, Wilfred-- Ben, I'm no grammarian and you may well be correct as to when to use other vs another. In any case I did not mean to dispute your use of "another". I was mostly going off on a tangent inspired by Wilfred's speculations as to what the distinctions might imply. I defer to you on the grammar. Your comment below raises another related thought: >>I agree about nummbers as othernesses. "Other" is not unlike an ordinal form of the phrase "more".>> What I meant to suggest in my earlier remarks was that "other" was akin to the notion of quantity as expressed in cardinal numbers and that the notion of sequence or order as expressed in ordinal numbers was perhaps more akin to the notion of thirdness, mediation, continuity and time. Otherness I associate with secondness which I was trying to suggest might be associated with the notion of quantity. These notions are far from clear in my mind but I think their interdependence (if in fact they are interdependent) may in part be explicated by Peirce's categories (as also be the source of some the disagreement as to whether or when a sign is a first or a third). But I have no quarrel with your choice of "another" over "an other" for Claudio's graph. I was just going off on a tangent sparked by Wilfred's comments. Sorry for the the resending your last post which I sent by mistake. But yes, the example you provided in that post, illustrated the distinction or emphasis I had in mind. Best, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The Guerri graph about some sign relations.
Jim, I said, > The only time that one properly splits them without an intervening word is when one indicates vocal stress of "other" by itself apart from "an" along with the syllabification "an-other" -- as in "an other thing." I guess that that does approximate to the situation that you're talking about, where one wants a different serving rather than an additional serving. However "an other" just looks like sloppy English, which Claudio wouldn't want if he knew how it looks. Italicization or underlining would be mandatory: "an other serving" or "an other serving" -- in order to represent that somebody was actually speaking with that stress on "other" and clearly pronouncing the "an" separately from "other." Best, Ben --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The Guerri graph about some sign relations.
Dear Ben, Wilfred-- Since much of this discussion has focused on the issue of nominal (categorical) and ordinal (sequential) distinctions, it occurs to me to mention that "an other" and "another" can (I think) be sometimes used to emphasize this distinction. "Another" is sometimes used to emphasizes a reference to something that is a second, further or additional something; whereas, "an other" is sometimes used to place more emphasis upon the distinctiveness between two somethings. For example if I wanted a second helping of food I might ask for "another" helping, where as if I wanted a different type of food I might ask for "an other" serving or entree. I may be wrong about the above and mention it not to dispute anyone's anyone's intepretation of these expression, but merely suggest that the question at the heart of this discussion is indeed a deep one and not merely question of diction. In what sense Peirce's categories represent nominal verses ordinal modes of being remains unclear to me. Perhaps his categories hold the key to riddle of quality verses quantity as well oridinal vs cardinal numbers. I guess my point is that for me this discussion of what mode of being are signs has been very helpful to me. Not for any definitive conclusion that have been reached but for the issues that have been raised. For example, I'm just now wondering if there is some value in considering the parallels between Firtness and quality, Secondness and quantity, and Thirdness and sequence --- self, an other, another. Otherness in itself may be adequate to account for quantity in as much as the notion of "and" seem implicit in the notion of "otherness" as for example a self "and" and an other self constitutes otherness. So that quantitity is implicit in other-others.Likewise time as Peirce oft cited examplar of Thirdness par excellence carries within it the notion of sequence or order among others. Just wondering. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] The Age of Fallibility
Title: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Dear Folks, Thought some might be interested in George Soros new book _The Age of Fallibility_. A review by Michael Maiello on the Fobes website states, "On one hand, Soros argues, the way we understand the world in large part depends on what preconceptions we bring to our inquires and on what narratives we choose to follow and metaphors we employ to describe the world around us. That sounds pretty post-modern but unlike the PoMos, Soros assumes that there is an objective reality out there that, althought it defies complete description, can certainly prove us wrong". Sounds about right to me but I've not read the book. From an earlier book I'd say Soros was left of center politically and by his own account heavily influenced by Popper philosophically. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: the quality of good
Dear Charles, Always worthwhile for me to read your comments. I've interspersed some responses. Charles Rudder wrote: Jim Pait, list, Jim's comments on ethics and aesthetics brought to mind some things I have thought about but not thought through which include: 1. Is anything like Rousseau's pre-social human existence possible, which, for reasons, among others, like Lester Frank Ward sets out in his objection to Laissez Faire theories of social movement, I doubt. RESPONSE: I, also, doubt the possibility of pre-social human existence. But I fear that such an argument would be difficult to distinguish between an argument over what one presupposes to be the nature of social verses what one presupposes to be the nature of humanity. In other words can the nature of what it is to be human be separated from the nature of what it is to be social. I think social is part of what it is to be human (and probably other species as well). The constructs would have to be conceptually independent to properly ask whether one could exist without the other. Then supposing they were independent conceptually one could ask if human existence were dependent upon the existence of the social. I haven't said this well. What I'm trying to say is that we need to distinguish between the question of whether being social is part of being human human and the question of whether existing as a human depends upon the support of society. Still not quite right but the best I can do just now. END 2. Is it possible for individual members of social groups to act as if we have no freedom of choice--that human conduct includes no nonmechanical consequences of selecting one among two or more available options? RESPONSE: I like the way you have inverted the way the question is typically posed, Charles. You rascal. END 3. If it is impossible for individual members of social groups to act as if we have no freedom of choice, is it possible for us to act as if no choices lie on a continuum between worst and best? Is it possible for members of social groups to avoid acting as if we must make ethical decisions about what is and doing what is right or best? RESONSE: I'd say the answer to #3 above is: No it is not possible to act in good faith and at the same time avoid considering the ethical consequences of anything we do. I believe that all our actions have ethical consequences. I think in general your questions above encompass two big issues that almost always arise in discussions of ethics: (1) Can there be ethical choices without so-called free will. (2) How ought concerns for the individual be balanced against concerns for the society -- given that the survival of each is interdependent. Despite the enormous value all societies (not just some societies) place on individual life and liberty, no society (not just some societies) allows its individual members to have totally free reign nor places more value on the life of an individual than upon the life of the society. But it is interesting to see the degree in which some individual's lives are more highly valued than other individuals -- again, probably in all societies. I'm talking about comprehensive societies (such as tribes or nations) that address the overall needs of their members -- not such limited social groups or institutions that address only one aspect of life. Just Wondering, RESPONSE: Me too, and thanks for the doing so. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] RE: the quality of good
Dear Tom, Good to hear from you! Your wrote: Specifically, in what sense are "the good and the beautiful ... more fundamental" than truth? How could something be good or beautiful without it first being true that it is good or beautiful? And looking at the quote you provided: "Esthetics is the science of ideals, or of that which is objectively admirable without and ulterior reasons. I am not well acquainted with this science; but it ought to repose on phenomenlogy. Ethics or the science of right and wrong, must appeal to Esthetics for aid in deter- mining the *summum bonum*. It is the theory of self controlled, or deliberate conduct. Logic is the theory of self controlled, or deli- berate thought; and as such , must appeal to ethics for its principles". it seems to me that truth can be looked at in terms of being an ideal, as being something that "is objectively admirable without ulterior reasons"; and that truth can also be looked at in terms of an ulterior reason, i.e., separating right from wrong and the benefits that accrue from doing so. Anyway, there is a sense in which esthetics and ethics as perspectives are fundamental; and that ideals - such as good, beautiful, true - are more fundamental than ethical considerations (what I take Peirce to be saying); but, I think I would balk at saying the good or the beautiful is more fundamental than truth. Response: You may well be right, but here's a bit more of my rationale for the interpretation I offered. I take the beautiful to be that which we find naturally desireable as an end in itself. What we desire as an end in itself I define (I think along with Peirce) as an esthetic ideal or beautiful. And yes I would agree that on this account there is beauty in truth. But truth is at least also fundamentally a means to an end as for example in the expression "the truth shall set you free". Indeed the truth is a great advantage in most and perhaps all situations. The truth, I am contending, is both beautiful and the universal means to an end. In so far as truth is an end in itself (as it is for so many who inquire after it) the truth is beautiful. In so far as the truth is in part the universal means to all ends I would place truth as dependent upon beauty. Ends (as genuine ends in themselves) are not only beautiful but are also the sin quo non of all means. BTW, though it's not central to the point above, I want to say that not all seeming ends are in fact genuine ends. Often the ugliness we call ends are not genuine ends but substitutes for the genuinely beautiful ends we can not achieve. The mistake I've made so often in my life is to settle for immediate gratification provided by the superficially beautiful rather than putting forth the genuine self control of thought and and behavior required to achieve the more enduring satisfaction of the genuinely beautiful. The best things in life are free and available for the taking by all, but they don't come easy. I'm taking this occassion to remind myself before I repeat my old errors. But Tom, all of the above notwithstanding, I've little quarrel with your formulation. The truth is as beautiful as it is useful. And because it is both maybe it is as you suggest about as fundamental as can be.Ah, in fact it just now occurs to me that perhaps my choice of the word fundamental is partly the source of our difference. I suppose the truth can appeal to esthetics without beauty being more fundamental than truth. Also it may be that by truth you mean something akin to "that which is" whereas I am thinking of truth also as a representation that conforms to that which is. IOWs not as a property of objects but as a property of representations. So, as I use the term true, for something to be inherently desireable or beautiful (or anything else) does not require that it "also" be truly represented as such. But I sometimes use truth in both ways. Plus I'm the fellow that doesn't know the true from the real so I've got plenty of room to be confused and just plain wrong. Thanks again for your comments. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Ben wrote: >>A 3-D object can be so rotated in 4-D space as to turn it opposite-handed. I remember an episode of the original _Outer Limits_ about it -- some man ended up with two right hands :-).>> My response: Thanks, Ben. I'm not surprised to hear from you on this issue four-most importance. But so quickly -LOL. Well if you are right (and I imagine you are) it seems to me that this would shed some doubt on the universality of Peirce's claim regarding the nature of triads being sufficient to account for all higher order relations. Still I think the result holds for three dimensional space (especially with respect to the issue of sterio-isomers requiring in principle only three groups to establish their handedness. Would you agree with this latter more limited conclusion? I recall a similar discussion on list years back when the question of whehter Peirces conclucions regarding the sufficiency of triads was merely an artifact of the the fact that we lived in three dimensional space and someone said that the issue had been addressed by some mathematicians and apparently "those" mathematicians felt Peirce was correct. But I'm in no position to judge. Seems its a fairly straightforward issue that I would think topologist have,or could, address. Thanks again. Ben. Would my blaming my breaking of my vow of holiday silence on you be a some sort of degenerate third or just a plain old garden variety lame excuse. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Neuroquantology Journal
Dear Patrick and Arnold Enjoyed your exchange! Not the least your spirited defense and encouragement of the desire and right to inquire no matter how humble or meager one's resources. In my experience when someone shares a tale or experience they hold dear it's almost always interesting. We humans are tellers of tales -- it may be our crowning glory. OK, its a holiday here in the states (and from what some of my British friends tell me for them as well ;) so I'll sign off for the day and give all my list friends a break. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] RE: the quality of good
Wilfred wrote: >> I did not respond. But actually would have said the same. That I would not know. In some situations I actually would have no problem at all putting the car at full speed and driving the man dead. While at other I would refuse to drive whatever the consequences might be as long the two subjects in front would stay alive. We could have this kind of discussions here. I would regard it very interesting. But think they should then better take place on some separate list probably. For discussion about applicability of the Peirce notions. And maybe getting the anothernesses into the discussions also.>> Dear Wilfred, Folks- Thanks for the interesting response and my apologies for taking some of it out of context in the interest of saving list space. One of the reason I was not yet ready to post my comments was because I wanted to tie them in specifically to Peirce. I believe he takes the view that his whole theory of logic and signs derives from the twin notions of aesthetics and beauty. That the good and the beautiful are themselves related and that both are more fundamental than the idea of truth. In his essay dealing with the classification of the sciences (page 62 of Buchler's Philosophical Writing of Peirce) I found the following quote of Peirce: "Esthetics is the science of ideals, or of that which is objectively admirable without and ulterior reasons. I am not well acquainted with this science; but it ought to repose on phenomenlogy. Ethics or the science of right and wrong, must appeal to Esthetics for aid in determining the *summum bonum*. It is the theory of self controlled, or deliberate conduct. Logic is the theory of self controlled, or deliberate, thought; and as such , must appeal to ethics for its principles". I agree with Peirce that we begin with the admirable (the given of what is desireable) but I think I would draw or emphasize a distinction between conduct that is desireable for the individual (or as perceived from a limited perspective) versus that which is desireable for the group (or from the broader persepective of the species or life itself). Ultimately I think beauty resides in survival of the group not the individual. And indeed when it comes to beauty folks tend to hold the group average as the best example. For example, in studies I can't cite off hand, folks tend to rate facial and bodily features most nearly approximating the group mean as most attractive. Well, now that I think of it, I believe Peirce does make the point that community feeling is a more admirable ethical principle than individual interests. So I think the notion of good I was trying to develop in my initial post was more or less derived from Peirce. I could not find a Peirce reference to Nietzsche. Do you or others know where Peirce offers an opinion on Nietzsche? Thanks again for your interesting and encouraging comments, Wilfred. Personally I think we could have a fun and pertinent discussion of ethics right here on the Peirce list if there is sufficient interest and participation. Trouble is, it usually take some emotionally charged current event issue to arouse folk's interests, and often such discussions tend to get mired down in disputes over the facts which end up overshadowing discussion of the of ethical principles and considerations. This, it seems to me, is even more the case with real life ethical conflicts (as opposed to discussions of hypothetical situations). Can a consideration of facts be made independent of a consideration of the beautiful and ethical and some logicians suppose? I'm not convinced. And not just because folks get upset over such disputes but rather because such attempts to separate fact and value are inherently false and upsetting! Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Wilfred wrote: "Is it not the case that even notions of left and right in a triadic Peirce relation require the consideration of a multiple relation of multiple directions? I mean, even if the left and the right are set (like A-B) and (B--A) in the example below, there are still many more X’s (signs) then the C around the B and the A." Dear Wilfred, Yes, I think you are right. Actually I was trying to make the point that it required three and only three dimensions of space to account for handedness or the notion of left and right but in my haste and limited spatial sence (not knowing my own left from my right) came up with the unfortunate illustration. Actually, in three dimensions any asymetrical object would do (in three dimensions) as an illustration of handedness. Consider the following two dimensional figures < and >. If one can rotate them they can be superimposed and thus lack an inherent left or right. In the case of aysmetric two dimensional objects such as I- and -I if one is allowed to rotate them in a thrid dimension then they also can be superimposed and thus lack an inherent left or right. But any asymetrical object fixed in three dimensions (ie one with a front and back, up and down, and left and right) such as our own hands (hence the term) can not be rotated so as to be superimposed and thus have an inherent left and right (or handedness). For an object to be so fixed in three dimensions requires *three* and only three distinct points, not *four*, as I think Jerry Chandler was suggesting. What the situation might be in the case of a space of higher than three dimensions I will not hazard a guess as I'm having enough trouble with this example. Well actually my guess is that higher dimensions would not require more than three points to account for handedness as handedness is a property of three dimensions but that's just my guess. As before I'm not sure I've properly understood Peirce but I hope the above example at least clarifies the issue a bit more and addresses your concerns. I think handedness is a fundamental example of what Peirce meant by a triadic relation so if I've still got this wrong I hope to be further corrected. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: the quality of good
Dear Folks, Sorry about that last post on the qaulity of good -- I was working on a draft which I meant to save but sent instead. I had just got to the point of realizing I had nothing to say other than I think Rawls had it about right in so far as I can tell from the blurb on the cover of his book! So that's my conclusion -- or good enough and the moral thing is for me to shut up and ask for the opinions of others. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] the quality of good
Dear Folks, I've long been sceptical about the notion of good and evil. So as an exercise of self discipline I thought I'd give a go at trying to develop a general idea of the notion of good and ask for others to share some of their views as well. Seem to me that good is an evaluation we make about the consequences or meanings of events. That in general we judge good event to be those who outcome is generally agreed upon as increasing the satisfaction and well being of folks. But how is the process of generally agreeing achived (in other words what specifically do I mean by general agreement) and what is meant by the notions of satisfactiona nd well being of folks. Beging with the latter I'd say that the satisfaction and well being of folks refers to those outcomes or consequences folks would choose for themselves. The issue of general agreement is more difficult. The problem with moral choices is not deciding between good and bad or better and worse but choosing between who is to get the better and whom the worse. The simple choice between good and bad is not by itself a moral choice. A moral choice involves a choice in which what is good for one person or group is achieved at the expense of what is good for another. A choice between six of one and a half a dozen of the other in which no one gains or loses at the expense of another is not a a choice involing a moral decision. Good is inextricably tied to the notion of moral choices. In general we consider an outcome good to the extent it is the outcome folks would choose for themselves. The distinction between a good and a moral outcome is that the quality of being good refers to that which one would choose for hirself where as the the moral choice is the one which one would select if he or she did not know which outcome --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Jerry, Folks-- For the fun of it, I'd like to try my hand at a biological application of Peirce's categories (and loosely speaking his notions qualisign, sinsign, and legisign). Consider the cell -- thought of by some as the fundamental unit of all living biological organisms. In particular I'd like to focus on the cell membrane that serves as the boundary between that which is cell (the essence of the living unit) and that which is not cell. Seems to me that the cell membrane is in effect a kind of mediater between what is cell and what is not cell. The cell membrance thus conceived is an example of what Peirce would call a legisign. The notion of life as a quality embodied in the cell would be a qualisign and the notion of material denotable cell itself would be that of a sinsign. I offer the above not so much as a technically correct account of the situation but merely as something suggestive of how Peirce's categories my be usefully applied to thinking about biological issues. The cell membrane defines not only biological cell in this way but also national boundaries (as semi-permeable boundaries) may be thought of in this light as well. Indeed I would argue that all constructs (identiies) are the result of such signification and that the viability of all cells and organisms (biological or social) are dependent upon the semi-permeable "continuous" mediation between so called self and other. Well just for the fun of it -- and admittedly neither very crisp or concise. But hopefully a little chewy. Cheers, Jim Piat Jerry Chandler wrote: "My conjecture is that extension is easy in number/arithmetic, difficult in chemistry, and very difficult in natural language. In the example, sign is extended to qualisign, sinsign and legisign. This extension appears to me to include a fair amount of arbitrariness. Fine for a philosophy of belief, not adequate for chemical or biological purposes. It would be helpful if someone could suggest a path that associates these terms with chemical, biological or medical practice". --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Jerry Chandler wrote: "But, my point is that if four different groups are necessary to construct an optical isomer of carbon such that it distinguishes between the logic of polarized light, then it is mathematically impossible to achieve this logical distinction with any notion of 'threeness". Optical isomers are not a question of trichotomies and triadicies. They are questions of tetrachotomies and tetraadicies. I would welcome arguments to the otherwise". Dear Jerry, Actually, handedness and materials that polarize light are among the very examples Peirce gives of his notion of Thirdness. The notions of left verses right (which distinguished between mirror image optical stereo-isomers) Peirce pointa out require the consideration of the triadic relation of three directions (up-down, front back, left right). It may well be that different carbon groups are involved naturally occuring steroisomers but in fact only three conjoined points are required to achieved the distniction beween left and right. Triadic examples of handedness Left Right A---B B--A l l l l C C Verses "redundant" tetradic examples of handedness Left Right A--B--D DB-A l l I I C C I don't mean to be present the above as authoritative -- this is merely my understanding of the issue. Best wishes and good luck witht he conference, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
It is found in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear": The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell Dear Folks, Thanks for all the discussion of real, true and existence. I take the above quote to mean that truth (or the lack of it) is a property of opinions and real (or the lack of it) is a property of the objects to which those opinions (signs) refer. An opinion that is true represents an object that is real. But what is the relation between real and existance? Can a first (such as a quality) whose mode of being is mere potential (not actual) be in itself real? A quality embodied in a real object I agree is real, but I remain puzzled as to the reality of qualites as mere firsts. I guess what I wondering is whether Peirce equates the real soley with what actually exist or whether real can also be applied to mere firsts. I suppose one could use Peirce's above definition of real to apply to mere qualities (as firsts). For example, if one were to express a true opinion as to what potential qualities might be realized in objects or what the character of those qualities might be, those qualities (as the hypothetical objects of those opinions) would be real.One could also express false opinions regarding mere qualities (how many there are and their nature) in which case the qualities referred to would not be real. And if the immediately above interpretation of real is correct (as I now think it is) then I would say that real is a property of all modes of being (potential, actual and general). To be, is to be real. However true or false is a property only of thought. Unreal is a property only of objects that are falsely represented. Anything that has potential or actual being is real but we can mis-represent or falsely represent both qualities and objects and to the extent that that either is falsely represented (or interpreted) that quality or object is not real. So, for example, hallucinations are real but they are falsely interpreted and the objects they are thought to represent by the person experiencing the hallucination are not real. Similarly possible objects do not necessarily exist but if truly (faithfully) represented then they are real. All potentially possible objects (truly represented) are real but impossible objects are not. And so on... I think that sovles the problem for me. My basic conclusion is that all modes of being are real. An object need not exist to be real but it must be possible. Some representations are true and some are false. Objects represented are real or false to the extent the representation is true. I wanted to make sure I had an understanding of real, true and actual that allowed for all sorts of conceptions including lies, illusions, contradictory statements, and mere potential states of affairs. I think the above does it but would welcome errors being pointed out. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Neuroquantology Journal
Make of that what you will :-) With respect, Steven Dear Steven, I think Crick of DNA fame was also seeking consciousness in the microtubials. What troubles me most about the search for the neural basis of consciousness is our lack of a coherent and satisfying working definition of consciousness. I doubt we will find the neurological basis of something we can't identify in the first place. The effort begs the question. Moreover neurons may be a necessary without being a sufficient condition for consciousness. Just one layman's opinion. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Patrick wrote: However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually "exist", beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" in Whitehead's terms. Jean-Marc responded: Not at all. Peirce was a "three-category realist", acknowledging the reality fo Firsts, Seconds and Thirds early on. What you call "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" is just another word for "nominalism" in that context. Peirce was not a nominalist. Dear Patrick, Jean-Marc, Folks-- I have a bit of trouble keeping track of the similarities and differences among the notions of true, real and existent as Peirce uses them. I am especially unclear about the the application of the term real to his category of Firstness.Are firsts real but non existent? Seems to me the notion of real qualities (as opposed to illusory ones) only has meaning in the context of qualities coupled with secondness as they are embodied in objects. In any case, what I'm doing here is asking a question and would love for someone to attempt to sort through how the terms real, existent and true are related. Best wishes Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Patrick, Folks-- Whitehead, yes -- and also Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance. Signs, like thought are more or less continuous and resist our attempts to pigeon hole them. OTOH contrasting mere intellectual associations with triadic thought Peirce says, "But the highest kind of synthesis is what the mind is compelled to make neither by the inward attractions of the feeling or representations themselves, nor by a transcendental force of haecceity, but in the interest of intelligibility, that is, in the interests of the the synthetising 'I think' itself; and this it does by introducing an idea not contained in the data, which gives connections which they would not otherwise have had". Later in that same paragraph (from A Guess at the Riddle) Peirce continues with a further good word for those who attempt to sort and categories experience saying "Intuition is regarding of the abstract in a concrete form, by the realistic hypostatisation of relations; that is the one sole method of valuable thought. Very shallow is the prevalent notion that this something to be avoided. You might as well say at once that reasoning is to be avoided because it has led to so much error; quite in teh same philistine line of thought would that e and so well in accord with the spriit of nominalism that I wonder some one does not put it forward. The true precept is not to abstain from hypostatisation, but to do it intelligently". Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: First, second, third, etc.
Dear Gary, Folks-- Oh I was just trying to be funny -- you know, with all the troubles in the world ours are just tempests in teapots. But I am serious about your good will being a great example and inspiration. I was just reading this moment about the Israeli tanks on the Gaza border -- wondering if this might not be an opportunity for them to pull back, extend an olive branch and say to Hamas "Hey wait, this isn't working --- what say we pause, regroup and try as brothers to find a common way -- or maybe for Hamas to make such a gesture. Seems all the drums everwhere beat mostly for war and conflict --- Where are the voices for peace? Blessed are the peacemakers. I'm only saying I wish we had more folks seeking common ground and I want to cheer on and express my gratitude to those who are -- as in your note to Jean-Marc and the list. Conflict, fear and animosity needs no encouragment from me. Nor criticism either. I'm just hoping good will trumps distrust, fear and animosity. Best wishes, Jim Piat - Original Message - From: Gary Richmond To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 10:05 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: First, second, third, etc. Jim, Thanks for your lovely notes. But what in the hell does this mean? PS -- it's a third you damn blockhead! Best,Gary --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: First, second, third, etc.
Dear Gary. Thanks for your generous and kind words. You inspire me to try to follow your example of courage and good will. Cheers, Jim Piat PS -- it's a third you damn blockhead! --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: A sign as First or third...
Gary Richmond wrote: >>So, finally, is a sign a First or a Third? It seems to me at this point in my reflection that it functions as both, transmuting itself as the sign grows in the continuation of a semiotic process.>>GaryDear Gary, Folks-- Yes, Gary, what you say in the above post seems corrrect to me in so far as my present understanding of this complex issue goes. Now, if we allow that even an object (if taken as part of triad of objects) can serve as a first or third I think we have come full circle and in some sense also merged with the position put forth by Jean-Marc. Could it be that Peirce's classifications of signs accommodates (my word for the day) both points of view -- The key being (in my view) that to serve as a first (quality or monad), second (object or dyad) or third (mediator or triad) is to function (or be construed/interpreted as functioning) in a specific relational way. IOWs all are signs and our discussions of objects, first and thirds (as well as categories verses ordinal positions) arise from our prescissions not from the givens. What makes thought possible (including all the nesting and reframing of ideas) is the fact that all is thought. We begin with thought. We swim in a continuum of thought and are ourselves thought. Slice it however you want it comes out an irreducible triad of form, substance and function. Maybe ... Thanks for sticking with me in this discussion. For me it has at times been a bit frustrating but even more so it has also been extremely helpful. For the record, I conclude that I was wrong or at best had a very limited understanding of the issues. Still limited, but better than before. Thanks to all, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: A sign as First or third...
Claudio, Jim and others I have a little game to suggest to everybody on the list who has some time to devote to it. Fortunately, it is related to a question of wines. In French language we have a phrase "Appellation d'Origine Controlee" (A.O.C.) to characterize at the same time the name, the origin and the level of certification of a bottle of wine. It seems that in English the phrasing would have to be "Protected Designation of Origin" (P.D.O.). I am sure that Claudio knows how to say that in his mother tongue. I will suppose that anyone of the acronyms is a sign. The question is : among the three elements of this sign (either A,O,C or P,D,O) which of them is the First, the Second and which is the Third? Hoping that you will find that the question is worth answering. Bernard Dear Bernard, You mean who's on First? Well, per my most recent take on this issue I'd say that, first of all, it all depends on what you mean by First. The sign it seems is the universal conceptual tool -- if it can be thought, the sign can accommodate it. Ah, yes ---and that too! Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: A sign as First or third...
Jim, List, I would like to try a comment on the relation between this two quotes: 1. "A _Sign_, or _Representamen_, is a First which stands in such genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its _Object_, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its _Interpretant..." (CP 2.274) and 2. "A sign is a third mediating between the mind addressed and the object represented". (Trichotomic, p. 281 Bref, [ A Sign is a First ] and [ A sign is a third ] as an apparent contradiction. Dear Claudio, Folks-- I've omitted the meat and best part of your post for the sake of brevity, but I like your synthesis better than my own one sided insistence that signs are thirds (in the categorical sense). I look forward to what others make of your suggestions. But as for me --bravo and thanks. You've helped me to see the fuller picture that somehow I couldn't seem to grasp. That said I don't mean to repudiate Jean-Marc's position which I do not think depends upon my insistence that signs were thirds. But having enough difficulty with my own misunderstandings I'll leave that discussion to Jean-Marc et al. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Dear Joe and Frances, This is not directly to your concerns but may be of some related interest: On page 106 of Volume 1 of the Essential Peirce (chapter 6 --On a New Class of Observations, Suggested by the Principles of Logic) I find the following Peirce QUOTE: "It is usually admited that there are two classes of mental representation, Immediate Representations or Sensations and Mediate Representations or Conceptions." CLOSE QUOTE The caps are not mine. Best wishes, Jim Piat Where does Peirce talk about an "immediate representamen" (or an "immediate sign")? I can't think of any use he would have for such a term. Joe Ransdell --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Ben wrote: Aw Jim, you're a trouble maker! 66~~ *A _Sign_, or _Representamen_, is a First which stands in such genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its _Object_, as to be capable of detemining a Third, called its _Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object.* ~~99 Dear Ben, Folks-- Yes, but Peirce also wrote (chapter 20 Trichotomic of The Essential Peirce Vol 1 page 281 line two of paragraph two) that "A sign is a third mediating between the mind addressed and the object represented". So I find this confusing. A Peircean categorical third is not a caterogical first. A first relates only to iself. There is firstness of thirdness but a third is not a first. In my understanding a sign is pre-eminently a third. Yet, Peirce obviously does say above that a sign is a First that stands in such a genuinely triadic relation to a second and so on. What do you make of this? I find it contradictory to speak of mere firstness functioning as thirdness. The quality of thirdness makes sense to me but firstness (as a Peircean category) in a triadic relation to secondness seems to me a contradiction. So I think we need to seek a different intepretation of Peirce when he say a sign is a First which stands in such genuine triadic relation to a second... Yes, all signs(which are thirds) are also firsts because they have qualities. Likewise all signs are seconds because they exist and have effects. But signs are neither mere Firsts nor mere Seconds. Furthermore, no First (as a mere first in Peirce's categorical sense) stand in triadic relations to anything because to stand in a triadic relation is the essence not of firstness but of thirdness. That's the line of thinking that leads me to believe Jean-Marc has a point -- at least in so far as the interpretation of this particular quote is concerned. The above notwithstanding, I do think Peirce meant for his three trichotomies of signs* to highlight to certain aspects of signs which to me are clearly related to his theory of catergories which I take to be the foundation of his theory of signs. In particular I think his first trichotomy forgrounds the quality of signs themselves as either hypotheticals, singulars or generals; the second trichotomy addresses the ways in which signs can refer to their objects by means of qualitative similarity, existential correlation, or convention; and the the third trichotomy addresses the fact that a sign can represent either a mere quality, an object or another sign. For me this suggest a three by three matrix of sign aspects based on Peirce's categories. As Joe cautions, Peirce's classifications of signs were a work in progress. All the more so for my own limited understanding of Peirce. * I'm working from Peirce's discussion "Three Trichotomies of Signs" as presented on page 101 of Justus Buchler's _Philosophical Writings of Peirce_ Best, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Dear Ben, Jean-Marc, list-- For what its worth, it also struck me that Peirce's use of the terms "first", "second" and "third" in the context cited by Jean-Marc is as Jean-Marc suggests merely a way of indicating the three elements involved when (A) Something --a sign, (B) stands for Something -an object, (C) to something -- an interpretant. I think it is mistaken to suppose a sign (as a function) is a example of a Peircean Firstness. A sign (as I understand the matter) is pre-eminently an example of Pericean Thirdness. OTOH is also seems to me (as Ben and others are suggesting) that Peirce's trichotomies of signs are in some fundamental way related to his categories and less arbitrary than it seems to me that Jean-Marc is suggesting. But I make both of the above comments mainly from the standpoint of an interested bystander who is both enjoying and learning from this interesting discussion which I hope will continue. That said, I am somewhat puzzled by what Peirce means when he refers to a sinsign as not actually functioning as a sign and yet having the characteristics of a sign. The only tentative explanation I can come up with is that for Peirce all that we conceive or experience (and thus all we can or do speak of ) are signs. So to speak of a quality is necessarily not to speak of a qaulity iself (because by defintions qualities are in or as themselves non existant) but to speak of the sign of a quality. IOWs a sinsign is something that stands for a quality that stands for something to something. And since this is more or less open forum I'd like to comment on a special interest of mine and that is the logic of disagreements but I will do that in a separate post. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] The logic of disagreement
Dear Folks, Seems I've read somewhere that the rules of logic are in some way truth preserving. I suppose this mean that these rules allow us to follow the various ways true statements can be combined to form additional true statements. Which for me makes logic very close to a form of truth presevering syntax. But the trouble is most disagreements involve not merely syntax but semantics. Ultimately the debate hinges on what one means by the terms that traditional logicians assume preserve their meaning no matter their syntactical context. If meaning is related to conceivable consequences we need to ask what the term "consequence" means. Seems to me a conceivable consequence is not merely what follows but what results what follows has upon the conceiveable present actions of whoever or whatever is conceiving those consequences. The logic of disagreement is that every POV has its own interests and thus its own personal meanings even though these are tied to the common interests and meanings of other POVs. IOWs every POV is to some extent unique as well as sharing something in common with other POVs.Meaning is to some extent tied to one's POV and personal interests. Despite logicians attempts to dismiss this as an ad hominen fallacy. The conceivable consequences of a given event are not necessarily the same for all those affected. In my view, meaning is not something that is fully independent of context or one's POV as some logicians seem to suppose. It seems to me that almost all lasting disagreements are the result not of faulty logic on the part of one or another of the parties involved but of a difference in meaning attached to issues being debated. The solution to such semantic disagreements is to find a meaning in common. This is called a common understanding and (in my opinion) almost always leads to agreement about the points being contested. So I take discusions (even heated ones) involving attempts to seek a common definition of terms to be a good thing and generally much more productive than most debates about the logic of one another's position. In my view a common definition ultimately depends upon a common POV or shared interest. To me conflict resolution is more about finding common ground than about attempting to deny the legitimacy of another's POV on the basis of some supposed logical inconsistancy. Which is finally to say that I admire both Ben and Jean-Marc and the discussion they are having (as well as Joe's attempts to keep it from getting overheated and de-railed). Best to all, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: LSE Conference abstracts on representation in art and science
I have not yet been able to find the source of this notion "that the meaning of something lies in its consequences" was explicitly connected to legal thinking in Peirce, but would be very interested if any lister has located it.Best,Gary Dear Gary, In Max Fisch's introduction to Volume 3 of the Writings of Charles S Peirce (1872-1878) begining on pages xxix is a section entitled _The Metaphysical Club and the Birth of Prgamatism_ .In this section Fisch discusses some of the influence legal thinkers had on the development of Peirce's pragmatism. I could not find a specific reference in which Peirce makes the attribution I alledged and my guess is I'm probably wrong. But I think there is general support for the considerable influence of Peirce's legal friends on his early thinking about pragmatism. Max Fisch passage from page xxxi: The most striking fact about the eleven members named by Peirce is that more than half of them were lawyers. (snip) And the most remark that Peirce later makes about the birth of pragmatism in the Club is that, while acknowledging the paternity that James had already ascribe to him, he calls lawyer Green its grandfather , because Green had so often urged the importance of applying Alexander Bain's definition of belief as "that upon which a man is prepared to act," from which "pramatism is scarce more than a corollary". END PASSAGE. I believe Bain was a lawyer. Fisch also suggest that the the pragmatic maxim may have derived from disussions in the Club. Best, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: LSE Conference abstracts on representation in art and science
D.C.L could also be "doctor of canon law." Gary Dear Gary, My Websters gives D. Cn. L. as doctor of cannon law. I notice Peirce mentions Canadian law in these entries as well. Elswhere I believe he uses the lawyer/client relationship as an illustration of "standing for" or representation. I think Peirce's legal friends had an important influence on his thinking -- no doubt mutual. Especially the notion that the meaning of something lies in its consequences. I believe that he specifically makes this acknowledgment somewhere. Sorry about including the whole message, and thanks for the reminder. Best, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: LSE Conference abstracts on representation in art and science
Dear Joe, In my Websters the meaning of D.C.L. is given as "doctor of civil law", but I don't find it in Black's Law dictionary. Jim Piat - Original Message - From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 9:33 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: LSE Conference abstracts on representation in art and science Ben: I don't know that it helps much in clarification of the "significance"/"signification" distinction, but you'll find below the definitions of "sign", "significance", and "signification" in the Century Dictionary. I've included only the statements of definition in the entries since it is simply too time-consuming to present the entire entries here, given all of the problems of transliteration, etc.; but I've made a few comments in brackets that might help. What I find remarkable is that Peirce amde no attempt whatever to convey even so much as a hint as to how he would define any of these terms for technical philosophical purposes. One could not possibly infer his own view even hypothetically from the definitions he provides. Do the definitions he provides correspond to his own colloquail rather than technical understanding of these terms? Presumably yes, so we can perhaps learn something from them if we bear in mind that they do not purport to be anything more than a report of what orinary or common usage is. And even there we should also bear in mind that the entries in the Century are often based largely upon the entries in a still older dictionary, the Imperial, as I believe it is called. So what we find here is apparently provided by Peirce but perhaps -- to some extent at least -- only approved of by him rather than created by him. I am not well acquainted with the Century as a whole. I had simply neglected its importance until quite recently. But my understanding is that he does in some cases do some fairly extensive creative work, going beyond mere approval of pre-existing accounts of popular usage; yet there is no trace of that sort of thing in his definitions of "sign". I assume his refusal to take advantage of the opportunity to grind his own axe in these definitions is due to and indicative of his commitment to an ethics of terminology, Joe Ransdell SIGN [used as a noun] 1. A visible mark or impress, whether natural or artificial, accidental or purposed, serving to convey information, suggest an idea, or assist inference; a distinctive guiding indication to the eye. [NOTE BY JR: It seems odd that the first sense listed would be restricted to visual signs.] 2. An arbitrary or conventional mark used as an abbreviation for a known meaning; a figure written technically instead of the word or words which it represents, according to prescription or usage: (as, mathematical, astronomical, medical, botanical, or musical signs; occult signs; an artist's sign. [NOTE BY JR: The examples he gives suggest that this would also include as a special case what we we now think of as being acronyms. At any rate, what he has in mind seem all to be special cases of symbols.] 3. Something displayed to announce the presence of any one; a cognizance; a standard; a banner. [NOTE BY JR: again, a remarkably narrow sense.] 4. An inscribed board, plate, or space, or a symbolical representation or figure, serving for guidance or information, as on or before a place of business or of public resort, or along a road: as, a merchant's or shopman's sign; a Swinging Sign, style of 18th century. tavern-sign; a swinging sign; a tin sign; a sign-board. 5. A symbolical representation; a symbol; hence, in absolute use, symbolical significance; allusive representation: [NOTE BY JR: as sometimes used with "in", e.g. "And on her head a crowne of purest gold Is set, in sign of highest soveraignty"] 6. A representative or indicative thing; a tangible, audible, or historical token, symbol, or memento; an exponent or indicator: as, words are the signs of thought; the ruin is a sign of past grandeur. [NOTE BY JR: His first example of philosophical usage occurs here. It is a quotation from John Locke: "This would be to make them [words] signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas. (Locke, Human Understanding III, ii, 2.)" All of the examples seem to suggest that he means things that are construed as symbols in their occurrence, even when they are natural occurences construed theologically, functioning evidentially, hence indexically.] 7. In general, anything which serves to manifest, stand for, or call up the idea of another thing to the mind of the person perceiving it; evidence of something past, present, or future; a symptom. [NOTE BY JR: This seems to be the most general sense of the word he p
[peirce-l] Re: If a valence of four had been known to Peirce, would he have constructed a logic of firstness, secondness, thirdness and fourthness?
Jean-Marc Orliaguet quoted Peirece: "Thus, the relation between the four bonds of an unsymmetrical carbon atom consists of twenty-four triadic relations". Dear Jean-Marc, Earlier I characterized the Carbon Hydrogen bonds in Methane as dyadic and suggested Peirce would have done the same. Clearly, the Peirce quote above does not seem to support my contention. To say the least -LOL Nonetheless I think the C-H bond in Methane is inherently dyadic, though, of course, as "represented" is triadic. Anything which is a respresentation of a dyadic state of affairs is, as a representation, a triadic relation. But it seems to me that C and H are held together not in a tiadic state but in a merely correlative or reactive state. What do you personally think about the nature of the carbon hydrogen bond in Methane? I mean your view as to the adicity of the actual bond itself -- not our symbolic representation of the bond. Quoting Peirce again below: "Careful analysis shows that to the three grades of valency of indecomposable concepts correspond three classes of characters or predicates. Firstly come "firstnesses," or positive internal characters of the subject in itself; secondly come "secondnesses," or brute actions of one subject or substance on another, regardless of law or of any third subject; thirdly comes "thirdnesses," or the mental or quasi-mental influence of one subject on another relatively to a third". With this I agree. I'm just not convinced that the C-H bond in Methane is an example of an inherently triadic relation -- unless one is taking the radical position that all relations are triadic and that both monads and dyads are mere abstractions. Which, come to think of it, may actually be Peirce's position. Cheers, Jim Piat Since the demonstration of this proposition is too stiff for the infantile logic of our time (which is rapidly awakening, however), I have preferred to state it problematically, as a surmise to be verified by observation. (...) --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: If a valence of four had been known to Peirce, would he have constructed a logic of firstness, secondness, thirdness and fourthness?
I think we are on slightly different wavelengths. I agree that Peirce's basic reasoning is constructive up to three. The potential for a triune God as an influence had occurred to me earlier. But, the basis of a triune God is reasonable clear from biblical narratives and can be (unjustly) simplified to a temporal association of past, present and future. But the articulation of valences of one, two and three are expressed in terms of the metaphor of conjunctions of roads or paths. The possibility of higher order branching is open. In technical language, he is talking about "trees" of relations. So, what creates the stopping rule at three for Peirce? Did he have a substantial philosophical reason or was it merely a fact that higher chemical valences could not be justified at that time? By the 1890's, it was well accepted by chemists that carbon could have a valence of four. It is highly probable that Peirce was aware of this fact. Is it possible that in later writings, he disassociated the enumeration of chemical valences from his enumerations of categories? Cheers Jerry Dear Jerry, I think that for Peirce the bonds of Methane CH4 do not constitute a single quadratic relationship in which all the elements are united, each to each other, at a single nexus. Instead I think he would view the C-H bonds as a seriers of four dyadic relations. IOWs not so much: H H C H H but more like: HHHH ' ' ' ' --Outer ring of electrons surround the Carbon atom I think Peirce's triadic theory of categories is most directly tied to the philosophical categories of Kant. They are intended as accounts of the fundamental modes of being. I suppose the reason he stopped at three is because for him the triadic relation of continuity or representation (along with monadic qualities and dyadic reactions) are the basic relations from which all that exists, could exist or will exist are constituted. They are the irreducible, necessary and sufficient modes of all being. There is no more or less -- nor can there be logically. I'm not the person to adequately present or defend his position but I think he attempts to do so himself in his essay On a New List of Categories. Thanks for your further comments. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: If a valence of four had been known to Peirce, would he have constructed a logic of firstness, secondness, thirdness and fourthness?
Jerry LR Chandler wrote: If a valence of seven had been known to Peirce, would he have constructed a logic of firstness, secondness, thirdness, fourthness, fifthness, sixthness and seventhness? And so forth. The metaphor of length of combinations of paths with and without branches is sort of a primitive precursor of the concept of categories of mathematical graphs. 21 st Century chemistry has developed vastly richer concepts of valence. Dear Jerry, I think Peirce saw chemical bonding as a way of illustrating his theory that in principle all bonds or relations can be built of and/or reduced to the three fundamental relations of firstness, secondness and thirdngess. So, in light of current knowledge I think he would probably argue today that chemical valances are actually examples of multiple dyadic bonds involving one or many electrons (though I may just be showing my ignorance of the modern view of the chemical bond). Along with you and others I too wonder about the diverse motivations for his triadic theory of relations. I think his interest in chemistry was surely a two way street both feeding and being nurished by his interest in the logic of relations. I also think his trinitarian view of Christianity was another important two way source of nourishment. And there are all important roots to be found in his philosophical readings. But whatever his influences I think he must also be credited with introducing something of his own as ell -- a bit of a first if you will. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Dear Ben, Gary R, Jerry-- Also in Vol 5 of the chronological edition (page 306 and 307) Peirce speaks of chemical valency: BEGIN QUOTE A straight road between two places, if not regarded itself as a place, is not a third place but only the pairedness of the two palces it connects. But a forking road involves a third place. Now no number of straight roads put end on end will ever have more than two ends aftger all; but forking roads put end on end with ramify into any number of ends. In like manner, in chemistry, were there no atoms but univalent ones, that is such as are capable fo pairing only, there could be no comibination but binary combinations. Whereas bivalent atoms, or those capable fo uniting with two others, which are therefore thirds, might give rise to combinations of any number of atoms. But bivalent atoms may be considered as involving only secondness in respect to having only two free bonds, and consequently they can only unite two univalent atoms however they may be arranged and multiplied. While trivalent atoms because they have three free bonds will serve to unite any number of univalent atoms. END QUOTe I also find on page 393 of the same volume an entry in the Centruy Dictionary for Element in which Peirce referes to the accepted views of Mendelejeff and himself (Peirce) provides a listing of 70 elements arranged in series and eight groups. I leave it to you folks to draw whatever inferences you may -- nothing fruitful springs to my mind. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Entelechy
Dear Folks-- I came across this definition of Entelechy among the words Peirce is reputed to have defined for the Century Dictionay in 1886 (page 404 of Writings of Charles S Peirce A Chronological Edition Volume 5 1884-1886) -- I was looking for a definition of form. BEGIN QUOTE ENTGELECHY, n. CGr entelecheia, word invented by Aristotle, from en telei echon, having atained the end.) Literally, attainment, realization; opposed to power, potentiality, and nearly the same as energy or act (actuality). The idea of entelechy is connected with that of FORM (caps from piat), the idea of power with that of matter. Iron is potentially in its ore, which to be made from must be worked. When this is done, the iron exists in entelechy. The passage from power to entelechy takes place by means of change (kinesis). This is the imperfect energy, the perfected energy is the entelechy. Tirst entelechy is being in working order, second entelechy is being in action. The soul is said to be first entelechy, that is, a thing precisely like a mani in every respect, except that it would not feel, would b e body without a sould; but a soul once infused is not lost whenever the man is asleep. This is the Aristotelian sense, but Cudworth and others have used entelechy and firt entelechy somewhat diferently. Cudworth calls his plastic nature or vital principle the first entelechy, and leibniz terms a monad an entelechy. END OUOTE My apologies if I'm repeating previously posted material. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
t because he recognized or at least claimed that mass or resistance was a dyadic relationship and that form was monadic. Why do you consider form a quality? Form is a kind of medium displaying all kinds of things -- rhythms, temporal things, and energy and vibrance as well. But basically, a shape in space looks like a balance of motion(s) and/or force(s). And when one looks not at loose forms -- patterns of bubbles on water, etc. -- but integral, cohesive forms, one sees structures, with structural integrities amidst their very flexibilities. To point to a thing with a certain quality is one thing, but to point at a thing which is a complex of things pointing at one another -- that seems another thing. The line of one's pointing can get caught up into the cross-woven "richochets" of indexicality in such a complex.>> Response: I think Peirce himself may use the term *form* to refer to qualities. I think folks, including Peirce, take this use as similars to the way Plato spoke of forms. At least in the sense of these forms being something intagible and whose state of being is more potential than actual. But I am wanting to extend this metaphor a bit to the potential ogranization of matter in space and time. Potential in the sense that matter (an actual existant) can potentially take many forms. I think it is a demonstrable matter of psychophysical experiments that many sensory qualities such as color, smell etc are the result of how an object's mass is structurally organized. More abstract qualities such as musical rhythms melodies and various patterns over time (taken as wholes) are again matters of how a sound (object with mass) is organized in space and time. That is what gives a quality what we call its feeling -- how it is organized in time and space (ie its form). I don't mean to be insisting I'm right Ben. I'm by no means convinced of that. I'm just trying to find a way of making as clear as possible what it is that I'm hypothesizing. What makes qualites seem so hard to put on finger on is the fact that they arise not out of the intrinsic property of the object's substance but rather as a result of the fact that the continuum (or represention) in which all objects swim (namely space and time) allows for different ways for matter to be organized or formulated.This might also account in part for the reason that qualities have both a monadic and triadic feel. They are in one sense forms unto themselves with no inherent relation to anything outside of themself (ie offer no resistance and no correlation) but at the same time are (in a manner of speaking) potentials of the continuum and therefore have a universal applicability. Each location (though dyadic) is unique but forms (though monadic) are potentially universally applicable. This "duality" of sorts lends a paradoxical feel to monadic qualities that real dyadic existents do not have. Maybe --- Thanks for your comments, Ben. I hope I'm not slipping into some sort of reductionist materialism which I don't want to do. I think the space time continuum which allows for representation is something apart from and beyond mere materialism. Not that it necessarily requires the notion of supernatural being but that it does require something beyond mere materialism. But just now I'd better get my material ass to work and make some money! Best wishes as always, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Porphyry's Trees
chers was a chemist and I can still remember his lectures about the importance of structure/form. Maybe too well some would say. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Dear Ben, Just a side note on Mendaleev's talbe which I googled. Mendaleev's periodic table was published 1869 -- Peirce New list in 1867. So I don't think it could have been the pyramidism of Mendaleev's table that inspired Peirce. Plus Mendeleev's original table didn't look like much the pyramid we remember from chemistry class -- and he called it a matrix. But you got me thinking about this notion of pyamidism being an inspiration to Peirce. The triangle is a fascinating structure or form for sure but I think it was more the semantic form of the triad than its physical form that inspired Peirce. Just as location can be in semantic as well as physical space. Although as you know I think that physical space (even if it is itself a crude representation of some other reality) does underlie our notions of semantic space and that location and mass are not just semanticly related in common speech but are in fact related in the abstract theories of Enstein in which mass actually bends or creates the shape of space. So when we denote or point to an object its hard to say whether it is its mass or location we referencing. No doubt in our minds we probably think of ourselves as pointing to the object's form as well. But, I still maintain that in theory all object have a set of qualities (constituting their forms or firstness) which are distinct from their mass/location (otherness or secondness), In fact I don't think Peirce equated secondness with either mass or location. He seems to have seen the continuity of space and time as being part of what constituted the mediation of thirdness. But I think a specific place is a matter of secondness. And I don't think he included mass as a quality. I think he equated mass (as a force) with secondness though he does not say this explicitely. I think mass is more or less the at the philosophers pole of substance with form at the other pole and continutity (representation or thought) being what mediates between them. Didn't mean to go off in this direction but I suppose this is my lst attempt at responding to some of your recent critiques of my discussions of connotation and denotation. Which, as usual I find very interesting, helpful -- and valid. Cheers, Jim Piat I would _not_ bet that his first inspiration was the periodic table or something like it, or the chemical symbolisms that were developing before it. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? (CORRECTION)
Dear Ben, Joe, Folks-- Ben, I can't always follow your mercurial explorations, elaborations, counter arguments and interesting asides so I'm just going to quote Peirce from the penultimate paragraph of the New List (which you may have already quoted yourself in which case I beg your apology while I wipe the egg off my face). BEGIN QUOTE: The other divisions of terms, propositions, and arguments arise from the distinction of extension and comprehension. I propose to treat this subject in a subsequesnt paper. But I will so far anticipate that, as to say that there is, first, the direct reference of the symbol to its objects, or denotation; second the reference of the symbol to ground, through its object, that is, its reference to the common characters of its objects, or its connotations; and third, its reference to its interpretants through its object, that is , its reference to all the synthetical propositions in which its objects in common are subject or predicate, and this I term the information it embodies. And as every addition to what it denotes, or to what it connotes, is effected by means of a dinstinct proposition of this kind, it follows that the extension and comprehension of a term are in an inverse relation, as long as the information remains the same, and that every increase of information is accompanied by in increas of one or other of these two quantities. It may be observed that extension and comprehension are very often taken in other senses in which this last proposition is not true. END QUOTE: Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re:Category Theory & CSP
Dear Irving and Jerry, Thanks for your very interesting comments on mathematical category theory. Seems I can't resist popping off about subjects I know nothing about. The less I know the more I'm tempted. And I dare say the two of you are not helping to cure my affliction with remarks such as the following: "(To put it colloquially, mathematical category theory makes it possible to compare apples to oranges.)" "It seems to me that category theory bears a different relation to language than does ordinary calculations". But I digress -- I'll buy the book and add it to my collections of half read treasures. Thanks again, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Entelechy
Dear Folks-- I looked up escatology (which I though is at least a remotely related notion) and entelechy in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy. I found the entry below for Entelechy. I think it adds a fun slant that is consistent with the picture you folks are painting. I especially like the "religious" teleological (from the Greek word for goal task completion or erfection -- also according to the Oxford Companion) movtives that I think are implicit in this notion. BEGIN QUOTE: entelechy. Hans Driesch (1867-1941) this century's leading neovitalist, was much impressed with his discovery that, despite extreme interferene in the early stages of embrological development, some organisms nevertheless develop into perfectly formed adults. In a thoroughly Aristotelian fashion, therefore, he became convinced that there is some life-element, transcending the purely material, controlling and promoting such development. Denying that this 'entelechy' is a force in the ususal sense, Driesch openly argued that it is end-directed. In his later writing, Driesch moved beyond his Greek influences, starting to sound more Hegelian, as he argued that ll life culminates ultimately in a 'supra personal whole'. END QUOTE the artical ends with a cross reference to vitalism which reminds me that Peirce was himself an investigator of spritualism. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Dear Gary,
Man!
As in no man is an island, there is nothing new under the sun and in one
sense nothing is ever used alone because every thing and every usage is
embedded in some context. So, Peirce's own context dependent arguments
notwithstanding (from page 309), I think one can also make the argument that
for every utterance or object there is a context in which it functions as a
sign and one in which it does not. That said, it may well be as you suggest
that in the context of a sentence (which I think you and I both agree is a
sign) prepositions and conjunctions (at least in some cases) function not a
signs but merely as "fragmentary signs" or structural elements that are only
meaningful in the context of the full sign or sentence itself. Seems to me
Frege made a similar point about the meaning of words but I may well be
mistaken about this.
So, following your helpful comments, where I find myself at this point is
toying with the notion that everything can be interpreted as a sign or
object depending upon the context just as everything can be interpreted as
part or whole depending upon context. Another of the great dualities I
suppose -- text vs context. Perhaps it is the resolution of this duality
(when context becomes text) that is the moment of conception, consciousness
and representation --- "to reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to
unity".
Thanks again Gary. Very interesting and helpful. I always enjoy your
remarks and love those post script aphorims. Recently read a collection of
Wittgensteins myself. -- which naturally I can't lay my hands on just now
when I want it. Something like "Cultural Investigations" -- Mostly remarks
(gatherered from various lecturers etc) about doing philosophy, being jewish
and what not.
}The meaning of a word is its use in the language. [Wittgenstein]{
gnusystems }{ Pam Jackson & Gary Fuhrman }{ Manitoulin University
}{ [EMAIL PROTECTED] }{ http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/ }{
Best wishes,
Jim Piat
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? (CORRECTION)
- Original Message - From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 7:16 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? (CORRECTION) CORRECTED VERSION OF PREVIOUS POST : Ben quotes Peirce as follows: 66~ A symbol, in its reference to its object, has a triple reference:-- 1st, Its direct reference to its object, or the real things which it represents; 2d, Its reference to its ground through its object, or the common characters of those objects; 3d, Its reference to its interpretant through its object, or all the facts known about its object. What are thus referred to, so far as they are known, are:-- 1st, The informed _breadth_ of the symbol; 2d, The informed _depth_ of the symbol; 3d, The sum of synthetical propositions in which the symbol is subject or predicate, or the _information_ concerning the symbol. ~99 And then says: "Information" may in some sense incorporates that which involves representational relations, but I don't think that that's the dimension of represenational relations per se. MY RESPONSE: Well, why not, Ben? Think of "information" in terms of an informing of something, or of becoming informed by something or about something; .think of it as an impression of form on something that thus becomes informed by it, i.e.takes on a certain form in virtue of that. (I am reminded of the locution "It impresses me (or him or her)"-- or perhaps "he or she is impressed by such-and-such.") The predicate brings form to the subject, in-forms the subject. Infomation could be regarded as a certain aspect of representation, i.e. the dimension of representation as regarded in a certain special way. Predication is a synthesizing of predicate and subject, as information is a synthesizing of breadth and depth, an informing of breadth with depth. I'll continue with your response later, Ben.. But this seemed worth remarking by itself. (Sorry for the sloppiness of the uncorrected copy originally posted.) Joe Dear Joe, Ben-- I'm talking too much and promise to make this my last comment for the day -- but I want to say that I think representation of meaning is a commonly held implicit definition of information though it may seldom be expressed in those words. I look in the dictionary and find "information: something told or facts learned; news or knowledge". To me all of these definitions imply the meaning of some event has been represented to someone. I think that for Peirce to represent is to inform. And I might add I think Peirce in some ways also anticipated Shannon's measure of information when he analyzed the fixation of belief in terms of removing doubt or reducing uncertainty.I look forward to your further exchanges. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Dear Gary, Enjoyed your remarks below! How would you account for the fact that word such as conjunctions and prepositions can stand by themselves as sentences? I'll grant you they serve primarily to indicate structural relationships among the various parts of sentences (and are so frequently employed that it is not surprising they would be short and few in number) but I still think they function as signs. They represent meaning and this is preeminently the domain of signs. On the other hand I think an agrument can be made that syntax is a form of representation and not merely a collection structural features that serve to hold the parts of a sentence together.What I mean is that in some languages (english for example) syntax is used to convey meaning. For example in the sentence "The boy hit the ball" the position of boy (a syntactical feature) indicates that it was the boy that hit the ball and not vice versa. So, in my view one could perhaps make a case that syntax is in this case being used as a sign to convey a specific meaning (agent vs patient or subject verses direct object). In fact it is my view that all syntax is really just a short cut for expressing common meanings (such as who is the agent and who the patient) that are embedded in nearly all sentences. Conveying these meaning with syntax (or syntactical signs) is more economical that using more words to accomplish the same thing. For example: The boy hit the ball. As opposed to: There was a ball. There was a boy. One struck the other. The boy was the agent. The ball was the object of the boy's agency. Granted I've overdone my example but hopefully clarified my point. I offer these views not to be agrumentative but because your comments touch on something I too have wondered about but reached a somewhat different conclusion. Actually I don't think the substance of our two accounts is all that different but I am a little uneasy about not considering prepositions and conjunctions signs. I think you are quite right about their fundamentally important sytactical function but as I said I think syntax is a form of structural semantics -- semantics embedded in structure. I much enjoyed your remarks and recognize of course that your view may well be right and mine wrong. I also recognize that I've over simplified your position and made it seem more one sided that it is. So I want to acknowledge that I'm not so much reacting to your balanced comments as I am to a straw man that I've concocted from a rather one sided and somewhat tortured reading of your remarks. Best wishes, Jim Piat I've been following this thread with great interest -- "following" in the sense that it's always a step or two ahead of me! But i'd like to insert something with reference to Ben's question about words like "not," "probably," "if," etc. I don't think it is helpful to consider such words as signs; rather they constitute part of a sign's internal structure, the sign proper being a statement, sentence, or proposition -- or minimally, what Peirce calls a "term". In linguistics, words like "if" are sometimes called "structure" words as opposed to "content" words, a distinction that is sharper than it may appear at first glance. Structure words, such as conjunctions, appear in closed classes with a relatively small membership. In English, for instance, there are probably less than a hundred prepositions (even counting those no longer in current use), and the addition of a new preposition to the language is extremely rare, compared to the frequency with which we add new nouns, verbs and adjectives (those being open classes). Another relevant distinction from linguistics is between semantics and syntax. If we want to study what (or how) how closed-class words mean, then we have to focus mainly on syntax, or the structure of utterances as determined not by objects denoted or qualities signified but by the structure of the language itself. Having said that, though, i think the line between syntactic and semantic has become fuzzier in recent decades, for instance in Leonard Talmy's work in cognitive semantics. He's shown how prepositions (for instance) not only lend structure to utterances but also reveal conceptual structures which are very deep aspects of meaning. And as i think Jim suggested, those aspects are most easily specified in terms of relations between objects. gary F. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
selves, because in such cases one can then use the stand in objects to do thought experiments and forcast the outcome of events before actually carrying them out with the objects themselves. This is very efficient in terms of time and energy costs, but some loss of accuracy is inevitable because in fact the symbol is not the object it represents and can therefore not fully duplicate the actual meaning (conseaquences) of the object is represents. I fear I may be guilty of repeating either what is true but already well known or suggesting things that are new but false. So I apologize for that, but hope I've made my views sufficiently clear such that they can be refuted. In any case this has been helpful to me and I would appreciate any feedback. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
-- are in fact embodied across quantum branchings. As with quantum mechanics, one can think about these things like "not" and "probably" and never get over their weirdness and _Twilight Zone_ qualities (though quantum mechanics seems to be a heck of a lot weirder). It seems to me that with "not" we have not so much comprehension or denotation, as a _straightforward generalized manner of alteration (and not mere modification) of comprehension_, and an accordant alteration of denotation. "Not" makes "not blue" out of "blue." The comprehension is flipped, likewise the denotation is shifted from one portion of the universe to the rest of the universe excluding that portion. You're saying that we do not directly witness or represent representational relations, but have to do mockups in terms of comprehension and denotation. We certainly have to give concrete examples, but after a while one grasps words like "if" and "not." I think that we directly and unabstractly represent representational and logical relations with words like "not." Adverbs (though not adverbs of manner) and conjunctions are their most appropriate grammatical form. You have the word "not" denoting everything and therefore comprehending (="connoting" in your sense) nothing; then you shift and have it having qualities and location in abstract, higher-order senses. We can spin some pretty find garb out of qualities and locations for representational relations, which make them more tractable, let us discuss them as objects. But we already see them plain in simple 1st-order words like "not" which, in fact, remain indispensable in all higher-order structures. We still end up talking about "belonging" and "_not_ belonging" to a class, etc. And there's never any getting away from that need for words like "not." So what is this "not," as such, in its first-order sense, which is indeed indispensable at all higher orders or levels? We're not going to build reaction and quality out of "purely" representational relations, but we won't do the opposite either.>> My response : Whew! Ben wrote: Now, Peirce actually says that there is a third category, that of representational relations. And it seems to be represented not by a dimension of information like comprehension and denotation, but rather by transformations of information. Symbols like "not" determine the interpretant to perform those transformations. Then it appears that information is conveyed sometimes more efficiently by those transformations than by always "spelling things out," which can't always be done. Something's not blue? I can't even say "it's red or orange or yellow or green or -- purple!" because "or" is another logical-relation word. All I could do is say what color the thing _is_, which will make clear that it isn't blue. I may not know what color it is. The logical-relation words allow tons of useful vagueness. So, those transformations do amount to another element or aspect, if not a dimension (as in the formula "comprehension x denotation = information), of information. We just don't have a name for it. When we isolate it, its bearer, its sign, may look like a mere gesture, but that doesn't mean that it is in fact empty. That it must ultimately be connected to icons & indices doesn't mean that there is no representational mode for it other than comprehension and denotation. In fact icons & indices won't get far without some help from symbols, and it likewise appears that there is a mode of representation which works through transformations of information and which is neither comprehension nor denotation. My response: I find all this very interesting. I think I'm more satisfied with the notion of information as representation than I take you to be. But I agree that representation is more than just "refering" which is the main function of either illustrating (connoting) or pointing to (denoting). I think representation ALSO includes the notion of "standing for" which is in my mind something more than merely referencing or indicating what is being indexed or iconized. A lot more. And I look forward to more discussion of just how "standing for to" or interpretation occurs. I think it needs the same sort of detailed analysis as the notions of refering which are achieved through icons and indexes (or their imputed functions reflected in our communal habits of symbol usage). As for Jon's earlier insistance that pure symbols did not perform the functions of icons or indexes (if indeed this was his position), I thought that he had abstracted and saved the bathwater from the baby rather than vice versa. As the old starkist add used to remind us, we want tuna that tastes good; not tuna with good taste. Thanks for your comments -- I look forward to more. Best wishes as always, . Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Category Theory & CSP
Bernard Morand wrote: Nice Jim! I had the feeling that I was blundering just at the time of writing that the categories in the sense of maths have no denotation nor connotation . However I could not see where the blunder was. So I decided to let the idea as it was and see what will happen. The underlying problem is I think the relationship between maths and other sciences, the most developed and interesting of them to observe being physical sciences. I suspect them to use mathematics as a convenient language in order to work physics but not for the very mathematical properties of this language. There is only a very basic arithmetics in the formula : e=mc2. J. Chandler suggests a similar shortcut in a previous message for chemistry: "Suppose I construct an abstract algebra for chemistry / biology that is not expressible in category theory". And this looks to be the problem of the admissibility of Gary's vectors too. In this line of thought, I wanted to convey that mathematical theory of categories does not presuppose any arrangement of the real (no denotation) nor any purpose for its internal organisation. What would be added to this even if we were agreeing that it is self denoting and connoting? Now, the fact that such mathematical systems really tell something to us, and very accurately, is always a divine surprise to me. Dear Bernard, Didn't mean to suggest you are blundering and I am not -- just wanted to join you and the interesting discussion. Unfortunately too often I let pass without comment the information I agree with or that helps me. A great deal of which I get from your always interesting posts. So, just to say thanks again for the friendly response and interesting comments. Many times I write something and in doing so realize I'm either mistaken or what I've produced is too confused to be worth posting. Sometimes I post them anyway hoping someone will have a helpful comment. And I find that almost always someone does. It's what we are doing here I suppose. Having a discussion of topics of mutual interest. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Ben Udell wrote: But first, on a general note, let me say that among the issues driving my current display of confusion & error, is the question: if comprehension is for quality & predicate, while denotation is for objects (resistances/reactions), then what dimension is for representational and logical relations themselves? Words like "not," "probably," "if," etc. do not designate either qualities or objects, nor do they represent objects as having this or that quality. What, then, do they connote? What do they denote?>> Dear Ben, Here's my take on the questions you raise above. I would say that symbols convey information and that they represent or stand for the meaning of objects. Objects (which may be tangible or abstract) have both qualities (forms) and locations (centers of gravity). The meaning of an object (its consequence for other objects) depends upon both the objects qualities and location. One can indicate the location of an object (or at least to its center of gravity). An object which perfoms this function is called an index. One can not readily point to the quality or form an object because form is not a matter of the object's location but of how the object is organized in space and time. However one can illustrate the form or quality of an object by providing a copy of another object that has similar properties. An object that performs this function is called an icon. To adequately represent or stand for an object's meaning we must refer to both its connotation and location. Moreover, I think it is a mistake to restrict the notion of objects to concrete tangible entities -- An object is anything that can be represented. Abstract objects such as relations also have forms and locations that can be connoted and denoted as discussed below. It is my view (and I think Peirce's) that words or symbols such as "not", "probably", "if" etc refer to and stand for abstract objects (relations) that have that do indeed have specifiable forms and locations. "Not", for example can, perhaps, be loosely defined as the abstract quality of lacking membership in a particualar class. Many, perhaps all, objects can participate in the abstact relational quality of "not" being a member of some class. And these sorts of abstract relations can be illustrated and pointed to. What makes "not" and all other abstractions difficult to conceive and illustrate is that abstractions are not forms or qualities of concrete objects themselves but are forms of the way in which concrete objects relate to one another.Logical relationships are abstact properties of the time/space continuum in which all concrete objects swim. To illustrate them we need to point to actions (and their consequences) over time and involving more than one concrete object. That's why math is not for all of us -- me for example. A symbol that does not perform the iconic and denotative function is like a gesture without movement -- sound and fury signifying nothing. Again, myself a good example. But most of all -- Thanks for all the interesting observations and references. Much food for thought in what you've provided. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Category Theory & CSP
Grary Richmond wrote: I agree with your assessment of the relational nature of Peirce's categories at least in the sense that at least in 'genuine' trichotomies that each of the three has a relation to the other two. But in another sense your comments seem to me to perhaps mix apples and oranges. As Bernard Morand pointed out in his message of 4/29:BM: As regards the relevance to Peirce one has to consider first that the word category in mathematics has nothing to do with the same word as it was used by Aristotle, Kant or Peirce.The mathematical category is an abstract construct which has no denotation nor connotation in itself. Dear Gary, Bernard, Folks-- Thanks for the comments. I don't know anything about mathematical category theory but I wonder what sort of construct (abract or otherwise) has no denotation nor connotation in itself. Isn't a construct's location in time/space in effect a self denotation? And isn't a constructs properties or form its self connotation? Aren't all constructs defined in terms of either their qualities or locations. My guess is that these so called mappings, transformations and such of category theory are in some fashion an elaboration of the meaning of such terms as connotation and denotation -- or alternatively form and location. The ways in which these categories are preserved under various logical, syntactical or mathematical operations. I don't know the differences among these operations but they seem related to me. In my view, following Peirce, there are three basic categories under which all conceivable modes of being fall: qualities or form, otherness or location (others must occupy different locations) and the contrual of the two producing a third which is representation. I cant quite imagine operations on hypothetical categories that have neither properties nor locations. Categories whose specific properties and locations are not at issue yes, but not categories absent these relations. Ah, it finally occurs to me that this may be just what you and Bernard mean by abstract categories. Abstract categores are those whose *particular* connotations and denotations are not at issue -- not categories without qualities or locations per se. Is this what you mean? However, if that is your meaning then I would still argue that the rules establishing how these categories relate to one another are in effect definitions of the general properties of the categories themselves. And further, that Peirce's categories are abstract or general in just that sense. Which is to say that form, substance and function are inseparable relations in the sense of being inextricable aspects of the same thing -- being itself. They are defined in terms of one another and there is no way around it. The most fundamental constituents of any system must be all defined in terms of one another (all in terms of all) or else they are not fundamental. I'm not sure how much sense any of this makes, Gary, but I've worked too hard on it to just give it the heave. So I'm posting it in hopes someone might either agree or point out some problems with it -- if they have the time and inclination. Thanks again for interesting and helpful comments. I too, btw, would like further discussion of Robert Marty's work if others are interested. I tried to follow it on my own a few years ago but was unable to make much progress and need help. Cheers, Jim Piat There has been the beginning of some discussion of category theory in relation to knowledge representation at ICCS the past few years and I have noticed that the mathematicians and logicians who attend the conference ( Bernhard Ganter, John Sowa, Rudolph Wille, etc.) do not conflate mathematical category theory with philosophical discussions of categories. In a certain sense this surprised me as these same folk at first resisted the use of 'vector' to describe 'movement through' a trichotomy of Peircean categories--for example in evolution, sporting (firstness) leads to new habit formation (thirdness) leads to a structural change in an organism (secondness)--and there are both temporal and purely logical 'vectors' considered by Peirce. Mathematicians especially would seem to get quite territorial as regards their terminology so that even Parmentier's precedent use of 'vector' to describe the sort of 'movement' I just described had to be reinforced by arguments concerning the use of the term in biology, genetics, medicine, etc. for them to somewhat grudgingly accept it for trichotomic (as I use it in my trikonic project). But, again, this is because category theory (perhaps badly named) has no direct relation
[peirce-l] Re: Category Theory & CSP
Irving: On May 1, 2006, at 1:06 AM, Peirce Discussion Forum digest wrote: A _category_ is the class of all members of some = kind of abstract mathematical entity (sets, groups, rings, fields topologic= al spaces, etc.) and all the functions that hold between the class mathema= tical entity or structure being studied. I find category theory to be somewhat of a conundrum. From the perspective of language, how is it possible to conceptualize both the subject and the copula for a category? If so defined, would you say that category theory is a sort of sortal logic over mathematical objects? Even metaphorically? Cheers Jerry Dear Folks, Yes, this is what is puzzling me -- seems that the fundamental rules or notions that relate the categories are in effect a definition of the categories themselves. So for me the question becomes as I think Jerry is asking -- how do we have both entities and relations. Seems to me that one or the other is not fundamental. I think the Piercean approach that all being is merely relations is more satisfying. Some of these relations (of relations) we relate to as objects, collateral objects, etc. The fundamental categories are themselves relations. I take that to be one of Peirce's main contributions to the theory of categories. Sort of . . . Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop
Dear Gary, Auke -- Which suggests to me the related notion that the consequences of actions involving objects are sometimes more efficiently determined by thinking them through with signs. Signs are tools for forcasting the outcomes of events -- affording all those who have them a great evolutionary advantage over those who do not. Jim Piat Gray Richmond wrote: Auke,Thank you for your interesting comments and for the quite pertinent Peirce quotation reminding us "that the essential function of a sign is to render inefficient relations efficient." --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: R: Re: R: Re: naming definite individuals
just a rapid remar. I was thinking that emotions, even in the case of very complex, cognitively rich, sophisticated and social emotions, such as, say, envy, even in this case emotions have a sort of "indexal" quality. I got such suggestion from the theory of the "emotional marker" by Antonio Damasio. In fact, according to Damasio, what is typical of emotional information is always the peculiar way that assumes its information: direct, anti-analytic, olistic, automatic or, at least, prone to be automatic, and perceptive. Thus, even in the case of complex emotions, what makes "emotional" an emotion is seemingly always something more related to an index than to a icon. Cheers Giovanni Dear Giovanni, Yes, I would agree that emotions (even complex ones) have a distinctly reactive component or secondness that is in a sense emblematic of an emotional response (as opposed to a more reflective or thoughtful response). But emotions are also characterized by their distinctive qualities perhaps even more so than the degree to which they often seem instinctive and and automatic. But here I am speaking of emotions as patterns of behaviors rather than merely the felt component of behavior. I think Peirce would describe all behavior patterns (including what above I'm calling emotions) as including the affective, conative and cognitive mode. For me emotions (as broad patterns of behavior) are symbols. What they denote and connote are not objects in the enviroment but dispositions, motivations or desires (which as you point out are often linked rather directly and instinctively to objects in the enviroment). So for example my fear is symbolic of my desire to flee, my anger of my desire to dominate and so on. To the extent that one (including myself) can read the nature of my desire in the way that I manifest my emotions (flight or fight) my emotions can be said to be iconic of the desire to which they point. To the extent that my emotional expression is reliably correlated with the presence of a specific motivation to which it points, that emotional symbol is indexical in character. But, as I've said, I believe all symbols perform both an iconic (connotative) as well as indexical (denotative) function. I think Peirce means in his account of firstness and his semiotic theory to more or less equate feelings with qualities or firstness. When Peirce speaks of feelings I think he is speaking of the fact that every experience has a qualitative or felt component. Here he is using the notion of feeling in a more narrow sense than my use of emotions to refer to broad patterns of motivational behavior. Not to say my use of the term emotion is correct but merely to help avoid a possible source of confusion. I think when Peirce is speaking of habits (as I consider emotions to be -- either aquired or instinctual-- urgent pressing, habits) he does view them as thirds and thus symbolic. Habits of course have a felt, reactive and purposeful component. Truth is, in my view, our experiences are not in fact divided into feelings, motives and cognitions -- all experience has these three facets because for conscious humans such is the triadic nature of experience. In anycase I don't mean to be coming across as nit picking or at odds with your view. Mostly just trying to sort out some terminological issues in my own mind and very much enjoying your insights. Found the Barr book, btw, and will get on that later. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: R: Re: R: Re: naming definite individuals
I was meditating that actually the most mechanical emotions may be thought as material relationships via neuronal paths starting from external stimulations up to conscious appraisal. Thus, your defintion of index is applicable to emotions, or at least to the emotions poorer of cognitive content. Cheers Giovanni Dear Giovanni, Yes, with the biological component itself actually evoked by objects or conditions in one's environment. Agreed. But like you I tend to view emotions as having a major cognitive component not the least of which has to do with interpersonal communication and goal attainment. And in this regard the iconic aspects of emotional expression as well as their symbolic character is at least as important as their indexical function.Overall I think Peirce analysis of the symbol is the most useful way to conceive of how emotions function holisticly as integrated feelings, reactions and thoughts. I see all purposeful behavior as essentially symbolic and I view the subject matter of psychology as not simply behavior but purposeful behavior. Behavior shorn of purpose I leave to the physical sciences. Or so it seems at this particular moment. Thanks again for your comments and best wishes, Jim PS -- I recall now a question I had about the view of consciousness in your rec readings. I will check them again this coming weekend and get back to you with it. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: R: Re: naming definite individuals
I wondered about something like this from another starting point. In order to present the Peirce's classification of signs in my book (Logique de la conception) to an intended audience supposed to be ignorant of such things, I searched for a concrete, non trivial, example of a qualisign.To give an example of a type of sign is always difficult because the relation between the case and the type depends on the situation and the context. But it is much more difficult for qualisigns because to give an example of a qualisign is to throw it out of firstness and to give it birth in secondness (qua example). Despite all these difficulties I thought that I could try as an explicative example the fear of an accident felt before driving up the car for a journey. I think it is a common everyday experience that becomes manifest in the fortunately rare cases where the accident really happens: people say afterwards that they had some "premonition". The fear can be regarded as a qualisign and thus an iconic sign. The resemblance is with what would be felt if the person was in the course of actually having a real accident. So, I think that the object of the fear-sign, while being purely virtual, remains nevertheless the object. Now may be that the therapist will be required when the person will confuse such an icon with an index. It will be the case if she believes that her actual fear, before driving up the car, will cause her to really have an accident later on, and so giving room for the premonition. In summary, contrary to what you are suggesting, 1) the fear would always have an object but it could be virtual 2) the awareness of the object that results from the erroneous indexical property of the fear would be a clinical fact. I would be grateful for your comments on my weak suppositions. Thanks Bernard Dear Bernard, Just lost to cyberspace a response I had composed, but I'll try to reconstruct it quickly.Basically I think I agree with both your clinical and semiotic analysis above. I did not mean to suggest that feelings were other than qualites best connoted by icons.I was just playing with the distinction sometimes made between the emotion of free floating anxiety and the more focused experience of the emotion we call fear. But I've no quarrel with your analysis. For me, all purposeful behaviors involve feelings, actions and thoughts. And I associate the icon with the felt component, the index with the reactive (inertial or temporal spatial component) and the symbol with the thought component. (I know this is probably not the spot but as I understand the matter Einstein equated inertia --gravity or resistance-- with space time. Such that what we call inertia or resistance is in fact very much a matter of location or pointing so to speak) You were expressing misgivings about my seeming attempt to provide an indexical account of emotions, correct? If not, and I've missed your point, please let me know. Like you, I'm interested in this issue and admire your attempt to illustrate a felt quality with an concrete example of what we call feelings. No matter the difficulty of trying to reify what can not be reified. The attempt must be made so that we can abstract from it the felt residue. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: R: Re: naming definite individuals
Dear Giovanni, My background is clinical psychology though I mostly function as a production worker these day -- reviewing mental disability claims for the government. I agree that emotions often function as indexes. In general I tend to view emotions as symbolic signs with strong iconic and indexical material components. We read others emotions because they are iconic of the motives (escape, attack, succor lust etc) that they express. Likewise emotions are typically tied to some specific objects (whether we are conscious of them or not). By tied I mean correlated in space and time. As a rule we do not impute the emotions we experience. They are elicited or evoked by specific circumstances and objects -- or by a chain of stimuli that are materially linked to the indexed (eliciting or evoking) object. The indexed object does not have to be immediately present to be indicated. The connection between the index and the object simply needs to exist independent of mere convention or our imputation of it. OTOH when we convey out intentions through our emotional expressions we are tending more toward employing them as symbols than as mere indexes or icons. Especially, for example, when we are being histrionic or actually acting as in a play. But I dare not put too fine a point on my speculations. I'm thinking now of anxiety which is sometimes defined as "fear without an object". Not sure how that might fit with your view of emotions as indexes or with mine of emotions as indexical and iconic symbols. Perhaps anxiety does have an object but the problem is that the anxious person is unaware of this object and the therapist task is in part to make this indexical connection manifest so it can be addressed materially. It's had to correct a hidden problem. From a more narrowly psychological standpoint I favor a multidimenstional view of emotions addressing not only their affective, conative, and cognitive aspects but also their biological and situational components from both the intrapersonal and interpersonal standpoints. BTW, I've bought and skimmed some of the books you suggested earlier on consciousness and found them interesting. I hope to get back to them soon but I'm more than a bit scattered in my approach to things and generally way behind in nearly everything. Thanks again for your comments. I am naturally comforted by and drawn to your psychological approach. As I suspect is the case with most folks, ultimately I have to ground the meaning of things in my own experiences. So I hope you continue to present your perspective. Cheers, Jim Piat Dear Jim, I thought about the definition of index and icon from the debate we had about consciousness and emotions. As you know, I am a psychiatrist. Thus, I am prone to ground the distinction index/symbol on the psychological domain. In my opinion, symbol is conncetd with conscious willing and freedom, index wth compulsory semantic relationships. You say that "indexes are necesarry results of the continuity of space and time coupled with the fact that locations in either are specific rather than universal." Tha is a good defintion. However, I think that there are psychic events, such as emotions, that could be defined at least partially as indexes, because they are not object of conscious control and willing. Hwever, there does not show neither physical nor material/spatial relationships. For example, basic fear is almost mechanically connceted with perception of danger. Although in fear there is a part of cognitive evaluation, I don't think that fear is an icon. Perhaps fear is neither a pure index such as the mercury in the thermometer. Howver, it seems to me that emotions are a good example of indexes that do not present a physical relationship. Giovanni Maria Ruggiero Psychiatrist and Cognitive Psychotherapist Milano Italy --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: naming definite individuals
Dear Folks, Some thoughts on this issue and interesting discussion: Something, it seems to me, performs an indexical function in so far as it serves to point to the spatial temporal location of something other than itself. That which displays a form is an icon. So, a name, as for example "Ben" is not an index. because a name does not have a physical (spatial temporal) connection with the object it names. A true index functions as an index whether or not we interpret it as such. For example a "reaction" is an index of an action. And a "part" is an index of the whole. Or one "side" an index of the other. Indexes are necesarry results of the continuity of space and time coupled with the fact that locations in either are specific rather than universal. Icons, on the other hand, are reflections of the fact that forms (as Plato said -- I think;) are universals and independent of time and place. An icon tells one nothing about the location of what it depicts but is does provide something about the depicted objects form, quality or essence. Indexes indicate locations. I would say a name is a symbol and like all symbols has both iconic and indexical functions. But a name is not an index per se. There is no necessary actual or existent connection between ones name and one's location in space and time. A name like all symbols are imputed indexes. That there is not a necessary/actual indexical connection between a name or symbol and its object is what makes symbols so useful for representing objects. The symbol can be manipulated (in thought) without having to actually move the object. Further, a symbol, depending upon its material properties can be either iconical, indexical or more purely symbolic. For example the spoken word bow-wow is an iconic symbol. The arrow on an exit sign is an indexical symbol and the word "in" is an almost purely symbolic symbol. But how man alone (if indeed it is man alone) achieved the capacity to impute (or partake of imputation) is the great puzzle of symbolization. I see where we got the idea of the importance of forms and locations -- but I don't know how we grasped the notion of using other objects to impute them. The discovery of symbols (as imortalized in the garden of eden tree of knowledge myth) was the begining of man's history as man. I guess what I'm saying is that names are symbols not indexes. As for what specificically is meant by subindex I'm not sure. Just couldn't resist jumping in -- as I am trying to follow this interesting discussion through its backs and forths. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Peirce, Emerson, Whitman
and how Whitman's poetic practice might profit from a "Peircean" reading. Dear Jeff, This caught my attention. So I says to myself, what is a Peircean reading. And just now all I can think of is an attention to quality (form), reaction (such as a poke in the ribs) and continuity. And what is the quality of being Whitmaneque if not a poke in the ribs and the continuity of all things? I'm trying to think of that passage from song of myself where Whitman exalts the sign democracy. I do think there was something in the language and culture of times that animated a common spirit in these three contemporaries. And that each in his own way celebrated the form, substance, and continuity of what is best in the American way. Plus each exhibited an intense pragmatistic mindfulness of the consequences of one's acts. Seen from a distance they were soul mates, profoundly ethical, robust, spritual souls -- emblematic of the American soul. We know this because these are the aspirations they stir in us. But facts I ain't got any. All of the above just an attempt to share some of my enthusiam and support for your project. I hope you keep us posted. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
