[Arisbe] Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry

[Jon Awbrey]

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Stan Salthe wrote (SS):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):

SS: I mean that in much semiotic literature 'interpretant' is used as
    though it just pops up as a mate for the object by way of the sign.
    Or, indeed, that a sign (as if it were "out there" prior to some semiosis)
    links an object with an interpretant.  That is, the system by which object
    and interpretant are linked via some (actually co-constructed) sign is left
    completely implicit.  I have found this unworkable for myself because, for
    me, a SI (your SOI) can be of many kinds, not just some human system.

JA: I am not sure if I read the literature that you are talking about.
    Off the cuff, I would say that I do not believe that the sorts of
    features you mention are obligatory attributes of sign relations,
    but more like optional accessories that can happen in some cases.

SS: Therefore the SI needs to be stated up front.

I do not understand.  We are talking about empirical phenomena.
At best we have our mits on a mere paltry sample of what may be.
There is a thing that we may call a "universal sign relation" (USR),
consisting of all the actual, or maybe posable, or maybe just possible
moments in the Conscious Cosmos when something (s) means something (i)
to someone (j) in 3-ads of the form of <s, i, j>, or posed another way,
when something (s) means something (i) about something (o) permused in
3-tuples of the form <o, s, i>, but the question is what it always is:
Does the spirit come when we call it?  Though we may spill out the ink
that it takes to form the letters of "Cosmos" or "Universe", in deed
we can scarcely do better than to focus on this or that drop of it.

JA: If you are saying that the whole sign relation L c OxSxI is the thing,
    in other words, the sine qua non of sensible discourse about signs,
    then I think that I would agree.

SS: No, I am saying that OxSxI are relations that,
    IF they are meant to be taking place in the
    material world, ...

I am purely a material thinker.
I can not imagine where else
they might be taking place.
But I know of no "anti"
to form for a' that.

SS: No, I am saying that OxSxI are relations that,
    IF they are meant to be taking place in the
    material world, require a locus to carry
    the viewpoint that will be reflected in
    the interpretants.  That locus or locale
    I call the system of interpretance (SI).

Now, it begins to sound like your SI is the interpreter?

SS: One SI may interact with an object quite differently than another does,
    and the signs used in mediating these interactions will be different.
    Put (more importantly) another way, the mediation is not done by the
    sign, but by the SI, which helped to create the sign.

JA: I guess I could say that the sign relation L c OxSxI
    is the "medium" of whatever "mediation" is going on.

SS: Well, that sounds like a kind of idealism to me.
    That is, not rooted in the frictive material world,
    but a free floating relation which might alight where
    it will.

By "medium" I mean the material whirl --
I was not calling on Madame Blavatsky.

SS: So, the SI is responsible for both the formalisms and the measurements.

JA: I believe that Nature, the ever pressent object reality,
    has its share of responsibility for our impressions and
    perforce must be assigned a part in the cosmic dialogue.

SS: Yes, but, because each SI will individuate during its development
    from vague beginnings, each one will have modified Nature's mode
    of impressions in its own way, and its signs will have its signature.

JA:  In those varieties of sign relation where Nature is the object,
     a modified impression is but another form of interpretant sign.

SS: Yes, development can be viewed as a concatenation of interpretants.

Okay.

SS: I note that this also relates to Howard's
    "Are Peircean rules of inquiry formal?"
    They appear to be formal and therefore
    to apply universally for all inquiry
    conditions, like "laws of inquiry".

JA: It seems that we have yet to converge on a sufficiently congruous collection
    of connotations for the term "formal".  I am hopeful that the fragment from
    Peirce that I posted under the heading of "Logic As Semiosis" will go toward
    explaining his sense of "formal" as "quasi-necessary", and also clarify the
    distinction that he observes between "logical" and "mathematical" reasoning.

SS: What I mean by formal is just that there is a form or framework that can be applied
    anywhere to analyze or understand situations.  That is, the Peircean triad, among
    other formalism, can be used as frame for understanding situations.  It is a tool
    for making models.

Well, it appears that everybody has his or her own definition of "form" these days,
which tells me that the Latin intuition is likely the most apt, "forma" = "beauty",
and thus in the eye of the beformer.  It is this very diversity that drove me back
to Homer and Plato and Aristotle, and to cling like a bat to the tree of etymology.

But I do like the bit about frameworks and instruments and mock-ups, whatever you call it.

SS: How, then, do the unique conditions of a specific observer or system under study
    enter the formal inquiry?  How is this different from normal physicist's inquiry?

JA: Again, this question strikes me as a strangely familiar inquiry,
    being one of the main tasks of my inquiry into inquiry to tackle.
    I will let you know what I come up with.  But I have already come
    to the conclusion that we cannot approach such complex and subtle
    questions without much more adequate conceptual and computational
    frameworks to support our effort.  So I have been working on that.

JA: Another thought. I just recognized that the type of question being asked here
    is closely related to a standard question in pragmatic hermeneutics, as to the
    status of the interpreter vis a vis the interpretant, in deed, as it stands in
    regard to the entire sign relation in question.  Peirce's answer, which I take
    to be a critical insight, is that the full sign relation is the primary entity
    of our study, its bearing on interpretants being the next in importance, while
    the agent of the interpretive activity is what such agents proto-typically are,
    a hypostatic abstraction hypothesized to explain the phenomena of experience.

SS: Well, I think this places your understanding here well within idealism.

I wish I were an ideal thinker, but I am far too fallible for that.
I mean, I think in ideas about Ideas, but my ideas fall miserably
short of the Ideal.  But maybe I should ask what you mean by your
idealism?

SS: But I may be making an oversimple reaction to this statement.  In science we are
    used to looking at systems.  We habitually imagine them to be composed of, AND
    to be precipitated BY entities.  Here you seem to opt for relations as being
    primary.  I think scientists tend to see relations as relating pre-existing
    entities.  Here instead you seem to see entities fitting into, or even
    coming into existence under the guidance of, pre-existing relations.
    If semioticians wish to talk to scientists, these issues will have
    to be cleared up.  (I am not saying either way is incorrect,
    of course.)

And where do you think that I learned this stuff, this POV, and how to think this way?
I did not begin as a student of antique philosophies and only lately catch up in my
reading to the 1800's.  It was in my "relativity and quantum mechanic" (RAQM) days
that I was re-trained to think in terms of relations and reciprocant observations,
and to see these bits of stuff flitting about the cosmos as congellid invariants
from the sol of a crypto-pythagorean geometry: "All Is Numb, And Getting Number".

But that was yesterday ...

Jon Awbrey

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