[peirce-l] Re: [Arisbe] Re: Critique Of Short -- Section 4 --Discussion

[Benjamin Udell]

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Tom, list,

Well, I'm not sure you or anybody else will want to read this all the way through if at
all. There's some good stuff in here & a nice chart. Sometimes a forum like this is a way
for contributors to work their thoughts out.  In fact, don't read it all the way though if
at all, do stop when you get bored.

Tom, you seem very at ease with reliance on context & syntactical devices & the like, but
many of us are not like that.  It's just confusing hen you speak dependently on such
implicit understandings.  Some of us, & Peirce is obviously like this, really fix upon &
use certain words as being like landmarks or buoys.  It was confusing when you wrote of
the "discovery" of the index & was so misunderstandable outside the context of the essay
that it was misunderstandable within its context too.  You write with such grace & ease, &
this increases the confusion. If Peirce needed to build his pragmaticism into his
semeiotics at the brass-tacks level so that his semeiotics would SAY it, EMBODY it rather
than just INTEND to say & embody it, & if that makes sense to you who say so, then it
should make sense to you when people ask you to be clear too.  It's certainly less trivial
than you think it is.

-- We're trying to analyze bicycle-riding while we're riding bicycles.  Philosophy is
reflexive, standing as it does in that inter-family coterie of friendly cousins which one
might call the sciences of reason (& reason's crack-ups) -- ordered sets, relations,
lattices, conditions for applicability of mathematical induction -- deductive maths of
logic -- philosophy (in the sense of that which Peirce calls cenoscopy's psychical
wing) -- &, with plenty of reason's crack-ups in the study of reason's crack-ups, the
human & social sciences/studies.  Self-overconscious bicyclists, self-underconscious
bicyclists, etc., & often vying along the roads.

-- Peirce took care to use "determine" in just a FIRST-LEVEL sense in the context of
semeiotic dependency, to help avoid confusion.  So the way you talk has been just
CONFUSING to us who have taken the trouble to get used to Peirce's way in this, & _have
become accustomed to depending on such usage in order to discuss, interrelatedly,
semeiotic determination & other kinds of semeiotically relevant dependency including
precisely the kind of influences which may lead to bad interpretants & in any case to the
kind of interpretant variation which you call "arbitrary."_ It's "completely" arbitrary
only for a tight camera shot, when the typical focus is much bigger-picture.

[graphic at:
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-- I just read Joe's post.  I agree with many things which he says but I don't think it's
strange to talk about reconstructing a sign on the basis of an interpretant, or
reconstructing the object in similar manner.  It seems like just the sort of thing that a
science of semeiotics would be interested in exploring.  And in a "cosmic" sense it's what
philosophy has been about for a very long time.

-- I just read Jon's post.  It's all the more reason for care in the use of the word
"determination."  It's not the first time I've encountered a question of Peirce's talking
about determination running from sign to object etc.  My impression has been that Peirce
grew pretty firm about the direction as the years went by, but was maybe not so firm early
on.

-- Deductive logicians now always systematically & carefully distinguish between 1st & 2nd
orders.  When we're dealing with multiple levels, excessive dependence on context &
syntactical devices will make it more difficult for us to _exploit the differences between
levels_, just as Peirce came, in your picture, to exploit the difference between
interpretability & actual interpretant.

-- Physicists need to sum different kinds of energy, so they have to distinguish them as
potential & kinetic, in order to combine them without fumbling.  They don't do the same
thing with momentum because the momentum associated with kinetic energy is conserved
independently of the "potential" momentum which you could associate with potential energy.
But with momentum they do need to take direction into account, even when seeking to sum
only the magnitudes.  In the end relative direction is taken into account even for energy.

It's not a fetish, it really helps us!  (A) It helps us keep track like with color-coding
of complex wirings, which we need to be able to do because semeiosis already often has
multiple levels even before the semeiotician comes along, & (B) it helps us remember (&
many of us DO need reminding in this day & age) that the *_semeiotic relations are those
whereby a mind learns the truth about real things that are what they are irrespectively of
what this mind or that mind thinks of them._*  That is the sense, as far as I can tell, in
which object determines sign to interpretant, rather than in reverse.  That's the guiding
idea & the bedrock & bottom line, the intuition guiding the semeiotic analysis of
constraints.  Now, minds can be very ACTIVE in arranging to get their cognitions to be
determined by the truth, the real thing, etc.  That's certainly what science is supposed
to be about.  With that massive & intense _activity_, it's no surprise that there's a
higher-order sense there in which the mind determines the truth, like a judge makes a
determination of fact.  We all know that.  But the distinction matters in this regard
because it would be very easy for semioticians not using some special term with the
Peircean meaning of "determination" to develop a semiotics of illusions, manipulation,
interpretations & perceptions deciding reality (i.e., deciding deluded people's view of
it), a semiotics in which the only semiotic object is the immediate object -- _such a
semiotics could easily fall prey to its own cynicism_.  And some people could likely
provide, quicker than I, examples of its actually happening -- socially critical semiotic
tirades against the smoke & mirrors of this or that university or this or that newspaper
or silly cartoon or you name it, when the tirade itself is even worse smoke & mirrors, is
being taught to impressionable students, & is really just wasting people's time & energy.
Peirce did not want a reality-is-fiction semiotics, (unless perhaps reality were to be the
one truly perfect fiction -- but that's obviously an extremal case).  A semiotics of
deception is a wonderful idea but a semiotics needs an underlying frame of reference in
which reality is not just an illusion, otherwise it degenerates into a charade & a
masquerade.  The word "determination" embodies a structural constraint which reminds the
thoughtful semeiotician to remain alert to the need to keep focused on semeiotic
relations' capacity to be right for the right reasons, even & especially when the
semeiotician is focusing on the semeiotics of illusion.

I'm not saying, leave nothing to context, but, wow, please leave less of it.  While Peirce
was not always a modal realist, there was always _categorial_ room & spaciousness in his
philosophy for possibility in one sense or another.  This can be further seen in the
difference which it makes, which is that Something Which Could Have Happened was never
taken for meaningless nonsense or tripe in his philosophy & Peirce would never have chided
a soul for talking "meaninglessly" merely by talking about would-bes or would-have-beens.
Peirce may have been for some time in the position of having to say that the
semeiotician's studied actual intepretant determines for the semeiotician the studied
interpretant's studied _actual_ meaning, but this is a use of "determines" not exactly
chock full of meaning when you merely mean that they're the same thing.  This use of the
word "determines" is not explicit in the chart above, it's just a lengthy equivalential
copula & not unambiguous given the variety of applicable contexts.  (You can see that I
thought quite a bit about it but I did so for the simple reason that I just wasn't sure
what you meant.)  It's obvious that you like to use words tellingly & to make them count &
you are really good at it, so this should be nota bene.

Anyway, saying that the actual interpretant equates to the _actual_ meaning differs, given
implicit contexts, from saying that the actual interpretant equates to the meaning per se.
Though it shifted in its Peircean ontological status, possibility is something for which
Peirce provided categorial room from early on.  Not a flat dismissal by him of possibility
but instead his coming to exploit the difference between interpretation &
interpretability, is that on which your argument would seem to find itself better off in
depending.

For a thought to occur is for a thought to be actual.  "Occur" has the same modal sense as
"actual."  In speaking of a thought as _occurring_ Peirce is saying (I think) that he is
not then talking about thoughts & signs as his way of talking about something else -- 
thoughts & signs which _occur_ do so at places & times.  If thought arises from & gives
rise to thought, then it's hard to see how a thought would occur or actually arise except
in an actual, occurring progression.  The poet Charles Olson credits the writer Edward
Dahlberg with having "beaten into" him the insight that "every perception leads DIRECTLY
AND IMMEDIATELY to another perception."  If the progression be continuous it will be
infinite in that sense.  It is true that Peirce did not speak of a semeiotic progression
which continues infinitely _unless interrupted_ while physicists will clearly say that
uniform motion goes on forever unless & until something forceful changes it.  (Perhaps Jon
would say that Peirce was getting the "kinetics" together, the "dynamics" would have to
wait.)

Anyway Peirce thought of semeiosis as an inferential process.  Inference is not, qua
inference, uniform &, over time, can vary enormously between poles of sophistication &
triviality, which should be remembered in considering that it does not seem that Peirce
thought that (inferential) thought progressions were confined to human minds, though one
might say that they become signs or quasi-thoughts.  I don't know what he thought about
that kind of progression in 1869.  But I just don't see how the issue of progressions (or
regressions as well) is wedded to that of building pragmaticism into the defining
structure of the semeiotic elements.  Peirce had plenty of ways to qualify the idea of an
infinite actual progression well before the introduction of the ultimate logical
interpretant, _which, as a solution for building pragmaticism into the defining structure
of the semeiotic elements, barely cracks the door open_.  Therefore I wonder whether he
thought of it as the way to finally build the pragmaticist theory of truth into the
brass-tacks level of his semeiotics.  I don't even know that he thought that he hadn't yet
done so.  I agree with you that he had not done so.  I think that he never did so, though
pragmaticist thinking flows through his semeiotic discussions & flows seemingly gaplessly
around his semeiotic conceptions, buoying them up & indeed supporting them in many ways &
helping constitute them, such that it would be wrong to say that his semeiotics is not
pragmaticist.  The pragmaticism is there in force, but there in ways which perhaps make it
harder to see the brass-tacks way in which pragmaticism is not built in.

Allowing a variety of possible interpretants, multiple actual interpretants, would not
solve a problem of interpretantial arbitrariness even if other solutions, such as the
statistical, were not possible.  It's obvious that, since there can be multiple
interpretants -- e.g., intentional interpretant (that of the sign's utterer), effective
interpretants (those of the listeners), so variation among the interpretants will depend
on more than the sign alone.  That doesn't mean it's FLATLY arbitrary semeiotically -- 
i.e., it's not a matter of deductive-validity-or-all-is-lost, & it doesn't mean that the
interpretants are also influenced in ways beyond semeiotics' purview.  The interpretants
may be variously influenced by _efforts at helping them be determined by the object_ -- 
e.g., through similar interpretants which have proven successful & been remembered by the
minds.  Of course, sometimes the interpreter is subjected to deception.  Deception is
often far from arbitrary & semeiosis can learn much from the bad experience.  The
differences in standards of value & significance in the various interpretants may all be
rooted in reality in ways whose differences have nothing to do with conflicts of fact,
though some of that will tend to happen.  That different actualizations are possible of
the same potency argues for complexity, not merely for arbitrariness -- ** & Peirce would
likely have _preferred_ an element of chance in interpretation, of course **.  Your
argument shouldn't be that it's "arbitrary," your argument is that Peirce was for a while
a semeiotic actualist.  I don't know whether he was, I kind of doubt it, but maybe you're
right.  Your argument is then that Peirce's semeiotic at that time _failed to allow as
Peirce intended for adequate determination by the object of the sign to the interpretant_.
What's not clear is that such actualism would mean that Peirce would think that an
interpretant's actualization would leave nothing to be said about how else the sign could
have been actualized, whatever the ontological status of such possibilities. That Peirce
for years thought that an untouched diamond was not actually hard didn't mean that he
would refuse to consider what would have happened a year before if he had scratched it
along the glass of his wife's favorite window.  Peirce said that the diamond untouched was
not actually hard, he didn't say that it was meaningless nonsense to call the untouched
diamond hard.  Especially to the point is that he could look at it statistically & he
could look at interpretants the same way.

Peirce's problem is, I think, much simpler than what you make it out to be.  Whatever
problems the progressions & regressions may present just don't seem pressing, & the
progressions & regressions themselves are essential to what the sign & interpretant roles
are.  A sign is such that it produces fertile sign-offspring -- it conveys its very
conveying, it conveys a difference (about the object) by being a difference (the sign)
which makes a difference (the interpretant).  Likewise then for the interpretant sign, if
it is an interpretant _sign_.  It's reassuring that this reminds one of dominoes &
mathematical induction, rather than of algebra, calculation, & coding -- we're talking
logic, not information theory.  But if even signals do not perpetuate themselves in their
own way, _soever cryptically_, then the world will not be perfused with information & the
universe will not be unified or, at any rate, be anything more than a blind mass
unrelieved or some very weird quantum thing.  Where signals don't go, existence as we know
it stops.  The interpetant, for its part, in order to clarify is selective according to
standards of value & meaningfulness -- it draws upon a selection, in order to produce a
selection.  If that, into which you've translated something, is not itself subject to
translation, then that which you've produced is not in a language & you have not produced
a translation at all.

Since Peirce's Ultimate Logical Interpretant is "not a sign," it does seem a way for a
progression either to go semeiotically extinct or maybe attain to some sort of semeiotic
maximum or status as ceiling or floor.  I don't know.  One might want to allow for such
termination without wanting to kill off all progressions -- this world's particular
progressions need to last only as long as this world lasts, this world of time & space as
we know them.

The real problem begins & ends with the fact that his pragmaticism has the high virtue of
depending on the idea of research sufficiently prolonged yet is not built in that regard
into the defining structure of the semeiotic elements.  Flow around & help constitute them
though it does.  Research includes observation & experience, sufficiently prolonged, or it
is not research at all.  This idea is necessary to avoid a conception in which semeiosis
fails to distinguish sense from nonsense & instead degenerates into credulous flights of
the trite & trivial kinds of fancy which Coleridge himself deplored & which are the wrack
& ruin of many actual people.  But the sign & interpretant convey no acquaintance or
observation or experience of the object.  Acquaintance, observation, experience,
familiarity -- _be they soever mediated by signs & interpretants_ -- are _not_ sign or
interpretant in the relations in which they are acquaintance, observation, experience,
familiarity.  In those relations, experience is collateral experience, which tests & is
informed by signs & interpretants, if it is anything more than "raw" secundan experience
of such a hit as leaves its sufferer so at the mercy of the hitter that the sufferer
cannot, for the moment, even form an idea of what is happening.  This role, this status,
which is collateral acquaintance or experience or etc., is not one of the roles or
statuses in the semeiotic triad.  Incorporate it & one incorporates pragmaticism into the
defining structure of the semeiotic elements.  In that minor little business of
identifying, observationally *_recognizing_* a sign's object as object of that sign,
emerges the key to all evidencing, attesting, corroborating, confirming, disconfirming,
spot-checking, granting recognition to a sign as having not just the interpreted role but
the recognized status of authoritative or corroboratory observational evidence on the
basis of past successful experience with similar signs, etc., etc., -- the key, also, to
how any semeiotic elements are ever bound together intelligently at all, & the key, not to
stanching the flow of semeiosis, but to girding it, giving it leverage, supporting it with
that to which adequate research leads.  More handholds along the rockface.  Or:  A gelatin
is hard to move, a car goes far.  Research continually renovates & occasionally rebuilds
the car.  That's what's missing -- the incarnation, the embodiment, the legitimacy, the
recognition, to which adequate research would & sometimes does lead.

It's gotten kind of emotional around here.  Talk of "rhetoric" & not in the sense of
methodeutic.  I hold that experience suggests that rhetoric understood as the logic of the
making of effects on interpretants is best understood as rhetoric in a somewhat (somewhat)
more traditional sense & not as Peirce's methodeutic, which, in covering the scientific
process among its subjects, is not just about interpretants but about recognitions.  It's
inevitable that interpretation is mixed up with emotion.  It's a thing of _actum_, energy,
life, _teloi_ & affectivity.  We interpret from a viewpoint & in accordance with standards
of significance & value & our own purposes.  It's just natural, it comes with life,
there's no other way to do it.  The material world statistically muddles the
before-&-after info equivalences which seem to hold at basic mechanical levels, till it's
a world swamped with signs, signs, everywhere the signs, omni-mediative, a swamp wherein
life thrives but needs to sort things out & uses standards of significance & value in
order to help it decode or interpret, on top of which, however, we have brains & can
*check* our interpretants rather than leaving the task to biological evolution & getting
removed from the gene pool by their failure against real & sometimes changing conditions.
Of course, for each of many of us, there are interpretants such that, if the interpretant
or its contained ideal fails against the real world, then it's a world in which you or I
might prefer no longer to live.  Amid life, a sink of unforgotten things grows
sophisticated & we call it intelligence.  This minor "basin" learns how to arrange for
itself to be a basis, a recognition, determined semeiotically by deep & powerful things.
It takes over from biological evolution & plays architect & re-designer with its world of
source, mediative stream, intervening living open system, & itself.  It has, perhaps,
barely begun & is fallible.

Best regards,
Ben Udell
budell at nyc.rr.com
ben_udell at yahoo.com